We Talk Over: Nintendo Direct 02/09/2022

Finally the perfect thumbnail

A new XC3. I can live with that.

Nintendo seems to be laser targeting late 90s Japan import games nostalgia much more than before with this Direct.

Pretty cool reveal this time for fans of old-school RPGs. XC3 looks promising too. I adored XC1, hated everything about 2, but I am hopeful 3 will be good. Kirby is looking absolutely adorable.

I'm still recovering from Mouthful Mode.

This Nintendo Direct was fully loaded and extreme

Lot of killer stuff here. Chrono Cross and Klonoa are the highlights for me.

Makes sense since remakes/remasters of old stuff was probably easier to work on during the pandemic and can actually run ok on the Switch.

@voidburger You absolutely MUST play Earthbound if you are a fan of Undertale. Undertale would not exist without it!

Triangle Strategy has a hilarious name and goddamn do I want to play it. This was a pretty good Direct!

(Bakalar, you’re never getting that hockey game)

That Direct was like a smart bomb to the nostalgia portions of my brain in terms of JRPGs. Chrono Cross, Earthbound, Live a Live, Xenoblade reveals all in one set is just insane to think about. Though really I'll be lucky if I could play through any of those in adult life - more likely the 48 Mario Kart courses, Switch Sports, and Kirby are going to dominate this household.

The one game I'll likely try to see through is Xenoblade Chronicles 3, just because those JRPGs manage to still stick with me. But seeing a number of returning voice actors / characters from XC2 really dampers my enthusiasm for that game. I liked a lot of XC2 in terms of worlds and systems, at least once those systems open up, but the main cast was very weak compared to XC1 (setting aside the gacha system and anime fanservice design nonsense that pervaded that entire game, which I hope gets entirely dropped).

Lot of good stuff in here!!! The only thing missing I was kinda hoping for was a release date for Metal Slug Tactics, but luckily there was other SRPG goodness to be had.

I know Jason mentioned he thought Age of Calamity didn't do well, but it looks like it actually sold gangbusters (around 4 million units, although clearly the Zelda connection helped since the first FE Warriors was closer to 1 million). Maybe with Three Houses getting popular, it will also prop up sales of the new Musou. I'm a weird longtime FE fan who kinda hated 3 Houses, but likes Musous, so this is more in my wheelhouse. That first FE Warriors game (as well as the port of the first Hyrule Warriors) actually ran pretty well on the Switch, so hopefully the technical performance is closer to that than Age of Calamity.

I'm also in the XC1 lover / XC2 hater camp (which feels like a minority opinion), I hope this new one hues closer to the original game.

I'm here for it, they've got my number, haha. Live A Live coming west was definitely nowhere on my radar.

@deathpooky: Oh, I've heard of Melia's voice actress from Xenoblade 1 returning. The rumor Khan of Fanbyte reported on is that XC3 is set far in to the future where all of the hom/human characters would have passed away. Given the comments by the executive director of the game on the official Nintendo news post, XC3 is hinting at a strange future where the worlds of XC1 and XC2 have collided and existed as such for a long time.

I do hope the battle system will be something different, even if it is still rooted in the MMORPG-style Tab-targeting and Hot Bar combat system of all the Xenoblade games. The combo, timing, and chain heavy design of XC2's combat system is a heck of a thing and, looking back, is probably too much of a battle system.

Kirby looks like a good time. Klonoa is a good time. Xenoblade looks good, but i just can't deal with that very melodramatic voice acting. Triangle Strategy seems to go for a similar thing. It immediatly makes me feel like i'm watching some old timey theater performance. I just can't take it serious. It's probably for the best that Final Fantasy Tactics doesn't have voice acting otherwise i would probably hate that thing too.

Lmao I haven’t finished 3 Houses either. It’s real good though.

They already added a 4th house as dlc lol

—correction: Monolith Soft was the support studio—

Speaking of external development, Koei Tecmo was the main support studio on BotW and Pokémon Arceus. If you play them both, you get an idea of what KT was responsible for there. So i think they earned a Dynasty Warriors with Nintendo franchises if they want to.

—

Got the Breath of the Wild one and it was better than I was thinking it’d be.

Jan MMBN shoutout great taste

Yessss strikers! Grass hockey

Splatoon seems awesome

Front Mission looks freakin cool. Armored Core Tactics basically? I’ll echo Jan on this one: We got tiles!

Chrono Cross was formative for me. There goes 100 hours of my life lol

Kirby still looking awesome. Super Mario 3D World caliber lets go! If it’s odyssey-tier even better. And everyone is so hyped it’s great

Switch Sports?! Alright cool

I planned to comment on most games but this comment is plenty big

I’ll just sum up my thoughts at the end lol

So ultimately I was hoping for:

BotW 2

New FE Remake of a classic one

Metroid Prime 4 / Metroid Prime trilogy

New awesome indie we didn’t know about that released during direct

Kirby being awesome

So I had one of my main hopes realized, but yeah. Somehow the list adds up. I agree with Jeff. That was the coolest one of these in a long time.

I'll admit, that was a good direct, much better than the Sony one which only focused on one game, a potential great game, but still one game. I want to play a Splatoon game, and was thinking about getting Splatoon 2, now I might wait for the third game. The Kirby game looks like a lot of fun. I hope the Front Mission remasters do well, because then they'll green light a new game in the series. The same with the Crono Cross remaster so we can finally get Chrono Break. I have no problem with the new modes in Metroid Dread, but yeah, more story based DLC would be nice. And yes! More main AAA franchises using the Dynasty Warriors gameplay. Persona 5 Strikers was awesome and I heard the Zelda based ones are very good too. Might get the second one sometime in the future. And finally, I'm glad they did a Xenoblade Chronicles 3. I'm still playing though the second game and liking it.

Xenoblade 3 definitely the star of this Direct

Hopefully more like the first game though which was one the best games of the past 20 years

Sorry Ghostwire Tokyo. You had a chance before after that last gameplay presentation, but Mouthful Mode made me decide on picking up Kirby first.

I’m all for Klonoa as well, though I might pick it up on some other platform later on.

This was a good early year direct. Of course they weren't going to talk about their 'big' holiday releases (Zelda, Beyonetta, Metroid?) in February. That's a strong lineup for their E3 adjacent Direct.

48 new Mario Kart tracks was a pretty nice surprise. Live A Live looks like something I could get on board with. Switch Sports will be worth a look just for Bowling and Golf. And plenty of tactics/ RPG action to be had.

No Mario Party Super Stars update is a travesty. That game has less courses than the original Mario Party had. Come on

The only thing good about xenoblade chronicles 2 was its costume and blade designs for the females the combat was 0 percent as fun as the first game. Hope they return it to the good open world combat instead of the weird chain system.

The Mario Kart stages are cool but so late in the piece, that game was released in 2014! Tells me that the next Switch is years away if these are not being saved for the next game. 🥵

Nintendo said quite recently that the Switch is mid-cycle, indicating that there's likely to be at least a few more years left for it.

Front mission was a nice surprise and looking forward to blowing the dust off my switch for it.

A lot of good games, but nothing to make me buy a Switch at theis point. Its cool that they are making a Front Mission.

That's a good Kirby trailer right there.