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Bump.

No one really cares about this around here anymore, but just to close the book, Nintendo has officially withdrawn Smash from EVO. It's perhaps due to Sony now owning the event, plus Nintendo partnering with Panda Global. Also, Smash wasn't included in last year's online EVO event due to Smash not having good enough net code.

Kind of an end of an era.

Nintendo will be discontinuing the eShops for both the Wii U and 3DS in North America and Europe in March 2023. It will still be possible to re-download purchased software and updates, and online play will still be functional.



NoA's depressing FAQ:

So, of course, the trailer is already being analyzed in-depth by many people.  I thought I would do my own analysis, except I'm going to do it a little differently.

I think I've mentioned before that one of the reasons I love the English voice acting in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is the use of different accents. So, just for some silly fun, I'm going to analyze the accents of the characters we hear in the trailer.

Noah - Starting with one of the main characters, Noah comes from the nation of Keves, which seems to be made up of the various races present in Xenoblade Chronicles 1, and thus resembles a Homs. Every character in XC1 had an English accent, regardless of race, but we'll go through this one by one. We clearly hear Noah speaking with an English accent.

I can't quite tell if that's Adam Howden doing Noah's voice, or another actor with a similar sound. It sounds like Adam, but with a higher tone. However, Adam's voice for Shulk is also a higher tone than his normal speaking voice, so it could be him.

Mio - Mio comes from Agnus, a nation that seems to be made up of the various races from Xenoblade Chronicles 2. She resembles a Gormotti, as evidenced by her cat-like ears. Gormotti all speak with Welsh accents, which Mio clearly has in the trailer.

Eunie - She comes from Keves and is clearly a High Entia as we see from the wings on her head. (Although, I don't recall ever seeing a High Entia with black wings.*) Regardless, she would have an English accent, which we clearly hear in the trailer.

Taion - Being from Agnus, that would make Taion Human, and generally all of the Human characters in XC2 had English accents, regardless of whether they came from Torna, Tantal, or Leftheria. Taion clearly has an English accent.

Lanz - Lanz is from Keves, and somewhat resembles a Machina due to the gray colors of his skin. Either way, he would have an English accent, and while he says very little in the trailer, that seems to be the case.

Sena - And finally we have the last of the six main characters in the game. Sena is from Agnus and resembles a Blade due to the glowing parts of her body and slightly artificial look. (Not sure if I should factor in the somewhat fan-servicey outfit, but I guess there's that, too.) In general, all Blades spoke with American accents (with some exceptions). She doesn't say much in the trailer, but she sounds American to me.

Aside from that, there's the unnamed character that strongly resembles Vandham from XC2, and provides some of the narration. Vandham was Urayan, and Urayans had Australian accents. The character in the trailer, however, does not seem to be Urayan, lacking the pointed ears and facial scales, and instead seems to be either Human or Homs. He does, however, share the same voice actor and still has an Australian accent. We'll need to wait for more information to see if his accent has any relevance.

It's worth noting, however, that Vandham is sort of a recurring motif in the Xenoblade Chronicles series, similar to Cid in the Final Fantasy series. There was also a character named Vandham in Xenoblade Chronicles X, although he looks different and has a different voice actor. They both share a Japanese name with Vangarre from XC1, but again, he looks and sounds different. (Diving deeper, there was also a recurring character in Xenogears and Xenosaga named Vanderkam that also bore some vague similarities.) So, it could simply be the case that this is a different character, but meant to resemble Vandham from XC2, and the accent may have no more relevance than that.

Finally, there are the two masked characters at the end of the trailer. It's generally believed that they are Melia and Nia from XC1 and XC2, respectively, and from what little we hear, they seem to have the same voice actors and same accents.

So, that's my accent analysis of the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 trailer. Everything seems to be consistent with previous games so far. 

* EDIT: I guess her wings are not actually black, but appear that way in the two close-ups of her in the trailer due to the lighting. There's another view of her from a distance where her wings are clearly white.

OK, here we go...



Overall - This was a really strong Direct. Lots of big titles. Very little filler.

I guess what I was referring to was that the Ys series tends to have different eras. The previous era was the three games made using the Ark of Napishtim engine. The current era started with Ys Seven, which introduced the party system, and all subsequent games (Memories of Celceta, Lacrimosa of Dana, Monstrum Nox) have used a variation of that engine and game system. It's the longest that the Ys series has stuck with particular engine. While those are all distinctly different games (just as The Ark of Napishtim, The Oath in Felghana, and Origin are all distinctly different games), it just feels like it's time for a refresh.

It does make me wonder, though, if the next Ys will keep the party system. Personally, I like having a party (although I do kinda want it to be reworked a bit), but there are still a lot of Ys fans who want to it go back to being just solo Adol. (Falcom attempted to cater to them with the solo Dana segments in Ys VIII, and the solo prison segments in IX.) We'll have to wait and see, I guess.

I remembered another demo I tried, plus two more I tried since I posted.

Samurai Warriors 5

Tried this because I enjoyed the Hyrule Warriors games so much, but didn't get into it. It still lacked the strategic element I liked from the first Hyrule Warriors, and the combat felt a bit strange (but maybe I just didn't take the time to get used to it). Also, I guess I'm more into Zelda than Japanese history fan fiction.

Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires

Tried another traditional Warriors game. At first, I was happy that the strategic element seemed to be back, but for the life of me, I couldn't beat the tutorial. I checked online and noticed other Musou fans saying the difficulty in the demo was a bit messed up compared to the full game. (All enemy commanders rush the player at once.) There were also a lot of noticeable performance issues. I'm not sold on this one.

Monark

I spontaneously tried this one knowing virtually nothing about it. It immediately gave me Atlus/SMT vibes, and as it turns out, it was made by former SMT devs. The premise was intriguing, but I barely got into it before I decided it wasn't for me.

Do you have any favorite Nintendo games that aren't part of a series or franchise? What standalone games do you think Nintendo should revisit with a sequel or remake?

There aren't as many as I thought there might be because 1) Nintendo often sticks to making games in established franchises, and 2) if an original game is reasonably successful, it will likely get a sequel. So, we're looking at a relatively small and niche selection of games (and a lot of them are digital-only), but there are definitely some interesting examples.

Here are the games that come to my mind:

Pandora's Tower and The Last Story

These were the other games that were part of the Operation Rainfall campaign, and they seem to have become a bit forgotten while Xenoblade has gone on to become a popular series. But both are excellent games, and Pandora's Tower, in particular, I like to think of as “the best 3D Castlevania game.” I'd like to replay them at some point if I get an opportunity.

Neither one is likely to get a sequel, however. Even at the time, Hironobu Sakaguchi said he had no interest in making a sequel to The Last Story, and the premise of Pandora's Tower doesn't seem like it would lend itself to being turned into a series.

Other games I enjoyed playing a lot at the time were The Wonderful 101 on the Wii U and Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem on the GameCube. They seemed worth mentioning, however I don't have a lot of desire to revisit these games now.

As for a standalone game I would like to see Nintendo revisit, I want to say Ice Climber (assuming we don't count the arcade version as making it a “series”). I have a soft spot for it, but I think I appreciate it more for its concept than its execution. The jumping controls don't have enough of a horizontal arc, making it overly difficult to jump to higher platforms, exacerbated by poor “hit detection” (not sure if that's the term I'm looking for) that makes it easy to fall through those platforms. But address these flaws, and I think there's a lot of potential to expand the gameplay.

I might post this question on Twitter, as well, to try to get more responses.