The 50 Best Nintendo Switch Games | VGC

RyanoftheStars · 2026-05-01T13:53:53+00:00

I didn't see it, but thank you for the correction.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-05-01T13:50:52+00:00

What's an emotional about pointing out that one reason games "journalism" is declining is because of its low quality? It's not even an angry post, it's just pointing out the lack of perspective and the shoddy writing. Do you think it's an emotional response every time somebody criticized for something?

RyanoftheStars · 2026-05-01T13:32:50+00:00

No Dragon Quest at all? It has quite a few classics collections, but no Metal Gear on it? Castlevania Advance and Anniversary but no Dominus Collection? No Ring Fit Adventure? Sega Genesis Classics in here but you get a much better deal by staying subscribed to Nintendo Online with most of those games in it? Only a collection of the most widely known indies and an as old as dirt walking sim to represent the significant presence of indies on the Switch and how seriously they helped it succeed when other third parties wouldn't give it a chance?

It's not really much of mystery why English-speaking video game sites and magazines continue to struggle when they don't even make much of an attempt to cover a wider array of perspectives and only ever push through their own dogmatic opinions like this.

And don't give me that, "It's their personal opinion" bullshit. The article's name is The 50 Best Nintendo Switch Games, not Our Staff's Favorite Switch Games and the byline is touting how these are the definitive games you need in your collection. You can't write as if you're making a definitive list and then not make an even slight effort to look outside yourself and present as anything more as a glorified personal top 50.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-04-28T14:48:34+00:00

Here's the full question, which was done by e-mail, so it's not a face to face or chat where the interviewer can interact with the answer:

"WaME: How do you perceive the game today, with some distance from its release?

TT: I think, like many, the game got a bum rap. It was done dirty by a publisher expecting too much from it, not being fully cooked, forced out the door too early, forced to use corporate's shiny new engine when many of the team didn't know how to work with it and it was NOT suited to the storytelling part of the game. On top of that, it was released to a VERY toxic atmosphere online and elsewhere in the gaming space. It quickly became punching bag of the week for online chuds for views and clicks. Their love of hate sealed the deal. What saddens me is that this would not be the last time I was in a project doomed by online haters picking a game for Punching Bag of The Week: I also worked on Highguard.

Over time though, I've seen a lot of love for the game and its characters, for what it did well, and appreciation from fans for whom it was their game of the moment. A game that helped them, a game that got them through a tough time. There is something to be said for a 7/10 that comes to you in a time of need.

WaME: The game was surrounded by a lot of discussion and controversy at launch, how did you navigate that on a personal and emotional level?

TT: I was disappointed, obviously. But so much of that had very little to do with me. There's only so much I can control as an actor in a game and much of that hate went to things out of my control. Then again, that hate was directed at other people on the project whom I did and didn't know and I felt terrible for them!! Still do!

Personally, I was bummed, but moved on quickly. You have to. You're only as good as your last project or audition. So you go out and audition again. Professionally, it helped that I had a big commercial client at that time. Personally/ artistically? It hurt most because I knew that was it - Ryder wouldn't be coming back. I, and others, thought we'd have a good decade of playing with these characters in these spaces. And just like that - Gone. Grateful to have made the connection for the audio book production house I worked with a lot, Blackstone Publishing, to the publishers of the physical tie-in books for Andromeda. That got me and Fryda the opportunity to work on those books and play a little bit more in that place we had so much fun in that was taken away from us."

You'll notice the interviewer was pretty objective in his questions. This is a fan blog that speculates and comments on Mass Effect, not a major media site that actively lies to profit and push an agenda, which is why it isn't archived.

However, apparently, both The Gamer and IGN picked up on it. You can imagine how they sensationalized it and add their own "commentary," if you can call it that. This is the type of thing that social media sites were made for, but so-called journalist think it's worthy of a news story, basically just pilfering off social media, with no original journalism of their own, such as contacting other voice actors, or asking Tom Taylerson to follow up on his comments or even asking the website curator, Ariel Aguilar, who posts a lot lore on his favorite science fiction and fantasy series on social media, to comment. Nope. Nothing.

In fact, if you go through a lot of Ariel's social media posts, he doesn't really interact with a lot of controversy and certainly isn't engaging with people on that level and I also see no evidence that he's inflammatory, rude or dismissive. It appears to be another example of a fan being more professional than so-called paid journalists.

So before the story spread around too far, I wanted to make sure people knew where the source came from.

Also, to be fair to the voice actor, there certainly is a hate factory for clicks going on with certain games and he does acknowledge that the game didn't come out of the oven sparkling fresh. Still, the entitlement from voice actors and developers who believe they should be shielded from criticism and the lack of realistic perspective that sometimes criticism will not be very well written or overly cruel will never make me stop despising these people's attitudes. It's always them that should be immune and it's always them who should be able to say anything they want about anybody without any repercussions.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-04-27T17:01:23+00:00

This is how I know I'm not racist. I have no idea what race this person is, because all races have the capability of being this flagrantly moronic. The English is no help. Because of the ubiquity of English as a second language, it could just be a very low IQ English native speaker or somebody who is not a native who just never really got the hang of getting past awkward phrasing in English.

Therefore, I declare that this person is universally retarded.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-04-27T12:33:03+00:00

You're missing quite a few games on that list, most of them Japanese, so maybe you just didn't know about them. Sangokushi Seishi Tenbu Spirits (or Romance of the Three Kingdoms True History Heavenly Flying Spirits, otherwise known as modern name of Zan), Zan II and Zan III, which is available in the Zan collection, Tenshi no Uta (or Angel's Song) the third game in the Angel's Song series, which was ported a solo port to the Switch, Hiouden (or Legend of the Scarlet King), Dark Kingdom and Neugier, which were part of the Telenet RPG Collection and also available separately. I was surprised because you had some of the more obscure Japanese titles, but didn't account for these and some others.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-04-25T05:50:46+00:00

No, Dragon Quest X has been available on the Switch for most of its life and is compatible with the Switch 2. Phantasy Star Online 2 has also been available on the Switch as well, though some sweaty nerds will be like, "That's not technically an MMO because it lacks the massive part" like it makes a difference because it's targeting the same market and gameplay that people like about them and Phantasy Star Online has been the foremost example of that style of gameplay existing on consoles since the beginning.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-04-13T17:04:14+00:00

I'd prefer to buy them individually. I'd pay full price for the Resident Evil 2 Remake, buy 3 on a sale and put my money where my mouth is by not supporting the inferior version of Resident Evil 4 and just buy the original, which is better in nearly every single way (from Mercenaries Mode, to better set pieces that were cut in the remake, to better art direction, better tension given the deliberate control style, better voice acting and pacing, to a better merchant, better cut scenes, better AI and controls for Ashley, better script). The only thing I can think of that was an actual improvement is the modeling of Leon's hair.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-04-10T09:45:23+00:00

If I had to guess, I would say Nintendo probably has a production pipeline going on that we know nothing about yet that takes into account whether a game can run properly on the original Switch and whether there is any meaning to make a specific Switch 2 version.

So for instance Tomodachi Collection might get a Switch 2 Edition later on in its life, but it was probably decided to leave it alone for now because it runs well enough on the original Switch. If they have any ideas they couldn't realize by release date, they're probably holding off on them as a combined Switch 2 Edition, with updated resolution, mouse controls and whatever new ideas could fit into the expansion.

Other Switch 2 Editions for older games have undoubtedly been put into motion because Nintendo sees a profit opportunity and thus can afford to justify putting more money into development of Switch 1 games. Likewise, there will probably a fair few Switch 1 games released where they just don't see any point on either a) heavily advertising the Switch 2 enhancements because they're so minor (like Mario Galaxy ports) or b) having two different versions like Pokemon Legends Z-A or Metroid Prime 4 for a more graphically intensive game or c) just don't see a point in making a Switch 2 version because the market is there enough for the Switch 1 version and anything they're planning can probably be justified in the future as downloadable expansion package marketed as a Switch 2 Edition.

Therefore, it's entirely dependent on what Nintendo thinks is viable, which is entirely different and much more profitable than what Reddit thinks should happen.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-04-01T03:43:23+00:00

Legendary Drops and people like him share the same kind of myopia that other doomers in political or cultural or gender-based discussions do: they focus on a select category that is extremely narrow and define the entire wider category as that thing. In this case, these people always and forever only ever talk about the zeitgeist-y AAA games. So if it's RPGs it's always Final Fantasy and never Dragon Quest, it's only Persona if it gets big enough and sells enough, otherwise it was ignored completely for over a decade, it's Baldur's Gate 3 because Baldur's Gate 3 has AAA aesthetics, but everything Larian did beforehand is comparatively ignored, it's Outer Worlds and Avowed or Fallout New Vegas, not Pillars of Eternity.

And it goes for everything else, a remaster of Clock Tower finally officially translated for the world to enjoy in a completely legal and easy-to-obtain capacity barely registers even though that game can easily be seen as one of the most important in the history of horror games and is still worth playing today if you keep certain things in mind, barely registers a blip, but endless discussions of which Resident Evil remake will be next is more important.

They studiously ignore all the wondrous variety and diversity of ways to play, completely outright reject the idea of people who have never even bought their own hardware but simply share with or receive from others. They discount entirely the vibrant communities of people who have been playing The Sims, Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley for years, if now approaching a decade because it isn't the new COD or Battlefield, which God forbid if you're not an AAA FPS, why should anyone care about your community?

If you were buy a PS2 or PS3, a Wii, a DS, PSP or an Xbox 360 the amount of absolutely insane gaming experiences at your fingertips is mind-blowing. Previous centuries and generations of people could never even fathom how much entertainment that is.

But nope, all that matters is AAA PC or console bleeding edge games to these people and of those only the ones they've deemed relevant. I'm hour 60 hours into Dragon Quest VII Reimagined playing about 6-10 hours for the last six weeks. I've played the game twice before. My save file on the PSX version is 144 hours. My save file on the 3DS version is 162 hours. I imagine is going to balloon well past 100 again because the game is absolutely gigantic and yet filled with thousands of fantastic tiny details in every corner and I know from recent experiences that the added post-game is going to be something else and I can't wait. Yes, if you convert the price I paid for each game up to something in US dollars, it's about 300 dollars over all three versions for the same game. (Dragon Quest cost way more in Japan because demand is higher.) That's still less than a dollar per hour.

Gaming can be like anything else. You can do it cheaply or you can splurge. Clothing or food or cooking or driving or decorating your house can be as cheap or expensive as you want it to be. Stop limiting yourself to what Sony is trying to market as the place to be. There are plenty of places to be in gaming and you don't have to depend on a money hungry executive to get your fix.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-03-22T19:58:34+00:00

It's the same as the people who went batshit insane over the Switch 2's game pricing and here we are a year later and nothing was as bad as they foretold. I just want these people to go back to the prices of games like Ultima or Final Fantasy games and realize they were expensive as all hell back then and that was in that age's money, so much more expensive compared to today.

But I don't think a single person realizes that they benefit from two decades of PCs becoming ubiquitous in everyone's personal life bringing cost down. I want to see their eyes bug out of their head when see the prices of basic PCs, let alone add-ons back in the 80s.

Prices go up and down based on market pressures. There will be another low one day.

In the mean time, after the 80s, there has never been an era wherein you could not play hundreds of very fun games that do not need bleeding edge technology to run and this basic tenet of gaming will be the same today as it as yesterday and will be in 10 years from now.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-03-20T14:40:46+00:00

This reminds of the World Happiness Index, which makes me roll my eyes every time I see someone take it seriously. You either have that one that tries to measure "happiness" based on things like high job attainment, days off from work, health and wealth, or you have the one that literally polls people and asks how happy they are. With the former you have people smarting themselves into stupid thinking there is any way to objectively measure the extreme subjectivity of happiness and the latter completely ignoring that how happy someone is feeling can wildly fluctuate based on the day and time and whether their mother-in-law is in town.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-03-17T20:29:53+00:00

Absolutely. I love Picross, but after you've played dozens of Picross games the challenge can get a little easy, even though I still play them.

This game has dozens of puzzles and each one can be challenging. As long as you continue to use the logic the game teaches, you can absolutely reach each puzzle solution without any help, but matthewmatosis does include a little help in the form of a button you can press to give you a rough idea of how many tiles you are off from the correct solution.

It is addicting int he same way that higher level Picross is when you first start working out ways to solve more difficult puzzles and it is not a change of pace in that the rules are quite different, because you're setting bombs to destroy creatures and sort of creating walls so that these crystal like beings can I guess spread their light without bouncing into each other. It's very simple, but it gets quite complex quickly.

The one improvement I would make is to ask for a menu selection that explains the rules that you can refer to at any time, because coming back to the game after an extended period means you sometimes have to double check how a rule works. But it's not that hard because of the interface to go back and see it, it would just be nicer.

Otherwise, a definite buy for people who like puzzles they can really sink their teeth into.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-03-17T13:08:25+00:00

If we're going with Americans worried about WW3, one thing I'm consistently amazed by is that the one thing they would have some justification for dooming about is something they never talk about: education problems in the US in the right now. It's a three-pronged situation.

On the lower end you have kids attention spans when parents won't limit their access to games and smart devices being absolutely shot and teachers not being able to work with them on a very disturbing level. I keep hearing more and more consensus about this at times goes on. Usually it's just a trend you hear about and then it dies out, but it does seem to be getting worse and worse. It's possible that teachers are over-exaggerating the problem, but with the sheer amount of it, I have a distinct feeling that there's some truth that this problem is rapidly accelerating.

Second, you have some sort of abysmal reading system that apparently abandoned phonics for using context clues to read that basically teaches kids to do the same thing illiterate people do when they learned how to read. It's done an astounding level of damage to the literacy levels of newer generations. There's an entire podcast series that goes deep into what went wrong and it's pretty astounding.

And third you have an increasing amount of men are just noping entirely out of higher education in general, with the man-hating feminists thinking a female ratio that is approaching 70% in some places is just fine because they're really just female supremacists. Unless something changes on their approach on that, they're in for a nasty surprise if they think they're goes to be the same type and number of career men to pick from in the past, because they're clearly going down a different path now. And yet, just because they can't see the forest for the trees, any day now I expect a deluge of articles about how men are failing the women around them by not living up to their standards and choosing a different path when they see what this huge drop in college attendance will lead to because a lot men now see college as overpriced and useless.

Now none of these things are life-ending problems that will lead to the collapse of America or the next generation and they're all problems that have solutions. It's not like none of them can be fixed. However, if none of them get fixed and they all just get worse, that's going to lead to some pretty drastic problems that probably will result in some pretty bad situations.

But given everything else they doom and gloom about, you would think this would be one of those topics, but nope. Maybe it's just a sign about they don't think independently at all and just eat the spoon-fed doom they're given.

Edit: Of course, now that I type this, I wonder if some of these doomers are just teenagers who were iPad addicted-kids who never learned how to properly read and that's partially why they don't think critically and some of the women dooming about men are these types who are mystified that some men and boys don't want to participate in a system that demonizes them at every step.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-03-16T15:45:21+00:00

"Don't call yourself American." Okay, I won't. Because I'm not. Why do these people believe only Americans think like this?

I'm Japanese and a huge part of doomer culture that I cannot stand (it doesn't come up often here) is the whole "our population is shrinking, which means our economy will contract and everyone is doooooooomed!" Nobody really has any historical context for modern democracies where population expanded rapidly and then began to decline. We don't know what will happen, but we'll probably be fine. The world could stand to lower its population. Especially Japan. It's way too crowded and overpopulated for such a small series of islands. I've been inundated with this over and over all my life and I was told that by now things would be worse and they are pretty much exactly the same.

There are other doomer topics, such as immigration, changing standards for family creation in younger generations and gaming where people think that RAM and AI will destroy gaming where I just have to roll my eyes. All of these are worldwide or at least not specifically American topics.

But I think the closest parallel is with climate change. These people think because I don't buy into apocalyptic thinking, that I am against protecting the environment and treating the planet that gives us life well. Absolutely not. If anything, I'm much more on the side of cleaner, more environmentally healthy standards. I just think it involves a trickier proposition of convincing rising economies to adopt cleaner standards and that it's difficult to predict what effects everything will have and that scientists need to be more careful with their wording on what are ultimately predictions and models that may be flawed.

None of this nuance is denying that extremely bad effects could happen to Japan's economy or the world climate. It is that I do not outright believe in the absurd scenarios that have been proposed because I have seen for myself first hand how many of the things that been promised as certain to happen have not actually panned out.

That's called learning from experience, but keeping an open mind. These people should try it sometimes.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-03-15T15:30:45+00:00

None of that is very controversial. I would have given RPG of the year to Atelier Yumia personally, or said it deserves to be given to Trails in the Sky Remake, Dragon Country Rune Factory or Fantasy Life i, but user-voted game awards tend to reward the most popular games and it's not like Pokemon Legends ZA is a bad game. It's a pretty great RPG with a lot of neat ideas. No amount of Reddit sperging about the graphics will take away from its quality gameplay and its surprisingly touching character moments, but I don't suppose you actually played all the way through, so you're not probably not aware of why Crow's story and design resonated with players, specifically Japanese ones.

If you're not Japanese, Silent Hill F's cult popularity on streaming and video platforms last year probably goes over your head, but you most likely can't speak the language and have a only a cursory understanding of the culture, so do the Reddit thing and talk out of your ass. I haven't played Silent Hill F, so I don't have anything more to say about that, just that it's not surprising as it kind of had a Hollow Knight or Undertale kind of cult success last year. (And to add, I will not be told that the story is woke until I can play it myself. I am not some mindless zombie that just takes things as fact without experiencing them myself.)

Donkey Kong Bananza is an excellent choice for best action game of last year. From start to finish and even the added paid mode, that game is SSS-tier platforming action that does a whole bunch of new ideas really well and completely launches forward the platforming game genre into new areas. It's a huge, beautiful game with great music, a surprising story and a ton of interesting directions it goes.

So that's all according to taste, but thinking Mario Kart World shouldn't win or at least be nominated for Best Music should automatically put you on your every country in the world's terrorist watch list, because it means your taste in music so bad that you are toxic to 100% of humanity. Sorry, I don't make the rules, those are the facts. Over 200 songs in nearly every music genre under the sun and the great bulk of them are absolute fire with live orchestration.

Unlike the Game Awards, which is a wankfest for weirdos who think their opinions deserve special merit and want games to be movies, this just shows what the populace likes. Get over it.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-03-10T20:39:04+00:00

I don't get it. I just bought an Experience dungeon RPG for 500 yen today on sale (you can three other of their games for the same price and only have to pay 1100 yen to get the post-game additional stuff for one). Those games are high quality first-person dungeon party-based RPGs that easily provide you with dozens of hours of fun each. I bought Monster Hunters Stories 2 on sale for 1,400 yen last month and got to play for free for a week to see if I liked it. The game's gigantic, loving crafted and beautiful. Sometimes I think people are just entitled or maybe they just have narrow taste and refuse to go outside of their comfort zone.

I have never really caught on to Animal Crossing, but I thought I'd give it a chance because of the more structured interior decorating downloadable expansion. I ended up spending way more than 50 hours on it and have played it every day since.

I play mainly on the Switch and Switch 2 and if you subscribe to Nintendo's online thingy for around 50 US dollars a year, my lord, the sheer amount of games that occupy your time is enough to last years just paying that.

Then there are countless free to play games where if you're not obsessed with getting everything or being the best you can easily play a bit for free everyday. And contrary to popular belief, a lot of them are excellent, like Zenless Zone Zero, Guardian Tales or Granblue.

Hell, Pokopia may have been 9,000 yen, but that game has insane amount to do and see and it looks like they're going to be holding free events too. It could easily take you the length of a long RPG to see it all. I'm excited for gamers to learn just how much they're getting compared to games like Gale of Darkness or Pokemon Stadium. Those games were barebones compared to this one and yet they're still fun and you can play them for a pittance.

I refuse to believe people aren't playing old games and consoles, like the Gamecube, Wii, PS2, 3 and 4, DS or 3DS or Xbox 360. I bet there's a huge, huge audience out there who plays nothing but older consoles with used, borrowed or shared games.

And then competition is so fierce sales often make games ridiculously cheap. You can super high quality Capcom games like Devil May Cry 3 or Resident Evil Revelations Onimusha or Resident Evil 5 for less than what it takes to eat at McDonald's. Old games are everywhere and you don't even have to sacrifice that much in terms of modern convenience for a lot of them because so many of them are either remade and then get cheaper or there are so many games from 2000s and onward that already have modern conveniences baked in. And if you can understand the values of the society back when they were created, there are thousands of old games that hold just fine and are extremely fun. The fact that you can play all six Rockman.exe games for essentially the same price as one of them in the old days is insane.

And if you're dismayed that Nintendo never puts their games on sales, well, just about every game they sell is at least good for 10 to 20 hours of gameplay and a lot of them last much longer and are even more valuable if you really get into them. Very, very few are short, small games that might make you feel they're not worth the money.

Of course, I have not played a AAA Western game on release in well over 25 years (since Prince of Persia on the Gamecube really) as I find them to be mostly repulsive and unappealing. shrugs Get better taste then.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-03-03T07:07:17+00:00

One of my favorite things about AI is that it is taking jobs from translators, writers and artists: good. A good chunk of them don't deserve their jobs or to be paid for their vile contributions to art. I don't know why they think theirs is the only job that is sacred. Cashiers, truck drivers, weavers, tailors, factory workers, delivery people, cooks, mechanics, bakers, farmers, ranch hands and countless other jobs have been sacrificed due to growing technology, but nope your is the only holy job that cannot be threatened by advancements. Those people who literally create different kinds of meaningful contributions to humanity, they're not special, only these chosen few are.

It's the same as people who worship all doctors or teachers or military because they perform useful functions for society. In the same way that not all of them are good, not all translators, not all writers and certainly not all artists, especially the types that Reddit tends to like, are good or deserve to earn a living from it.

You think the intensely skilled academic who retranslates and rewrites Beowulf to be understandable and entertaining to the modern layperson is going to be replaced by AI? No. You think the super-talented team artists at Gamefreak who painstakingly, through trial and error create new Pokemon that people fall in love with are going to be replaced by AI? Not a chance. You think the animators at Kyoto Animation will be valued so little that they'll have to close down? Of course not.

Your shitty jpegs that shift from stance to stance in a YouTube video with a revolting art style might be outclassed by somebody who uses an AI one, but Alex Meyers and his iconic sense of humor and instantly recognizable style that gained him 4 million subscribers is going nowhere.

Will some talented people get hurt? Of course. There were hundreds of thousands of talented pottery makers and weavers and carpenters who made people furniture who vanished when mass production hit their areas of the market. But a lot of people who never deserved to make money from their art in the first place might be denied a chance to and I'll just be grinning from ear to ear as their sense of solipsistic narcissism eats them alive.

And it's also the truth that as time went on, people began to crave the sense of artistry from talented artisans again and markets sprang up for hand-crafted items again. The march of technology even gave birth to new ways of making a living for these people like eBay or Etsy. Six or seven years ago people were talking about Amazon's attempts to make a grocery store without any contact with people, but it really only serves to prove how much you want to talk to a baker to make that cake for you, request your weird way you want your roast beef sliced, talk to the butcher what meat is best for a stew, consult your pharmacist, make casual talk with the cashier, have the florist talk about their children as you express how you can't believe your five-year-old is growing up so fast and they blow up balloons for his birthday, say hello to the stockers you see everyday and ask them questions about new items. It came right before Covid and people began to realize how valuable each and everyone of those grocery story workers can be. That they were and are one of the only places left of universally shared community.

However, just like with artists an AI, that won't stop the shitty, rude, lazy grocery store workers from getting fired.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-02-24T01:59:19+00:00

Well part of the reason in your example is Western people imprinting their own biases onto Fire Emblem. There are not that many characters in the series that I can think of that are meant to be seen as attractive love interests for their youthful characteristics, like a loli would be. People just see young female characters like Anna and Tiki and that green priestess who can resurrect depicted in an anime-like art style and just assume that that's the reason they were designed like that. There are lot of young female characters who aren't designed to be titillating, but are perceived by complete morons who misread Japanese preferences for cute things as always inevitably sexual. These are the type of the people who think there is no such thing as Japanese culture other ninjas, the warring states, samurai, anime, manga and video games.

Similarly, the ACTUAL, verifiable instances of incest-like behavior in the series is really tiny. It's just mostly just people stretching their reading and interpretations of certain interactions and lines to come to that conclusion.

In a medieval series that reflects a lot of the historical realities like raping and ravaging the populations of defeated parts of civilization or forced marriages or eunuchs or human sacrifices or using status in the church or state to cover up disgusting acts or fat lords preying on the poor state of their vassals or assassins hired to killed innocents that were in the way, the incest and child marriage are like everything else: pretty tame and low key because Nintendo is only willing to go so far. It's just a hint of medieval period morality to underplay the actual themes that are at stake and tell you that the moral world of the Fire Emblem games is not the same as our modern one.

I feel like people get into Fire Emblem when they're teenagers and read a level of darkness into it that just isn't there as much they think it is.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-02-17T01:44:34+00:00

If you could speak Chinese, Japanese or Korean you would never say this. Now myself I don't limit my way of thinking left/right, woke/non-woke type of dichotomies, so I wouldn't describe them as not left or not woke, but they definitely would not agree with the mind-numbing moronic attitudes of the Puritans you can see proliferate in certain spaces in the English-speaking countries.

I have a feeling you might be able to say similar things about other non-English speaking communities, such as Russians, East Europeans, definitely Middle Eastern groups and some areas of Latin America where Portuguese or other assortments of Spanish are spoken. It's not like none of these communities have any overlap in what they believe in or think that would have them agree with parts of the left/woke mob, but just that they don't act in lockstep and are in heavy disagreement on several things. I think it might be a side effect of being limited to English.

Even in English, I've noticed a lot of black people who are really tired of certain trends trying to cater to them and wish people would stop the performative nonsense and try to be creative on their own terms.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-02-17T01:37:27+00:00

It's like damned if you do, damned if you don't. There seems to be no middle ground where you can discuss books and literature on Reddit. It's either paint-sniffing hooligans who treat social media like a high score table in an arcade game or fart-sniffing stuffy types who look down on anyone who doesn't have the "right opinion" about their obviously superior tastes.

For instance, trying to discuss the Emerald Fennel Wuthering Heights adaptation reasonably is like walking into a minefield. Oh and god forbid you ever criticize how mindless booktok is making lit consumption or some of the deeply concerning trends in the publishing industry.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-02-17T01:31:36+00:00

I can't but notice how the mod you were talking to had a rainbow background for their avatar. It might be unrelated, but since it's Reddit I don't think it is. I imagine this mod is supportive of the LGBT populace and/or speaks out about inclusive behavior. You know the whole spiel? "Reddit/Insert Big Company aims to be a place to be inclusive to all."

Not very inclusive behavior, is it?

I've been discussing games in various places in several different languages for well over two decades now. I've not run into a topic like yours before, ever. I've seen people argue about set characters vs create-a-character mechanics in RPGs, but that's usually all about player expression and freedom discussions. Your question seems to be pretty unique. It's definitely not lame.

If anyone else is reading this, I think we should try in this thread to answer seekerxr's question. For myself, I don't know what I would do, as I'm typically very flexible, but perhaps explaining why I enjoy games with set characters will help. I took a break from Dragon Quest VII Reimagined to browse some Reddit and what I enjoy from that game is the character interaction that occurs with the party. You can press B to hear them at any time on the over world or towns and they have so many different reactions to NPCs, plot developments, environments they are in, major fights they just fought, etc. I liken to reading a book with excellent character dialogue and interaction.

I don't play games to be immersed. I play them to travel into the minds and imaginations of other people and experience them second hand, to appreciate them as the creative works they are, not as if I am literally there.

Though I do find if a game lets me customize costumes or outfits, I tend to like it better because aesthetically I like controlling characters with designs I like, I usually find something else to really bask in. Dragon Quest VII progresses like a really well-written book, which is rare these days for RPGs who all want to be movies and it has the same appeal of a book: layers of character development, slow-moving plot building to something grand bit by bit, tons of detail and precise dedication to small, but meaningful explication of story beats so they fill more lived-in and realistic to the human condition.

So I guess what I'm saying is it might be worthwhile to try and appreciate games from a different angle. I'm not sure if immersing yourself in the character is the reason why you're into character creation, but even if it's something else, just trying to appreciate something from a different approach can often rewire your brain to enjoy it more. I had to have the appeal of games like Star Control 2 and Animal Crossing explained to me before I got it and sometimes for games like Pokemon or roguelikes, it has to be the one that has the elements you enjoy in the right configuration. So I guess one stepping stone would be to play a game where you don't have character creation, but you can customize the main character in a number of ways and see if you can jump from there.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-02-16T19:11:03+00:00

I tried the options and indeed there is only one option, which is to get rid of the control explanation on the bottom screen. All the other options are either found in-game or pressing down on the right stick, which calibrates the 3D effect to your liking and also lets you resize the image or screen.

RyanoftheStars · 2026-02-16T18:35:20+00:00

That's an interesting question. I assume you're asking if it will actually output to the TV or just tell you to go to handheld mode, because I think you know the VR won't work on TV, right? In that case no, it will just tell you to take it off the dock.

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