On the Nintendo Switch

As per usual with these, I will mostly be talking about things that caught my own attention and my opinions on that versus reporting everything :) If you haven’t watched the presentation yet, I highly recommend doing so. I already made sure to preorder the Nintendo Switch myself (though, I am still hoping the colored Joy-con version will go up… There is also a chance that I may just preorder at Nintendo NYC) along with a few games and am anxiously awaiting some accessories and Amiibo to go up…. But let me go ahead and get into my opinions here.

One of the nice things with the presentation is it immediately came out with the price point and release date–$300 and March 3rd, 2017. The price is a bit more than I expected (I was thinking closer to $250), but after all the features in the controllers, I can see how it tips over to that. The date, however, threw me off completely. I was expecting late March, MAYBE mid-March at the earliest so the fact that the system is only about a month and a half away is practically mind-blowing to me. And wow will I need to finish Poochy & Yoshi’s Woolly World fast :P

After some information on the system and the massive amount of features in the Joy-con controllers…

…we were thrown right into games starting with 1-2-Switch which kind of reminds me of what Wii Sports and Nintendo Land were for the Wii and Wii U. However, as far as I can tell, the game doesn’t seem to actually come with the Nintendo Switch and is its own game. I may have tried it if it came with the system, but for now I’ll probably hold off on it.

Next up was ARMS which is a brand new IP. It’s a fighting game with essentially elastic arms. While I’m not personally too interested in it, I think the art style is fairly interesting and it’s really colorful. I really like Ribbon Girl’s Design:

We then got Splatoon 2. While a lot of people were thinking the game would be a port with added features, I’m kind of excited to see how much more is in it due to it being an actual full game. If you follow my tweets or have read some of my other posts here, you’ll know I slowly started to just… stop having much fun with Splatoon due to:
-Stats being tied to customization.
-Match-making issues.
-The awful local multiplayer.
-Not being able to still get experience if playing in a full room of friends.
-The experience changes past level 20 which no longer gave you any credit based on how well you did personally.

Despite that, I am very interested in the story of this game for many reasons. For one, Splatoon 2 takes place 2 years after the original game. I mean, this is apparently Inkopolis Square:

And yes, I said that right–Inkopolis Square is not only the new popular area to hang out, but is two stations over from Inkopolis Plaza. There were also various new characters such as Mini-Judd:

And while I ended up no longer really playing the game, I still had a lot of interest in the characters and lore behind Splatoon so knowing this game takes place two years later, the new characters, and, for whatever reason, Marie being alone…

I just have so many questions I am looking forward to learning the answer to. I really hope Callie, and the Squid Sisters in general, are okay.

I still want to know if we can play the normal multiplayer locally without having to be on different systems though… That is the one thing I’m really interested on.

Mario’s new game came up next and I AM SO EXCITED FOR IT!! Out of everything new we heard about during the press conference, Super Mario Odyssey is easily the game I am most hyped about.

It’s not going to be out until Holiday 2017, but well, at least that means I’ll have a large amount of time to finish Zelda :P

The game was mentioned to be similar to Nintendo 64 which is my all-time favorite Mario game (though, my favorite 2D Mario is Super Mario World) and as someone who just generally prefers full 3D Mario games… I can’t help but be excited. It just looks great and New Donk City reminds me a lot of Station Square from Sonic Adventure which is one of my favorite Sonic games. I can’t wait to see more of this game.

The next game to get my attention was Xenoblade 2. I don’t really have much interest in Xenoblade, but it actually looks really pretty and I can’t help but be intrigued by it this time around.

Of course, this wasn’t the only game to catch my interest–Project Octopath Traveler (which I am assuming isn’t going to be its final title). The art style is incredibly pretty and I can’t help but want to know more about the game:

Finally, the last game to be shown is the one everyone wanted to know the date for most of all–The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. If you have not seen the trailer yet, do yourself a favor and watch it right now:

It is absolutely breathtaking. It’s beautiful and cinematic and makes me so excited for this game and is one of the few launch titles for the Switch. There’s also voice acting which, while I know some people were apprehensive about, I think has been done really well. You can also hear the Japanese voices over here. For the most part, I feel like they picked fairly similar voices between the two. The only one that stands out as kind of off to me in comparison is Zelda’s… she almost sounds too deep? Or something? I’m not really sure, but I just don’t really find it fitting and I can’t place it. Every other voice sounds fine to me though. I’m very curious if Link will actually talk too.

Also, the Master Edition of the game is amazing and I need it:

I unfortunately missed the pre-order which breaks my hopes and dreams, but hopefully it’ll pop back up on Amazon or I can catch it at Nintendo NYC T~T I’m really looking forward to making a video series of the game (and the Master Edition looks like it’d be so fun to unbox…). It’s hard not to be hyped for it, honestly.

Breath of the Wild will be one of the few games for the Nintendo Switch’s launch and while I am a bit concerned with there not being too many at launch, I’m pretty sure this was going to be the game I jumped right into anyway so maybe that’s for the best…

With that, the conference was over, but information was not and there were some things that were not shown during the Press Conference.

For one, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe! As expected, it’s mostly a port, but includes all the DLC and several new additions. Best of all though, it comes with a much proper Battle Mode:

The courses look really fun, honestly. And besides King Boo, Dry Bones, and Bowser Jr. joining the roster, we also have Inklings!

And yes, that is a Splatoon course. There will be new karts as well. While I think all the new additions look great, I’m not sure if it’s enough for me personally to want to essentially repurchase the game on the Switch. Part of why I ended up no longer playing on the Wii U was getting frustrated due to stats and appearance being tied together and my favorite combo not fitting my playstyle. I doubt that will have changed so I’ll likely hold off in the meantime, but maybe I’ll grab it down the line. It’s not out until April 28th so I have time to think about it.

Finally, I want to bring up some of the accessories and the Parental Controls. For the Parental Controls, just watch the video on the Nintendo Switch homepage. It is adorable and done wonderfully and just A+ Nintendo.

Bowser tries so hard to be a good dad.

As for the accessories, a lot of people are complaining about the prices. $80 for the L&R Joy-cons and well, what did you expect? Most controllers are about the price of a game now. The Pro-controller is only about $10 more and those are only $20 more and considering just HOW much they can do compared to most other game controllers, I am not surprised at all. I think the initial sticker shock can happen, but it’s completely understandable considering just how much is in them, despite their size.

We also got to see two more Breath of the Wild Amiibo–I’m mostly excited for the Zelda one:

I’m still mixed on her design in the game, but in the Amiibo and official artwork, it really does look quite nice:

Also, I totally want a Zora Amiibo based off some of the official Zora artwork too:

The final thing, which I didn’t bring up earlier, is just concern over Online services. Online services will be free until the Fall when they will cost a monthly fee. We don’t know what the price is just yet and I hope we get more information before the system comes out. While you do get a free game each month apparently (similar to how Playstation Plus works), as someone who still has her SNES and NES and all her games, I don’t have much interest in Virtual console or downloading games so it’s still not enough to really sell me it. It’s not enough to stop me from getting the Switch either though so we’ll see.

I also really want to know more on if we’ll need to have more than one console to play together or not because while local multiplayer and online multiplayer was confirmed, it seemed more for two consoles versus on the same system.

Overall though, despite some concerns with certain things, I’m so incredibly hyped for the Nintendo Switch and I can’t wait to play it on Saturday and watch the Treehouse Live presentation later. But yes, those were my thoughts! And now I have… about 5 hours of sleep I can get before Treehouse Live starts :P At the moment, no promises for writing up any thoughts after the Treehouse Live presentation (I’ll probably keep most short thoughts on my twitter), but definitely expect some photos and ramblings on Saturday after we get to try out the Nintendo Switch <3 And some videos too! Edit: So, as I expected, I really don't have enough to say about Treehouse Live's presentation, though it was longer than I expected! As mentioned, most of my thoughts can be seen on my twitter, but I wanted to talk about two launch games specifically that I got more excited about playing after seeing them on Treehouse Live (and both are coincidentally ones I did not mention in this article before):
1. Snipperclips. Snipperclips is a bit odd, especially just from screenshots.

But it’s a really cute puzzle game that requires more thinking than you expect and you can work with a friend and I am pretty excited for it now. It’s a $20 game that will be on the eShop at launch so hopefully I can pick it up at some point between all the Zelda playing.

2. Super Bomberman R. I have a very softspot for Bomberman, but I’ve actually only played the Nintendo 64 version. I have fond memories of the story mode and also reining terror on the various battle stages. I’ve never actually played the classic versions of it though. I was first put off by what we had seen, but after getting to watch much more of it, I figured it might be fun–especially when playing with someone. These were my favorite Bombers:

I’ll probably use the Pink one, though, I adore Aqua’s skirt and ribbon.

I don’t know if I will get Super Bomberman R right away (as it is, the amount we’ll need to save before March 3rd is pretty crazy), but we’ll see. I’m sure I’ll get it eventually though.