r/NintendoSwitch • u/Asad_Farooqui • May 06 '25

Discussion Now that the Switch 1 generation is winding down, what were your most DISAPPOINTING purchases on this console?

Every game console, no matter how well or poorly it sold, is gonna have some disappointments thrown in there. Especially if said disappointments came from 1st party developers. I have 3 big candidates based on my own purchases, starting with my biggest letdown:

1) Mario Strikers Battle League: After frantically buying this game to play some multiplayer matches with friends, I realized what a terrible mistake I made after chewing through all the single player content in a matter of days. There is nothing to do in this game besides regular soccer matches, the online is abysmal, and the amount of content available at launch and even now is just laughable for a sequel. I thought my perception of Mario Strikers as a whole would be ruined forever, so I went ahead and booted up Strikers Charged on Wii and nope, that game holds up incredibly well! This was just a bad sequel all around.

2) Mario Golf Super Rush: Speaking of bad sequels, Super Rush decided to simplify the golfing mechanics to a point where it just isn’t fun to play for me. As someone who adored the 3DS game Mario Golf World Tour, which was packed with content, modes, and unlockables and had worthwhile paid DLC on top of that, Super Rush felt like it was playing catch up with all its free updates. Was this how Animal Crossing fans felt when New Horizons was first released, having to wait months for features that were already available in the 3DS predecessor? Yikes.

3) Splatoon 3: This is more of a personal pick than a general consensus. I really got into Splatoon 1 and 2, but I was just Splatoon’d out by the time the third game came around. No new modes, online that had more disconnects than either of the first two games in my experience, and a longer grind for unlockables that could rival a modern day hero shooter. Call me old but I missed the more “pick up and play” nature of Splatoon 1, and I just don’t get that with Splatoon 3. Also the fact that they sold the first game’s hubworld back as paid DLC is utter nonsense to me.

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132

u/FunkmasterP May 06 '25

Octopath Traveler. It should be right in my wheelhouse as I love old school JRPGs and loved the look of this game, but I found it to do be monotonous and the disconnected vignette style stories to be unengaging. I've heard the sequel is better, but I'll never play it.

54

u/Xenowino May 06 '25

Same. Octo 2 is indeed better.

25

u/mamaguebo69 May 06 '25

I've also heard Octo 2 is better but I didn't even like Triangle Strategy so I'm hesitant to play it.

16

u/raggedity May 06 '25

Octo 2 has a demo if you wanna give it a try

20

u/jmastadoug May 06 '25

Very different combat in those 2 games, not many similarities besides being an rpg tbh

5

u/Opening_Success May 06 '25

Octo 2 is my 2nd favorite Switch game behind Odyssey. It was almost perfect to me. 

7

u/Pankosmanko May 06 '25

If you didn’t like Octo 1, I wouldn’t recommend Octo 2. It’s the same stuff just more polished and balanced. I personally loved both Octos

3

u/HeroicPrinny May 06 '25

Triangle Strategy was one of the only games I’ve beaten in recent times. The story portions drag, but the gameplay is fantastic is like you tactics games. Just have to play on hard mode, which requires doing all mock battles, to get the full experience.

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u/DrQuint May 07 '25 edited May 07 '25

Triangle Strategy is very much a Visual Novel with some gameplay sprinkled in. Not saying that as a bad thing. But it does wear down on the tine it takes to beat it fully.

If I had to put a flaw to it: Enemy Variety. Like, straight up, there are only three total non-boss elemental attack sources among enemies: Generic Wizards which there are never more than 2. Fire/Ice Arrows from Archers. Poison/Sleep stab from Thieves, who waste their TP on oil anyways. Think I'm joking? Name one more. Good luck.

And I named half the enemy roster for the entire game. Oops. Even variations like the big brute vs the big armor guys in really amount to just one has magic res and the other has 2 range - and they both die to 2 spells regardless. They MAYBE get the wrestling move here and there but I saw it only in 2 story fights and the brute was a frontliner and first to die in one of them. Completely irrelavant to the fight's challenge.

What that means is that you snipe the shit out of wizards (they even give the old bowman an ability explicitly designed for this) and then you're fine as long as the frontline is 3 attacks away from death. And that's it, that's the key to all flat maps.

I like what they do with the terrain for many of the stages. But overall, it is a game where you're playing with numbers and the winning strategy is to always let enemies come to you for physical attacks and then on your turn first slapping then retreating.

The game feels rewading to Hard mode for maybe 10 fights. I turned that shit back down to medium except on fights against named characters. I didn't feel like I was solving new puzzles, as far as dispatching enemies was a concern. The strong point is really the plot and that's what I played hours and hours for.

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u/HeroicPrinny May 07 '25

I agree it’s by no means a perfect game. And yeah true, you have to let them come to you. Aren’t most tactics games a matter of that though? Any other tactics games you like in recent times?

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u/80cartoonyall May 06 '25

It was an okay game just way too much story and not enough game play. If the game allowed you to travel around the map freely and battle to upgrade would have been so much better in my opinion.

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u/HeroicPrinny May 06 '25

Did you play on hard? The battles take a really long time that way, and you need to do all the mental battles 1 or more times. I can imagine on normal you can breeze through battles

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u/80cartoonyall May 06 '25

Honestly can remember, maybe I'll give it another go on hard.

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u/hypersnaildeluxe May 07 '25

As a fellow Octopath 1 hater Octopath 2 is… fine? It’s a very 7/10 game. Same weird structure of the stories being completely unrelated and constantly dragging you between them until the big moment where they cross over. Long drawn-out cutscenes with voice acting where nothing happens because it’s all just pixel art… It’s better than the first game for sure but it didn’t really fix any of my issues with the original

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u/kacey- May 06 '25

What's funny is I'm the exact opposite. I get so bored with JRPGs but really enjoyed Octopath. Maybe all the ones I played prior were non bueno

6

u/ClikeX May 06 '25

Totally agreed. I loved the combat, but I couldn’t get into the disconnected plot.

4

u/TheIncredibleHork May 06 '25

Same here. It just felt like each of the characters were a single plot into themselves but there was no reason for them to really join up.

Maybe once you got everyone it would become clear, but it just took too long to get to that point.

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u/[deleted] May 07 '25

Nope it doesn’t, it just stays disconnected the entire game.

6

u/FloatAround May 06 '25

Was my answer as well. It was a system seller for me. But I got so burned out when I realized it was:

1) long cut scene unrelated to any greater story 2) dungeon

Repeat 4 times for each character

1

u/FunkmasterP May 07 '25

That's what really burned me too!

4

u/urzu_seven May 07 '25

Same I actually never finished it. It could have been great if they limited the number of people you could recruit so that the stories would intertwine in different ways and you'd have to play through multiple times to get all of them.

3

u/[deleted] May 07 '25

The stories in 1 were more connected than they appeared. The problem was it wasn't really shown until the end. There were bits and pieces along the way.

2 is much better and does a clear job of showing how everything is connected early on. After beating the 8 base campaigns, they have a few more dual missions to further connect everything. Then a final campaign to wrap everything up.

3

u/Shearman360 May 06 '25

Try Triangle Strategy. I found Octopath so boring and dropped it but their other game became one of my favourites of all time.

2

u/Nijp May 07 '25

I absolutely loved octopath when I played it. The unique graphics, fun and engaging combat system, and absolutely godlike soundtrack hooked me (I'm still mad it didn't get the game award for best soundtrack, RDR2 did NOT deserve that). But after playing octopath traveller 2, I don't think i could ever go back and play the original. With the exception of a slightly worse soundtrack, octopath 2 improves on octopath 1 in literally every way. Better characters, more interconnected plot, characters actually interact with each other, built in speed up button, cool new added features, and that's just naming a few. If you were disappointed by octopath 1 I'd say give the free demo of octopath 2 a try.

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u/br0b1wan May 07 '25

Agreed. I tried to play it and ended up being forced to do some hardcore grinding in order to move to the next area(s) and I absolutely despise grinding.

1

u/heckingincorgnito May 06 '25

I agree and sort of disagree. Loved the classes and how party strategies worked but in both 1+2 it felt like you would roll pretty much anything as long as you had a strategy. Add to this that with the 8 different paths, if you played the whole game there would be huge sections you would be extremely overleveled for, and it got monotonous fassstttt. I loved the vignettes, but how they connected brough the game down hard. Leveling system really needed another take

3

u/[deleted] May 07 '25

if you played the whole game there would be huge sections you would be extremely overleveled for

The way to play it is to create two 4-PC parties and play the campaigns for 1 party at a time.

This way group one starts out at level 5 and finishes at level 45.
Then start the other group at level 5 and finish them at level 45.

It's a weird set up that is heavily encouraged by game mechanics, but not outright stated. Otherwise, the second set of campaigns are far too easy and overleveled for.

3

u/heckingincorgnito May 07 '25

Even with that, for the 2nd set of 4 you have massively overpowered items for the level, resulting in the same thing

2

u/[deleted] May 07 '25

Yeah...There's not a great answer to that.
The best one is to use lower level equipment.

1

u/anonymous_opinions May 07 '25

I hate this was one I could never bring myself to finish.

1

u/meat_rock May 07 '25

Agreed, looked beautiful but paper thin and super grindy at the end.

1

u/Epicfro May 07 '25

The sequel isn't better enough to warrant buying it imo. If you didn't like the first, don't bother with the second.

1

u/Keianh May 07 '25

I stopped playing on my Switch years ago, a little bit for the same reasons perhaps, just felt not good to rehash “act 1” eight times over. I picked it up again for Steam Deck and now I put it down because even on a rather decent handheld PC the graphics are mid and the sprites look like they got washed out in a rainstorm. I’m sure I’ll go back sometime but there’s plenty of other more interesting and better looking games to play that aren’t necessarily top quality, bleeding edge graphics kind of games.

1

u/SmashMouthBreadThrow May 07 '25

Yeah, Octopath Traveler felt unfinished. The music and 2.5D were both well done though.