Poking the Switch

[alias_sqbr]

So my gamer side finally won over my skinflint side and I got a Nintendo Switch! So far the only game I've bought is Animal Crossing.

If you've somehow missed the hype, Animal Crossing is a very chill, cute game about helping settle a deserted island. You wander around gathering wood for construction, catching bugs for the museum etc as well as talking to the villagers and making everything pretty. I'm having a lot of fun so far even if I sometimes stop and go "this is fun, but is it [ridiculous quantity of money spent to get to this point] amount of fun?"

Something I didn't realise until I bought it is that you have to pay an extra $6 a month for online access to visit other real people/have them visit you. YOU HAVE SO MUCH MONEY FROM ME NINTENDO DO YOU REALLY NEED MORE. There's a 7 day free trial which I will use at some point, for those who have the game: is there any reason I'd benefit from delaying or should I just use it now?

Other Switch games I am pondering buying but am not 100% sure about:

Our Two Bedroom Story: A collection of Love365 dating sim routes. I've enjoyed the routes from this that I've encountered more than usual but they were still pretty... Love365 so idk.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses. The characters sound interesting but I have to investigate the gameplay and make sure it's something I'd enjoy.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Does this have stats grinding or is it possible to find a battle too difficult and be permanently stuck? I've heard this is a very good RPG but I have a bunch of other apparently good RPGs I own and haven't played, so.

Collar x Malice: an Otomate (creators of Hakuoki, Amnesia etc) dating sim that comes out on the 25th. Not sure I'm up for playing a cop right now, even a tropey magic Japanese lady cop.

Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town: What Harvest Moon is called now. I do want to play this but it's coming out for PC which would be more convenient.

Pokemon Snap: This just got announced, and I'm not 100% sure I'd play it but it does look cute.

Pokemon Sword And Shield: I didn't get into it when I tried whatever version was current ten years ago, but maybe I would now?

There were some other games I could have sworn I found on the store before we bought the Switch but I now can't find, I think they may have been DS games, oops /o\

Anyway, any other Switch exclusive games people rec? Bearing in mind that I do not like platformers or plotless fighting games.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

I don't think you get much benefit out of visiting other people's islands etc. in the first week or two while you're setting up your own island until you've got your first six villagers. It took me that long to get the hang of how it works.

Breath of the Wild is extremely beautiful but I eventually got stuck because the time needed to improve stats/battle skills to get through battles was too much for my arthritic hands to manage. This did not happen as early as it does on most games because there were lots and lots and lots of side quests to do.

[flamebyrd]

I agree with this, give it a week or two to get settled on your island before breaking out the trial - I paid for the subscription on day 2 but I barely used it until this week.

[alias_sqbr]

nods I had a feeling it might be something like that.

[alias_sqbr]

Thanks, that's all very helpful!

[inametaphor]

Oh huh. Last I heard, Switches were still fairly commonly out of stock from the frenzy of people buying them at the start of the lockdowns. I'm glad you were able to find one! I still need to get one; I love the Nintendo IPs.

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah we had trouble finding one until Cam found a shop selling them in person but not listing them online for some reason. If you were in Perth I'd rec going to JB Hifi in the city, but as it is I will just wish you luck :)

[inametaphor]

I'd have to do the math, but I might be nearly as far away from Perth as it's possible to get. :D I haven't looked too hard yet, since I have a lot of different devices to game on right now, but it's sort of in the back of my mind to get when they get production up to speed again.

[winterbird]

Tbh I would happily gift you a year's membership just for the opportunity to be able to gift you random furniture and send you letters saying hi lol. I've loved the online play aspects, mostly because AC is low-key and you literally never have to talk to the people you're interacting with (it's also the only way to get all the fruit and flowers in the game, if completing those aspects is something that you're interested in). I've helped out two friends by seeing them on say, the second or third day of gameplay by gifting them fruit and some iron nuggets. Foreign fruit is worth x5 times as much as local fruit, and you can grow trees from the fruit itself. I mean you might not want that! Which is also totally cool. But the collection side of me just likes having all five fruit trees on my island (and all the flowers).

You'll also need it for aspects of nearly other game, I actually initially got it for Pokemon (I was mad). ALSO - I have a version of Pokemon I can give you! Glen got me an extra one because he didn't understand how it worked, so I believe I got shield, and he gave me sword. So I have an unused game there if you want it! It still might not be your thing re: gameplay, but you won't have to spend money to try it!

I remember really resenting that Nintendo basically makes you pay additional money for online play, and I think I held back on it for two days (I cave easily but I was angry!) but desperately wanted to try some of the community stuff in Pokemon. I haven't regretted getting it at all, even though I really only play two games, but you can *definitely* play the games without it, and my experience =/= your experience etc. etc.

Do not ever get Moonlighter lmao

[alias_sqbr]

Oh gosh! That is very kind of you but it's not that we can't afford it I am just annoyed at Nintendo and want to pettily spite them out of money for as long as possible. Knowing they were charging YOU money would be just as bad! I will absolutely cave eventually.

For now I am enjoying the challenge of gathering things myself via Nook Tickets etc, but I can see the novelty of that wearing off, at which point I will totally hit you up for some pears or whatever. Letters from you sounds pretty nice though...

And yeah Pokemon would be great!

[oyceter]

Yay Animal Crossing!

For Switch games, we just got Good Job, which has been very fun so far. You can try to accomplish a goal in an office setting quickly and without breaking anything, or you can go in, try to destroy everything, and eventually get around to the goal when you feel like it (what we do).

[alias_sqbr]

Oh wow, I'd never heard of Good Job and it sounds super fun! Thank you!

[torachan]

Definitely hold off on using the trial until you get your island to the point where you'd want visitors.

Breath of the Wild is an action RPG so there is not really such a thing as getting stuck in a battle as you can just run away from the enemies. The only ones you can't run away in the middle are boss battles, which there are only a handful of. And there are no stats in the traditional RPG sense. You have hearts, which you can acquire more of by completing shrines, and that gives you more life. You can also get better stamina by completing shrines as well. Carla is not terribly good at actiony games but had fun with BotW and managed to defeat the final boss.

You might like Murder by Numbers, which is a cross between Ace Attorney and Picross, with you solving mysteries and doing puzzles to reveal the clues. Come to think of it, it's not Switch exclusive, though, so you might have already played it actually?

[alias_sqbr]

That's useful, thank you!

And yeah, Murder by Numbers is on my Steam/GOG wishlists!

[chagrined]

When to use the online trial is up to your playing style I guess. If like Travis said you want your island more nice-looking before having visitors than wait! I wanted to visit people right away to scope out their islands and trade stuff, and so we could send each other mail.

The online also lets you play Tetris 99 & a selection of old NES/SNES games for free, if any if those interest you.

Zelda:BOTW is a fantastic game but I wouldn't call it an RPG, it's action-adventure. At the bottom you said you don't like plotless fighting games; it's an extremely plot-light action game. The gameplay is absolutely fantastic, and imo the highlight of the game is how robust its physics/world are, so you can come up with really interesting interactions btwn objects/enemies/environment. The plot is basically the same as almost all Zelda games (Ganon is evil: you must defeat him) & the cutscenes/plot content are extremely sparse. For me this was a plus but maybe it'd be a minus for you! It doesn't have grinding per se as it's not an rpg (you can gain more heart containers & stamina as you go, and obtain stronger weapons/armor but you don't have any real stats) but you can definitely run into barriers that you may or may not be able to overcome... Most things can be avoided (there are these Lynel enemies I always just ran away from) but for example, the first time I played, I accidentally paraglided over lots of useful things and ended up beelining a story quest, LONG STORY SHORT this resulted in teleporting ninjas showing up all over the map everywhere I went and I was so weak they would all oneshot me. I was frustrated to I started my game over (and played it "better" the next time). I did love my second playthough though, in which I took way more time to "smell the roses" and never bothered fighting that enemy again (nor did I beat Ganon lol although you can do that without fighting that enemy if you want).

I would not play Pokémon Sword/Shield if you didn't like previous games; the gameplay is the same with minor changes. Definitely no special plot or characters either.

If you're really into story & characters FE3H is a good bet. Yeah, the gameplay is tactical rpg moving on a grid stuff. There are many difficulty levels and forgiving options like an ability to rewind turns. The social gameplay aspect also is very reminiscent of visual novels. I'd say the main minus of this game is it's extremely long, especially if you want to experience all the different plotlines (you'd have to do multiple playthoroughs, with each one taking like 60+ hours, mine took 80 I think). I burned out midway through my second playthrough.

If you like tactical grid gameplay Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle is a super cute switch exclusive, bonus that it's often on sale for dirt cheap (especially compared to 1st party switch exclusives, since it's an ubisoft game instead). Not really much story though (I mean, it has one but it's just cartoonish silliness) so I'd only rec it if that type of gameplay appeals to u!

[alias_sqbr]

This is all very useful information, thank you!