Started Chatper 9 of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition but got stuck, I was at recommended level, but you can’t use Skells during the fight, and it’s kinda tough one. I also went with characters with low class levels, so grinding a bit to level up.

I think that’s one of the hardest boss fights in the main story. Had to burn a couple consumable items to get past it.

Playing Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land

It’s a good game and I’m having a lot of fun playing it, but feels more like a new RPG series from Gust than than an Atelier game.

It lacks the relaxing, happy vibes that those games are known for, with a darker mood and heavier storyline. Alchemy is taboo, its pratictioners are shunned and hated, there’s some dangerous-looking villains around, the main characters all seem to have some sad backstory.

So if you played Ryza or Sophie and want more of that wholesome feel this is probably not the game for you, but if you love the complex crafting systems from those games and want something with more meat in the story then take a look at this one.

Talking about gameplay, I have one criticism and one concern. The criticism is the battle system - at least on normal is way too easy and feels like you can beat most battles just spamming buttons. I did warm up to it as more systems were added, but most battles are so short that you don’t really use them very often. Also, you level up ridiculously fast - I’m almost at Level 50 and looking at the map I’m barely a third into the game.

The concern is that this game may get really repetitive over time. Exploration has been fun, but I just finished the first main area and feel like I’ve seen all the game has to offer in that aspect - and there’s three more big areas to explore.

On the positive side, crafting continues to be great (though I still prefer the system from the Mysterious games), there’s a really neat “Base Building” system that I’m sure will have people spending dozens of hours designing their perfect home, and the mystery on the main plot has me intrigued - it has some cool “Atelier Dusk” vibes as you investigate the causes or a large-scale alchemy-related disaster that destroyed a country in the past.

Direct link for the Switch 1 version: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/deltarune-switch/

The number of people with the issue is probably not that high, specially in US and most parts of Europe, but still could be an issue for some.

I wonder if the Switch 2 actually work with Hotel or similar networks that require sign-in. I’ve always had trouble getting the Switch online while travelling abroad because of this.

I’ve bought games and consoles during work trips and it would suck hard not being able to play them until I got home.

It’s pretty bad that it doesn’t work out of the box.

In particular for a handheld console.

I’ve bought consoles during business trips where I didn’t have reliable internet (and the goddamn Switch can’t even do sign-in to most hotel networks) and I would be pissed if I could not play it until I got home.

Let’s hope this is only for the first batch and that later ones will work out of the box.

I think the biggest question is “how reliable is this basic compatibility testing they’re doing”. Guess we’ll find out in a couple weeks when it’s out and we get reports from players.

BTW, I think you forgot to unpin the previous thread and pin this one.

How is the gameplay of Yumia compared to Ryza?

It’s way more open-world, clearly taking inspiration from BOTW and similar games. Battle system is similar to Ryza’s but even more fast-paced, and also includes more action elements like positioning and dodges.

Definitely recommend the Demo if you want to have an idea what the game is like.

Finished Xenoblade X!

The extra content from the DE went into a very different direction than I expected. It was cool having a new area to explore, though not having the minimap available during that part sucked.

About the final battle… not much to comment because Ares 90 did its thing and one-shotted the boss. 😆

Also, I seriously can’t believe that they didn’t give you a certain character back even as post-game bonus.

Playing Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land

Not sure it was a good idea to start another big open-world JRPG after 90h of Xenoblade X, but here we are.

Yumia is a cutie, and it’s pissing me off seeing some of the NPCs discriminating against her due to alchemy having a bad name in this world. Which is also a surprising plot point since these games tend to be all positive and wholesome, though I don’t imagine this negativity will last long.

I’m still early in the game (just cleared the lighthouse) so I’ll refer to my comments from the the demo for more impressions.

No, didn’t know about it. Added both to my wishlist just now.

Strong Hades “vibes” from this one. Will definitely keep an eye for reviews when it’s out.

Had never seen this video (even though it’s 14(!) years old)… but I love it.

Immediately added it to my favorites.

I do hope Nintendo use better quality screws on Switch 2, as this is a problem that has likely caused no end of problems for repair technicians. I have repaired a Wii before and its screws were of a far higher quality.

I’d go further and say I’m hoping one of the reasons for the higher Switch 2 prices is better quality components overall. I loved my Switch 1 but good god the build quality was disappointing, in particular for the joycons - had so many problems with those.

One of the reasons I’m holding back on a potential Switch 2 purchase is that I want to see someone do a really good teardown of that console when it’s out and see how much they have improved it. If we can go back to the good old times where we joked that their consoles were built out of “Nintendium” I’d say the $450 price tag becomes a lot easier to digest.

I was also gifted A Short Hike on Steam so maybe I’ll give that a go :)

That game is a delight, and it’s only a couple hours long. Definitely recommend trying it.

Let’s hope it’s the case, I would be very happy with some upgrade patches for the Trails games.

Good info, thanks!

I can understand some degree of anger with Nintendo, but I still think the behavior we’re seeing in this thread is not acceptable.

covers most of the first party games

Which gets me thinking… have we seen any announcement for third party game upgrade patches? Free or paid?

What’s the point of classes once you get the skell though?

Fighting on-foot can be lot stronger than using Skells if you take the time to optimize for it, in particular late game. And there’s some downright broken stuff you can only do on-foot like infinite Overdrive or being 100% invincible by abusing Ghost Walker.

After I got the Flight Module I used Enel’s guide to quickly max classes so I could test differerent setups, then took some hints from his Long Sword and Dual Guns guide to tweak my character. I did not grind for equipment, just used what I had in my inventory with a better weapon/arte/skill combo, but the result was absurd, I was soloing enemies 20 levels higher and killing stuff faster than Level 30-50 Skells. This is what I used to beat most of the late-game bosses.

Only after unlocking the Ares 90 that I moved back to killing bigger stuff with Skells. From the videos I’ve seen you can still outdamage it on-foot but it would take quite a bit of effort grinding for the best gear and so on, and given how easily I’m killing everything now it would be probably be overkill.

The general ideal is that Skells are easier to optimize and get high damage numbers, and are more than sufficient to get through the main game, but if you want to really min-max you can destroy things even faster on-foot.

Also, one more thing to know: The Galactic Knight class has skills that buff Skells. So if you prefer to stick to Skell combat this may be a good class to unlock.

Cool stuff, thanks!

Edit: For those interested in examples, I was doing some googling on the topic and found this page comparing several tonemappers: https://github.com/meemknight/tone-mappers

And also this link with ACES vs Hejl Dawson comparison images that shows well the loss of detail in darker areas: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=21249

Hejl Dawson tonemapper

No idea what this means, but definitely curious. Do you have any links explaining how this works to share?