Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

@Octane: it has a fantastic control scheme that compliments a tactical and engaging combat system, combined with a brilliant art style that enhances your immersion in the great story which is well told through the plethora of interesting characters, including new ones like Ghirahim, Groose and Fi. The dungeons and puzzles are up to the high standards of previous Zelda games, and it has a number of memorable bosses that utilise the aforementioned fantastic controls in clever ways, and a well implemented boss rush mode is a welcome first feature to the series. Speaking of firsts, it was the first Zelda game to implement a stamina feature allowing you to run, yes run, not seen in any Zelda game prior bar the silly Bunny Hood. And it no longer took 30 seconds to climb up vines/ladders and the like. Oh and all this is backed up by what is one of my favourite soundtracks in any videogame I've played.

Yes I think it's fair to say Skyward Sword was a very memorable game. For me anyway.

@TheLastLugia: We were talking about the side quests...

@Octane: your 'Skyward Sword does not stand out in any way' gave me the wrong message then.

Though again I'll come to Skyward Sword's defence and say that the sidequests were at least engaging and gave good rewards be it NPC character development or useful inventory items. Though yes by far the majority of them were the typical fetch-questy thingy that lots of people find (understandably) immediately bad. Not SS best mechanic to be sure.

@shani: Don't get me wrong. I love SS. It is one of my favourite Zeldas and I loved the sword controls! However, the side quests were mostly boring (for me).

There you have it. You named all the interesting islands in one sentence. The sky was emptier than Wind Waker's vast ocean. I would prefer some larger islands where you can find more than a single person with a mini game. Wind Waker had some funny small islands, a ghost ship and more too discover. And even there one could complain the overworld was too empty.

@Chandlero: Ok now I get what you mean. And although the sky didn't feel empty to me, I agree with you, more interesting or larger islands (similar to Skyloft) would've been really nice.
But on the other side, I felt like I already was in the sky world more than enough (at some point, when I had to return to the dark sky part again and again, I was a bit fed up). Maybe it would've made the ground world feel less important. What I would've preferred instead would've been more sidequests on the ground (I think there were only a few like that incompetent goron acheologist ^^) and having the ground completely connected like the sky. It still felt like a big, coherent world, but it wasn't truly open world.

Wind Waker felt more empty for me, probably because I don't like water and steering that boat. In SS on the other hand, I had tons of fun just flying around and through those holes that accelerated you. I guess that distracted me a bit or made me enjoy it more than the sea in WW.

Ah okay, I thought you meant the other Zelda games had outstanding sidequests, that made me wonder.
But wow, then you must have been really fast. It took me ages to catch all those insects and flowers. I mean, not only did you need them for your gear, you also needed them to upgrade potions or just to make money to buy items. That alone created new, self-made "sidequests" for me, like "catch 10 of those expensive insects and sell them to the insect-lover at night to finally buy item XY".
That way, I essentially had to do side-sidequests before I could complete the sidequests.
Plus, completing boss rush mode to get the best shield in the game also took me ages. If you combine all of this, it probably does cumulate to 100 hours or so. I wish the Wii already had a monitoring app to show you how many hours you have played a game in total.

I gotta admit, I usually play Zelda games distributed over the course of 2-3 years, in longer bursts with a lot of time between them where I don't play it, sometimes for several months (usually because I had seen enough of it, especially when I got stuck, or just because I wanted to saviour it). So maybe getting back in the game every time added some extra hours, maybe I could've done it faster if I had done it in one constant rush. Still I would've never managed to upgrade all my gear to the highest level in just 2 hours. You must be a natural then.

But the thing is: Being able to upgrade your gear in such an extensive fashion - regarding the variety of insects and flowers, but also regarding the many levels of upgrading - was a first for Zelda games, at least I don't remember something similar from OoT or any other entry. So that possibility alone was outstanding for me. And correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't SS also the (3D) Zelda game with the most tools at link's disposal?

@TheLastLugia: Couldn't agree more with your post #5,649!
Ghirahim and the Imprisoned were the most memorable enemies ever, even more than Ganon (in his true form, I mean - don't want to spoiler anything) himself. And the sword fights against Ghirahim were probably the best boss battles that I've ever played.

The more I think, read and write about it, the more I want to play Skyward Sword again. I should probably buy it again, although I'd prefer an eshop download. Why hasn't Nintendo released it already? And more importantly, why does TP get a remaster but SS does not (yet)?

Although I should probably finish WWHD first. But I have zero motivation to continue it, the ghost ship was already sooo annoying and the savage labyrinth is just ridiculous.
I think I have completed everything else from chapter 13, but at this point, I don't think I will ever complete the game because I hate it.

[rant]
I'll never understand how people can complain about the fetch quests in SS. Wind Waker is so much worse!
You have to sail from A to B to C to A to Z to Q to H to O to P to R to S to T to F to M and in the end it's all for nothing.
It's pure torture, especially because the boat either starts to deviate from the course or some enemies appear and then you're screwed. Because either you're forced to flee and get off course or try to shoot them with that stupid canon (and thereby also get off course), which is slower than a snail and has a hit rate of 0.1%. That way, you never reach your destination or if you do, it takes an unbelievable amount of frustration and wasted time.
I swear, this is 100 times more cumbersome than any motion control (I think they were fine) stuff that people complain about. The canon of the boat is virtually useless.
And the boat is constantly moving in the water, it never stands still. Sure, I know, it's a boat in the sea, but it's just zero fun that way. Why can't it just stand still? Who said it has to be realistic? When the boat is already your biggest enemy, why do there have to be additional enemies in the sea that take the remaining fun out of the game?
[/rant]
Sorry for ranting, but in my opinion the sea-boat mechanic in WWHD is just a complete failure and all the WW comparisons in this thread just revived and channelled my anger. ^^

@shani: I didn't count upgrading your items as a side quest, as I gathered most of the items during my quest. Just like in Wind Waker, I hoarded those items whenever I could. But the stuff you have to do for the gratitude crystals? I think those aren't nearly as lenghty as you think they are.

You only needed to defeat 8 bosses for the Hylian Shield, that's about 5 minutes per boss? Can be easily done within an hour I think.

@Octane: Are you serious? 5 minutes per boss, that's impossible. Unless you know some glitches that I don't know of or practised it like a pro. You do remember that you keep your hearts after each boss? Even with two faries bottled, it was really hard to get through the bosses. That led to beating the first bosses quite easily because I had done them like a 100 times already, but rarely got to practice the other ones. I often gave up after a while and quit the game because the longer I tried per game session, the worse it got, till the point where I even failed the easy ones. It took me months to finally get the Hylian shield.
For all I know, Skyward Sword wasn't just one game. It was at least three games. One game being the main story, one game the item upgrades and one game the boss rush mode. I probably spent 200-300 hours with SS in total.

Interesting, I guess that's part of the beauty of Zelda games that the experience can be so vastly different. I didn't catch any of the things needed for upgrades while doing the main quest. I was too busy doing the main quest, got no eye or nerve to do anything else (unless it's really easy to get and on the way anyway). So I had to go in and go out of all the areas to finally have enough of insect X and flower Y to do just one upgrade. And then do it again for the next update. And again. And Again. Every time going in and out the area to respawn the damn things or to fly up to the sky, then to a different area, back to the other area, respawning, respawning, and eventually back to Skyloft.
And I also had to do all of that every now and then to upgrade my potions again. Because I used them up all the time. That meant I had to upgrade my potions quite regularly, so I had to catch and gather even more on a regular basis.
And then I needed money and went out again to catch the most expensive bugs, because that was the fastest way to make money (getting the high-value rupees often required you to have the updates on your gear or something else. And you needed the bigger wallets). But the most expensive ones are also rare, that meant a lot of respawning and waiting.
So because of all that, because every side quest had its own sidequest which in turn had its own sidequest, I probably spent as much time with this as I spent with the main story. Of even more, who knows.

And I'd say the gratitude crystals took up the smallest and easiest portion of the sidequests, but even that took quite some time to gather enough for a really big wallet. I don't even remember for what I needed the wallet, but probably to buy some item or so.

@shani: We know Skyward Sword is coming to the Wii U eshop from the leak that also revealed Twilight Princess HD, it's all a question of when. As for when, I think it'll be during March as there's a lot of other Zelda stuff happening then so not too long to wait.

@shani: The bosses weren't that difficult, despite my issues with the game's controls. Not sure how long a boss fight exactly takes, but not a lot more than 5 minutes. I did them all pretty much in a single go.

My total playtime is a little over 50 hours. I pretty much completed the entire game, except for that harp mini-game. That's all I have left to do, and I probably spend already 5 hours on that mini-game alone.

The main point is that my criticisms really lay with those that have you gratitude crystals. Upgrading weapons, potions, and gear didn't really deviate you from your main quest objectives. I think I gathered about 50 crystals; they certainly weren't as exciting to obtain as stuff in other Zelda games I played. Sure, the characters were weird, but they weren't as interesting.

Also, for the record, Skyward Sword was one of my favorites, so this is only a minor complaint I had with it.

@Grumblevolcano: Really? That's great to hear! Seems like I somehow missed those news. Thanks for the info! Looking forward to the eshop release.

Otherwise, it seems to me like my experience was really different than those of others. I admit, it became a bit tiring sometimes, but all in all I enjoyed playing SS in such a slow fashion. I like to drag out the big games, I did the same with GTA V's story on PC. I basically created my own side-missions (amassing more money, stock market manipulation, with the goal to be able to buy all the real estate in the whole game) and played it more thoroughly than on Xbox360 two years before.
Maybe I'll complete SS faster the second time around, who knows.

And sorry for being so protective of SS at times. It's just that I often read comments (not just on NL, on several sites) who say they didn't enjoy it or that it's their least favourite Zelda game. And everyone is entitled to their own taste/opinion. But often it seems to me like those commenters didn't give it a fair chance or got discouraged by the motion controls (which I loved, even when it became difficult sometimes), so maybe that's why I took such a protective stance although no one here stated that they disliked the game in general.

Anyway, I stole the thread long enough, I'll try to go back to topic. I really can't wait for Legend of Zelda U. Although I'm of the the opinion that Nintendo should take as much time as they need, it's really time for a new Zelda adventure. It's a subliminal craving that I've been feeling for the whole winter now (Zelda is the perfect Winter game anyway). I tried to satisfy it by starting Link between Worlds (and XCX before that; I even started to play Skyrim because of that) and it's great, but still not comparable to the vast open world experience that awaits us on Wii U.
If they would just release more game footage or something, that would be nice. I'm looking forward to this game so badly, the only thing that will help me bridge the gap will be Starfox Zero.

No need to worry, I'll defend Metroid: Other M anytime if I have to. I think Skyward Sword was a bad game. I like motion controls when it's implemented right, Zack & Wiki is a great example, and I loved the Zelda mini-game in Nintendo Land. I played through Skyward Sword twice and I almost completed it, but I'm still pretty sure that it's not a very good game.

Bingo, depending on which characters you liked, Skyward Sword only had a maximum 6 NPCs who were interesting in the entire game. Ghirahim, Fi, Demise, Zelda, Groose, and Impa.

No other character had an arc or did anything beyond act goofy. Compare that to Twilight Princess, a game whose characters everyone likes to bag on. TP had Colin, Talo, Ilia, Rusl, Telma, Prince Ralis, Queen Rutella, Yeto, Yeta, Impaz, Midna, Zant, and Ganondorf. The individual races also had their own (serious) story with each dungeon. Regardless of whether you liked these characters or not, they all had some sort of serious characterization within the narrative. So several of TP's sidequests took place in a far more interesting context.

@shani: I've been watching one of my kids playing through WW:HD currently (in preparation for TP:HD), and I really don't recognize any of the boat issues you're describing.

1. Once you get the bow+arrow as well as the fast sail, there isn't that much sailing going on at all.
2. The boat can jump, so the fast sea enemies can be avoided that way.
3. There are almost always objects far away at see that you can use as "land marks" if you need to temporarily move away from an enemy.
4. Most enemies at sea are slow moving, so they are just to be avoided.
5. The boat with cannons are shooting very slowly, so they can be approached very closely and then hit with 3 direct shots.

@jariw: All of what you wrote is true, but still part of the problem. None of those things really help.
1. I have both of those items and they make it only slightly less annoying.
2. I dont see how jumping helps me avoid enemies. They can still shoot at me.
3. I know, but that's just the problem. I'm forced to move away from the enemy, off to one of those land marks. That delays the journey to my goal, because those enemies usually stand right between you and your goal. So I deviate to the land mark and back to my goal and then the enemies reappear. It's an infinite loop of annoyance. And while I'm doing that, it becomes day/night and my goal - the ghostship for example - disappears.
4. That's what I did 99% of the time, because shooting them makes things worse. But it's sooo unsatisfying to constantly avoid them, especially because it leads to what I wrote above (3).
5. Well, while I'm aiming with the stick (why can't I aim with motion controls? That would work so much better!), they hit me so many times that I eventually have to flee, teleport back to an island somewhere else in the game and restock on hearts, fairies, arrows etc. Then I have to go back to where I was before and it starts all over again. Again, an infinite loop of annoyance. Worst game design ever.

In my opinion, if they wanted to stick with the boat and sea, they should've just gotten rid of all the random enemies on see. They make the game so unenjoyable!
Or, if they wanted to stick with the enemies, they should've just replaced boat and sea with Epona and land.

Who are those people? Are we talking about the same game? The only two I remember from TP are Midna and Ganondorf. I completed the game and literally have no clue who those characters are supposed to be. What races and stories are you referring to? Only more proof that TP was unmemorable, at least for me.

And don't get me wrong, I agree on those 6 characters from SS being the most memorable. But still I remember a lot more: That insect lover, the clown, Headmaster Gepora, Batreux, the chinese merchant and his wife, the potion seller and her husband, the guy who repaired and upgraded your gear, that item check girl that fell in love with you (actually, how could you forget her?), her parents, that weak guy who constantly needed stamina potion, that annoying knight who caught you every time you fell of Skyloft and preached to you about knightood (I wanted to tell him so many times: 'back off! I'm already a bigger knight than you'll ever be! I'm gonna save the world!'), the guy with the bar who ordered pumkin soup, that strange fortune teller, the lost cat, that guy who turned into that big monster in the dark clouds.

Now let me count... I remember 24 characters from SS and only 2 from TP. I think that says it all.

Both of you are right (@iKhan regarding TP and @shani regarding SS). It's really all about how much you've played and enjoyed both games. If you like SS more you're more likely to remember meaningful characters from that game and vice versa. An outsider to both games would probably go with Twilight Princess due to Hyrule Warriors representation though I'd hope that future DLC at least gives Groose (a Skyward Sword pack in general would be cool).

@shani: I'm not really referring to how memorable they are. I'm more referring to the side stories they go through as a result of the story.

Colin (the blonde kid) had a confidence problem, but he looked up to Link, and in a time of desperation, is forced to grow up quick.
Rusl (his dad) was badly hurt during the Twilight attack on Ordon village, but recovered, and dedicated his time to leading a resistance
Telma is the barkeeper with a big heart, but who will fight for whats right and won't take crap from people.
Ralis's mother (The Zora) was murdered by Zant, and he is struggling to cope with it.

Skyward Sword had all the characters you mentioned, but every single one of them felt like a joke that was supposed to make you smile. None of them are affected by the central story at all. The Mogmas and Kikwis were affected sure, but it was mostly represented by goofy dialogue.

Goofy dialogue is fine, but it should be complemented with something more meaningful. Yeto (the Yeti in Snowpeak Ruins) is a great example, with a strange dialect, an accidental overaggression etc. But ultimately, you see a real love story between him and his sick wife.

@iKhan: I think it partly comes from the different tone both games had. TP was arguably darker, as you even mentioned that there was murder involved (didn't remember that). SS on the other hand had a bright world and the goofy characters fit in there.
I usually like dark worlds, so I don't know why I liked SS better. But I found the slight goofyness (WW was a lot worse) actually adorable.

Now that you desribed those TP characters, I think I remember who Colin was. But I found his character really uninspired and forced, his "development" was totally unbeliavable. Of course he looked up to Link, he was just a little kid, what else should he do? In a game like TP, I don't want some kid getting on my nerves with his lack of confidence. I want to directly head out into my adventure. That reminds me of the video footage of TPHD that I recently saw on Polygon. It showed the first 36 minutes of the game and there you see that stupid girl who takes Epona away just so you have to track her down and then she tells you to take good care of Epona durning your journey. Like she has a say in it anyway! Like she knows what danger is. I'm heading into a dangerous adventure while Hyrule is in peril and all she cares about is the well-being of my horse? Aw come on!
I just skipped that part of the video completely because then I remembered how annoying and unnecessary that was for me. It felt really tacked on and didn't fit into the rest of the game.

And I actually find the other two quite ridiculous. Rusl leading a resistance is preposterous. It's not some resistance saving the day, it's Link and Midna. That makes me think even less of that character.
And a barkeeper who won't take crap from people, lol, that's soo clichée! And also totally irrelevant, because again, it's Link saving Hyrule, not some barkeeper.
Isn't Zant the villain from Minish Cap? Didn't know he was also in TP.

I think memorability actually says a lot about the characters, but I want to rest my case, because @Grumblevolcano is probably right. There's no right and wrong here, I don't want to tell you (or anyone) what to think. I just want to share my opinon.
And I still somewhat enjoyed TP, but if you take away the Wolf form, it felt like a cheap copy of OoT with better graphics, at least to me. And because of that, SS truly stood out for me.
But that doesn't mean it has to be the same for you. These things can be very subjective.
And I think it speaks in favor of both Zelda games. They touch people's emotions in different ways.
And as we know, there is an unwritten rule (I think Miyamoto established it) at Nintendo, that the original Smash and Splatoon had to fulfill before they were greenlit: If a game stirs up emotion in the player (joy, anger, sadness etc), then it's a good game and Nintendo will support it.
So I'd say, mission accomplished, both games achieved that in a way for you and me.

Are we really not gonna get any substantial information about Zelda U until E3? Why is this game hiding? Am I the only one who thinks its weird we STILL don't even have an official TITLE?