Fire Emblem Heroes Update planned for April

Here's the list of new features and tweaks:

Inherit Skill: When merging duplicate allies, the disposed hero will pass on all of their skills to the hero that's receiving the boost.
Hero Merit: Heroes that take part in battles will earn Hero Merit and, once enough Hero Merit is accrued, this can be used to acquire Hero Feathers.
New Combat Rules: Two new rule sets are coming: Defense—which will see you defending against enemy attacks for a certain number of turns—and Reinforcements—which will see enemy reinforcements appearing on the map as the battle goes on.
Adjustments to Arena Scores and Matchmaking: Matchmaking will now be based on four values: character levels and star ratings, number of bonuses gained by using Merge Allies, total base stats after removing all skills, and equipped skills. Also, awarded scores will be slightly raised for all difficulty.
Bonus Hero Descriptions: If you tap on a Bonus Hero in the arena, a description for them will appear
Notification Display Adjustments: Notifications will now only display automatically once per day
New Ways to Expand Hero Abilities: A new, secret item will be introduced which will slightly expand abilities. More details to come.

Also, there's some sort of permadeath mode in the works, though the details are still under wraps.

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/03/a_large_update_is_coming_to_fire_emblem_heroes_in_april

they just announced Sonic Mania is getting delayed from Spring 2017 to Summer 2017 at #SonicAtSXSW. makes sense! i am at peace with that

— Nick Robinson (@Babylonian) March 16, 2017

So my first susprise of the Switch launch lineup is now Blaster Master Zero. I've never heard about the original game, but I'm really having a blast (heh) with it. At its core it's a Metroidvania, but it borrows more influences like Zelda. I feel like it's a must at that price tbh.

Developing Games For Nintendo Switch Is “A Lot Smoother” Than Wii U

Frozenbyte has shared some tidbits in regard to developing for Nintendo Switch. According to the Finnish developer’s marketing manager, Kai Tuovinen, making games for Nintendo’s latest console is “a lot smoother” than the same process on Wii U. Has-Been Heroes is the studio’s first title for Nintendo Switch and it’s set to launch worldwide on March 28.

“Switch has been a real pleasure to work with, no complaints at all,” Tuovinen said. “Nintendo has really learned a lot from the Wii U times and developing for the Switch has been a lot smoother. They’ve changed around a lot of things, and really thought of the whole process from a developer standpoint. Our programmers have loved it.”

https://mynintendonews.com/2017/03/17/developing-games-for-nintendo-switch-is-a-lot-smoother-than-wii-u/

Sounds good, since this isn't the first developer to say this now

Breath of the Wild completed in 75-80 hours.
Still have 44 Shrines, 814 Korok Seeds (wtf) and 288 Compendium Photos to go O_0

Credit Spoilers
Seeing Iwata in the credits brought a tear to my eye

Zelda BotW wallpapers:

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/wallpaper/ZeldaBotW_thanks/index.html

OMG MyNintendo has my Mii playing BotW on a Switch

It has been a long ride with the Fire Emblem Fates Series.. Going into this game, I had a lot of doubts, with so many things being changed and tweaked. The core gameplay is still there, but a lot of things were changed, like additions to the weapon triangle, weapon durability, reclassing, and a lot of new classes with new skills and weapons. the game being split into three parts. But most of all, the game was split into 3 separate games.

The gameplay is good, as it is still Fire Emblem. A lot of weapons got nerfed especially the range weapons, and all weapons aside from the bronze and iron have extra effects. This is one of my main issues with the game. In order to remove weapon durability, there has to be some sort of drawback. These range from speed decrease, being only able to attack once, or debuffs. Debuffs seem to be the main way developers chose to remedy the issue and it doesn’t really fix the issue they are going with. They want people to use the more obscure weapons because people (like myself) save up the good and legendary weapons. However, in my playthroughs, I just ended up using the Iron sets only, and just forged them. Forging is a lot more useful as they don’t break, but it makes it really grindy to get a +3 or +4 weapon. You need twice as many of the same weapons to forge a weapon so to get a +3 sword, you need 8 of the same sword. To get a +4, you will need 16 of the same sword. I’m fine with grinding, but sometimes, things seem like too much (especially when you want to forge the more rare weapons)

The introduction of a LOT of new weapons may seem a bit overwhelming, but it’s nothing really specially. Katanas = Swords, Nagitana = Spears, Clubs = Axes, Yumi = Bows, etc..They do have very slight differences, but they all basically are the same thing with just different names. The addition of tomes and bows into the weapon triangle was something I was hesitant at first. However, they simplified it to a colour triangle with all weapons falling into one of the 3 colours and it does work out in the end. Still not really a fan of it, but it’s not bad. Shurikens are the most broken weapons

This leads to the next addition added to Fates: Debuffs. So many weapons have self inflicting debuffs and weapons and skills cause debuffs after battle. This really adds a twist to battling, but it can become really annoying when you have a ninja stage where every enemy causes stat debuffs. RNG seems to be biased too :p 

My castle is this whole new addition were you get to build up a base and customize it. You can defend it from invaders or go online to visit other people's castles and challenge them to a fight. This base is pretty convenient for having shops, place to raise friendships and gather resources for upgrading or cosmetics.

The pairing system was heavily balanced and allows enemies to take advantage of this as well. I really liked the 2 different pairing, one for defence and the other for attack. It took me a while to get used to having side by side units always initiating paired attacks, as other games didn’t have this, but it works out well. Defence pairing has been nerfed as well, but you will be able to charge up a meter that will guarantee a free block so I have been able to build up strategies to work with this for sure mechanic, rather than relying on luck, like in Awakening

A lot of classes have been added in with a lot of new skills, but to be honest, they mostly functioned in the same as previous classes, one way or another. There are some really fancy skills that take a long time to obtain but overall, nothing too special with this overload of new classes. Reclassing also does not have your units reset levels so if you will have to buy this really expensive item to increase the max level, which adds to the grinding element.

As for the stages, in general, Birthright had pretty classic stages, while Conquest and Revelations had a lot of wonky stages.. Teleporting, wind blowing, traps, pots, cloning, moving platforms are among a few of the stages added in Fates. They did add a breath of fresh air into the maps, but overall were just a hassle to deal with. A lot are pretty vague so you really have to start the game to see what they did exactly. Dragon veins were added to allow you to ‘modify’ and change the stage which was neat, though it was limited to specific characters. Birthright and Conquest reused a lot of the stages, with slight changes and different enemies while Revelations had other stages due to the story.

As for the story, you truly can’t experience the whole story without playing all three games. Birthright is the classic FE story where you defend from an invading force and ultimately invade them, while Conquest has you working for the enemy. Revelations works well since it focuses on a completely different story path, but was alluded to in both Birthright and Conquest , so that was really neat to see. I felt Conquest story to be much more interesting than Birthright, and Revelations was not bad. Revelations definitely is the canon ending with the Best End. :p Characters were pretty standard, given the scope of how many there are in total. The cutscenes are pretty good, though the first person perspective is always a bit weird to watch.

Overall, I would rank Revelations > Conquest > Birthright, but I really don’t like how they split the game up into 3. Obviously trying to milk the series by separating each one out. I’m not sure if it’s worth getting all three modes just for the story and characters but it’s still really fun. I definitely did not do as much grinding in Fates compared to Awakening, but to get extras in this game, you really need to grind so I did miss out on a bit (like getting all of the children).

8.5/10

tl;dr. It’s Fire Emblem so it is good. A lot of changes and new additions, but if you look at it closely, they are really similar or aren’t too important. The story is decent, but requires all 3 modes to fully get the picture.

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Previous Review:

Pokemon Picross: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8093401

【Android版配信日決定】
3月23日からAndroid版の配信を開始します！Google Playの事前登録はこちらhttps://t.co/xMNtY4cObH
同日に iOS版ver.2.0.0の配信も開始！
更新情報をこのアカウントから発信していきます。 pic.twitter.com/5CAK4Z9RGC

— SuperMarioRun (@SuperMarioRunJP) March 18, 2017

I just got the Switch Pro controller and i must say it's great .