4213

Been playing this one for a couple of dozens hours.

It’s cheap, plays perfectly, features a unique art style, zeitgeist storyline, pretty amazing auto map, and while streamlined, it’s actually very, very deep on the combat system, but it becomes only apparent slowly the more you play it.
It’s also got surprisingly involved puzzles, with a little bit of thinking out of the box.

For 15 bucks, this is a no brainer to me. Also available on Steam.

4214

Compared to the DRPG’s you’ve offered up yeah, this is a little rough looking. But taken by itself when it’s in front of me, I think it looks pretty good. The dungeons and movement are good, and I’m really into the combat and character creation, which is key.

@Thraeg I haven’t seen the portal that allows you to generate random dungeons, but the main story is all one static dungeon that’s mapped as you explore it. I believe at some point I’m going to unlock the option to use a portal to generate a random one-shot dungeon that will allow for some fun exploration, but none of the reviews I skimmed or saw on YouTube made it sound like a focus, fwiw.

I’ve put in about 3 hours at this point and some of the mechanics are super good - for example, you develop a resource by taking/dealing damage and defeating enemies that can be spent on calling your summon or any number of other actions which will trigger at the top of the round. Or, you can spent 1 point to “empower” any skill you want to use - this will ensure it fires off at the top of the round (clutch for a healing spell or a debuff that targets all enemies) while also being more potent at the same time. 1 point is easy to generate, so I have found myself using at least 1 or 2 empowered skills each battle now.

Some other fun concepts here (new to me, at least) such as the ability to change a single target skill/spell to an entire row for double the mana cost, or ALL enemies for triple. My wizard has Shock for 5 mana and often paying 15 mana to deal huge damage to all enemies, especially empowered, is an incredible way to open a fight and get a lot of free XP!

I think the enemies and ally portraits all look very good personally, and while it’s a simple game in terms of animations and graphical power, the mechanics and RPG elements behind it are well thought out and it features a good enough story to make me curious.

Also, after putting some time into it, this is Etrian Odyssey reincarnated, full stop. It’s incredible, the parallels between the two - down to where when you are in town and selling materials you are unlocking more things for the armory to sell you. Finding and selling rare materials is how you unlock equipment to buy, just like EO, a system I always thought was cool.

Also, the games @alekseivolchok is talking about such as Sword City or Yomi look excellent and I for sure put them on my wishlist, they are $50-60 full priced games and Infinite Adventures (which looks better than any EO game I’ve played while having all the cool stuff going on those games did, without me having to manually draw the map in) is only $15, so I feel like I’m hitting these titles in the correct order.

@Left_Empty Thanks for putting this on my radar, that looks great so I stuck in on my Deku Deals wishlist to grab later. Man, the Switch is such a great system for indie RPG’s and fun titles I had never heard of, it’s probably a good thing I have until at least October before I can get a Steam Deck!

4215

I’m intrigued! I really like the art style, especially compared to some of the others posted upthread.

A Steam review—would obviously be getting this on the Switch though—mentioned that you can have 8 characters max (3 in active party, 5 in reserve), there are no random encounters, no consumable items, one save slot per game, party wipes restart you at town with no item or exp loss, and ~20 hours to beat the final boss with ~30 for completionist playthroughs, which sounds very reasonable to me. It reads like a game that respects your time without being overly forgiving.

There’s a demo available for the curious.

4216

Amazingly, the forum has never had a dedicated for Mario 64. Time to change that soon, I think. But for now, I just want to comment here that there’s only one Nintendo Switch game I bought at full price so far, and that’s Super Mario 3D All-Stars, right before they were going to yank the product from “store shelves” (digital). And hooo boy has it been worth it. Honestly, I didn’t know at the time how much of it was just nostalgia, and whether these games would really hold up in the 2020s, but man, they really still do. It’s been fascinating watching my 5 year old immediately loving Mario 64, as he transitions to it from the much easier Mario Odyssey, and the much harder Mario 3D Land and Mario Sunshine. Honestly people, I’m amazed at how much Nintendo got right with this game back in the mid-90s. It’s still crazy good.

4217

It was late 90s. But I’m surprised the 3D Mario formula (open level/sandbox with variations and very precise small girl) hasn’t gotten more popular. Maybe because it requires so much more work compared to simply making linear 2.5 d jump puzzles!

4218

I guess we’ll have to have a debate on whether June of 1996 is better classified as mid-90s or late 90s. :P

Very precise small girl?

Yeah, I am quite amazed at how much each level of Mario 64 was an open level/sandbox. I didn’t think about it that way at the time, but it’s very obvious when going back to it now. Bowser’s Fury takes this even further by not restricting each sandbox and having all the sandboxes in one giant level instead, but even Mario 64 is pretty big sandboxes in each of its levels.

4219

Google keyboard thinks small girls are more likely than small goals. We’re safe from Skynet for a little while.

Also it was more like late 97 here, but Nintendo boats took a long path around Mars to get to Europe (and it was the Jupiterian satellite, while Saturn’s are such better spots).
Nevermind me, I’m making me smile in my bed. I need coffee.

4220

I need to go back and give this a try again. I fell to FOMO and was like I have to get Mario 3d Allstars it’s limited. I fired up Mario 64 and was immediately underwhelmed. I was hoping I could come to grips with Sunshine since I have fond memories playing with my sons on the Gamecube but just hating the no invert controls or something like that. I know @Rock8man had quite a bit to say about the controls. I’ll have to give it another go one of these days.

I’m still so far up Elden Rings butt though that I don’t know when I’ll have time for something else.

4221

Labyrinth of Refrain by Nippon Ichi? My favorite RPG. A hardcore dungeon crawler, then the story sneaked up and I cried.

4222

I like Disgaea games a lot but the anime is hard to stomach. I’ve started playing that game and it looks great but I got anime overload. Maybe one day.

4223

I stumbled across this today because a song came up while listening to http://www.radiosega.net . Anyone played it?

Reviews are pretty dang good. It’s a rhythm game.

4224

With a trip coming up with lots of portable Switch time, I bit on Roguebook. I didn’t play it on PC, and I’m enjoying it a lot so far.

For anyone else curious, the Switch performance is fine but noticeably laggy. There’s a 20-30 second initial load into a run, maybe 5 second load to get into a battle, and frequently a bit of a delay between selecting a card and having the effect play out. Nothing that takes me out of the experience, but not as seamless as Monster Train or STS. But the map exploration means I’m not really speeding through runs, anyway. It’s a slower sort of game.

The controls are fine. I wished that the directional pad wasn’t mapped to deck viewing options in battle as I prefer it to the analog stick for card battlers, but that’s a tiny complaint. Overall, this is a fine port and I’m glad I’ll have access to it on the go.

4225

I agree with your thoughts on the port although I feel like the lag starts to get annoying. I will say that there’s a few spots where they clearly should have done something about the text size. In particular in the shop on a switch lite I have to take off my glasses and squint at the screen to read the cards.

It’s definitely playable, but nowhere near as smooth as other card games on the switch. Hopefully they can clean it up some.

I’m not sure about the game long term at this point, but I’m on my 3rd run so too early to tell for sure.

4226

Same, and it keeps bothering me haha. I am having a hard time remembering to use the stick so I’ve started using it for everything, which has helped, and I ignore the d-pad.

I’m on my second run and it’s been really, really good so far! Aside from your observations, which are spot on.

@Lantz One thing about the shops in particular that helps is you can click on a card, gem, or artifact and it zooms into the card giving you the chance to buy it. That’s good enough for me, though I do wish there was a way to zoom in on a card the time like Slay the Spire - the text can be a bit of a problem sometimes, especially reading numbers in my experience.

4227

Whoa. A Crypt of the Necrodancer for platoformers? How did I totally miss this? (I know how, the eShop is a mess).

4228

Quick note that Target had both regular and Animal Crossing versions of the Switch in stock in store today. Many of them. Let your people know if they are still looking for one.

4229

I just got an Xbox one, and I had no idea I’d be missing portable gaming so much. Worse: I had no idea modern consoles lacked a sleep and resume function. This seems so strange!

4230

FWIW, the Xbox Series X and S (their current-gen consoles) both have these functions.

4231

I resume games on my PS5 and Switch all the time. It’s only PC that lacks this function, which frustrates me to no end. The PS4 could do it as well, but my son was the XBO player, not me, so I guess I didn’t realize XBO couldn’t do this?

4232

xbox one has a switch-like sleep and resume. The later series x console lets you have multiple games in a sleep/resume state.

A random like but e.g.: