Mario Strikers: Battle League

[Xiahou Ba]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1602287685137203200

wow birdo and bowser jr. totally update worthy characters and deep cuts and totally not base game characters that should have been in there at launch

also of course this game gets necked early on

man mario sports games have fallen from grace.

 

[Dingodile]

can we just appreciate that we got a new mario strikers after ten years and not complain about nintendo not adding the characters people wanted?

I mean, we all have opinions, but sometimes games don't deserve to be constantly shit on for not including certain things and not pleasing the hardcore fans.

 

[Mike Wheeler]

also of course this game gets necked early on

Why is "necked" used in this case?

 

[Xiahou Dun]

 

[Borp]

As nice as it is to have a third Strikers game, outside of some top-notch animation the game doesn't really give us that much more than Strikers Charged did, so...

 

[Koopa con Carne]

if they release a new mario baseball game, i'm sure it's gonna be dreadfully thin on content like battle league. as in, three stadiums at most with no gimmicks between them and like only a dozen playable characters that have to be cloned during gameplay to fill up the teams.

and it will sell 16747738377282 copies in a week.

 

[Xiahou Ba]

can we just appreciate that we got a new mario strikers after ten years and not complain about nintendo not adding the characters people wanted?

I mean, we all have opinions, but sometimes games don't deserve to be constantly shit on for not including certain things and not pleasing the hardcore fans.

"why can't you just be happy with mediocre products that exist" is not the flex you think it is

if they release a new mario baseball game, i'm sure it's gonna be dreadfully thin on content like battle league. as in, three stadiums at most with no gimmicks between them and like only a dozen playable characters that have to be cloned during gameplay to fill up the teams.

and it will sell 16747738377282 copies in a week.

this game's captains would be just mario luigi peach daisy yoshi wario waluigi bowser bowser jr. donkey kong then the sub characters would be just stock rank and file mario enemies (koopas, goombas, shy guys, hammer bros) and toads

 

[Dingodile]

"why can't you just be happy with mediocre products that exist" is not the flex you think it is

I never said Battle League was "mediocre". What I said was we should at least be grateful for what we got instead of complaining that it wasn't we wanted.

It's like a Christmas present you didn't exactly think of receiving. The present isn't what what you were dreaming of, but you should be happy you got something.

 

[Mike Wheeler]

It's like a Christmas present you didn't exactly think of receiving. The present isn't what what you were dreaming of, but you should be happy you got something.

That's like saying you should be happy to get a pencil eraser you weren't expecting to get for Christmas when the person can afford to buy you some pottery.

 

[Xiahou Ba]

i have no moral obligation to be grateful for a product that doesn't deliver what i should expect from a 60 dollar next gen game. i don't think what is offered is reasonable, and considering this game has been the fastest selling mario sports game, i strongly think we deserve better than this.

im not settling for the bare minimum. demand better, you deserve more than a slapdashed product from a company clearly trying to shortcharge you, sell you an underbaked game for money first and then finish it later.

the christmas present is a horrible analogy. nintendo isn't my family nor friend. they're a company that wants to profit off of me by selling products. there's no altruistic intentions behind their products.

 

[Dingodile]

i have no moral obligation to be grateful for a product that doesn't deliver what i should expect from a 60 dollar next gen game. i don't think what is offered is reasonable, and considering this game has been the fastest selling mario sports game, i strongly think we deserve better than this.

im not settling for the bare minimum. demand better, you deserve more than a slapdashed product from a company clearly trying to shortcharge you, sell you an underbaked game for money first and then finish it later.

the christmas present is a horrible analogy. nintendo isn't my family nor friend. they're a company that wants to profit off of me by selling products. there's no altruistic intentions behind their products.

"Slapdashed" and "underbaked" is hardly what I'd call Battle League. They made a game for a dormant sub series of Mario sports titles for the first time in twelve years and you don't think that they put any effort into it? The idea of "finish it later" does not make sense, because Battle League is clearly a finished game.

Nintendo put six more characters in for the FREE post launch updates. Let me reiterate that: FREE. No extra money involved for access to them. They literally went "here have some new characters free of charge! thanks for buying the game!" and you just walked away right in their faces, remarking "this should have been in the game to begin with!!" They're in the game now, right? They're for you to use without shelling out additional dollars!

Also, that's the goal of every company: to make money. Money is what fuels the world's economy and also fuels the making of products. You know, like Battle League!

 

[Xiahou Ba]

the content isn't technically free, it's in-game content held back intentionally because the game is released too early, and it's purposely held back to give the illusion that it's new content. this is like you being grateful that fucking daisy, a mainstay character, had to be introduced in an update to get hyped over when she was in most mario spinoff games base roster since day one. your posts give the same energy of people cheering when game devs said "no lootboxes!" or "a fallout game will have npcs, now applaud for us!". having the bare minimum content isn't something worth celebrating or being "grateful" about. this is an underbaked 60 dollar game and it's clear nintendo is taking advantage of the mario brand to easily shortcharge you and having you get excited that bowser jr., another character who has been in mario rosters since his introduction in double dash all the way back in 2003 is in the game.

plus im not arguing that this product is lazily made at all. the game reeks of crunch and overworked devs churning out a game to meet that stringent deadline especially since it launched with broken mechanics that had to be quickpatched so online doesn't become unplayable with too broken moves.

Also, that's the goal of every company: to make money. Money is what fuels the world's economy and also fuels the making of products. You know, like Battle League!

right so like

now you understand why your christmas gift analogy is bullshit?

 

[Koopa con Carne]

fully agreeing with all the other things you've said, but

the game reeks of crunch and overworked devs churning out a game to meet that stringent deadline especially since it launched with broken mechanics that had to be quickpatched so online doesn't become unplayable with too broken moves.

the small amount of content doesn't necessarily suggest crunch. it could've been a pre-planned, executive directive simply so the company could use updates to manufacture hype post-release and keep the playerbase from dying out. (yeah, i know, because that worked so well with tennis aces)

What I said was we should at least be grateful for what we got instead of complaining that it wasn't we wanted.

it's frankly silly to show gratitude to a souless, faceless monolith of a corporation whose only goal is to find new and improved ways to coax you into handing over whatever's in you wallet. they don't know who you even are.

 

[zel]

ill also add that this strategy just kind of leaves people with a half baked game on release that they forget about soon after, except for when a new update rolls around. which then happens few times because the update cycle was really short for some reason. it feels like people have barely talked about mario golf since its final update for example
and it feels like mario tennis aces added way more free content in its update cycle? didnt it?

 

[Bootique]

OK nobody except me is gonna care about this but they missed a HUGE opportunity to add King Boo in as a character since Next Level Games helped work on the game and technically co-own the Luigi's Mansion series at this point
It would have been PERFECT

 

[Dingodile]

the content isn't technically free, it's in-game content held back intentionally because the game is released too early, and it's purposely held back to give the illusion that it's new content. this is like you being grateful that fucking daisy, a mainstay character, had to be introduced in an update to get hyped over when she was in most mario spinoff games base roster since day one. your posts give the same energy of people cheering when game devs said "no lootboxes!" or "a fallout game will have npcs, now applaud for us!". having the bare minimum content isn't something worth celebrating or being "grateful" about. this is an underbaked 60 dollar game and it's clear nintendo is taking advantage of the mario brand to easily shortcharge you and having you get excited that bowser jr., another character who has been in mario rosters since his introduction in double dash all the way back in 2003 is in the game.

plus im not arguing that this product is lazily made at all. the game reeks of crunch and overworked devs churning out a game to meet that stringent deadline especially since it launched with broken mechanics that had to be quickpatched so online doesn't become unplayable with too broken moves.
—
right so like

now you understand why your christmas gift analogy is bullshit?

Nintendo never said that this content was deliberately held back from the initial release or that the game was put out early. Where did you hear that?

Again, "underbaked" is not what this game is. Underbaked would insinuate that Battle League isn't complete and still need development time. If it was like you keep saying it is, we wouldn't be able to play it.

"taking advantage of the Mario brand to easily shortcharge you", that's what EA does with FIFA, and definitely not what Nintendo does with its most famous franchise.

 

[Borp]

if they release a new mario baseball game, i'm sure it's gonna be dreadfully thin on content like battle league. as in, three stadiums at most with no gimmicks between them and like only a dozen playable characters that have to be cloned during gameplay to fill up the teams.

Kinda like how baseball was handled in Sports Superstars, only without the excuse of it being a package deal on a handheld.

 

[MnSG]

To be honest, the backlash over the game's handling would not have been quite as awful if it actually received more newcomers than just Rosalina and Pauline. And free updates don't exactly make up for the fact that we're talking about features that should've been in the base game since day 1.

I mean, just look at how long it took for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to finally receive a custom items setting. That alone could've easily been a base game feature.

 

[Glowsquid]

"Slapdashed" and "underbaked" is hardly what I'd call Battle League. They made a game for a dormant sub series of Mario sports titles for the first time in twelve years and you don't think that they put any effort into it? The idea of "finish it later" does not make sense, because Battle League is clearly a finished game.

Nintendo put six more characters in for the FREE post launch updates. Let me reiterate that: FREE. No extra money involved for access to them. They literally went "here have some new characters free of charge! thanks for buying the game!" and you just walked away right in their faces, remarking "this should have been in the game to begin with!!" They're in the game now, right? They're for you to use without shelling out additional dollars!

People don't like the update model because there's a clear trend of these modern Mario sport games launching with a low amount of modes, characters, courses et cetera, a quantity of content that's often inferior to their GameCube and N64 counterparts, and then getting an handful of staggerer, underwhelming updates that barely gives them parity with their predecessor, and often not even that. People aren't upset the game is updated for free, they're upset because they perceive the free updates as being part of a disliked strategy of launching unexicting games and then building them to an underwhelming state before abandoning it.

The usual response is that games take longer and are more expensive to make now. To which I respond that Nintendo is making the most cash it's ever been, by far, and could account for this reality, throw more manpower at these games, give them a bigger budget, and so on. But they seem content to treat these games as low-budget gap fillers that'll sell on brand name so there's no need to put real effort into them, and that's sad.

And yes, you could argue it doesn't matter, because these games will sell millions of unit purely on account of the funny italian man being on the cover. But I'm not a bean counter, that's no reason to accept mediocrity.

 

[Xiahou Dun]

The usual response is that games take longer and are more expensive to make now. To which I respond that Nintendo is making the most cash it's ever been, by far, and could account for this reality, throw more manpower at these games, give them a bigger budget, and so on. But they seem content to treat these games as low-budget gap fillers that'll sell on brand name so there's no need to put real effort into them, and that's sad.

It's just a trite talking point. It's a given fact, no one is disputing it, but it's being overstated to excuse the game's disappointing content.

Nintendo is in no position to plead poverty. I've always doubted that claim that studios can't handle higher graphics or whatever. It's not like Mario spinoffs are known for pushing console hardware with cutting edge graphics. The models aren't high poly, I highly doubt the textures exceed 1024x1024. I know being a Nintendo subsidary is not being immune to struggling revenue, see AlphaDream, but Next Level Games has seen success with their Mario games so far, and Battle League did set sales records, so revenue is not an issue with the updates. Another comeback is possibly inflation distorting revenue but I also highly doubt inflation adjustments make Battle League incapable of making back revenue from development costs.

People don't like the update model because there's a clear trend of these modern Mario sport games launching with a low amount of modes, characters, courses et cetera, a quantity of content that's often inferior to their GameCube and N64 counterparts

The comeback is that these earlier titles are comparable in content, especially the first installment but my rebuttal is that something is wrong that a third installment in 2022 is held to the same standard as a first one in 2006 or whenever. Surely there's charted territory now and you'd expect expansion of content and refinement of game mechanics from sequels not a half assed step forward.

I am pretty sure this game was rushed, and Next Level Games and QA surely knew that their game came up short but were constrained by Nintendo.

 

[Waluigi Time]

The "just be happy they made (product) at all" mentality isn't really a great one to have. As a paying customer who dropped 60 bucks or whatever your equivalent is on the game, you should be able to be satisfied with what you got, and if you aren't, you're well within your rights to voice that opinion. If companies keep making subpar products and no one criticizes them, well, they're most likely going to keep making subpar products. If you enjoyed a game or really any piece of media, great! You had a good time and got your money's worth. But that doesn't mean people who didn't like it are wrong or shouldn't be allowed to criticize it just because it exists. Nintendo didn't give anyone a gift by making Battle League - they made a product that you had to spend your money on. (Heck, even if you didn't buy the game, you should be allowed to criticize it and explain why you didn't think it was worth spending money on.)

Honestly, it is pretty embarrassing on Nintendo's part that they're pumping out sports games that either struggle to reach around the same amount of content that games 15-20 years old had, or even worse, fall short of that. But they're still doing it, so clearly the sales numbers are high enough that they think this is a viable strategy. And going back to them doing around the same amount of content as old games, I wouldn't get caught up in defending Nintendo just because they did "enough". This isn't some indie studio, it's one of the most successful video game companies in the world, they can and should be able to do more than what they were doing decades ago on inferior hardware. New games should build on old ones instead of making you cross your fingers that you might get as much content out of it as the original. (It's similar to why I don't like the argument meant to defend things like *cough cough* Sticker Star of "well, it's not anywhere as good as what they've done before, but it's fine if you look at it by itself". Don't settle for that! You're getting an inferior product from a team that has clearly demonstrated they can do better!)

 

[Xiahou Dun]

I agree with all the points criticizing Battle League. I think people are making hyperbole of this being worst game of year (more qualified as most disappointing game) but like, unlike Pokémon, Battle League works and isn't split into two full priced versions that are set apart only by a boolean value in a line of some file and isn't going to cut content to readd as DLC under the excuse of "high quality animations". Unlike Scarlet and Violet, Battle League isn't a hideous mangle of a game with appalling vomit environment design and pathetically stilted character animations, buttressed by a rat's nest of programming that was sloppily glued together after getting hit by a tornado. Battle League is really charming, the menus are appealing, the soundtrack is excellent, the animations are excellent, no clones in the roster, and the gear was a good first step as well as the gameplay changes.

I liked it. But, seriously it's only slightly longer lived than an arcade game except they charge 60 dollars. It's also marred with incompetent design decisions you question the developers' sanities. They're quite incomprehensible.

Spoiler: recap of my issues

Why do they restrict one gear loadout per character? Why did they then introduce a character that's meant to be customized with gear that'll just have all the same gear? Why can you have multiple Toads in a team but not Marios even though multiple Marios is possible, just in the online mode (that you have to pay for on), AND you're already facing other Marios in the two total modes the game has, like the concept of an individual Mario is already tossed out, why pretend otherwise? Why can't stadiums be customized offline????? Why are jersey colors restricted to one side or the other offline (why can't we be red that faces yellow)? Why aren't gray and light green jerseys used offline? Why does this remind me a lot of Mario Tennis Aces with these baffling restrictions, and even if they drop an update to fix ANY of these major issues that are EASY TO FIX, why did it take so long??? Also what is with the coin payouts not really matching the price of gear, like this game was beckoning microtransactions?

Don't settle for this. I didn't. I pirated the game and I have zero regrets cuz 60 bucks (disregarding the hideous paid online "service" this game almost wholly relies on to be good) ain't cheap for a game like this and 60 bucks is looking to be overpriced amount for a frustratingly increasing amount of Nintendo games these days (from Nintendo Switch Sports to Yoshis Crafted World to Link's Awakening to Mario Golf Super Rush) and their games almost never f*cking drop in price. If you're in South America where the cost of Nintendo games is a fucking disgrace, you should be infuriated at this business practice.

This game should be caution to anyone that preorders games or buys them at launch.

 

[Mario Enjoyer]

God I was so excited for a new strikers. I honestly don't think anything has disappointed me more then this.
It managed to rip that title from Sonic Forces. Here everything is just fine. The gameplay is fine, the characters are fine, and the animations are fine. However, Strikers was never a fine series. Charged has some of the most expressive animations I've ever seen. Every single character felt unique, even the generic ones. Everything feels toned down. Peach is less aggressive, Waluigi is less of a show off, Wario isn't as extreme, and the big showy move is just less.
I was never bored when playing Charged, but Battle was forgettable. You want proof? I had to scroll up to check the name. I've never had to check the name of a Mario game before. I can remember over almost every single Pokémon, but I forgot this game's name. Apathy is the worst thing a game can bring out of me. I'm enraged by a mediocre game, but this game isn't that. It's slightly too good to enrage me.
I defended this game. "Just think of it like I do. We get 10 free dlc characters" "Quality over quantity". I was so excited.

I've never had a game make me feel quite so empty.