Maryokutai

This was a funny review: It's a bit of a shame, would have liked to see a game like that doing well on Switch.

I'm not sure if it would be my favourite movie every day of the week, but certainly for the majority of it. I saw it for the first time over ten years after it initially came out, which means that for ten years I had to listen to people telling me that it was one of the greatest movies they've ever seen. Talk about building up unreasonable expectations. To Million Dollar Baby's credit, it managed to exceed them, which in hindsight seemed like an impossible task. But it's just such a good movie with humor, drama and heart in all the right places. How the ending managed to subvert expectations by not turning it not into a run-of-the-mill Rocky clone but by having a very dramatic conclusion still impresses me to this day. IMO Eastwood's finest - which says a lot because he has done many great films in his career.

Turns out the Game Gear wasn't the revolutionary thing Famitsu promised. Instead it's a cloud-service for Arcade machines or something like that: http://segabits.com/blog/2020/06/03/famitsu-sega-reveals-revolutionary-arcade-fog-gaming-service/ Which makes more sense to be honest. Arcades are still a big deal in Japan (and really important for SEGA) so if someone manages to shake things up there that might actually be called a revolution. For us this is only the butterfly though, not the hurricane.

THQ really didn't buy all these IPs for show, did they. It was an okay game. Combat was fun and the world was pretty but the quests were super generic and boring and everything was kind of lifeless. Really a mixed bag but I enjoyed it for a while.

Off-topic so I'll keep it short: I only bought it to see how it performs and at some point I realised that I wanted to continue but didn't have the DLC on my Xbox so I just went on with the Switch version. I don't play 3D games that ask you to use both sticks all the time (for camera adjustments and such) in portable mode, so that wasn't an option either. Put 130 hours into it in the end and never regretted the system I was playing it on.

If your TV has a good sharpening filter, just turn that on. That helped a ton with The Witcher 3 on Switch to the point where it felt like I was increasing the resolution of the game.

Also how is the Legendary Beast quest a grind? It's deliberately designed to accompany you along the ride and whenever you notice you're strong enough to fight the next one, you do. You're not supposed to be able to teleport across the map as soon as you get the quest (which IIRC is about ten to fifteen hours in). I think I killed the last beast when I had played the game for 90 hours or so. That doesn't mean I grinded for 90 hours, that just means I played the game normally without every really thinking too much about my level and went to kill the last beast when I noticed I was strong enough. There are quests like these in tons of RPG. The collect 'em all Gwent card quest in Witcher 3 probably takes about the same amount of time to complete, simply because it demands that you explore and visit everything the world has to offer because the cards are hidden in the tiniest corners. Honestly I think if you feel like Odyssey ask you to grind, then the game just isn't for you. Because it pretty much means you're not engaging with it on the level you're supposed to. Just wander off a bit, it's a pretty world they built and lots of interesting stuff to see.

Well, you're not only doing that. The way I played it I picked an area with my level recommendation. I ran around that area and got XP for discovering stuff, for killing enemies, for completing quests. All these things together add up. So much so that, in fact, I never had a story mission closed off because I wasn't strong enough. Until I read your post I always thought this forced grind was a myth to be honest because there's no way for me to play this game without getting enough XP to progress. I guess it should not force you to grind if you only want to play the main stuff. But then again why even play sch a massive open-world game when you want a more linear story experience? The sidequests were miles ahead but exploration in The Witcher can be a pain in the ass. Geralt dies when he falls two meters, he can't really climb anything and Roach could turn Ghandi into a genocidal maniac. Plus, Ikaros is an actual game changer in that sense as well. I didn't realise it at first but only noticed when going back to the Witcher after Odyssey, but not having to open up the map all the time to find anything is such a quality of life feature. In practice it's the same thing: you hit a button (map or Ikaros) and look where you have to go. But the fact that everything happens in the game in Odyssey and doesn't break the immersion is just such a better way of handling navigation in a world like that.

The Switch version of Pawarumi got a big update yesterday. To keep it short, the developers spent the best part of last year fine-tuning everything on a technical level, meaning that they managed to double the framerate to 60fps without compromising any visual features. I haven't played it on other systems but I suppose it's the same everywhere now. They also added achievements which double as artwork-unlocks (a bit like they do on Xbox One). I already liked the game in its original state but I can't argue that it feels and plays better now. If you haven't heard of it, it's a colour-coded shoot'em up where using one of your three coloured weapons has different effects depending on which colour the enemy has. You can "boost" by shooting with the same colour which recharges your shield, you can crush them with their weaknesses which does more damage or you can shoot them with the last remaining colour to "drain" them and charge your Super. Takes a while getting used to but it's a nice system that works well in practice. I also really like the Sci-Fi mayan visuals which make it stand apart from a lot of other games in the genre.

It's a weird game for me as well. I'm not particularly interested in it and yet I pre-ordered it the moment it was available simply because the original was absolutely amazing. I don't think this was a sequel the world needed but on the positive side I'm going into this with absolutely zero expectations so hopefully I'll find something that I like.

It's a complete waste of resources and plastic considering you can't really play on this thing. I doubt even the magnifying glass will make this usable. That said it's very much SEGA.

That and a dumb haircut. This is a Nomura FF after all.

You don't need to do the repetitive stuff like the forts or the Spartan vs. Greece battles. I mostly ignored those and never had to grind because I just explored everything. Unveiling a new area on the map gives you XP as well fo example. And while the sidequest aren't quite BioWare or CD Project material, I think there are a couple ones that are solid. And if not for the story they tell, they at least might reward you with some interesting equipment.

I remember a couple of Last-Gen games running in 1080p. Virtua Tennis I think and of course both Rayman games. Few and far between, sure, but they're there. Just like those 720p games on the first Xbox.

It's sad I have to point it out but I love how nobody's talking in that trailer. Usually Japanese trailers have these super annoying voice-over that explains in absolutely detail everything that's happening on screen. This one was a joy to watch and I'm not even interested in the content.