Nintendo

Ugh, I loved it so much. I played the Wii U version (Switch version is owned but in my backlog) and just had a total blast with it. I'm not surprised the SMT edgelord segment and FE traditionalists hated it because some of it just so gay in the best way. "Reincarnation" bangs.

It's fun too because the dungeons are well-designed/rich in mechanics, and the boss battles can be challenging at times. I'm sure the streamlining of Session animations (can't you skip them now?) makes the battles so much snappier, too.

The songs are great! And the music videos too, and the costumes (save for Kiria's, which is a bit of a disaster). It really is very gay, I do love having a pop music-centric JRPG.

I'm not sure how sessions worked in the original game, but they go by pretty quickly now, each additional step takes maybe 1 or 2 seconds? Not sure if they can be skipped, it's not something I ever even considered doing. Only thing that's a bit of a bummer is battle chatter not being subtitled, but at least it doesn't look like it's actually anything important, just the usual battle interjections like "here I go!", "my turn!" and the like, and often you can more or less get what characters are saying by their tone and understanding a word here and there.
 
I made it to chapter 13 in Xenoblade Chronicles DE ages ago, but stopped playing the game for whatever reason, and I'm trying to get back into it now, but whew, there's an overwhelming amount of systems and stuff to keep track of. The combat system is complex enough, but there's also the affinity charts (both in the party and with NPCs), the endless sidequests, the collectapedia, the gear, the skills, the crystals/crafting, the heart to hearts, the unique monsters, the Colony 6 restoration...

head-bang-headache.gif


I definitely still want to beat it, but it's all just a lot to take in after not having touched the game in several months. I think I'm gonna have to reread some tutorials nn

Honestly I'd say move on with the story! It's about to really take off.
 
I'm not sure how sessions worked in the original game, but they go by pretty quickly now, each additional step takes maybe 1 or 2 seconds? Not sure if they can be skipped, it's not something I ever even considered doing. Only thing that's a bit of a bummer is battle chatter not being subtitled, but at least it doesn't look like it's actually anything important, just the usual battle interjections like "here I go!", "my turn!" and the like, and often you can more or less get what characters are saying by their tone and understanding a word here and there.
Yeah, they're pretty quick! There's just a point by the end of the game where you may start having 40+ chain sessions that run every turn/random battle.

Also yeah, totally forgot about the un-captioned battle dialogue but remember it now. I was wondering if they would've implemented that in the Switch port.
 
Surely two characters per Kart and a wider roster are reasonable expectations.

I really don't want Super Smash Kart but let me at least have the Samus/ Birdo partnership of my dreams.
 
Does anyone have any Wii U digital/Virtual Console recommendations? I'm trying to grab some games before the eShop closes down for good. I know it belly flopped but I love this stupid console.
 
Does anyone have any Wii U digital/Virtual Console recommendations? I'm trying to grab some games before the eShop closes down for good. I know it belly flopped but I love this stupid console.
Wii U fans, unite! All three of us!

I don't think the Wii U and 3DS eShops are going to close anytime soon, though. I read somewhere that they use the same infrastructure as the Switch one, meaning that it hardly costs Nintendo anything to keep them online (at least as long as they keep the Switch one online, too).

This being said, here's some must-haves:
  • Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3
    Personally I've always preferred the original NES version of SMB3 when it comes to graphics and music, but this is still the only way (!) to access the 38 e-reader levels, most of which were never even released/distributed outside of Japan at all. You basically get a whole new game alongside SMB3.
  • Duck Tales Remastered
    Just a fantastic and gorgeous jump'n'run. The thing is that in the past, this game sometimes became unavailable for a while due to licensing issues on Disney's part. I wouldn't be surprised if at one point they just stop renewing their license for the game altogether, which would make it completely unavailable. I'm definitely glad I have a copy of it on my Wii U.
  • Zombi U
    By no means an amazing game, but I still think it's pretty good? And it makes great use of the Wii U Game Pad.
  • The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD
    You probably already have those, but I'm still mentioning them because thanks to the second screen, the Wii U versions are always going to be superior to the inevitable Switch/Switch 2 ports of these two games (in my opinion, at least). Also, The Wind Waker HD is part of Nintendo Selects, meaning that it's no doubt cheaper than it's going to be on the Switch/Switch 2.
  • Nintendo DS Virtual Console titles (e.g. Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Sky, the three Pokémon Ranger games, New Super Mario Bros.)
    Playing DS games on the Wii U actually feels surprisingly great! If you don't have them as original DS game cards anymore that you can play on your DS/3DS, you should definitely get them this way, especially since some of them have become pretty hard (or expensive) to find, Explorers of Sky in particular. Also, due to the fact that they're DS games, I doubt they'll ever port them over to the Switch since they'd need two screens.
  • Game Boy Advance Virtual Console titles (e.g. Zelda: The Minish Cap, the GBA Metroid games, the Super Mario Advance series, the somewhat forgotten Golden Sun games etc.)
    I guess these might actually end up appearing on NSO sooner or later, but for now the Wii U is still the only modern-ish console that lets you play these classics.
  • Nintendo 64 Virtual Console titles
    Okay this might be a bit of a weird pick, but personally I find the NSO Expansion Pack quite overpriced, so I prefer paying just once for games like Super Mario 64, the Zelda games, Paper Mario, Donkey Kong 64 etc. and actually owning them forever, regardless of what Nintendo does with NSO and whatnot. Also, while playing those games on an original Nintendo 64 console is probably still the best experience, I heard that the Switch versions are pretty glitchy and laggy? So one more reason to play the Wii U ones, in my opinion.
 
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he/him
The emulation Nintendo is using for N64 Switch Online looks sooooo bad. They should have just contacted either Project 64 or Mupen64 and gave those teams their well deserved coin. The N64 controllers they're selling are tempting, though.
 
So I finished the main story of Xenoblade 2 last night and…I need someone to talk to. I need to gather up my thoughts but I thought the ending was epic and overwhelming in the best way possible. But it also left me feeling really sad.
 

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