Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@Pizzamorg I'm heartless. My friends and I sit around laughing at melodrama that other people consider gut-wrenching most of the time.

Stuff that legitimately does upset me, like animal violence, just gets skipped if I know about it. It's why I've opted out of seeing GotG3.

Cleared my first dungeon. Have to be honest, it was fairly anti climactic all around. You needed to complete a platforming challenge to get to it, this was fairly spectacular visually but also mostly on rails. I'm kinda fine with this in a way as I hate platforming challenges in otherwise non platforming games that just end up gating progression, but then I also dunno why it needed to be quite as long as it was, if it was all fairly linear and difficult to fail.

@RogerRoger Interesting! Wouldn't have imagined you'd have ever had the opportunity to play this game.

Out of interest, do you have any experience with BotW?

After spending most of my weekend with Tears of the Kingdom I will say I am enjoying it... but not loving it. If there was any part of BOTW you didn't like, it is probably still here and entirely untouched. I just think that is such a shame.

You could argue that "well BOTW to me was a perfect game" and even if you take that as an objective statement, many also said that about God of War 2018, yet almost no element that was carried over from 2018 into Ragnarok went untouched. Almost everything had some sort of pass over, some tweak, or refinement. It is why someone like me is able to be lukewarm on 2018, but love Ragnarok, even with the two games sharing core fundamental DNA.

It isn't lost to me on where all the energy, effort and resource went during the long, multi delay, development of TOTK though. And in those regards the result is pretty much an inarguably resounding success. To make a massive open world game that invites the player to break it, while also dealing with the extra limitations the Switch imposes upon them... And it come out like this, so fun and almost entirely bug free. Just wild. I mean just think of the state of something like Redfall that just came out and on the hardware that was built for. Nintendo are wizards at their craft.

But that doesn't mean I can't help but wish for more from everything else, which is very much just more BOTW, untouched (which to some I am sure sounds like a good thing, rather than a negative). Based on some completion times I am probably just a drop in the bucket though, so who knows maybe some late game development will fix everything, I dunno.

This is just where I am at right now, I fully plan to keep playing either way.

@Pizzamorg I feel the same way. I've played TotK for around 5 hours this weekend and it's fundamentally more BotW. Just like Ragnarok was more 2018. The key difference is that both BotW and 2018 felt new and refreshing for the franchises, while TotK and Ragnarok certainly improved a lot of aspects but are still more of the same. I'm just not as amazed with TotK as I was with BotW for this reason.

It is crazy too when you think that it was Skyward Sword before Breath of the Wild right? And that had roughly the same gap that BOTW did to TOTK, but BOTW is a complete reinvention of what a Zelda game is, whereas TOTK is more of a BOTW side grade. And that isn't a horrible thing, but it again does make me wish that more parts of the game were attended to, rather than carried over verbatim.

@Pizzamorg I was actually going to mention that I'm all for developers reusing the same template as long as it shortens the development time. But TotK took just as long to be made as BotW and that game was made from the ground up. So it makes me wonder what they did during all these years.

But yeah, at this point I think I'd rather have them take a break from the open world formula and go back to creating something like Skyward Sword or Ocarina of Time. A more linear adventure with a focus on classic Zelda. I think both types of Zelda can co-exist, but I'm definitely feeling fatigued from open world Zelda right now.

I feel like what they did, based on what we know, was to use an entirely different engine. Plus the lack of obvious loading between....well you'll see, and the new systems that had to be added on top of BOTW is probably what took so long.

Granted I don't think it's 5 to 6 years of dev time long but it's certainly more than just reusing BOTW for something else.

It makes BOTW look like a tech demo.

Just to make it clear, I'm not trying to rehash the 'its just a dlc' comments, I think those takes are in bad faith whether intended or not, but I'm just more saying that on a fundamental level almost anything that is carried over here from BOTW is basically unchanged, and untouched. And for me at least, as someone who didn't love BOTW, this has been a real shame for me.

I am really enjoying the TOTK parts of TOTK, like the new abilities, the new approaches to problem solving, traversal options, the maps and story etc but there is a lot of carried over BOTW between those moments, probably more carried over BOTW moments than new moments. And each time I am just reminded of all of the things I didn't like about that game, or all the micro frustrations I experienced while playing that game, and feel somewhat bewildered this is all still here.

Especially given the amount carried over, given how long this was in development for and given all the player data and feedback they have collected over the years.

I'm loving every second of my time with this game, but I do think that, even though it's obviously better than its predecessor in most respects, I won't love it quite as much as I did BotW. Part of that, I'm sure, is that BotW got mixed up with the overall excitement and hype for the Switch in general, being a launch title, but BotW was also just a radically new experience, both for the Zelda series, and for modern open world game design in general. TotK improves on that formula to great effect, but it's not a transformative moment in the series and the industry overall.

But you can definitely do way worse than being an iterative improvement on one of the best games ever made.

So even if it's not my favorite game from them, I definitely wouldn't disagree with the idea that it's Ninty's best game to date. If it's not, then it's def. top five, for sure.

I will say, one other thing I prefer about BotW was the purity of its design. While I think going with a somewhat more conventional approach to narrative in TotK was the right move for a sequel, I will forever appreciate and admire its predecessor's sheer willingness to commit to the idea of pure design openness. TotK is still an extremely open ended experience, of course, but it's not quite as committed to the: "This is your adventure; go make your own story" bit as BotW.

@RogerRoger Gotcha. That makes sense. I was curious, because my first thought was: 'did you play it with your partner?', but I remembered you talking some time in the past about certain types of games being challenging for him, and the recent Zelda games, while not Dark Souls-tier hardcore, are reasonably challenging even for someone like me. That split makes a lot of sense, though, since there is a lot of fairly calm downtime in BotW to just run around as well.

I thought I’d explore in Hyrule Castle just to see what was there and I ended up killing a skeletal Hinox and now have the Hyrule Shield. Not bad at all considering I was getting killed in one hit by the enemies!

You see, I am one of those weirdoes who actually likes the 'Ubisoft design' open world games. While I think almost all of these games are too long these days, you give me a map full of markers to clear, and oh baby... I am all in.

I know some people love the idea of plonking their own marker in some far corner with no indication as to what they'll find there, but to me the chance that I may find nothing at all disincentivises me from that style of play. The marker maps solve that, because you pick a marker off in the distance which means you know you are going to find something at the end, but then you get to discover stuff along the way if you take the long way around.

I do feel like TOTK has improved this element over BOTW for me. To me anyway, so much of BOTW felt aimless, and I felt like I was spending so much time just moving through empty space not doing anything, I appreciate some people loved that stuff, but I personally found it honestly kinda boring a lot of the time. It just isn't the experience I want from an open world title.

TOTK isn't a map marker driven Ubisoft style open world, to be clear, but I just feel like I am coming across a wider variety of things, and they are closer together. I feel like I am no longer wandering for what feels like hours through a field, where the only landmarks are identical enemy camps on either side.

It is the one place where I feel like TOTK is true upgrade over the previous title, rather than just a side grade.

@Kidfried There's also light survival sim elements, and a dash of Minecraft as well (the approach to music while you're exploring; the completely open-ended structure; the game being a sort of physics playground).

The weapon breaking thing will forever be the marmite in Zelda's sandwich lol. I thought it perfectly addressed the issue of your inventory being clogged with weapons and not having incentive to use everything you find. Believe it or not, playing games like Elden Ring and The Witcher 3 and not using 95% of the weapons I find because they either weren't as good or required me to rebuild my character in order to effective use them made me yearn for a similar approach.

Literally my only frustration on that front atm is that I have limited weapon slots and haven't found Hestu yet.

Honestly, my three biggest criticisms of BotW were the lack of a recipe book, the lack of fishing, and not having enough to do with monster materials. TotK fully addresses two of the three, so I'm pretty satisfied.

I will also say that I dunno whether it is just because I played BOTW already and have learned experience, but I hated the survival elements in that game and feel like I am hating them far less in TOTK.

In BOTW it felt like you couldn't walk more than a few metres in any direction without Link dying from being too cold or hot or wandering into that miasma stuff. There was a lot of learning through repeated failure though until you realised the right ways to prep to push forwards.

In TOTK I feel like I was given far more tools far earlier on to survive mid levels of cold and hot, and more than enough materials on hand to make sure I am fully stocked to survive treks up mountains or whatever. Who knows, maybe if I went back to BOTW and now knowing how much prep was a necessity for progression I wouldn't run into so many survival walls like I did during my first playthrough. But I am gonna give the points to TOTK anyway.

Although I will say, everything in BOTW was so damn expensive if you bought it rather than found it, and so it still confuses me how expensive everything remains in TOTK. Even if you happen to get like a surprise diamond discovery or something I think that only gives you like 200 rupees when sold, and a full set of clothing is like 4 grand. If you were going to get the full sets before expeditions, I dunno how much grinding that would entail, but it seems like a lot.

In terms of weapon degradation, I do agree with complaints that it does take away some of the excitement from a drop when you know you can only use it a couple of times and then it breaks. However, I do think Fuse solves this somewhat because at least so far in my experience I haven't found a lot of special weapons, the special weapons are what you create. And this sorta feels more palatable to me when it comes to them breaking, because you might get to stick three or four things onto a weapon before the base weapon itself breaks, so you are sorta getting three special weapons in one and you get so many parts with various, and sometimes, unique interactions when Fused, that it is actually kinda exciting to see something break so you can see what happens next when you try and stick something else on your weapon instead.

I think the bigger problem with this system is that the UI, and general control scheme, is honestly pretty horrid. The general clunky fiddliness to use these systems, especially mid battles, can lead to a lot of pretty unnecessary feeling frustration as you scramble around to glue your stuff together. This game has obviously been playtested and QA'd extensively, so I trust this is probably the best they could get the controls, but I dunno. A hot bar of like discovered combinations that you can just click on in your inventory and it'll automatically combine the ingredients might have been better. Or maybe like a wheel of select favourites, so you can much quickly get the fusion done, I dunno. I just don't feel like it feels that great when you are under any kind of time pressure at all.

I did the big elephant near Zora’s Domain which was pretty cool. Sorta like a shorter dungeon, although I’m liking the sound of actual dungeons being in the new one!

I'll say this: while I recognize most of the major landmarks, the more I play, the less this feels like a re-tread of the Breath of the Wild map.

Pretty much every major location has been changed up, sometimes to a pretty wild degree. And wow, I don't remember there being a ton of caves and wells and stuff in BotW. It's sort of reminding me of Elden Ring with how many, dank, subterranean, and in the case of the Depths, absolutely massive environments there are just tucked away in this game. It makes for a pretty striking contrast for the almost heaven-like sky world you start out in, and can explore more of as your arsenal of Zonai tools increases.

I bought a switch a few weeks back. There are a bunch of things I've missed during the preceeding 5 years which I'm unhappy with and have just come to light.

Being primarily a PlayStation / Xbox gamer and all the stuff we have to play, I haven't much ventured into the Nintendo world. I will preface this by saying our family did have a switch near to release with ARMS, Mario Odyssey, Rabbids turn based strategy game and a few other near to launch games - the last game I bought was BOTW. Anyhow my son sold the switch maybe 2 years ago after realising it was collecting dust in his cupboard. I picked one back up for the actually brilliant 'ring fit adventure' as I've been getting fit and it seemed a nice way to assist in between gym sessions. And it's boss!

Big issues I have with Nintendo and the switch;

1) Locking content behind Amiibo

I don't want toys adourning my living room walls like a man child who hasn't grown up. I'm a geek, obviously, but the toys to life plastic tat is beyond a joke. Nintendo are experts at establishing scarcity when it's unnecessary- driving up prices for said tat. In some games, amiibo have locked full game modes. Disgusting combination of false scarcity amiibo, gamemodes and capitalism.

2) Time limited game releases.

Recently I mentioned to @Ralizah I was adding xenoblade 3 into my must buy list (thanks for the advice legend). Which was sat alongside Grandia remastered and the Super Mario 3d collection as my must buy games. I hadn't done my homework on those games. Grandia is £129 on ebay and Mario is £90. Again, false scarcity. I can't buy them legitimately. I can't buy Mario 3d collection on the Nintendo store for god knows what reason and Grandia (moon old game which is easily emulated) is £35 digital. Its just a joke.

3) First Party Games not dropping in price

I'm a savvy shopper. Love a discount as I play a lot of games. So when TOTK released I thought, let's have a look at how much Links Awakening or Skyward sword are. Sensible for me, ive missed both games. Usually by the time a sequel or latest in a series hits, older games have dropped in price. Not on Nintendo. Links Awakening is £40. £40 for an admittedly solid remake of a gameboy game. But £40?? TOTK is £50 in comparison which is brand new.

Out of the big four - PlayStation, Xbox, Valve and Nintendo. Nintendo have far and away the worst consumer experience. Yes you can almost guarantee the games will work and be optimised which shouldn't be overlooked. I also don't begrudge Nintendo employees a good wage to work in the industry. But it's not good enough. Nintendo were fined in the 90s for price fixing and anti consumer tactics and it feels similar right now.

I think Nintendo is largely abandoning the amiibo drive at this point. Major releases lately seem to enjoy less support on that front compared to ones from earlier in the generation (most don't get any; even TotK, arguably the biggest Nintendo releases in years, only received one amiibo compared to a whole slew for BotW). I do think they're also backing off from locking content behind amiibos, thankfully.

I'd be shocked if they're even still a thing next gen.

As for Grandia, I don't know how it was distributed in the UK, but over here, it was exclusive to Limited Run Games, a boutique publisher who does limited print runs of games that otherwise wouldn't be distributed in this region. You can easily buy the asian physical with english support on Play Asia, at least.

Digitally, the game sinks to about $20 in sales over here, which was about what I was willing to pay for it.

The 3D All-Stars situation was bizarre and infuriating: they did a large single print run for that game, but the digital version was delisted after a certain point! I'll never understand the reasoning behind it other than attempting to elicit FOMO, because the entire point of digital distribution is to ensure the easy availability of your product to everyone, since they no longer have to buy a cartridge in a box in order to be able to play it. Thankfully, I haven't seen them attempt to replicate this strategy with another major release yet.

This one has, admittedly, never been a big deal to me. If anything, I like it, since it protects launch purchasers instead of rewarding people who wait for the games to sink in price. Most products cost what they cost, and I think the devaluation of games had led to... unhealthy industry trends.

IMO the pricing tactics engaged in by companies like Ubisoft and SEGA where they start high, peddle expensive editions and DLC to the whales, and then, barely months after release, start cratering the price, which causes launch physicals to lose value, is borderline predatory.

Sony also had this issue with pricing last gen, tbh. I bought major releases like God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn a year or so after release for, like, $10 a pop after getting burned by this strategy when I bought a couple of their games at launch and then felt like I'd wasted my money when they started dove-tailing in price not long after launch.

So far, Sony's strategy this gen has been a lot more measured, which is good to see. Prices are coming down, but in a very gradual sort of way.

I think the Eshop Vouchers (assuming you are happy to buy your library digitally) take the edge off of things. I effectively got TOTK for 35 quid with the voucher + accumulated coins from other vouchers reducing the cost of the voucher purchase. Xbox and Sony are probably more consumer friendly in a general sense, but I wish all of them would adopt the voucher approach because it rocks.

@Ralizah great counterpoint. As mentioned, I've been out of the loop on Nintendo so seeing amiibo and locked content articles for games I'm interested in, came as a shock. Possibly amiibo followed in the footsteps of skylanders and has slowly burnt out. And you are right about the price of games, on xbox everything is cheaper - including my trade in values. I just need to stop being a tight ass initially rofl 🤣

Yeah the 3d Mario collection Is an odd situation. I have no idea why Nintendo don't want to sell us their back catalogue. Possibly restricting it, makes us want the games more. Playing hard to get in a commercial sense.

@Pizzamorg I am happy for digital games. Although with the cost, I am much happier having the backup of trade in values. As an example I started stranger of final fantasy last night on the xbox and absolutely hated everything about it. One of the worst games I have ever played. 45 minutes and it's back in the box. Going on ebay later to try to recoup the wasted £20.

Games which I know such as 3d all-stars, celeste, sonic mania etc I would happily buy digitally. Games I'm unsure of, such as Grandia (recommended by a colleague) or Tactics Ogre reborn its physical all day, unless it has a mega online discount. Weirdly I love disgaea and am lukewarm on tactics ogre. I can see the reason people like it, but it's far too cumbersome and bloated, without the tactics of say disgaea, xcom or shining force. I'm finding it too easy. Just load up on archers and have a tank sat off picking up the bonuses.