The last major press conference of the week was held by Nintendo, who kept their traditional Tuesday afternoon spot. It’s a hard call to say whether Nintendo or Square Enix “won” E3 since both of their presentations were absolutely filled with amazing content, and almost no filler. But I think Square Enix might have had a greater number of titles I’m excited for, Nintendo had a much wider variety of games that I think people, in general, are going to be incredibly excited for. Remakes? Got those. Classic franchises brought back? Nailed that one too. Fun family/multiplayer stuff? You betcha. PC titles that Nintendo fans might have missed out on? Double check. The Nintendo Direct was only 45 minutes long, but they packed over 20 games into this amount of time, with more info coming at the Nintendo Treehouse. So what’s the most amazing stuff in my opinion? Well, I’m glad you asked!
Dragon Quest XI S: Come on. You know I’m excited about this. I don’t have to say a word about it, but I will anyway. I’ll keep it brief. It looks like it’s going to have new content, and the 16/8 bit-style mode is what really sells me on it. I never did get the True Ending, since my PS4 crash corrupted my save file. Never did get back to it. But this version has enough new content/visuals that I will without a doubt be diving back into one of my favorite Dragon Quest games of all time. Trailer: Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of An Elusive Age
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics: If you had told me that The Dark Crystal, Jim Henson’s incredible creation was not only going to get a Netflix series but a video game a few years back, I’d have still said you were mad. But here we are, getting a turn-based tactical RPG in the Dark Crystal universe, set in the new series’ timeline, and it’s coming out in 2019. The Lord works in mysterious ways, my friends. Trailer: The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics
The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening: OH. MY. LANTA. I need this in my life, and I need it right damn now. The animation style is incredible, and it’s one of the best Legend of Zelda games (and potentially one of the most overlooked), and it has an awesome, fun new feature: You can build your own dungeons to challenge, offering infinite gameplay. This is the Chamber Dungeon system, which lets you complete objectives by arranging dungeon rooms. It’s coming to life on September 20th, 2019, and that cannot get here fast enough. What a packed fall it’s going to be! As an aside, holy damnit! The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is getting a direct sequel! They must really want to use that version of Hyrule again, and that engine (both of which were delightful). It’s pretty rare in my estimation, for a Zelda game to get an immediate, direct sequel. Trailer: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Luigi’s Mansion 3: Now, I haven’t really played the Luigi’s Mansion games, but I think Luigi’s awesome, and he deserves more time in the spotlight. Looks like similar gameplay from the previous games, but it looks gorgeous, and it’s a game about Luigi! But now he can smash the ghosts while he’s sucking them up and can fire a plunger from it, then pull it back to destroy objects (or some ghosts). If he’s being ganged up on, he can use the Burst function to deal with that situation. He also has a slime clone, Gooigi. For obstacles too great for Luigi, you can use Gooigi, and he can also be used as a co-op partner. There is also the Scare Scraper mode that is can be used as an online/in-house co-op/multiplayer mode. It’s coming in 2019 also, so that’s big stuff.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance: The Black Order: We get to see a bit of gameplay at least, and some of the cast of characters. Elektra, Ghost Rider, Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, Nova, Spider-Gwen, Thor, Nightcrawler (and a bunch of X-Men), The Guardians, the Avengers. I am a gigantic fan of the Ultimate Alliance games and having such a potentially huge roster (even if much of it seems like it’s going to be DLC), it ought to have the ARPG gameplay that made Ultimate Alliance a hit in its own day. Thanos is the big bad, as is made evident by the name of the subtitle, “The Black Order”. It essentially looks like an Infinity Gauntlet game, with modern characters. I’m totally on board with that. It’s coming sooner than I thought – July 19th.
Trials of Mana Remaster: Seiken Densetsu 3 is a game I’m vaguely familiar with, even though it never came to America. I played a few fan-translations back in the early 2000s but never did complete it. It’s the third Mana game, that I thought we were going to get (but instead got the North America-designed Secret of Evermore – not that it’s a bad game, mind). It’s a complete rework from the ground up, but I hope it doesn’t fall into any of the trappings that the Secret of Mana remake did (tons of bugs, glitches, et cetera). This came with another announcement, that the “Collection of Mana” that was teased in Japan earlier this year, is now available in a digital format (with a physical release coming this year). That will have the first three “Mana” games in it, and I’m so excited about that. Trailer: Trials of Mana
