Carrera Go Nintendo Mario Kart 8 - Mach 8

This game is fun. The bonus material with this edition is very high quality and looks great. The actual gameplay is some of the best in the series, with little innovation but near-perfect honing of previous mechanics such as the emblem rings replacing the pair-up mechanic from Awakening and Fates, and the break system supplementing the weapon triangle. The story though, is so bland and predictable that it seems that it was written for children. Another negative is the artstyle. It is some Genshin Impact weeaboo degenerate stuff. A positive stylistic decision are the buttery smooth beautiful combat animations. Overall, worth spending the $110 USD

I picked up the Divine Edition on release day kind of by happenstance. I happened to be in the store for something and thought to ask about it, and they didn't have the regular edition in stock. Still, the Divine Edition is pretty nice. I like the art book, and the poster's cool. The character cards are pretty pointless to me, mostly because they just slapped on the original art from the characters' original games, and most of those designs are veeeeery dated. If they'd been brand-new, exclusive art pieces in a modern style, it would be a whole different discussion. As it is, those cards really feel like a lazy afterthought.As far as the game itself, it's fun. I've played over 200 hours now (across two saves--one as male Alear and one as female, though there are ... MoreI picked up the Divine Edition on release day kind of by happenstance. I happened to be in the store for something and thought to ask about it, and they didn't have the regular edition in stock. Still, the Divine Edition is pretty nice. I like the art book, and the poster's cool. The character cards are pretty pointless to me, mostly because they just slapped on the original art from the characters' original games, and most of those designs are veeeeery dated. If they'd been brand-new, exclusive art pieces in a modern style, it would be a whole different discussion. As it is, those cards really feel like a lazy afterthought.As far as the game itself, it's fun. I've played over 200 hours now (across two saves--one as male Alear and one as female, though there are no differences other than aesthetically). There's no new game plus, which really limits replayability, sadly. My first time through, I spent around 150 hours, taking my time, grinding a lot more than I needed to, and really enjoying the story (that's without getting most of the support convos). The second time through, I hurried more and took about 60 hours to get within a couple chapters of the end before deciding to quit. The story didn't really hold up super great to a second watch, especially the DLC xenologue. I really enjoyed the xenologue the first time, but the second time through, I found that I had more questions than answers.The support convos get kind of annoying to watch when you see them constantly reusing the same weird gestures for all the characters. There are "female" gestures and "male" gestures. Things like age and personality are not taken into account. And the gestures mostly aren't anything people actually do in real life; they look like "Japanese idol on stage" gestures. Which end up looking super weird when coming from, say, a hardened warrior old enough to have white hair. The voice acting is pretty great for the most part, but the 3D animation scenes are pretty bad. I think it would have worked better if they'd left them as 2D sprites like in Awakening/Fates.Also, the hair physics are terrible. I made my female Alear a berserker just so she could put it up in a ponytail. I have other criticisms about the character/design stuff, but I'll leave it there.Overall, it's like people say. The story and characters aren't as strong as other FE games. The gameplay mechanics are pretty cool, though. The whole emblem mechanic leads to a lot of fun combinations, and I love that you can reclass anyone into almost any class (after a little preparation). I was also really impressed with the diversity of the maps. It seemed like every new one had some new thing to figure out how to deal with.So, yeah, I'd agree with the general consensus I've seen, how this is a strong game in terms of the actual gameplay but weaker than other recent FE games in terms of story/characters. It actually didn't feel much like a real FE game to me but more like a spin-off, since I focus on the story part of FE more than the gameplay.Oh, I do love that the dancer is male in this one. Finally. (Poor Inigo got shafted.) Though he's still got a lot more clothes on than most female dancers in the series. Baby steps, I guess.

I have beaten the game and I know the entire story. The game's trailers may give the impression that the story is of a similar quality to Fire Emblem: Fates (a previous game criticized for it's story). I felt this way as well before I actually played the game, but I now know that this is incorrect. The early game presents the player with information about the world and the quest they are on. On my first playthrough this seemed quite generic. However, I started a second playthrough and I now know that 50% of the dialogue in the opening 4 chapters is very skillful setup of fairly intense payoffs that occur much later in the story.