The Ringer-Verse - “Who Won the Day?” Battle Royale: ‘Dragon’s Dogma 2,’ ‘Rise of the Ronin,’ and ‘Princess Peach: Showtime!’ | Button Mash

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Ben, Jessica Clemons, and Matt James react to the trailer for ‘Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra,’ the news that Larian Studios will not be making more ‘Baldur’s Gate,’ and a report that Sony has paused production of the PSVR2. Then they break down three big new games that came out on the same day (‘Dragon’s Dogma 2,’ ‘Rise of the Ronin,’ and ‘Princess Peach: Showtime!’) in a spoiler-free discussion to determine which one won the day (22:23) Host: Ben Lindbergh Guests: Jessica Clemons and Matt James Producer: Devon Renaldo Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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doctor about Trimfaya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit Trimfairadio.com. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business. And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business to keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum Business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Welcome into the Ringerverse, your Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, a senior editor for the Ringer, and today I have reached into the Rift to recruit two high-level pawns. Excuse me, two high-level podcast guests who have minds of their own and aren't just NPCs who mindlessly served the ERISA.

Definitely did not mean to imply that. But I have pressed down on the D-pad and said to me, and here they are. Ringer Deputy Art Lead Matt James is here. Hello, Matt. Hey, Ben. And with us once more is former co-hosts, current friend, the rock star of new rock stars. Jessica Clemens. Hello, Jessica.

Hi, I'm here. And I played a lot of video games. And now my brain, all I care about is killing. Well, one of those games, oh, you know what? There's murder in all of them, to be honest. It's bloodier in some than others. We'll get to that. But we have all been playing a few games.

That makes three of us, because a few. months ago, the three of us got together to talk about a trio of games that had come out recently at the time, cocoon, Jusant, and Slay the Princess. We didn't all agree on how good those games were, but we did have a good discussion about it. Definitely not holding any grudges about things that were said on that podcast by either of you. Okay. Today, we are doing something similar because last Friday, March 22nd, three big games came out. Maybe the three most anticipated March 2nd. Maybe the three most anticipated March releases, all dropping on one day. We have played them all. And today, we are pitting them against each other in a head-to-head-to-head battle royale to determine who won the day.

Dragon's Dogma 2, Rise of the Ronan, or Princess Peach Showtime. You can guess which of those three is the least violent. Maybe one of them stands out. One of these is not quite like the others. Something for everyone here. We will keep this spoiler free because most people have not been marathoning three games since last Friday. But there's all consoles and systems represented M-rated games and e-rated games, sequels and originals. Three games enter. Only one leaves.

I guess they'll all leave, but only one will leave having won the day, according to Buttonmesh. And here's one thing I will say. Humans are not meant to play three games that come out on the same day, two of which are gigantic. You were probably just alluding to this, Jess. This is tough. It's tough to play. three games that come out on the same day.

I don't know if it's a great idea to release three big games on the same day. But the perfect part of doing that is having three people on a podcast that can all lead one. And it seems like Matt did a very deep dive in one. Matt spent dozens to hundreds of hours playing a video game. That doesn't sound like him. He would never find time in his schedule for that.

Very busy. My wife kept walking in while I was playing the games to prep for this podcast. and every time she came in the room, I was playing a different game. And she was like, how many video games do you play? And she said, you're supposed to play one game for one to two years and then move on. She was kind of kidding those semi tongue-in-cheek, but not really, because that kind of is how she plays games.

Like she'll get into a Breath of the Wild or Hollow Night or something and just want to do absolutely everything that you can do in that game. And so she will just be immersed in it for months, maybe years at a time. And I think that is how people play games more typically than let's cram three releases because they're all coming out on the same day, which is backed up by data because GDC just happened, the Game Developers Conference, and there was a report there from New Zoo, which puts out data about video games. And they announced that from 2021 through 2023, 66 titles accounted for 80% of all of players' time

on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. That does not include China or India, but 37 other markets. And also, old games kind of dominated the new ones. So last year, more than 60% of playing time from the people they surveyed were playing games that were at least six years old. So your GTA-5s and your Fortnite's, right?

That's why it's tough to break into this market, because when people find a game they like, they just play that game for years and years and years. And so it's especially difficult if two other big games are coming out on the same day, you are. What is a normal person to do? Yeah, I wouldn't be able to speak to that as someone who's not normal. Play them all.

Yeah. Well, this probably won't reflect most people's experience. But hopefully it'll be helpful. This will be service journalism because people can hear us talk about these and then they can say, hey, I only have time for one or I only have time for two. I will check out the ones that the button masher's like. Take our words for it. You can trust us implicitly.

And I guess fortunately, the good news maybe, is that things do sort of slow down after this. My theory, you know, people always wonder why to all of these things come out at the same time? People are looking ahead to the June TV schedule and saying, really, the acolyte, the boys, hot D, all coming out at the same time. It's like hot nerd autumn from 2022 all over again. And in those cases, yeah, it seems sort of silly to go head to head against another blockbuster. but I guess it's partly that a lot of these things, it's just hard to rearrange because they're in the pipeline for years, especially with video games, which take forever to develop.

And then I think part of it is that in the video game world, a lot of fiscal years end at the end of March. And so my theory is that everyone is just trying to pump out whatever they're working out, just get in under the wire, get those games out in the fiscal year. I guess it was also Pax East this past. weekend. So maybe that's why. Are you trying to imply the decisions in the video game development community are based on financials? Is that what you're trying to tell me? I know. It's all about art, but occasionally

commerce creeps into the picture too. Yes. So things will slow down a little bit. We will get a bit of a breather and a respite. And that's good because you will have time to actually play these games over the next couple months. So since we are three people discussing three games, we figured it would be appropriate if we let off by chatting briefly about three recent news items. And first, Jess, I want to hear your thoughts on a new trailer that just dropped for Marvel 1943 Rise of Hydra, which does not come out until next year, but look sort of sexy. Tell me what you think. It does look very sexy.

And that was the first thing I thought about it and the only thing I thought about it. Just sexy. I said, ooh, this looks sexy. It looks pretty. It's more so that, like, I know that it's like an original story and it's new, but I feel like we spent so much time with Hydra. They're really depending on people not actually thinking too much about, like, phase one and two of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

And so that's the part where I'm like, okay, I've seen Captain America a lot. I don't really need to play as Captain America. I think the more interesting part of this is the ancestor of, like, Tachala of Black Panther during the time and what he was doing. and that's where I'm like, okay, so 50% of the game I'm very interested in. The other half with Captain America Fighting Hydra I don't really care for. But it does look very pretty. I'm going to play it.

Yes. How am I not going to play it? This is of interest to our audience, so we will certainly cover it one way or another. And granted, this is the story trailer that came out. It's not necessarily in-game footage that we're getting here. But it does look pretty impressive, Matt. Any thoughts? Very impressive.

I actually put the trailer on from my... wife just to see how far into it we would get before she goes, wait, this is a video game? And it was a while. Yeah. It looks good. We've talked about the trouble that some superhero games have had. Obviously, we talked about Suicide Squad, Jess, and some of the others that either haven't been good or just haven't sold super well. Almost everything except insomnihack, frankly.

So this game, there's a lot writing on it. I guess we might also get Wolverine from Insomniac next year, too. But this game coming from Skydance New Media, which is Amy Hennig's development studio. And she's sort of a legend, right? Just going back to Jack 3 and the Uncharted games, et cetera. But it's been a while since she's shipped a game. She worked on Project Radtag, the Star Wars game that looked promising, but was then canceled. And now Skydance is working on a Star Wars game.

too. So they've got both of these big Disney properties, and we will see what comes of it. We don't know anything really about the Star Wars game. Maybe it's a revival of Ragtag, but how this game does, maybe will be sort of a sign of things to come. And yeah, they brought on Mark Bernardin, the writer, TV and comics writer, to work on an original story for this game. I'm interested in the setting. So it's early yet. It's far away, but it's pretty and I'm excited. Same. All right. Next up, we have some news about a game that is not coming out, or at least is not being developed by a certain studio. Larion, which developed Baldersgate 3, basically everyone's game of the year last year, has announced that they are not making any more Baldersgate. They started developing some DLC for Baldersgate 3, and then they were like, you know what?

we're not into this. Just collectively as a studio, we're going through the motions. Our heart is not in this project. And so they decided they are not making any more content for Baldricks Gate 3. And they are not making Baldur's Gate 4 either. Presumably someone will, the D&D license will go to someone else. But Larian's like, you know what?

Mission accomplished. We did it. We came. We saw. We conquered. We're done. And now we are looking for new horizons. We're moving on to a new property that they have not.

disclosed yet. So Jess, you love this game. Are you admiring of the fact that they're moving on? Are you disappointed that there won't be more Larian-made Baldur's Gate? I'm sad, but what you said is truly what makes me be like, no, they're right. If the heart's not in it, don't do it. Please don't, because I think your reason you put, the reason the game was so good is you put your heart into it. You put your foot into it. That game was so freaking good. I'm sad that there's not going to be like any DLC or whatever, but like I'm also like, I'd rather it be really great.

And it's going to be really hard to beat something that was already fantastic. And if you're not, and if you're thinking too hard, it's like, uh, never mind. We just won't do it.

My roommate, though, is very upset. We got in an argument about it this weekend. That's another game that people are probably still playing and might still be playing for, it's like, do we really need DLC?

I'm still on Act 3 or whatever. Oh my God. They've released some content, of course, and they sort of improved the ending in some ways. They've tinkered a little bit, but now they're moving on. Matt, what did you make of this news? I was just shocked that a video game studio had the goodwill to make a decision not based purely on financials. This is like a story you just don't hear very often anymore.

Yeah, I'm sure they all just assume like, well, we had a great success. I guess that means we're going to be working on this for pretty much the rest of our lives. Right. So kudos to them for making a decision that shows everyone who works there how much they care about what everyone is doing. Yeah, I really respect this. It's such an outlier. It's such an exception, not just in video games, but in media in general, where you have a smash hit that everyone loves, that sells really well. And you just say, all right, we did it. Next up, next project, we're doing something totally different. That never happens because the industry is just so unsettled. just layoffs left and right, if you have a hit, you typically double down. You capitalize, you triple down, you quadrupled down. You're just making more of those games forever.

You see that with Insomniac, which obviously has had a lot of successes over the years, but the Spider-Man games are huge, and now it's just like Insomniac makes Marvel games forever and ever for the next 10 years, right? And that's nice because they're really good at that, but there is some sort of sad aspect to it, you know, just like I want to see what they could create out of whole cloth, just start from scratch. And you can imagine that there'd be some burnout if you're working there. And it's like, I mean, we love these games, but another one, you know, these same characters, these same worlds. So I really respect this. And maybe it means Baldur's Gate 4 won't be as good. But that's okay. You know, it was a classic. And maybe Larian will make something else special next that we aren't even expecting. I bet they will. Yeah. And I guess one reason that they're able to do this is that they are privately owned. You know, this is the rare exception, a company that's big enough to make AAA-type games,

but doesn't really have to cater to the will of shareholders or some Embracer Group-style conglomerate, right? And that might be why Baldersgate 3 was so good to begin with. Like, they took their time. They made it the way they wanted to make it. and now they're not making it the way that they want to make it. So it's really rare that you have a studio that's set up like that and has the size to make games like this. But I'm glad there's at least one of them out there.

And I look forward to whatever they do next. All right. Our third and final news item is also about something that is not coming out. And that is more PSVR. Sony has pressed pause on the PSVR 2. it is not selling well and they are not manufacturing anymore reportedly

according to Bloomberg for now because they don't want to flood the market the supply is there the demand not so much and we have hinted, teased threatened but at some point we got to do a VR episode this is not the one but

this was I think of interest to all of us so Jess what did you think when you saw this announcement? Yeah there's too many VRs there's too many VRs there's too many people coming out with them. And the Apple one is like somehow, and why I say somehow, just because it's so expensive, just people are buying it. So I think people are like leaning that one before this one. I'm glad that they pause production on it because I don't think it would have sold, period, well enough at least. Also, you guys do a VR episode and you guys

get free VR sets. I want to be on it. I want to be sick with motion sickness. Actually, the Apple is pretty cool because you can just slide in your, your prescription. So I don't have to wear my glasses. That was a running bit on my old achievement-oriented pods with Jason Concepcion, where we kind of just threw it out there. Hey, anyone want to give us VR? Never happened. No one ever did.

I will wear it the entire podcast. No one can see me wearing it, but you will know I'm wearing it. You will know. Matt, are you sad that production has stalled on the PSVR too? A little bit. I kind of believe in the potential of VR, but I think this is kind of a chicken or the egg scenario like did it fail because no one is into VR or did it fail because they weren't making games for it?

Like, and maybe both is true. In fact, that's probably the most likely scenario since VR has been trying to happen for a very long time and just cannot break through to the mainstream. But yeah, maybe if they had made some games, it would have been a thing that sold. Yeah, you know, that's usually a pretty. important stuff. I'm not an expert, but make games, sell consoles. It's hard to skip the make games part. Yeah. What if they were just making the consoles, but there's no games to play on it. I mean, I grew up mad on that part where I'm like, yeah, if I'm paying this much,

like, I want to play games on it. And the only game I can play, my nephew loves playing this like, chef simulator. And I'm like, you're just going to play this over and over again? He's like, yeah. And so I'm like, I'm like, one game for two years. For two years. I'm like, oh, my baby needs more games. My son needs more games. Yeah, I could not be more in the market for this thing, and yet I haven't gotten one, and I'm not even all that interested in getting one. What are they enticing me with? I know that they had a Horizon launch title, but it was sort of a stripped-down, not really a system seller. It's not the Half-Life Alex of the PSVR 2, and you can't play Half-Life Alex on the PSVR2 either. So I have an original, and even though that was a much more

primitive machine. I really loved it. I had a good time with it. And they built up a pretty decent library with that thing. A lot more support for that. Yeah. The problem is no backwards compatibility. And I get why, because it's a totally different technology. But it's just such a difficult proposition to get you to spend several hundred dollars on this thing. Of course, on top of the price of the PS5, which I already have. But if you don't, then you're looking at the PS5 and the PSVR2. And you're just not getting enough to play, you know? There's like so little that I feel like I'm really missing out on and it stinks. And it's not all VR headsets that are flopping.

I mean, MetaQuest is doing well, right? But there's just no support for this system. And it's just a really tough sell, clearly, literally, they are having a hard time selling it. So I don't know how that changed. The next one, that'll be the one. That one's going to pop off though for sure. Yes. Sony has hinted, has floated the possibility.

of PC compatibility for this thing so that maybe you would be able to use it with a PC to some extent. They haven't really specified exactly how that would work. But then again, if you're just going to get a PC headset, there are other options out there. So I don't know where you go from here, but it's kind of just DOA. And I'm sad about it because I do want VR eventually to be affordable and be enough of a non-hassel that people will get into it because I am still.

kind of a comfort. It's just so cool. You know, when you play it and it's done well, if you don't get nauseated, it's really awesome. So I hope they figure it out. Once they have like a real full functioning ready player one universe, I will do it. And I will disappear and no one will ever hear from me again unless you need to get a hold of me through the VR headset.

And I want a world like this that's not Roblox. I need something for me. I want to be a dinosaur running around. Yeah. But yeah, I need that first. hopefully we don't have to have the dystopia in order to have no no we do our headsets that people own you know like do we need the the ready player one snow crash kind of world where the real life is just so horrible that we all just want to plug in well that's what i do video games for anyways so it doesn't change anything

it's just whether you wear something on your head or not what i can see it my eyes are open down bad the world is right now oh god All right, programming reminders. No PSPR2 is coming out, but we have plenty of podcasts coming out. This week on the Ring ofverse Feed, a double dose of Midnight Boys. Poo-Pew, Pew, Pew, Pew. We've got Midnight Boys on Invincible and X-Men 97 and Godzilla X-Kong. Is it X-Kong?

Do we say X versus? I don't know how to read this time, but that's how it's written. Okay. They don't say the X, but the X is in it. All right. The X-Kong. silent. Well, they'll be talking about that, giving you their instant reactions. And then, Jess, you will be back on Mint Edition next week for another Godzilla-Kong-inspired episode. You're

doing a monster bracket. Yeah, dude, I know too much about that world of King Kong and Godzilla. It's unhealthy. Yeah. Also, this week, over on House of R, Mal and Joe, are doing their three-body problem deep dive. They've already done the book club. Now they'll be talking about the Netflix. show and later in the week they will also be discussing X-Men 97. I know you're a big fan of X-Men 97, Jess. I love that show so much. I'm literally about to get a tattoo from a quote from that show already. Wow. I'm very embarrassed how quick that happened. Oh yeah, we've got to know what it is now. Are you ready for it? Yeah. It's when Cyclops says, give them the forecast and it's storm underneath. So it's going to say, give them the forecast,

and it's going to have a storm in an omega-level threat level. That's technically a Cyclops quote. Technically, which is honestly redeeming for me as someone that hated Cyclops for a very long time. Did you stop? I like him now. I like him a little bit. I like his little polo, very white suburban dad look.

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Learn more at Wells Fargo.com forward slash active cash terms of play. All right. It's time for our showdown here. So what we're going to do is we're going to talk about each of these games. and then at the end, we will give you our individual rankings and our collective ranking, and we will establish which game won the day. By the way, I meant to say, you can email us, contact us at ringerverse gaming at gmail.com for all your thoughts on everything we're talking about today, what you want us to talk about in the future.

Let's start with Rise of the Ronan, which is an open world action RPG set in 19th century Japan developed by Team Ninja, legendary developers of Ninja Guidon and Neo and Dead Are Alive and Wohong, etc. Developed by Team Ninja, published by Sony, for the PS5 only. We all spent lots of time in this game, although probably not as much time as one could spend in this game

because that's a lot. This is another very large game. Jess, you may have played this more than either matter. I did. So let's have you lead off. What did you think of Rise of the Ronan? I love Rise of the Ronan. I love Rise of the Ronan, you guys.

This game was so fun. I think you were talking earlier about how like we have the boys, Hot D, all these shows coming out and no one really like the programming for games is like years planned and developed. But I was like right off the heels of like Blue Eyed Samurai and Shogun. And now I'm playing this. now I'm immersed in it. I was like, I'm not happy with like the plots of Shogun and

Blue-Eyte Samurai, but I was like, oh, I'm going to kill these red coats. Like, I was going in. And I just loved it. I love being able. It did have a lot of storage stuff that I know that we kind of get irritated with. There's like

literal minuscule things that I was like, let me see if I even have to read this. And I didn't. There were like two things in your storage you never have to do. But I love that you get different weapons. Every weapon comes with different fighting techniques, and you can level up those fighting techniques. So I really was paying close attention to every single weapon,

which was like maybe 10 plus, and trying to perfect a technique for each of them and explore those. And the open world part is very fun. You don't have to stay close to the story at all, but it's so fun to follow the story. I played it for three days straight, and I had to turn off. I had to turn it off, and it was the hardest thing to turn it off to play Princess Peach is game.

game. But I love to rise of rodent. I felt like I was playing like Eldon Ringbo Samarise instead of magic. Well, that's high grace. I know. I think I get addicted to these because it's the same I got with like Diablo. It's the same I got, not with Boulder's Gate, but like Diablo and any kind of MMOs, I kind of get so into it for a very long time, especially if I can make my character more me or more whatever as the story goes on. So I did. Yeah. It's funny that you mentioned

Blue Eye Samurai and Shogun because those were very much on my mind as I was playing this. Of course, this takes place a few centuries after those shows do, but it's Japan, it's opening up to the West or will it open up to the West, right? So some sort of broad similarities.

And of course, people are comping it to previous games, not just, say, the way of the samurai games, but Ghost of Tsushima, right? So when you have Blue Eye Samurai and Shogun and Ghost of Sushima all just in the past couple of years, like it's a tough, tough act to follow, you know? Like it's sort of saturation. And it was hard for me not to compare to those things.

And that's a really high bar to clear. And that's not really fair. So if you just judge it on its own merits, then you might come away with a more positive takeaway than if you're thinking and constantly comparing to those things that you played and you've watched. that were great. Matt, if you're evaluating it in isolation, what was your verdict? In isolation, well, that was my main problem, then because Joseph Tsushima is one of my favorite games

of the past decade. Yeah. And it was impossible for me to not think about that game constantly while I was playing this. And I also was thinking about like a dragon, Eishon, which I also played recently, which takes place in the same era, and even has one of the same characters in it, actually,

since we're lightly based on history in this game. I say lightly. I thought that Rise of the Ronan, I felt that it is a good game. I think it brings very little new to the table, but it does everything either fine to good. I don't think any part of it, any element of it is bad. I don't think that any element of it is outstanding.

I think there are going to be people who the flow of this, they vibe with it hard. There'll be people who like just... I think we're talking to one. This is a 9.0 for some people. But for me, it was like a 7.9. Like just under 8, like... I'll take that.

Like the graphics... 76 on Metacritic right now? I'm not a graphics guy. I'm really not. Yeah. But... Yeah. man, you're wandering around and there's there's like wood crates everywhere.

And when you break them, there's nothing in them. And at least in Dragon's Dogmat, too, which has a bit of an antiquated nature to it as well, which we'll talk about. When you break the boxes, sometimes there's something in there. There's an apple that will go rotten after an hour of me playing the game. Hey, not every box is full, Matt. You know, there are empty boxes out there. Not every box is empty, though. That is true.

Why would we even need the boxes if they were all empty? It's a good game. It's a good game. It's just I feel like I played these open world games for so many years. And Gosa Sushima was just knocking the whole time being like, hey, I did this better, huh? Yeah. Well, I think I had a similar reaction, not even comparing it to any one particular game,

but comparing it to the past decade of games. because it really did feel like kind of a mishmash. I guess you could say take the good elements of various other games, but just didn't really feel like it iterated or advanced on any of those or built on them or perfected them. It was just sort of a feeling for me of I've played this before, which is not to say I wasn't having any fun or that I was sick of it or that I wanted to put it down necessarily.

But it did feel like a game that has been in the oven for a long time. And it has, right? They started developing this game in 2015, and it kind of felt like a game out of 2015 to me. I mean, it looks like that, frankly, you know, as you were just alluding to, there are moments where you get picturesque scenes,

but for the most part, it did have a very PS4 feeling to it, if that, you know, like the sky boxes in this game, you know, like what the clouds in the sky look like, and the water, probably some of the worst relative to its era, relative to its competition in the current console generation that I've played recently, just kind of a primitive-looking foliage.

You know, Matt, when we did the pod on the Avatar game, and we were saying how usually when you get right up and close to plants in games, like suddenly everything turns like jagged and polygonal and 2D, but not in that game, and we were so impressed that it held up to close inspection. Not this game.

It does not hold up at all. And that's graphically. And as you said, you can ignore that, you know? The boxes look great. Those are square as hell. The boxes are extremely empty,

just like real life occasionally. But I think the bigger problem to me was, like, people have been waiting for an open world game from Team Ninja, and we finally got it. And it just feels like

a lot of other open world games that we played. It just feels very much like the template. I wish they had a different subject instead of one that was so well-traveled because I do think that they're capable of making a good open-world game. But, you know, first attempt didn't knock it out of the park for me. And a big part of that was just I couldn't stop thinking about other games that I played that were right here. And like, even like I'm running around chasing down these cats to pet these cats.

And normally, this is right up my alley. But while I'm petting these cats in this game, I'm thinking, man, you know what, though? And ghosts of sushi, I had to chase these foxes around. They take me to the shrine. And then there's like another element to it aside from like, find the fox pet it, right? And then that's the kind of thing that this game constantly did of like, you know, they'd send you off to do a side quest, right? And it would be like, all right, go over there.

And this guy needs you to like kill some stuff. Very much. Yeah, deliver something. And when you get there, you kill people. and, yeah, it's just, it's lots of killing people, which the killing people is fun. Oh, yeah, no complaints. That's the highlight, I think. The combat, I mean, unsurprisingly for a team ninja game, did you enjoy that combat system as much as I did, Jess?

Because, like, it's complex, but not overwhelming. It is a hard game. It's sort of soulsy. You know, it has, like, the banners that you touch, kind of a soul's-like element and even on an easier difficulty level, still challenging. but not unfairly challenging, I felt like. Yeah, if you do the level above story or beginner, it is actually kind of hard. Yeah. It's very difficult because I went back and changed it to an easier level.

Yeah, me too. But I love the combat part. That's why I said at the beginning, I was like, you get like a bunch of weapons that you can perfect and each one has different like, Chi, Jin, whatever, like technique that you can get better with them at. And I was like, that's what I was just doing. I was like, I was fighting the entire time. I love having finisher moves where I cut people's heads off.

I used a musket and got headshots clean every single time. That was so much decapitation in this game. I loved it. They would run at me and I would pull out that musket and be like, give me just one second. And then their head would fly off and I was like, I'm having too much fun with this. Usually headshots do more damage,

but they do not do decapitation damage typically. But in this game, you get a headshot. Your heads are rolling. bow, bow, bow, bow, bow. Very, very compelling in terms of, like, the historical impact of guns. It's very much felt in this game. Oh, yeah, because every time you had to reload it, you were like, clogging it or like doing the thing with it. And I was like, hurry up, he's coming.

The bosses were very difficult. I will say, yeah, I guess listening to this, I'm like, yeah, those points are very valid. I think I play all games as, like, a tank. So I was like, I played this game the same way where I'm like, oh, I'm just going to go fight. I was like, I'm just going to fight. I didn't touch it. I love cats. And the fighting's good.

Yeah. Yeah. I stayed away from the cats at all times because they just made a lot of noise and would sound off for things that I had to do. I rode the horse through town most of the time and bought new horses. So I would like purposefully kill strong people to steal their armor. Like that's all I just did throughout the game. But yeah.

And I guess as someone that doesn't, this isn't probably, and I'm trying to think because I've played a lot of ridiculous games, I think this is my first samurai. game period. And so that's why I'm so into it. And I guess like, I need to play the game that Matt's talking about because maybe I'll be like, oh, this is nothing. Like, this is way better than Rise of Ronan. But I've never. Don't play that till you're done with Ronan, though. But I've never. So if you're an audience person that doesn't play many, but you liked the, not the atmosphere. I don't want to keep furthering the atmosphere, blue-eyed samurai. The show was horrible for the atmosphere. And so it was Shogun. But if you're a first person, first time playing like Samurai, I think it's

very fun. And it's easier to understand. It's just like there's a lot of stuff in that storage I remember going through and being like, I don't need to look at the encyclopedia. I don't need to look at my bonds. Why am I friends with these people that are on the opposite team as me? Yeah. I like being a part of the

like anti-shogunates. Like I was like, oh yeah, I hate the red coats. There is a lot of open world bloat and map markers and checking stuff off and side quests that I didn't find particularly compelling. But I did enjoy and appreciate some of the quality of life things that they put in

here to just make stuff a little less annoying, you know? For instance, yeah, you get a lot of stuff, but it kind of gets automatically removed or like it just goes to your inventory automatically and you can just kind of forget about it or it's easy to see what is useless that you can discard and little things like just getting on your horse without having to press a button. If you're playing this thing for 50, 60 hours, you really do appreciate that sort of thing. Just like Rayberth. Yeah, right. And, you know, like the horses will take you where you're going to go.

They go. Those horses go. They do, which is very unlike Dragon's Dogma. I think these make for an interesting contrast. And also like endless sprint, you know, like this game, it is, it's like kind of realistic in some ways, but then, yeah, you have the constant decapitation. You have like money bags lying around, you know, it's not just empty boxes, but it's just money bags, just like you're picking up power-ups in a game from 20 years ago or something. And then you have endless sprinting. And yeah,

like, I guess it's more realistic to have stamina and have a bar that wears down like Dragon's Dogma 2. But when you have a gigantic world like this, I got up appreciate it, you know? I just want to get from place to place and there is a lot of fast travel and there is a lot of skipping. And also like if you die and you probably will die a lot, you never have to watch a cutscene again or even skip the cutscene. You know, it'll just like port you right into the fight where you were just dying. So like little things like that, it did appreciate. I will say I forgot. I was loving the violence and playing this as a fighter so much. I kept skipping the dialogue. And then I was like, oh, they're asking me a question.

And I would just choose one of the answers that I thought maybe I would say. And then it'd be like, damn, this person doesn't like you anymore. And I was like, fuck. Damn it. Trying to be friends with these people. Trying to get gifts from them. But yeah, so don't skip all the dialogue. There is a lot of dialogue.

But if you played like, I'm not trying to compare it, but I'm like, if you play Final Fantasy, I think you can deal with the dialogue. Yeah. Also, as a dog guy, I will just say lots of cats to pet. But also lots of dogs to kill, which is not a way. You don't have to kill all the dogs in the game, but there are a lot that you do have to kill. Definitely a cat person game. It's definitely a cat person game.

And I'm more of a dog guy. Well, those dogs are attacking us. I know. I'm like, I didn't want to decapitate the dog, but I had to. No choice. She's already deep in the propaganda. Got here. Give me the musket.

Give it a musket. That musket, I'm sorry. You can only hold like six bullets at the beginning. but I was still like decapitating. Decaptain. I know. It's weird. It's like,

it's a sword fighting game, and it's very good at that. And yet, I really loved the rare shooting that you do in this game. It's like, should this have been a shooter? No.

But also, shooting was kind of cool. Why? Oh, okay. So sort of archaic in its graphics, in its structure.

Also, it's like sort of awkwardly, like you can tell that this is a company that usually does more linear games because you get the open world, but then it'll switch into more linear stages,

you know, like more the combat areas that you get in Neo or Ninja Guidon, for instance, and it's kind of like grafted together. So sometimes sort of awkward, but a lot of bang for your buck here. Yeah. It will keep you entertained.

Yes. I don't think it's a great game, but it does a lot of things competently at worst. So that's fun to be had. There's definitely fun to be had. My not so ringing you. endorsement. I'm not going to say, yeah, not going with Eldon Ring with Samurai, but.

No, I was, it was, it was dark souls. But I was like, I love Eldon Ring, but I was also like, I've never played a samurai game. And I am literally venturing as a samurai and stabbing people. It's kind of assassin's creedy. I wasn't true like it. No, it's not. There was much more sneaking and badness in that game. It's true.

I guess less decapitation. in a size of screen generally. If I can decapitate like that, and Assassin's Creed, I might like it. But no, I do not like it. All right. Let's pivot to our second game, and we will stick with open world action RPGs here,

except we will travel from 19th century Japan to a fantasy world, and we will go to Dragon's Dogma 2, which is developed and published by Capcom for all consoles. Well, not Switch. Switch would spontaneously combust if you tried to play this game on it, but Windows, PS5, Xbox, Series SX. It is the sequel to 2012's Dragon's Dogma,

which is kind of a cult favorite. This game better receive so far and probably more popular and better selling. It's not quite like Hell Divers to Hell Divers 2, but it may be sort of similar in the mainstream success of this game, even though the lineage, the DNA is definitely similar to the original. So, Matt, I think this time, you put the most time into this game. So give us your thoughts.

Are you going to go with an Eldon Ring with something else? Oh, my God, do not make fun of me. I use it as an example. It was just an example. You're excited for the DLC. Coming later this summer. We'll talk about that then. They're going to eat me alive.

And I love Eldon Ring. I was just using Sam, I know. Matt, go. Matt, hurry up. This game is, Definitely for people who like Eldon Ring. Yes. I'll say that.

Yeah. It's for people who like The Witcher 3. It's for people who like a sense of adventure, who like a game where you're out in a world, you're learning the lore, you're making discoveries, you're going off the beaten path and being wowed by the things that you find. It's a game that doesn't hold your hand. It's a game that really exemplifies the concept of fuck around and find out. Yes.

There are things about this game that when you, you tell me them, I say, that sounds bad and I do not like that. Yes. Fast travel is extremely limited. Oh, man. It is really tough to fast travel. There is no manual saving. It's all auto-saving.

So if you have an outcome you don't like, it's already saved. You can't change. Yeah, there's no Baldur's Gate style saves coming here. So this game, it requires you to sort of let go of some of the comforts that we are accustomed to. And I'm a guy that when I play video games, I save scum the hell out of things. I'm saving every, I'm saving obsessively. I'm saving too much in games just in case. Yeah. And this is kind of freeing for me in a way to just like let go and just experience like what the developers plan for this thing. And the difficulty of it, like it can be very challenging.

But in the way that like a soul's game is like, get good. You know, like this isn't so much of like you need to have like a technical performance on the controller. It's more like get prepared and get thoughtful. It really wants you to assess what's happening. And every time you're going to go out into the world, you need to be prepared to go out into the world. You need to not be overburdened by what you're caring. You need to be aware of what time of day it is because at nighttime things get a lot harder. So how far are you going?

Do you need to bring a camping kit to camp at night? Like all these things that as you learn the systems of the game, if you prepare well, if you are thinking about things, you're going to be fine most of the time. But there will be times when you're like, you know what? Maybe I overlook this one thing. And now I'm in some trouble. And the only way through this, I can't load my old game.

I have to solve this problem somehow. And yeah, it's really compelling in that way. Right. You could describe this and Rise of the Ronen as open world action RPGs, but within that broad umbrella, they could not be more different. No. In every other way, these games are almost diametrically opposed, which is not to say that one is inherently better,

but, man, playing them back to back like that, extremely different experience because Rise of the Rone is just very video gamey. You know, it's just point A to point B, You select a quest. It tells you where to go. You know, it's on your map. It tells you exactly how far you are. You run to that spot.

You sprint to that spot. You go there and do that thing or fast travel. Not in this game. You are often in the dark, sometimes literally in the dark, although as you said, it's very dangerous. But just broadly speaking, like, where do I go? What do I do? You sort of stumble across these things. It's a very emergent gameplay sort of setup.

like let's create this clockwork world and we will just set people loose in it and they will figure out the rules of how it works or not and there will be a lot of trial and error. Like so many quests, you take a quest from someone and you open it up in your menu and it's like, okay, try to find this thing or talk to this person and that's it. You know, like there's no go there and do this thing. And it makes sense in the world of the game that they would not tell you exactly where that thing is or where that person is because they don't know. It's just like someone's following you. I don't know who. I don't know why, but you have to figure out who it is and talk to that person.

And eventually you do. You do enough side quests and you talk to enough people and you come across it at some point. But it's definitely not like, okay, here's my active quest. I'm going to check this off and then I'm going to go to the next thing. You really are exploring, you know? It's like intimidating. It's daunting. It's frustrating at times. But it is pretty exciting in that kind of Eldon Ring Breath of the Wild Way. What did you think, Jess? Yeah, I think I got so stressed at one point, I like, rage quit for a minute. Everything kills you in that game.

And if you're a woman, it's even harder because there's creatures that just want to eat you because you're a woman. And so I was like, wow, I wish I didn't make my character a girl. Though I love the character building on this. I love the character building on this. Let me first say that I made both my characters Aslan. So they are giant god lions. both very thick.

I made them as thick as I could make them. They get pretty thick too. They do! And I was so happy. I was like, oh, this is going to be the biggest lion god I've ever seen. But I think I chose. And if I had more time to play the game, I would have absolutely restructured. I was an archer.

I hated it. It was so. I, Ben. How could you reject your inner tank? You just said. I know. And you know what's funny? I thought of you.

I thought of you. And I was like, Ben will probably, like, he probably is going to play as a different character. I should probably play as something out of my ordinary, just because of it. I was like, I know this game's great. I watched so many people play it just for fun. Like, I love watching people play it. So I was like, let me step out of my F in Comfort Zone.

What a team player. And it sucked. It was the worst thing. I had to shoot from afar. I was like, let me get in there. And then I couldn't. And it was just like, it was very boring for me to play as like the archer. But it was very fun.

The mechanics of being able. to rent ponds is insane to me. I know. It really is. Because I was a fighter. I was typical hack and slash. And I was just like, I'll make all my ponds the things that I'm not that I don't enjoy doing. So they can be archers and they can be thieves and sneak around and they can be mages.

Do not cite the deep magic to me. I will just be up there swinging my sword. And like you though, like I am kind of uncomfortable like morally speaking with the whole like a risen pond sort of system. I mean, I guess the game plays with that, narratively speaking, but it is sort of weird, you know? Just like, yes, I am in this world for one purpose. And that's to do your bidding.

It's like your Taylor Swift and these swiftings just appear out of... I'm everyone's messiah. Yeah, they... I remember in Boulder's Gate, I bought the character from that guy. And that person was like, I'm a soul that's here to fight for you. and I can only finally get my last day once you release me. And I was like, well, I'm never releasing you.

So you're going to be on my team forever. So I didn't care. I was like, oh, I'm going to abuse this. But the problem was, I was battling like an ogre. We left. We were like, ooh, good job, team. Did it play for like an hour. And I realized one of my teammates was dead and gone.

And I didn't even notice. And I don't know. And I think they dropped all their shit. And I was like, damn. Well, there he goes. he's dead I guess so that happened to me yeah that'll happen yeah there are a lot of those organic moments

like you just feel the earth shaking and you're like oh shit yeah I was fighting like a cyclops or an ogre or something at one point and we had them like dead to rights we're just about to finish him off and he just picks up one of my ponds and goes to the edge of the water with him

and then I'm like oh no oh no and then one of my other ponds in this world. Yeah, it's like Grand Theft Auto 3 rules, basically. Yes. Another pawn hits him, and he falls back with my pawn in tow into the water, and that pawn is just gone.

Yeah. That's the end. Yeah. I did kind of get attached to my ponds, even though I felt bad about exploiting them. At least most of them were getting paid, not all of them, not your permanent one. But you do dismiss them. They come and go, because you have your permanent pond who's ride or die just with you the entire time and levels with you, but then the temporary ponds who just join you along the way,

they do not. And so you kind of have to keep replacing them as you go. And it's always sort of sad, you know, because even though you use them as storage space, because yes, you will become encumbered if you're carrying too much crap, no bottomless inventory here, which I always find very annoying, even though it's logical. It's the games where you can carry infinite stuff that are illogical. I know that, and yet they're fun. but the ponds become more than pack mules to you.

There's like a lot of pawn chatter as you're just journeying about. They're talking to you. They're talking to each other. It does get repetitive, to be clear. But they also drop some lore and they will react to the composition of your party in interesting ways. And so there were times when I was sorry to dismiss a pawn. You know, it's just ultimately you are a pawn to me. I'm sorry, I need a more powerful pawn at this point.

Oh, that was always what happened. And I was always like, I need a higher level pawn. Yeah. I need you to go. They make you cycle through. But the pawns also, crucially, you can hire a pawn, which has been created by someone else in the real world. You're hiring random people's pawns.

Yeah. Or people who you know's pawns if you type in a code to get their pawn. You can play offline. And it can just be Capcom created pawns. Sure. But they can help you if you don't know what to do with a quest. If you mark that as your act. quest and then you go to higher pawns.

You can search for a pawn that has done that quest in another reality. And they will lead you to that quest that you're stuck on, which is a really helpful and when they're like, follow me. I'm like, yes, please. And you're halfway there. And then they get murked halfway to where you and you're like, I don't even know where to go now. I don't know where I'm. They're always like, they're like, it's nearby.

It's not far now. You're like, really? because I feel like I've been running a really long time at this point. I kept running and fighting merchants, and then the merchants would run from me. And I was like, no, please, I need to buy things. And they're like, stay away. And I think it's because my weapon was drawn every time. Yeah, you got to put that.

You're very threatening when you have your point out. It was a bow. There was not even an arrow in my hand. It was a bow. Yeah, it's little things like that that are kind of immersive. Like, you don't even anticipate that because most games just don't work that way, you know? like Rise of the Ronan probably wouldn't. But there are a lot of comps here.

I mean, your pawn, you're kind of like your blade twin in Rise of the Ronan. In a way, I almost feel like I wish you could blend elements of these two games. Now, maybe if you blended any of Rise of the Ronan into Dragon's Dogma 2, that would be like anathema. That would be going against the mission here. But it would be nice if you had like Rise of the Ronan level combat in Dragon's Dogma, which is not that the combat is bad. It's strategic and it's just not like as dynamic on a moment-to-moment basis.

It's not that kind of combat system. It's not really about combat in the way that Rise of the Ronan is. But I did kind of wish if I could import one aspect of Rise the Ronan into Dragon's Dogma to make it even better. It would probably be that. I wanted the connection I had with my Pond to feel that way with my Blade twin and Rise of Ronan because I spent so much time with creating my Blade Twin and then I went, oh, I'm not going to split it. But for those playing, just make sure you are going to choose one. You're going to choose one.

But I wish that connection was stronger between me and my pawn because it was clear that once I made my pawn, I made my pawn a miniature version of my, like a still lion. I was like high regard. And then they're just like, yes, ma'am, where do you need to go? And I was like, oh, God. Come on, girl. You're my best friend. Let's get on.

Five, is there aught I can assist thee with? You got to have a high tolerance. for the fies and the bees and the dines and the knots and the knots in this game. And the prey. The prey. I was getting so, this was like Super Mario Wonder again. I was getting so irritated with their talking sometimes. Sometimes they're helpful like, oh, there's a chest over there.

And I was like, oh, shit, I didn't even see that. Thank you. Did you know you can make them shut up? You can get, that's what I was going to ask. You can get us like, you know how like some of them will like rearrange your inventory and some of them will be like, I'm going to forage. There's a thing that you can put on the ponds to make them shut up. Okay, I'm going to do that now.

I'm not even trying to be bad, but it was just like the voices are also so weird. I wanted like, there's like four voices for every, like, class or whatever you choose. Like, if you choose like a jaunty, maybe this was just for the pawns. But regardless, they, some of their voices are just so high pitch, not helpful at all. And I was like, shut up. Be quiet. They were like, slow down, slow down. Oh, you run everywhere.

I was like, yeah. I do. Yeah, I do, because we have to get over here, and my health bar is so low, and your healing's not helping. We got two other games to play that came out the same day. Oh, my God. We got a sprint. But also, your pawn, you said that you can hire a pawn that someone else's character

created. I saw online that someone made Ice Spice as a pawn, and people, and this guy was, like, hired her, and his wife was like, my husband is playing a game where Ice Spice is in this world. And I went, oh, wait a minute. So now I'm going to replay. and I'm going to change my pawn to look like Beyonce and then I'm going to name her Beyonce and then you guys can hire her if you want

so yeah it'll be fun I found a Shadow Heart Pond from in Oh nice yes I need to find that I was rolling with her for a while Oh I want Shadow Heart That's good oh that's such a good idea we should just recreate the BG3 people See now you love this game I like the game I just played as a bat I chose the archer And I'm so sorry if you're listening

You can switch you can switch though I don't And it's pretty easy. It's pretty forgiving. I didn't play that long. I played like a day and a half because I got the code so late because it was breaking on my PlayStation or on my computer and then I had to get it to the PlayStation. And then you started crashing on my PlayStation. So then I had to get my, I had to redownload it to my roommate's PlayStation.

It was hard for me. Yeah. You're not the only one having performance issues on PC. Presumably that will be patched and fixed, but it's rough out the gate. And also people are pissed about. micro-transactions. Which is ridiculous. Yeah, I mean, the micro-transactions are mostly things that you can acquire in the game,

right? And it's just sort of get them faster or get more of them because there is a scarcity to items in the game. And that's by design. I mean, they want there to be friction. They want it to be hard for you at times. But I wouldn't even classify this as like pay to win. I mean, not really.

It's a single-player game, first of all. And also most of the stuff that you can pay for, which I will not. be doing, you can also just get in the game for free. Oh, yeah. Generally, anti-micro-transactions, but in this particular case, I do feel like it's been blown out of proportion a bit. Yeah, definitely. Well, I do like that the ponds high-five you after fights.

Yes, I did that once. It feels like a true team effort. I also like that you can just wander into buildings, just like almost any building. I mean, some doors are locked, but for the most part, you just kind of push in. there isn't even a button prompt to open a door. You just push in. And again, it really makes it feel like a living, breathing world. I mean, Rise of the Rona, it's like wherever you go, there are NPCs walking around doing

NPC things, but it never really feels like a world to me that is going about its business, whether or not I'm there, whereas this game does. Maybe partly that's because there's so much pop in in Rise the Ronen that like the NPCs appear 10 feet in front of you. And this game looks good. I think this game, I mean, maybe it's because I was playing it right after Rise of the Ronan, so there's sort of a sight for sore eyes, but I think it looks really nice. And the world design is really cool, too.

Like, it's just a very beautiful fantasy setting with some varied terrain and a verticality to it that I appreciated. So, like, you will get lost, but at least it will be pretty scenery while you're lost. And you know what? Like, I played one mission. You're supposed to go to this masquerade, like, this ball where everyone's disguised and you're supposed to meet someone. But the game doesn't tell you when to go or when not to go. And so you show up there and they're like, oh, there's no masquerade tonight.

Sorry. And so, like, it depends. If you think that sounds awful and it's not respecting your time and you're going to be pissed, then maybe Dragon's Dogman 2 is not for you. And there's a lot of people who it's not for. There probably are. Yeah. And if you're like, you know what?

Okay. Like the game, I'm playing by the game's rule. not the other way around. It makes sense that there wouldn't be a masquerade every single night. So I'll just come back the next night and maybe there will be. That's the kind of game this is. And I respect it. Is it my favorite?

Did I get frustrated? Well, no is the answer to that first question. Yes is the answer to the second one. But even when I was pissed, I was like, okay, I got to hand it to them. This is kind of cool in an annoying way sometimes, but kind of cool. And, you know, there's like a real, Capcom comeback. Maybe we can't even call it a comeback at this point because it's been going on for a while. But Capcom Renaissance, like since RE7 sort of got that company back on the right track, they're kind of killing it.

Like, R.E. Village, the 2, 3, and 4 remake, Street Fighter 6, Monster Hunter, World and Rise, Devil May Cry 5, the Ace Attorney remakes and compilations. Everything's coming up Capcom. I mean, it's mostly established series, but they're doing, justice to those series. So good on them. All right. Our third and final game. And now for something completely different. Princess Peach Showtime,

developed by Goodfield. Publish my Nintendo for the Switch. This is the first game to feature Princess Peach as the main protagonist in almost 20 years since Super Princess Peach in 2005. Jess, you have been anticipating this game for quite some time. So I'm eager to hear your few. I was talking to Matt a little bit before the game. I was like, oh, I guess other people

didn't like it. But I was very excited for this game. I love Princess Peach. Pink is my favorite color. I just like her a lot. And I, if you can see my desk, you'd understand. But this mixed in with like theater was so heavily. It was a game catered to me. And I think there's a world in which this game is catered to a very specific, maybe even pseudo niche audience of like, oh, you have to like love the innovative parts of like transforming a theater like a literal stage performance into a game, but then also love that Princess Peach part to it as well. If you don't really care about theater, you're going to be like, yeah, it's kind of fun. I'm just searching for shit. But I was like, it was just so I thought it was very impressive. And also I didn't really like

Super Mario Wonder. So I was like, this is actually, there's parts in this I was finding challenging that I was getting irritated. And I'll be honest, it was the damn puzzle parts. And I told you why I don't like puzzles. I don't like puzzles. I died the most during the detective ones. And to be fair, I realized, and then you know what made it worse? It was like, Jessica, this is a game for children. Why are you dying so much?

It's too hard for that. That's one of my big things with it. It's like, it is, but it isn't. And then I was also like the first time the detective one, I was like, this is hard. And I talked to everybody in this room. And I'm still, I have like, I was down to only one of the 10 light. Because you get minus 10 coins every time like you lose the life.

I was down to like 10. So I was like, I can't, I can't die. I was like, I can't die. I need to figure out who took this mural. Honor demands that I not die in Princess Peach Showtime. I refuse. I, oh my God, I refuse. But I did love that.

I love the different versions of Peach. I like dressing up and going to conventions. I'm so sure there's going to be a million Peach cosplays now. Oh, yeah. I'm going, I'm stealing the Cowgirl peach outfit immediately. Oh, yeah. I mean, you basically did

at our Ring or Verse Live show. Yeah, I'm going to do it again. I'm going to do it. But she had horns on her, like bullhorns on the cowboy hat. I loved it. I even online, I think I played it within seven hours.

I also give that two bonus points because I can finish a game in one day. It was refreshing to play this after Dragon Togna and Rise the Road and be like, oh, I could actually finish this game this weekend. How about that? That's possible. It's also very fun to play in front of your friends, that's what I did, we were just all having a fun time.

And we still couldn't figure out the detective thing. I gave it a 7 out of 10 because I just compared to how I felt about Super Mario Wonder was vastly different for this. And I think it was very different. Like there's a lot of things to it, especially in the peaches play. I think it's primarily four kids. I was playing it kind of with my daughter. My daughter's two and a half.

So she's too young for most games. But she was entertained? She was entertained. Yeah, she was too young to do well. right? And so when she would play and not do well, I'd be like, get good, you know? And I'm that kind of dad, right? No tolerance. Like, let's go love. Well, part of what she most entertained about because it's also very colorful and there's a lot of like, you attracting attention. Did she like the mermaid peach? She did. She liked the mermaid peach. Yeah. At first she was like, I'm a little scared because, you know, there's some ghostly things attacking you. But then she got very into it. And she was like, I want to play daddy's game. You know, First, it was like, I want to watch Bluey.

I'd turn off the game. But no, eventually she forsook Bluey for Princess Peach Showtime. So that's a good sign, I guess. That's kind of the target audience. And yeah, I do feel like the level of fun is pretty variable depending on the stage and the variety of Peach. Because, yeah, the conceit here, I mean, there's basically no story. It's a Mario adjacent game. So, you know, you're in a theater and there's a.

a bad villain who's doing nasty stuff with the sets and such. And so you have to transform into various characters with various power-ups and go through and defeat the baddies and find some stars. And some of them are really fun. And some of them, not so much. And I would put the detective peach toward the bottom of the list as well. But, you know, like the Kung Fu Peach and the Fighting Aliens Peach. Ice Skater Peach.

Ice skater peach was excellent. We ride for ice skater peach. I ride by ice skater peach 100%. Yeah. So there were times when I was like, maybe they should have just made this the entire game or at least made more of this. Like either lean into the variety and just have a different peach every time, kind of like Mario Wonder, where they just threw everything at the wall,

or just really focus on the ones that worked well. Because it was kind of a middle ground there where there was only so much variety and half the variety wasn't that good. And it was, you know, kind of formulaic. I mean, it's pretty simplistic, pretty perfunctory. Like, there are two buttons, you know, it's A and B. That's it. Now, cocoon was one button, and it melted our minds, right?

So that's not to say that you need complex controls to be engaging, but that was a hardcore puzzle game, whereas this is not quite as hardcore, which is, you know, not to say that it's not tough detectics. to Peach. Sometimes, hard to say what those coos are pointing to. They don't make sense. I can't get it out of my head. They're going to talk to everybody.

Talk to everybody. Listen to what they're saying. I was. And then I think it was doing it on purpose because in the next round I played, I was like, oh, yeah, I talked to everybody. I clearly knew what it was. Not the first round. Ben, I wanted to also just second.

I agree with you when they, I thought they were going to be different every stage. Because when you get up to the second stage, that's when you meet like Kung Fu Peach. So I was like, oh, okay. Hell yeah. It's different. And then I went, oh, I'm cowgirl again. And then also, you kind of like, I don't really know most about this because I just played the game through.

I didn't really go into all the extra stuff. But like, once you play as like a certain thing twice, you get to, it's like, oh, you own the skill of the cowgirl or whatever. And I was like, oh, I only own the skill of the cowgirl first because it was the first door on the left both times. And so I was, like, kind of confused with like how that order was. Yeah. It's 30 stages, though, which is.

It's like a Peach's Castle from Mario 64 sort of layout where you can just wonder around and go into different stages. Yeah, if there was like a six second loading every time you got one level higher in Mario and Peach's Castle. Dude, okay, so it wasn't just me. It wasn't just me. By gay, I was like, is my internet freezing this? And then I was like, wait, why do I need the internet for this? Yeah, that thing was chugging on the load screens. They're like PS2 load time sometimes.

Yeah. And I don't want to say this is like last gas. the Switch in terms of originals, but like Nintendo's been pumping out the Mario-related remakes, and there are more of those to come later this year. But this is kind of the only big original that they have announced for this year. Now, they might have some surprises in store because it seems increasingly likely that Switch 2 will not come out until next year. And so maybe they have some holiday ace up their sleeve. Maybe they'll just drop Metroid on us out of nowhere. But I don't know. So this might be it kind of when it comes to

premium Nintendo developed games, and it's not exactly the flagship title that you were waiting for necessarily. But, you know, it's fun. Like, it's fun for as long as it lasts, which is not that long. I wish it were even leaning more into the, like, little big planet aesthetic of, like, the constructed kind of artificial scenes. And I guess I wish that it were mechanically a little more compelling. Again, it's kid-friendly.

Like, you know, there are a lot of baking. stages where you're basically just pressing B repeatedly to make cookies. Like, gotta press B enough to bake the cookies, but not so much that you overcook them. There was a little more of that than I needed it. Chef, Peach was my second favorite,

which was very weird. I agreed. I told Matt before this, it was, which isn't bad, but I was like, it is aggressively, like very feminine.

Like the entire game, I understand it's Peach, but I remember as soon as I started, play and I was like, oh, she uses a ribbon and spins around. And I was like, I kind of wanted Peach to be a badass, but I guess I was like, this makes sense. And then you get those extra characters to be the badass. They'll be a

concrete peach and everything else. And she, and I love that they balance that out where it's like, yeah, she's still badass and she's still Princess Peach and let's see how like this aggressive feminine, like kind of trope can play together. But then the chef one, I was like, God, I am putting myself into a box

here because I was like figure skater peach and chef Peach, I'm having too much fun. I was like, God, I wish I wasn't so. I'm clearly the demographic. It was like anyone that's a young girl at heart, anybody that still would play in 10 dogs immediately, this is for you.

And I'm like, cool. That's me. And I was collecting all the dresses. You were. You were. You were collecting the mom. That's the thing. Yeah, like you compulsively collect coins and stars and you don't really need them for

anything. Like, there are collectibles, there are unlockables, unless you care about the cosmetics, which maybe you do, you know, but I was going around like, I got to get that last coin. No, no, you don't. You guys don't. Yes, I do not. No, no, Matt, you do not.

No, Matt, you do not. No, I do. And that was a problem for me because the levels are so linear, which isn't necessarily a problem. But if you're an insane person like me and you're like, oh, no, I'm going to get every star in this game. It's just a Nintendo game. I'm going to do it. If you're playing the level and you see that you've missed a star, you immediately just knocks you down.

You're like, oh, can I have to play this whole level? And then you have to go back and play the whole thing again. And hope that you find it at that point. Yeah, but you can't just skip to the part that you miss. I stopped doing that. I stopped doing that too. Eventually, I was like, I need to see more of this game. And eventually, maybe I'll come back and find that one.

But it was a little annoying to me that I couldn't like jump to a certain part in the level to try and find that last one. Yes. Yeah. They would also not give you a star if you just like pass something but didn't pass with 100%. Right. And I was like, because the chef one was that for me. I was like, oh my God, I'm messing up these cakes.

I was like, I'm not spinning the cake. I'm trying to make this design. Slow down the spins. Who's spinning the cake? Stop spinning it. I'm working. I'm baking here. I was so into it.

I'm so embarrassed. I was so into the show. I love it. I kept playing because you can also replay the mini games. you like, which I really love. It felt like Mario Party. Sometimes you can choose to replay some of the games. And this one, I kept playing the barrel game where it was like basically whack-a-mole,

but with barrels that were like about to explode and you have to save the sparkles. And I was like, oh, this is really fun. I like that I can choose to go back to certain mini-games and play because then I did the chef one too. So I liked that. I enjoyed a lot of it. I enjoyed a lot of this game. It's little things like, it just felt like it was about to break my switch.

Yeah, and for what? I know. It's not like it looks like Dragon's Dagenberg or something. Yeah. Right. And another thing was like, yeah, like it presents itself. It's like, oh, it's a game for children.

Don't get like too like. But then there would be like optional challenges. Yeah. That was just like, it's tough. If you want a hundred percent this thing. And they're the kinds of challenges where they're like, okay, kill this many people or like go this long without getting hit once. Right.

And it's like, damn, this is over and over and over again. And you have to start again from the beginning. I done so many more times in Peach than in Dragon's Dogma, too. It's hardcore, which I guess is good. It's like make the main game pretty easy, pretty accessible. But then for the sickos, give them some extra stuff so that they can actually have a hard time with this game if they want to. I guess my winning trait is that I easily give up. And I'll tell you right, my friends were so irritated.

They were like, just my. it's right there. And I was like, I just got to finish the story. I was like, I just got to finish the story. And then after I realized the dresses were just the same dress, just different patterns. Yeah, different skins. I said, I don't need it. And then they're like, oh.

That disco dress, though. I don't know. I think I stuck with the skiing one that was just snow or like snowflakes. And then when they were like Stella gets outfits, I was like, she doesn't need an outfit. No, she doesn't. She doesn't. I don't even remember her name. I did it there.

Stella. Get her out of here. The boss battle is really fun to me. I loved going against the lion. It took me 20 minutes probably. That was the longest one. Because it was different. They would only shoot two fireballs and you were like,

I need more fireballs to fire back at you. Okay, regardless. Yeah, some clever boss. The game only takes like seven hours, not even, to finish. And that's the one recommendation I will give it for anyone that wants to play. Yeah. I think maybe some of those performance issues, Matt, like we've seen Nintendo itself in the first-party games just manages to eke out every bit of processing power that the system has.

Like, you play Tears the Kingdom. It's like, how does this run on Switch? And yet this other game doesn't. But it performs better than like that recent Pokemon that was just like broken. Yes, it's not like that. Oh, my God. But this is not the varsity squad developing the game. It's not like it would really get in the way of your enjoyment.

Yeah, it just makes you feel like it's a little less top tier. Nintendo was super secretive about who was developing this game. Like they literally wouldn't say they were like, when it comes out, you can see. in the credits. And I don't know if that's just because Nintendo is constantly, like, just weirdly secretive about everything and predictive, or whether they thought, oh, we don't want people to see that this is developed by Goodfield, which, you know, they've made some good games. Like they've made Kirby games and Wario Land and Yoshi, et cetera, but not like the flagship games that you associate with Nintendo. So maybe that's a reflection of that. But I'm happy that

Peach got a game again. It's been too long. Yeah. I think it's better than Super Princess Peach. I guess it's got roughly the same metacritic score, but, you know, it's high time that she got a starring role here. And yeah, Chess, like, when Peach is running around the theater holding her dress up with one hand, it's like, you got to get some active wear here. Peach, like, you're in a platformer like, you're the star. And so it's nice that she then gets to shed the dress and go into various other outfits that are maybe a little better suited to action and everything that she gets to do. I just, I just remembered Mighty Peach, the hero Peach, and that was a very fun outfit, very fun for her to be in.

And she flew around and was in a jetpack. So she's perfect. Okay. Well, I guess we've got to deliver our verdicts here. I guess, you know, you've probably gotten some sense from the tenor of our conversation here, which games we liked the most. I think what's clear is that we didn't dislike any of these games, right? All of these games brought something to the table. They're all worth checking out, not necessarily simultaneously the way we did, but get around to them at some point.

I will say, like, they all kind of fell within a range for me where I didn't dislike any of them, but didn't fully love any of them either. Matt, I'm guessing you're probably at the love level with Dragon's Dogma. Maybe I would get there over more time, but there's enough kind of bouncing off it for me that normally I would think, this is not my type of game. In this case, I actually appreciated it, but still struggled with some aspects of it. So I was kind of like in the middle range on all of these games. But if I had to give my ranking, I think I would go Rise of the Rhone Third, Peach, second, Dragon's Dogma first. Matt, what's your ordinal ranking of the three? Well, number one is Dragons Dogma, too, which is going to probably be in my top five games of the year.

I would assume. I love this game. And then second place and third place are real tight for me. Yeah. Toss up. I'm going to give the slight edge to Ronan just because I think that Peaches at $60. I think that Peach is not giving you $60 worth of game. Like I could see 40.

And that's still kind of pushing it. But Ronan, there's no doubt that you could play that game for a long. That's a huge game. So that's my tie. That's my tiebreaker. Yeah. Good point. Yeah.

I would put Peach higher just evaluating it irrespective of price. But most people don't evaluate games irrespective of price because you got to pay for them. That does matter. So if you want something to last, then, yeah, $10 more for Rise of the Ronan for, I don't know, 10 times more content potentially. Yeah, that's a pretty good deal. Jess, which way are you going? I reacted so big to that because I purchased the game. And now I got to go check my bank account because I thought it was $40.

I genuinely thought it was $40. Now I got to go check my bank account because I absolutely accidentally spent $60 through PayPal. God, dang it. God. Okay. They make it so easy. Unfortunately, they do. And then someone once said once you pay like through Apple Pay or whatever,

you don't really think you're taking the money out of your account. and that's kind of how I feel with PayPal. I'm like, oh, yeah, it's not, it just disappears. And then it does damage. I think because of that, I am now going to put Peach as third. I think Peach is very fun. I loved it. It's very quick play.

You would finish in two days for sure. Me one day because I'm a lunatic, but $60 for that is very steep. I don't think any child would get $60 out of that. Oh my God, $60 is steep. Children can play things endlessly. Yeah. Really? I was like, because I imagine myself playing it and then being like, okay, I finished it. And then going back to like Mario Party or Smash or something else.

Yeah. I feel like when I was a kid, you could put any crap in front of me. And I'll be like, all right, this is the game. I'm playing forever now. It could be good or bad. I hope because I love Princess Peach, but $60 is very steep. So I'm putting that as three. I'll go with my heart. I'm playing as number one. I'm probably going to get off this call and go continue playing it for sure. 100%. I'm going to keep decapitating people to the day I die. I'm putting dogma as number two. Dogma is a great game. I need to replay it as a different person. And there's so much to do. And I think that is a good bang for your book. Yeah.

All right. Well, if we do the math here, we want a lower number if we're going with one being the best, three being the worst. So we've got a combined score of four for Dragons Dogma 2. That's one from me and Matt, two from Jess. Six for Rise of the Ronan. That's three from me. two from Matt, one from Jess, and eight for Princess Peach, two from me, three from Matt and Jess.

So a clear hierarchy here. I guess that also does mirror the Metacritic ratings currently, which are like 86 and then 75 and 74 or 76 and 74. So yeah, I mean, look, I had a good time at the video games with these three. So there's something to offer for everyone. Dragons Dogma 2, you have won the day. But really, we're all winners because we got to play three pretty good games and we got to talk to each other. Jess, I wonder whether you want Peach to be the next spin-off in the Mario movie franchise? Of course, in March, we got a classic, this is Miyamoto message where Miyamoto said that Nintendo is making a new animated film. This is with illumination.

So this is separate from the Zelda movie that is all. also being made that I have high hopes and great fears for. But this is a spinoff of the Super Mario Brothers universe coming out April 3rd, 2026, very specific. And they said that it is broadening Mario's world further. So it's presumably not just Mario, although the first Mario movie wasn't just Mario either. It was pretty peach-centric too. So would you want, if we're doing Nintendo or Mario expanded cinematic universe here, would you want Peach to have her own movie now too?

Some synergy or you want to get some Donkey Kong action in there. You want Luigi to take the spotlight this time. Who do you want to step up? Well, it's Seth Rogen's Donkey Kong, right? I think we got enough of the entire family in the first movie. Not in a bad way. I meant more so we got a lot of it. I would love a Princess Peach spinoff.

100%. And then I know there's probably fighting words, but yes, do Luigi next. Kind of try doing like a Luigi Mansion thing. And why I said fighting words, because I don't think anyone wants anyone to touch Luigi's Mansion. But I'd watch that as a movie. I'd watch Luigi's Mansion as a movie easily. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

This Peach Game had like aspects of Luigi's Mansion to me. That's high praise because we love Luigi's Mansion. It's not quite that good, but it felt a little like that at times. Sort of the side-scrolling nature of it, kind of low-fi, kind of fun, but also spooky sometimes. Well, look, maybe Nintendo is fine. going to make up for the indignity of Waluigi not getting in his own game and not even being in a game for quite a while now by giving us a Waluigi movie. We'll just skip straight to the Waluigi vehicles. Just no game, just go right to movie. Forget about Toad, forget about Yoshi,

forget about everyone else. We're going big screen Waluigi. That's what we want. See you there. Okay. Well, we have three games with three quiet or silent protagonists this week, but my guests have not been silent. That would have been awkward. I thank you for joining my party for speaking up. It has been a pleasure as always. Thanks, Jess. Thanks, Matt. Thank you. And we get a bit of a break now from the constant flurry of blockbusters. Honestly, the release schedule for the rest of 2024 very up in the air. You know, like most of the big games that we knew would be big games coming into the year have already come out. Like there's some notable exceptions to that, certainly. But there is a lot of, I don't know, what's coming out in May or June or whenever, but I don't doubt

that there will be things because who saw Powell World coming? Who saw Hell Divers too? There will be surprise releases. There will be things to talk about. And if there aren't big games, that's okay because we will still have plenty to talk about. We'll have some fun. We'll do some drafts. We'll do a mailbag finally. And next month, we've got two big video game adaptations to talk about. So we will be covering Fallout probably on the next episode of ButtonMash. And then after that, Knuckles. Jess, will you rejoin us for Knuckles? I love Knuckles.

Okay. It's an invite. You'll be back for Knuckles. Everything's coming up, Jess, this year, too. You got your Princess Peach game. You got a Knuckles show. I love this for you, as Joanna would say. Yes, and I got Fortnite still, so.

That never goes away. You're the person who is playing the six-plus-year-old game forever. I'll see you in Roblox. Oh, no. Please, don't ever wish that upon me. Contact us at ringerverse gaming at gmail.com. Thank you to Devin Ronaldo for producing today's episode and to Arjuna Ramgapal for his senior podcast management. Stay tuned for multiple Midnight Voice pods and multiple House of Our pods coming later this week.

We love you. Thanks for listening. Talk to you soon.