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Yeah, Yori, you’re ALRIGHT in my book!

I’m TRYING not to let Mario Odyssey and Fire Emblem Warriors consume my life. The first is the best game I’ve played this year that doesn’t involve a sword, and the second is a super rad army murder simulator with a massive roster of characters I love.

Mario Odyssey is like pure magic! I do think the camera is not great, and controlling the T-Rex isn’t nearly as fun as one might hope, but those are some super minor nitpicks among the pure platforming ecstasy that is this game. The soundtrack is also quite fantastic and eclectic, and I already have a hard time imagining playing a Mario game without Cappy the sentient cap. (I really love that long distance jump move.)

I don’t know when it happened, but at some point Fire Emblem became my second favorite Nintendo franchise (Metroid being the indisputable first), pushing Zelda down to third. Having said that, I loved Hyrule Warriors, which was the only Musou game I’d played outside of Samurai Warriors on the ps2. HW was a pure fanservice game, and ended up having deeper gameplay mechanics than I’d expected.

The common conception of Warriors/Musou games is that all you do is mash the X button to win, but, at least in these Nintendo spinoffs, there’s a good amount of strategy that goes into managing the battlefield and properly timing your combos. I was initially worried when I found out that the weapon triangle would be a factor in Fire Emblem Warriors, specifically that it would make playing as a favored character for each mission impossible, instead forcing you to switch to characters you may not like or may not be in a good position. But it turns out the weapon triangle and the ability to order your companions around the battlefield and switch playable characters on the fly ends up turning the game into a real time version of the Fire Emblem Franchise’s 3DS progenitors. Desperately scrambling to position your troops where they can make use of their weapons advantages in map overview mode and then switching to your boots on the ground to wipe out countless soldiers with super rad flashy animations, all to killer electric guitar mixes of Fire Emblem themes is basically pure FE fanservice, and a great time.

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  • Sunwu

    how many swords must a samurai break before he becomes head of his clan?
    Yes, and how many bottles can a daisuke drink before he can cut down a tree?
    The answer my friend is like a bird fish in the wind! The answer is like a bird fish in the wind

  • cu

    Second only to not stopping not dying, that goes without saying. Doing all the damage you can to the nearby vegetation comes third.

    • Kid Chaos

      But beware the TREEVENGE! 😨

  • http://www.flowerlarkstudios.com/ Flowerlark

    ‘Of sorts.’

    Daaaang, Genchu may be known for his mastery of swordplay, but his true expertise lies in the backhanded compliment.

    • Kid Chaos

      “But enough chit-chat; c’mon and meet the gang! I know Ken’s been dying to see you again.” 👹

    • animalia555

      Who exactly did he bachand and how? Not saying I don’t have a guess I just want clarification.

      • Kid Chaos

        I think it’s the “and managed to become a wandering hero, of sorts” part in panel 3. 😎

      • http://www.flowerlarkstudios.com/ Flowerlark

        Indeed it would be the erstwhile pupil sporting the perpetually flummoxed expression.

  • Turul

    *still awww-ing*

    It’s ok Yori, when you’re a daimyo, you can delegate the head-chopping to your minions.

  • Galeden

    FE warriors is good, but it could have tried a bit harder with some characters, and roster quantity, since there were si many more memorable characters, plus the game only has 4 axe characters if you include the announced DLC…

    • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

      I can’t deny that my dream would be to have the full cast of Awakening available, as that is my favorite 3DS game. I haven’t unlocked anyone outside of the main 20 characters, which consists of 3 spear wielders, 3 axe wielders, 3 magic wielders, 2 archers, 1 little dragon girl with an adorable fake British accent, and a whopping 8 sword users, some of which are very effective against outrealm monster and some that are very effective against dragons. That’s enough diversity that I’m not really thinking too much about the lack of character class choices. I may feel differently after I’ve inevitably sunk 200 hours into the game, though.

      • Galeden

        I am still enjoying it, but most of the characters have copy paste movesets outside of “Musou” attacks which is my biggest gripe.

        • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

          yeah, it’s kind of a bummer but I haven’t found myself bothered by it that much. I do find that they are not entirely copy/paste, they regular combo sets have slight variations from one another, although ultimately play out the same, mainly with the pegasus riders, marth/lucina, and rowan/lianna (and I assume the gender swapped characters, although I haven’t unlocked them yet). Overally, they’re not as copy/paste as I’d expected based on how much it was brought up in reviews. GRANTED, They are nowhere near as unique as the Hyrule Warriors cast, but a lot of those characters were given some pretty inventive movesets as many of them were non-combatants in their respective canonical appearances.

          Overall, though, FEW spends a lot more time emphasizing your team’s combination more than your individual character choice. And those Musou attacks always feel good to pull off.

          • Galeden

            I also don’t see why they didn’t make Owain, Niles, Oboro, and Navarre playable without the DLC as they were already in the base game where they could have added other characters in their place.

          • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

            My assumption would be that it was to milk DLC, but game development is a complicated beast, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a more technical reason for that choice. FEW could definitely be better. The potential scope of a Fire Emblem X Musou crossover is massive, and what we got is pretty underwhelming if you think about it. But Koei Tecmo cranks these Musou games out pretty much one a year, or more than one a year, really. It’s like an assembly line product to them, and the games still sell well in Japan despite what feels like significant over-saturation. I’m kind of happy the FEW is as fun and addictive as it is, even if it could’ve been so much more. At least Nintendo made sure Koei Tecmo put some effort in!

          • Galeden

            Aye, I have also heard whispers that they might potentially make more dlc based on demand, though not to expect Roy or Ike unless a sequel is churned out.

  • clogboy

    And here I was (not) looking forward to the sort of dynamic like between Noct and Gladius.

  • LordBolanderFace

    Oh! OOOOOOOH! I like it!
    “The rarest, and most valuable, trait a leader can have is to simply do the right thing.”
    I MUST HAVE THIS LINE! Guys, do you mind if I steal it? I’ll give it a good home.

    • LordBolanderFace

      And on a side note, what do you make of the insane number of moons there is to collect in Odyssey? I watched ProJared’s review of it, and while he said it was a good game he also said there were too many moons to collect, and very few of them felt like you were doing anything to earn it. It’s like the korok seeds in BotW, except that instead of being a sidequest it’s the main quest.

      • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

        yeah, I dunno, it does encourage searching every nook and cranny. I haven’t watched ProJared’s review, but I assume it was done over a pretty short amount of time. Reviewers more and more find themselves in the unenviable task of having to review massive games under major time constraints, and that can suck a lot of joy out of the experience. If you want to 100% Mario Odyssey in a week, I’m guessing that finding every moon probably feels like a huge pain in the butt. But if this is a game that you’ll be coming back to for months, it may be what keeps the game alive in your mind, thinking about what to explore and parsing out the meaning to a cryptic clue. I have far from beaten the game, though, so in the end I may end up with the same complaint, TOO MANY MOONS!

        • noerartnoe

          I didn’t really stop to collect on the two first worlds. On the desert one, however, I took my time to gather some and felt like I’d done a pretty decent job. Until I looked at the list on the map, that is, and realised that my 34 moons was (a little) less than half of what the world had…

          I will say this though, in favour of Odyssey, it is the fastest a game has ever had me go from; “Well, shit.*resigned sigh* ” to ” *cracks knuckles* All right then, let’s fucking do this!”

          • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

            That’s some great visual imagery of dejection to determination! So far I’ve had a ton of fun methodically finding all the moons, although I can’t deny that my mouth kind of hit the floor when I started my fifth row of green moons on the desert world.

    • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

      it’s a good ol’ fashioned sorta line, I’m sure Joe won’t mind you quoting it or whatnot.

    • Kid Chaos

      Personally, I prefer to steal from Girl Genius; specifically, the quaint world-view of one Tarvek Sturmvoraus… 😎

      “If someone can’t handle an unpleasant truth?
      Lie to them.
      If someone won’t listen to reason?
      Make them.
      If people don’t choose to love peaceably?
      Don’t give them a choice.
      If you don’t like the rules…
      Change the game.” 😈

      • LordBolanderFace

        Meh. I used to like GG until it became a typical self-insert, everyone-loves-the-mary-sue story.

  • Crestlinger

    See the important thing is to strive to do good. What happens next is where the dice land but stating intentions afterward can swing the perception of the result.

  • SlugFiller

    I’m actually wondering where Yori is getting his idea of “any decent person”. Certainly, not from most of the characters he has met so far (except maybe, MAYBE Cho), nor from the local populace. Has he been reading one too many overly embellished samurai story books?

    • clogboy

      Some have a father, others have a mentor they try to surpass.

  • Nos Rin aka CTCO

    The only Warrior game I got into was 4. because custom characters, but because of angry rant time reasons, I refuse to single player those games EVER again.
    Gundman had interested me at one point, but while the mechs are cool G-Gundam is the ONLY one that ever caught my interest, although I heard wing was cool. Definitely not watching that one where the child get’s his head vaporized. Ever.
    Hyrule Warriors did have my interest though because, heck, I love Zelda more then any other nintendo franchise (metroid is cool but I’m trash at it and mario well, meh.) Star Fox is kinda sorta maybe number two.
    But ya, too cheap to buy consoles, I’d rather by knives, books and booze. and a sword on occasion. also I need a new graphics card…. sigh…..

    • http://www.nn4b.com suburban_samurai

      I loved Gundam Wing in High School, it was my gateway into mecha, and I cherish it. I’ve been rewatching the show very slowly on Hulu and I don’t know if it holds up that well outside of the soundtrack, tone, and costume/mecha designs (the military uniforms in Wing are killer). The story is both too dense and not terribly good at humanizing anyone so it’s hard to feel any emotional attachment to the drama. There is a lot of Gundam I haven’t seen, but out of everything I have seen, probably my favorite Gundam series is 08th MS Team, which is like a 12/13 episode OVA series with incredible animation and a very character driven, down to earth (literally, as it’s mostly jungle warfare) story about a unit of mismatched soldiers just trying to survive a war. Great characters, high stakes, solid drama, and no filler. Also a super catchy opening theme.

      Never feel bad about not playing video games, they are time vampires!

      • Nos Rin aka CTCO

        i have soooooooo many games still unbeaten, like bastion and mars war logs.
        g-gundam stood out to me because unlike other mecha animes where you sit down and pilot with a control panel, you actualy stood in a small room and wore a suit and piloted a mech with martial arts. and there was a tournmanet, and a lot of cool unique mecha. and it’s sitting on my list waiting to be watched after some anime called Green Green and Tenchi Universe but first I need to finally catch up with Red vs Blue which I’ve been binging the hell out of this past week.
        I have a LOT of time sinks sitting around.

        oh, ah and Godanner has an awesomely catchy theme, one of my favorites.
        Really good mech anime if you don’t mind a smidge of fanservice (nowhere near as much as a lot of modern stuff but there’s some in there.) But what a crazy story for that one. it’s a typical fight monsters with giant robots anime (which never gets old) but with a crazy twist.

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