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CainFortea posted:I randomly got gifted Phantasy Star 2 by a family member as a kid and I enjoyed it but never played the first one. Neither did I. Or the second one actually.
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Jun 14, 2023 18:45
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| # ? May 26, 2024 00:02 |
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I'm looking to pick up a used Switch. My partner already has one I occasionally borrow, so I can afford to wait for a deal (assuming that's a thing). Are there any particular sources that are more trustworthy?
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Jun 14, 2023 20:35
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I'm halfway into Tears of the Kingdom and... Eh... It's enjoyable, but falls short compared to "Breath Of The Wild." Breath of the Wild was criticized for being perceived as "shallow" by many, including me. Looking back, however, I think those criticisms may have been a byproduct of people's expectations of Open World games that were influenced by what we now call the "Prestige Game" format (or more derogatorily speaking, "Ubisoftification"): Open worlds that are densely packed with a scattershot of collectables, chores, and mini games that are all calling out to the player to run to. Through this lens, I can see why people think TOTK is better. I think these criticisms overlook the design of Breath of the Wild, which, in my opinion, was intentionally designed to condition the player to find meaning in the environment that emotionally invests them in a way that most open world games don't. The content cycle seems basic: You see a shrine, and you walk towards it. And along the way you might stumble upon a chest, or a NPC. But then you come across the Koroks, little goofy guys that reward you with seeds when you discover their secret puzzles, and now the world is telling the player "Hey, there's meaning in the quiet empty places too." And now you're encouraged to keep your eyes off the minimap and take in the world. As a result, your relationship with Hyrule, even when it's simply traversing it, becomes more interesting. The way the game really encourages exploration, however, by how it deviates from the seemingly rigid formulas in very unexpected ways. You may find yourself naked on a deserted island, you may find a tiny cabin in the mountains with a old little person there that'll challenge your shield sledding skills, you may find yourself building a whole rear end town. I didn't expect those things to happen, and it's amazing that they did! These deviations make the world feel mysterious and alive, that there's stuff out there that I don't know about and will never know about. In contrast, Tears of the Kingdom feels Ubisoft as gently caress. A dense map filled with a trillion of collectables, minigames, and puzzles. The game shifts the focus from environmental attentiveness to easily spotted points of interest. Instead of exploring the world on the ground level, I can just shoot myself out of a tower and glide to the next shiny or floaty thing, bypassing the nuanced navigation of the first game. The world feels less significant now that there's more stuff to do in it, ironically. Automata 10 Pack fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Jun 14, 2023 |
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Jun 14, 2023 20:47
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Automata 10 Pack posted:easily spotted points of interest. This is literally how they designed both games, from their own mouth in interviews.
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Jun 14, 2023 21:03
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Automata 10 Pack posted:I'm halfway into Tears of the Kingdom and... Eh... Yeah usually expansions aren't nearly as good as the base game.
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Jun 14, 2023 21:03
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Meanwhile I got a cool screen cap of some neat scenery that I only would have gotten while on my hoverbike. vOv I'm at work or i'd post it, but basically the tip of a mountain lined up with the bottom of hyrule castle in a way that made it look mirrored.
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Jun 14, 2023 21:05
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Automata 10 Pack posted:I'm halfway into Tears of the Kingdom and... Eh... Nice post NOT!
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Jun 14, 2023 21:23
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Automata 10 Pack posted:In contrast, Tears of the Kingdom feels Ubisoft as gently caress. A dense map filled with a trillion of collectables, minigames, and puzzles. The game shifts the focus from environmental attentiveness to easily spotted points of interest. Instead of exploring the world on the ground level, I can just shoot myself out of a tower and glide to the next shiny or floaty thing, bypassing the nuanced navigation of the first game. The world feels less significant now that there's more stuff to do in it, ironically. I feel like minigames among other things make it feel so much more like an older zelda titles - the world feels much more alive in a way that, at least I personally enjoy. "Nuanced navigation" in BotW amounted to "time to wait because it's raining again" and finding weird bits of cliff you could stand on to regen stamina (something I'm doing plenty of) - I feel like there's so many "aha" moments in navigation in TotK where you realize you can apply one of your powers to help you get around. (Or just the joy of building a contraption to achieve your needs) Though I do agree that the nature of the verticality does lead to a lot of "im just going to fly over to the thing I want." I don't agree any of it is "Ubisoft open world" at all. Everything is still very self-driven and I don't really think there's that much more collectables and puzzles. IMO I think some of that is also needed because I feel like the first game kind of lacked purpose to stuff, where fighting enemies quickly became a waste of your time because you were spending a bunch of your breakable weapons to get....more breakable weapons?
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Jun 14, 2023 21:23
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The quiet moments of contemplation and sprawling landscapes are still there in ToTK, you just have to make it a point to go out hiking rather than hopping onto your fancy vehicle or shooting yourself up into the sky every single time. I agree that it feels denser overall and I liked botw just fine content wise but most people disagree and found the first one way too empty. I think this new balance is perfect I personally love traversing the overworld and even the underground on foot honestly. Although I do always have my auto builds ready to go in case I have to deal with extreme heights
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Jun 14, 2023 21:25
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TIL I could stick a rocket on my shield and just fly up whatever
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Jun 14, 2023 21:29
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Automata 10 Pack posted:I'm halfway into Tears of the Kingdom and... Eh... not reading any of this bullshit
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Jun 14, 2023 21:43
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I stopped using the now ubiquitous hover bike because it was ruining my enjoyment. Be chill and sprint around like a lunatic instead
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Jun 14, 2023 21:45
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*feels villeneuve makes the tulin whirr sound and blows away the bad posts*
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Jun 14, 2023 21:46
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Nah, my post is good. Also, The Depths sucks! Just a large big ol' chunk of bad content. Just a bad No Man's Sky biome stinking up the place. The game is still good overall. But if someone is deciding to only play BOTW or TOTK I'm suggesting BOTW. It's the best designed, while TOTK is the most designed. Automata 10 Pack fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Jun 14, 2023 |
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Jun 14, 2023 21:50
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The only depths I am dreading are the depths of you're bad posts!!!!
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Jun 14, 2023 21:54
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thinking about that first boss at the volcano and smiling
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Jun 14, 2023 21:54
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Automata 10 Pack posted:Also, The Depths sucks! Just a large big ol' chunk of bad content. I was gonna give you the benefit of a doubt, but god drat did you gently caress that up here.
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Jun 14, 2023 21:59
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Automata 10 Pack posted:Instead of exploring the world on the ground level, I can just shoot myself out of a tower and glide to the next shiny or floaty thing, bypassing the nuanced navigation of the first game. The world feels less significant now that there's more stuff to do in it, ironically. I mean, you can also not do that. It is what you make of it. I wanted to open up another tower, so I literally glided from one to the other using stamina foods to keep gliding. That's kind of the nice thing about TotK. I can't recall you ever really needing to create elaborate hover bikes or whatever to get places. As far as I can tell, you can explore everywhere with your basic abilities. You can create a death machine that shoots lasers a Lynels so you don't have to do any work, or you can just fight them the old fashion way.
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Jun 14, 2023 22:00
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Also lol at the idea people didn't glide everywhere they could in BotW
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Jun 14, 2023 22:06
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Fire Dungeon is a big ol' pile of meh compared to the other three. After the first three unlocks I just brute forced my way into the other. Boss was fun though.
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Jun 14, 2023 22:06
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Yah I definitely just climbed and mashed stamina food into my face to get to most of the locks in that one
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Jun 14, 2023 22:20
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Automata 10 Pack posted:I'm halfway into Tears of the Kingdom and... Eh... Yes and no. Obviously TotK is the better game, it's everything BotW was and more. The more is a bit questionable at times, and I get where you're coming from. I haven't quite had those moments of sheer amazement that I had in BotW, but I love having so many more biomes to explore. You need to walk, take the roads on horseback, and follow natural geographical roads (rivers and valleys), to really see some cool things. TotK just allows you to not do that. My biggest complaint is how much more gated of a game it feels. It's not a huge deal, and it's clear it does it mainly because the game just has so many systems, but I liked how organic being in BotW was. Still haven't started the plot and have 95 shrines just from wandering around. It's really really good in that way.
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Jun 14, 2023 22:30
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History Comes Inside! posted:Yah I definitely just climbed and mashed stamina food into my face to get to most of the locks in that one If you (plot spoilers)find the fifth sage as your second sage she can just walk on minecart rails and then you can just walk on those and get where you need to be without interacting with any puzzles I imagine that was a real involved temple but uh...it wasn't
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Jun 14, 2023 22:31
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I don't know if Zelda really needs to be open world or if it even excels there
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Jun 14, 2023 22:40
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100YrsofAttitude posted:Yes and no. Obviously TotK is the better game, it's everything BotW was and more. The more is a bit questionable at times, and I get where you're coming from. I haven't quite had those moments of sheer amazement that I had in BotW, but I love having so many more biomes to explore. You need to walk, take the roads on horseback, and follow natural geographical roads (rivers and valleys), to really see some cool things. TotK just allows you to not do that. My biggest issue is actually with the story, which in both games is minimal enough to basically just be vibes. But there's a weird overlap and repetition that makes Tears of the Kingdom not feel great. In Breath of the Wild, Hyrule has faced a century of ruin due to your failure. But now you have the chance to set things right. Every ruined town, every moss covered wagon, all make you feel the weight of what happened and what you're seeking to fix. In Tears of the Kingdom... all those ruins are still there, but is not thematically or emotionally relevant to the story at all. You're facing a reckoning with a founding secret of Hyrule that you had nothing to do with, and has nothing to do with the current state of the world. And then there's the fact that the general story of harnessing the power of ancient sages by connecting them with their modern descendants is just a less fleshed out retread of what you had to do in the first game. I haven't beaten the game yet though, and I've already encountered some neat twists, so maybe it's okay that this is a similar, but less central part of the story. I don't know. It's a much more satisfying game to play, but it has much less satisfying vibes. I kind of wish it wasn't a sequel but just a weird remake where the events of the first game were just happening slightly differently. The vibes of Breath of the Wild were so heart-wrenchingly good. It's a shame I don't get to feel anything like that in Tears of the Kingdom, even as I'm having a lot of fun actually playing it.
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Jun 14, 2023 22:48
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I was ready to give up on Zelda after TP and SS. No sense of discovery or exploration in those at all. Open world or not, I'm glad they seem to have realized how unnecessary all the handholding and guidance was.
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Jun 14, 2023 22:52
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Meowywitch posted:I don't know if Zelda really needs to be open world or if it even excels there I don't think Zelda fits well with open world even though I'm well in the minority. I enjoyed the getting new ability in 2d zeldas, then go back around the overworld looking for places it can open up. Same as a metroidvania, but from a different perspective. Open world just doesn't lend itself well to that, at all. I really believe open world either needs something fun to do in combat (horizon fights vs robots) or be densely packed (yakuzas). Exploration for its own sake is just extremely tedious. And other than lynels, the combat just falls flat in BOTW. But I'm also someone who really disliked the open world aspects of Elden Ring that were a huge hit with most people.
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Jun 14, 2023 22:59
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totk is pretty dense. its the yakuza 5 of zelda
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Jun 14, 2023 23:01
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good thing zelda’s exploration is really fun
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Jun 14, 2023 23:01
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For me TotK is the better game and for me the biggest thing is that I just felt a greater sense of awe in the environmental storytelling with all the ruins and everything. There just wasn't that same level of that for me from BotW, maybe in part because a lot of the time I saw something that I wanted to take a closer look at I would hear a beeping and then be shot to death by a laser.
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Jun 14, 2023 23:28
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TotK > BotW All other Zelda games > TotK
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Jun 14, 2023 23:31
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TotK owns. I hope they do something different for the next Zelda game 8 years from now.
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Jun 14, 2023 23:36
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Lol some of you people have such bad opinions, semper games
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Jun 14, 2023 23:38
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Ever since BotW I've maintained an alternative direction they could take things would be similar world design and scope but actually dialing back the freeform traversal and replacing it with conventional Zelda tools and progression to open more up to you. Being more grounded would probably lend a pretty insane sense of size to the world, but obviously a lot of other stuff would need to be changed to not just have it be tedium.
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Jun 14, 2023 23:40
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The one major gripe I have about Tears is that once you know the sort of metagame around the Depths - first, that the light roots all correspond to exactly where shrines are on the surface/sky and second, that the Depths are segmented by where bodies of water cross on the surface - the level of exploration and mystery kind of drops a bit because you can make a solid guesstimate on where a lot of things will be. Of course with that being said, I'm at like 90 hours on the clock and still haven't found the Master Sword, so there's still some surprises left out there.
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Jun 14, 2023 23:41
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American McGay posted:TotK owns. I hope they do something different for the next Zelda game 8 years from now. I'm hoping for a 3rd version of this hyrule, but flooded so we get Legend of Zelda: Black Flag
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Jun 14, 2023 23:43
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As much as I enjoyed TOTK, and as fun as flying around is, flying is very much at odds with surface exploration. 90% of the map becomes flyover territory, and this leads to googling where to find stuff more often instead of just exploring on your own Possible solution 1: gatekeep flying for later in the game after people have hiked around and explored things on the surface world for a while Possible solution 2: get rid of the surface world, everything is either flying or caves/buildings where you can’t fly
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Jun 14, 2023 23:54
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Manoueverable posted:The one major gripe I have about Tears is that once you know the sort of metagame around the Depths - first, that the light roots all correspond to exactly where shrines are on the surface/sky and second, that the Depths are segmented by where bodies of water cross on the surface - the level of exploration and mystery kind of drops a bit because you can make a solid guesstimate on where a lot of things will be. Of course with that being said, I'm at like 90 hours on the clock and still haven't found the Master Sword, so there's still some surprises left out there. Of course it made the exploration a lot simpler after that, as you said, but personally the easier exploration came with a residual pride for having figured it out on my own. And the whole game is kind of balanced that way- it's like starting out with 3 hearts and every combat encounter being a huge challenge, vs having 16 hearts and not having to worry about it. The game gets easier in some ways as you progress, and that's fine.
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Jun 14, 2023 23:58
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Or you can just, you know, not fly.
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Jun 14, 2023 23:59
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| # ? May 26, 2024 00:02 |
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Manoueverable posted:The one major gripe I have about Tears is that once you know the sort of metagame around the Depths - first, that the light roots all correspond to exactly where shrines are on the surface/sky and second, that the Depths are segmented by where bodies of water cross on the surface - the level of exploration and mystery kind of drops a bit because you can make a solid guesstimate on where a lot of things will be. This is the only reason I got all the shrines. I had to light the depths and reveal the map, and then since I had all those found I might as well get the land shrines, and then I was only missing 9 sky shrines so gently caress it why not
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Jun 15, 2023 00:00
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