Idk if it's a weird thing to say but Nintendo games/products just haven't felt the same since Iwata passed and Reggie left. It feels like a lot of them are just being thrown out to fill space or haven't had as much love put into them other than "well the fans will buy it anyway". Part of me thought it was just me growing out of Nintendo as a company but even going back and playing games I hadn't played when I was younger they just seem far more put together from anything from gameplay to story.
Nintendo just seems so behind compared to other gaming companies now and it's kind of sad to see... AC felt half finished, Pokemon is slowly becoming more and more ass, and Splatoon 3 just seems like a rehash of 2 with different specials at this point. The console itself, whilst innovative at the time just doesn't keep up with the quality of PS and Xbox consoles imo.
TBH, as I've said upthread, I really hate seeing this take. I don't 100%
disagree with it, but I also ultimately think acting that the Iwata/Reggie years were all golden sunny skies is kind of rewriting history a bit? Case in point, the 3DS and Wii U era, which is something of a nadir for Nintendo's output imo. For every Pikmin 3, Mario Kart 8, Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze or Animal Crossing: New Leaf, which are all daring and inventive new games in their respective series, there's a Mario Tennis Open, Paper Mario Sticker Star, Mario Party 10 or Wii Sports Club, which are ultimately forgettable at best, or outright going "hey, what do people like about these series? Get rid of them!" at worst. There's the New Super Mario Bros. series forgetting to be an update of the classic Super Mario games like the first one was, and instead just relying on "hey, things from older Super Mario games!", there's the utter botch job in bringing Virtual Console over from the Wii, where not only do you have to buy games again, the emulators themselves are technically inferior, and there's a weird over-reliance on "hey, nostalgia thing! Remember Nintendo games from 25-30 years ago!" rather than doing anything new or interesting, even compared to a decade beforehand, and Splatoon, the last game released while Iwata was still alive, inventing the update system as we know it today... and that's not even covering the 4 years between Iwata's death and Reggie's leaving the company, which although it includes highlights like Breath Of The Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, Super Mario Maker and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, also includes utter garbage like Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival, Mario Tennis Ultra Smash, Chibi-Robo: Zip Lash and Mario Sports Superstars.
In general, I think Nintendo themselves have improved
somewhat since the dark days of the early-mid 2010s. Paper Mario and Mario Party have gone back to their roots,
somewhat. They somehow made a new Mario Strikers game, something I thought was impossible. I think they've honestly got a lot to improve on still: they've got to stop over-managing the Mario brand and sanding a lot of the weirder edges of it off, they've got to try and come up with some new IPs so that every new Nintendo console isn't just a flood of sequels, and most importantly they've got to massively expand their workforce so that they can put out their prerequisite 10-12 games a year IN HD without either putting out a shockingly low amount of games per year like they did with the Wii U, or over-relying on the update system (it's usually 1 or 2 games a year, but this year, not the best vintage for Nintendo there is anyway, there's
3 of the damn things, one of which just had its first update after 3 months and it's just slight tweaks and more costumes, and the next update is another 3 months away) like they're doing with the Switch.
(this last one
does seem to be happening given Nintendo's recent acquisitions of some of their sister companies and their plans for a new HQ building next to the old one, but this is a good few years away atm... but it could also be indicative of The Exact Same Idiot Decisions IN 4K!)
This is basically just my post from upthread but much longer, so I won't go on for much longer, but my point still stands: Nintendo have been in a bit of a weird state since the early 2010s (at least), it's still very much an ongoing thing but it's both improved and gotten worse at the same time, because in reality, although Nintendo seems like it's just Reggie and Iwata or Furukawa and Bowser in charge, it's ultimately a lot of people all making idiot decisions... and most of them seem to be the same people as 10 or 15 years ago, which doesn't help. Boiling it down to "these two men were charming presenters so their entire era was good" is hyperbolic, and that's a worryingly common problem in Nintendo fandom anyway.
Once again: being a Nintendo fan is pain, especially when consoles have the exact same lifespan they did when they were 10 times less powerful.
