Did they fix the overly long animation of you getting kicked out to the world map and having to manually re-enter the level on every death? That basically killed that game for me on Wii U.>
I don’t know how the loading times are any better than they were on Wii U, but I’m finding getting kicked out to the map pretty annoying and slow on Switch. I like the game enough that I’m putting up with it.
It was 50% off a few weeks ago on the European store (the reason I created an account there, actually), so I am confident a similar deal will come around again.
About The Atlas series, not Switch related
The original series (which you can purchase emulated on Steam in a not very good way because of typical heavy Japanese DRMs) dates back to the early 90s Uncharted Waters days: it was already from Artdink, which is the original developer of the A-Train series. The original duology let you first uncover the contours of the world through the seas, then explore the terra incognita of the world map you drew in the first game in its sequel. There was a The Atlas 3, which I never played, on Windows. There were then two Playstation updates to the concept, the Neo Atlas series. So Neo Atlas 1469 is, in effect, probably the third or fourth remake of the first game — Japanese gaming is never convoluted — and it may explain why a lot of the mechanics and interactions are so “basic”, in a sense, as the game essentially didn’t change, only part of its interface. But not all the interface: the annoying oversizely headed tutorial character was present from the very first game, although he wasn’t as talkative.
The Steam release of the old games got one enormous caveat for modern systems: they are emulators embedded with the games, and that custom-made emulator doesn’t support any other resolution than the native 640x400. They also don’t come with the manuals. The games aren’t very complicated, but their interface obtuse enough to make such an omission quite glaring.
They bothered to actually update the original games though: saving is a lot easier and you get a lot of extra slots and, more importantly, they got rid of a freaking terribly annoying horn that was resonating everytime you clicked something. That issue alone makes playing the original emulated a bad idea, in my opinion.
The Neo Atlas variation has got a much better human interface, thanks to the gamepad interace that makes zooming in and out of the map — the thing you spend the most time doing in the game — a breeze. The interface itself is much less sexy, what with the Cherubs versus the classical paper map style of the first game).
Neo Atlas also introduces a few issues: it is more directive (you are incentized to explore such and such places, to follow some “narrative” thing. I think you actually were in the original too, although the game didn’t tell it to you, giving a false sense of freedom ;), and the exploration mission reports seem lengthy (but that might be because my own tolerance lowered with age).
They also didn’t fix the most problematic issue of the game that I should have mentionned earlier: if a fleet encounters land, it turns back instead of following the coast in the general direction of the pre-planned expedition.
To me, the most enjoying part of the first Civilization was revealing the world map. It’s like the character making in Might & Magic 3: I can’t explain why, but I could do it all day (and I actually did). The Atlas games are basically built around that single aspect. A 1X game, if you wish. For a game venturing into the ocean, it is probably quite shallow (you really spend most of your time scanning the maps for pictures to click or ballons to pop, in the most casual of games’ manner), but it’s also unique. For instance, when you send your expeditions out, they don’t uncover the map as they go: you only discover what they’ve seen upon their return. It is a very major part of what gives the game that “age of discovery” feel to me, but I’d understand if it’s an annoyance to somebody else.
I have never played Lunatic Dawn. I played only Eikanwakimini (the most unexciting highschool baseball simulation I ever played), some A-Trains, but more importantly the Carnage Heart series, a series of console-only games about programming robots, that was open to the non-programmer’s mind in ways a lot of games treading that path nowadays should draw inspiration from.
Cheers for this, It was one of the games i bought per the recco’s and played. Yeah Its an odd duck it feels like an extended tutorial in many ways, but despite my aversion to “do this , do that” games there is something so unique about this one which makes it worth the effort. A 1x game is about right, but as the x is explore the map then thats cool!
I just noticed that Nintendo Switch is getting remakes of Langrisser 1 & 2 which is pretty cool. Langrisser 1 got localized as Warsong many years ago (and is the game that Battle for Wesnoth is inspired by).
The series has always been a long fav of mine so I hope they follow through and remake the rest - especially Der Langrisser which I always thought was the high point of the series.
Sadly the difficulty was really dumbed down in all successive released of the first Langrisser/Warsong on the Megadrive, but I agree that Der Langrisser, with its wacky half-god hero one-man armies going round and round to insane unbalance level is the shit!
For anyone who can’t watch the video immediately, Nintendo is apologizing because the project wasn’t up to their standards so they’re essentially starting over with Retro Studios now.
Right. It didn’t have a release date. But if they’re starting from scratch, uh, see you in 2022 maybe.
Also Retro was already working on something. Curious if this cancels that project or if that other project was close enough to completion that they can split efforts for a while.
Hey, Wargroove looks glorious and I only put it on my radar yesterday after seeing some footage from awhile back (honestly I think the video I watched was like a year old). $20 bucks? I’m in!
However, I have a real dilemma. This seems like a great game to play portable style on the Switch, or even docked on the TV, but maybe it would be better with a mouse and on PC as I see it will be released on Steam as well. Anyone given this any thought?