Faffing around is a British term that means doing a whole bunch of shit that is ultimately a waste of time and it feels like with the Switch Nintendo put up a big poster in the lead developer office with the words "faffing around" in huge block capitals to constantly remind their teams what to focus on.
The first huge game I finished on the Switch was Breath of the Wild and I've commented plenty on how I feel about that one but there is A LOT of faffing in that game. Searching around for weapons, searching around for korok seeds, pointless side quests, filling in the encyclopedia, cooking and much more all just feels like stupid bullshit to do for the sake of doing it. In old Zelda games you just....went...and sure there were some side activities you could faff around with but in Breath it feels like the faff has become the focus. Even the shrines feel like faff because they are so small and easy and once you get a couple of upgrades under your belt they become essentially pointless to even do unless you are a weirdo that wants to 100% it or something.
Mario Odyssey was the second game to showcase Nintendo's obsession with faffing around. Most Mario games have had 120 collectibles spread out over a number of levels. Well crafted and fun to play courses with a nice little McGuffin at the end to give you a dopamine hit when the jingle plays. Odyssey on the other hand has A THOUSAND fucking moons and most of them involve faffing around. Herd some sheep, guide a dog around to certain points, posses a thing, run around collecting coins, do children's puzzles. It has so much more to get while somehow also having significantly less REAL content. The actual moons that you have to get are actually quite fun and Odyssey sports some of the best 3D platforming I've ever played with but Jesus lord Christ in heaven is it padded to fuck with FAFF.
But the game that loves Faff more than a child loves its own mother is Fire Emblem. Good LORD does this game love some faff. Most of the Fire Emblem games I've played are just a linear series of missions where you and your army fight off the big bad. The series is focused on what's important which is this SRPG combat and while there are things like support levels and stuff a lot of that was done ON the battlefield. You'd have your big burly axe man walk up to the fast sword man and they would go "It's sure great to have such a good buddy by my side on the battlefield" and then it would play a jingle and some stats would go up. 3 Houses however has taken all that and turned the whole thing into a faffing around simulator. Now you're a teacher in a school so you have to faff around with lessons, faff around on the school ground doing "quests' for students, faff around raising support levels by taking people out to lunch and tea time, faff around fishing and the list goes on and on and on. But you can't just skip the faff and go to the combat because the faff is INTEGRAL to having a good party. When you get to the combat it's great, I really enjoy the actual SRPG part of the SRPG I spent 6000 yen to play but it's everything in between that pisses me the fuck off.
Side content is cool and all, gives some extra distractions or an excuse to get stuff to make a character or party stronger but with some of these Switch titles Nintendo have gone WAY fucking overboard with it and now it feels like annoying padding rather than fun side-shows. Bravely Default 2 comes out tomorrow and I'm hoping for a tight, well crafted RPG experience but my body is in fact ready for large amounts of faffing around.
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