Alexlotl

The Switch has been a flipping lifeline in all this Covid stuff. My wife and daughter are both playing Animal Crossing and working together to tidy up the island and fill the museum, and sending each other little presents and messages. I'm playing a bit of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 where I can sneak it in, and my 3 year old is starting to get to grips with the phoned-in-but-harmless Paw Patrol game. The Paw Patrol game stinks of multiplatform port, TBH. Long load times, and only works with a full controller rather than a single joycon, despite only needing a few buttons. It also bewilderingly doesn't have the official Paw Patrol music, but weird non-copyright-infringing soundalikes - I understand this is surprisingly common with licensed games. Still, it's teaching him to run and jump, and even double-jump - I'll have him playing Revenge of Shinobi before long.

Well done for getting there. Now you never have to play it again! It's interesting that Xenoblade Chronicles was apparently called "Monado: The Beginning of the World" all through development, and the "Xeno" moniker was tagged on by Nintendo at the last minute due to the brand power (ahem, "to honour Takahashi's previous work"). After playing this game, and hearing about the similarly over-ambitious incoherence of the Xenosaga titles, the "Xeno" was a massive red flag for me! Glad I looked past it though, as I love XC1 & 2, and they somehow manage to riff on a lot of the same elements that Xenogears did without being an overwrought mess. I guess you could make an argument that Xenogears/Saga is the Silmarillion to Xenoblade's Lord of the Rings - the lore is still there*, and it's now being used in service of a human story, rather than the humans just being shuffled around to serve the lore. Xenoblade spoiler: I'd love to see you do Chrono Cross, if you haven't already.

Haha, that was my exact reaction to the Episode V thing. Sorry, I'd got mixed up with where you were in the plot - I didn't see you mention the below, which is definitely peak WTF.

Quite fitting, given Xenoblade wouldn't have left Japan without NoE.

I’d love it if they brought some quality of life improvements over from XCX and XC2, particularly: - Quest XP tracked separately to battle XP, and only optionally redeemed. It was waaaay to easy to get over-levelled in XC1 if you did all the side quests. - Gravestones for unique monsters letting you re-summon them at will. - Cosmetic Armour options, so you can choose what a character looks like. The motley of XC1s armour is part of the joy, but sometimes the ladies outfits are a bit much, and having to pick between the best armour stats-wise and one that doesn’t have their tits out isn’t so good. - Break/Topple timer bars. Based on the trailer, looks like they’ve added these. Maybe they’ll finally add some indicator of spike damage too.

Trust me, you’re yet to hit peak WTF.

There’s certainly a constituency of XC1 fans who don’t like XC2, but I’ve never seen any proper arguments beyond “XC2 is too anime” and “Rex’s VA is bad at screaming”, so I think it’s largely a taste thing rather than anyone breaking the mechanics. I guess the gacha stuff rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but if you relax your completist tendencies and just view it as a randomiser, it’s good fun. I like them both a lot. XC2 has the better battle system IMO - the cancels make you focus on the present, while the orbs get you planning strategically in longer battles. XC1 towards the end is pretty much spam arts and wait for recharges. That said, XC1 arguably offers more diverse combat types (Melia is pretty much unique, while Shulk’s Monaco arts and Riki’s DoT focus don’t really have an XC2 analogue). Both have great music, best-in-class localisation and likeable characters, although I’d say the XC1 characters are a bit more human in their motivations. XC1 skews a bit more serious in tone, and XC2 a bit more comic (although it’s pretty serious too by the endgame). XC1 wild environments probably just have the edge, while XC2’s towns are much better. tl;dr - they’re both good, and I can’t really understand liking one and not the other. I can entirely understand liking them both but not the charmless XCX, though.

Get a hand grinder for isolation - you'll get a great grind for barely any money, some exercise, and you don't need to be That One Guy in the office who noisly hand-grinds his own coffee for 2 minutes every morning.

Oh God, I’m going to buy it again aren’t I? Something spotted on Reddit (major Xenoblade 1 & 2 spoilers):

My philosophy with RPGs which are simultaneously fascinating and awful is to make sure I finish them, as that way I'll never have to play them again. Whereas if I leave them unfinished, then there'll be a nagging urge to go back to them and see if they all come good in the last hour or so.

Hoo boy, Disc 2. At least your characters being stuck indoors sitting in chairs will make some sense in the current climate.

I thought MS Outrun was pretty impressive, considering. Also notable for a few curiosities: - It’s one of the handful of games that supports the Sega Paddle rotary controller. I have one, and Outrun is totally uncontrollable with it. - It has FM support, but the FM music is awful, far worse than the PSG. Do check out Chase HQ if you’ve got it - quite a decent port. Taito did good work on the MS.

Are you sure? It's in the wrong aspect ratio...

Hard to know if that wasn’t just a nod to Chrono Trigger, like the Lucca cameo in the tutorial house. Scrappy-Chu can do one.

As I said earlier in the thread, the games in hand are a can of worms. Aston Villa have played one game fewer than Watford, Watford have 2 points more than Villa. If Villa won that game, they'd stay up and Watford would drop. The only reason why Villa have that game in hand is because they did better in the cup than Watford, so you're arguably punishing them for success, not failure. There's a less controversial issue around 5th/6th with Arsenal/Sheffield United too, both of whom have games in hand. If it was the same number of games played for all teams in the Prem, as it is in the Championship, then I think calling it on current standings would be fine.