What are you playing on your Switch?

Oh yeah, you guys have convinced me that AHiT isn't that, but from the name and what little I'd seen, those were my assumptions.

I've played a couple of hours of Nexomon: Extinction. It's simultaneously what I expected and not.

It makes no bones about the fact that it's a Pokemon-alike, but the writing is very different - it's that very self-aware, 4th-wall-breaking sense of humour you get in some games (struggling to think of examples but there are plenty - it has exchanges between NPCs like "you've clearly never played an RPG before" and "don't send (protagonist) in to sort that, he's mute!").

Gameplay wise, it's trying to do some things that Pokemon doesn't really embrace, like sidequests and reputation and stuff, and that's cool. On the other hand, it's really quite grindy... and because all the Pok- sorry - NEXOmon are new and kind of lacking personality I'm not really feeling any attachment to my party. I'm having a decent time with it and I wasn't expecting a Pokemon-beater, but not sure I'd recommend it over just replaying an old Pokemon game.

That's where you need to start naming your monsters after us. Jimbob the half-eaten Steak Bake Nexomon. Crumpy Andy the farting dinosaur Nexomon. That sort of thing.

Is this a free-to-play thing or am I going to have to pay my cash money dollar dollar bills?

It's £16 at the moment I believe unless the sale has ended, there's a physical version as well.

Yeah, there was a 10% preorder discount but otherwise I think it's £16.99.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

That's where you need to start naming your monsters after us. Jimbob the half-eaten Steak Bake Nexomon. Crumpy Andy the farting dinosaur Nexomon. That sort of thing.

I have taken your advice!

Here you all are:

Make of that what you will.

At least Jimbob doesn't resemble any existing Pokémon! Unlike flightless Zapdos, Glameow 2.0, Crawdaunt on a diet, Oricorio blue form, or me: a mishmash of the grass type starters. (To be fair it's pretty hard to design a monster that doesn't resemble any existing Pokémon nowadays.)

Anyway, I'll be gunning for Ballaceratops to evolve and stomp its foes soon!

I'm gonna go ahead and say those are actually some nice designs, as Balla mentioned, it's hard not to step on the toes of Pokémon so I'm just impressed they look good.

Those designs look decent! Even Pokémon has a rough job these days of avoiding retreading similar designs, so I can't fault them for that.

Even Jimbob made me think of like a Magearna or something.

I would need to see their animations, character, lore etc before I really judged any monsters, but those are okay designs at least.

I think part of the issue is that the art style reminds me a lot of Pokémon too, which I'm sure was intentional but really does add to the feeling of knockoff-dom.

Ball in a cup
Ball in a cup
I'm a ball in a cup

edit
Dragon's Dogma! I did a thing! Went down a well! Almost have got the hang of contributing! I get what you mean about binning off Rook now! I couldn't find any friend pawns! I borrowed some at my level! I tried not to pick 2 scantily clad women so I didn't look like a pervert! Impossible! Everyone's pawn is like this!

Balladeer wrote:

I think part of the issue is that the art style reminds me a lot of Pokémon too, which I'm sure was intentional but really does add to the feeling of knockoff-dom.

I don't really like the art style overall to be honest. The overworld looks cheaper than it should, considering in other regards you can tell that they put a lot of love and money into the game.

In other news: everyone apart from Cappa has evolved.

Don't leave us hanging like that Rum! What do we look like now?

Balladeer wrote:

Don't leave us hanging like that Rum!  What do we look like now?

So you already know what Cappa and Buska currently look like, but as for the rest of you:

Spoiler:

So the designs are decent, but by and large, mostly stuff we've seen in Pokemon already...!

As I'm now off the SM3DAS Train, back to looking at a Switch game and those designs don't look bad & for £16 I'm tempted as I prefer 2D games on a handheld then 3D ones even though Pokémon has been fine on the Lite.

Have you played Digimon Story Mas? I can't remember if you already played those on PS4

I played a bit of it but got distracted by a bigger game then never went back

I think I'd give them a go before I play this game that doesnt seem that different from Pokemon

So much more expensive though and not I want the sleuth side of things

I might even go for something more random like Best Friends Forever

Yeh, the price is definitely in different leagues!

'You know what this cat needs? MORE EYEBROWS!!!'

I'm okay I guess. I mean if that were a Pokémon I'd struggle to come up with a nickname, it'd sit in my box forever, and I'd forget about it. Smurf comes out best I think.

I just finished Turnabout Big Top in Phoenix Wright: Justice for All. The jumps in logic were... not my favourite. The pacing is a bit weird in that at a certain point the game basically tells you who the murderer was and you just have to piece together nonsensical elements of story until they're proven guilty. And so many of the penalties were huge! I ended up playing it with a walkthrough open to double check my choices, just to make sure I didn't get a game over after making a couple of mistakes.

Anyway, onto the last case now, which I hear is a good one. The little preview of it at the end of Big Top has me excited.

You've made it past the worst bit of the OG trilogy and besides a small dip in AA3, you're in for a great time ahead of you. Enjoy the last case of JfA!