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hero-of-the-wolf · 4 months ago

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What are all of the games that you’ve played? Double the points of you add your thoughts on it (it can be as short or as long as you want, if you’re up to it)

Bonus points if you want to add some of your thoughts on Echoes of Wisdom.

I’m assuming you mean LoZ games? okay so far we’ve got:

Twilight Princess

the first Zelda game I ever completed :) it will always hold a very special place in my heart!! I’ve been wanting to replay it again so badly lately even tho it’s only been like a few months since I finished it (I can just use my bad memory privileges—)

listen, Twi’s my guy. I love him sm. I love running around Hyrule with him and holding all the cats and petting all the goats 😭😭😭😭😭 this game just hits on all the nostalgia for me I can’t listen to the score without tearing up 🥺 also I’m ngl at the beginning I genuinely didn’t like Midna at all and by the end I actually physically CRIED when she left so…. good job Nintendo. this game is literally the BEST 20/10 I could play it forever and never get sick of it

Breath of the Wild

so BOTW is actually the game I heard of first? like it introduced me to the concept of LoZ, and I even played it a bit a couple years ago, but I actually started playing it after I finished Twilight Princess. with some experience under my belt I enjoyed this game so much better haha

my favorite part is the way the game lets you solve problems in multiple different ways!!! I really enjoyed the shrines, I don’t think I ever really got super frustrated and had to look smth up with this game and it made me feel really smart hehe :) also the combat is SO satisfying but I rarely ever actually engage bc I uhhh I don’t want my weapons to break 💔

Wind Waker

this one I borrowed from a friend :) my only complaint is it’s far too short 😭 I also went into this one determined to figure everything out by myself (riding my BOTW high) and I got SO confused like halfway through I literally had to look up a walkthrough 😭 ik that’s on me tho, I unfortunately get confused very easily 😔 this is another game that I’m so tempted to replay but I do not own it so 😭😭😭😭😭😭 NINTENDO PLS RELEASE THIS GAME AND TP BOTH ON SWITCH I AM BEGGING

the worldbuilding in this game is INSANE actually like they went so hard??? I love the implications of like… this is the same world from OOT but flooded and the people alive now don’t even realize, the world as it is now is all they know. it’s just so interesting to me. and I love Aryll and grandma sm like I would literally sail to the ends of the earth for them

Skyward Sword

so I’m not even halfway through this game yet but I LOVE THIS GAME SM I don’t understand all the hate it gets like it’s SO GOOD???? every scene with Link and Zelda in it makes me so goshdarn emotional 😭😭😭😭😭 I would kill a man for Zelda!!

this game is quickly becoming one of my favs…..

Link’s Awakening

it’s still in the mail so I haven’t played it yet :) I’m very excited to cry at the ending :))

Echoes of Wisdom

I’M SO EXCITED FOR THIS GAME NEW ZELDA GAME AAAAAAAAA

I just know it’s gonna be so much fun to play :) I can’t wait to puzzle things out (esp since there will be multiple right ways to solve a problem again!!!) and learn the story and find out what happened to Link!!! and I cannot wait esp for the lore implications and how this might potentially affect LU >:3 I’m so excited!!!!

#thanks for the ask!!!#this was fun to think about :)#also sorry if this isn't super coherent I'm fighting a headache again—#I hope it's coherent #asks

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lostjudgmnt · 10 months ago

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finished replaying wind waker just now :”) cried 4 times during the final cutscenes. wind waker was literally the first game i ever got to experience as a child and this is the first time i ever got to beat the entire game on my own <33333 im emotional

#🌀.txt

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incoherentbabblings · 1 year ago

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Omg i never expected you to be a legend of Zelda fan! what game was your favorite? i'm stuck between wind waker,majoras mask,and twilight princess! also which races are your faves? for me it depends on the game cause i like the gorons in OoT but the zoras in twilight princess.

Bruh ever since I was a wee nugget running around looking like this

I have loved Zelda. I would sit and watch my brother play Ocarina of Time and Majoras Mask on the N64, then Wind Waker on our Gamecube. Twilight Princess was the first game I ever completed on my own and I currently have 500 hours on Breath of the Wild and I only just finished Tears of the Kingdom last week after attempting to 100% it before fighting Ganondorf. My favourite is probably TP for nostalgia and BotW for how much content and gameplay I consumed for that game. It very happily got me through the pandemic.

I love Zelda. I have all the coffee table books for the lore and creating the games, I have all the mangas (save TP which I am saving for the colected versions)... I genuinely wrote notations for my favourite fics... Ah. These games have a hold on me big time.

And same! Gorons always rank highly, no matter what game, but I love the Rito on BotW and the designs of the Zora in TP are astronomically good.

Last year I replayed OoT on my switch for the second time and towards the end I caught a terrible fever which took about three days to pass. As I finished the game and as Zelda says her goodbyes, I began to fully weep. A blend of feverish delirium and just really loving the game a bit too much.

I am always very happy to ramble about the games. I admit I have not played the handheld games or the original 2D 90s ones, but I know my lore. I think.

#i have those zelda lofi edits for music as my Saturday cleaning playlist 🤣#but i genuinely think my brain has been rewired from zeldas lullaby and the song of time #i hear either of them and i get very close to bawling #ask and I'll babble

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starlightshoals · 2 years ago

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Link's Awakening DX (Review)

-Part 1: My History with the Series-

So, let's start with a bit of background. Before this year, I had never finished a Zelda game, or even played one for longer than an hour or two. I remember watching my dad play through the entirety of Ocarina of Time when I was a little kid, and I have hazy memories of trying out Wind Waker, Minish Cap and Majora's Mask. But for some reason, Zelda as a franchise never quite caught on with me. I had a mild interest and appreciation for the series from a distance, but certain aspects of the gameplay turned me off growing up. As a kid who loved platformers and Metroidvanias where fluidity of movement is vitally important, playing as Link in those games just felt awkward - he couldn't jump, he was sluggishly slow, it seemed as if you had to constantly go into your inventory to switch out items, and a lot of the puzzly elements felt obtuse, unintuitive, and dragged the pace even further to a crawl. For me it left the impression that Zelda simply wasn't a series I could enjoy playing.

As I got older, though, I can see how that may have changed. I got into more games where puzzles play a central role, like Portal and the Silent Hill series. In fact, Silent Hill's methodical lock-and-key based exploration isn't entirely dissimilar to Zelda's dungeon crawling! And a couple of my favorite games I've played in the past few years owe a massive debt to Zelda, wearing the influence proudly on their sleeves. The first, Nier Replicant, is structurally, narratively, and to some extent mechanically a twisted homage to Ocarina of Time. And my game of the year for 2022 (which I also reviewed!) is a little indie title named Tunic, which could not be more open in its reverence for Zelda if it tried.

My love for these two games, combined with my love for all the friends I have who've been pushing me to play some Zelda for ages now, is what finally got me excited enough to try Link's Awakening DX for the Game Boy Color.

-Part 2: In the Shadow of a Masterpiece-

Awakening is an odd little game and I'm coming at it from an odd place, too. You see, I started playing it a couple months ago, cleared six out of eight dungeons, got forcibly sidetracked by a heap of real life stuff, then two or three weeks ago I started on a different Zelda game that came before it, A Link to the Past, which I've now played, replayed, and even dipped into randomizer runs before finally coming back and finishing my Link's Awakening playthrough.

And I'm glad I did, because it threw into perspective just how much Awakening lives in the shadow of ALttP. It's a smaller entry on more limited hardware that serves as the follow up to a certified classic that laid the groundwork for decades of subsequent Zeldas and Zelda-likes to come. ALttP has not one but two sprawling overworlds that work in tandem with each other, and it marries exquisite combat scenarios with a strong puzzle solving element and an item based progression system reminiscent of Metroid. The items themselves are tremendously fun and addictive to use (the Pegasus Boots, the Hookshot, the Fire Rod, etc), with almost every piece of your eventual loadout remaining useful and serving an essential purpose in combat scenarios as well as exploration. A Link to the Past is jaw droppingly expansive yet compact, a tour de force of world and dungeon design where every piece fits perfectly in its place.

So why am I reviewing Link's Awakening instead, when it's a significantly weaker experience that never stood a chance against its wildly successful older brother? Well, for one thing, it's because there isn't much more I could say about ALttP that hasn't already been said better by other people, and I'd just keep gushing about how great is it for sixty paragraphs. And that's boring!! I'd rather talk to ya'll about a flawed, dinky little weirdo game that not as many people have played and celebrated.

And yes, I know there's a 2019 Switch remake of this game that rebuilds it from the ground up with new graphics and music, a better button layout, and even more secrets to find. (I've already dubbed it Link's Remakening when chatting with my friends.) But it was important to me to experience this game in an older form first to better appreciate its place in history and how that remake chooses to "modernize" it when I inevitably get around to playing that too. And hey, I think the way the best Game Boy titles made the most of their hardware is pretty neat! I find the "dated" graphics charming and it features a trio of composers that made excellent use of the sound chip, among them a brilliant lady named Minako Hamano, of Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion fame...or at least I wish she'd receive more fame and credit.

Because damn, when you first boot this game up you're hit with a stormy screen and a hauntingly foreboding piece of music, depicting Link on a raggedy little boat struggling to stay afloat in a violent sea that looks poised to swallow him whole. Then a strike of lightning comes down, the screen flashes, and we transition to a tranquil beachside while a far more mellow track plays. We see a lone girl walk down the shore to find an unconscious Link washed up on the sand. Then the camera pans up while the iconic Zelda theme kicks in and we see a distant mountain with a giant egg and a ring of clouds at its peak, as the title of the game appears at the top of the screen just like in the image I opened this review with.

-Part 3: An Island of Dreams-

This moody little intro immediately sets the tone and feel for Link's Awakening as a whole. It's a surreal, melancholy, dreamlike little game that appeals to the player's emotions through sound, subtle character moments, and imagery that will stay with you. While Awakening draws inspiration from ALttP in many respects, it also pulls away from it by telling a more intimate and personal story than the monomythic quest to save Hyrule.

That girl in the intro who rescues Link is named Marin, and the game proper begins with Link awakening (hehe) in her house. Her dad, Tarin, gives you back your shield and the two of them let you know that you're on Koholint Island and your sword should still be sitting around the beach somewhere.

Because Link is effectively you, the player, the game is trying to make you feel a couple things here. It wants you to like and care about Marin and her dad, so it has them be as nice and helpful to you as possible. And by extension, knowing there are monsters threatening them and their village gives you a reason to wanna protect this place in addition to solving whatever mysteries you may find here.

Awakening, you see, puts a lot of love and effort into its setting and NPCs. By injecting more flavor, sensitivity and humanity, with a cast of quirky oddballs, it left its mark on the Zelda series in a way that's still felt today. It even has an item trading sidequest that has you going around the entire island talking to people! And while most of the sidequest isn't mandatory, completing it is necessary to get an item that for most players will be needed to finish the game. In other words, Awakening really pushes you to get to know Koholint and its inhabitants, and hopefully grow to care for them and feel the weight of your main quest's consequences.

That main quest, as it turns out, is to wake the Wind Fish that slumbers in the enormous egg atop Mount Tamaranch at the north end of the world map. This requires collecting instruments from each of the eight dungeons scattered across the island...so let's talk about those dungeons.

-Part 4: Into the Labyrinth-

To reach most of them, you'll first need to explore the overworld and complete some random, often pretty strange tasks to find a key that will open the way to the dungeon. For instance, getting to Eagle's Tower requires you to bring a stone rooster to life and fly it across gaping chasms you couldn't cross with just the Hookshot. It's pretty weird.

The dungeons themselves deviate and elaborate on the structure used in ALttP in a few ways. Instead of finding a "big key" that gives you access to a "big chest" and unlocks the rest of the dungeon, more emphasis is placed on the central upgrade you find halfway through. The first leg of a dungeon typically has you wandering around, hitting lots of dead ends until you finally get your hands on the new item and suddenly the rest of the dungeon will open up for you, because now you can complete the environmental puzzles necessary to push further in. Likewise, where bosses in ALttP presented challenges mainly for you to resolve with your sword, bow or fire rod, the bosses in Awakening almost all demand that you use your shiny new upgrade as the means to defeat them, like the genie in Bottle Grotto whose bottle you need to toss at the wall with your new Power Bracelet. In some ways this creates for more gimmicky boss design, and most of them are pathetically easy compared to the genuine adversity ALttP throws at you, but it's an approach that allows each dungeon to more clearly identify with its central item. And I'm told that becomes the norm in future Zeldas!

This upgrade-driven progression also speaks to an overall shift more into the Metroidvania lane for Awakening. The fact that the game takes place in a smaller, tightly knit map full of roadblocks you'll need to use your full item kit to bypass contributes to this as well, with new shortcuts opening up as you go. And it's a good thing the overworld is pretty small compared to ALttP, because the screen size is also painfully tiny and thus so is your view of the immediate surroundings. With all the pauses for screen scrolling it has to do, it's good that the game doesn't bite off more than it can chew and for the most part avoids being too difficult to navigate (though I still got lost and turned around more times than I'd like).

And I gotta be honest here, progression in this game can get pretty wonky. Sometimes the devs lean too far into the realm of dreamlike chaos and present you with puzzles and gating that just doesn't seem to have any intuitive logic behind it. One minor example is when the game expects you to open a locked door by...throwing a pot at it. This is not set up at all and you have no reason to think this particular door is so different from every other door up to that point which is unlocked by a key or by clearing out the room's enemies. Similarly, that thing I mentioned earlier about bringing a rooster to life takes a series of steps so bizarre and illogical that I was dumbfounded when I looked it up.

That's not to say Awakening is lacking in puzzles that were a pure joy to solve, because there were some amazing "ah ha!" moments that gave me the same sense of excitement and satisfaction that Tunic so often did. That lightbulb going off is the high I was chasing when I started my quest to play every major Zelda game, and Awakening sometimes delivered. Not to spoil too much, but there's a moment in the third dungeon, Key Cavern, where you realize you can combine the effects of two upgrades to do something super cool that you'll go on doing in various places for the rest of the game. And if you have a hunger like I do for "puzzle box" dungeons that require you to interact with the environment in ways that dramatically alter it and gain the spatial awareness to navigate it intelligently, then Eagle's Tower will be the highlight of your playthrough. It's been a few days and I'm still thinking about how brilliant that dungeon was. While ALttP is by far the better game overall, its steady consistency stands in stark contrast to the highs and lows of playing Link's Awakening.

There are other evolutions to the dungeon formula, too. A big one is the change in functionality of the compass - in ALttP, all the compasses would do when you found them is mark the boss room on your dungeon map. This was pretty useless since the geography of dungeons in that game will naturally lead you in the boss' direction regardless. On the other hand, Awakening's dungeons tend to be far more labyrinthine and confounding, so this basic quality to the compass is inherently more valuable. But wait, there's more!! In Awakening, the compass now also plays a jingle when you enter a room with a hidden key, and it marks every unopened treasure chest left to find on your map! This makes the compass so much more vital to finding your way and uncovering secrets.

And the last thing about dungeons I need to point out is the addition of sidescrolling segments, with some light platforming and even cameo appearances from Mario enemies, like goombas and piranha plants. Because yeah, this game has platforming. The first dungeon upgrade is the Roc's Feather, which lets you jump in a Zelda game that isn't Zelda II, almost 25 years before Breath of the Wild! You can only imagine how giddy I was to have this item and how much fun I got out of it across my playthrough.

-Part 5: Why This Game Sucks Actually-

However, speaking of the item inventory...this is where we have to address one of Awakening's most painful flaws. Inventory management in this game is excruciating. Because it's on the Game Boy, you can only assign items to the A or B button, and every item you obtain is bound by this system. Where ALttP had picking up pots and rocks as a context sensitive A press, Awakening has you go into the menu to bind the Power Bracelet to A or B every time you wanna lift anything up. Likewise, where the Pegasus Boots were just a press and hold A to charge up in ALttP, in Awakening you have to button assign it if you wanna use it. Every single time.

What makes this worse is that every time you brush up against a liftable object without the Bracelet equipped, you get a long, slow, unskippable text box telling you that you can't lift it. This is pretty bad at the start of the game when you don't have the item, but it becomes unbearably bad later on when you already know that, god game shut up!!

What makes it somehow even worse than that is the fact that the game's overworld seems tailor made to exhaust you with constant, and I mean constant dips into the menu to switch out items. There are so, so very many obstacles to get around. Rocks you need to switch in the Bracelet for. Pits you need to switch in the Feather for. Enemies you need to switch in your sword for. Blocks that can only be broken with the Pegasus Boots. Gaps you can only cross with the Hookshot. It adds up, and while you get used to it, it makes traveling from one end of the map to the other a tedious ordeal.

Fixing this issue, above anything else, is something I feel like Link's Remakening (2019) has to offer over the original. From what I hear, all your most necessary upgrades are generally already bound to buttons on the controller and stay that way, dramatically minimizing the amount of menuing you have to do. I look forward to re-experiencing the game in this way at some point, because good gravy is it a problem in the og version.

-Epilogue: I Love it Anyway-

Despite some frustrating flaws that hold it back, though - some of which are a consequence of the hardware, some of which are just questionable choices on the part of the dev team - I would still say Link's Awakening DX is a lovely little game that showed a whole new side of Zelda and maintains its own special place in my heart. Koholint Island is a setting I can't help having fond affection for, with its wacky characters, poignant story, whimsical locales and the fascinating risks and experiments the devs took in making it. The director apparently said he felt as if they were making a "parody" of Zelda, and I can see it. Parts of this game feel like a weird romhack more than a fully polished official product. But that's part of its enduring charm, and I'm thankful for the strange, dreamy journey I got to take with Link, Marin, and all the rest. They'll stay somewhere in my memory, like a sad and silly dream that lingers after you wake.

#tloz #link's awakening #review #zelda #alttp #tunic

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thescrapwitch · 1 year ago

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📄 What’s a WIP you never finished that you would like to go back and revisit?

Thank you for the ask!

That would be my Wind Waker prequel: A Crown of Salt and Wind. I was really happy with the first chapter, and I have the other two loosely sketched out, but I just haven't had the focus for them. Which sucks because I love Wind Waker and I love the idea of exploring how the last princess of Hyrule started a line of pirate captains. Maybe, if Nintendo ever puts the game on Switch and I get the chance to replay it, I'll get my brain focused on that idea again and finally finish it.

Thank you again for the ask!

#asks #my fics

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owlixx · 1 year ago

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Operation Terminus

So…I’ve canceled my plan to play/replay the first nine Assassin’s Creed games following my current playthrough of Valhalla. Instead, I’ll be cleaning up my “backlog”. Given the nature of what I do and how I play games, that’s less about which games I “own” and more about which games I’ve already sunk some time into.

Games I’m close to finishing:

* Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Xbox

Yeah this is the one I’m currently doing so definitely going to finish here before moving on, but I maybe do some small sonic game runs before digging into this operation proper.

* Phoenix Wright 1 3DS

I’m sooooo close, I’m like halfway through the final case, the DS exclusive one.

* Midnight Suns Xbox

Okay admittedly I’m only like…just past the start of Act 2 but this one is a priority before all the information completely leaves my brain. Plus the DLC is all out now and I own it!

* Wind Waker Wii U

I’m literally over halfway done with the triforce hunt so this is super close but I lost about an hour of progress last time I played over a year ago and haven’t touched it since. Shouldn’t be more than a couple days of playing left.

* Sonic Unleashed Xbox

Stuck on empire city, I just need to get some more medals to progress. Using a guide should help.

Games I’m near or around half done:

* Skyward Sword Wii U

In Lanayru Desert for the first time, not yet to the dungeon. So 1/4 - 1/3 done with the game? The motion controls kill me but standing up might help

* Metroid Prime 1 Wii U

Similar to wind waker, lost a good chunk of progress last time I played to space pirates. I don’t think you can turn down the difficulty after starting a playthrough but I should if I can.

* Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze Wii U

Stuck on boss of world…3? I do really enjoy this game when it works well

* Wario Land 3 Switch

I think I’m around half? Game is just big and other stuff came up

* Hot Shots Tennis Get A Grip PS Vita

Actually no idea how long this game is but it’s awesome

* Ratchet and Clank 2 PS3

I think I’m around half? Just got new ps3 controllers

* Bulletstorm PS3

I think I just started act 4 of 7, enjoying it so far

* War For Cybertron (dad?)

Okay admittedly I’m like less than half done with the first of two campaigns but I think I’ll be trying this coop soon online with my dad

* Fire Emblem Awakening 3DS

I think I’m on chapter 8 of 25

* Fire Emblem Warriors Three Hopes Switch

I can’t remember how far I got actually but I feel like I poured a good amount of time in already

* Xenoblade Chronicles Wii

Maybe 1/3 done with game?

* Professor Layton 1 DS

Maybe 2/3 done? I tried to omit games I’ve already beaten from this list unless I’m super close to beating them again and it’s been a while

* Mario Kart 7 3DS

I just kind of plink away at unlocking all the courses now and then but this shouldn’t take long with any effort applied

* Monster Tale DS

Again no clue how long this one is but I feel like I’m a good chunk into it, maybe 1/4

* Deadpool PS3

I think I’m on chapter 4 of 8

Games I Can Skip The Intro On:

* Mega Man Battle Network DS

I’m past the first main boss but not yet to the second. Playing a fan Tran of the Ds remake

* Mega Man Battle Network 2 GBA

I think same as above

* Death Stranding PC

Honestly this is a huge game and I’m only maybe 6 hours in

* Disco Elysium PC

Maybe 15 hours in?

* Metal Gear Solid 4 PS3

Barely past tutorial

* Bayonetta Wii U

Literally just past tutorial

* Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga Remake 3DS

Out of tutorial and past first main boss

* Final Fantasy Tactics Advance GBA

Decent clip into this one, maybe 15 hours, but it’s a huge game

* Puzzle and Dragon Z 3DS

Still in the tutorial in the main game, on world 3 or 4 of the Mario version

* Pilotwings Resort 3DS

I mean, it’s such a short game that the couple hours I’ve played is like half of it

* Dragon Age Origins Xbox

Maybe ten hours in? Big game though

* Final Fantasy VI GBA

Only 2-3 hours in and a huge game

* Twilight Princess Wii U

Just past the tutorial if that

* Crisis Core PS Vita

Think I’m still in the first real mission after the tutorial

* Locoroco PS Vita

Towards the end of world 2

* Patapon 2 PS Vita

Okay not actually far in but I’m considering the five or so hours I spent in Patapon 1 to be a kind of sunken cost tutorial

* Dead Space Extraction Wii U

I think…3 missions in? Out of 10?

* Sonic Colors Wii U

On world…3? Out of 7? Played before and replaying taking turns with partner

* Uncharted Golden Abyss PS Vita

Okay just past tutorial admittedly

* Wipeout 2048 PS Vita

Like Mario kart, i plonk away at this here and there

* Luigi’s Mansion 2 3DS

First of five mansions down

* Retro Game Challenge DS

I wanna say I’m on the third or fourth game of 8

* Grand Theft Auto 4 PS3

Maybe 2-3 hours in

* ICO PS3

1-2 hours in

* Demon Souls PS3

Okay barely even got past making a character, just got to the hun world at all

* Pokémon Sun 3DS

Okay this one I’m actually more like half done with I think, maybe closer to 1/3 but it’s been a while.

* Elebits Wii

Maybe 3 or 4 of the 25 levels done

#gaming #Wii u #wii #Ds #3DS #gba #ps3 #assassins creed #Phoenix Wright #midnight suns #ratchet and clank #wind waker #Zelda #Nintendo #Sony #sonic

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spectre-ship · 2 years ago

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Twilight Princess is such a good game, I really should finish my replay of it. Lot of things I love about that game but I think I've especially always found it really engrossing from a visual perspective. Obviously Wind Waker aged much better in pure technical what-looks-good terms, but the kinda grimy, edgy "realistic" look of TP is so charmingly of its time, and (I guess in part because I played it as a kid) it just kinda captures my imagination in ways not a lot of fantasy does.

#arbiters' grounds especially. now that's a goddamn video game dungeon #maybe i should start twilight princess aestheticposting...

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waffliesinyoface · 2 years ago

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This may be a slightly controversial opinion but I think video games these days play a bit too fast and loose with the idea of fast travel. This has, granted, been a thing for quite a while, but I never sat down and really thought about it until my most recent playthrough of Breath of the Wild, in anticipation of Nintendo's upcoming Tears of the Kingdom. I'd initially been hesitant to do a replay so soon, worried that I'd become burned out on the game before the sequel had even come out, but I reconsidered after reading through several posts in the Something Awful Forums’ Zelda Megathread, when a few other users mentioned doing a playthrough with no fast travel at all, and the idea intrigued me. It wasn't until a few hours in that I realized why - it completely changes the game.

Fast travel is unlocked as soon as you start the game - before anything else, you gain the ability to warp back to the starting shrine, free of cost. I stubbornly refused to use it, to the confusion of the old man who acts as the game's tutorial NPC, but it didn't particularly make the tutorial much different – you don't unlock your main method of traversal until after the plateau, a paraglider that allows you to fling yourself off cliffs without fear – and the four tutorial mini-dungeons are all equally distant from each other. There's not much difference until you leave.

Because, without fast travel, there's no way back.

The Great Plateau is surrounded by steep cliffs, and without several stamina upgrades or a fair amount of resources, climbing it is impossible. But, well. It's the tutorial area. You don't actually NEED to go back. You've got a kingdom to save, get a move on.

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Lacking an easy way back also made me a bit more diligent in doing side content as well. In the average playthrough, the player will slowly accumulate a large list of sidequests that fill up the adventure log, to be done whenever they can get around to it. But for me, because there was no easy way to return to any of the towns, leaving was almost as serious a commitment as jumping off the plateau – the first village you’re directed to is Kakariko, and you need to return several times to progress the main quest and get the True Ending, so it wasn’t as severe a departure as before, but I was still mindful of doing as much as possible before I’d left the area. I stuck around the village and searched out the missing cuccoos; I sold everything but the absolute essentials in an attempt to afford the exclusive stealth armor, and after that wasn’t enough, I made sure to keep my eyes peeled for any suspicious rocks or well-hidden ore deposits in the surrounding area; and when returning from Hateno village, I went out of my way to look for a beehvive, so that the little sheikah girl could make the dessert that reminds her of her dead mother. Because after I’d left for the second time, I wouldn’t return until I’d cleared two of the main dungeons, collected several memories, chased down a dragon, and tracked down the materials needed to upgrade my armor further. And it was on this return trip, that I was reminded of another Zelda game, The Wind Waker.

In Wind Waker, you start off on Outset Island, join up with a band of pirates to rescue your kidnapped sister, and give a tearful goodbye to Link’s grandmother. After finishing the tutorial dungeon and, frankly, failing miserably at your appointed goal, you’re stranded on the other side of the map, and actively prevented from returning to Outset until you’ve defeated the next two dungeons – upon your return, things have changed. Monsters prowl the island at night, the neighbor’s pigs have grown several times your size, the local swordsman recognizes your skill, and your kindly old grandmother is literally sick with worry.

This dramatic homecoming just isn’t possible in a game with always-on fast travel. Which isn’t to say that Wind Waker doesn’t have any – the bow & arrow from the dungeon immediately following this allows you to track down a local god wreaking havoc and shoot some sense into him, upon which you are rewarded with the ability to travel to most important locations throughout the Great Sea, but that’s the point – you have to work for it.

I’d like to make it clear that I’m not against fast travel entirely – frankly, if a game didn’t have any in this day and age, I’d wonder what the developers were thinking – but it doesn’t feel satisfying without a sense of friction. It should be a reward, something you have to work at.

Earlier pokemon games are a good example of this – first, you start out with your base movement speed, which is just slow enough to irritate you. After running an errand for the professor, you get the Running Shoes, and it feels like the game is no longer holding you back, you can explore at your own pace.

A few towns later, and you’ve been rewarded with the bike, which trades maneuverability for pure speed.

A few towns after that, around the midpoint of the game, you get the Fly HM which unlocks fast travel for real.

The sense of progression is important. Navigating the world is akin to walking through your own neighborhood – the length added by moving on foot makes the world feel bigger – to go back to Zelda comparisons for a moment, in Breath of the Wild, horses are a somewhat niche method of travel. Nice to have, but almost certainly abandoned within minutes in favor of climbing up an interesting looking mountain. In Twilight Princess, getting Epona back means that you no longer need to mash A rolling your way across Hyrule Field – in addition, unlocking fast travel gives us another feeling: relief. Or, in other words:

“oh thank fucking god, I don’t have to go through that again.”

Now, before anyone can accuse me of being a shameless Nintendo fan, I’d like to point out a few other examples. Any farming sim fans will, of course, be familiar with Stardew Valley, indie darling and successor to the old 2D Harvest Moon games. You have a limited amount of time in each day, and if you’re not back at your house by midnight, you’ll start the next with reduced energy. If you’re not back by 2am, you pass out in the streets and lose a handful of items. Once you’ve gotten a semi-respectable farm set up, you’ll be able to afford the horse, which allows you to spend even longer in the mines and still make it back on time.

Once a year or so has passed, you’ll probably have gotten enough coffee beans to make your own steady supply of income and caffeine – for you and your horse, apparently – and then, once you’ve rebuilt the community center, made your farm into your own personal art project, broken the economy through the sheer unbridled economic might of Fermented Ancient Fruit Wine, and have set your sights on the coastal Ginger Island, you will almost certainly have obtained the Return Scepter as well as a few Warp Totems for your farm, allowing you to fast travel as you please.

Satisfying, isn’t it?

Or, to point at another beloved example, we have Dark Souls 1. Which still, fifteen years later, is praised for its world design, and how interconnected everything is. It makes Lordran feel more coherent and real than other similar worlds, and though the other areas aren’t actually loaded in when you’re in each zone, their low-poly equivalents are, and many players have frequently reported being able to see their bloodstains from entire map zones away, because those low-poly versions are accurate to their actual locations. A more in-depth discussion can be found here, by Illusory Wall.

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Now, personally, I find Bloodborne’s map layout to be much more interesting to play through, because instead of having each area be interconnected it frequently has one area connect in on itself several times – Father Gascoigne and the Cleric Beast are both equally viable as the first boss of the game, and the routes to their respective boss rooms branch off from the same starting point – but I won’t deny the appeal of, say, the Undead Burg, which links to the Dragon Bridge and then Undead Parish, the Lower Undead Burg and then the Sewers, Darkroot Basin, and Firelink Shrine, which, in turn, links to the Catacombs, New Londo, Valley of the Drakes, and so on and so forth.

More than once, I’ve heard people claim that they went above and beyond with the map design, and that there was no reason for them to do so, but they’re glad that they did. In contrast, many of those same people criticize Dark Souls 2’s maps for being overly linear, and the world design being incoherent. I don’t entirely agree with them: for all of its flaws, Dark Souls 2 having a deliberately* disjointed world is a point in its favor thematically, even if the level design suffers for it.

(*Yes, it’s deliberate. The elevator in the windmill going up into a lava castle which does not exist was not something they overlooked, they were trying to be evocative. THAT part was good. Said lava castle being filled with katana-wielding knights who track your movements perfectly was NOT. Fuck the smelter demon all my homies hate the smelter demon.)

But there’s one big reason why they were each designed the way they are. In Dark Souls 1, you get fast travel after you’ve beaten Anor Londo and proven yourself, and the endgame levels of the Tomb of Giants, Lost Izalith, and Duke’s Archives reflect this. Much like Dark Souls 2, where fast travel is available at the start, there’s no reason for them to seamlessly mesh together with the rest of the world, because the player can just teleport out. The world design of 1 needs to be interconnected because otherwise, the lack of shortcuts would get tiring fast.

So, in the end, my point with fast travel is this: it’s a very nice carrot you’re offering, game developers, but I’m not particularly enthusiastic about carrots until you’ve beaten me about with a stick first.

#long post #video games #Legend of Zelda #BotW #Wind Waker #Stardew Valley #Dark Souls #Pokemon #game design

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radellama · 2 months ago

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q v w

Q: Any Guilty Pleasure Games?

I'm just gonna saw power washing simulator. I don't feel guilty about playing, I just need to stop cause I'll lose entire days to it!! I've finished playing it and am just replaying levels over and over, I don't need to I wanna move on to other games!! But I keep coming back!!!

V: First game you remember playing?

Yoshi's Island on the SNES. I was 2 years old, parents thought it'd be a funny photo opportunity to have me holding the controller, and then I started to figure out I was playing. I don't remember the exact first moment of playing, but I do remember playing around ages 2-4 because we accidentally plugged our SNES in wrong so the colours were extra vibrant, I remember the reds in particular being INCREDIBLY RED. Other games I played around that time were Mario All-Stars, Link to the Past and Super Mario Kart, so all of my pre-kindy and kindy>primary school memories have those games in the background hehe

W: Any games you regret getting rid of?

These days I don't get rid of games, I'm a hoarder collector. I think the only ones I might regret is when I sold a few ds games I rarely played as a young teen to trade in for a different ds game I wanted, but I ended up buying those second hand a few years ago anyway just to have them again.

I've had other people get rid of games tho, that's probably why I'm extra sensitive to hold onto everything LMAO. Dad misremembered some stuff and sold our PS1 and all the games, even tho I'd bought half of them and a couple were gifts to me and my sister. BEYOND UPSET when I couldn't find Spyro 1&2!!! Luckily I'd safely hidden the childhood PS2 by that point, and thank fuck I took the PS1 memory card, don't remember why I took it out the PS1 but I'm glad I did, and I still have my beautiful PS2 to this day!!

AND WHEN MY SISTER SOLD THE WII U. THAT WAS BOUGHT AS A FAMILY CONSOLE AND I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF MY WIND WAKER PLAYTHROUGH WHEN SHE ASKED TO HAVE IT BACK AT HER PLACE AND THEN SOLD IT. DO YOU KNOW HOW EXPENSIVE IT IS TO BUY THOSE KINDA WII U GAMES THESE DAYS!? Thankfully, Dad gifted me the Wii U he had cause he barely played and was gonna sell it anyway, and I have it in a box on my desk right now >:) I just... Don't have any games for it lmao

Send some gaming asks from here

#rads asks #anon #thank youuuu #i need to play around with some stuff on my Wii U soon cause it's just sitting there...#my TVs busted so i can't really play anything unless it's on the game pad but I'll figure something out someday #if only it wasn't super expensive to get second hand games for it LMAO

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tarakaybee · 5 months ago

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Stray Thoughts: Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch Remake)

This was one of the first Game Boy Colour games I owned, and I think the second Zelda I might have ever played of my long history with this series, which has been my top favourite game series my whole life. The Zelda series is my favourite game series of all time, but I always found the 2D Zeldas inscrutable and overly difficult and generally didn't capture my imagination. I normally love games with that kind of 8 bit sprite art style because the artists have no choice but to have as much absolutely clarity as possible, but having this game rendered on a TV with better clarity than a cramped Game Boy Colour helped me to appreciate that this is perhaps one of the best Zelda games ever made.

It's hard to describe why I had a really good time with this game, setting aside the recent developments of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, I'm so used to Zelda games being frontloaded with a ton of pre-amble, being full of gimmicks and focusing on cinematic adventure, that this game's extremely simplicity on all those fronts was so enjoyable. The dungeons are absolutely nothing flashy but they're some of my favourites in the series because they use what they have so effectively and focus on challenging the player with global navigation, in a way that Zelda games have been coming and going on for a long while. The story is also simple, we're washed up in an island that gives off Alice in Wonderland vibes, and we're trying to assemble an orchestra to wake up some sort of fish god, easy. It's easy to get attached to the world of this game in spite of how small it is, I commuted across Koholint Island so many times that it became a cosy sort of commute despite being extremely dense with enemies, I enjoyed looking at the surprisingly small world map and slowly unpicking its mysteries in a way that replaying Breath of the Wild and TOTK has never quite been able to capture.

If I had to sum up Link's Awakening when compared to other Zelda games, it would be unpretentious. The arsenel of traversal items you unlock in the dungeons are the least flashy of just about any Zelda game, the dungeons contain very simple puzzles, where the real challenge is plotting a course through a cluster of rooms filled with monsters and traps. And again I can't stress enough how much it helps with immersion for a game to avoid explaining itself too much, after a single very short cutscene, the second you exit Marin's house you have complete free reign with no more story cutscenes save for owl conversations, who in this game is your main source of information about the world, and who doesn't outstay his welcome. The Switch version, which is the version I was playing, also has a lot of quality of life improvements, like I said I found the original Game Boy Colour version of Link's Awakening DX inscrutable and it was hard to feel like a heroic adventurer when I could only see twenty feet around me at all times, the viewpoint scrolling more often really helped me to place myself.

Like I said, I've been a lifelong fan of the Legend of Zelda, one of my earliest memories is my dad defeating Ganon at the end of the game and it's one of the franchises I stuck with the longest. The peak of my Zelda love was around the time of Majora's Mask and The Wind Waker. Around the time of The Minish Cap and Twilight Princess, I remember liking those games but I never ended up replaying them, they didn't fire up the imagination the way they used to. I ended up not finishing Skyward Sword or Spirit Tracks, the Zelda formula had run stale for me by that point, so after a prolonged period of feeling like I was over Zelda, Breath of the Wild came out and exceeded my wildest expectations, with Tears of the Kingdom being a nice cap on the end of the experience. With this return to a game I'd never been able to get myself to get into, before the period I consider the peak, it's been nice getting to feel those old feelings again. I'm managing expectations for Echoes of Wisdom, the echo system basically looks like a scaled down version of the crafting system from TOTK, so I'm curious to see how it plays out while we wait for the next mainline entry. Zelda games at at their best when they don't try to reinvent the wheel and either use existing wheels or they Ultrahand a flying saucer together.

Fuck, that's such a good Nintendo Official Magazine sign off to a game review, I should use that and not keep in this part.

#legend of zelda #link's awakening

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thelegendofhino · 1 year ago

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While i do enjoy zelda games and zelda lore and whatnot i have only played 6 zelda games... i know there are a lot more than 6.

Obviously ive played breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom. I dont really know what made me want to play breath of the wild. It was very unlike other games id usually play. Especially since i tend to just play the same few games over and over again... but im glad i did, because i enjoyed it immensely, to the point where i played it twice, my first time being on the wiiu.

I think one of my earliest attempts of playing a zelda game that i can remember was wind waker on the gamecube. I never managed to beat it partly since the console was at my grandmothers house and partly because i got stuck at dragon roost island because something odd had happened with the collapsing stairs that i was unable to progress. I dont know if i had gotten actually softlocked or if it was just a skill issue on my part. I was kinda young at the time. I did end up playing and beating wind waker hd later on. Then i tried to play it again on the gamecube but for some reason i lost interest at the part where i had to find the iron boots to progress.

Ive played four swords adventure way too many times. More times than id care to admit. More times than i can count. For no reason other than it was the only zelda game we had for a while and i just loved playing the gamecube and it was not a very difficult game (there was one time when i was younger i did get stuck on one level for. Possibly hours, driving my parents insane because i just kept going back and forth trying to figure it out) and it was just a fun game. As much as ive played it i absolutely would not consider it my favorite zelda game. Its a fun game but its also boring at the same time. Probably just because ive already played it so many times.

Ive attempted minish cap twice and beat it once. My first attempt i couldnt figure out how to beat vaati, but in my defense, everything else in the game with singular eyes youre supposed to shoot them with arrows. So naturally i never once thought to swing my sword at vaati because he is just eyes. And eyes = arrows. And it just never occured to me to try and hit him normally until i replayed it earlier this year. Other than that, its a fun game, and i love how it looks.

I played links awakening dx. I dont remember much about that game actually. I enjoyed it. It looked cute. I had no means of playing the original. Thats all i have to say about it.

Now. Those are games that ive finished a playthrough of. Ive also attempted twilight princess. Unfortunately i attempted it right after having played botw for a while, so i had to get unused to being able to climb things. And... embarrassingly enough, i got stuck at the very first temple of the game where you get the boomerang. I just couldnt figure out where to go. And being very aware that this was so early in the game and i already got stuck did make me feel discouraged. Not that i thought the game was too hard, but that i shouldnt be struggling as much as i did... nobody was watching me play but i was still embarrassed anyway. So, perhaps in the future ill give it another shot.

Now i am playing ocarina of time and will hopefully play through majoras mask. I have a feeling i may not end up ever beating majoras mask, but... i will at least try.

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