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From what I saw on launch, the Switch 2 shouldn't actually be that bad to get (at least until around Christmas when everything will be hard to get). We had 26 systems for launch at my store; 19 Mario Kart bundles and 7 of the regular. The bundle was more popular and sold out within three hours. The regular one took five hours. But that's at least 2 1/2 more hours than I expected (I thought we would sell our inventory the first 30 minutes).

I was tempted to get one but decided I'll wait until either there's a fun special edition or until Pokemon generation 10 comes out. I don't expect that until late 2026 though. By then more games will be out as well so it's a win win IMO.

I did end up going to see it. I really enjoyed it. It had the right amount of action, humor, and character driven moments.

I'll eventually get a Switch 2. Nintendo still has a few franchises that you just can't get anywhere else. But I can't fit it in the budget currently. I have enough games from current consoles that I haven't finished to keep me going for a few years at least. 

The most recent binge was Frieren: Beyond Journey's End on Netflix. It's soooo good. I ended up buying the physical version so I can still watch it when I eventually cancel Netflix.

I might go see it tomorrow. I'm not current on the MCU so hopefully it stands its own.

I unfortunately had to sell most of my retro games when I was going through a financial hardship, so the only older Pokemon games I still have are Black and Black 2, and the digital version of Pokemon Sun on my 3DS. Luckily I had already put most of my older gen Pokemon into Black 2 and was able to transfer my Pokemon into Pokemon Home so I have a mostly full living Dex (missing a few mythicals like Zarude and Hoopa because I wasn't playing when they were distributed).

Personally it's hard for me to go back for older Pokemon games just because of the HM system. Needing a Pokemon for Cut, Flash, Rock Smash, Surf, Waterfall, Fly, etc limits what kind of team you can build, or makes you have to switch Pokemon out constantly which can be inconvenient if you're not near a Pokecenter to access the PC.

In gen 7 you had ride Pokemon which did all of the HMs for you, and the newer games have a similar set up. The Switch games also allow you to access your box from anywhere which is a huge QoL improvement.

Despite its terrible performance, I found Pokemon Scarlet/Violet to be probably my favorite Pokemon game ever. The characters were great, the story was good, the music was amazing, the new Pokemon are awesome, and the DLC only added to it and made it even more fun. They made hunting shinies more fun, and it's so much easier to hatch eggs and EV train than previous games.

The only real critique I have is that the gym leaders should have scaled with the level of the player; and obviously the performance issues are not great (although honestly the people who complained about having problems the most were mostly the same people who manipulated save data for egg hatching).

I also played Pokemon Sword, but I found that one incredibly boring in the base game. It was saved a lot by good DLC.

Then there was Pokemon Legends Arceus, which I also absolutely loved. The catch mechanic is so much fun.

I still kind of want to play Let's Go Eevee/Pikachu but haven't had a chance to get it yet.

And finally I also have Pokemon Shining Pearl. I never played Platinum and it has been so long since I played the original D/P that playing Shining Pearl was like playing a new game, so I didn't have any issues with it.

Walmart hasn't stopped yet. Those articles were a weird misrepresented response to Walmart pulling (only) Starfield and that was more to do with Starfield being a Game Pass title than anything as far as I know.

They did cut down the amount of games we carry for each platform, with Xbox taking the biggest hit (from 90 down to 49), but there's nothing in our current floor plans to suggest we're getting rid of any of them altogether.

Personally for myself I like physical copies, although like Grindspine said, trading out the cartridges on the Switch is a little on the inconvenient side.

I really enjoyed the Marvels but the singing planet part was a bit cringe even for me. I also don't think it's as rewatchable as Captain Marvel was, even though I do enjoy the cast of the Marvels a lot.

The last few shows I binged were Medium, FBI, and NCIS: Hawaii.

Medium was great! FBI is still ongoing so I'm waiting weekly for new episodes on that now.

NCIS: Hawaii unfortunately got cancelled but it seems like at least some of the characters may get folded into other ongoing NCIS shows so I'm still watching those.

I started playing again a couple years back and got more into it. There's also more Pokestops close to my house now (about four in my apartment complex and a few more along with two gyms about a 10 minute walk away).

Although admittedly right now I've stopped playing again for a bit because now I have most of the regular Pokemon and the spawn pools aren't great right now. I do community days when it's a Pokemon I have an interest in (Bagon Day) but only play long enough to grab a shiny for ones I don't (Bounsweet).

The area I live in is still rural enough that gyms are really spread out and it's almost impossible to coordinate major raids without using Discord so I mostly remote raid using another app (it's legal don't worry) and I stopped bothering with Shadow Raids after how hard it was to do the Mewtwo shadow raids.

Anyway I have a lot of thoughts about Pokemon Go but I'll stop there and maybe see if anyone else has anything to add as well. 

Thank you! I swear I'm still alive I just have not been gaming as hard as I used to. 

There are too many people in the US that think it's a hoax or that being asked to wear a mask is a violation of freedom. At my store, we require all customers to wear masks, but many just take them off once they get inside. 

I hope they'll go with what people are asking for and make his sister Shuri into the new Black Panther.

The Shadowbringers expansion for FFXIV has an amazing soundtrack. I'd link the title soundtrack but most of the youtube videos are heavy spoilers if you ever planned on playing it.

PS5 first but I'm sure I'll get both eventually.

I picked up the definitive Tales of Vesperia on Steam since it was on sale for $20.

I finished Grey's Anatomy, and then the spinoff Private Practice. Both were pretty good.

I am working now on Arrow. I've watched Supergirl and the Flash so it's kind of neat seeing where all the Arrowverse stuff started.

I wasn't a huge fan of the last Paper Mario (I think it released on the 3DS). But if it's like Super Paper Mario from the Wii, I'll love it.

She-Ra is another good one to binge if you're more in a cartoon mood. They also just put Avatar: the Last Airbender on Netflix.

Dead to Me is a great show as well, and they just put season 2 up.

There's no way I'll be able to afford it when it comes out, unfortunately.

I mean I'll end up buying it in a few years after the price goes down. I think that's better, anyway, because then there will also be more games for it.

My thoughts are summed up in this pic:

https://scontent.fatl1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/96118012_579529239608044_8910874249372106752_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=O_eGwSMucXoAX_82G9J&_nc_ht=scontent.fatl1-2.fna&oh=62115ad52d03b99e82f5931961753ff5&oe=5EDEFBB5

I think the stay-at-home orders are doing a decent job of keeping it from spreading as much as it could, but if we are to keep it up, it would be nice if there were ways to help those who can't work from home or aren't essential workers and need to have some kind of income. I'm really in support of universal income. They've been doing it for a few years in Finland, and the results show that it doesn't make people less motivated to work, so that's not a good reason why not to have it.

Thanks! So far it's been pretty chill. I took the day off work so I have just been playing Animal Crossing and watching Netflix! 

I'll be honest, it's been about 17 years, maybe 16 on the generous side, since I played FFVII, and I only played it once, so I honestly remember almost nothing about it!  So I am not the one to ask about comparisons, anyway.

But!

Based on what I do remember, I absolutely love it!

The battle system is great! It's a lot of fun, and you can easily switch between characters. Also, you can switch back to classic turn-based, but I like the default system. It does kind of a bullet time thing when you're in the menu so it's not like you're trying to do things while the enemies are just whaling on you. If you've played FFXIII you'll be familiar with the Stagger system. If you do enough damage to enemies, they are staggered and take extra damage. Some enemies are weak to specific spells, some are weak to physical attacks, etc. I think that part is pretty standard. The combat still uses the ATB system, and you build it up faster with the character you're controlling. Tifa is a lot of fun to control, so I use her the most, but Cloud and Aerith and Barrett are fun in their own way as well. The hardest part about the combat is honestly deciding which materia to give to who. Early on, you don't have a lot of materia slots. But you can upgrade the weapons to add more as you get further in the game. The level up system for the weapons is also a bit like the Crystarium from FFXIII. There's rings of options and you get Action Points that you can use. Each weapon levels up at its own rate so you'll probably end up checking the weapon upgrade option often just to see if you accumulated enough AP to add another bonus to the weapon.

If you buy a physical copy of the game, it has a download disc that you put in first to make the process go faster. Once the download disc is done, you put the game disc in. I think it may have taken about an hour, maybe an hour and a half to do the whole process for me.

I thought I wouldn't be able to get used to the voice cast (they aren't the same voice actors as Advent Children or FFVII character appearances in Kingdom Hearts and World of Final Fantasy) but they are all pretty good.

Overall I'm very impressed with it and I'm kind of putting off finishing it because I know I'll just want the second part to come out already!  But I might also try to platinum it; haven't fully decided yet. One of the trophies is for beating it in Hard mode, and you can't use items in hard mode, so I'm debating whether I want to take on that challenge.

Don't be silly, everyone knows gamer things are black and red! 

Blue lights are fine, though.

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of people coming in shopping that aren't taking it seriously and seem to just be making a social outing of it. We still get a lot of entire families shopping, when one of the parents could have stayed at home with the kids. People come in to print pictures, of all things, and get upset that our kiosks (which are touch screen only) are disabled.

I live in Georgia currently and Gov. Kemp just opened up a lot of the state for businesses like gyms, hair dressers, and theaters, so it's only going to get worse for us.

Who else is playing this right now? I know I can't be the only one! 

I'm really pleased with how good this game is. The updated combat is so much fun.

I haven't quite beat it yet but I'm pretty close.

The design itself is great, but I'm not wild about that color scheme. Where is my all black controller? 

I used to have paid Spotify but now I don't, and the commercials are annoying.

Some other returning features:

-buying carpet/wallpaper from Saharah
-getting rare items from Gulliver when you find him on the beach
-buying turnips on Sunday to sell for (hopefully) a profit later in the week