Switch 2 is here! Well, not mine, but in general. Should be getting mine soon though. How many of you have gotten it already? And how are you liking it so far?
Finished Chatper 9 of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition ! I was expecting this to happen in the story, it was kinda predictable. Still, interesting to see.
Got the flight module after that, and now I can fly everywhere! Completed FrontNav of Noctilum, and now just running around doing affinity missions so that I can be couple of levels above the recommended level to start the next chapter.
Played a good amount of Marvel's Midnight Suns. It seems to me that I am spending lots of time in the Abbey, instead of doing the fighting. Not that abbey parts are boring. It's interesting to see the super-hero drama. There's tons of dialogue. I think I am on day 7 or 8, so not too long in grand scheme of things but haven't heard a single repeated line, IIRC.
Trying to most of the side missions before continuing with the main missions, so this will probably take a long while to finish. I am around level 7 now, and have unlocked lots of abbey areas.
Characters unlocked
I have unlocked Spider-man, and the next main mission is with Dead Pool, and I am assuming will unlock him. Also have some locked missions with some other new characters like Morbius.
Also started Ghost of Tsushima.
I originally played it a while back on PS+ Extra, but then my sub expired when I was just about 10-15 hours in. So bought it on on-going sale and downloaded it when I was near the end of The Surge, but when I finished it, I didn't want to start another melee action game right away, so went with Marvel's Midnight Suns.
Then my kid started playing Ghost of Tsushima Legends (MP part of the game), and I saw him playing it and got the itch to play it myself. And here I am.
I am apparently in the start of Act 2, but was hadn't done any main mission yet and was clearing the first area, so continued with that and have completely liberated the firs area now. Going to start on the main mission in second area now.
What about all of you? What have you been playing and/or plan to play?
I finally beat Brothership yesterday. It should have ended last weekend, but the end of the game really drags on. You know that obligatory five minute cutscene about the friends you made along the way that a JRPG tends to have in between the final boss and the true final boss? Brothership turned that five minute cutscene into a three hour backtracking segment! And the true final dungeon is very long, too. Something I wasn't really in the mood for anymore...
It was a good game though! The cynic in me expected the RPG side to be very simplified and easy, but it's the Mario & Luigi it has been when I still played it on the GBA. And the optional boss re-fights in the late game hit hard!
My main criticisms are:
The plug system gets very annoying with you constantly needing to replace them. At least let me favorite some of them so I don't have to find them all the time.
First strikes are very awkward. For comparison, my first strike rate in Thousand Year Door is easily ~98%. I'd be surprised if I got more than ~5% in Brothership.
Overworld travel gets very tedious after a while. It basically becomes Spirit Tracks without any of the action.
Now, I planned to beat the game before the Switch 2 releases, but now I had a comparison here, too. I didn't notice load times being much shorter, but the game definitely runs smoother in those moments when it matters. There's a Bro Move that has you alternate the A- and B-Buttons quickly, which is easy enough. But about halfway through the timer the game would briefly slow down, which always messed me up until I started to specifically slow down in anticipation. That slowdown is gone on the Switch 2!
Next, I plan to play Kena - Bridge of Spirits on PC, a game I know nothing about. I picked it out from my backlog because I was in the mood for something green. I wanted to frolic in nature, but most games in that category are large RPGs that I wasn't in the market for, because Xenoblade X was the game I intended to replace Brothership with. There's nothing to stop me from just playing Xenoblade now, but I already had Kena downloaded and installed when I decided to focus hard on Brothership.
And on the side, I dabble in Mario Kart World. I can't say much about it yet, but I was blown away by the fact that they have a track that acknowledges Super Mario Land! That's so rare... But I can't say I'm a fan of the Grand Prix format. Driving from one track to the next is cool, but if it comes at the cost of reducing all but the first track to a single lap, I'd rather not have that at all.
Kena - Bridge of Spririts is a debut game of the studio, that used to work with movies or something, IIRC. The game was praised a lot when it was released. I think it was released on PS5 first, and from what I remember hearing about it, it's not as easy as you may think from looking at it. It's still on my wishlist.
Hmm... a single lap race, not sure how I feel about it, let's see how I feel about it after playing it.
There is Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga on NSO, should I play that one first or Brothership? What do you recommend? I'll probably play both of them, assuming I like the gameplay style, but which should I play first?
I generally always recommend playing in order of release, but it doesn't really matter here, the games are completely standalone. Brothership does have very minor references to the older games though. One game gets an entire character returning, but I haven't played that one either.
Mario Kart Update: One cup has a remake of an SNES track as the first one. It's not very interesting and five laps long. More laps than the other three (more interesting) tracks in the cup combined. I really don't understand what they were thinking...
I love the water segments though, very Wave Race!
I also prefer to play (and read, and watch) everything in release order, but most Nintendo games are standalone, so just play whatever I can get my hands on.