There was a lot of hype built up before today’s Nintendo Direct. We already knew about Super Smash Bros., but there had to be more huge announcements. For the sake of comparison, last year, we knew the show would be focused on Super Mario Odyssey, but we still got announcements for a new Pokemon, Metroid Prime 4, Kirby: Star Allies, and Kirby. So surely, we’d get more of the same this time.

Well, we did get some. The Direct started with a brand new game from Marvelous Entertainment called Daemon X Machina. The trailer didn’t give a whole lot of information, but it seems to be some kind of mech based action game. Hard to say if it’ll be any good, but it’s certainly something different in the Switch library and kind of a neat way to start off a show.

There was some more information on games that we already knew about. There’s new story DLC coming to Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which looks like more Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Also, we got a slightly closer look at Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee. There really wasn’t anything there that we didn’t really know about already, except that if you buy the Pokeball Plus controller, you get a Mew. I don’t know how I feel about that one. It’s cool, but also, holding Mew behind a second pay wall is a little crappy.

Thankfully, things got a little better when Super Mario Party got announced. I like Mario Party a lot, but like most fans, wasn’t too fond of the last couple games. That stupid car, right? But, the trailer clearly showed characters walking around on the game board independently, no car in sight. As far as I’m concerned, Mario Party is saved. There’s also some cool looking minigames that require multiple Switches. One they showed had tanks that you drove from a top down perspective, and the play field stretched across two screens. It looks good!

After that, we got some updates on some indie games and some third-party ones. Hollow Knight is finally out on Switch right now, Overcooked 2 is on the way, and Killer Queen Black is making it’s console debut on the system. Plus, the long requested Dragon Ball FighterZ is coming out on the Switch, which is really exciting.

Speaking of exciting, we finally got to see what the new Fire Emblem is. It’s called Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and it looks really cool. I’m not sure how the Fire Emblem fanbase is reacting to it, I’m a pretty newly converted fan, but I really like the look of it. When you engage in a battle, instead of it simply being two characters hacking at each other, you get your hero with a whole army behind them charging at your enemy with a whole army behind them. It really makes the scale of the battles seem so much better and I love it. Unfortunately, it’s not out until next year.

The bulk of the presentation was spent talking about Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. I really like what they’ve shown. The game features every single character that has ever been in a Smash Bros. game. That includes characters that we haven’t seen in a long time, like Pichu and Snake. It even includes the DLC characters from Smash 4 like Cloud. There’s also a couple new characters. We already knew about Inkling, but we’re also getting Daisy and the often requested Ridley from Metroid.

The Smash section of the Direct went on for a long time, and went into a lot of very specific details about new techniques, Assist Trophies, and Final Smashes. Honestly, I really enjoyed it but it easily could have been shorter. It doesn’t help that a lot of stuff that people have been clamoring for was nowhere to be seen. Where was Metroid Prime 4? Where was Yoshi? Surely there’s an Animal Crossing game in development, right? Maybe a Tokyo Mirage Sessions port? That’d be cool.

Basically, what Nintendo had was good and I really enjoyed watching this Direct. Unfortunately, it was really lacking that one big announcement that will keep people talking for the rest of the year. On the plus side, Nintendo regularly does these Directs whenever they feel like, so they don’t really need to pull out all the stops at E3. But it’d be really nice if they did.

One last time, let’s talk about my predictions. They finally showed Fire Emblem! But I said it’d be out by September, and it won’t be out this year, so that’s a no. Also, there was no Animal Crossing. And because there’s no justice in this world, a sequel to Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE did not get announced. That makes my final prediction score 3/21. Last year, I had 2/18, so a little better I guess.