Nintendo Just Demolished Everyone’s Free Time

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Oh no. Josh Broadwell, our Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave reviewer, says he’s spent more than 120 hours playing the game. I’ve heard other critics saying they’ve spent 160 hours, even over 200, on it. This game is enormous. But it’s also very, very good, which means we’re out of luck. We can’t skip it.

Some of us have more time for gaming than others, but nobody has infinite time, and as we approach the busy season, there are just too. many. games. I was both thrilled and appalled this week when Blizzard announced it was releasing World of Warcraft Forever, a reimagining of my favorite game of all time, on Nov. 4 — one day before the release date for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a reimagining of my other favorite game of all time. I consider this a personal attack.

Can I really throw a 100-hour-plus Fire Emblem into that mix? I feel exhausted just thinking about it. But the thing is, I also love big games. I love Tears of the Kingdom. I love a world and a story I can sink into, systems that deepen over time and reveal secrets to you dozens of hours in. There’s something special about these all-consuming experiences that only gaming can deliver.

Also, I must admit to a double standard. I balk when faced with a 100-hour RPG story, but I regularly sink that long into open-ended games. Diablo 4 is a great example, and it just arrived on Switch 2 this week in a pretty great new version. I’ll probably manage to find time for that without thinking about it.

Diablo 4 poses a different kind of size problem, though. It’s 71 GB. That’s actually not bad (the install fills over 160 GB on my PC) but it’s still a big chunk of the Switch 2’s 256 GB. I had to delete several much-loved and unfinished games to install it. I’ve been putting off buying one of the Switch 2’s annoyingly expensive, SD card memory expansions. I guess it’s time to bite the bullet.

It’s a different but related issue: Games just take up so much space (literal, temporal, digital). It can be stressful. But to be fair, it’s quite rare that Nintendo games, and Switch games, demand to take up so much room. They usually slip into our lives so easily, which is why I love the console. We can let them have this one.

eShop game of the week: Woodo

This is a beautiful, soothing puzzle game for all ages about bringing color and life to a series of toylike woodland dioramas that look like hand-carved toys: “a gentle game that reminds you of the little memories that are so easy to take for granted,” according to Polygon’s Giovanni Colantonio.

Nintendo Classics game of the week: Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

If you’re put off by the sheer size of Fortune’s Weave and fancy a more digestible Fire Emblem, this 2005 series entry is a good shout: a completist run shouldn’t take more than 50 hours. Or, grab its GBA companion piece The Sacred Stones for that delicious Advance Wars-era Intelligent Systems pixel art.

Nintendo Music track of the week: ‘”Don’t Speak Her Name!”‘ from Fire Emblem: Awakening

A suitably sweeping and dramatic eight-minute track from the 3DS classic to celebrate Fortune’s Weave‘s release week. (You can find a playlist of all Switchboard’s Nintendo Music picks here.)