vanguard333

Path of Radiance: Ike Radiant Dawn: Micaiah Shadow Dragon: Ogma Awakening: Cordelia Fates: Azura Echoes: Mathilda Three Houses: Edelgard The Battle: (This is just a scenario meant to be entertaining; if you just want to see who I think will win, skip this part) The Winner: Ike.

I finished the Specter Knight campaign for Shovel Knight. I was a bit surprised to see such a lighthearted main game have a rather gloomy prequel. Don't get me wrong; a lot of prequels tend to be darker because they're often tragic, but this one was really gloomy. Of course, there's the knowledge that Shovel Knight beats the Enchantress in the main game, so a prequel like this can afford to be a bit gloomy without too much risk of what TV Tropes calls Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: when a story gets bleak enough that audiences become detached from it because they no longer care what happens to the characters. Personally, I'm just glad to be able to play something billed as a prequel that is actually a prequel, and not something that the marketing pretends is a prequel only for it to be a fanservice-driven alternate-timeline narrative. Nintendo and Koei Tecmo could learn a thing or two from Yacht Club Games on how to be honest with customers. Anyway, on the gameplay side of things, the gameplay for Specter Knight is really, really good. It manages to have a lower skill floor than Shovel Knight while having a higher skill ceiling; combining wall running & jumping with cutting straight through enemies to propel oneself in midair, not to mention the sections of gameplay where Specter Knight's scythe acts as a skateboard. I also really liked the level design in that the levels were far more remixed and tailored for Specter Knight while still being recognizable. Sadly, instead of a world map, there's one hub and a basic level select, but if that was the price in exchange for the levels being more suited to Specter Knight, then it's a good trade-off. Plus, it comes with being able to tackle the stages in any order, which is a bit neat. Well, now I'm playing the King Knight campaign. King Knight's moveset is fairly interesting so far. It's not my favourite moveset out of the four campaigns, but it's not bad. That said, I really am not liking Joustus so far. I fully understand the rules, and I'm normally great at puzzle solving, so I'm usually at least decent at these kinds of strategy card games that tend to get inserted into these games; I was good at Gwent in Witcher 3 and I was decent at the card game in Bug Fables. Here, however, it has been a pain. It feels extremely luck-based rather than strategy-based.

That's an interesting headcanon, though isn't that a bit like theorizing that a lot of different people throughout the history of a region are distant descendants from one of the region's founders? Given that Link and Zelda found Hyrule at the end of Skyward Sword, it really isn't a stretch. The field of Population Genetics even has a name for this: the Founder Effect. By the way, on the topic of Zelda headcanons, what did you think of my headcanon for Breath of the Wild?

Link in Breath of the Wild is naturally left-handed, but he was forced to fight right-handed when he underwent martial training, both for pragmatic reasons (if trying to do a formation like a shield wall, you don't want one guy holding his shield in the opposite hand from everyone else) and because of the rigid overly-focused-on-tradition nature of Hyrule at the time. Even after 100 years of slumber and amnesia, he still fights right-handed due to muscle memory. I came up with this headcanon to explain why he seems better with a shield than with a sword (look how awkwardly he swings when holding a one-handed weapon despite canonically being a trained fighter in this game), his extremely powerful shield parry, and the fact that the Links are canonically supposed to be left-handed (with Skyward Sword having been an exception because of the motion controls, and even then it should've been optional). Plus, Aonuma was asked multiple times in multiple interviews why Link was right-handed in BOTW, and each time he gave a different answer that was obviously made up on the spot, suggesting that there was no reason. If I had been in his position, this is the answer I would've come up with, stuck with, and then told a member of the dev team "we need to add a quick reference in one of the journal entries that Link is naturally a lefty so that what I just said in that interview is actually true".

I understand it as an alternative to the lives system; I even figured when playing the game that they chose it because they didn't want to use a lives system. I'm just saying that it comes with its own frustrating downsides and that I don't consider it a better system. That's another problem with the system that I forgot to mention: I don't like systems that encourage grinding if the player's struggling. It's basically, "Oh; you're struggling with the game? Just go out of your way to do something tedious." Anyway, I just completed the Plague Knight campaign. It was fun. I liked the final boss fight, and how the first phase of it can be beaten by doing absolutely nothing for 40 seconds, and how, without wishing to spoil anything, I like that the final boss fight represents Plague Knight's insecurities that led to him trying to brew the ultimate potion in the first place. I also like what Plague Knight ultimately decided to with it. Deciding, "I didn't need it all along" is heartwarming but a bit of an old cliché; what made me like it more than usual was the way he decided to use the potion after deciding he didn't need it. This I really can't say without spoilers, so... Next of course will be Specter Knight's campaign, and then after that will be King Knight's campaign.

I agree. It's not so bad when the money is easy to retrieve, but since I die to a platforming challenge most of the time, the money will often appear in such a way as to be unobtainable. Plus, even when the money is obtainable, it's essentially making the game that bit harder. Why make things more difficult for a player that's struggling? Stuff like the checkpoint system that you can destroy for treasure is a much better risk/reward system.

Ah, I see. That makes sense. EDIT: I recently began watching Golden Kamuy: an anime that takes place in Hokkaido at the dawn the dawn of the 20th Century. It's really good, but the reason I bring it up is that the show does a lot to explore, well, what it was like in Hokkaido at the time, and it teaches the audience a lot about the Ainu: the original settlers of Hokkaido. The Hisui Region in which this game takes place is based on Hokkaido; I'm not expecting this game to go to anywhere near the extent of Golden Kamuy; it's a fictional setting and it's a Pokémon game, but I think it would be really neat to see the game at least acknowledge Hokkaido's history and the Ainu Culture.

How does it remind you of those?

I finished the main campaign for Shovel Knight, though I did not 100% complete it. One thing I can say is that the later parts of the game really made me miss the rewind feature from the Mega Man Legacy Collection. I know I'm not even close to the greatest at platforming challenges, but there were a lot of times, particularly in the Flying Machine stage and in the Tower stages, where it felt extremely unfair. For just one example, there's one section of the tower where you have to jump across narrow platforms in the pitch darkness; the only thing of colour being the green rain falling on the stage, and not all the platforms are real; some are fake, and you have to discern the real ones from the fake ones by whether or not the rain is landing on them. That, I thought, was a great challenge. But then they toss in flying propeller enemies that are designed to push Shovel Knight away from them... in a section that already has narrow platforms, fake platforms, and complete darkness. That crossed the line. However, the fact that I finished the game demonstrates that they didn't outright ruin the experience for me, though they did significantly diminish the experience. The final boss fight though was great; I like how it demonstrates just how well Shovel Knight and his partner Shield Knight complement each other and work as a team, all through gameplay. It kind-of reminded me of final boss fights in The Legend of Zelda whenever Zelda gets to help out Link. Overall, it is a very fun, lighthearted game that is only really brought down by a few unfair moments and the currency-loss-when-you-run-out-of-health system. Now, I've moved on to the Plague Knight campaign, and I'm at the tower levels. I can understand if people didn't like that the stages are almost exactly the same, but I think the fact that you have to get through them differently because of how differently Plague Knight plays compared to Shovel Knight makes up for that, even if it is obvious that the stages were not designed for him. Speaking of which, I like that Plague Knight plays very differently from Shovel Knight; relying on explosions and ranged attacks in general for combat and platforming. However, I find that he tends to make already-easy platforming a cakewalk, and already-difficult platforming a nightmare. I like that he can create a platform underneath himself in midair, though the already difficult parts of the game weren't difficult from lack of a place to land, but from propeller enemies and others constantly knocking me off the places to land. Of course, the most noticeable difference Plague Knight's gameplay makes is in the boss fights, which are substantially easier for Plague Knight than they were for Shovel Knight. I don't mind this difference at all; mainly because it felt really cathartic to be able to beat Polar Knight on my first attempt for once. I also like how Plague Knight's campaign takes place at the same time as Shovel Knight's, and that it's implied that there's a bit of unreliable narrator going on for Plague Knight's campaign in one particular moment: I also like the humour in certain moments of the game. For instance, after beating the first round of bosses, Plague Knight walks in on his assistant Mona dancing a waltz with an imaginary partner, and if you wait something like 30 seconds without interacting with her, the game says, "You have unlocked an achievement: Creep." I thought that was hilarious.

I agree. There are plenty of examples of overhauls they can make to justify cutting characters. I already mentioned Ganondorf, @Interdimensional Observer mentioned Samus. Sonic is definitely another good example. Another example I can think of would be Young Link being overhauled to utilize the transformation masks from Majora's Mask.

And then how would you follow up from that? I haven't once been talking about the chronological weight of the word "Ultimate"; another meaning of ultimate, and the one that people tend to use when saying the word "ultimate". is, "being the best or most extreme example of its kind". "Special" may not carry the chronological weight of "Ultimate", but it does carry a lot of the other weight of "ultimate". I do not think that is necessarily a guarantee; as I said, starting fresh with a "relaunch" or "reboot" might be enough cover to avoid the death threats if they present it properly. You're forgetting the group that is discerning but would look at the positives of a relaunch rather than the negatives. Seeing Samus get a moveset overhaul would be interesting. I see. Thanks for answering. I still think "special" does have that latter implication behind it; if not the greatest, then certainly an exemplar.

I'm pretty sure the person just said it as an interesting fact without a point, given how they phrased the statement. But I can't speak for lord_brand, so I'll ask him: @Lord_Brand When you pointed out the Japanese title for Smash Bros. Ultimate, were you making a point, or just pointing it out as a fun fact? True, though one of the points of Ultimate was "everyone is here", and King K. Rool was one of those fighters that a lot of fans voted for to appear in 4 only to end up as a Mii Fighter costume instead.

Even as an advertising objective, it carries weight; what would you call a game that came after a game called Ultimate that tried to basically be the previous game with even more stuff? Ultimate Supreme? Even More Ultimate? This Time Definitely Ultimate? Starting fresh would enable them to cut characters, yes, but it would also give them enough cover to be able to rework characters without upsetting people. For instance, it could mean we could finally have Ganondorf actually fight like Ganondorf. Huh. I did not know that. That's even more reason that they can't really keep doing, "now with more fighters" after Ultimate. I suspect that its roster will probably be significantly smaller than Ultimate's. Either Sakurai or someone else who is part of the series' dev team (I can't remember who exactly it was) said that each new character doesn't add work, but instead multiplies the work. As for being able to play as Krystal, I doubt it unless Nintendo makes a new Star Fox game that includes her.

I both was expecting Sora and wasn't expecting Sora. On the one hand, from what I've seen (I haven't played Kingdom Hearts), he seemed a natural fit for Smash Bros. On the other hand, the sheer amount of collaboration required made it extremely unlikely. But, this is Sakurai and Nintendo: they somehow managed to navigate the minefield of disputes between Kojima and Konami needed to bring back Solid Snake for Ultimate. I can both believe that it really was the final Smash Bros. Ultimate announcement, and yet, at the same time, I can easily believe it. One thing I will say is that there's no way they will really be able to make a bigger Smash Bros. game than Ultimate (and if they do, it will undermine Ultimate being, well, Ultimate), so, if they do decide to continue the Smash Bros. series (which they almost certainly will because of how much money it makes them), I hope that they start fresh rather than try to make a "Smash Bros. More Ultimate".

That would be neat. And, as a left-handed HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) practitioner, I can confirm that that advantage is real. It's not as huge an advantage when using two-handed weapons as it is in something like sport fencing, but it is an advantage.

@Shanty Pete's 1st Mate I think the new Pokémon are very interesting, though it's a bit weird that, aside from Basculegion, all the new Pokémon that have been announced so far are either part Psychic type or part Rock type. An interesting thing about Wyrdeer, Baculegion and Hisuian Braviary is that Sika Deer (Japanese deer), salmon and white-tailed sea eagles were all part of Ainu culture (albeit mainly as food), so these Pokémon are great choices for a game set in a region based on Hokkaido. Kleavor makes a lot of sense; Scizor's appearance always reminded me of those modern hydraulic claws used for cutting steel pipe and stuff like that, which you wouldn't really find in the 18th-19th century, so a new evolution makes a lot more sense. An axe Pokémon is certainly interesting; the only other one I can think of is that dragon-type Pokémon that has an axe in its mouth. However, as far as Pokémon with weapons for arms, I'll probably end up using Gallade rather than Kleavor. Hisuian Growlithe is interesting. Fire/Rock is a terrible defensive combination, but it is fairly decent for offense. Still, one should probably avoid ever using it against Shellos or Gastrodon.

…I can't believe I accidentally typed Duma instead of Grima. I meant Grima. In any case, I'm pretty sure that the postgame for Shadows of Valentia is not the event where Chrom's ancestor slayed Grima, especially since it's an isolated event (and is it even canon?)

What I would want would be for an Awakening prequel to actually be an Awakening prequel; just because Awakening had time travel shenanigans in its plot doesn't mean the prequel should have any, let alone any that make it no longer a prequel. Anyway, there are really two significant events I can think of in Awakening's past that would be prequel material: when Chrom's dad waged a fruitless and costly war against Plegia, and when Chrom's ancestor defeated Grima for the first time in Archanea's history. The latter would probably be easier to make into a compelling video game story (just imagine a game where, without warning, a powerful dragon attacks the human kingdoms for the first time, rather than being a threat from the past; there could be a neat mystery element to it as everyone's caught off guard), but it would also be a very distant prequel that would have limited connection to the characters in Awakening. Either event would be fine as long as it's written well.

I just completed Bug Fables. I did not 100% complete the game, but I beat the story mode, all the sidequests, and all the optional bosses. I have to say that the Wasp King is a worthy final boss; I found him rather easy, but only because I had optimized my team beforehand with a strategy that capitalizes on his biggest weakness (see the weakness and the strategy in the spoiler section): As for the plant optional boss: the Devourer, I can see why people regard it as the hardest and most unfair optional boss: most of its attacks hit the entire team and it can swallow one of the bugs. However, I noticed a weakness it has that made me able to beat it on my second try: So, overall, it is a great game. Story: good. Characters: good. Combat: excellent. Exploration: mostly fun. Platforming: neat in concept; needs work. Card game: rather fun; it makes me wonder if they'll make a spin-off that's just the card game. I am now moving on to the other indie game I bought during the recent eshop sale: Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove. The game seems fun so far, though I'm surprised there wasn't anything to explain the controls. It took me a little bit to figure out how to use downward aerial attack with the shovel. Once I figured out all the controls, the game quickly became very fun. I knew going in that it took inspiration from multiple games in the NES era, but it was interesting and a bit surprising to see each different part and recognize its inspiration: the levels are like a classic Mega Man game but with clear checkpoints like a Mario level (and it's neat that you can destroy the checkpoints for gold if you feel confident about not needing them), but then the world map is like a 2D Mario game and the towns are like those in The Adventure of Link, and I'm sure there are other things that I missed. One thing that surprised me was that King Knight; a boss that I thought for sure would've been the last Order of No Quarter knight that the player fights, is actually the second knight you fight (if the black knight is one of them), and he was about as threatening as King Augustus from Black Clover: Anyway, he was still a fun boss fight; all the bosses I've fought so far except for Polar Knight have been fun boss fights. I'm not a fan of the Souls-like "if you lose, you lose some currency and only have one chance to get it back". In boss fights, it means you're spending the first bit of the fight trying to get your gold back, and in platforming sections, the gold will sometimes appear in such a way that the only way to obtain it would be to lose again. I suppose it's better than a limited-lives system, but I'm not a fan. It's certainly not helped that, in the third set of levels, there are a few platforming challenges that I think are rather unfair. So, when you combine, "You mess up, then we'll make it that bit harder for you" with the challenge itself being rather unfair, and you get stuff like the propeller knight level, where I started it with 14,000 gold (I had run out of things to spend the gold on), and ended it with less than 6,000 gold. Perhaps a bank system would've been a good thing to add to help mitigate the problem.

Just to add to your point, according to that article to which I left a link, forced conversion from left-handedness to right-handedness is still prevalent in some countries to this day. It's no longer done in schools as far as I'm aware, but it is still a real issue.

I have to ask: how much do you know about what left-handed people have to go through today and had to go through in the past? There are a ton of different things that left-handed people like myself go through on a fairly regular occurrence; little biases in predominately right-handed society. If you want examples, wikipedia has an entire article titled, 'Bias against left-handed people" that includes a lot of examples, including some that even I didn't know about. Here's a link to it: Bias against left-handed people - Wikipedia For a small but personal example, just a few weeks ago, I was having to provide my signature via writing on an electronic screen using an electronic pen; the pen was connected to the device via a wire on the right side of the device, and the wire was not nearly long enough to easily write on the screen with my left hand; the person at the desk had to hold the device so that I could hold the wire in place with my right hand while writing, and it was still very uncomfortable. I even muttered to myself, "Stupid right-handed design" and the person at the desk said that she hears that from every left-handed person that has to write their signature in the device. Considering the combination of societal biases and physical biases that are present to this day, I'd say that handedness is not a 'lame' "identity category" at all.

@Jotari I can't believe I never noticed that. Then again, the handle of Ashnard's sword is almost long enough to be that of a smaller polearm, and for a two-handed polearm, you normally want to swap hands when swapping which direction you're cutting from because of the sheer length of the handle, so that might explain why he holds it interchangeably with either hand. Same; especially since the previous left-handed hero, Link from The Legend of Zelda, turned traitor in Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild.

In terms of story, I want the avatar to be like Rook from Xenoblade Chronicles X: a nobody and a witness to the events of the story with the main lord being the protagonist. At most in terms of story involvement, I would want them to be a low-ranking tactician, and that's it. In terms of appearance customization, again, I would want it to be like Rook from Xenoblade X, with an extremely wide range of options. No more just having a small selection of faces and hair colours/styles. In terms of class customization, I want them to be like Kris in that the player selects their starting class. I don't like the avatar characters having unique classes.

Funny; for me, I figured I would have the game on normal difficulty most of the time and only use the hard mode medal on the bosses & mini-bosses to get the reward medals for free, but I often find myself forgetting to un-equip the hard mode medal, so the difficulty fluctuates quite a bit for me, and I sometimes find myself thinking, "why are these enemies doing so much damage that I sometimes end up burning through some of my healing items?" only to then realize that the hard mode medal is still equipped. That said, I have yet to find the difficulty to be unmanageable, though there are a number of bosses that I lost to several times. Perhaps the two biggest examples so far are the sidequest boss Monsieur Scarlet and the boss of the sand castle: With Scarlet, all his attacks drain HP and I had trouble blocking and super-blocking quite a few of them in the latter half of the fight, so I had to rely on Vi's freezing skills (which don't always work) just to prevent Scarlet from attacking. With the boss of the sand castle, it was a similar problem; even when blocked, his attacks often did a lot of damage, and there were a lot of times where the game said I didn't block even though I was certain I pressed the a button just before the attack, and that quicksand attack that you have to mash a to escape from was just a pain, so I often found myself having to rely on Vi's freezing abilities. Except, even though I equipped Vi with the medal that makes the user more likely to inflict status ailments, and I used the single-target freezing skill that has a high likelihood of freezing him, I would often go multiple turns in a row without successfully freezing the boss. It was only after I changed tactics by using the freezing spell for the first half of the fight, and then using Vi's team barrier spell for the second half of the fight whenever the boss was going to attack twice, that I narrowly managed to win. Yep. Pretty much, if it was a GameCube title that didn't print money (which, sadly, is the case with most acclaimed GameCube games), Nintendo won't re-release it. I see. Speaking of which, the backtracking in Bug Fables is pretty great so far, thanks to both the tunnel system and unlockable shortcuts. That said, there isn't really a fast way to the start of the Golden Path, which is a shame for me, because if it had been faster to get back to, I probably would've explored it after unlocking Vi's barrier and obtained Chompy (I found out about Chompy completely by accident). As it is, I just started chapter 5, and I still don't have Chompy, so I'm going to obtain Chompy, complete some sidequests, explore the rest of Snakemouth Den, and then proceed with the main plot. EDIT: I'm a lot further in the game now (well, I'm still in the middle of chapter 5, but I've completed a lot more side content and I completed the swamplands section of chapter 5). I mentioned earlier that I really like the main characters and their dynamic, and that's still very true. Honestly, most of the characters are pretty good, with even the least-developed ones having at least a bit of charm. That said, in the case of the main rivals: Zasp and Mothiva, they're both interesting characters, but their dynamic has a major problem. It's very clear what Mothiva is to Zasp: Zasp is head-over-heels for Mothiva, and it's interesting how he tries to rein in her worst habits and is a good guy whenever she's not around, while ultimately she brings out the worst in him. However, the main problem I have with their dynamic is that, at the point of the game that I'm at, it is never shown, stated, or even hinted as to what Zasp is to Mothiva. Is she just using him because the explorer's guild demands teams of two? Does she value him as a teammate in any way? Does she reciprocate his feelings for her on any level whatsoever? I have not seen anything yet to indicate an answer to any of these. I have to ask: is there any moment later on in the game that provides an answer?

Thanks. I see. That makes sense. I didn't know the original Paper Mario was on the Wii U virtual console. So, Nintendo's been willing to re-release that one, but Thousand-Year Door is an example of an acclaimed GameCube title that Nintendo has never re-released? I agree as well.