Nintendo Switch

Replying to myself, it seems it’s a dog. Single course. Boo.

What isn’t a dog is that Tetris 99 thing. That’s just genius.

Yea Tetris is great but I really need to find out the best strategy to get badges. Right now KOing a person seems like pure luck. There are games where I string together 3 tetrises in rapid succession and get nothing and there are other times where I get badges like they are free. I’ve toggled the different targeting strategies but that still doesn’t help move the needle. I’ve even tried targeting people manually at the expense of my board. It still seems like my success or failure is purely luck driven.

I’m really digging Tetris 99, but I agree. If I’m lucky enough not to get targetted by too many people at once, I can do well. If three or more pile on, then it’s over. I’ve tried the various counter-targetting strategies (e.g., targetting those who target me, or targetting the badge leader) with no noticeable results.

I think the idea when you’re getting heavily targeted, is to target attackers and clear quickly and steadily. 1 or 2 rows at a go.

From what I’ve read online, 1 row at a time doesn’t do anything to hurt your target. It has to be 2 or more.

Tetris 99 is great. Feels very random, but I’m having a lot of fun.

Make sure you’re using the L button to hold onto a piece you might need. Usually that’s a straight one, but you might want a T too.

Being targeted can make Tetris 99 no fun if it happens to you a lot in multiple games. I’m just ok at Tetris, but there have been a few games I got run right out of town in 95th or so because everyone hammered me at the start

I really like the look of Final Fantasy IX on the Switch. I haven’t picked it up, I wasn’t really planning on it, but from some reviews I saw it’s like the best version of the game yet to release. I tried playing this on my Vita back in '13 and got about 3-4 hours in and was having fun but other games/things happened and I never went back to it. It’s probably in my top 5 Final Fantasy list, but I don’t really remember why, other than I recall it being a return to a fantasy setting and a more traditional combat style (I’ve since called FFXII my favorite FF game, but I still enjoy the old-school stuff from time to time - just a few years back I got super into FF VI on Steam, for example).

Anyone else pick up or thinking of picking up FF 9 on Switch?

It’s definitely on my radar but will likely get lost in the flood of good games already competing for my time. I had heard some one (Jason Schrier on Kotaku I think) say it was a bad port or maybe a port of the mobile port? Can’t confirm that though.

That’s different from what I read, but it’s hard to say. I was going by this:

Yeah but if you’re being heaviliy targeted, you’re defending and not really attacking anyone. In that situation clearing a single row does have a slight benefit, as it won’t trigger the red flashing block that turns into garbage.

From what I can see, there is a music bug in the Switch version that’s in all the other ports too. S-E does minimum effort on these things.

Some rumors that it’s Scalebound. Could be BS.

I would love it if someone could explain to me why I should be excited for scalebound. The few gameplay trailers they showed for that game made it look like it would have been Kamiya’s worst game by a mile.

Yeah it didn’t look that great but you never know how it would’ve turned out in the end. Nintendo will surely salvage the good parts, assuming this is true.

Platinum is working on a bunch of games so it could be scaled back.

Ok, if they change the name to Scaledback I’m on board.

So I played the first two missions of the Daemon X Machina demo and I really liked what I saw. It’s short of a cold opening that I hope will be improved in the final game, but the fighting feels really solid, specially assuming this is low level equipment you start with and you will gain even more mobility.

Also, it seems the framework/story/structure is meant to be quite open to different strategies and paths, so not a linear game. Feels like a modernized armored core in many ways.

I noticed there are a ton of smallish games on the estore/online games store. Can anyone recommend various titles that are only available there? Any/all genres considered!

Exclusives…

Golf Story
Kamiko
Fast RMX

…and not a lot else that isn’t also on PC and often PS4. If you meant available on the eShop but not in stores, that is obviously a lot longer list.

The eShop is almost app-store levels of un-parseable already. While I appreciate their dedication to indies, there are so many mediocre looking rogue-like-likes, puzzle platformers and adventure games / visual novels every week that there are some that have literally 0 professional reviews available online. I kind of like shovel-ware / Simple 2000 stytle games, but I can’t bring myself to wade through all that nonsense.

I don’t think Wandersong or PikuNiku got physical releases, they’re both cute light-puzzle sort of games.

West Of Loathing is pretty good.

PIcross S / S2 are good, if you like picross.