Posts made by Mbun

Looks like we're going to be about to customize our nose and mouth shapes!
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The clown show continues.

There really is some great QoL stuff for meta endgame. Just dumb they thought that meant we didn't want the game before it.

But yea, I'm going through weeks of tweets I avoided until I was sure I'd seen all there was to see without getting spoiled, and there's some real interesting stuff:

Oddly, the official Pokemon site released the specifics themselves on shiny hunting and Brilliant Pokemon (yellow aura) hunting for Sword and Shield. Very much worth the read, and it isn't like any previous game. For shinies, you don't have to maintain a chain anymore, simply chip away at an all time record of catching or fainting a species that forever boosts rates involving that species and can be progress checked in your Pokedex. Fishing does work like chaining sort of, except it no longer boosts shiny encounter, only Brilliant encounter, and it doesn't matter what species you get, just that you keep fishing and fainting what you fish up without messing up.

Despite having your Shiny Charms, Masuda Method, and extras for boosting shiny encounters such as this info, I kind of like that there's no super easy path to shinies in Sword and Shield like some previous games, besides hacking of course. That'll be ruined once trading comes in though, but still nice to see them better balanced than Let's Go where fucking everyone gets a dozen shinies just for playing to credits. Not showing that a Pokemon is shiny on the overworld was a good decision, even if it makes very little sense, and I love that they went out of their way to code that Pokemon you can't catch yet can't be shiny, so people without enough badges don't get trolled. The new super rare shiny square animation thing is low effort and dumb though, but even despite that, overall they did a good job handling shinies in Sword and Shield. They're still rare and very much not "free", but there's multiple paths you can work down towards increasing your chance of getting one.

@shoulderguy See you've already got Three Houses music covered, but wow I didn't expect to like the Yooka Laylee track as much as I do. That definitely slipped past me. Probably my favorite thing in this topic.

@TokyoSlim Select one to stand out like @ffff0 did, otherwise that's not really this topic. Not about to listen to the whole Soundtrack.

@bam541 Despite some of that generic "epic"ness, I can definitely tell from what you posted how good that Ace Combat music is. River City Girls I think you covered the best track. Honestly, the soundtrack falls into the problem of lots of samey songs, so they get garbled together after awhile.

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One of those soundtracks that blends together quite a bit when taken away from the game, but I think this track stands out even without the moments it is made to accompany.

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Bit of a bonus entry, because this song only appears in these commercials for the game, even though it is way better than any of the music in the actual game and should've been used as the credits theme. Legitimately my favorite song of the year.

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Game itself had a bunch of problems limiting it from taking off like the original, but some of the music added, especially for the 3D World style, is just top notch.

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There's multiple songs I could've picked for this game. Ended up going with something weird for the weird fun little underdog of a game it is. Really wish this one had gotten more attention given how hard it tried to attract new players.

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No explanation needed.

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I'm among the list of people who grew up with Banjo Kazooie on the N64 and still hold it in extremely high regard with the realm of 3D Platformers. Loved the music growing up too, and I got super excited when I saw the track list of remixes for the Smash induction of the classic duo. The SNK music added since with the Terry update has probably overshadowed those now for most, but I'm still jammin' to them.

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It doesn't have alot of music, but what it has absolutely slaps.

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Of course I couldn't end off without some jolly Pokemon. Love how this track starts with a sound fresh to the series, then goes full Pokemon, then kind of blends the two together. Became something I genuinely got excited to hear again every time I had reason to return to the town it resides in, and while the rest of the game does have some other interesting tracks, nothing ever topped Turffield's song for me.

@naltmank Basically Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and yeah it would be sweet.

@naltmank said:

To be fair, I remember feeling that way about X and Y when they came out - sure, there was a graphical leap, but there were still several sections where your character movement was limited to 8 directions.

I still think 8 directions should always be an option, even if it isn't the default option.

Call me old fashioned, but I miss the days of HMs requiring you to explore environments in new and exciting ways.

As much as I hate Sun and Moon, they got it right with Ride Pokemon. They just needed to evolve that, so the Ride Pokemon are actually your Pokemon.

The most egregious flaws in this game for me have to do with sound - the music has some solid compositions, but the synth quality is BAD.

I've heard other complaints about the music and reusing classic sound effects for move hits and stuff. Guess it just didn't bother me. I didn't like all the music, but there were tracks I enjoyed, never sounded low quality to me. The only song that did bother me was during a part near the very end where the music just didn't feel like it fit what was going on in the game.

The "vocals" used during the gym and championship battles are very unnatural sounding, and annoy more than they inspire excitement.

I enjoyed those too, but maybe they could've evolved more?

Basically agree with the rest of what you said though. Those camp animations are so fun.

I'm not the type who plays online battles, but sounds like they screwed those up too: (strong language warning)
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Forbes article about The Pokemon Company tracking down and legally pursuing the individuals who leaked the unrevealed Pokemon before the launch of the games.

@bam541 Nice. Yeah, I love how the show handles the audio levels and all the transitions into unique endings. Scary sometimes just how cleverly she reads him, when the guy isn't being super obvious, but clearly the two of them got invested in each other for very different reasons, so over time they'd become familiar enough with the ways one another think. Hear the manga is good too, but so much of what I like about the show wouldn't come through as strongly or at all in that medium. The only bummer with singing the praises of it now is this is quintessentially a Summer vibes show to me.

@dmcmaster said:

a Tony Hawk remaster without Tony Hawk

that sounds dumb

@dmcmaster Death Stranding DLC

Finally hit credits. Something new I'm upset about, but I'll save it for the full shakedown after I explore postgame to my heart's content.

@mico_moreno I'm rooting for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, but knowing how much work Sakurai has put into Smash over the years and especially with Ultimate, I wouldn't mind that one winning either, even though it won't happen. Outer Worlds seems great too with the little I've seen of it. The only one I'd be annoyed to see win is Control given the mess that game was on base PS4 at launch and how in a nutshell it is basically just a prettied up and polished PS2 shooter. I straight up played games exactly like Control back then, flinging objects at enemies with mind powers and all! That said, 100% rooting for Dr. Casper Darling for Best Performance category, because those parts of Control are what I hadn't quite seen anything like in a game before that set it apart for me.

@axel said:

I went back to Pokemon X and Pokemon Sun to scratch my itch, turns out there were still things I hadn't done in each (especially Sun, didn't do any postgame stuff)

I had to fire X up awhile back to breed some stuff for someone from Twitch chat playing ORAS, and just remembered how much I enjoyed the movement in that game. Still has that snappy grid movement, except you can break out of the grid with the rollerblades too, which also feel super good to move around with. I honestly wish Pokemon had kept that style going forward instead of going full free movement. I haven't seen anything in Sun and Moon or Sword and Shield that really justifies completely getting rid of the grid. Everything you can do in free movement can be accomplished in grid.

Awhile before Sword and Shield launched, I also kept trying to go back to Sun, because likewise I basically never touched the postgame, because I was super underleveled for the Elite Four at the end of the game due to turning off the EXP Share, and the problem amplified exponentially in the post game with no good place to grind besides once a day Battle Buffet until you beat a string of super strong trainers bodyblocking the postgame area. Over the course of months, I finally slogged through them and unlocked that area and had almost gotten to the post game battle facility, but that's where I'm left off now. I really hate Sun and Moon's routes, the way the games lag on original 3DS, and the SoS mechanic when trying to catch things, so it just isn't fun at all to go back to like X.

Overall, Johto and Unova are my favorite regions to revisit, but Kalos is seriously underrated. There's actually some really nice, interesting stuff packed in there, but people got so up in arms over the "no postgame" at the time they've seemed to have forgotten. Also, I love the Emma and Looker postgame questline for XY, so I've just never fully agreed with those complaints.

think I'll wait for the almost inevitable Pokemon Ultra Sword or Pokemon Flail next year and hopefully get a "definitive", more complete edition

I really don't think that game is coming, but predicting GameFreak has proven difficult, and honestly if they bungle Ultra SwSh as hard as they did for Ultra SuMo you'd be better off just getting the games out now. I still expect next year to either be Let's Go Johto or to be Sinnoh Remakes. Right now the merchandising slightly points to Sinnoh Remakes. The new series of anime is setup so they can go literally anywhere, and Ash's male traveling companion is straight up named Go and all about catching Pokemon, which suggests that series isn't as dead as they want us to believe it is right now. Sequels to Sword and Shield seem possible too, and usually you miss out on alot with those if you didn't play the games that came before them, but full disclosure the main story of Sword and Shield can be explained in like a single sentence, so you'd miss out on characters evolving between games but not so much be lost with story beats.

@mico_moreno Definitely far enough removed from the original to count as a new game. That said, it shouldn't win because there's better nominees.

@el-shmiablo said:

I agree when Kyle says that the people complaining are right.

The thing is you can't generalize that so much. There's people complaining who have zero fucking clue what they're talking about and are way way way off base, but then you also have legitimate complaints mixed in and coming from people who have played the game and understand the things it does poorly or even just lacking compared to older entries.

I agree when they all say that Pokémon is a children's game.
I disagree that this should be an excuse for the terribly poor quality of the games.

I don't agree with Kyle there, because Pokemon primarily targeting kids is nothing new, and the only time that's been slightly different was Gen 5 when they aged up the protagonists to target like teens instead. So, theoretically this shouldn't be leading to a downward trend in quality, unless kids these days are just dumber and more impatient, so the games have to suffer to cater to them more.

I agree when Ian says that the games have always been low effort cash grabs, and find it odd that people are only just now being so vocal.

This I don't agree with at all and is honestly a very outside the franchise, uninformed take. The reason there's always been two versions of the games is to encourage trading between players. There's never significant differences between the two versions that'd require you to play both. That includes Sword and Shield as the version exclusive Gym ended up being a joke. In interviews, many times the devs have said they don't expect or encourage people to buy both versions, but they'll sell double packs for families and friends to split and such. Since Gen 4, they've included ways for even people with no friends to trade Pokemon with others, so even they don't have to buy both versions for getting all the Pokemon.

There's certainly people who can't stop themselves from collecting every version of the games, and of course GameFreak makes a tidy profit off those types in the process, but the two version thing has always been about encouraging player interaction with one another. It really doesn't hurt anybody. I've played since Red. I've never bought both versions. I've never felt like I was missing out either.

just sorely disappointed that there is so much wrong with these games, particularly the latest entry

There's lots I've been disappointed about as well, but these games thankfully aren't a total wash. There's lots to enjoy here as well.

so many people seem just fine to be fine with the schlock they are charging full price for.

Definitely not schlock, and honestly if the games truly were just terrible, uninteresting, not fun, etc. then they would've ended up like Fallout 76 instead of being the fastest selling Switch games and on track for the best selling Pokemon games of all time. They're just games with an equal measure of good and bad. I'm hesitant to call them swimming in 7s, and they have way more polish than your typical 7, but the general feeling behind that concept applies pretty well to these games.

Oh, poor optimistic early 2018 me, if only you knew how bad things really are.

Here we are in the future, and it's disgusting. Pocket Camp is celebrating the game's second anniversary. Now what do you think is a proper way to celebrate the fanbase that's stuck around despite your barrage of time intensive same type event spam and gross mobile strongarming for two whole years?

That's right. Let's emulate Nintendo's worst mobile gaming effort, the recent Mario Kart Tour, and slap some gross Subscription Plan paywalls into Pocket Camp next!

The first plan is called the Happy Helper Plan and costs $2.99 a month, which is roughly $36 a year. For that money, you get the pleasure of not playing the game. That is, you get to appoint your favorite animal villager that's currently implemented into Pocket Camp as a Camp Assistant who does the tedious game stuff every three hours for you while you're not playing. That includes any ongoing events, where they'll gather the event stuff for you. That means if you want all the furniture and stuff, but you don't actually want to fire the game up every three hours and grind for it all or are too busy to, this plan makes some sense for existing at least. This plan also includes 60 Leaf Tickets (premium currency) a month, highly reduced crafting times, and access to some throwaway journal thing that talks about upcoming stuff for the game. There will be a 1 month free trial for this plan.

The second plan is called the Cookie & Depot Plan and costs $7.99 a month, which is roughly $96 a year. This plan is straight up designed for whales. That is, this plan is designed to give you a slight discount on the hilariously overpriced lootboxes that exist in the game and allows you more storage for all the crap you're hoarding. Each month you get to pick five of the "Premium Fortune Cookies", which are lootboxes, from a selection of current and previously available ones, but not from all that were ever available. That's still more than $1 per lootbox attempt at getting a piece of virtual furniture, and that's technically a discount from the normal price that's been in the game for ages now. This plan also includes the highly reduced crafting times and throwaway journal thing that talks about upcoming stuff for the game that'll just get posted online anyways. There's no free trial for this plan.

That means if you want all of these "features" you're looking at roughly $11 a month, which is roughly $132 a year. Happy Two Year Anniversary! Pay up! Instead of Quality of Life changes and balancing the game to be more enjoyable for the loyal playerbase, when it is already filled to the brim with Microtransaction encouraging aspects, these Quality of Life options are instead gated behind Subscription Models on top of the already intrusive Microtransactions plaguing the game. Even worse, the fact that Additional Storage is part of the $7.99 plan, likely means all the free players will have their Storage Limits purposely gimped in the future to encourage people to buy into that plan. As well as that, it is possible they'll hand out fewer free Leaf Tickets to encourage purchasing the cheaper plan or make events and the grind much worse to encourage people using that plan.

Now this update releases on the same day as an update fixing something else the devs recently changed that caused such an outrage a large portion of the playerbase quit or threatened to quit. They're improving that system's change to prevent the mass exodus, but in a way these Subscription Models slapped in feel like a punishment to the playerbase for complaining about those changes instead of just accepting them. They couldn't strongarm people into spending money one way, so now we have to deal with these Subscription Models. Instead of improving the game, instead of making the environment nice so it feels good to spend money and the game can thrive like something such as Fire Emblem Heroes, they just keep fucking rudely adding new hurdles for the playerbase to dodge and jump over, and the game just keeps slipping down in revenue and playerbase size as a result of this hostile mismanagement.

I guarantee when Animal Crossing New Horizons comes out in a couple months, 95% or more of the Pocket Camp playerbase is going to immediately, joyfully quit to move onto that. Everyone is dreading any of these gross mobile practices possibly ending up in New Horizons too. Pocket Camp could've been such a relaxing side thing to hold people over until the new series release and encourage new people to discover the joy of Animal Crossing, but the team responsible for Pocket Camp, despite having the skill to make it flourish as a mobile game, just won't stop fucking with the playerbase in all the most gross mobile ways! I legitimately wish I had never started playing it, hadn't sunk so much time into it, and I'll forever be angry at it for merely existing, for spitting in the face of and maliciously twisting the fundamentals of the original purposes behind the franchise. People think Amiibo Festival was the worst Animal Crossing game of all time, but no, it is easily Pocket Camp instead. Merely being a mobile game doesn't forgive that. Mobile games can be good. I've seen it.

Oh cool. Yoshi's Crafted World wasn't completely forgotten.

@el-shmiablo said:

unacceptable and insulting to be asked to pay full price for a game that has pop-in in empty areas less than 10 feet away from the character

Haven't seen any of this personally, unless you mean the Wild Area online, because players can drop into your world from anywhere. It is less pop in, more drop in. Now I have noticed the occasional pop in for towns and routes, but it is always on the edge of your camera, not as close as 10 feet away from your character. Also, it is worth mentioning that the loading between areas in this game is super fast, as games with worse pop in usually suffer that as a result of the decision to make loading breezy, instead of trapping the player on a loading screen until every asset is preloaded into memory. It is a trade I'll take for minimal pop in. We're not talking Xenoblade Chronicles 2 here, where you can load into an area and not even the geometry and floor are loaded. The only thing that really ever pops in and out is NPCs and Pokemon, and again only on the edge of your camera view. You should watch footage from people who aren't making videos to condemn the game or just you know, play it yourself, so you have more informed takedowns, because this game does have problems, just not the ones you're acting like it does.

@dmcmaster NANI