Maylmilae Wrote:Have you played the DS game? Camelot already followed up the amazing GBA Golden Sun games... just with a reeaally bad flop. I really love the series (I have all of them complete in box!) but ooph the DS entry is not great! I'm sure Camelot is scared to touch that franchise again!
I think DD gets treated unfairly among fans. It's not a bad game IMO, just not a great game. Having played almost 70+ JRPGs over the past 15 years, I have seen really bad games. Like if you played Lunar: Dragon Song or Lufia: The Ruins of Lore from start to finish, you'd have more fun ripping off your own fingernails. DD has a bunch of flaws, but for me it's not terrible. Terrible is something else. DD is just average in the grand scheme of things (slightly above average for me, somewhere just above an 8/10). It missed the mark on becoming a great hit like the other two GS games, but you can't always strike gold. Still an enjoyable game for many people I've talked to, and FWIW the 3D battles pushed what I thought the NDS could do. And you could even speed them up! Overworld 3D was meh, but better than a bunch of other DS games.
Although, commercially, yeah, it was an utter failure. Not even gonna lie, DD just didn't resonate with people, which may have been the biggest crime in many eyes. The numbers never backed up the game. Even so, it's ridiculous how Nintendo and Camelot refuse to update that IP and just left us with a cliff hanger. If you fail once, is it really worth quitting altogether? Plenty of other franchises have had their own "misses". I'd argue that despite nearly 14 million units sold, the Wii U itself was a miss, yet Nintendo came back punching with the Switch. I know GS will probably come back later, but I keep asking how much later? It's not like they can't fix what they messed up.
@Admentus - Everyone I talked to knew all of Nintendo's online stuff was going to suck, based on what info had been made known. Nintendo has never been seriously invested in making modern online services. It's just enough that you can hold Smash and Splatoon matches; everything else beyond basic multiplayer (and I mean basic) is like shooting in the dark with Nintendo. They used to be pretty innovative. Stellaview was a very impressive attempt at downloadable content, and the GB Mobile Adapter pushed what handhelds could do online. The 64DD also had lots of potential (but Nintendo never delivered on most of the good features they promised). After that, they basically abandoned all things online during Gen 6 and only reapproached it semi-seriously with Gen 7. But even then they were slow to adopt and adapt (two words: Friend Codes). Besides barebones multiplayer for stuff like Smash and Mario Kart, and their online store, they've just about missed every other mark. I log-on to PSN every now and then, and it's just worlds apart.
I think it really has to do with their corporate culture. It's just especially slow to change in terms of long-term strategy. Which is odd given that the game developers and engineers themselves are always making innovative things (e.g. Nintendo Labo came out of nowhere for me, 100% unexpected, but it was "classic" Nintendo ingenuity at work). It's also a case of Nintendo's corporate culture not really caring about customer criticism (especially western criticism, I gather).