Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

@nessisonett Hopefully not in the Gerudo Desert 💀

I think it is interesting too, because arguably (especially in the context of people giving this a 10), there is still plenty of work to be done in TOTK. Switch limitations aside, TOTK still isn't a perfect game as far as I am concerned. It has pretty weak combat, really unnecessarily frustrating difficulty tuning, at times genuinely terrible controls, an awful UI (and inventory management system) and some fairly dull encounter designs outside of open world emergent sequences.

However, would they really release a third BOTW style Zelda but just with all of the quality of life tweaks that are missing? Could they really get away with that? I'm starting to think based on the response to TOTK they maybe could.

And that isn't me trying to throw shade at TOTK, I genuinely like it more than I don't and have enjoyed it more than BOTW so far (even though I was more lukewarm on that than many) but I think anyone giving this a 10... that is just insanity. They may only be small transgressions TOTK commits in the scale of much grander magic, sure, but fewer small annoyances have sunk other ships when it comes to critical responses to things.

@Kidfried I genuinely wouldn't mind a Wind Waker remake that fleshed out the latter hours of that game. And righted the terrible way they treated Tetra in the closing hours, for that matter.

@Kidfried Breath of the Wild was designed around having a giant, fully interactive environment to explore. The Triforce shards hunt is only there because the development team didn't have time to finish all of the game's planned dungeons. TWW is otherwise still designed to be a sequence of dungeons and boss fights, like all post-OoT Zelda games up to BotW. It'd be the equivalent of OoT having you dig around in the dirt for hours before fighting Ganondorf.

The Wii U entry streamlined this process, but it really shouldn't have been there at all.

@Ralizah Tetra was the coolest character in that game and then they whitewash her and turn her into a beige Zelda. Total swing and a miss.

@nessisonett I'm pretty sure she's just tan from hanging out on the deck of a pirate ship all the time, although it still doesn't make sense she'd lose that when awakening to her true identity lol. But yeah, taking the formerly most badass character in that game and hiding her in a basement so she could get kidnapped was infuriating. Like... why? Zelda literally dresses up like a ninja and helps Link throughout OoT without memory issues! Even in the context of something like BotW, she's imprisoning Ganon, not visa versa. She's not a Princess Peach type of character that should be narratively tossed around like a football.

It's really too bad, because take away that part of her character arc, and she's one of the best iterations of the character in the series.

@Ralizah that was decent, cheers. I have no good ideas, the ones I think I have don’t ever work.

Recently I rarely played my Switch games as my PS4 games hype is still on.
I felt Switch in year 6 started to feel disappointing for some reason.
The machine is already outdated in my opinion and it made the bad treatment for physical release by certain developers.

Beat my third divine beast, which was the Gerudo one. That boss was one of the hardest I’ve fought in a Nintendo game to be honest. Probably because all of my gear was metal! At least that gave me the last heart I need for the Master Sword.

@RogerRoger To be clear, I don't think stories, in and of themselves, matter one whit in Zelda games. By and large, Zelda games don't have stories in any meaningful sense. They have long sequences of directed gameplay or setpieces (which culminated traditionally in the series' famous dungeons) and the narrative elements, as they are, exist to provide context and heighten the drama of what is happening on-screen. This is why most Zelda stories have been some variant of: go collect the seven thingies from these important people to unlock the power to defeat the bad guy!

That's obviously not to say there's not a layer of complex lore in the background, but it's not, and never, the focus of one of these games.

Which is why BotW's structure was so brilliant, IMO. It leaned even harder into this ethos, to the point where the traditional open world tension between gameplay and story disappear completely. Insofar as the story is about Link becoming strong enough to defeat the Calamity Ganon, the gameplay IS the story. You write the story with your actions, and the game molds itself around how you approach it.

This actually gave the designers some space to include real narrative elements that didn't somehow revolve around 'collect the thing to beat the guy' via the game's tragic backstory, which you can gradually unlock through the game via memories and hitting main story waypoints. Brilliantly, even this ties back into gameplay, but in a more organic way, as it's primarily a reward for exploration, and being immersed in your environment.

TotK tries something similar by making your goal to find Princess Zelda, but without an explicit, immediate goal that's connected to the flow of the gameplay, a lot of the game just ends up feeling sort of context-less. I'm sure they'll connect the dots between what I'm doing and what's happening in Bad Guy Land down the road, but it lacks the sort of unity of elements that BotW had.

So far, I'm playing just to play. Which isn't inherently a bad thing. That's how Mario games are, too, and those are some of the most beloved games to ever exist. But it does mean I am changing how I approach this title compared to its predecessor.

Interestingly, Monolith Soft was heavily involved with the development of these modern Zelda games, but they're seemingly the one internal Nintendo developer whose games actually prioritize narrative. Admittedly, the Xenoblade games lightened up on this a bit compared to their Playstation days, but a game like Xenoblade 3 still has practically a Metal Gear Solid-esque commitment to complex and emotional storytelling, with one set of connected cutscenes in the middle of the game actually practically being a movie in its own right, since it's roughly two hours long. Thankfully, there's, like, a three minute window of time in the middle to save/rest first lol.

@nessisonett

"That boss was one of the hardest I’ve fought in a Nintendo game to be honest."

Ol Flowerblight Ganon by the Hila Rao shrine still reigns supreme.

In terms of real enemies, though, I struggled with the lynels more than any of the bosses. Especially the golden variants, eugh.

@Ralizah I remember having way more trouble with the flower lady the first time I played it. This time I just kinda glided near enough to the end.

55 hours of playtime over the last ten days lol. I've only done one of the four main story questlines so far and have only collected a third of the memories. I was wrapping up BotW after 75 hours.

This is gonna be a loooooooooong one.

@nessisonett I love that players were salty enough about her automated abuse that they very quickly found ways to destroy her flowerbed without even actually touching the ground and activating her animations.

Finally finished up XC3: Future Redeemed last night. Don't want too say too much because the whole thing is kinda spoilery, but it was pretty great. Kinda like Torna, I kinda liked that it was a tighter, more concise adventure. That said I kinda wish it were a bit longer, but that's just because it was so good (without getting too spoilery, I would have loved it if that "memory" was fleshed out into an entire region).

I think the only thing I have left to do is clear out the last 4-5 unique monsters, but I think I'm going to leave them alone because there's no way to organically grow stronger to fight them (the only way I could see is to constantly grind the one closest to you in level until you're strong enough for the next one). TBH, I'm almost level 70 & I can't beat that level 60 T-Rex thing (don't know how I'd begin to take on the level 70, 80, 90, & 100 unique monsters).

Would love to start on Kirby or Zelda, but it's been a few months since the last time I touched my gaming laptop (since Prime Remastered released, I think), so I should probably play through something in my Steam library in order to put it through it's paces.

The Lightning Temple is definitely an improvement over the Water one. It feels MUCH closer to being a 'real' Zelda dungeon than anything else in the game so far. It's too bad the air being choked with dust from the sandstorm made it look sort of visually washed out.

Has my favorite boss in the game so far as well. If there was one thing I missed in BotW, it was the sort of gigantic, terrifying bosses you used to see in Zelda games, and this definitely hit the spot in that regard.

I'll also say, while you don't unique gear to use in these dungeons, having to use the champion's abilities to complete the dungeons and defeat the bosses feels like an acceptable substitute.

And the build-up to those dungeons feels VERY classic Zelda in terms of how they're structured. You know, talking to NPCs, solving environmental puzzles, completing set-pieces, etc.

The more I play, the more the main story stuff feels like a middle-ground between old and new Zelda.

@RogerRoger I don't think your analysis was flawed at all. Just wanted to explain my own (perhaps slightly unorthodox) feelings on the matter.

In the case of Monolith Soft, I think they were pulled in to assist with the open world design elements of these games. Monolith's own Xenoblade Chronicles X was, I believe, the first fully open world 3D game Nintendo ever published, so they seem to be the go-to experts on how to craft an interesting and open ended environment. It must have been such a switch up for the Zelda devs, who had been making increasingly tightly designed linear action-adventure titles since 1992 (although, interestingly, the original Legend of Zelda from the mid-80s is perhaps the first major open world game, which is why people often refer to these new entries as being a return to the roots of the series).

Nintendo EPD's gameplay-first approach tends to go to the center of their design philosophy, and really explains all of the idiosyncratic aspects of their productions. For example, the squid people in Splatoon are squid people primarily because that concept aligned nicely with the gameplay functions they wanted the game to feature, rather than designing a game around the concept of a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by intelligent squids. I'm sure that's why Zelda stories were the way they were in the more linear games, and then changed with the introduction of an open-world structure.

Ok the Ocarina of Time music playing when I pulled the Master Sword out its pedestal was very cool. Heard that tune a million times cause of switching age playing randomiser runs. There seems to be a lot of hidden OoT music in BotW actually, heard a bit of the Kokiri forest music but not found Saria’s Song!

@nessisonett Yeah I loved little touches like that. Made the game feel nostalgic in places even though is was a new direction for Zelda games.

After 20+ hours, I've finally arrived at my first temple in TotK. This is going to be a long game, so I'm definitely going to play it in bursts in order to avoid getting burned out.

Anyone else feel like stamina isn't as important in this game as in BotW? Because in BotW, you really relied on climbing in order to get everywhere. But in TotK, you have so many ways of traveling vertically. Sky towers shoot you up, you can fast travel to completed shrines on sky islands and glide down from there, you can stand on stones that have fallen from the sky and reverse time so you travel upwards. I even did a shrine today that taught me you can attach a rocket to a shield and it lets you fly up for a short time. Seeing as you can purchase zonai devices like rockets, that's going to be incredibly useful.

So yeah, I feel like upgrading your stamina is fairly pointless since you don't really climb as much in this game.

@LtSarge It still has many uses. Gliding long distances, charge attacks for some very beefy enemies, climbing (because you'll still need that a good bit).

In fact, I'd argue Stamina in this game will sneak up on you. Some sky islands you're not getting too even with your best devices, so best get gliding.

Granted, there's another reason you'll want stamina. I'd say just over two full wheels is what you need. I've stopped at 2 & 1/3, and I've only rarely felt like popping an elixir.

I finally did my first dungeon which was the wind temple. So far it was decent. The boss fight was very reminiscent of the Zelda games I miss so much so i loved it, but I forgot to take a pic of it in case it has a slot in the compendium 😅

The dungeon itself was a little too short and still felt like a divine beast in that it doesn't feel like you're solving puzzles to progress through each point of a dungeon. But instead you're wandering around almost aimlessly just looking for the right entrance to get to an objective with simple puzzles scattered about. It probably didn't help that I refused to take off my skyward sword clothes and I had very few cold resistance food/pots so I was sorta rushing

Another thing I didn't like is how samey it looks. Maybe it was the constant blizzard masking everything or how the game itself just has diluted colors in general. Flying around from the outside you can tell it's a ship, but when you're on it or inside. I thought I was in a slightly more elaborate shrine. Overall I hope the other dungeons are better and they keep the really cool boss fights!