vanguard333

I'm pretty sure that was the order in which they were made, not the order in which they were conceptualized. According to a Nintendo Dream interview, a route where the player sides with Edelgard was always planned, but it was originally going to be a lot harder to access than it is now.

It looks kind-of interesting. I personally would've preferred an XCX-2 over an XC3, but that's just me. One thing that concerned me a bit was the lack of anything indicating anything special about the gameplay. Monolith Soft is great at making interesting worlds with neat stories and characters, but the gameplay is often uninteresting and lacking, especially with its combat, but even exploring the worlds they've created can often be a drag despite how interesting they look. The reason I like XCX is that, while the combat is largely the same as always with XC games, it greatly improved the exploration. I really hoped that, after helping the Zelda team with Breath of the Wild, Monolith may have learned something about how to make interesting gameplay, but the trailer being all story and 80% cinematics suggests that that's where the focus will be. I know this is just an announcement trailer, but it's still a bit concerning that they showed nothing.

I'm pretty sure that was IS. IS was really ambitious with this game, so I wouldn't be surprised if expanding the number of routes from 2 to 4 was IS's idea.

I actually looked into this a few months ago. Here's what I found about the game's development and who did which: So, basically, the Three Kingdoms inspiration was from IS looking at Koei Tecmo's previous works, rather than being Koei Tecmo's contribution directly.

Sure, that's a plus I guess. But that still doesn't change the fact that this feels less like a crossover-spinoff being made because someone saw potential in it, but because of the success of Age of Calamity and Persona 5 Strikers.

Well, that was... mostly boring honestly, with one or two flickers of excitement and a couple groans. The flickers of excitement: more Advance Wars knowledge is cool, Triangle Strategy demo should be fun The groans: Three Houses Warriors, Triangle Strategy is still called Triangle Strategy and not something better XC3 looks kind-of interesting; I'm not sure I like the idea of a game taking place in the worlds of the previous two games; both XC1 and XC2 seemed rather conclusive in their conclusions. I honestly wasn't expecting an XCX-2, as much as I would've preferred that, so this didn't surprise me. One thing I would've liked though would've been for the trailer to show some actual gameplay; no one doubts that Monolith Soft can put together an interesting world, story and set of characters, but for me, the combat in every game is almost-unbearably dull, and X was the only one that managed to make the exploration interesting. Gameplay is really not their strong point, and I just hope that they actually address that with this game, but given that it's directly continuing from XC1 and 2, I honestly doubt it'll happen.

True, but their main help was with the bulk of the programming if I recall correctly; stuff like story, worldbuilding and character was purely IS. My thoughts as well, only I was willing to say some negative stuff.

Forgive me in advance because I'm probably going to sound rather cynical and the opposite of excited for this game, but I can't help but see the game for its marketing strategy. Warriors crossovers that are typical crossovers don't sell well, but then they release Age of Calamity and Persona 5 Strikers: Warriors crossovers targeted squarely at those much-more-popular franchises' fans by promising a story set in their fictional universes, all while deliberately avoiding questions about whether or not said stories are actually canon, and those games naturally sell far more than than Warriors games normally do. With Age of Calamity in particular, which is still the best-selling Warriors game of all time, what grabbed people was the promise that the game was a prequel to Breath of the Wild (something which turned out to be a false promise); the game sold entirely on its association with Breath of the Wild. So, now they're doing more of that. I cannot shake the feeling that this is a game meant to leech off of Three Houses' success, and all that that entails. I'm a big Fire Emblem fan, and I can honestly see the potential in a Three Houses Warriors to an extent, but the moment I saw this, I honestly groaned. For just one example, for me, a big part of what saves the story of Three Houses is the depth of its characters, as the plot very much bites off more than it can chew. Given how badly Age of Calamity flanderized the characters from Breath of the Wild despite the Zelda team supervising that game, I have little hope that the characters will be intact for this game.

I'm not worried about Sigurd becoming Alm 2.0; I'm concerned about his son becoming Alm 2.0. I admit that I'm not an expert on Genealogy's plot, but my reading of it was that Sigurd is supposed to be a deconstruction of the FE lord archetype and Seliph is supposed to be a thoughtful reconstruction of the same archetype. Alm in Shadows of Valentia was that archetype played completely straight, completely blandly & generically, and with a large helping of Gary Stu sprinkled onto him. Either character becoming Alm 2.0 would ruin that, but especially Seliph since he's the reconstruction; if you deconstruct a trope or archetype with the intent to reconstruct it within the same story, and then you botch the reconstruction, well, you just end up with something broken.

You have to craft the healing items yourself using stuff you find while exploring. You can buy healing items from the shop, but that would mean leaving the area & returning to the shop, and you generally don't have as much money in this game since there are few Pokémon battles and the ones that are there don't award the player money.

That is true from my experience; enemies can still hit hard, and even when they don't, attrition is a lot more of a concern when exploring than it is in previous Pokémon games. Anyway, one thing I find a bit funny is how... unsubtle the game can sometimes be with getting the player to prepare their team for an upcoming boss fight.

Welcome to the forest. I hope we all get along as well.

Well, Nintendo has just announced that it has no intention on joining in on purchasing a bunch of game studios; instead, they're apparently putting their money into expanding their 1st-party dev teams. I think they're making a smart choice. Plus, how typical of Nintendo to look at what Sony and Microsoft are doing and go, "Nope; we're not going to do that."

That honestly wouldn't surprise me, but given how Nintendo has been lately with ports and remasters, I suspect that, instead of just porting the trilogy, they'll "remaster" each game via polishing the graphics (that don't need any polish really outside of textures; I say this as someone who just played the trilogy for the first time recently) and remapping the pointer controls to the gyro (and only the right joy-con's gyro as usual despite the fact that left-handed people exist), and then they'll charge full price for each game, rather than the trilogy as a whole, even though the trilogy as a whole is available for $20 on the Wii U e-shop.

I have finished Valkyria Chronicles 4, I enjoyed it a lot (though part of that may be bias from it being the first VC game I've played), and I can say that I can understand not wanting to finish it, for one specific reason: the final mission. I don't think they really finished (or at least polished) the final mission: it's a large icy map where you fight a giant amphibious tank, and it's rather buggy and just bad. The first problem is that it's stuffed with enemies. Remember how the final battle against Prince Maximillian in VC1 was literally just against Maximillian because that was all it needed? Remember how the giant tank you have to scale in that desert map of VC1 only had a few enemies around it and its turrets were more dangerous? Well, this game apparently couldn't resist overstuffing the final map with enemies, even though, for story reasons, the villain really should be alone at this point. This feeds into the second problem: one of the main gimmicks is that the tank will sometimes go underwater and re-emerge elsewhere on the map, and the map is absolutely huge, so you have to make your units travel a long way a lot, all while fighting a relentless horde of enemies. Even worse, it's like Maximillian's tank in that you have to destroy its exposed radiators (which thankfully are always exposed this time), and every time you destroy one, a bunch of enemies will spawn around the tank; making this even worse. Finally, if you want the game's true ending, you have to beat the final boss fight twice. You have to beat the game, unlock a side-story that has no missions, go through that side-story, then beat the final mission again just to get the game's true ending. I'm somewhat ashamed to say that I actually did this, though I only did so because, as it turns out, there's a way to end the boss on the very first turn; I'll put it in the spoiler tag, and while a relief, it really does not seem like a method that the developers intended: It's a very disappointing end to what is otherwise a really good game.

I could barely hear what they were saying half the time despite having the volume set high enough to hear when they open the door or grab the papers. …/10

Oracle Zelda remakes would be cool. I hope that, if they do that, they also make the cancelled third game and sell the whole thing as a bundle. OOT and MM remakes could be interesting. The question is would they build from the original games and ignore the 3DS remakes or build off of the 3DS remakes? In the case of Majora's Mask in particular, I hope it's the former; perhaps having a remake be spearheaded by someone who had a breakdown during the original game's development and who didn't even want to make a remake was not a good idea. A surprise remake of the NES games really would throw players for a loop. My question would be: what would be the point? The games are so old that people wanting to play them want to play them partly because of their quirks as old games.

A new Nintendo direct? Interesting. My Hopes: 1. BOTW2 news. 2. A Fire Emblem announcement; be it a new game or a remake of Genealogy of the Holy War, and if the latter, the trailer shows that they learned from the mistakes of Shadows of Valentia (i.e. actually know what kind of remake you actually want to make) 3. Xenoblade X Switch port is announced, with the promise of Xenoblade X-2 if the port sells well enough. 4. Grezzo (the people who made Ocarina of Time 3D and Link's Reawakening) announce their new game. My Predictions: 1. More information about that 3D Kirby game. 2. Xenoblade 3 is announced, and it is Xenoblade 3 and not Xenoblade X-2.

I just beat the Noble Pokémon of the Cobalt Coastlands. I can't tell if it's me failing to learn or the game failing to teach, but even though I have Basculegion, I've been struggling a lot with catching Pokémon that are in the water. There's no cover (obviously, since it's the water), there's no stealthy way to move about in the water that I've found and smoke bombs are basically useless as a result. The only way that I've seen to feasibly catch any water-dwelling Pokémon that isn't Mantyke/Mantine (since they're neither afraid nor aggressive) is to send out one of my Pokémon first to fight them, and I'm not a fan of that; I really like the real-time Pokémon-catching; having to go back to the turn-based method just makes everything slower. Also, is it just me, or is it really easy to accidentally end up over-leveled in this game? I haven't even come close to finishing all the sidequests I've found so far, and yet, simply because I go out of my way to explore and try to fill in the Pokedex, my team is almost all level 40+ in an area where the non-alphas are level 35 at most.

I don't know about ideal, but I'd like to see Fire Emblem experiment with a playable version of the monster mechanic from Three Houses; essentially making a transformation mechanic where the limitation doesn't come in the form of a gauge or a limited-uses stone, but in the character taking up multiple tiles when transformed.

Welcome to the Forest. It's nice to meet a fellow aspiring writer.

Future Game of the Year (Industry) - Depends on what you mean by "industry"; the game that gets the most acclaim? The game that gets the most "game of the year" awards from out-of-touch award shows? In any case, probably Elden Ring. Future Game of the Year (Personal) - Breath of the Wild 2 if it releases this year. If not, then probably the Blossom Tales sequel. Future Worst of the Year (Industry) - No idea. Future Worst of the Year (Personal) - No idea; I try to avoid bad games and I listen to reviewers. Biggest Sales Flops - Edge of Eternity: a JRPG that's been in early access for multiple years and has had almost no marketing whatsoever. Biggest Controversy - NFTs, assuming that it counts as a controversy since "controversy" implies argument, and as far as I can work out, the only people supporting NFTs in games are either people with stake in NFTs or the game companies trying to push for NFTs in games, so it's not an argument. Better than Anticipated - Pokémon Legends: Arceus. I have not seen such low expectations for a game in quite a while; expectations for any Pokémon game have been below rock-bottom; they've been planet's inner core level of low. But, I've played Legends: Arceus, and it's been pretty good so far. It isn't by any means the most amazing game ever made; not even close, but I cannot see a game being even more "better than anticipated" than this, simply because anticipation was just so low for this game. Most Disappointing - Industry or personal? Either way, I have no idea. I would say Dragon Age 4 for "industry" if it wasn't already a given that Bioware is basically dead. Your Most Anticipated - BOTW2 obviously, if it releases this year. If not, then probably Blossom Tales 2. Game/Franchise You Most Want Announced - The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games Remake that includes the cancelled third game. Unannounced Game You Expect - Fire Emblem Echoes: Genealogy of the Holy War. Your Safest Prediction/Low Hanging Fruit (Can be about anything) - Dragon Age 4 will be a shell of a game.

I haven't played Samus Returns or Zero Mission, but I know that, when it comes to music and the Metroid games, it's Super Metroid and the Prime games that have the good music. Speaking of which, you should probably try those games. Super Metroid is very much a product of the SNES era but it otherwise holds up, and the Prime games are pretty good.

@joevar I see. I don't know too much about the series as a whole, but I'm going to guess that the thinking behind VC4 probably had to do with diminishing sales numbers/audience reception, since the series doesn't exactly sell very well. Anyway, I started playing Pokemon Legends: Arceus. I created a topic specifically for people to post their first impressions of the game, so I'm not going to say too much here (then again, I haven't said much in that topic either because I created that topic before I bought the game...) One thing I can say is that I've been enjoying it a lot; the gameplay loop of going out in expeditions, exploring and catching a lot of Pokémon is quite fun. The new combat is also fun, but I'm not a fan of how it sometimes seems to lie to the player: it'll say that the move order is your Pokémon will attack once and the wild Pokémon will attack once, only for the wild Pokémon to get to attack twice even though they don't have access to swift-style moves or anything that would raise their attack speed.

Fire Emblem has always had a problem with its avatar characters. Fixed protagonists and custom protagonists have different strengths and weaknesses, and FE avatars are usually an awkward mix of the two that doesn't really utilize the advantages of a custom protagonist. In the case of Byleth specifically, the combination of a fixed character and dialogue choices makes Byleth come across less like a custom protagonist that is our insert character, and more of a fixed character that we are guiding, like Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher games or Toon Link from Wind Waker and its sequels. The obvious problem there is that Geralt and Toon Link are brimming with personality; taking advantage of being a fixed character, while Byleth is the exact opposite.