Category: Nintendo

Don’t walk away, Renee.

There’s nothing quite like a good Metroidvania. Dense labyrinths to traverse, many kinds of demons/undead/monsters to slay, new equipment to find, hazards to leap, and, most importantly, abilities to acquire that allow you to explore even more. We’ve gotten quite a few stellar genre entries in the last decade, but now we have another that aims to join the most memorable of them: Aurogon Shanghai’s Afterimage. This sprawling, anime-inspired take on the genre double jumps and air dashes with the best of them, though it isn’t without its quirks.

Afterimage opens with a vague, Dark Souls-like overview of how its world has decayed, depicted with a series of gorgeous, hand-drawn images. We understood none of it. In fact, the narrative is a convoluted mess of fantasy pronouns and anime girls; even after a dozen hours, we still didn’t know what was going on other than that, taking control of a young magical girl named Renee, we had to seek out a cloaked girl that stole her master’s soul. Joined by a sassy spirit called Ifree, we were off through hand-drawn biome after biome, whacking a wide array of enemies with whips and great swords as we explored every nook for treasure and upgrades.

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Includes other features “enhancing the overall experience”.

Although Nintendo has officially called time on Kirby’s 30th anniversary, fans of the pink puff are seemingly still going with all sorts of creations. One, in particular, that’s caught the attention of the wider Nintendo community is a new ROM hack for the 1995 release Kirby’s Dream Land 2 – adding proper support for the Game Boy Color.

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Pull my (Trinity) Trigger.

Fans of ’90s JRPGs, particularly those released for the SNES, will have been watching Trinity Trigger closely. The game boasts a veritable dream team from some of the best JRPGs of the past 30 years, including those who worked on Xenoblade Chronicles, Octopath Traveler, and, of course, Secret of Mana. There is a lot for Trinity Trigger to live up to; fortunately, it managed to exceed our expectations in most areas.

The world of Trinitia is at the centre of an unending war between the Gods of Order and the Gods of Chaos. To prevent destroying everything in their conflict, the gods agreed to choose a champion and have them fight in their stead, but not before several of their weapons, called Arma, were scattered along the surface. Giant spears, axes, and swords have become home to monsters and scavengers alike, while the gods wait to see whether the Warrior of Chaos or Order will prevail.

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And does Breath of the Wild fit the mould?

Despite the overwhelmingly positive reception to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild when it launched back in 2017, there are undoubtedly those who yearn for a return to what they deem to be a more “traditional” Zelda experience. With its open world, shrines, weapon degradation, and ‘rune’ abilities, Breath of the Wild most certainly made some significant changes to the games that came prior, but we have to ask ourselves here: just what constitutes a “traditional” Zelda game, anyway?

From a story perspective, Zelda games have always followed a pretty similar path: you play as a hero who must embark on a grand adventure to save the land and defeat evil. That’s always been the case, whether you’re talking about the original NES game, Ocarina of Time, or Breath of the Wild. Some titles, like Majora’s Mask or Link’s Awakening, might well feel different in how they approach their respective narratives, but those games still boil down to the same essentials.

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Hot takes deployed.

We had to wait a while for this one, and we don’t just mean due to the ‘global events’ (also known as the Russian invasion of Ukraine) that caused Nintendo to delay Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp for a year.

Nope, ever since Fire Emblem took off in the West, the Advance Wars series has taken a back seat to turn-based tactical battling of the fantasy kind involving more swords — lots more swords — than more modern artillery.

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Icy Inteleon.

The next 7-Star Tera Raid Battle event has been announced for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet and this one will see you facing off against Gen VIII’s Inteleon first from 28th-30th April, before repeating 5th-7th May.

The details of this event were shared on Twitter by @SerebiiNet, revealing that the latest ‘mon to get the seven-star treatment will have the Ice Tera Type and the Mightiest Mark. As is always the case, you will only be able to catch this version of Inteleon once per save file.

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Who is your favourite character?

Back when Fire Emblem Engage was released on the Switch at the start of the year, the Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream ran a poll, asking fans who their favourite character was in the latest release.

Now, after two months, the final rankings are in! Thanks to a translation (via Serenes Forest), we’ve got the “top 25” characters of 39 characters – revealing the game’s protagonist Alear as the favourite!

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“We’re looking at a completely blank slate in terms of future developments”.

Square Enix’s stuffed slate of releases over the past year has given us some stellar titles, but among some of their biggest releases, this year’s Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo should not be overlooked.

Revealed during a Japanese Nintendo Direct in February and then launching just a moth later, this horror visual novel sees you unravelling the mysteries of the real-life urban legends known as The Seven Mysteries of Honjo, (or, sometimes, The Seven Wonders of Honjo). These Mysteries serve as tourist attractions in the Sumida Ward (formerly known as Honjo) of Tokyo, representative of ghost stories that have been passed down over generations since the Edo Period. Many of these stories aren’t set in stone and have had multiple interpretations over the years.

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Part VI – Return of the Gem-i.

It’s been over six months since our last round, so it’s time for another batch of NL ‘reader recommendations‘ with Part 6 of our Games We Missed series.

We asked you recently to send us your nominations for Switch games we weren’t able to review for one reason or another that you think deserve highlighting in this article. With the sheer quantity of games hitting the Switch eShop on a weekly basis, it’s impossible for us to keep up — believe us, nobody knows how many we’re missing more than we do!

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Font-tastic? Or font-al?

Has it sunk in yet that almost every single mainline Final Fantasy game between I and XII is now available on the Switch? That’s thanks to this week’s release of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series, which was long, long overdue.

Back when the games launched on Steam and mobile between 2021 and 2022, lots of people were happy that the classic six Final Fantasy games were finally being made more accessible. But there was one big talking point that swept across the world when it came to the Pixel Remasters — the font.

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