With everything else crammed into Sunday and Monday, Nintendo gets and an entire day of E3 to itself. Since I'm a huge Nintendo fan, this works out well for me. The event was a tight 42 minutes that was a rapid-fire series of trailers in the beginning and then a lengthy deep-dive into Super Smash Bros in the back half.
- Daemon x Machina - A mecha action game from the producer of Armored Core. As I had mentioned in my previous E3 post, I'm a big fan of giant robots blowing each other up, so I was all about this. I really liked the art style and high-contrast colors. (trailer)
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna The Golden Country - The story expansion for Xenoblade 2 was shown off and it looks like a pretty robust package. It appears to be a prequel story set before the events of the main game. (trailer)
- Pokemon Let's Go - More gameplay of the previously announced Pokemon gaes was shown. I'm interested in this mostly because it appears that the entire campaign can be completed in co-op mode. (trailer)
- Super Mario Party - Mario Party will be returning to its original digital board game format. I was amused by the fact that the trailer for this showed people playing it while camping in the woods, a continuation of the Switch advertising style. (trailer)
- Fire Emblem Three Houses - The new Fire Emblem game for Switch looks like it's going to be really good, however, we'll have to wait until 2019 find out for sure. It uses top-down perspective when commanding units and then transitions to a 3D Musou-like view for combat animations. (trailer)
- Fortnite and Hollow Knight - Each of these games that were previously available on other platforms were announced for Switch. Both were made available immediately on the eShop at the end of the presentation. When I played Fortnight on PC, it didn't really grab me, but knowing how popular the game is, I'm glad it's available on Switch now. I've heard that Hollow Knight is excellent, so I'll be keeping that one in mind next time I'm looking to pick up a new Metroidvania game. (trailers: Fortnite and Hollow Knight)
- Super Smash Bros Ultimate - The bulk of Nintendo's presentation was devoted to the new Smash Bros game. The main takeaway was that every playable character that has ever been in any Smash game will be present in this one, even including oddball ones like Solid Snake and Ice Climbers. It was also revealed that Daisy is being spun off from Peach to be a new character and that the roster would have at least one all-new character: Ridley from Metroid! Previously, it was announced that Splatoon Inklings are also being added to the game; some of their mechanics were explained in more detail during the presentation. Overall, this looks like the most content-rich version of Smash yet, but not a dramatic change from what we've seen before from the series. (trailer)
While this wasn't a megaton blowout of a presentation, the games that were shown looked like a lot of fun.
Super Smash Bros Ultimate and
Octopath Traveler will be holding down the fort for the rest of the year as far as major new releases go and there are a couple of 2019 titles that look really promising. See below for the screenshots I took while watching the conferences.
Also, if you're interested in pre-ordering any of the games that were shown and also supporting this blog, please use this Amazon affiliate link:
Amazon Video Games
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| Daemon x Machina |
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| Xenoblade 2 DLC |
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| Pokemon Let's Go |
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| Fire Emblem Three Houses |
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| Super Smash Bros Ultimate |
Smash Bros ultimate is looking real big.
ReplyDeleteI hope Fire Emblem Three Houses is planned to be an epic in the vein of the Tellius games. I'm also hoping the Avatar will be absent or play a minor role.
By the way, I've been meaning to ask you? Do you like reclassing a lot in the Fire Emblem games you've played. How do you prefer a conflict portrayed?
I'm hoping they don't split Three Houses into three campaigns like they did in Fates. And yeah, I experiment a lot with classes in Fire Emblem, much like I do in Final Fantasy 5.
DeletePersonally I prefer getting a character of each class over reclassing. In Fire Emblem class is part of a persona.
DeleteLike you'll notice no one really fits as a Bandit-Berserker line unit in Awakening, even the body model doesn't fit as all the player units all use a generic palette plus a super-skinny model, ill-fitting for the class.
Its also interesting to see balance done in games like TearRing Saga where extremely powerful units would be in weak classes and weak characters could be in extremely powerful classes. It made more interesting I think. Like in Awakening, no one ever uses General or Sniper after getting their skills.
Your thoughts?
Sometimes the character's class ties into the story in ways that really work (for example Final Fantasy 4), but generally I consider a character's persona and role in combat to be separate attributes. Oftentimes I feel that when writers link character personalities with their classes, they tend to rely too heavily on tropes (the brawny dumb fighter, the snobby wizard, aloof thief, etc)
DeleteGreat blog I enjoyed readiing
ReplyDeleteVery nice bllog you have here
ReplyDelete