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I loved these games, always good to see another LP of them. They're not very innovative in the context of the rest of the series, but they didn't need to be, they're solid games and anyone who likes Zelda (and especially Link's Awakening) will like them. It strikes me as a very Capcom style of game design, rather like so many Megaman games blatantly being "new levels, new weapons, excuse plot. Have fun!". I always prefer to do Seasons first also, though some of that is map OCD, because in a non-linked Ages run there is a single map square you can never reveal, and that bugs the hell out of me. I can't remember if I've actually done them in the other order... One thing I will say is that trying to get 100% rings is a huge pain and I don't blame you one bit for not trying to do it (I did do it once and never will again). I think I'd actually have minded it less if they were completely random (which could at least have made for some variance in replaying the game), but instead there are some really weird ones you only get from doing a particular obscure sidequest, or win from a minigame (but naturally you can't tell if you got the exclusive one or not without going back to the ring shop), and so on. And then there are the ones from things like Gasha Nuts, there are actually different rarity groups depending on the location you plant the seed and that gets really annoying to manage. (On top of this there's the fact that most of the rings are either incredibly situational, or useless, or outclassed by some fairly straightforward effects on rings that are easier to obtain...) Though I guess one perk is that you can use "secrets" to carry them to new files, once you have them, you don't need to do it in a single playthrough and you can use them as a sort of new-game-plus thing.
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May 20, 2018 02:18
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Bruceski posted:Depends how you define innovation, really. They have interesting variations on old tools, and they make use of those differences between the games. Yeah, that's true. Good point. They did a really good job of iterating on and playing with old themes, I think. It's the broad strokes that they seem the most clearly derivative, and even there they manage to make some interesting changes that change the feel and how it plays. That, and I'm not going to complain about getting more of a good formula. There's a reason we have sayings about not fixing things that aren't broken.
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May 20, 2018 02:43
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General Revil posted:That's what I'm doing on my run through, but getting 100% rings requires you to play each game two times (in one of two possible orders). Fortunately, if you grind Gassha trees in one game, you don't have to do it in any of the others because you can just trade rings. Still, I think you can get all but three of the rings with just a regular 2-game linked game. Yeah, that sounds right. It's been a while, I certainly don't remember all the details! I looked up a guide out of curiosity and it's apparently 4 rings that require the second two playthroughs: the ring you get for using Hero Secret, the ring from the upgraded Hero's Cave, and two rings from secrets. And strictly speaking you can transfer the Hero Secret one back as soon as you start the third file, but the other three won't come until most of the way through the second linked game. Your order's definitely better if you're going to do four playthroughs for ring completion, but otherwise I'd maintain Seasons first is still preferable (though honestly some of that might also be just because I enjoy Ages more and prefer to end on a high note).
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May 21, 2018 03:22
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Kerning Chameleon posted:I seem to recall the urban legend being that Seasons was originally a remake of LoZ1, and a lot of that can be seen in the final product, such as the locations of the dungeons on the overworld and the overall plot-light structure. Can't remember what Ages was "supposed" to originally be. I do like Ages more for the characterization, though. In that it has any. I seem to recall it being a bit more complicated than that - something like the original plan being for three games, one of which would be a remake of LoZ1, but the password system made it too complicated to implement (with three games, they'd have had to account for 6 distinct orders you could play them in) so they cut it down to two games and distributed what they had of the LoZ1 remake content into the games we actually got. I think there are a few different things, the biggest and most obvious one is obviously the first dungeon of Seasons (its overworld location, the shape of its map, and the boss are all identical to LoZ1) but it didn't stop there. I don't have a source for this handy, so I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was something like that anyway.
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May 26, 2018 22:21
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Yeah, this boss is not fun. I think its official name is "Head Thwomp", or at least that's what the strategy guide called it back in the day (this game was long enough ago that I was still buying those). Regardless, this fight is both annoying and uninteresting, and especially frustrating if you assume the roulette is random rather than stopping on the face the bomb went in on (or the next one that would have shown if it was in transition). Also not great is that you have to fight this thing with a maximum bomb capacity of 10. This is definitely the boss I dislike most in these games. On the "ranged weapon" talk, yes, I really enjoy how these games handled that also. It's probably one of the reasons I prefer Ages to Seasons though, all things considered. But we'll see that soon enough.
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May 28, 2018 01:16
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On Ricky the kangaroo - as far as I know, yes, she was intended to be female (male marsupials don't have the pouch for obvious reasons) even if the game tends to use male pronouns. I seem to remember reading that it's a translation/localisation issue and the name would have been more accurately romanised as Rikki. I think the animal helpers were a cute idea that's underutilised in these games, but I'll wait to talk more about them because most of what I want to say involves things we haven't seen yet. The raft sequence always drives me nuts in terms of map OCD, the areas it lets you explore look pretty awful on the map (whether you go out of your way to explore as much as possible or not) and you can't go back to fix it until much later. That said... I actually like the Crescent Island sequence, I guess that's an unpopular opinion? It may be a bit frustrating to lose your items, but I like how this area forces you to recontextualise them and temporarily losing capabilities you take for granted in a game is a good way to make you appreciate them. I thought some of the puzzles were cleverish too, and having to decide which one(s) to bring out of shovel/feather/bracelet until you can get them all back allowed them to gate things in a way they wouldn't otherwise be able to. It's interesting, at least.
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May 30, 2018 18:34
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I think this dungeon might be why I find myself nostalgic for the rest of Crescent Island too. Best dungeon music, best dungeon item. One of the better bosses too.
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Jun 3, 2018 18:28
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The default animal companion is actually different depending on which game you play first (and your choice carries over to the linked game, you don't get a do-over). I can never remember how it works, I always have to look it up. In Ages, you get Dimitri from the shop as you showed, or Ricky as a minigame prize (from the batting game in past Lynna Village). If you get neither flute before reaching this area, you'll get stuck with Moosh (ugh, button mashing). In Seasons, the shop has Moosh, Dimitri is the minigame prize (from Subrosian dancing), and you get Ricky by default on reaching the animal-specific area. I usually end up picking Dimitri too. I'm still not sure if I like this or not, mainly because it's never explained, so the player can't make an informed choice unless they look up a guide. On the other hand, it never really ends up mattering: there's one area in each game that changes depending on which animal you get, and outside of that and the very short introductory areas for each animal, you never need their abilities for anything and there's little reason to use them. I think there might be some minor areas you can access sooner depending on which one you have, but it never makes a huge difference. The animals were a cute idea, but they're really underused. I guess at least in theory it offers some incentive to replay the game with different ones? Fun bonus: the animal flutes are also lethal to Pols Voices. It can actually matter in Seasons, since that game's gimmick item (unlike the Harp of Ages) doesn't make sound, and you encounter Pols Voices at a point before you are guaranteed to have a flute. It's a (minor) incentive to choose an animal other than Ricky in that game if you play it first (if you play Ages first I don't think you can have a flute then).
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Jun 6, 2018 18:46
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lezard_valeth posted:In Link's Awakening I got stuck in the 2nd dungeon I think? In the room where you have to kill the enemies in a specific order, but the hint you get calls them by their name ("kill the imprisoned pols voice first, last stalfos") which an 8-10 years old has no way of knowing since who reads the instruction booklets at that age. I eventually figured it out by order of elimination following the imprisoned part of the clue. Oh god. For the longest time child-me literally just kept replaying Link's Awakening from the beginning to that point, because I had no idea what to do but still liked playing the game. That "puzzle" forced me to buy a guide for that game.
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Jun 7, 2018 15:19
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Thorn, I think you were sort of sequence-breaking here, the room with invisible floors is meant to be navigated after you have the Cane of Somaria. You can use the block the same way you were using the seeds, and/or push it along the platform, to identify where the floor is. The game probably intends you to get one of the other keys first, though off the top of my head I don't remember which one. I seem to remember this gimmick showing up again later in the game, also? I liked your solution to the Boss Key puzzle, I don't think I've ever done it that way and aligning the colours is cute. Don't think I ever knew you could delay the boss clouds with the sword, either, though it doesn't seem like that strategy actually helped you very much... still, it's neat. Other than that, I don't think there's a whole lot to be said about this dungeon. It's not bad, exactly, but it can be confusing and is one of the less interesting ones really. I like the next ones a lot though (yes, even the one everyone complains about). I'm less fond of the "suddenly, minigames!" thing as pacing, but it's not the worst thing either.
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Jun 17, 2018 17:57
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Cythereal posted:Ha ha, a Zelda game with a competent female character is unthinkable enough. Now you're suggesting a Zelda game with a female protagonist? In your dreams (and mine). Ugh, I know. It does seem like a thing people care about, at least! There actually seems to be a mod project in the works to make Zelda playable instead of Link in Breath of the Wild, which is pretty cool. It looks like it's in fairly early stages and they haven't modelled all the outfits or anything, but what I've seen so far looks pretty impressive; here's a trailer someone made. I've also seen some footage of a version that replaced all of Link's grunts with Zelda ones from things like Hyrule Warriors and Smash Bros. Unrelated to this - Thorn, you've said you're going to be doing a linked game for Seasons, haven't you? The way you were talking about it in this episode it sounded like you might not be, or maybe that you weren't going to do a lot of the extras? I know that you can get all of the major items (like Biggoron's Sword, the subject of the discussion) regardless of which order you do the games in, it's just that the events you do to get them are different... there are also password generators out there if you didn't feel like revisiting Ages to get the second half of the secrets. I know you've already recorded most if not all of the LP footage, I'm just curious how you're planning to approach it.
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Jun 29, 2018 00:40
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ThornBrain posted:I could have still been deciding at the time. Seasons will be linked directly from Ages, but that's it. You need to link both to get most of the secrets, as all you really get from the first linked game is the passwords for those secrets (minus the continued story), and I don't like either game enough to play through them a second time. This actually isn't quite right - you don't need to play Ages a second time to get the secrets. You just need to return to your existing Ages save file. Basically, in addition to the main "linked game" password, a bunch of NPCs will give you smaller ones you can give to various NPCs in your original Ages save for a reward (some of them will make you do a minigame first but they're not that bad), as well as a password. You give that password to Farore in Seasons and you'll get the reward there too. You only need to do four playthroughs if you want 100% rings (which I agree isn't worth doing, playing both games twice in a row is tedious), all the other prizes can be gotten just playing each game once. The extra events for the linked game (and how you actually get those prizes) are different depending on which order you played the games, but the non-ring prizes are the same. That said, of course I won't pressure you, especially if you've already recorded. Still, if you wanted to show off Biggoron's Sword and the suchlike in a bonus video or something, you wouldn't need to put in that much effort to do it.
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Jun 29, 2018 01:22
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Zedd posted:It's me, the person that liked this dungeon quite a bit. You're not alone, I think I agree with this entirely. Not to say it can't get tedious, but I guess I mind backtracking less than some people (or at least certain kinds of backtracking). I always thought this one at least felt satisfying to figure out.
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Jul 4, 2018 22:18
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...did you forget you had the Cane of Somaria again? You can use that instead of wasting seeds to find the invisible platforms, I'm pretty sure that's what you're intended to do. Interestingly, if you look at where you are on the map, the last dungeon is very close to the first one. If you try to use the Song of Ages and get into it from the present, the game just arbitrarily says "no, time travel doesn't work here" or something like that and sends you back. No sequence breaking, you have to go through the Sea of Storms. I'd like this dungeon so much better if not for the music, completely agreed. It's especially frustrating to me because the music in the labyrinth outside is great.
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Jul 8, 2018 18:41
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Zanzibar Ham posted:I think what I liked most about the Oracle games is that you had linking games in the vein of pokemon and such, except in this case you had two different adventures rather than 'minor differences in where you find things'. In general I really hate the color-linking thing, but here it was alright. I agree with this. The other nice thing is that the intent was pretty clearly "play both games" rather than "swap with friends", and the password system (tedious as it can get at times) means you don't need to buy link cables or extra hardware to experience all the content. I can't think of other "multiple version" games that give that courtesy off the top of my head.
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Jul 12, 2018 17:52
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MeccaPrime isn't wrong about the rings, you just need to use a Ring Secret to transfer them (talk to one of the snakes in the ring shop, IIRC the blue one?). This encodes all the rings you have at the time you request it into a password that gives them to you in the linked game, essentially letting you transfer rings any time. It just doesn't happen automatically. This works for Hero Secret games also, it's how you get all the rings over the course of multiple playthroughs. (This is also how you completely trivialise what challenge there is, by starting with things like the Blue Ring from the get-go.)
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Jul 15, 2018 19:55
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Subrosia is the most mellow subterranean hell dimension ever and it's great. And somehow I always end up forgetting it's a thing when I consider which of these games I prefer and/or want to replay. It's no wonder you're getting fed up with Maple, with Maple's Ring it only takes 15 kills to make her spawn (it's normally 30) and this game's full of enemies. Though FYI, if you don't feel like dealing with her you can just leave and reenter the screen when you hear her music start, you don't have to wait for her to show up. (That said, I'm still not over seeing you get the Piece of Heart along with a potion and ring. That was absurd.)
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Jul 22, 2018 22:15
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C-Euro posted:I'm pretty sure that the rapids area right before the Moblin Keep does change depending on your animal friend. What I can't remember then is at what point you get locked into your animal friend for that playthrough in an un-linked game. It seems like it would be in the swamp where you picked up Dimitri, but at that point you haven't met each animal friend and would run the risk of getting locked into one that you didn't want, which would suck. I just looked this up because I couldn't remember, and it's apparently quite early: you'll get Ricky's Flute the first time you meet them (well, when you give back the gloves) if you didn't get one of the others before then. This is just after the second dungeon! You'll still meet the other two animals briefly, but apparently you'll be locked into one long before you'd meet Dmitri or Moosh normally. This seems a bit weird in comparison when Ages goes out of its way to introduce them all first, even if it still doesn't bother to explain how to choose the one you like.
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Aug 6, 2018 15:46
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cant cook creole bream posted:You can actually slash the claw of that crab off. At that point the crab is pretty much helpless as you shoot seeds at it. Also it spawns little crablings, which restore your ammo. I actually didn't know you could beat it the way Thorn did, for whatever reason I always thought you had to destroy the claw first. I think that's what all the guides said back in the day.
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Aug 12, 2018 22:15
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Magnetic monopoles ahoy! It makes no bloody sense but it's still a really cool mechanic, and a fun item to use, so I guess I can forgive it. I think we've finally hit the point the dungeons in this game start being less... boring, but you guys are definitely onto something that this game's dungeon designs are more lacklustre than Ages'. It doesn't help that the dungeon items are sort of a step behind the ones in Ages (notice how we got the Seed Satchel for free in Ages but it was the first dungeon item in Seasons, and Seasons still hasn't caught up: every item is a counterpart to Ages' item from one dungeon earlier), I can't help wondering if that's related. That said, the next couple of dungeons are a big improvement.
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Aug 16, 2018 01:45
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Tarm Ruins is definitely one of the most memorable parts of this game - fantastic atmospheric music, and actual puzzles using the season mechanics to their fullest. It's really not a big area, only a handful of screens (the puzzle section is just four!), but nobody forgets it. I wish there'd been more areas like this in the game (the only area I think compares is the Temple Remains, which we'll be getting to in a couple of episodes; interestingly, another musical highlight too). Fun thing about the trading sidequest: if you know the hint already, you can skip the trading quest entirely: it doesn't check whether you've given the Deku Scrub the phonograph or anything, just whether you followed the directions. That poor shield.
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Aug 19, 2018 20:07
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get that OUT of my face posted:The Zelda series isn't much for instant death, but if you get crushed by the closing walls in the leadup to the Boss Key, you'll automatically die. Not only that, but I'm pretty sure a potion won't save you from it either! That's very unusual for Zelda, and might actually be the first time it's happened (the only other I can think of is getting caught by lava in the digging tunnels of that one Skyward Sword dungeon).
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Aug 23, 2018 01:21
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Thanks for finishing both games! Link's Awakening and Spirit Tracks should be fun (Spirit Tracks is one of the few Zelda games I've never played, actually, so I'll be looking forward to that). Ugh, I agree the Twinrova first phase is the worst. There's really no good strategy there, I think the best approach is probably just to hide in a corner (which helps keep them from flying into you) and hit whatever orbs come your way until you get lucky. You can't really aim. One thing I find interesting is that this finale feels a bit different depending on the order you do both games - Onox and Veran are very different fights (Onox is a much bigger pain) and then you're going directly from there to Twinrova and Ganon. On top of that, your item loadout will be different: I think Seasons has the advantage there, Roc's Cape and Hyper Slingshot are both more useful than Roc's Feather and Seed Shooter against Twinrova. I don't know how you're supposed to figure out Scent Seeds either though. Fun fact: Ganon can actually be hurt without spin attacks if you have the Master Sword (level-3 sword), which is kind of a nice touch. Although I think it might just be a damage threshold you have to exceed before hits count, and Noble Sword + Red Ring might also work; I'd test it if I had a convenient save file, but I don't (goddamn completionism!).
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Sep 9, 2018 19:42
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Link's Awakening is an excellent game, I also have a lot of nostalgia for it. Though it wasn't the first Zelda I played (that was OoT, which might give you all a fair shot at guessing my age for better or worse), it was definitely the second, and I picked it up shortly after. I have a few embarrassing stories about this game, too, which I may share later; I genuinely couldn't beat it without a guide back then (you may well guess which puzzle I got stuck on) and for the longest time before getting one I'd just replay the game up to the point I was stuck and then start over, again and again... In some ways I think this is the first Zelda where the "formula" really came together (in particular, this is the first game where the dungeon structure is consistently "explore what you can without item", "find item which allows you to navigate the rest of the dungeon/puzzles", "fight boss who can't be defeated without item"). Previous games had some of that (we've had map/compass/item since the first LoZ), but even ALttP had a lot of dungeon items that were just armour upgrades or things like the Moon Pearl that had no in-dungeon purpose. I'm sure there's a lot of argument to be had about whether this was a good thing, and whether the series eventually went too far in that direction, but at least as far as this game goes it seems to have been a good thing for the level design.
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Sep 12, 2018 01:26
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lezard_valeth posted:If it's the 2nd dungeon's puzzle, there is nothing to be ashamed of. We all got stuck in that dumb puzzle. Ding ding! Yeah, I think everyone gets stuck there, but it still annoys me in retrospect. I do maintain the clue is bad. Less excusable are some other things, like thinking I had to get a game over to save when (as we saw in this video) there's a child who will tell you how to bring up the save screen. Sure, it's kind of a wonky input to do, but at least the game tells you. Because of that, I racked up so many deaths on my first file that I discovered the game (DX anyway) will eventually take pity on you and give you the reward for the colour dungeon without you ever setting foot inside it. I don't know if it's random, or if you always get the red one, but that's what it gave me; I think this happened at 200 or 250 deaths. Needless to say, I was very confused.
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Sep 12, 2018 01:56
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As I've mentioned earlier, I'm another one who got stuck here. Even with the clue, as a kid I needed a guide to figure out the enemy-order puzzle. See, I'd been spoiled about the genie boss, and I didn't know what a Pols Voice was, so I thought that meant the genie and "imprisoned" referred to the bottle (and I thought it was calling me a Stalfos). It didn't really make sense, but it didn't occur to me at the time that it could've meant anything else, so I felt really stupid when I finally got the guide and found out what I was supposed to do. There are side-scrolling segments in LoZ1, though there wasn't any platforming in them, they were just single screens where you'd climb ladders and collect items (for instance, in the first dungeon it's how you get the bow). There was also a Power Bracelet in LoZ1 although it didn't do very much (it let you push specific overworld objects on a handful of screens, IIRC), and it wasn't an item you could set to a button. It used a similar icon to the one you get in this game, so I'm fairly sure it's meant to be the same item. There were also the Power Glove items in ALttP, of course. Incidentally, I recently found an explanation for the tunic bug I was talking about in an earlier post. Turns out I was wrong and it's not connected to deaths at all. It actually occurs if you kill 90 enemies in the overworld without leaving the map. The tunic you get depends on the memory index of the 90th enemy you kill (0-green, 1-red, 2-blue, 3-"damage sprite", higher indices give stranger glitch behaviour). I guess I must have been grinding rupees or something on the file where it happened.
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Sep 18, 2018 19:25
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Tuxedo Ted posted:Hey. Just saying, if you steal from the shop you're a scrub. You'll just be spending the rest of the game trying to open treasure chests and putting the rupees back in there cuz your wallet is already maxed, THIEF. Well, it doesn't matter because those rupees would be useless anyway. You're not going back in that shop after stealing, are you? You'll pay the ultimate price of getting a death on your file and ruining the ending, so what can you even spend them on? Thankfully this game was well before Link came up with the idea of putting rupees back in the chest (in release order anyway, I've no idea what the gently caress the timeline is supposed to be now). Everyone knows the better way to steal is to save and quit while your rupees are scrolling down. Keep the item and (most of) your money too! And the shopkeep will never know. (Not that it matters really, there's not much use for rupees after you have the bow anyway.)
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Sep 19, 2018 03:43
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The secret medicine in dungeons is a DX version addition, yes. I don't know what it replaced, I think the chests were still there in the original but I don't know what was in them. Ugh, horse heads are the worst. It's not even a puzzle: as far as I know they're completely random. It's frustrating, flow-breaking and a complete waste of time. (I ended up developing a superstition that the process goes faster if you throw them so they hit a wall or object, but I don't think it's actually true.) Don't play Manbo's Mambo to kill Pols Voice! I've done that by accident before and it's really frustrating.  There's a really fun trick with the flying rooster - try throwing the boomerang and then picking up the rooster before it comes back. The boomerang will hover back and forth below Link, and nothing can hit him because he's flying, so it effectively turns you into an invincible death copter. There's no real point to it, and it's not as useful as it sounds since you can't transition between screens while flying, but it's still funny. Also, the flying rooster is the key to getting one of the missable seashells - there's a long line of pits just west of the drawbridge to Kanalet Castle that you can only get over with him. (Of course this is academic for the LP since you've already got the sword and it would be replaced by 20 rupees.)
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Oct 11, 2018 17:23
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Both Oracle games used the dungeon key mechanic (not for every dungeon, but even Link's Awakening didn't have one for every dungeon), I suspect because they were consciously imitating this game. I don't think we've seen it since? There have always been dungeon entrances that are sealed or inaccessible in some way when you arrive, contingent on solving a puzzle or finding an item or whatever. Keys are the same mechanic, just a bit more explicit.
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Oct 11, 2018 17:41
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Eagle's Tower might be my favourite dungeon in this game, in concept at least. In practice, manoeuvering the ball around is a huge pain if you don't already know the route, and it's really confusing to get around and easy to get lost. (You may also notice they sort of reused the orb/pillars concept with the crystals in Ages' Moonlit Grotto.) The 4th floor is a bit misleading really, it's completely inaccessible and I'm not even sure if it exists in the game. There are also parts of the 3rd floor (before it changes) that are inaccessible due to the way the switch blocks are set up. It's a pretty weird design choice, all things considered. One of the chests on the ledge you drop down to in Eagle's Tower is a seashell that would become 20 rupees; it's the last of the seashells to become accessible. As for the one in the rapids, the seashell is actually the one you reach from Face Shrine; the ones you reach by rafting are always rupees.
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Oct 16, 2018 18:14
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Well, that's a wrap! Thanks for another excellent Zelda LP. I agree with the other posters that this game proved that "it was all a dream" isn't an inherently bad concept, though it certainly took a lot of setup to make it work. I never knew you could use the shovel on Agahnim either, I don't think I ever went into this fight while having it! The Ganon form is also vulnerable to the Pegasus Boots' dash attack, weirdly enough - for the longest time I thought that was what you had to do and didn't know the spin attack worked, because the strategy guide only mentioned the boots. I didn't know the boomerang worked on the speedy worm or whatever that form is (the strategy guide called it Lanmola, like the desert sandworms, but I'm not at all sure it was right); the Magic Rod also one-shots it. The final form's official name is DethI, weirdly enough (I guess "death eye"?). For the longest time I thought it was Dethl (with an L, which made no sense but sounded more like a name to me) because they looked the same in print. I like fighting it without the boomerang better, if you use the bow it takes 20ish hits and its attack patterns change up a fair bit as the fight goes on. MithosKuu posted:In addition, the path isn't randomized when you start the game, it's randomized when you first read the book in the library. So long as you never read the book the path will always be This makes so much sense. For the longest time I thought it was randomised on a per-cartridge basis, because I got that pattern on my first playthrough by chance and on later ones I just continued using it without checking the book, and that worked.
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Oct 21, 2018 16:08
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Commander Keene posted:I definitely remember running afoul of a glitch pertaining to a sidequest involving a chain of Kinstone fusions in my playthrough of this game. I don't think any are intentionally missable, though. There's one which I'm almost certain is intentionally missable (because there's an in-universe reason why), which is a huge pain and a design decision I wasn't happy with. It aggravated me no end that I missed that one on my first file, though in the grand scheme of things I suppose it's actually not a huge deal (the reward for it isn't very useful honestly, and you do lose out on the cosmetic reward for 100%). We already saw the relevant NPC in this episode, actually: His name is Stranger. This is the first I've heard about the bugged one, though that wouldn't surprise me either. The most frustrating aspect to me, outside of the missable one, is that it can be hard to track which ones you've done and which you haven't, some fusions are shared among a group of NPCs and it might change which one is available to fuse with (I don't think it's truly random, I think they might just be tied to which fusions you've already done somehow). I always found myself confused when I'd notice a NPC wanted to fuse, didn't have the piece they needed, then came back only to find it was no longer possible to fuse with them (this usually means either you did the equivalent fusion with a different NPC in the pool, or another one that rotated the cycle, I think). Overall I never minded the Kinstone system, it's just different enough from how Zelda usually does collectibles that it felt somewhat fresh. On top of that, it gave them an excuse to tell you a whole bunch of minor NPCs' names, which I irrationally love for some reason.
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Nov 30, 2018 20:43
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Speaking of sound callbacks, the rainy area's music is definitely harking back to the ALttP intro. I don't think it's quite identical, but the same melody is definitely there.
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Dec 4, 2018 23:03
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The Cane of Pacci is definitely in that space of weird gimmicky items (I think TP's Spinner is generally the poster child for them) that aren't very useful outside the specific scenarios they're designed for. This one bothers me a bit less than others, mainly because they at least vary up the situations and what it's doing in them (they give you a decent variety of objects to flip, plus there's the bouncing out of holes, destroying pots at a distance, and that's just what we saw in this video although in fairness I don't think there's too much more). It does also have some minor niche combat uses - it's better at flipping the spiked guys than a shield is, for instance, and you can also remove Stalfos' heads with it. These aren't terribly useful functions, to be fair, but at least it does something. I can't remember if any other enemies have a reaction to it. Also, I think this boss' name is Gleerock. Like a Gleeok, but with rocks, you know? (If that's not the right name, it should be, but I'm pretty sure that's the official name.)
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Dec 8, 2018 06:02
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The figurines are by far my least favourite mechanic in this game. There are things I like about them (e.g. there's a lot of charm in the character names and text, they clearly put a lot of effort in there), but there are so many little irritating aspects to them that combine into something incredibly frustrating overall. I'm sure savestates mitigate a fair amount of it, but not enough; it's utter hell to complete on the actual console. I think it's mainly a numbers issue. We started to see in this video the huge numbers of shells the game tends to hand out in treasure chests and the like (it's not at all uncommon to see 50, 100, or 200; I don't remember if there are smaller amounts off the top of my head), and you have a maximum capacity of 999. That sounds like a lot, but it fills up really fast, and if you're not keeping on top of it and making sure you're going back to town to use them, a lot of those chests will go to waste (and shells are probably the game's favourite minor reward to throw at you). To add insult to injury, if you wanted to use them efficiently, you'd save your shells until late in the game; the more figurines available to you, the higher base % you get and the fewer shells it costs to increase, and new figurines get added to the pool as you progress in the game (to make matters worse, there are several that don't unlock until postgame). But, of course, you can't do this. YMMV, but for me this made it so that using shells was always a feel-bad moment. And the actual process of using them is just so goddamn tedious, even disregarding you have to trade off gambling with RNG and spending more time mashing through text boxes, versus grinding for more shells because even with how many the game throws at you, it's never enough. It'd probably be fine if they were separate from other collectibles (like they were in Wind Waker), but one of the rewards for 100% figurines is a heart piece. That's just a baffling design decision to me. At least (I think) it lets you get that one without the postgame ones, so you can have it for the final boss, unlike another bizarre upgrade in this game.
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Dec 11, 2018 20:59
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Every time I play this "collect the books" sequence, I solve the puzzle to knock the book off the mayor's shelf and then forget to go back in the house at normal size to pick it up, then don't notice until I try to turn it in and the game informs me I don't have it. Every time. It never fails to frustrate me.
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Dec 26, 2018 17:38
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I'm with MeccaPrime on this dungeon; I think it's one of the better ones in this game, honestly. The ice physics can be annoying but they never really bothered me, and I'm more than willing to admit the lily pads are awful (mostly because of how slow and tedious they are; I never knew about the location reset bug, somehow that's never happened to me), but the puzzles are clever and I enjoyed them. (We're finally past the earlygame phase where most puzzles consist of "which thing do I use on the thing", some of these at least require actual thought.) Also, I have to admit I'm quite fond of the music, and it's refreshing to see the structure playing with traditional dungeon tropes a bit (the boss key isn't for the boss, and getting to the boss is a side-effect of a separate puzzle). That said, I don't much care for the boss either. It can be drawn out and frustrating even when you know what to do, and it would've probably been fine if they'd just slowed down the rotation a little. I might have more to say about Phantom Hourglass later; it's honestly a pretty forgettable game, even though it's perfectly fine to play and the control scheme (while weird and awkward in places) works better than I think anyone expected it to (even if, overall, I'd still prefer a more standard control scheme). I think the plot decisions were also pretty bizarre, doing a direct sequel without bothering to actually build on anything from the previous game. You could argue Majora's Mask did a similar thing, but at least that had a lot of interesting things to say on its own and a compelling atmosphere; I think PH sort of wanted to be MM but didn't know how to recapture the important aspects of what that game did.
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Jan 1, 2019 23:29
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Microcline posted:It's a pretty amazing technical achievement that they were able to implement a by-the-numbers Zelda game entirely using mobile phone controls. This is spot-on. At the same time, impressive technical achievements are not necessarily good game design decisions. Mediocre though they may be, all three of those games would probably have been better sans gimmick. (The one thing I really did appreciate in PH, despite being right-handed myself, is that the controls were fully reversible to accommodate lefties. Nintendo don't always do that with their gimmicks - just look at Twilight Princess or Skyward Sword, where they warped the entire game to make it right-handed friendly and then didn't give options.) That said, I suspect Phantom Hourglass would have been a much bigger success had it been released on mobile phones, because the dissonance wouldn't be smashing you in the face all the time ("look at all these face buttons I could be using! why can't I?") and a new Zelda release for that kind of platform, especially at the time, would have been revolutionary and might have opened the series up to new audiences.
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Jan 2, 2019 02:56
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I seem to remember there being exactly one time I considered trading the remote bombs back for normal ones. The thing is, remote bombs have to land before you detonate them, you can't set them off in midair over pits (while a normal bomb can if you time it right). There's exactly one room in the final dungeon where I was initially stumped at how to get through with remote bombs, though there's a better solution: there are bob-omb enemies in the room, and if you launch one from the gust jar it'll explode on contact. The other (very minor) downside to remote bombs is that you can only have one out at once, unlike regular bombs where you can have two, but that literally never matters. Remote bombs are awesome though, and lots of fun to use; they're definitely one of the better new items in this game. I always found them especially handy against Darknuts. The Royal Crypt was always one of my favourite areas for some reason, but I think it's really just the music and nostalgia factor. The actual puzzles in there aren't terribly interesting, honestly, and it's very short. Then again, it could also be that it indicates my actual favourite area is coming very soon (Cloud Tops). I think the "amulets" the newsletter is referring to are the "charms" the Oracles give you. Maybe that was a translation mistake?
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Jan 4, 2019 20:35
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 09:28 |
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I'm never quite sure what to make of the Palace of Winds. There are a lot of good points to it in a vacuum (I think I'd even say I like most of the individual rooms and puzzles), and it has excellent music, but the overall experience gets tedious and somewhat repetitive. The boss is pretty good too, one thing I definitely appreciate in this game is the way they incorporated the splitting mechanics into the boss fights. It could also just be that it doesn't quite live up to the Cloud Tops area in my opinion, though looking back I'm not quite sure why I like that area so much either. The actual gameplay there is just as tedious and repetitive; I think I just like the music and atmosphere of it enough that that doesn't bother me, and I liked the hunt for kinstones and pedestals. Still, I think most of my attitude toward this dungeon is the product of repeat playthroughs. The first time through, I loved it. Torrannor posted:Ironically, the ice medallion that freezes all enemies on screen was your best weapon in the Ice Palace. Freeze all killer penguins, crash them with the hammer to refill your magic, repeat. I always just used Bombos, personally.
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Jan 12, 2019 06:30
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