9/13/2020 A sort of mini E3

Although I tempered my expectations going into the first of today’s presentations, I have to say it was pretty good. Nintendo offered for us its usual September Direct this morning. As a quick recap, the biggest names in it were: Fire Emblem, Pikmin, Octopath and the subtitle reveal for the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. A number of other games were shown as well. A number of them, coincidentally, are basically farming simulations like Harvest Moon, Fae Farm and Harvestella. A remaster of Tales of Symphonia was also announced. That one caught me by surprise. I really enjoyed it on GameCube so I’m glad its getting released, in lieu of an actual GameCube virtual console on Switch (Wishing Baten Kaitos got a remaster or remake). Another unexpected surprise was Octopath Traveller 2. I enjoyed playing a bit of the first game, but I confess I wasn’t able to finish it. Perhaps this is a good time as any to get back to it, though I might have to start again. I’m really glad Pikmin 4 was properly announced. They didn’t really show much, but it was good to see they’re working on it. Pikmin 3 was a lot of fun to play, so I’m sure the sequel will be just as good. The very first announcement was Fire Emblem Engage. A rather odd subtitle for it, but it ties to a mechanic shown in the trailer. It looks like the main character can gain attributes of other characters from the franchise by equipping special rings. Of the old characters Marth, Celica and Sigurd were shown. The final reveal showed a little bit of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom as well as its release date in May of next year. Surely they will show more as that day nears.

Second presentation of the day was fairly short, but right on to the point. The very first entry was Tekken 8. Though I don’t follow any of the fighting games, I honestly didn’t think there were that many of them. Two games focused on PSVR. Most of the others that were shown focused on action. Quite a few of them are set in Japan and featured a bit of swordplay. The closing game was none other than God of War: Ragnarok and gave us another look at the story.

Both Sony and Nintendo continue to cater to their audience in their own way. Anyone with enough money and time might still get a big backlog of games with all that has been announced. Have fun!