What are you playing on your Switch?

Nah, I was just having a moment.

DQXI is winning out! I have already started that too.

I'm about 7 hours into Ni No Kuni so far and i highly recommend it!

Welcome back Giz!  NNK's next on my list I think: after DQXI failed to land with me, I'm currently back on A Hat in Time and smiling a whole lot. How are you finding the much-maligned (by Andy) battle system?

Good to be back balla yeah the battle system is for sure the "marmite aspect" (copyright that phrase for me Mas) of the game. It's pretty simple and thoughtless to begin with but once you get familiar taming and evolution it becomes sort of a pokemon lite!

The amazing story and characters are high points though!

What stopped you from getting into DQXI btw? Its very much on my radar!

I plan to test out those aspects this afternoon!

Re. DQXI, it's an odd one. You can play it in 2D or 3D and it doesn't quite work either way for me. In 2D you have random battles (which, unless like in the Bravely games, are always a bad idea) and miss out on the cinematic feel of the game. In 3D, though, the graphics feel like a lot of window-dressing. There's not actually places to explore, you just have a wider area to search over for the (mostly fairly rubbish) items. The very basic (thus far) turn-based battle system also feels bad in a game that looks like it should have the punch to do something cleverer. It doesn't even have the breaking system of Octopath. If you're a big fan of the old takey-turny style of JRPG battling then you'll probably get more out of it than me.

That has always been my worry about the DQ games, Final Fantasy, Persona, etc all evolved a little bit wheras DQ is very similar all the way through!

Much like yourself in the TMS thread i have such a big backlog of Switch games to get through i may wait for a big old gap in my schedule to give it a try!

My backlog is too much handle with the kind of games I like, I'm very glad I rarely try to get into JRPGs. If I ever finish Xenoblade 2, I may look into Ni No Kuni or Dragon Quest. More than likely, I'll buy them for Shen and watch her play a little so I don't have to.

I just had six days off work, so I'll have played loads of videogames, right? Hahaha, nope! I did some pokedex hunting in Sword and a little Splatooning while I was staying in Hostels, I finally beat the 200cc staff ghost on Bone Dry Desert and I got a silver rank on Begin Again on Sayonara Wild Hearts, but mostly I went hiking and adventuring and walking. I walked 107 kilometers according to Pokemon Go. Am I an . . . outdoorsy person now? I went for a kickabout up the park with my friends the other week, too.

You either die an extrovert gamer, or you live long enough to see yourself become a jock.


I am now playing Ni No Kuni. It starts with not one but two of those long legal agreements that are meant to be binding and simultaneously trade off the fact that nobody ever reads them. I thought the warning about using music at the beginning of DQXI was bad, but this is an absolutely appalling look.

Lovely thereafter, mind; and I can't decide whether to use dub (for Drippy's Welsh accent) or sub (for Oliver). It's just a disgusting start to a game.

Dub! Drippy is a treasure

He's marvellous. I started playing in Japanese, but have turned on the dub and thus far he's justifying the move single-handedly.

My missus is welsh so the amount of "i dont sound like that do i?" banter has made the purchase worth while

The issue with the battle system isn’t a lack of depth simplicity at the start, it’s that they screw it up so badly by the end that it might as well not exist. Battles become a pointless chore.

If the game's better than Octopath prior to screwing it up at the end I'll take it.

The story and world are always there, so it’s never that much of a chore. It’s just shit to actually play.

The Crump says it's shit to play, I'd better give this a look! He's probably not wrong...

It's not been bad to play so far. Only issue is, how does one actually sneak up behind a monster? I've managed it once, the little blighters have a cone of vision that seems more like a semicircle.

Do not quote me but i think theres a perk to make sneaking easier in the side quest shop.

Edit: yep its the merit reward "jack in the box" and it costs 2 merit cards

Cheers Eof, I'll remember that.

In the meanwhile, though, I'm having a grand old time with A Hat in Time. The camera is funny and it definitely isn't at its best on Switch, but it's a callback to the golden era of 3D platformer and, unlike Yooka-Laylee, does that callback well. I've just finished the second world - however, Mission 5 isn't appearing in Mafia Town. (Missions 6 and 7 have.) What do I need to do?

Hi Balla,

I don't want to spoil things - my initial comment is "don't worry about it for now"
If that doesn't help...

Even then this is a minor spoiler:

I've gone back to Breath of the Wild and made a start on the Champion's Ballad and it feels so good to be back in this version of Hyrule, normal service has pretty much resumed and I'm just having fun taking my time and enjoying each moment as it comes.

Still the best game ever.

Correct opinion.

I'm not keen on the DLC because the original adventure was so stonkingly brilliant as it was and I don't like OHKO modes, but... ah, I can imagine that.  Just re-entering Hyrule and it being as freeing as it is.  What a world!

Jimbob wrote:

Hi Balla,

I don't want to spoil things - my initial comment is "don't worry about it for now"
If that doesn't help...

Even then this is a minor spoiler:

This is the least spoilery spoiler ever. Better to be safe than sorry I suppose!  I'll leave it for now.  I'll just continue with World 3 and AAAAAAAAHNONONOWHATTHESHITISTHAT    

I didn't want a horror game, I wanted a nice cheerful platformer!  That's scarier than every single moment and thing in Luigi's Mansion 3. That said, it's this sort of thing that makes the game special, isn't it?  I think I might have to edit my 'top games of 2019' vote...

Good to see you're enjoying A Hat In Time. The best bits of it are still to come - it's one of those games that you can see the developer becoming more confident in making it as you go along. 

~

I've collected all the bees in Yooka-Laylee and The Impossible Lair, and my review will appear in either the Games I Finished or Games I Didn't Finish thread in a few days. We'll have to see how that Impossible Lair goes. Now, I've moved onto Sayonara Wild Hearts. I'm enjoying the lights and the sounds, and it's obviously slickly made. Is it much of a game though? I'll keep going.