Console RPG Quest: Switch - Definitive Edition, Fantasy Life i

you Welcome to another episode of Acts of the Blood God, an independent RPG podcast. I'm your host, Kat Bailey. Joining me as always, my lovely co-host, Nadia Oxford. Hello, Kat. I'm proud to announce that we're starting Expedition, Expedition 34. We're looking for Randy Pitchford's... Thumb drive. At meaningful times. We're gonna die. We're off to a start today, aren't we? Before we get there. If she's merciful. Whoa, dude. Sorry, I'm in a dark mood today.

Also joining me is my equally lovely co-host, Eric Van Allen. We will find the hard drive so the patrons can never post again. For those who come after. For those who post after. Oh, we're loopy, everybody. Yeah, we are. We are. Yeah, a little sleep deprived. We are. Recording on a Friday instead of on a Saturday today because it's Memorial Day weekend. But here we are on twitch.tv slash bloodgodpod with all of you lovely people. And we're going to be talking about...

Nintendo Switch. It's time for the console RPG Quest Nintendo Switch Definitive Edition. The last Nintendo Switch console RPG Quest was in 2021. A lot has happened then. A lot of RPGs have come out. We'll be talking about all of that in this episode. We'll also be talking about Fantasy Live, The Witcher 3's 10th anniversary. And lots, lots more. And I suspect that Nadia is going to have a real banger of a nostalgia pit slash Nook later on.

Before we get to that, though, if you enjoy the show, please consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com slash bloodgodpod, your generous donations. Ensure that we can continue to do this. This is our full-time job. We are independent journalists, and the Patreon is our main source of income. Please directly support independent games journalism.

And if you do so, you get tons of bonus content, like being able to join us in for our cool book club, which is continuing today. We have a discussion on the Discord at 4 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Eastern.

We'll be talking about chapters seven and eight in the fifth season by N.K. Jameson. Eric's really enjoying it, aren't you, Eric? It's really good. I'm really having a good time with it. I find it to be a very... uh prescient novel it's very of our times and uh yeah it's uh it's really something else i think i've i've been won over by both the pros and the uh

general world building that i'm really enjoying so it's very good you know i like a book when i start comparing it to babylon 5 which i did in the street in the channel so there you go So that's happening over the next couple months. We're also preparing to do another Pantheon vote. We are going to be soliciting picks from our $100 and $50 level.

patrons and uh there and the theme is sequels so uh so look forward to the pantheon vote for that next week and we're going to be doing vagrant story in a couple weeks um and nadia is going to be leading that one and you get access to charlie and dropouts our final fantasy 14 podcast and our newsletter which goes out every Tuesday and Thursday, which you subscribe to bloodgottpod.com. Victor had a whole preview of the Rido remaster in this one. He sure did.

Yeah, so totally worth reading. You should go check that out too. We're putting out a lot of content. And finally, we have a lot of programming notes coming up. We're coming up in a very busy month for Acts of the Blood God in June. We're going for partner. on twitch so please subscribe to us on twitch.tv slash blood cop pod and be on the stream we're going to be streaming a lot in this coming month here are some streams that you can look forward to the switch 2 comes out on june 5th

We were planning on streaming it that day and hanging out and answering your letters. Nadia and I will be there. Eric's going to be at SGF. Maybe we'll drag Victor in too. That'll be a lot of fun. We're going to be co-streaming. all of the major streams. We're going to have bonus streams throughout the month too. I'm going to do my Final Fantasy VII completion stream that month to wrap that up finally, so you can join me for that.

And we're going to be doing the charity stream at the end of the month. The official dates are locked in. We are going to be streaming on June 28th and June 29th. And we got... An amazing amount of content. We did our first big meeting for it last week, and we're super duper excited about it. Last year, we raised more than $15,000 for Trans Lifeline. It was an amazing time.

We had a blast. Every year is better than the last. So, yeah, come and join us for that. It feels more important than ever, honestly. And finally... I'm going to start shouting out a different Star of Destiny each week. Stars of Destiny are like our most loyal supporters are there for the pre-show and the post-show. And this week's Star of Destiny is DrewRWX. Drew, thank you so much for your generous... Okay, let's head now into the console RPG quest for the Nintendo Switch. The end is nigh.

In just a couple weeks, Nintendo will finally release the Switch 2. The Switch has existed for most of Acts of the Blood God's run. If you go all the way back, I've alluded to this episode in the past. You can find Nadia and I reacting to the original reveal of the Switch in 2016 in the catalog. How well is that aged? Is that aged well? Pretty well, actually. Yeah, I would say that a lot of my predictions are on point.

our predictions in general. I think I was a little more cautious about it because both of us were a little traumatized by the Wii U. yeah i think i remember you saying the price uh was gonna sink yeah and i was wondering about the price and when it was announced i thought it was too expensive

Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that really pushed the Switch over, though, is it had such a banger of a launch game. I know, right? That was the main thing to me. I feel like Breath of the Wild was just such a remark. It was a vault for games the same way that Ocarina was a vault for games back in the day.

And it was just such a must play. I was like, well, even if this system is a piece of shit, I'm going to play this game. And that's been my legacy of Nintendo since day one. So, I mean, why stop now? Our original console RPG quest for the Switch was back in 2021. You knew it would take another four years to get a new console. At the time, we thought we might get a Switch Pro. Instead, we got the Switch OLED, and we got a ton of amazing RPGs.

as well to come out on that thing um it is now the third best-selling console of all time just behind the nintendo ds currently sitting at 152 million It seems like the last two years have been spent sitting around waiting for another Switch 2. People more and more saying, the Switch isn't powerful enough. It's a glorified Android tablet.

which you've also seen to be fair i mean um i wasn't like on board with that stuff until i started playing xenoblade chronicles x and it's a great game it runs incredibly well but also for some reason that game is what there's always the game that suddenly makes you realize oh it's time for a console upgrade for ps4 that was metro exodus for some reason i was playing metro exodus

heard my ps4 like starting to kick the fans on like the jet engine it's like all systems my poor my poor oled when i got flight on my scales and xenoblade x it was all of a sudden like wait wait a minute we're doing what now oh god it's playing echoes of wisdom a game that could run at 60 fps on my fucking phone yeah this it has been or like

I'm not trying to disrespect it. It's an old workhorse. It's been around forever now. But I think that the pandemic really threw a huge wrench in Nintendo's plans and something somewhere happened that we should have been playing on a Switch Pro. Oh, sure.

With a better processor, yeah. I wonder how that would have divided the market, though. Nintendo always has an upgrade, and sometimes it seems... Some are more popular than others, and I wonder how well a Switch Pro would have done. Probably quite well. It would have been like a PS5 Pro, right?

If you gave us an updated Switch with OLED, I think that would have been a pretty successful upgrade. I mean, it was a successful upgrade anyway. Exactly. It seems like a lot of people bought... multiples of them i mean we have multiples nintendo switches just floating around the house that's one thing analysts said would not happen they said people will not buy different switches the way they buy different ds's and they absolutely did they sure did

The number of times that a Switch came out and be like, I love those Joy-Cons. Or I love that dock, the Animal Crossing dock or the Zelda Switch OLED with a bang. I almost sprang for it. when tears of the kingdom came out but um so yeah a lot a lot of water under the bridge

And a lot of RPGs since then. So let's recap some of the big ones. And I think that maybe we should start with... a game that is near and dear to Eric and Nadia's heart, Xenoblade Chronicles 3. i would have started with two i'm that kind of sicko like i absolutely i love three i adore it but the problem is three is that the team had it shit together by then nobody had their shit together for xenoblade chronicles two it was so much fun for that reason uh

to the soundtrack is absolutely wild i love that for the snowy area he just has this real driving sisters of mercy thing going on it's this the yeah okay everyone hated rex but rex showed them by the end i think we can all agree that When the Switch started, everyone was like, haha, Rex is a weenie. And now that the Switch 2 was coming along, we're like, we're sorry, Rex. We were very wrong. But I would give it to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 before I get to 3. And 3 is great, too.

i think it's funny that the chat also exploded with no start with two damn it look i respect i respect y'all rise up one one photo in three really changed the tone on rex permanently huh like that that really just like oh no he's actually just built different that's crazy um the dlc apparently he's great in the dlc the reason that i'm picking three first is because a lot of the rpgs are talking about came out in the latter half of the switches uh life cycle

A whole mess of amazing RPGs came out in the first half of the Switch's life. This thing's been around for a long time. I can't believe it. It's been almost 10 years since its original release. xenoblade chronicles 2 fire emblem three houses the list goes on but uh yeah no xenoblade chronicles 3 came out in 2022 and it's the best one right it's not close

I, people will argue this all day and I have not played two yet. So the only Xeno blades I've played so far as a little bit of one, all of three and all of X, which we can talk about X maybe later in the show or, or even in this segment, I don't care. But, uh, I, I think three is by far might be my favorite Zeno. It might've dethroned Zeno saga episode one for me, which is a little Titanic in and of itself, but.

I really think that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 captured something with its story, with its characters. I think its party system is fantastic. I think... when we talk about the idea of the campfire right like the the rpg campfire the party gathering around seeing all of them kind of interact with each other and the the good feelings you get from that i think xenoblade 3 really understood that leaned into it and emphasized it there's something really good about having your full party for pretty much

the whole game. And then you get like your little supporters that hop in and hop out, but they're just kind of like there. They're almost there. They're kind of the job system that you use to kind of like get new stuff for your main party. But you feel like there's a very core central cast that you're. endeared to over the course of hours and hours and hours that really like worked well for me.

And I think some of the narrative swings it takes, especially in, you know, like 40 hours and 50 hours in are really impressive and really work well. And it's maybe the most I felt that the Xeno team.

balanced gameplay with cinematics in equal measure i i feel and we'll talk about this when we get to see like chronicle x and the definitive edition but i feel like there's a very precarious balance between gameplay in cinematics and sometimes zeno can like swing it too far one way or the other and i think xenoblade chronicles 3 was like the perfect balance it got it just right yeah it um

has a great cast it has a very well put together world it's like monolith soft of course as we know by now we're brilliant um how far at how far they have come with the switch in terms of the engineering and whatnot um But yeah, 3 was also a game I think should get more praise for how well the characters are rigged in cutscenes.

That's one thing you didn't see very much on the Switch, because probably the memory isn't there for that, but the characters make all these subtle movements, and even that movement of their eyes tells a lot of the story. So I'm glad that they have that going on. I think Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is in many ways emblematic of the success of Monolith Soft on the Nintendo Switch. Yeah. Which has been...

One of the main technical drivers behind the console, they were a big part of, for example, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. And they consistently, their games have been some of the best looking and best performing games. on the platform. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 looks great on the Nintendo Switch full stop. And I think that... Monolith Soft already had a solid reputation for many reasons, but I think that the Nintendo Switch really leveled them up. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

the dlc torn of the golden country like they you could really see okay this is where they got the handle on the switch and it's again they've done some of the best dlc period and not just for the switch I just want to go through the years really quickly because I went through the best of lists for every year since we've done the original console RPG quest. And there's a lot of bangers here. So 2021, Bravely Default 2, Neo The World Ends With You, SMT5, Monster Hunter Rise.

2022, Chained Echoes, Triangle Strategy, Pokemon Legends, Arceus, Xenoblade Chronicles 3. 2023, Fire Emblem Engage, Octopath Traveler 2, Tears of the Kingdom, Sea of Stars. 2024. Unicorn Overlord. Hello. And many, many, many remasters, remakes. The list goes on. It was basically a refugee camp for the Wii U. To say the least, we have been eaten the last few years.

I think 2023, that was a great year. That was Tears of the Kingdom. What else did you say it was? Getting Fire Emblem Engage and Octopath Traveler 2 and Tears of the Kingdom the same year. That's a good year.

i think this is yeah this is where the window shows a little bit is because 2023 i think for for tears of the kingdom very solid but 2022 the year before having triangle strategy chained echoes rcs 13 sentinels xenoblade chronicles 3 um what's the one i'm forgetting chained echoes i said already tactics over reborn um like some really really solid ones yeah everyone remembers the square enix rpg blunderbuss uh that was that was a good time but there there's a lot of like even under like

the the radar ones from that era i forget if dio field was on switch or not i don't remember i played it on playstation i felt like everything made its way to the switch eventually voice of cards was also i think i played voice of cards on the switch and i enjoyed that quite a bit Do you feel was on strategy? Yeah, there you go. Really needs to be followed up on. That was a really good strategy. Harvest Stella, baby. Harvest of course.

gotta have it back man that was such a stardew valley i think it was already very popular on steam and mods are a huge part of its success but Stardew Valley also benefited a huge amount from being really early to the party on the Nintendo Switch. Yes. And it fueled a whole farming sim revolution. revolution that continues all the way to, uh, to the release of fantasy life. I, um, and the upcoming ruin factory. So, but.

When I think of the Nintendo Switch, I also think, though, as I mentioned, a lot of remasters. So many legacy games came to the Switch. Saga Frontier, SMT3, Nocturne. all of the pixel remasters do you know that you can get basically every final fan numbered final fantasy up to 12 isn't that crazy on the switch yeah that's so cool In the late 90s when Square Enix told Nintendo to take a flying fuck. And now it's just like, holy shit, every single Final Fantasy is on.

so who can make it like god tier that alone makes it basically god tier to me seriously i do think not to detract from the switch having this stuff but i think with the pixel remasters with some of the hd releases we've seen from uh 10 10 to 12 zodiac age things like that and even just so you can do the same on steam basically and i think it speaks

broader to square enix rethinking its priorities let's say and and i mean there's been a lot of talk from them recently we talked about it last week actually about how they are kind of rethinking their process moving forward and part of that includes a broader platform approach which i think would only benefit them but you can see i think square enix over the years starting to really attach to the switch in various ways and that comes from games

like uh triangle strategy like octopath traveler which octopath traveler 2 was a multi-platform release but the original octopath traveler was kind of one of the big like post-launch it was actually for the switch when i saw the switch in january octopath was there on the reel and i was like wow what is that and for a long time we didn't know octopath in and of itself was

a pretty important game just for defining honestly making hd2d happen like like it was the the inflection point the flash point of hd2d becoming the thing for retro looking games Live Alive. Oh, the Live Alive was very good. The Dragon Quest XI S. That was a version of Dragon Quest. And Octopath Traveler was very early. It was revealed very, very early.

in the Switch's life cycle. Triangle Strategies is another one. So yeah, HD2D. I think that's actually a pretty key part of the Switch's legacy. It's a good way to hide the fact that there's not a lot of processing power behind that little guy.

But it was effective for the most part. Octopath 2 looks fantastic to me. Those sprites. Oh, it looks so good. It's just gorgeous. And of course, the soundtrack. But yeah, there's also Dragon Quest XI S, which I guess our next... it can do the flip between 3d and 2d as well which was like really i think something that's very impressive to this day it was the definitive edition still is still is and that's not something you say about the switch very often

This is if you want the Switch version. To me, I think one of the biggest pieces of the Switch's legacy is that it showed that the era of processing power as the be-all and end-all was over. Absolutely. That a system could just have a giant blunderbuss of games that could probably have run on the PS3 or older consoles than that even.

but still be very successful. Stardew Valley is not a technically sophisticated game. It sold like 30 million copies, and a lot of those were sold on the Nintendo Switch. And... Nintendo understood that going all the way back to the Wii when they just noped out of the hardware race and said, no, we're just going to do our own thing. And it hasn't always worked out for them.

Didn't work out for the Wii U, that's for sure. Virtual boy forever. We're just going to keep dragging you. The Switch was a compelling thing because it was a handheld device that looked good enough. At the time, they felt novel. And.

But at the same time, like you could play just a wide range of things. It felt very new when it came out, this concept of a dedicated handheld. And it didn't even really matter how powerful it was because you could just, to this day, indie games can come on the Switch and run fine.

for the most part. I always look at the... narrowing of Nintendo right because Nintendo for the longest time was a handheld company and a console company and it would kind of alternate between those two and I think where the the console struggled for Nintendo where the Wii was kind of broadly defined by let's say, a handful of key games, your Wii Sports, your Skyward Sword, your Mario Karts, and things like that. Even Smash on that platform was not the biggest Smash compared to other ones.

you have the handhelds which continued to thrive the ds and and to some extent not as much uh the 3ds sorry did you say that smash on switch is not the biggest smash no smash on wii on wii oh yeah yeah yeah no it's yeah brawl was kind of switch smash is the it is the smash unless what i'm saying is you look at that like those two forks and the switch is basically the moment where nintendo said okay

We're not splitting our attention anymore. We're combining the two paths. We're making the handheld console that really the Wii U... was aiming for in the first place but they need to kind of put their chips down on it so i see the switch as much a successor of the 3ds and the ds as it is a successor to the wii u and the wii before it and i think in all the ways the switch has succeeded

it's been leaning into the ideas of what those handhelds did very well. Strong third party support that had really interesting things that weren't relying, like you said, on graphical power or amazing new tech. I think for, you know.

clear obscure is is a good thing to look at right now like yes this is a graphic powerhouse this is an unreal engine 5 game that looks absolutely gorgeous it's not on the switch right now but for every clear obscure you have you have games like stardew valley where you can just kind of

create something that's going to resonate with people it's going to take off or even games like hollow knight which came out and then came to switch and got incredibly popular on the switch i think hades was honestly a lot of the same way where hades was already very popular on pc

But bringing it to Switch opened up a completely new audience. I knew a lot of people who started playing Hades once it came to the Switch. I like how the console exclusive is going to Switch 2 for a while. That's kind of a nice salute to what the Switch did for them originally. And of course, probably make them a billion dollars. On the flip side, I said that performance doesn't matter. Having said that, Pokemon really suffered in some ways.

on the switch i told you switch 2 is gonna have the unfucked editions and here we come the funny thing about pokemon is i think you could look at and go wow it's uh you know sword and shield And Scarlet and Violet had a lot of problems. Also, though, they were some of the most successful entries in the series ever from like a sales standpoint. I'm a sword and shield defender. I need to double check this. I'm checking the numbers right now. I think Scarvai is still behind sword shield.

on sales numbers i'm double checking right now i don't know but i think it was doing just fine i'm pretty sure it was the one of the fastest selling generations period like really fast out of the gate Pokemon Legends Arceus also did extremely well, but I'm a Pokemon fan. I like the Pokemons. I like them Pokemons. Scarvai has overtaken Sword Shield now, but it's... 26.79 million versus 26.72 million so it was almost 30 million copies man yeah that's incredible i'm saying that is

Notable and interesting that it did take some time for Scarvite to get to the point where it overtook. Yeah, it did. That's notable, especially when you look at the top games on the Switch right now and a lot of them came out and were immediately storming onto there.

New Super Mario Brothers, New Deluxe is doing crazy numbers. Shout out to that. Is it really? That's really holding in there. I would never say that from a sales standpoint, Pokemon did poorly on the Switch. It did very well. No, no, no. I was saying within...

its own series within its own like progression but i think pokemon's issues maybe even run deeper than just performance but that's a different topic pokemon's more successful than ever in many ways i mean pokemon tcg pocket low-key doing better than pokemon go during peak pokemon go In terms of revenue. I'm cracking a pack as we speak. Sorry, everyone. It's addiction. Let's go. Heroin. Having said that. I didn't say that, Twitch. I think that, I mean, we had the Dexit.

uh with the the end of the national decks as we knew it was sort of shield you were before that good job we love you hey okay can we can we tell a u.s gamer story on here um are we telling this story again i think we've told this story but you can tell it again it's it was i had just been hired at us gamer as as news editor uh cat was sending me off to

e3 and it was not my first e3 but it was like my first e3 as a professional in the video game industry and not like a dude writing for some video games blog who was really excited to show up to e3 and all that was like oh i gotta go in there and i gotta like be professional and all that i gotta be i'm part of the i had him interviewing masuda my it was like my first appointment

And I think we might have had one of the first interview slots after they had just announced Dexit. And I had messages from you on Slack that were just like, you asked them about Dexit. You asked them. Kat was like in the background, like, you fucking ask him. yeah it was it was very funny and i was going in there and i was like oh man a lot riding on this i was pretty rational about it but in hindsight

People dragged Sun and Moon, which, by the way, was the theme of the last Pokemon TCG Pocket expansion. Yes, it was. I love Sun and Moon. I have a lot of fond memories of Sun and Moon. By comparison, on the 3DS, runs really well. Beautiful, great art design, full Pokedex, full national Pokemon decks, tons to do in it. Red and blue on their holiday vacation smooching.

That's so great. What else could you want? Good for you, Game Freak. I don't think the... Oh my god, they're gay. Good for them. They're ultimately... They had Mega Evolutions still. So I would say that... sword and shield and scarlet and violet were steps back in my view that's all i think i think my like broad sentiment is that game freak never

manage the jump into 3d i think reb has said something similar on the show before and i agreed with it very much where uh the move to 3d and full 3d the sort of like um vision scale construction of the world that you see in something like honestly scarvi i think sword shield kind of found a way to okay we're gonna have some open zones but when you're in a town it still kind of looks like pokemon

and stuff like that but once you were in scarvi and it felt like there's there's something weird about like having the full panning around camera and the way you're moving around that world and with rcs it was like okay you're doing something different you kind of have different like pokemon mechanics and stuff like that but there's the something about the way scar vice world is constructed that doesn't feel like it's

a 3d world it feels like you're kind of playing like a 2d world mapped down or mapped up in a way uh and i think there's just a lot of aspects of scarvi that felt like a company that was still trying to figure out how to like take something that always made in a certain space and a certain design perspective, a certain viewpoint.

and move it into a different perspective because they've done 3d graphics before but thinking within 3d open world full camera rotation you're flying around and stuff like that you could tell it was a first draft of it and that makes me really curious about what their vision is moving forward because i don't i don't know that i've always you know there's always been the dream of the pokemon mmo right like

I just want to be in a Pokemon MMO and run around with my friends and capture all the monsters. And it sounds really good on paper. And then you start writing. the list of things you want from that. And then the list of things that you enjoy in Pokemon, I don't know if they match up one-to-one, you know? And so I'm, I'm curious what game freak does for the next mainline entry on the switch to, if it tries to build on.

scarify i don't think it should i think it should look at what area zero and scarify the end of scarify was i think that was an incredibly good blueprint for pokemon moving forward something that they could really work with and really build on and i'd be excited to see more of that and less of the like i don't know the open world stuff just doesn't do much for me and i'll tell you what the future of pokemon is Mobile. Lifestyle branding. Yeah. Pokemon Legends. It has a wide variety.

I will say that my dream Pokemon game, and I can feel some people just rolling their eyes because I'm going to go full fangirl here. My dream Pokemon game is they go back to Pixels. They have multiple regions and they have the full national Pokedex with like the, all of the different mechanics from over the years. Yes. Even gigantamaxing or whatever, just throw it in kitchen sink style.

And give me some really good solo content. You would never see me again. That would be it. I would just play that game forever. I legit think you take. A pixel style. You set it in. HD 2D.

kanto or johto and you you call it pokemon all stars and it's we're bringing all of the like trainers and gym leaders yeah it's the the idea is like everybody's in here you've got like cynthia and lance and and brock and i i'm gonna start running out of trainers i can pretty fast everybody has their generation they know it it's in tcg pocket it's what pokemon master sex should have been but instead that was like a weird gotcha game

and yeah i had yeah yeah it still is also it's very funny to call it pokemon master sex i don't know why well that was weird because it was like the trainers and it's like oh cool yeah and like i am I'm the person out here saying that I think like the trainers are an underrated aspect of Pokemon. I want to train with Melanie. You kidding me? It's right there in the name. Melon. We spent a lot of time.

We spent a lot of time dwelling on Pokemon, but a series that did have kind of a renaissance on the Switch, as opposed to Pokemon, is Fire Emblem. And we got two... Major Fire Emblem games and a lot of Smash Brothers Fire Emblem games in characters in Smash Brothers. Eric is like just losing his mind right now. it's it's in the name melon it's just really fucking with me it's there i'm good i'm good i'm good

We good? I think so. Yeah. Okay. Fire Emblem did pretty well on the Switch, didn't it? Oh, yeah. Three houses was a thing. Engage was kind of a thing. And yeah, I remember one of my proudest moments for you as gamer was finding that hidden story that I wrote about and like in the murals that you see in every chapter. And I was like, hey, everyone, this is a story. It all links together. And everyone was like, wow, cool. And that was a nice article.

I think it's funny how with every Nintendo generation, it's like Fire Emblem is dead. Fire Emblem's back. Fire Emblem's dead. Fire Emblem's back. Long live Fire Emblem. It's never been more over. We've never been more back of a video. games and i think i love it for that mirage sessions that's right sharp fe mirage was a like that was a wii u game but like the port forward i think that was one of my

I don't think they would do it, but I hope they do it. And now I'm really glad. And now we just need to get it on a Pantheon poll because I need an excuse to replay it. But Loki might be one of the best Persona style combat systems ever made. even compared to other persona and smt games i think the combat system for sharp fe is absolutely brilliant but uh i i think when it comes to fire emblem

Three Houses was a really strong entry. I'm never going to deny that. I love Three Houses. I do think there's something to, and maybe I've been thinking about this because I've been playing the old Fire Emblems again. There's something to people wanting the old Fire Emblems back. And I don't think it's just having that campaign structure and all that. It's also the tone, the tenor, the vibe of the game.

I think Persona Persona Fire Emblem Three Houses leaned into Persona management, leaned into calendar stuff, leaned into a lot of the things that do make games like Persona very appealing. But. Also, I think maybe detracted a bit from people who just wanted to play a tactical RPG and they ended up drifting towards games like Triangle Strategy and the Tactics Ogre remake and stuff like that.

And I love I love variety of my tactics RPGs. Let me tell you, I this is honestly an incredible generation for tactics. Incredible. Yeah. One hundred percent. Mario and Rabbids Sparks of Hope is.

an incredibly underrated tactics rpg that everybody should take down to play like a very very chronicles mario game that's crazy yes to me it it worked so well and i think about that game so often and yeah it's it's incredible but I think with the next Fire Emblem, I would hope that they would think about going towards doing something that feels like a Fire Emblem 7 or a Fire Emblem 8, a.k.a. the GBA Fire Emblem.

engage was not that engage was like from a map design standpoint it absolutely was an old school fire emblem game the second you are playing a fire emblem yes everything outside that was like go go get your ring go like recruit this character and assign them this ring and then go talk to the spirits it still had the flavor of the story was still very fire emblemy it still had the i wouldn't even agree with that okay It was like toothpaste.

hair person and is like secretly a dragon or whatever and is on a quest to stop the other bad dragon and like i'm telling you i've been playing fire emblem seven and fire emblem eight like on my amber nick and being like oh yeah this was like okay here's lynn who has been fighting it's always been anime as heck and there's always been dragons but but but it was more magic it was a war story there was you know kingdoms there was

conflict that was what i liked about three houses and war stories in this too the only thing that made me mad about engage is that it didn't really uh it doesn't really do anything with the dragon heritage and that's wrong Fire Emblem always does something with Dragon Heritage. Fire Emblem Engage was an incredible ode to the entire history of Fire Emblem. It looked beautiful.

The actual ghost mechanic, what are they called? The little Fire Emblem characters attaching to you. The rings that you get married to. It was an amazing mechanic. I really enjoyed the help section.

It was a really, really, really, really well done game. And anything chronically underrated, actually. It had one of my favorite Fire Moon maps of all time. And that was the one where you're in that pincher attack. That was... that was great the the maps are such a level beyond anything in three houses it's not close yeah there but um there are some really good three houses maps but i will say on overall level yes engage was

And gameplay wise, too. I loved all the engaged mechanics. I just wish like it felt like two games in one. It felt like they were trying to do an all stars and then also do the other stuff. And I think like if they just focused on the all stars part of it. and just had that focus there i would have been way more into it i don't remember half the cast in engage like i i remember harley quinn girl and that's about it they really went for it with the character designs didn't they Yeah.

Well, we went to our audience and we said, hey, Blood God listeners over on the Discord, what were your thoughts on the Nintendo Switch's legacy? And here's what some folks said. First, Len Hafer, a friend of the show, said... I don't think there were a lot of standout RPGs that were Switch exclusives, but it definitely got me playing RPGs on the go again, which I hadn't really done as much since the days of the GBA, probably.

I re-bought multiple games I already owned on other platforms just because I wanted to be able to play them at the park or in the train or something. I also finally got deep into Fire Emblem because of the Switch 2. Previous entries just had never hooked me the same way that Three Houses did. Sarden says, I never had a PS1 or PS2, so the Switch is my first time playing a bunch of Final Fantasies, and so conveniently. 7, 8, 9, 10, and 10.2 are Switch games to me.

in general the switch is great for anyone interested in playing old rpgs collection of mana the remaster paper mario thousand year door live alive fantasy star one for the game club good times good times and octopath traveler which however you feel about hg2d started a movement that included strong sequel and a number of old games made accessible again on modern systems i think the switch is one of the best retro consoles ever made full stop it is just a joy to have that thing

if you showed the switch to me when i was a teenager my head would have exploded i i would have died just been like take me with you yeah i was like the future does this exist really bad i don't care take me with you yeah yeah

Some great memories of just kind of playing those early games. Like it was Christmas time, as I recall. We were on a holiday break from US Gamer. I don't remember the exact year. It might have been 2017, 18. I was playing Diablo 3. on the switch and that was just my first time playing diablo 3 and that was great i enjoyed that and i was playing uh i think it was uh that monster boy game which is a great platformer oh that was really good yeah they got the remake

It wasn't Wonder Boy. It was something based on Wonder Boy, but it was a whole different adventure. It was really a lot of fun. You turn into monsters and stuff like that, so it was very Monster Boy-ish, but yeah. It has some really good, cozy games. For a lot of people, that was their first time experiencing retro. Even the Nintendo Switch Online service, it has all these really weird-ass retro games you've never heard of, but you want to play.

That's a lot of faults starting with input delay. But... By and large, there's so many weird, interesting games to find on the SNES versions of that service in particular. Japanese games, even. You can play Fire Emblem Blazing Sword on the GBA.

that's pretty cool yeah that's was that the one that started it all with north america blazing yes yeah yeah that was that was the first one that came out after seven seven baby roy he's like hello i'm baby white which did not have roy in it had his dad his dad elliwood elli elliwood yeah it ended up the way i played it he he ended up one of the most popular characters in fire emblem still

We love Lynn. Lynn's the best. Oh, my husband's been Lynn. We support Lynn. We are Lynn supporters on this podcast. Mark Alonpan says, I'd say the Switch RPG Legacy is a bit of a mixed bag. While it does have some standout exclusives, mainly Fire Emblem and Xenoblade, a bunch of their RPGs are available elsewhere or are ports of older games cleaned up. Even the Pokemon games, while it's always pretty good sellers, were uneven in their presentation and receptions. And Arkity says...

The Switch has many legacies, such as groundbreaking Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart selling more copies in the population of many nations. For RPGs, the Switch's legacy is being one of the best places to play classic RPGs, such as Lunar, Saga, Suikoden, but also... of classics we never got like live alive it was the console to have if you wanted amazing classics and amazing mid-tier rpgs okay i'm just gonna go around really quickly and i want every i want you to

And I'll do this too. What is your favorite RPG? What is the best RPG released on the Nintendo Switch? You're not allowed to say Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, by the way. Best RPG released on the Switch and the most underrated RPG on the Switch that everybody should play. Oh, that takes some thought, though. I literally pulled my OLED out. Mine's on the couch. I can't get it.

For me, the best RPG released on the Nintendo Switch. I'm going to give everybody some time to think. Dragon Quest XI is the best one. That's the one. It's in our top 25 RPGs of all time. It is a beautiful, amazing game that was significantly upgraded on the Switch. We were used to having downgraded, kind of problematic ports on the Switch. They did such a great job with Dragon Quest XI on the Switch. And...

In much the same way that Fire Emblem Engage was a great ode to Fire Emblem, Dragon Quest XI was an amazing ode to Dragon Quest, but it also stood on its own in so many ways. Great cast, really memorable cast. Act 3, divisive, but also memorable. We did a Pantheon episode for it. It was in our top 25. For me, Dragon Quest XI is it. And then I think the most underrated game... is either between Fire Emblem Engage and Unicorn Overlord. Both of them tactics RPGs. I think...

Fire Emblem Engage was kind of unfairly dismissed to me. Unicorn Overlord was... I just had such a great time with that game last year. Crank up the difficulty on it, but... It is such a delight to put together all of the different characters. It's like a good version of the Gambit system. Sorry, Final Fantasy XII fans. and a special shout out to bravely default to a game that i spent a lot of time grinding and the job system in that is chef's kiss eric how about you

I'm going to assume that I know what Nadia is going to pick for the best Switch RPG. I have ideas, so go ahead and say your heart. Okay, so... I think you're going to say Octopath 2. I mean, yeah, but. So that is also mine. I think Octopath 2 is honestly one of the best RPGs I've played in years.

It is incredibly well made. I think it's a beautiful realization of a lot of really interesting schools of thought that were happening around the turn based RPG. As developers, we're clearly trying to figure out what an evolution of the turn based RPG looks like. And I think it was incredible for what it did inside the combat system for what it did outside the combat system with its path actions. I think the way it took the original idea that like Canterbury Tales idea of Octopath Traveler one.

and really realized it in a way that felt a lot more interesting compelling and uh really brought it together at the end uh with two i think it just it sang uh it really worked And then my backup would have been this. This might be a little controversial because even I will say this has some faults. But triangle strategy was a was a banger. I really have thought a lot about Triangle Strategy since. I think it's a game that really had some great ideas about a tactics RPG game.

and character design and just again like i think the switch was a place where a lot of developers clearly thought about how to take these old genres and evolve them moving forward uh i think for underrated I got to be on brands option a dungeon encounters. Y'all know it. Come on. Dungeon encounters, baby. That's that's that's it. That's that's where it's at. like like that's that's just that beautiful distilled like perfection of dungeon crawling uh perfect answer

Yeah, but also option B Chained Echoes. I fucking love Chained Echoes. That game goes so hard. That game's so good. the air the the arrogant answer is also giving four answers instead of two so um i mean i gave like three answers so whatever I badly square. If you're listening, this is free. This I'm giving this to you advice. Maybe maybe put my name in a special thanks somewhere.

final fantasy dungeon encounters please like that's all you have to do you put everybody in there it's it's it's what's going on with magic the gathering right now it's just all the characters are just oh here's you've recruited ishtola you've recruited yuna you've recruited all these characters and you go crawl in the dungeon with them and you fight a bunch of final fantasy baddies like cactoirs and and and tawn berries and stuff like that and boom

There you go. It's easy. If I knew how to mod, I would mod it for dungeon encounters right now. Why are you doing this square? Get this man a job. Yeah, yeah. But Chained Echo is also very, very good. Very, very good. And a game I wish more people would play. The people I have convinced to play it.

have always come back and been like you know you were right you were right about chain deco so i was like i know i was i know i was shout out to front of the show moon blaze wolf uh who's in the midst of running rpg limit break which is happening right now actually hell yeah hell yeah hell yeah Hell yeah. Nadia. Favorite? What is the best RPG on Switch and what is most underrated?

I mean, the easy answer is the Elite Chronicles 3. We've already gone over what a well-done, well-polished RPG that was and how it was a technical marvel. The storytelling was brilliant. Even the bodily movement rigging was fantastic. So that's an easy yes for me, but I would also give it to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 just for the rebel factor. You can't have one without the other as far as I'm concerned. And so they are like a child and an adult, you know.

One phase for the other. Otherwise, I actually kind of want to give a small shout out to Stardew Valley because something about playing that game in handheld really bumps up the experience tenfold. I think of all the games I have. like the racked up hours on my Switch, Stardew Valley has got to be at the top somewhere. It's ridiculous. Underrated, I'm going with Harvestella, of course, because...

It was just such a quintessential good 7 out of 10 game that deserved a little more recognition. And it was kind of going towards what I want to see more from developers, what everyone wants to see more from developers, which is like...

a smaller more confined experience it still has like immaculate vibes but it is just you know just good fun to play maybe doesn't blow apart the the effects budget but as for the game itself you're looking at basically near rune factory so that just says it all you know a game ruled on the switch Deedlet and Wonder Labyrinth. And Ladybug's coming out with another Wintervania. Just a really great riff on Symphony of the Night.

It almost feels like a mod or a fan game that just swaps out Alucard for Deedlet. And I love it. Just give me Elf Girl with a bow all day long. There's so many good RPGs. We can't hit them all. I mean...

I think you could do a whole episode on just how much the Switch has meant for the Trails series. A game that, I mean, I almost feel like we should do just... We're doing a book club now. I almost feel like we should do a... a trails club or a trails project that would take like five years we would be celebrating this show's 20th anniversary by the time we got through all of them but so many trails games came out on the switch

Trails through Daybreak, Trails into Reverie, various Cold Steel games. I mean, wow. There must have been, there's more than a half dozen on the Switch. Did we get Cold Steel 1 ever?

We must have, didn't we? I don't know. I know Cold Steel 3, I think, is on the Switch. Cold Steel 1 was back in the Vita PS3 era. But for completionist's sake... I think when we talk about... i think when we talk about the trails games that like hit on the switch that i know people were playing specifically on the switch it was the uh police arc the cop arc yeah yeah the switch version only came out in japan for some reason really

yeah pretty annoying the crossbell arc i do think it's interesting that we're finally getting which like trails in the sky first would have been the one to put on switch you would think especially looking at

what other people were doing. I think this is maybe just a case of a company that doesn't have the not quite limitless, but like higher resources of something like a square or something like that, that it can't just be like, yeah, let's put put all these old games on there like you know they got to pick their their battles a little bit more but uh trails in the sky first remake uh which i think is coming to both switch and switch to

That's pretty exciting. I think a lot of people are probably going to start picking up that series through that. So final thoughts on Nintendo Switch's legacy. I will say that the Nintendo Switch is probably my favorite console of all time. It's my desert island console. If you gave me a Nintendo Switch and just put me on an island somewhere, I'd be pretty happy. I love...

It's mix of indie games. There's been a lot of banger RPGs and games on it. Tears of the Kingdom is one of my favorite games, full stop. I just had an incredible experience with that game. And I love its mix of retro sensibilities with kind of modern design. I've had a lot of really special experiences. with the Switch over the years. And I have not really been bothered at all by its technical limitations. If I wanted a technical powerhouse, let's go play a game on PC.

I'm being totally honest. The Switch gives me a very different flavor of gaming experience. I don't think the Switch 2 is going to be able to reach those heights. I think the Switch 2 is going to be... more of a 3ds kind of situation not saying it's going to struggle out of the gate i just think it'll be fine it'll do well but it won't do as well as the switch because what can

It came out at the right time in the right place. It was a dedicated handheld. Dedicated handhelds were a fresh and new experience. It felt very differentiated from what the PS4 and the Xbox One could offer. And Nintendo was just on fire. Oh my god, putting out Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey in the same year? That was a good year. So many just incredible games came out for it.

And I don't know. It was lightning in a bottle. I don't know that you capture that again. But what a ride. What a ride over the past.

eight years and it's kind of neat that acts of the blood god was there the entire way crazy huh yeah let's hope we're there the whole way for switch too uh personally um i am kind of glad that the switch 2 is just more of the same because i'm happy with the ride i don't really want to get off so it's just a matter of give me those good nintendo games you know give me something

Because I think Nintendo's making some of the best games they've ever made, and I've been a fan since the very beginning. There's people who say, oh, Nintendo of the old is so much better. No. This Nintendo was like, oh, you want a good Mario game? That's not new Super Mario Bros. for the 50th time? Here you go. And they're actually willing to do that, so I'm glad for that. And I'm just excited to see what's coming. Like I was saying on the pre-show.

the thing i love most about final fantasy 15 was sitting around and listening to music and driving around and listening to the music you're gonna get more of that except it's gonna be mario kart and it's gonna be crazy good and gonna be crazy fun donkey kong looks insanely good and i think word of mouth is going to get be very strong about this now my question is there's two problems here number one social media is a complete like

minefield now. It's almost useless. Blue Sky doesn't have the same traction as Twitter, which doesn't have any traction at all. So that word of mouth is going to be really fragmented. Number two, everyone's going to run out of money at the same time.

And it's going to be very soon. I'm sorry, but it's not going to be pretty. So there's no way that the Switch 2 is going to be better than the Switch. But yeah, it'll be fine. I want to put a pin in something you just said. All right. Social media. Keep a pin in that. on on the switch i i've mostly been talking about the rpgs up to this point but for the switch console might be one of the most important consoles in the history of video games i don't feel like i'm glazing overall to say that like

I think it fundamentally shifted the way we think about the home console forever. For sure. The idea of the portable, dockable console that can move. go on the go and then be set up on your TV. It does both. It handles both. It has the simple switch off. It's what we wanted the whole time with the Vita.

yeah you look at like steam decks and and everybody's getting involved with making a handheld bc i don't think it's uh out of pocket to say that that'll happen post switch that everybody looked at the switch and said oh no that's that they they were on to something that that's that's really like probably a good way forward especially as we move into a gaming industry that is

more reliant on platforms and storefronts than it is necessarily hardcore console exclusives where we're much more about services we're much more about online connections and storefronts with which you buy things that's where a lot of the industry hubbub is happening right now is around things like epic apple microsoft who has what platform on what operating system etc and in that regard the switch was ahead of its time it was forging a path

That being said, the other important thing of the Switch era and the PS4 Xbox One era was the ability to share, to capture, to post things. Big deal. The Switch is so easy. or it used to be so easy to post a screenshot or a video. When Tears of the Kingdom came out and people were posting their doohickeys on social media, that was a beautiful time to be alive. It was incredible.

plank monster with the penis that shot fire like it was ridiculous yeah yeah the one of like the koroks being roasted over the fire like that was incredible even breath of the wild had great ones too all of that has of course been thrown to the ground because you know what in our life hasn't been ruined by a dumb ass you know that says it all uh i think that is my question moving forward with the switch two is how does it have that

you know where how does it sit in a world where we're not as not to sound like hideo kojima but we're not as connected in that way we're not as like uh able to do a cool thing in donkey kong i can't make a dick in donkey kong bonanza and then share it on twitter that easily i have to like pull it i have to take the switch to out i have to plug in the usbc cable into my computer i have to go into system settings and say manage

data manage screenshots move them over it's truly 1984 here exactly yeah so i i'm curious how that shapes the switch to platano ranger in the chat saying that's quitter talk eric look where there's a will there's a way uh but i I am curious how that ends up shaping the narrative for the Switch 2 moving forward. You know, what we really need is a new Animal Crossing. And maybe Fantasy Life Eye is booming. But even a new Animal Crossing can never be as big as the original Animal Crossing.

New World, which brought in a ton of new fans. Wow. Talk about a right time, right place experience for a game. Pandemic. yeah we need the the bird flu to really kick into action for that 50 of us will die but uh we'll get another animal crossing but we'll get another animal crossing monkey paw curls wow but uh it's like being the first guy

No, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. Nintendo Switch, what do you think? What's your favorite RPG? We want to hear from you. Share your thoughts in the Discord. Send me an email at catatbloodgodpod.com or hit us up on Blue Sky. I plug a pod. Okay. That's it for the Console RPG Quest Definitive Edition from the Nintendo Switch. We'll probably do some more of these. At later times, it's fun to do these during regular episodes as opposed to as a special because there is a lot to a lot to dig into.

All right, next up is Random Encounters, and then we're going to talk about some fantasy life in The Witcher 3, 10th anniversary. Don't go away. Okay, it's time now for a series of random encounters. The Elden Ring live-action film is officially in development from A24, written and directed by Alex Garland of Ex Machina. George R.R. Martin is one of the producers. Also, Elden Ring Night Reign, which is coming out!

Next week? It's almost here. Could receive a two-player mode post-launch. Elsewhere, Ys vs. Trails in the Sky Alternative Saga will officially launch this summer with rollback netcode. It was originally released back in 2010 on the PSP. If it came out in time, we could do it for the charity stream. It's like Smash Brothers. Ease versus Trails. That's an interesting Smash. Trails in the Sky. Huh.

yeah the ultimate fight of who are these guys again hey don't say that about my guys my falcon crew i'm just i'm stoking the fires i'm stoking the controversy As long as you get some really good Ys music in there, I think you're cooking. You're cooking. A hall of fame for great RPG soundtracks, both Ys and Trails in the Sky. Mm-hmm. So this week, a bunch of really terrible Baldur's Gate 3 miniatures came out. Oh, no. And from WizKids.

that were getting passed around on the internet and everybody was saying how bad they were. WizKids apologized for them and is now offering refunds. Larian was going, what the heck? I think actually that might've been last week. I can't keep track of time anymore, but it was making the rounds. It was pretty funny. Also, Infinity Nikki's devs are also apologizing because they put out an update that was extremely poorly received.

Elsewhere, Backpack Battles. I don't know if you've played that one. I played it briefly. It's a particular genre of game. An auto-battler? Is that what it's called? Yeah, the clicker. Oh, cat. Oh, ye who have only peered into the abyss. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see a manual battle till I was a grown man. I played it briefly. Thank you. I played it briefly and it caught me for like more than an hour.

and i thought oh this is dangerous i'm gonna put this over here good idea let me let me tell you about the bizarre let me tell you about how many hours you can lose in the bizarre it's it's bad Yeah, so Backpack Battles 1.0 coming June 13th. Watch out. Watch out. Avowed director Kerry Patel has left Obsidian to join Netflix. Cyberpunk 2077.

Apparently features a second city like Chicago Gone Wrong. This is according to Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith. Also known as Chicago. Be sure to check out our Pantheon episode of Cyberpunk 2077. That was a great episode. I've never been to Chicago. I'm sure it's great. I was about... Nadia, I was thinking the same joke. So it's like... chicago i didn't say anything claire obscure and you said fucked up france and i said so france

that's that's the like chicago it's a pretty cool town actually i like no that's that's the like jay leto bit right that's like uh it's gonna be hearing this you see about this yeah yeah they're they're saying cyberpunk 2077 sequels gonna be set in chicago gone wrong so i guess it's just chicago We got a great show tonight. My chin is huge.

Nintendo is going to be back at Gamescom this year. That's happening in August. It'll be August before we know it. Oh, my God. 2025 is almost half over. It's been a long decade, hasn't it? And finally. Happy 10th anniversary to The Witcher 3, which released on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on May 19th, 2015. We reviewed it.

We talked a lot about his battle system because everybody said, I don't think the battle system's very good. Here's a little cat take for you. I think Witcher 3's battle system's pretty good, huh? Take that. It took a lot of time to evolve. But I enjoy the parry system. I enjoy the presentation of it. It feels really dang cool to walk through a series of people and slice off their heads and get little kill animations and that sort of thing.

And when you get into blood and wine, you unlock some crazy good abilities, a whole new skill tree. That's really fun. And it's so satisfying to go and get the grand master armor in that game. And the monster battles are really cool. Just people act like Witcher 3's only good quality is the actual story. And the story is amazing. Don't get me wrong. I love the story in that game.

Watching the 10th anniversary trailer gave me chills, making me remember everything about that game. But I had an amazing time actually playing it. There's a lot of... layered strategy to it the way that uh you can coat your weapons you can coat your uh your items it's very flavorful in the way in its systems I'm using Flavorful now because I'm playing Magic the Gathering. Can you tell? Flavor with a U?

exactly the only flavor i recognize zesty yeah yeah they got the way that you attach to mutations the way that you use different potions to be able to where you take a specific Potion when you're fighting a vampire to say poison your blood so that they can easily bite you. Things like that. It makes you think a lot. It puts you in the role of a witcher. I felt like I was playing as a witcher.

in this game and initially i was kind of like i don't know if i want to be gerald but by the end i was like gerald's Pretty cool dude. Also, shout out to Geralt actor Doug Cockle for saying that. The criticism, quote unquote. of Witcher 4 surrounding Ciri 4 was, Ciri was, being the protagonist is, quote, ridiculous. And that, that he, Geralt can't be the hero forever.

Yeah. Geralt's retired. He's off drinking wine somewhere. Let's Siri have a chance. It's literally like anybody saying that clearly doesn't. go here because like literally witcher 3 is just one big like off-ramp for Geralt and on-ramp for Ciri. That's like the point of the story. It's like being like, oh, two towers?

frodo is not going to be with the fellowship i don't know guys that feels like a bit of a reach i don't know that's that feels like they're really trying you know it's like dude did you read the book did you play the game No, get out of here. Yeah. So. I agree. I like The Witcher 3. Don't take real life advice from it and replace your blood with battery acid to ward off vampires. But it's it's a really cool system that I think had some cool ideas about how to fight monsters and also like.

fighting monsters in those interesting ways like you said not just hitting them with a sword and a spell but like doing some cool stuff with the mutagens and all that i always thought that was one of the cooler parts of the witcher's world is that you get to use those tinctures and concoctions and stuff like that he's a little witchy you know like gerald's a treat yeah i've discovered that deidra from andor was yennefer and i can't unhear it

Now, she did such a great job with Yennefer. Amazing character, an amazing cast. So well realized between Yennefer and Triss and Ciri. and everybody else, really delightful, really well done in terms of voice acting and presentation CD. This was the game that really catapulted CD Projekt into, well, they replaced BioWare. They walked into the BioWare role. And, wow, it's 10 years ago. It's a really different time. A better time.

It was a time. And I'm really looking forward to The Witcher 4. If you've listened to this podcast, you've probably heard over the years my time spent playing The Witcher 3 and kind of my journey with that. than just subsequently playing through Cyberpunk 2077, which really amazing experience there too. Happy 10th anniversary to The Witcher 3. There's a bunch of celebrations happening.

with CD Projekt, they're releasing music, new art, that kind of thing. I already mentioned the trailer, so keep an eye on it. And if you haven't played The Witcher 3, go play it, Nadia. Yeah, I know, I know. Fantasy Life just dropped, what can I tell you? Well, it can play it on basically everything now. It was one of those games that we were talking about the Nintendo Switch. It was wild when they ported it to the Switch.

Could have been a worse port, actually. It's not the best way to play it. Yeah, that's the problem. It's the Switcher. Yeah, I felt kind of confined while trying to play it. Switcher. The Switcher. That's right. The Switcher 3 Wild Hunt. Yeah. Switcher Swildhunt. Yeah. Swildhunt. Hearts of Swone. Blood and Swine. Blood and Swine.

I think you'd really like Blood and Wine as a story, Nadia. That is a very Nadia story. Yeah, I mean, I liked Cyberpunk more than I thought I did, so I see no reason why I wouldn't like Witcher. Very much so. you One game that you haven't played Nadia is fantasy life. You said it kind of it's been taking over your life

Yes, my real life has been taken over by my fantasy life. I'm not too deep in just yet, but I started my first job, which was a hunter. You kind of got to choose one from the outset. And yeah, it's a... So far, it seems to be very... I'm playing on the PlayStation 5. It looks like there's a great deal of things to do and jobs to take, and there are parts of it that are very FFXIV coded, so that's for...

capped Cyat, but yeah, there are definitely parts where I said, yes, it's definitely an FFXIV reference. But it's... I'm hoping, from what I've played so far, it's very solid, and that... this will be what Level 5 uses to prove itself that it is back. Because this is, of course, the company that gave us Dragon Quest VIII, for God's sakes. And actually, if you want to get technical about it, I recognize some of the sound effects they used in VIII. So that's pretty cool.

Yeah, I'm hoping that this marks the return of level five, especially that we're going to the Switch 2 era. And I would love to know. I have to give money, cash money, to find out what Inifune did. That screwed things up so badly. That the president of level five himself had to do the very un-Japanese thing of going up there and talking shit directly about Inafune. So something must have happened. And I want to know what it is. And I will not rest until...

So Inafune has not had a good decade. He has not had anything for a long time. Could be worse. I don't know. uh he could be like doing tax fraud allegedly allegedly allegedly allegedly yeah i've had inafune looking at yuji naka being like oh at least that's not happening to me yeah It's doing really well right now. It's getting very positive reviews on Steam. Good concurrence.

much better it's it's a much needed win for level five which has been having not the you want to talk about developers that should have thrived on the switch but really really really did not the switch did not treat level five very well their heyday was arguably on the the ds and the 3ds and it's wild because it feels made for level five but they hardly released any games on it and

Only now are they finally kind of coming back to it. So it's heartening to see. I have no desire to see level five, you know, kind of collapse. So it's heartening to see fantasy life doing as well as it is.

The interesting thing was there was that February Nintendo Direct a few years back where Level 5 announced a ton of games. And... immediately had to start delaying all of them and they've kind of been trickling out from there i think megaton musashi is out now and people seems largely like like yeah it's solid all right that came out

But some of the larger ones like Deka Police and the new Professor Layton still have yet to come out, even though people went hands on with Deka Police at Tokyo Game Show back then.

so the weird the weird thing is that there's a lot that they have in the hopper and they might have potentially bitten off a little bit more than they could chew but it is heartening to see fantasy life i come out and not be an absolute train wreck and honestly i think it's timed very well we were talking earlier about like oh we need a new animal crossing i've seen a lot of people referencing like oh fancy life eye is the animal crossing that you've been waiting for it's the

life sin that you've been wanting to play it's the thing that's i i'm curious whether it's going to take the wind out of uh rune factory's sales a little bit because rune factory is also like a couple weeks away uh at this point and it they kind of hit the same area they're going for the same crowd and so i'm i'm curious whether that takes some wind out of the sails there but uh i think in terms of they're very different games

uh personally they're both life sims with with combat elements and and like yeah maybe maybe there's a slight difference in that i think people who play room factory want to romance somebody look pretty different but yes yeah yeah And Rune Factory has more of the Japanese style than Fantasy Life. And when I say like ancient Japan really leans into Japanese folk myth and folklore.

with guardians of asthma yeah that's been like the main change for this new rune factory is that they're trying to like really theme it whereas rune factory up through five was very like we're doing fantasy world kind of Lance Hart, I'm going to call you out. Animal Crossing had excellent island building. It had a very large number.

Dude, look at my island sometime. I put like 500 hours into that. So did my husband. And it gave me a lot of things to do. And they could have supported it better and released more stuff. But they still released a lot of stuff. I spent a lot of time getting things together. Just saying. Animal Crossing had good island building. I think Animal Crossing has sufficient island building.

it had but i but i'm saying like compared to something like a fantasy life i or or dq builders yeah like you just have more tools and that's not necessarily a knock against animal crossing because animal crossing also wants you to like work for your island stuff you always want to have it always wants that friction how resplendent

yeah yeah like how resplendent your island is is like a social thing right it's like a it's a status mark it's like oh look at how nice my island is whereas dq builders or something like that wants you to just play with the islands and and create things it's it's like having like a bucket full of legos versus having like the really nice lego set that you bought online i just I build an entire mountain home with like a swimming pool and...

My house had three stories and I had an arcade in it and this beautiful kitchen area with dividers and a nice living room and a forest with various homes in it.

EDM place on the beach and a Japanese market slash peace garden. I mean, it let me do a lot. I made a... And I could... i could sculpt the entire world in a way that looked really nice it felt very pleasant and lived in it took me a long time to put together as well it gave me a lot of options there's a lot of satisfaction of building up your own little place in animal crossing i actually

made a amusement park right and then you know painstakingly tile by tile I spelled out bullshit land and different colors I just think that's really good Who was it at USG who had the dungeon? The bungeon. Somebody had a dungeon. The bungeon. Oh, was that Jake? That was Jake. He's twisted, man. Was that Jake or Joel? That was one of the UK guys.

Wasn't there like the creepy doll that kept showing up at people's houses? Yes. That was Joel. Wasn't Joel sending people creepy dolls? Yes. Yeah. Oh, Joel. I miss Joel. I miss Jake and Joel. you mischievous. I know they're both great. I think Joel ended up at games radar. Yeah. Uh, yeah, no, I, I think it's just different.

goals different end goals of what you want from that thing like animal crossing it is about the creating this resplendent paradise that you have built up over time as as a mark of your achievements in the game versus something where like again you are being given just tons of construction blocks to do whatever you want and then like demolish it and build it back up and do all that whereas animal crossing is about like

I worked really hard to save up the bells and get this one item that I was really looking for. That's going to bring this whole thing together. It's just two different, two different things. Yeah. I think if you were a builder. Like if you are somebody who wants to just have that bucket of Legos, that's one thing. And then if you're somebody who wants to make the pristine diorama, that's a different like like seeking altogether.

the animal crossing is not above criticism i hope that when they put out a new animal crossing so animal crossing wild world or the new horizons actually did a great job with the world island building in my opinion just Being able to customize the island in that kind of Minecraft-y kind of way was great. Yeah. They need to do a lot with the villagers. The villagers had only a few lines of dialogue, were kind of generic.

Even they were collected solely for their looks. They need a lot more personality in the next one. I hope the next one has. I don't even like side quests and that kind of thing. Like little quest chains to get to know your islanders that get you special items and stuff. That's the direction I hope Animal Crossing goes. Learn from RPGs. They gotta do...

They got to do the thing where it's like the villagers can help you with everyday tasks. And maybe like, I don't know, you get clown guy or whatever. Oh, no, not clown guy. I hate that asshole. And he like.

he like chops down trees for you or maybe he like catches some bugs and he's like hey i brought you some like they kind of do that sometimes in animal crossing but i i want it to be automated i want to put my villagers to work uh they they're having it too easy it's a free ride on my eye island right now and they they got to put in some some labor hours to earn their key this sounds very communist i want to be able to do activities with my islanders and have it feel like it matters i agree

Also, I didn't like that Islanders were put into certain personality buckets and then would have generic lines based on that personality bucket. It made it feel... No, it's just slightly less. Oh god, I have five jocks on this island. And then people will be trading their jocks for their other personalities. It's pretty funny.

I'm getting dragged in the chat right now. Yes, you are, Eric. I'm sorry you deserve it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry it does this to me. There's nothing wrong with Tom Nook. He gave you an interest-free loan to have your dream home on an island somewhere. Shit, I take that.

there's no deadline on getting paying that loan back this is on you he did then establish a shop on the island that his like nephews ran that uses like company script and stuff like that company's not it's not it's not wholly you know magnanimous but um Eric, you mentioned that you finished Xenoblade Chronicles X. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to turn even more people on me now. No, I like Xenoblade X Definitive Edition. I think my takeaway from the game as a whole now that.

I have... like finished it and by finish i mean i've played through all of the base game content and then the additional chapter which is broken up into three acts at the end which is like new stuff and you can tell it's new stuff because the voice actor for vandom suddenly changes

and it's very noticeable everyone else doing a good job but it's like very very noticeable voice actor change for one key character who shows up in a lot of story scenes uh which gets kind of weird there's also like new quests during the base game that they have added that use that voice actor. So all of a sudden he'll sound very different. You're like, that's like Flintstones, Barney rubble changeover. Yeah. Yeah. So my, my takeaway was base game after chapter 12. I actually enjoyed Xenoblade.

like base game xenoblade x quite a bit uh i can understand why people might have been frustrated with the cliffhanger ending and stuff like that maybe i wasn't because i knew there was going to be more after it but then chapter 13 is very cutscene heavy, like super cutscene heavy. Good old Xeno.

it's i'm talking like put your controller down and walk away for half an hour at least go get a beverage get some popcorn sit down and A lot of it is focused, I think, in trying to find ways to put some interesting threads in place for where that series could go in the future, but also not tie itself completely to anything.

Without spoiling too much, there's very overt references to things from the Xena Blade series and some very subtle references to things from Xeno Saga and Xeno Gears. And so... It also pulls like a multiverse thing. It's kind of like the MCU where they're like, well, we got to pull this record because this might be our way to start connecting all these franchises together. So it's very much like. Multiverse stuff is present now and I. I'm.

I think my takeaway was that I don't know that I like Xenoblade X's combat very much. I think... And maybe this comes from the standpoint that I was also having to like play it with intent and guide it and things like that. But yeah, I was.

playing a lot of these boss fights and and if you've played xenoblade x you probably know that you're gonna fall into one of a few buckets of how you play this game and if you're maxing overdrive you're not really playing the enemy that's in front of you because there's not really a lot to do in that respect. You're kind of just trying to max out your overdrive bar and then unleash hell.

on the enemy and that's kind of how you get through this without spoilers isn't xenoblade all about moldy yeah yeah straw hat cyborg you're you're right i'm more saying that like they have added xenoblade x to the

the ongoing like things happening um xeno versus a thing that's a dragon ball game uh yes i guess my my takeaway is that like i think chronicles like xenoblake chronicles two and three are are a little bit more solid in my in my standings are a little bit more i think the draw of x of cross is the world i think the open world design is fantastic i think there's some really cool stuff they do in the first

30 to 40 hours that feel great i think getting your mech and then being able to fly in your mech is is just incredible and the world design of the place the way it looks the way it feels the the way you find all this new stuff that feels awe-inspiring and terrifying and and all the things you want like i i said way back when we did our review episode that this is kind of what i wanted from mass effect andromeda it is what i wanted from mass effect andromeda full stop

Like this is what I was kind of hoping for in that story. Yeah. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah, that's kind of what they wanted originally. They just didn't have the... What's the word? Creativity to make it happen. Andromeda was was a whole crap show of things not going right. And then also a lot of.

stuff that there's there's always kind of scuttlebutt about you know what was the ultimate goal where the quarian the quarian arc never arrived oh is that going to be like dlc or whatever and then just got turned into a book or whatever it's like yeah um there's there's a lot of weird stuff there i think with xenoblade I ultimately enjoyed the journey. I'm definitely glad I rolled credits on it. I still think it falls behind the other Switch entries for me.

But I'm glad it's been preserved in some way because I think there's a lot here that is really fertile soil for future Xenoblade. entries and not even just as a like a spinoff like cross but looking at xenoblade moving forward i'd love to see a future xenoblade chronicles game uh play in this arena a little bit with this idea of this open world you can almost see the the blueprints right of of what would come in the zelda series yeah

Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom. Yeah, you can see a lot of the ideas. And I think that's maybe where the disconnect also happened for me is that if I played this in chronological order, then I would have a little bit more reverence for this. But.

i i think playing xenoblade chronicles x i'm like i love this open world but i want to have the interactivity with it that i have in a breath of the wild or tears of the kingdom uh and so that's why i keep saying like i can't wait to see what monolith soft does with

switch to and what it can create there because clearly they're thinking about this this hardware and what game design they can do in that space in ways that not a lot of other companies are not a lot of other studios are and it's very exciting But yeah, X, it's fine. It might make my goatee list. It might not. It's kind of on the bubble for me right now. It's a really stacked year. It's a very, very good year for video games. It is. Yeah.

this would have been a more solid like potential goatee list game last year two years ago but 2025 is already looking very stacked in that regard so um yeah i was you know Last thought on the Nintendo Switch. Everybody, I think people tend to focus on its technical failings. I always appreciated the developers that really maximized the hardware. For sure. Capcom's a great example. Monster Hunter Rise.

It was a fantastic looking game. Dragon Quest XI was a game that we already mentioned. And then Monolith Soft. There's a lot of really, really good looking games on that platform. For sure. Tears of the Kingdom, obviously, was just a tactical marvel. Koei Tecmo was doing a lot of... I have no idea how they pulled that game off. Yeah. Koei Tecmo was doing a lot of work on the Switch as well at various points. And I know a lot of people talk about, especially I talked about Age of Calamity and...

Being like, oh, I'm kind of going to play that on the Switch too because of that. But like Three Hopes ran very well. I enjoyed Three Hopes quite a bit. And I think definitive definitive edition for Hyrule Warriors was probably one of my favorite Warriors games in recent memory. So, yeah, it's. I think it is.

going to be interesting to see where all those companies go moving into the switch to uh with all the extra horsepower but uh xenoblade chronicles x definitive edition i would definitely say play it if you like xenoblade uh i have some hot tips about how to level up faster if you need those because there were a few points in time where i was like i need i need to move ahead this is a game that's like

It is a hundred hour, 140 hour game. I am not exaggerating. It is. You have to spend a lot of time in it. I do think it rewards that time. I think the side quests are honestly the reason to play Xena Blade. The main story.

A lot of my gripes are with the main story and kind of where that goes. But I think the side quest stuff is honestly pretty top tier. It's it's quite good. Great storytelling and really makes you feel like you are part of this collective of humanity that's trying to survive on a strange. alien planet and really captures that feeling captures that emotion very well and a lot of the companion characters are really interesting because of that i agreed all right that's it

for the tavern. Nadia, take us home. So I'm gonna tell a story from grade 9. I've been 94 I suppose. One thing that I hate more than anything in the world is to be talked down to as if I'm a child. And so I had a teacher in grade 9 who was...

You know, one of those, not exactly like, I was going to say touchy-feely, but that sounds bad. I mean, like, just like a very sort of like gentle soul. And he wanted to teach gently and like teach through his, you know, conversation and be more, more open. I mean. the one interesting thing about the 90s is that everyone was a fucking asshole like you think people are assholes now they were huge assholes in the 90s it's like people are assholes now because you're asking them hey you know

don't be a bad person and they'll tell you, fuck you. And that's why you're an asshole. Back in that day, everyone was just an asshole. Nobody really said, well, you know, nobody went against it. There's a whole song about it. It was called asshole. I can't remember. Anyway. So this guy, when he said, like, okay, I want everyone to write a small essay about their favorite cartoon character.

and nowadays i'd be like fuck yes i'm gonna like ace this essay but back then i'm like i'm too cool to write about cartoon characters so i did something the kid The girl who went up before me, her name was Laura. Everyone called her the burning bush because her hair just really stood out. She gets up there and she gives this whole speech about how much, you know.

I love Simba Simba because it had just Lion King had just been in the theaters. It was huge. She's like, I love Simba. Simba is brave and strong. And Simba carried on after his father was murdered and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She's a nice girl. I had nothing against her. Her hair was weird. That's about it. I came after her and I said, my favorite cartoon character is Itchy the Mouse.

And I like him because he's cute and violent and funny and he always wins. And then you had to write, what was your favorite moment that happened for this cartoon character? And I said, my favorite part of the cartoon is when H.J. knocked out Scratchy's eyes and replaced him with balls. And if you remember this, that was actually an episode of Itching Scratchy. And that's something I watched when I was like...

Oh God, I don't even know what year that was. Probably 1990. I was in grade five. And that was the episode where Marge went up against Itchy and Scratchy. And the cartoon that set her off was, again... itchy getting his eyeballs knocked out by scratchy because he hit him with a hammer and so he finds these bombs and he screws them into his eyes and he looks in the mirror and he's brushing his hair and then he notices

Like two seconds later, his eyes are bombs and screams and they blow up. And I said, that was my favorite moment in a cartoon. And my teacher just like, uh, uh, uh. Also, you had a huge chair in his crotch. So even if I look like an asshole, I won. I love that Nadia is a real life Bart Simpson. I kind of am. Yeah.

i have to say that the part of the simpsons the joke that makes me laugh of the hardest is when they're they go to the post office and the postmaster's like welcome to your post office and farts like it's mine cool and he immediately starts fucking shit up just knocks shit off the tables takes it the pen that's changed for like packages and starts scribbling all over the walls.

that's also the episode and bark and fight and fight and fight and bark but that was uh i mean that was my favorite moment for a long time because back then god cartoons I know it was parody violence, but cartoons are not that violent. Teen Scratch, it just got worse and worse and worse. Yeah, my parents did not care about me watching The Simpsons very young, but my parents also like. i played quake when i was like six or something like that so like yeah

I mean, like, I don't know. Like I watched Jurassic Park when I was like way younger than you were supposed to see Jurassic Park. Yeah, I wasn't allowed to. It's fine. It's fine. Jurassic Park was not that scary. I remember when it came out, there was a big thing. Oh, it's so scary. Steven Spielberg won't let his kids see it. And it's not scary. A dude gets bitten off a toilet. That's like the worst part. And the kid gets shocked by the electric fence. But that's about it. That's a little scary.

your raptors in the kitchen though it's not like that scary it's just it's thrillingly intense that's just my cat at 2 a.m when i'm trying to sneak out and get a little snack from the fridge it's time to get fed it's time to get fed it's time to get fat yeah yeah Yeah, including the part where I'm like hiding behind a drawer, like looking around the corner and stuff. My cat's taking stealing my chicken. That's exactly what it is. All right.

That's it for this week's episode of Acts of the Blood God. Thank you so much for listening and thank you so much for your generous support. We're heading now into the Acts of the Blood God post show. Please come on and join us with the stars of destiny. I always hang out and chat. It's a great time.

Make sure to subscribe to us on Patreon at patreon.com slash bloodgotpod. We also record this show live every single weekend on twitch.tv slash bloodgotpod. Our normal time is Saturday at 9.30 a.m. Pacific. We did this one a little earlier to account. for the holiday weekend. We will be back next week. I've been your host, Kat Bailey, and for Nadia, Eric, and myself, thanks for listening, and happy adventuring. You're turning into a fine blade. I'm proud of you.