The free upgrades are quite nice. I'm playing Mario vs Rabbids, runs hell of lot smoother on S2. Odyssey looks sharp on the S2 as well.

Actually, Mario + Rabbids it's not an upgrade. Turns out the game had a double buffer V-Sync and the Switch 2 extra power allows it to reach 60fps instead of the usual 30 on Switch 1.

There are many similar cases were games see significant gains in performance just by running on the Switch 2. NEO: The World Ends With You, Trials of Mana, Monster Hunter Stories 2 and Ni No Kuni 2 to name a few, run at 30fps or at uncapped framerates on Switch 1 and on Switch 2 are 60fps with little to no drops at all.

Honestly I'm so glad I got to grow up and enjoy consoles before the fucking internet. 

How would I have ever enjoyed the Super NES in the modern internet it would just be non-stop whining about how "yeah you can play Street Fighter 2 on the SNES, but it's no where close to the arcade version lacking pixels/colors/etc! Super Ghouls N' Ghosts has slow down!!! Stop playing it!!! Star Fox's frame rate sucks! Digital Foundry says Mario Kart is ruined by constant split screen!". 

The GameCube was ruined for me because the internet was non-stop on its ass about it being the worst console ever and Nintendo not matching this or that from Sony, and you know what? Now it's funny 20 years on that the internet has now rebranded the GameCube as a great, classic console that had so many great things about it. It's like where the fuck were y'all 20 years ago? 

The same people who bitch/whine about things are two faced and years later will say "oh what a classic console/game that was! Right fellas?". Now I've learned to just ignore a lot of this bull shit noise. 

That is kind of funny.  An unintentional upgrade.  I still maintain Mario vs Rabbids is one of the best strategy games in recent times.  I'd love to see a third on the S2.  

It is a very good strategy game with a great soundtrack . But my favourite thing about it is... How well they managed to mix Mario and the Rabbids without it feeling dumb or forced. The game has a world and a sense of humor that works incredibly well just because of this apparently absurd combination xD

Well stated.  It did merry really well.  I recall laughing when it was announced.  I thought it was going to be silly, I called that one wrong.  

Yeah, it was kinda common sense to expect that they will put fans in dock that actually cool the main unit and help it clock higher than what it clocks now. Maybe they even did at one point, but I'm thinking pure accounting and profit margins weighed in  on that one and made it what it is now.

I think the reason that we have the performance profiles we have for both dock and handheld boils down to two factors: battery life and parity between handheld and docked modes.

These are difficult things to balance and I don't think Nintendo has as much room for overclocking and such without compromising these two aspects as some people think. The fact that it can be done doesn't mean it should be done. We are already getting like 2h of battery life while playing Cyberpunk or MKW. That number is barely acceptable for a portable device so I think increasing the clock speeds wouldn't be acceptable for the majority of customers.

Parity between handheld and docked modes makes sense for why CPU clocks are close, but there is no reason for the GPU. Games scale fine by resolution. There isn't much of a difference between scaling a game 2 times the resolution and 2.5 times or 3 times. That's essentially what maxing the GPU in docked mode would do. 

The reason why the GPU clocks aren't maxed likely is mostly due to power consumption and thermals. Nintendo likes to keep their thermals in the 60's-70's Celsius (as opposed to other systems that let them go up to 80's-90's and throttle) and they are very much about maintaining optimal power consumption. Increasing the clock rate to its max, probably super-linearly increases power consumption. And yes Nintendo probably could safely have the SOC run 80c+, but they aren't one to do that. 

I'm torn on the prospects of a 3rd. I loved the 1st game but the 2nd is up there with my most disappointing games of all time.

My main gripe is that it was just insultingly easy. The 1st game was by no means hard but I remember it being tricky to get through many missions with your whole team intact, and those special challenge missions were straight up challenging. 

I waltzed through the first half of sparks of hope barely having to pay attention then just stopped. 

I also wasn't a fan of the free movement approach in SoH.

For me at least, in a strategy/puzzle game there has to be a decent level of challenge or it's just an empty experience.

It's a weird one as generally Nintendo strike a good balance in terms of difficulty, even 2nd party/co-developed projects...

If they do a 3rd I hope they remember that most switch owners are adults and don't want a baby's first xcom. At least gimme a hard mode where enemies do double xp damage or something, ffs.