Nintendo 3DS (thread twooooo)

[importaku]

Found my new 3DS model totally getting bought

[VR46]

Yay, A-Train has been confirmed for a USA & UK 3DS release.

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/06/natsume_confirms_a_train_city_simulator_for_3ds_and_alphadia_genesis_for_wii_u

[cutmymilk]

Wheres the first play for Tomodachi Life?

I forgot to buy it in town yesterday, d'oh! Will grab it Tuesday most likely.

[teddymeow]

Wheres the first play for Tomodachi Life?

I forgot to buy it in town yesterday, d'oh! Will grab it Tuesday most likely.

Yeah, because I have no idea what it actually is.

Wasn't there a game called Tomodachi something in DS. And wasn't it garbage?

[kryss]

Tomodachi Collection on DS was the last game I bought before leaving Japan. I gave it to my friend for his young daughter shortly after.

Yay, A-Train has been confirmed for a USA & UK 3DS release.

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/201...esis_for_wii_u

Of course, before I've even managed to get a go on the Japanese version! Still, good news and a shame they never localised the DS one (although the 3DS one is the same anyways...)

[Asura]

Man, I have a real love/hate relationship with Fire Emblem. The perma-death makes it really tense, which can be fun, but it makes it very difficult to train weaker, lower level characters, and I over-rely on the higher level ones. Getting concerned that'll make me vulnerable in the future if someone like Frederick dies, but some of them die in a single hit against most enemies. It's tricky.

[Asura]

Man, I have a real love/hate relationship with Fire Emblem. The perma-death makes it really tense, which can be fun, but it makes it very difficult to train weaker, lower level characters, and I over-rely on the higher level ones. Getting concerned that'll make me vulnerable in the future if someone like Frederick dies, but some of them die in a single hit against most enemies. It's tricky.

Hate to quote myself, but now I'm 2/3rds of the way through it, I definitely have problems with it.

For starters, in missions where the AI controls certain characters who you can recruit if they survive (allies), the AI is suicidal! It seems to throw the characters at enemies with reckless disregard. They end up dying when I would save them if they would just stand the **** still. I just lost the second Manakete I've met because the combat went like this:

An enemy got in range
The enemy hit him, did 90% damage, he hit back and did 2% or around that
Ally turn comes around
Instead of running he hits the enemy (when certain death is mindbendingly OBVIOUS) and dies

I also dislike the way in which things can go south really quickly. I don't mean when you do something daft like a Pegasus Knight gets killed by an Archer, because the game gives you enough information to prevent that kind of thing. I just mean occasionally when the entire enemy force in range decides to gang up on one of your units, when there are several in range. In my experience, very few units in the game can survive successive turns of combat without healing, short of depending on the "no damage" thing from pair-ups, which seems a bit daft when those, whilst likely, are still somewhat luck-of-the-draw.

This enemy gang-up kills one of my team, then my team decimates them the next turn; I have to play conservatively but the AI doesn't really care about its own forces. It seems weird.

The game does a lot of things I like, and conceptually I think this whole perma-death idea is very good, but now the difficulty is starting to increase, I'm not sure how well it's going to hold up.

[Dogg Thang]

I loved it at the start and lost interest after a while. Never seemed like a bad game though so I couldn't say it was a bad game at all, it was likely just me or my mood.

[Sam The Man]

Asura i also loved it at the start but then like you began getting frustrated at stupid things the A.I does. It was at times like the computers main objective in battles was to perma death my characters by going after 1 in particular or the weakest link even if it wasn't the best choice as far as winning the overall battle goes. Then the story started getting silly and rather boring and i stopped sometime after you cross the ocean. There were other annoying things in the game like the characters not being able to level up past level 20 and the characters not having any feet. Overall id say it was a 7/10 game that could of easily been higher if they had solved those few problems.

[Asura]

There's one other thing I forgot to mention; the AI bringing on "reinforcements" from any and all corners of the map in some scenarios, often changing the "rules of engagement" mid-battle can be frustrating. It makes you feel sometimes that you need to always be as far from the edges of the map possible.

Unfortunately stuff like this (and what I've said above) seems to make every battle resolve in exactly the same way - you kill the stuff near you to get space, then you move to a more central position, then form a ring of your more defensive characters, put your archers/spellcasters in the middle and basically sit there until the enemies are dead, or there are so few that you just send out your characters to mop up. The only exceptions are maps with very strong choke points and no clear "entrances" around their edge.

Even the map design is a bit strange. Just now, I had a mission where I had to assault a coastal fortress. When the mission started, your army was on the beach outside the castle walls, and there was a bridge leading into the castle (which was full of enemies). The mission began, however, with a load of enemies outside the castle, on my side of the bridge on the beach. It just seems weird, somehow; like the scenario/enemy positioning/location/plot aren't really in sync.

I've just upgraded the class of a load of characters in a flurry, and used my stat-boosting items. I'm now just going to plough through the main missions, ignoring distractions and get to the end so I can finish it off (as I think there's 25 missions and I'm on 17).

[Guts]

Avoiding death of characters is part of the challenge and charm in Fire Emblem. You need to think carefully and sometimes take risks. Like in a real battle. That's rewarding to me, and leads to some real tense moments that majority of modern games lack. It's a real adrenaline rush and wave of euphoria when your almost dead unit is saved by an adjacent friendly. Same when you team up to bring down a tough foe.

There's also the "casual" option with no perma-death in Awakening for those who want to avoid replaying scenarios and just plough thorugh the story, so it's a win-win for everyone really.

[Golgo]

Perma-death in Fire Emblem games was always a boon as far as I was concerned as it allowed me to suicide all those dullards. I found their interminable dialogue grating as hell after the mute heroes of Advance Wars. This was the only pleasure I got from the games. Needless to say, this 'tactic' meant I never finished one.

[Asura]

That's rewarding to me, and leads to some real tense moments that majority of modern games lack.

That's the thing; it does keep me coming back. This one element of the game, when in full swing, is brilliant. I'm just not so fond of many other things that sit on the periphery of that feature.

[cutmymilk]

I completed Link Between Worlds last night after having it since launch. Also started Mario Tennis. 3DS is superb. Link Between Worlds was definitely the best use of 3D I have seen, though. Don't think Tennis has it quite right.

[Asura]

Don't think Tennis has it quite right.

Odd, really. Maybe it's just me but I'd expect tennis to have a very good 3D implementation.