I don’t believe it does. From what I’ve heard the Game Key Cards don’t even contain the game icon.

I’ve been using backloggery.com for more than 15 years.

It’s a simple, manual site, but I think that’s also its main strenght - I’ve had too many issues with other sites where I wanted to add a niche game I played but it was not in their databases, inconsistent naming between games in the same series, no ability to add duplicates when I occasionally double-diped on a game and so on.

It has all features I need - you can add reviews, notes, track priorities, wishlist, borrowed games, make custom lists, get stats… it’s also community supported with no ads.

The site was a bit stale without development for a while, but Drumble (the owner) finished a major rewrite last year and started developing new features again. You can check his profile here for an example.

Yes, I’ve had someone mod my Pro Controller with Hall Effect sticks after it started drifting, and it’s noticeable that the battery lasts less now.

Of course, it still lasts a LONG time.

Well, Switch is my favourite console, and I just wanted a faster Switch with Switch 2, so don’t really have any reason to not buy it.

Me too, but I’d rather wait a bit to see if there will be hardware-related headaches on this first batch of consoles. And while the extra processing power would be nice (see my comments on the Switch 1 struggling with Yumia), it’s not like there’s any games I really want to play for that platform right now.

I never finished Atelier Ryza, but didn’t it have a similar theme about people frowning upon Alchemy and an old kingdom getting destroyed because of it?

There was a plot point about an old kingdom self-destructing due to the abusing alchemy, but it didn’t reflect much in the present - alchemy was mostly forgotten, Empel and Ryza weren’t subject to heavy discrimination and so on. They also didn’t focus much of the story around it, it’s more about Ryza and friends growing into adulthood.

In this game almost everyone treats Yumia’s with suspicion and/or disdain at first, like a criminal who is “allowed” to use her skills because they need her for the expedition. The plot is almost entirely around the exploration of a kingdom similar to the one mentioned in Ryza, except this time we are going much deeper in detail in their misdeeds and abuses. Plus, the main villains of this game are people related to that kingdom that continue to abuse alchemy to this day, and almost every single party member has a tragedy in their backstory related to alchemy.

It’s not a comfortable controller for adults, but it’s a complete controller with all buttons that is very small.

It’s good for young kids or if you want something small you can carry around for quick sessions on the go - I used it several times to play simple games like Vampire Survivors while cycling on the gym.

I also use it for VNs at home - in those games you’re very often just pressing a button to move the text forward, so I hold with the buttons facing up, kinda like a small TV remote.

Got the flight module after that, and now I can fly everywhere! Completed FrontNav of Noctilum, and now just running around doing affinity missions so that I can be couple of levels above the recommended level to start the next chapter.

Just flying around the world doing quick missions, killing monsters and finding relics was so fun. Spent way too much time doing that.

How many of you have gotten it already?

On the fence about it.

I’ve been quite impressed with the reviews about its overall build quality, the results of some durability test videos I’ve seen are honestly amazing. Well, asides from the screen film that scratches easily, but I planned on putting a screen protector on it anyway. However, I’ve been traumatized from so many drift issues I had, and the teardowns show that the design for the new sticks is very similar. There’s some tweaks and it’s possible they solve the main issue, but I’m not convinced about that yet.

Since finding SD Express cards also quite hard around here (and I want a 1TB one) I’ll probably wait more to see people discussing/testing the new sticks, and also follow the backward compatibility progress since there’s 7(?) games I own that are still listed with problems.

Playing Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land

The technical aspects of this game are starting to annoy me. Performance is wildly inconsistent, with some regions running quite well while others are a stuttering mess. This wasn’t as much a problem earlier in the game but gets significantly worse in the the later regions, in particular the third. Also, this game is a bit glitchy - I’ve had issues like clipping through ground, getting stuck in places you shouldn’t, or geometry not loading. It’s nothing gamebreaking and more on the “amusing” side, if you’re curious about it you can see some examples in this video. Finally, got a couple crashes too - but lost no progress thanks to the autosave. All of these things combined made it very clear to me that this game needed more development and testing time.

Despite the technical problems I’m still enjoying it, but it’s gotten to the point where I needed to highlight this for potential buyers. Word around is that it’s poorly optimized in other platforms as well, but obviously the Switch is the one that’s going to struggle the most due to that.

Back to the game, I took some time in the weekend to craft some equipment, which is another way of saying “tripled my stats”. And then I did if again some mid-week when I unlocked the facility that lets you duplicate crafted items, so I’m ridiculously overpowered right now. All of this was completely unnecessary given how easy the game is, but I just can’t resist when a game gives me the option to break it in half 😀.

I figured out that a (!) marker instead of a (?) in the map means it’s a Normal quest intead of Random one, so I went and cleared all of those that were available. Also finished the Pioneering goals for the first three regions, mainly because I got tired of seeing places I couldn’t get to because I needed the special ammo you get from these.

After that I focused on the main quest and got a lot of progress, and I’m now exploring the fourth (and probaly last) region. While I miss the all-wholesome story from the previous games I’m really liking the way this one touches on the dangers of alchemy - most of the sad/messed-up character backstories are related to its misuse, and there’s a lot of unpleasant implications on what the Aladiss Empire was trying to do with alchemy prior to its collapse. This is something that the Dusk trilogy had touched upon, but has a much bigger focus in this game.

The twist at the end of the 3rd area was really, really interesting too.

I’m probably close to the end now, so I should finish it during the next week. Still have to decide what I’ll be playing next, but feeling the urge to go back to VNs, been quite some time since I finished one of these.

Truly broken and deeply unfinished games shipping on cart/disc are (were?) still kinda the exception.

DoesItPlay? tries to track this, and they currently list 92% of Switch games being playable without a download. Most of the remanining 8% are games that don’t have all the content in the cart, not games that need a patch due to bugs.

And most likely it’s higher than 92%, since it’s easier to track down the “exceptions” that require download or are broken than it is to test the thousands of available games to say “yes, I played it through using the version in the cart and it worked fine”.

Nice, I love my Ultimate and I’m glad it will also be usable if/when I get a Switch 2.

The company said more updates are coming soon.

Also nice to hear. Hope the Micro gets an update, I often use it for “low interaction” games like VNs and it’s also good for small kids, my nieces really like it.

Took a peek to the specs:

• Deck: 640g
• Switch 1: 400g
• Switch 2: 535g

So it’s about halfway between the OG Switch and the Deck in terms of weight.

There’s a lot to hate Nintendo for, especially regarding the switch 2, but this is totally not on them.

The screen being very close to edge of the box does sound like a poor choice that will make it easier to damage in transit. In particular when several people are commenting that the (fixed) plastic film on top of the screen scratches very easily.

That being said… this case is definitely the store’s fault.

Seeing a teardown of the Joycon and how similar to the Switch 1 the sticks look was the main reason I gave up on purchasing one for now. ☹️

Maybe the small changes they made or quality improvements in materials will be enough, but the drift problem was such a major pain in the OG Switch that I don’t want to risk dealing with that again.

I’m probably getting a Switch 2 at some point, but the difference between “soon” and “maybe in an year or two” depends on them getting backwards compatibility to 100% for the games in my Switch 1 library, plus hardware reviews so I don’t have to worry about another mess like the drifting problem in the Switch 1.

My Switch 1 is showing signs of age so getting an upgrade with better performance is tempting, but it needs at least the two points above covered before I consider it. It is too pricy to take a chance, in particular when you add the cost for console, SD Express and potentially new acessories (reports say that 8bitdo controllers currently do not work on the Switch 2).

There’s many reasons, here’s a few examples:

• See how easy/hard it is to repair it
• See how easy/hard is is to mod it (say, add a bigger battery)
• Understand the internals, see which components are being used and their quality

As an example of the last one, I’m really curious to see a Joycon teardown so we can find out what kind of sticks they used and how likely it is for them to show drift problems in the future.

I’ve played both and I’d say it’s far worse in EoW. And considering even in this Switch 2 video you can still some small stuttering I imagine there’s something bad in the game engine itself.

Will be interesting to see the DF comments on this.

“wow anime is really popular right now”

CR’s success is pretty much that + not having any real competition.

Started Chatper 9 of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition but got stuck, I was at recommended level, but you can’t use Skells during the fight, and it’s kinda tough one. I also went with characters with low class levels, so grinding a bit to level up.

I think that’s one of the hardest boss fights in the main story. Had to burn a couple consumable items to get past it.

Playing Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land

It’s a good game and I’m having a lot of fun playing it, but feels more like a new RPG series from Gust than than an Atelier game.

It lacks the relaxing, happy vibes that those games are known for, with a darker mood and heavier storyline. Alchemy is taboo, its pratictioners are shunned and hated, there’s some dangerous-looking villains around, the main characters all seem to have some sad backstory.

So if you played Ryza or Sophie and want more of that wholesome feel this is probably not the game for you, but if you love the complex crafting systems from those games and want something with more meat in the story then take a look at this one.

Talking about gameplay, I have one criticism and one concern. The criticism is the battle system - at least on normal is way too easy and feels like you can beat most battles just spamming buttons. I did warm up to it as more systems were added, but most battles are so short that you don’t really use them very often. Also, you level up ridiculously fast - I’m almost at Level 50 and looking at the map I’m barely a third into the game.

The concern is that this game may get really repetitive over time. Exploration has been fun, but I just finished the first main area and feel like I’ve seen all the game has to offer in that aspect - and there’s three more big areas to explore.

On the positive side, crafting continues to be great (though I still prefer the system from the Mysterious games), there’s a really neat “Base Building” system that I’m sure will have people spending dozens of hours designing their perfect home, and the mystery on the main plot has me intrigued - it has some cool “Atelier Dusk” vibes as you investigate the causes or a large-scale alchemy-related disaster that destroyed a country in the past.

Direct link for the Switch 1 version: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/deltarune-switch/

The number of people with the issue is probably not that high, specially in US and most parts of Europe, but still could be an issue for some.

I wonder if the Switch 2 actually work with Hotel or similar networks that require sign-in. I’ve always had trouble getting the Switch online while travelling abroad because of this.

I’ve bought games and consoles during work trips and it would suck hard not being able to play them until I got home.

It’s pretty bad that it doesn’t work out of the box.

In particular for a handheld console.

I’ve bought consoles during business trips where I didn’t have reliable internet (and the goddamn Switch can’t even do sign-in to most hotel networks) and I would be pissed if I could not play it until I got home.

Let’s hope this is only for the first batch and that later ones will work out of the box.

I think the biggest question is “how reliable is this basic compatibility testing they’re doing”. Guess we’ll find out in a couple weeks when it’s out and we get reports from players.