I'm super happy. I've been waiting for this game to come to Switch since... always. I've played WW HD and TP HD recently. I have a hankering for Skyward and it's great to see it come to a system beyond the Wii's 480p. Button-based control scheme is almost exactly what I expected, though I very much enjoyed the motion controls and didn't have a problem (though I knew people who did). I always figured the Joycon would produce better controls--it's 10 years of development improvements after all. I'm just happy that hopefully more people will get to play through this story. It's really a great compliment to BotW IMO, especially if BotW is your introduction to the series. The whole "Goddess Hylia" and Master Sword speaking thing just makes more sense after playing SS.
I'm not disappointed about anything because 1) I know this isn't the last we'll hear about the Zelda 35th. In fact, they didn't mention it at all so it's impossible that this is the last. They can still give us more but I didn't expect them to show up and dump 5 ports on us and the sequel to BotW in 50 minutes. And my usual statement that the team that ports isn't the team that makes BotW so there's no "instead of" to it. Nintendo can port non-stop and it not slow down their development of new games. Their new games take time because they want them to be awesome.
Looking forward to hearing more Zelda info this year. SS is probably my 3rd favorite Zelda after OoT and MM, so this is a day-1 purchase for me.
@VoidofLight That's a privilege you have to earn by descending into the dark black forest. You can't be a kid again until you get a job that pays you enough to buy a hoverboard
But that too is brilliant design. They purposely make you feel powerless and trapped for an entire dungeon. No easy outs. They don't even give you the Prelude of Light to return to the Temple of Time like a place of safety. You're out in the world, stuck, no shortcuts. And then when you save Saria, literally the symbol of your entire childhood before this week and it's revealed that you can visit the past to take respite it's such a relief. Not a perfect one because even in the past the damage is already done. Zelda is still missing, on the run for her life, the king is still dead. So you know that even if you can take breaks from adulthood the only true resolution is to move forward and fix the future rather than hiding in the past.
@KateGray great article! Reading it was the first time I thought explicitly about the ambient power the Temple of Time exudes, specifically that while Ganon was destroying literally everything else in Hyrule: freezing Zora's domain, draining Lake Hylia, turning the Castle into a crater, throwing castle town into ruin--even he didn't dare damage the Temple of Time. It was virtually untouched in 7 years despite being right next to the King of Evil. Did he decide not to or maybe he couldn't?
I'm not gonna lie, the $250 I spent on Blizzard's Hearthstone was mostly an effort to make up for not having any Pokémon cards when I was a child. That and a little bit of Yu-Gi-Oh (which I only really watched on TV). I really wanted to play TCG but couldn't find the cards, the money to buy cards, or anyone with whom to play. After like 15 years I finally had the chance to play a card game and it was great!
So I'm all in favor of this if they put in as much effort into the art, animations, and polish as Hearthstone (a game criminally absent from Switch, BTW). I'd finally get to live out a missing part of my childhood. And spend stupid money on digital cards again.
@earthinheritor No hate. Your experience was what happened. I'm curious what determines how much you need. I'll admit I wasn't very imaginative with my party. I find that Ophilia is essential for early heals, Cyrus is essential for analyzing weaknesses and breaking elemental weaknesses, and Olberic is essential for tanking hits for everyone else. It was a loooong time before I could run a party without them and even then I think Ophilia was always there.
Tessa and Hanit can easily be broken because Tressa can give you extra boost points for heavier attacks and Hanit can force an enemy to take their turns after all of your characters, which might be enough time for you to kill them.
I don't feel like the other 3 characters become particularly viable until midgame for some reason.
Oh, also a thing I did that may have made the game easier is I unlocked secondary jobs (not the secret ones) pretty early. Almost as soon as I could, and I might have had to escape high level fights to get to them. I remember dying on the way to the Merchant one. The game is very repetitive in patterns so once I knew where one of the second jobs was I figure out where the other 7 were easily.
Another thing that might have helped is the way I played the missions. I think I started with Ophilia then picked up Cyrus, then Olberic, then Tressa, then I just swapped out Tressa for the other 4 characters one at a time (so Ophilia/Cyrus/Olberic just get stronger from all these Chapter 1 missions). Then I think I started to do the chapter 2s like that but got bored so I kept my main three and did all 3 of Hanit's remaining quests, so again those folks got super strong so just... over time my party was always overleveled and over capable, even though I always had the skill on that reduced the random encounter rate.
I don't know that I'd call any of this advice. I'm just rambling cause it sucks to know some people might have a bad experience with the game if I recommend it (which I have).
I hate random encounters so hard. Octopath Traveler by default has encounters more frequent than the "rate of thought" meaning if I decide to do something like "backtrack to the fork" or "open that chest" whatever I was thinking about doing will be interrupted by a random encounter and I'm likely to forget whatever it was. This sucks. But with the passive skill that reduces the encounter rate (which basically forced me to get one character immediately in my party) the encounter rate is fine at about once per screen or a little less than once per thought. This rate was more than enough for me to over-level all my characters.
I generally speaking DO NOT grind for levels. Don't like it. I definitely don't like doing it when it's mandatory for basic gameplay. I don't mind grinding for rare materials to craft a particular thing one doesn't need but I want because that's my choice (provided the drop rate is reasonable). I don't mind too much grinding for other types of progression such as leveling a specific skill (kill 500 baddies with Frost). But the only time I've ever ran into a boss and not be high enough level to beat it was Quest 64 and I just gave up on that playthrough and didn't play again for like 10 years (when I beat it).
So, in summary, yeah forced grinding sucks. Grinding should be productive when optionally available for stretch goals.
@brunojenso the one on Ploymus Mountain by Zora's domain is the best one to practice on. He's very repetitive so you can practice perfect dodging. It helps tremendously to have the Stasis+ upgrade so you can freeze the Lynel periodically (usually before big aoe attacks). And aside from flurry rushing after the perfect dodge I get the most mileage out of very long spinning attacks with two-handed weapons, the stronger the better. And once you have enough stamina it snowballs because killing a Lynel gets you Lynel weapons which are faster at killing Lynels getting you more Lynel weapons until you have 90 attack Savage Lynel crushers and 5x Lynel bows and can just hover in arrow-time mid air in front of a Lynel and just headshot him over and over and over again with your favorite arrows.
Or you can forego the loot and shoot it with an ancient arrow, but that's no fun. Anyway, that's the progression I went with. I don't know that there's much more to properly defeating them than being strong af with a lot of health and stamina and good armor. GL
I too wondered about the Mario DS release. Given what I saw of OoT 3D I thought it might be a no-brainer but after looking at gameplay it really didn't capture the style of the original. The color palette is ... just different. Like why is the grass yellow like that? I love Luigi and would probably have loved to play Mario 64 as Luigi but I can see how Nintendo wouldn't pick Mario DS to celebrate the history of Mario anymore than the Super Mario Allstars version of Mario 1,2,3 would be considered definitive.
OoT 3D makes a MUCH stronger case. Full disclosure, I never thought the Water Temple was a problem, but I'll even stomach that change for the better models.
MM 3D... MM might be my favorite Zelda. I'm torn honestly between it an OoT. So that the 3D version made some of its changes are really painful to me. I just rewatched Nerrel's MM 3D review video again just to remind myself of all the changes. I desperately want to updated models and textures. And they can miss me with most of the other gameplay changes. Bombers notebook is maybe the most useful valuable thing there after the landing reticule for the deku flower (like what was added for the Deku leaf in WW HD).
Having said that, a lot of folks struggled to stick with MM because of some of its mechanics. I loved the whole groundhog day thing. I didn't mind putting my money in the bank. I liked the saving system. But my best friend absolutely hated it and just never finished the game. I remember him getting very angry about it. I think a better balance can be struck between allowing more people to enjoy one of the most creative titles in the series and jettisoning all of its unique qualities. I would prefer they revert a handful of the worst offenders in the MM3D release. Basically, they should just look at his video and fix like all of that. Should be pretty quick to implement everything other than all the boss fight stuff and just as long to test.
It's running in the Citra emulator. Looks great! I just want Nintendo to make this happen so I can revisit a game I literally haven't played front to back since 1999.
As others have noted, you really don't have to upscale it. The assets for the 3D remake were already 1080p downscaled for the 3DS. @Atariboy posted this above and reposting because it needs as many views as possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7qQckdFUY8
Would it be nice to get even more triangles? I guess, but honestly I don't really need that. I'd rather get a few more gameplay tweaks or a little bonus content. Graphics just aren't everything. I'm care more about what you do with them, such as the atmosphere of the Lost Woods, which is much better in OoT 3D or the sea-life architecture in the Great Bay in MM 3D. I only played those games on original N64 (or Virtual Console) and would love to play again on my HD TV. As far as I'm concerned, give me dual-analogue camera controls and tweak the gameplay a little more and you can ship it as is, emulated in native 1080p and I'll buy it. I'd much prefer it wasn't $60 though. Can't have Ocarina with Majora's mask, they're a duo so I'm not even entertaining having one and not the other.
Nintendo is overthinking it, I think. I don't need a FF7 style remake. I don't need anything involving the Unreal engine or ray tracing. I don't need it redone in the BotW engine or art style (it's actually kinda small for that I realize). Just a classic made viewable on a modern television (like Wind Waker HD).
I have both OoT and MM on Wii U Virtual Console and I while I love my Wii U, I'd really like everything I love on it to get rescued off of it so I can free up and HDMI port. That includes Wind Waker and Twilight HD, and Skyward Sword. I have no problem whatsoever with having my full catalogue of games since NES playable on my Switch. I never want my old content to be unplayable anymore than I want movies I saw in 1990 to be unwatchable. As a PC gamer this seems pretty intuitive.
I was just about to mention Xenoblade X and how I love how quickly they establish that the biggest indigenous lifeforms aren't hostile. They're just drinking water all day. Unlike my friend who does grind the innocents for XP, I had a fairly strict self-defense only policy in that game so there were lots of creatures I just never experienced combat with. I didn't even like waking up the sleeping giants (there's an expression about it) so I probably won't ever 100% that game.
I did let the pigs live, and they did kill someone. I have to live with that. Still great game design that you're not in this new alien biome to kill everything in sight. I got most of my levels from XP from exploration, in the beginning at least.
@Grot it's not even a moral argument. Companies rarely have a choice about enforcing their copyright and trademarks. Legally they are required to consistently defend their IP or some jurisdictions can and will dissolve those rights. It's essentially an issue of squatter's rights which is a real thing. If you know someone is using your property and allow them to do so for a period of time you can't then change your mind and start trying to exploit them. There are reverse scenarios where a person could do just that. Allow someone to build a business based on something they don't own then threaten their entire operation later to exploit hefty fees. The law is setup to protect both parties but Nintendo has to be seen as vigilant about their own IP.
If they don't do so enough eventually you get things like genericized trademarks where legally everyone can call any game system a Nintendo, you can Google stuff on any search engine, and everyone makes asprin. It's happened before to other companies plenty of times.
This sounds great. And while it's true that emulators can be made to offer more but the more you add to them increases testing time because you have to test everything you did that's new. I would love (infinitely more than any widescreen stuff or increases in framerate) for them to just fix the Mario 64 camera to be dual analog and work like it does in Odyssey (where it doesn't move mid jump all the time). But I recognize that would require more testing. Nintendo's pretty good at limiting camera movement to not reveal graphical optimizations off screen like pre-loaded models under the floor or missing extremities below the counter in a store or the entire backside of a model not being rendered or textured at all. Any of those abstractions can become very leaky if you just open the floodgates graphically without rigorous testing which means more time and not getting this game today but maybe in January or March. Maybe they'll be able to patch Widescreen in in the future, who knows. But throwing terms like "lazy" around is so incredibly disrespectful to individual employees (read: people) we don't know who are probably actually working very hard under extreme circumstances from their homes. If you don't think these games are worth $20 each, or $10/$20/$30 or $15/$20/$25 (or whatever split) given the increase in resolution and the remade textures/fonts + the music collection then that just means the collections aren't for you, nothing more. I've paid for Mega Man 2 on different platforms more times than I remember and I'm sure I'll do it again because I love the game. I don't really care how it's implemented that I get it. No matter how old it is I'll never think Mario 64 isn't worth even 10 dollars. I just paid $13 for some f-ing pancakes.
You're not. That's the problem. The cubes match the art style well enough that they could just leave them in. They kinda look like they always belonged there. They helped the developers understand the travel paths and they serve the same function to gamers.
As for being emulated, of course. What insane person would re-implement each game from each system individually for no reason. There's a reason emulators exist. They emulate hardware that doesn't exist. The people saying it's easy or lazy are also the people who couldn't code a tic tac toe game let alone an emulator. I just hope they pop out a quality 3DS emulator.
I kept thinking on it after my last response and while I don't throw terms like "stupid" around like that I will concede that it's pointless. My whole point was that the system can completely be worked around which means it's not really a good system. It's kinda like health regen in Master Mode. It doesn't exactly make the game better/harder, it just makes things take longer. My Dark Souls inventory was infinite and I picked up every weapon and none of them permanently broke (you could repair them) and it didn't break the game really (though the weapon I had at the game was literally in the starting area) so you've convinced me that the design does more harm than good. I'm sad you didn't get to enjoy and otherwise great game. I hope they don't include it in BOTW2 so that you get to enjoy that one because I think it'll be really awesome. I also suspect that it won't entirely be the same "genre" as BOTW but will instead focus on getting right the things BOTW dropped, like linear narrative.
I'm guessing you meant survival games where you starve over time without food. But I think food is entirely broken in BOTW because you can stock up and never die and kill everything and there are no limits/tradeoffs. Not really a response to your point but we did both use the word "food".
@HalBailman funny, I keep my NES cartridges in the basement too. Can't let 'em go. At least if you play an emulator you can say your Air Fortress ROM is totally legal
Here's hoping this portends to addition to Nintendo Switch Online of a Nintendo Switch Online 2DS app. You run these games through an emulator and even without the 3D effect they look fantastic at 1080p or 4K. My dream is to play Ocarina and Majora 3D on a television because they have high quality "future proof" assets. It can be done and it has been done and they'd be much better than the N64 versions. I'm even willing to give Mario 64 DS a shot to play through the game as Luigi. There's gold in them thar hills, people!
@HalBailman love for the image. Air Fortress is one of my NES favs and I wish more folks got to play it (that and Guardian Legend). Here's hoping it'll come to a modern system one day and I'll finally get to get past Fortress #5!
I have completely maxed out weapon/shield/bow slots from Korok seed updates (only takes like 400). The durability mechanic is fine, it just terrifies people. (almost) all weapons & enemies holding them respawn and the weapons are just... everywhere. In master mode I didn't even upgrade the capacity. Just kill monsters and jack their *****. Don't want to do that, get a cheap bow and some (infinitely replenishing) lightning arrows from Lurelin, Gerude, Korok, or Tarrey towns. Pop those suckers off with the cheapest boko bow and enemies will drop their weapons. Pick them up and leave, don't even have to fight. Once you go to Hyrule castle you'll be able to shop for Royal two-handed weapons. There's a respawning weapon cache cave in the desert and the Colosseum just respawns all elemental weapons. The molduga is laughably easy to kill to take his drops. Guardian trials of strength respawn (w/ drops) and ancient weapons can be bought.The Sheikah slate radar telling you where to get more of any weapon you want + amiibo. W/ Champion Weapons (can be remade infinitely) OR the master sword (especially after the Trial of the Sword) & Hylian shield (which can be infinitely rebought) most other weapons/shields (other than Lynel) just become completely obsolete.
Money literally glows in the dark in this game. Pick of any of the constantly respawning hammers (like by Link's house) and get your luminous ore. Kill those delicious Taluses for their shiny insides.
The durability is fine. The game just presents it in a way that terrifies everyone for the first 40 hrs that this will be the last flaming sword they see for the rest of the game and it's not (I could pick up at least 3 at any time w/ little to no combat). And that makes people want to "save" their good weapons and use ***** ones. But ***** ones break faster because they take more hits to kill anything and durability degrades based on # of hits. If you want to save you weapons use whatever will one-shot anything and no more. 1-shot the stal-koblin/mobilin/lizalfos with a headshot w/ the cheapest bow you have (and there are bows all over the place). Fire/ice wizzrobes and other enemies can be 1-shotted w/ ANY bow; do you know how powerful those ice/fire rods are? Guardians can be 1-shotted. Stalnox? Toss its eye in water and just steal from sleeping Hinox. Kill most things fast by knocking them in water. Stasis or shoot a single Keese and the rest'll fly away. With the sneak attack from behind an enemy weapons do 8x damage; can kill all but a silver moblin in 1 hit (only losing 1 durability). Master killing Lynels (just blocking/dodging/stasis/spin) you'll never want for weapons again.
Don't want to fight? Majora's mask or other monster masks. Cook 5 mighty bananas (forest full of them, Yiga passing them out like... bananas), use the barbarian armor, or the phantom armor (which you can get from right after the Great Plateau) to increase damage.
You could run out of bombs in all past games and no one complained. Now bombs are infinite and boomerangs break and suddenly equipment needs to be everlasting or bust. They really don't need to make this game any easier. They just need to make it less frightening. Once a person understands how to fight EFFICIENTLY rather than just flailing at everything recklessly you'll be constantly dropping weapons because they don't break fast enough!
I don't about hardware but software. N's (and others') back catalog is huge to me. Didn't own a GC, never played Sunshine, Galaxy 2, or FF7,8,9,10,12,13 (which I really hope they port). I'm inching ever closer to having most of the past games I want; just need Xenoblade X, WW/TP HP ported and I'm good from Wii U (thx 3D world).
I've never been a handheld Nintendo gamer. I missed a lot of great titles. Link's Awakening was a welcome remake and I really do wish for a chance to play the Oracle games and ALBW on my TV. The Switch is the first time I've gotten to enjoy the world of Pokémon. I was a Gen1 fan but didn't play so the Let's Go games were precisely what I needed. Sword & Shield had a rocky start but I'm VERY hopeful for what the new DLC model can bring to the table as opposed to re-releases and new titles every 12-months. Metroid Prime Trilogy sounds f-ing awesome and I hope I get to play that for the first time and 4 eventually.
I'll take all the f-ing ports/compilations/NSO ROMs/remakes they can pump out honestly because I would love to enjoy titles I missed and because I think it's very important that new generations have a chance to experience a lot of these classics for the first time.
I NEED the 35th Anniversary Zelda collection (w/ Skyward HD)--I NEED IT. I don't actually want OoT & MM (which I haven't re-played in 20 years) to get the Mario 64 treatment. Instead, if Nintendo can bring the 3DS versions to Switch @ 1080p that would be the absolute BEST experience because those versions already have HD assets that were just downscaled for the 3DS. Go on YouTube and look up OoT 3D 1080p or 4K. Gorgeous enough for me. Would I love a remake? Sure, but it's almost impossible to live up so I don't think it'll happen casually. The backlash would be severe.
We're all waiting for the N64 or GC Nintendo Switch Online apps but the stealth win would be a DS/3DS NSO app.
The Indie scene is great and I purchased or wishlisted more titles than I'll realistically ever get to finish.
Having enumerated all my fantasies, the absolute LAST thing I want is a new not 110% back compatible console that I then need to lobby to port select titles off to (I'm a PC gamer, back-compat is assumed).
So that leaves us with the "Switch Pro" mid-gen refresh, which ... "of course". The challenge for them will be making sure that the entire Switch library works on the flagship Switch, Switch Lite, AND Switch Pro without splitting the library. I think they can (PS4 Pro handled this pretty well) so I'm treating that refresh as a lovely bonus.
All a Switch 2 in 3+ years needs is to be 3+ years of "Moore's Law" better than Switch Pro w/ full compat and they can just have my money. How many titles they can release per gen means nothing to me. This is literally the most Ultimate Smash Bros ever. Who would want to play the next one with fewer characters? Sure, a new Mario Kart is fine. BOTW2, Age of Calamity, Bayonetta 3, another mainline Pokemon pair + more 3rd party/indie... that's enough, for me at least, and then some!
I believe everyone who says they were frustrated by it. I don't know if it'll make a comeback. I don't care much either way because I'm at the point in my game where 95% weapons are pretty worthless for a lot of reasons.
Once you get the Hylian shield (which you can do pretty much immediately) all other shields become worthless, especially if you're decent at parrying or dodging.
The Great Eagle bow is one of the bests and you can rebuild it super easily every time it breaks and the same with all the champion weapons. If you have the Great Eagle bow you only need a few others. Either a Phrenic bow or Golden bow (which respawns in Gerudo town) for long ranged accuracy, and any bow at all for one-shotting keese or skeletal enemies with a headshot. Any basic bow at all will still one shot any fire or ice-enemy with the opposite element and any guardian with an ancient arrow to the eye. Ancient arrows one-shot Lyonels if you don't care about getting their equipment.
And the powered up master sword just wrecks everything else. By the end of it you have the wisdom to kill most enemies with one hit because you know their weaknesses.
I can only offer for the frustrated the knowledge that while weapons are breakable they're all really easy to replenish because all of the weapons respawn with the blood moon.
I love the Royal Claymore and there's one on the skull above the tower immediately north of Hyrule castle as well as several inside the castle itself. Hyrule Castle is like Walmart and there are so much knight, royal, and royal guard level equipment there for near free. Especially if you wear Majora's mask.
Every base weapon you need to forge a champion weapon is available as a respawning weapon in the town where you get that forged weapon. You never have to look for them.
Also remember that the guardians you fight as part of your Trials of Strength also respawn with the blood moon so you can revisit those shrines to test your strength and to also farm their ancient weapons.
There's a cache of nice Gerudo weapons in a cave blocked by rocks next to the Gerudo Highlands tower. Lot of good stuff there.
There's a korok spear behind the Deku tree, a golden bow in the training area, a sparrow bow at the flight range, a good zora sword and shield (and bow?) on the left bridge out of town. And even if you don't need to remake your champion weapon (or don't have it at all yet) you can still pick up the base weapons because they're useful.
All of the elemental weapons eventually are carried by the monster in the Colosseum. You don't even have to fight them (or any monsters really) if you don't want to. Just shock their asses with shock arrows, a lightning spear, or Urbosa's fury and you can just pick up the weapon and leave.
If you can fight at all, farming Lyonels gives you the best equipment in every category and they respawn. 5x bows, 3x bows, amazing shields, OP 1-handed and 2-handed swords. You master that flurry rush and you'll never want for weapons again and once you have Lyonel weapons it's a lot easier to just kill more Lyonels and stock up. Especially if you have an Attack+++ potion, food, or armor, all of which are fairly easy to come by.
Aside from that it's just utility weapons like leaves, torches, hammers, and axes and most of those are piled up outside of nearly every stable.
The most important tip to conserving weapons is to always use the weapon that can kill an enemy in the fewest hits, preferably 1. This means both exploiting enemy weaknesses and using SNEAK ATTACKS which do 8x damage, whenever you can. If you do that you'll always collect weapons faster than you burn through them and your biggest issue will be a lack of weapon slots and you'll be throwing away rubies the size of grapefruit in no time.
In BOTW weapons are expendable but bombs are unlimited. In past Zelda games bombs were expendable and usually situationally far more required but we didn't feel as much stress about saving bombs. Some stress but not as much because we think of bombs (and arrows) as replenishable and we know how to easily do so. In BOTW weapons are equally replenishable as you familiarize yourself with the map and the map pins give you great tools for remembering what's where.
Also, money grows on trees. luminous stones are easy money, and talus's are walking money goblins. Death mountain is a money field.
As for the "therapeutic" benefit of BotW. In 2017 when it came out I had just gone on a 3-month medical leave for issues related to depression/anxiety. I was miserable, barely wanted to get out of bed, found little enjoyment in most activities. I was burnt out. I just happened into getting a Switch because I'd heard there would be shortages so I waited in line with a friend. Then I basically played BotW 10 hours a day for a month straight. Exploring every nook and cranny of Hyrule, getting every shrine, (I've found 810 Korok seeds so far without the mask). Then I would talk to me friend ,who was also playing the game, for 2-4 hours about our different experiences and what we liked about it ("I fought a goddamn Dragon today and it was a total surprise!"). It pulled me out of a pit a little. It made me appreciate creativity again, it was artistically made with such care that it inspired me to want to create great experiences in my own field (programming) again. It was like a month long vacation. By the end of it I felt like I'd been to real canyons and islands and deserts and climbed real snow-capped mountains. I shudder to imagine what my medical leave would have been like without BotW. It didn't completely cure me or anything but it reinvigorated me a little and rebuilt some of my happy neural pathways. I can totally believe that it is helpful in unplugging from the kind of adrenaline driven action of Fortnite.
@keihtg 8-hours in? I'm not trying to invalidate your opinion, just to understand the underlying differences in desire that make it boring to you.
I've put in at least 400 hours up to this point but I really enjoy meandering around exploring things and discovering stuff. Just reaching the top of a mountain is a goal for me just to take in the view (or paraglide down). I spent relatively little time in the game on combat. It happened but the "point" wasn't to take out Bokoblin camps. It was more often "get to that shrine", "ooh that tree looks interesting, wow found a korok seed" so I never really experienced "vast distances between destinations" because I don't really see it as having "destinations" and even though I have a really fast horse, I rarely use it. I'm not running back and forth on fetch quests and the land is just an obstacle, the land is the point. Paragliding from tall places is the point. Climbing is the point.
I love Dark Souls too but combat is the point in that game. I wasn't exploring the catacombs or the duke's archives or lost izalith to "take in the sights" or find collectables. I would have liked to have that level of accessibility but the environments are so perilous. You can't swim in Ash Lake. You can't go into the different buildings of Anor Londo. You can't dive off the waterfall in the Darkroot Basin.
So, I can't tell if you just like a different kind of game (go here, go here, get that, now go here next, in sequence) or if you enjoy other open world games but just had the wrong expectations for this one (expectations that would totally be reasonable for any other Zelda game). Did you by chance play Xenoblade X?
Did you ever use the Korok mask? I haven't used the mask yet but it's getting hard enough that I'm probably going to go get it so I can get the last 90 seeds. Please don't say those last 50 need the guide even with the mask. I'm trying hard not to use a guide.
@Jayofmaya
That's how it was for me too. The first 650 or so was just accidental in playing the game. I probably looked for the next 50 or so to 700 then the next 100 were incidental while I was trying to complete my compendium--tracking down rare sparrows. I don't really think Nintendo wanted finding all of them to be fun. I kinda suspect they made the prize so bad to actively discourage trying.
@MarinoKadame Yeah, I saw some of the parkour videos. That is true. I just tried my hardest to explore as much as I could without Skells at all because a lot of people think you can't do anything without them. But the vast majority of even Cauldros you can get to (include the sky platforms above the bases) with your feet and it's kinda more fun that way, to me. It's all in the augments you craft. Pathfinders for Life!
In December 1996 I got a Nintendo 64 and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire for Christmas. The first day I played the battle of Hoth, spinning around in that damned snow-speeder I remember I got so nauseated I just couldn't play anymore. I worried it meant this whole 3D thing was just not going to work for me. But After a few play sessions my brain adjusted and I've been happily enjoying 3D gaming for over 20 years since. Had a similar experience playing "Alien" in the "Alien vs Predator" games, a creature which literally walks on walls and ceilings and has a constantly changing direction of what is "Up", unrelated to the direction of gravity.
It's a brain thing. I don't yet have the VR goggles but I still want to check it out. This really might be a hard limit on the specs for a VR system but based on my past experience of being temporarily nauseated by new 3D tech/experiences I'm still willing to give it some time for my brain to adjust across a few play sessions before making a final call on whether it can't work.
@Snakesglowcaps would the approach suggested by @link3710 not work? What about software updates + a polarized or color-coded anaglyph lense filter add-on to the headset? Considering we're comparing it to the 3D effect created originally on the 3DS, which required no glasses, is the bar really that high?
Of course, given that the 3DS isn't even end of life yet it's probably a wholly unnecessary endeavor, I'd actually just prefer a 1080p version of those games on my 65" TV anyway. But given Nintendo's... proclivity, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to MacGuyver up a solution to preserve some of the original novelty of the OoT 3D and MM 3D remakes. I don't care how they convince themselves to do it; I just want the games
This could be the first step before a play to re-release Ocarina of Time 3D and Majora's Mask 3D on Switch without sacrificing the stereoscopic 3D effect. I also love the idea others have suggested that this sets up Metroid Prime Trilogy well. All of that especially if a Switch Pro model comes out that ups the resolution/framerate to make those experiences slick. This makes me very hopeful!
I'm not a big SNES fan because I didn't have that system as a kid, but if Nintendo did an "A Link to the Past HD" Remaster in the Octopath art style they would have my money instantly. It would simply teleport from my bank account to their bank account auto-magically. It could be so gorgeous, I think, and I'd really love to at least see a fan-made attempt/proof-of-concept.
But, I agree, I don't want to see every new 2D game do it, no.
It's not true that you need the flying skell to "REALLY" explore the map. I specifically avoided it until as late as possible and installed all but a handful of data probes across the planet. You can get to all of them in Sylvalum but because you need the Mechanical 5 skill (which requires flying to earn) you can't actually install 1-2. I couldn't physically get to 1 in Primordia, 1 in Oblivia, 1 in Cauldros, and 2 in Noctilum but other than that I went everywhere. Flying skells just help you complete the exploration (the floating island in Oblivia--you can use a non-flying skell to get to the island in the pit in Oblivia, the Divine Roost with the hardest indigen in the game in Noctilum, the Noctiluscent Sphere with the 2nd hardest indigen in the game in Sylvalum, the island off the coast of Cauldros, the top of the huge structure in Primordia). But other than that 95% of the game is open to exploration without skells and that's how I did it. I maxed out my characters before I got my skell license at all.
That's what I loved about it. You just need to look for alternate "safer" routes and use items and tactics. There are actually multiple places you can "enter" cauldros and some of them are more friendly to being on foot. Also there's an item you can craft which negates the lava damage entirely if you want to get crazy.
Agree with @Spiders
If you really want to enjoy exploring the map in this game I highly recommend NOT getting a skell and running through and climbing (mountain goat style) as much of it as you can before getting a skell. You pay attention to a lot more of the details and even avoid certain encounters because certain monsters don't attack you on foot (giant robots in Sylvalum). It's not some extreme glitching exploit thing either, it's built into the game--you get XP for discovering "scenic views". I remember my epic quest to summit the volcano in Cauldros--Pro-Tip: cloaking device(s). The sense of accomplishment was incredible! Then I had to jump in.
Skells actually ruin exploration, if you ask me. You don't have to "work for it". Even after 200 hours I'm still surprised sometimes to discover a BC I just didn't trek past already (and get XP for it). I was Pathfinder division all the way.
@BulbasaurusRex: I didn't have those problems but you they seem to have really bothered you so there's nothing I can really say. Some things are just below your tolerance. It's hard to mark unpassable terrain since so much of it looks unpassable but actually is. But the paths up mountains depend on their steepness and where you start. It's not Breath of the Wild climb everything freedom but the mountains look far more unclimbable than they are in most cases.
'First time hearing it"What us this crap lol"10 hours into the game"U know, this is kinda catchy."30 hours into the game"I CANT HEAR YOU!! I CANT SEE YOU!!!!"'
Comments 234
Re: Zelda: Skyward Sword HD Hits Switch This July Alongside Themed Joy-Con
I'm super happy. I've been waiting for this game to come to Switch since... always. I've played WW HD and TP HD recently. I have a hankering for Skyward and it's great to see it come to a system beyond the Wii's 480p. Button-based control scheme is almost exactly what I expected, though I very much enjoyed the motion controls and didn't have a problem (though I knew people who did). I always figured the Joycon would produce better controls--it's 10 years of development improvements after all. I'm just happy that hopefully more people will get to play through this story. It's really a great compliment to BotW IMO, especially if BotW is your introduction to the series. The whole "Goddess Hylia" and Master Sword speaking thing just makes more sense after playing SS.
I'm not disappointed about anything because 1) I know this isn't the last we'll hear about the Zelda 35th. In fact, they didn't mention it at all so it's impossible that this is the last. They can still give us more but I didn't expect them to show up and dump 5 ports on us and the sequel to BotW in 50 minutes. And my usual statement that the team that ports isn't the team that makes BotW so there's no "instead of" to it. Nintendo can port non-stop and it not slow down their development of new games. Their new games take time because they want them to be awesome.
Looking forward to hearing more Zelda info this year. SS is probably my 3rd favorite Zelda after OoT and MM, so this is a day-1 purchase for me.
Re: Memory Pak: When Link Left The Temple Of Time In Zelda: Ocarina Of Time And Everything Changed
@VoidofLight That's a privilege you have to earn by descending into the dark black forest. You can't be a kid again until you get a job that pays you enough to buy a hoverboard
But that too is brilliant design. They purposely make you feel powerless and trapped for an entire dungeon. No easy outs. They don't even give you the Prelude of Light to return to the Temple of Time like a place of safety. You're out in the world, stuck, no shortcuts. And then when you save Saria, literally the symbol of your entire childhood before this week and it's revealed that you can visit the past to take respite it's such a relief. Not a perfect one because even in the past the damage is already done. Zelda is still missing, on the run for her life, the king is still dead. So you know that even if you can take breaks from adulthood the only true resolution is to move forward and fix the future rather than hiding in the past.
@KateGray great article! Reading it was the first time I thought explicitly about the ambient power the Temple of Time exudes, specifically that while Ganon was destroying literally everything else in Hyrule: freezing Zora's domain, draining Lake Hylia, turning the Castle into a crater, throwing castle town into ruin--even he didn't dare damage the Temple of Time. It was virtually untouched in 7 years despite being right next to the King of Evil. Did he decide not to or maybe he couldn't?
Re: Soapbox: It’s Time For A Pokémon Trading Card Game Reboot On Switch
I'm not gonna lie, the $250 I spent on Blizzard's Hearthstone was mostly an effort to make up for not having any Pokémon cards when I was a child. That and a little bit of Yu-Gi-Oh (which I only really watched on TV). I really wanted to play TCG but couldn't find the cards, the money to buy cards, or anyone with whom to play. After like 15 years I finally had the chance to play a card game and it was great!
So I'm all in favor of this if they put in as much effort into the art, animations, and polish as Hearthstone (a game criminally absent from Switch, BTW). I'd finally get to live out a missing part of my childhood. And spend stupid money on digital cards again.
Re: Soapbox: Grinding Is Poor Gameplay Design That Doesn’t Respect Your Time
@earthinheritor No hate. Your experience was what happened. I'm curious what determines how much you need. I'll admit I wasn't very imaginative with my party. I find that Ophilia is essential for early heals, Cyrus is essential for analyzing weaknesses and breaking elemental weaknesses, and Olberic is essential for tanking hits for everyone else. It was a loooong time before I could run a party without them and even then I think Ophilia was always there.
Tessa and Hanit can easily be broken because Tressa can give you extra boost points for heavier attacks and Hanit can force an enemy to take their turns after all of your characters, which might be enough time for you to kill them.
I don't feel like the other 3 characters become particularly viable until midgame for some reason.
Oh, also a thing I did that may have made the game easier is I unlocked secondary jobs (not the secret ones) pretty early. Almost as soon as I could, and I might have had to escape high level fights to get to them. I remember dying on the way to the Merchant one. The game is very repetitive in patterns so once I knew where one of the second jobs was I figure out where the other 7 were easily.
Another thing that might have helped is the way I played the missions. I think I started with Ophilia then picked up Cyrus, then Olberic, then Tressa, then I just swapped out Tressa for the other 4 characters one at a time (so Ophilia/Cyrus/Olberic just get stronger from all these Chapter 1 missions). Then I think I started to do the chapter 2s like that but got bored so I kept my main three and did all 3 of Hanit's remaining quests, so again those folks got super strong so just... over time my party was always overleveled and over capable, even though I always had the skill on that reduced the random encounter rate.
I don't know that I'd call any of this advice. I'm just rambling cause it sucks to know some people might have a bad experience with the game if I recommend it (which I have).
Re: Soapbox: Grinding Is Poor Gameplay Design That Doesn’t Respect Your Time
I hate random encounters so hard. Octopath Traveler by default has encounters more frequent than the "rate of thought" meaning if I decide to do something like "backtrack to the fork" or "open that chest" whatever I was thinking about doing will be interrupted by a random encounter and I'm likely to forget whatever it was. This sucks. But with the passive skill that reduces the encounter rate (which basically forced me to get one character immediately in my party) the encounter rate is fine at about once per screen or a little less than once per thought. This rate was more than enough for me to over-level all my characters.
I generally speaking DO NOT grind for levels. Don't like it. I definitely don't like doing it when it's mandatory for basic gameplay. I don't mind grinding for rare materials to craft a particular thing one doesn't need but I want because that's my choice (provided the drop rate is reasonable). I don't mind too much grinding for other types of progression such as leveling a specific skill (kill 500 baddies with Frost). But the only time I've ever ran into a boss and not be high enough level to beat it was Quest 64 and I just gave up on that playthrough and didn't play again for like 10 years (when I beat it).
So, in summary, yeah forced grinding sucks. Grinding should be productive when optionally available for stretch goals.
Re: Soapbox: I Never Completed Breath Of The Wild, And I Never Will
@brunojenso the one on Ploymus Mountain by Zora's domain is the best one to practice on. He's very repetitive so you can practice perfect dodging. It helps tremendously to have the Stasis+ upgrade so you can freeze the Lynel periodically (usually before big aoe attacks). And aside from flurry rushing after the perfect dodge I get the most mileage out of very long spinning attacks with two-handed weapons, the stronger the better. And once you have enough stamina it snowballs because killing a Lynel gets you Lynel weapons which are faster at killing Lynels getting you more Lynel weapons until you have 90 attack Savage Lynel crushers and 5x Lynel bows and can just hover in arrow-time mid air in front of a Lynel and just headshot him over and over and over again with your favorite arrows.
Or you can forego the loot and shoot it with an ancient arrow, but that's no fun. Anyway, that's the progression I went with. I don't know that there's much more to properly defeating them than being strong af with a lot of health and stamina and good armor. GL
Re: Video: Here's What The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time 3D Could Potentially Look Like On Switch
@Lady_Harubun
I too wondered about the Mario DS release. Given what I saw of OoT 3D I thought it might be a no-brainer but after looking at gameplay it really didn't capture the style of the original. The color palette is ... just different. Like why is the grass yellow like that? I love Luigi and would probably have loved to play Mario 64 as Luigi but I can see how Nintendo wouldn't pick Mario DS to celebrate the history of Mario anymore than the Super Mario Allstars version of Mario 1,2,3 would be considered definitive.
OoT 3D makes a MUCH stronger case. Full disclosure, I never thought the Water Temple was a problem, but I'll even stomach that change for the better models.
MM 3D... MM might be my favorite Zelda. I'm torn honestly between it an OoT. So that the 3D version made some of its changes are really painful to me. I just rewatched Nerrel's MM 3D review video again just to remind myself of all the changes. I desperately want to updated models and textures. And they can miss me with most of the other gameplay changes. Bombers notebook is maybe the most useful valuable thing there after the landing reticule for the deku flower (like what was added for the Deku leaf in WW HD).
Having said that, a lot of folks struggled to stick with MM because of some of its mechanics. I loved the whole groundhog day thing. I didn't mind putting my money in the bank. I liked the saving system. But my best friend absolutely hated it and just never finished the game. I remember him getting very angry about it. I think a better balance can be struck between allowing more people to enjoy one of the most creative titles in the series and jettisoning all of its unique qualities. I would prefer they revert a handful of the worst offenders in the MM3D release. Basically, they should just look at his video and fix like all of that. Should be pretty quick to implement everything other than all the boss fight stuff and just as long to test.
Really a different beast than Mario 64, honestly.
Re: Video: Here's What The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time 3D Could Potentially Look Like On Switch
And here's a 4K texture pack made by a fan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB36JWnBvak
It's running in the Citra emulator. Looks great! I just want Nintendo to make this happen so I can revisit a game I literally haven't played front to back since 1999.
Re: Video: Here's What The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time 3D Could Potentially Look Like On Switch
As others have noted, you really don't have to upscale it. The assets for the 3D remake were already 1080p downscaled for the 3DS. @Atariboy posted this above and reposting because it needs as many views as possible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7qQckdFUY8
Would it be nice to get even more triangles? I guess, but honestly I don't really need that. I'd rather get a few more gameplay tweaks or a little bonus content. Graphics just aren't everything. I'm care more about what you do with them, such as the atmosphere of the Lost Woods, which is much better in OoT 3D or the sea-life architecture in the Great Bay in MM 3D. I only played those games on original N64 (or Virtual Console) and would love to play again on my HD TV. As far as I'm concerned, give me dual-analogue camera controls and tweak the gameplay a little more and you can ship it as is, emulated in native 1080p and I'll buy it. I'd much prefer it wasn't $60 though. Can't have Ocarina with Majora's mask, they're a duo so I'm not even entertaining having one and not the other.
Nintendo is overthinking it, I think. I don't need a FF7 style remake. I don't need anything involving the Unreal engine or ray tracing. I don't need it redone in the BotW engine or art style (it's actually kinda small for that I realize). Just a classic made viewable on a modern television (like Wind Waker HD).
I have both OoT and MM on Wii U Virtual Console and I while I love my Wii U, I'd really like everything I love on it to get rescued off of it so I can free up and HDMI port. That includes Wind Waker and Twilight HD, and Skyward Sword. I have no problem whatsoever with having my full catalogue of games since NES playable on my Switch. I never want my old content to be unplayable anymore than I want movies I saw in 1990 to be unwatchable. As a PC gamer this seems pretty intuitive.
Re: Feature: Why Not Patch These Switch Games To Work With The Ring-Con, Nintendo?
Cadence. Of. Hyrule.
Re: Miyamoto Wants Us To Understand The Motives Of Enemies We Kill In Video Games
@Darknyht @gcunit
I was just about to mention Xenoblade X and how I love how quickly they establish that the biggest indigenous lifeforms aren't hostile. They're just drinking water all day. Unlike my friend who does grind the innocents for XP, I had a fairly strict self-defense only policy in that game so there were lots of creatures I just never experienced combat with. I didn't even like waking up the sleeping giants (there's an expression about it) so I probably won't ever 100% that game.
I did let the pigs live, and they did kill someone. I have to live with that. Still great game design that you're not in this new alien biome to kill everything in sight. I got most of my levels from XP from exploration, in the beginning at least.
Re: Custom-Made Etika Joy-Con Which Raised $10k For Charity Fell Foul Of Copyright Claim, Creator Reveals
@Grot it's not even a moral argument. Companies rarely have a choice about enforcing their copyright and trademarks. Legally they are required to consistently defend their IP or some jurisdictions can and will dissolve those rights. It's essentially an issue of squatter's rights which is a real thing. If you know someone is using your property and allow them to do so for a period of time you can't then change your mind and start trying to exploit them. There are reverse scenarios where a person could do just that. Allow someone to build a business based on something they don't own then threaten their entire operation later to exploit hefty fees. The law is setup to protect both parties but Nintendo has to be seen as vigilant about their own IP.
If they don't do so enough eventually you get things like genericized trademarks where legally everyone can call any game system a Nintendo, you can Google stuff on any search engine, and everyone makes asprin. It's happened before to other companies plenty of times.
Re: Eiji Aonuma Talks About The Possibility Of More Legend Of Zelda Spin-Offs
@SeantheDon29 AKA Smash Ultimate w/ Knuckles as the last DLC fighter
Re: Dataminer Shares New Details About The Emulation In Super Mario 3D All-Stars
This sounds great. And while it's true that emulators can be made to offer more but the more you add to them increases testing time because you have to test everything you did that's new. I would love (infinitely more than any widescreen stuff or increases in framerate) for them to just fix the Mario 64 camera to be dual analog and work like it does in Odyssey (where it doesn't move mid jump all the time). But I recognize that would require more testing. Nintendo's pretty good at limiting camera movement to not reveal graphical optimizations off screen like pre-loaded models under the floor or missing extremities below the counter in a store or the entire backside of a model not being rendered or textured at all. Any of those abstractions can become very leaky if you just open the floodgates graphically without rigorous testing which means more time and not getting this game today but maybe in January or March. Maybe they'll be able to patch Widescreen in in the future, who knows. But throwing terms like "lazy" around is so incredibly disrespectful to individual employees (read: people) we don't know who are probably actually working very hard under extreme circumstances from their homes. If you don't think these games are worth $20 each, or $10/$20/$30 or $15/$20/$25 (or whatever split) given the increase in resolution and the remade textures/fonts + the music collection then that just means the collections aren't for you, nothing more. I've paid for Mega Man 2 on different platforms more times than I remember and I'm sure I'll do it again because I love the game. I don't really care how it's implemented that I get it. No matter how old it is I'll never think Mario 64 isn't worth even 10 dollars. I just paid $13 for some f-ing pancakes.
Re: Random: Some 3D All-Stars Players Aren't Happy About The Visible Debug Cubes In Super Mario Sunshine
@Zeropulse
You're not. That's the problem. The cubes match the art style well enough that they could just leave them in. They kinda look like they always belonged there. They helped the developers understand the travel paths and they serve the same function to gamers.
As for being emulated, of course. What insane person would re-implement each game from each system individually for no reason. There's a reason emulators exist. They emulate hardware that doesn't exist. The people saying it's easy or lazy are also the people who couldn't code a tic tac toe game let alone an emulator. I just hope they pop out a quality 3DS emulator.
Re: Nintendo Looks To Extend Switch Life-Cycle As Demand Looks Higher Than Ever This Year
@sword_9mm
I kept thinking on it after my last response and while I don't throw terms like "stupid" around like that I will concede that it's pointless. My whole point was that the system can completely be worked around which means it's not really a good system. It's kinda like health regen in Master Mode. It doesn't exactly make the game better/harder, it just makes things take longer. My Dark Souls inventory was infinite and I picked up every weapon and none of them permanently broke (you could repair them) and it didn't break the game really (though the weapon I had at the game was literally in the starting area) so you've convinced me that the design does more harm than good. I'm sad you didn't get to enjoy and otherwise great game. I hope they don't include it in BOTW2 so that you get to enjoy that one because I think it'll be really awesome. I also suspect that it won't entirely be the same "genre" as BOTW but will instead focus on getting right the things BOTW dropped, like linear narrative.
I'm guessing you meant survival games where you starve over time without food. But I think food is entirely broken in BOTW because you can stock up and never die and kill everything and there are no limits/tradeoffs. Not really a response to your point but we did both use the word "food".
Anyway, I hope you get the sequel you want <3
Re: Nintendo Looks To Extend Switch Life-Cycle As Demand Looks Higher Than Ever This Year
@HalBailman funny, I keep my NES cartridges in the basement too. Can't let 'em go. At least if you play an emulator you can say your Air Fortress ROM is totally legal
Re: Nintendo 3DS Production Has Officially Come To An End
Here's hoping this portends to addition to Nintendo Switch Online of a Nintendo Switch Online 2DS app. You run these games through an emulator and even without the 3D effect they look fantastic at 1080p or 4K. My dream is to play Ocarina and Majora 3D on a television because they have high quality "future proof" assets. It can be done and it has been done and they'd be much better than the N64 versions. I'm even willing to give Mario 64 DS a shot to play through the game as Luigi. There's gold in them thar hills, people!
Re: Nintendo Looks To Extend Switch Life-Cycle As Demand Looks Higher Than Ever This Year
@HalBailman love for the image. Air Fortress is one of my NES favs and I wish more folks got to play it (that and Guardian Legend). Here's hoping it'll come to a modern system one day and I'll finally get to get past Fortress #5!
Cheers!
Re: Nintendo Looks To Extend Switch Life-Cycle As Demand Looks Higher Than Ever This Year
@sword_9mm
I have completely maxed out weapon/shield/bow slots from Korok seed updates (only takes like 400). The durability mechanic is fine, it just terrifies people. (almost) all weapons & enemies holding them respawn and the weapons are just... everywhere. In master mode I didn't even upgrade the capacity. Just kill monsters and jack their *****. Don't want to do that, get a cheap bow and some (infinitely replenishing) lightning arrows from Lurelin, Gerude, Korok, or Tarrey towns. Pop those suckers off with the cheapest boko bow and enemies will drop their weapons. Pick them up and leave, don't even have to fight. Once you go to Hyrule castle you'll be able to shop for Royal two-handed weapons. There's a respawning weapon cache cave in the desert and the Colosseum just respawns all elemental weapons. The molduga is laughably easy to kill to take his drops. Guardian trials of strength respawn (w/ drops) and ancient weapons can be bought.The Sheikah slate radar telling you where to get more of any weapon you want + amiibo. W/ Champion Weapons (can be remade infinitely) OR the master sword (especially after the Trial of the Sword) & Hylian shield (which can be infinitely rebought) most other weapons/shields (other than Lynel) just become completely obsolete.
Money literally glows in the dark in this game. Pick of any of the constantly respawning hammers (like by Link's house) and get your luminous ore. Kill those delicious Taluses for their shiny insides.
The durability is fine. The game just presents it in a way that terrifies everyone for the first 40 hrs that this will be the last flaming sword they see for the rest of the game and it's not (I could pick up at least 3 at any time w/ little to no combat). And that makes people want to "save" their good weapons and use ***** ones. But ***** ones break faster because they take more hits to kill anything and durability degrades based on # of hits. If you want to save you weapons use whatever will one-shot anything and no more. 1-shot the stal-koblin/mobilin/lizalfos with a headshot w/ the cheapest bow you have (and there are bows all over the place). Fire/ice wizzrobes and other enemies can be 1-shotted w/ ANY bow; do you know how powerful those ice/fire rods are? Guardians can be 1-shotted. Stalnox? Toss its eye in water and just steal from sleeping Hinox. Kill most things fast by knocking them in water. Stasis or shoot a single Keese and the rest'll fly away. With the sneak attack from behind an enemy weapons do 8x damage; can kill all but a silver moblin in 1 hit (only losing 1 durability). Master killing Lynels (just blocking/dodging/stasis/spin) you'll never want for weapons again.
Don't want to fight? Majora's mask or other monster masks. Cook 5 mighty bananas (forest full of them, Yiga passing them out like... bananas), use the barbarian armor, or the phantom armor (which you can get from right after the Great Plateau) to increase damage.
You could run out of bombs in all past games and no one complained. Now bombs are infinite and boomerangs break and suddenly equipment needs to be everlasting or bust. They really don't need to make this game any easier. They just need to make it less frightening. Once a person understands how to fight EFFICIENTLY rather than just flailing at everything recklessly you'll be constantly dropping weapons because they don't break fast enough!
Re: Nintendo Looks To Extend Switch Life-Cycle As Demand Looks Higher Than Ever This Year
I don't about hardware but software. N's (and others') back catalog is huge to me. Didn't own a GC, never played Sunshine, Galaxy 2, or FF7,8,9,10,12,13 (which I really hope they port). I'm inching ever closer to having most of the past games I want; just need Xenoblade X, WW/TP HP ported and I'm good from Wii U (thx 3D world).
I've never been a handheld Nintendo gamer. I missed a lot of great titles. Link's Awakening was a welcome remake and I really do wish for a chance to play the Oracle games and ALBW on my TV. The Switch is the first time I've gotten to enjoy the world of Pokémon. I was a Gen1 fan but didn't play so the Let's Go games were precisely what I needed. Sword & Shield had a rocky start but I'm VERY hopeful for what the new DLC model can bring to the table as opposed to re-releases and new titles every 12-months. Metroid Prime Trilogy sounds f-ing awesome and I hope I get to play that for the first time and 4 eventually.
I'll take all the f-ing ports/compilations/NSO ROMs/remakes they can pump out honestly because I would love to enjoy titles I missed and because I think it's very important that new generations have a chance to experience a lot of these classics for the first time.
I NEED the 35th Anniversary Zelda collection (w/ Skyward HD)--I NEED IT. I don't actually want OoT & MM (which I haven't re-played in 20 years) to get the Mario 64 treatment. Instead, if Nintendo can bring the 3DS versions to Switch @ 1080p that would be the absolute BEST experience because those versions already have HD assets that were just downscaled for the 3DS. Go on YouTube and look up OoT 3D 1080p or 4K. Gorgeous enough for me. Would I love a remake? Sure, but it's almost impossible to live up so I don't think it'll happen casually. The backlash would be severe.
We're all waiting for the N64 or GC Nintendo Switch Online apps but the stealth win would be a DS/3DS NSO app.
The Indie scene is great and I purchased or wishlisted more titles than I'll realistically ever get to finish.
Having enumerated all my fantasies, the absolute LAST thing I want is a new not 110% back compatible console that I then need to lobby to port select titles off to (I'm a PC gamer, back-compat is assumed).
So that leaves us with the "Switch Pro" mid-gen refresh, which ... "of course". The challenge for them will be making sure that the entire Switch library works on the flagship Switch, Switch Lite, AND Switch Pro without splitting the library. I think they can (PS4 Pro handled this pretty well) so I'm treating that refresh as a lovely bonus.
All a Switch 2 in 3+ years needs is to be 3+ years of "Moore's Law" better than Switch Pro w/ full compat and they can just have my money. How many titles they can release per gen means nothing to me. This is literally the most Ultimate Smash Bros ever. Who would want to play the next one with fewer characters? Sure, a new Mario Kart is fine. BOTW2, Age of Calamity, Bayonetta 3, another mainline Pokemon pair + more 3rd party/indie... that's enough, for me at least, and then some!
Re: Fight Crab Dev Explains Why The Game Is About Crabs Fighting
Are we all just going to ignore the 800 foot lobster in the room?
Re: Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Voted Among The Top Stress-Relieving Games In New Study
@KoopaTheQuick
I believe everyone who says they were frustrated by it. I don't know if it'll make a comeback. I don't care much either way because I'm at the point in my game where 95% weapons are pretty worthless for a lot of reasons.
Once you get the Hylian shield (which you can do pretty much immediately) all other shields become worthless, especially if you're decent at parrying or dodging.
The Great Eagle bow is one of the bests and you can rebuild it super easily every time it breaks and the same with all the champion weapons. If you have the Great Eagle bow you only need a few others. Either a Phrenic bow or Golden bow (which respawns in Gerudo town) for long ranged accuracy, and any bow at all for one-shotting keese or skeletal enemies with a headshot. Any basic bow at all will still one shot any fire or ice-enemy with the opposite element and any guardian with an ancient arrow to the eye. Ancient arrows one-shot Lyonels if you don't care about getting their equipment.
And the powered up master sword just wrecks everything else. By the end of it you have the wisdom to kill most enemies with one hit because you know their weaknesses.
I can only offer for the frustrated the knowledge that while weapons are breakable they're all really easy to replenish because all of the weapons respawn with the blood moon.
I love the Royal Claymore and there's one on the skull above the tower immediately north of Hyrule castle as well as several inside the castle itself. Hyrule Castle is like Walmart and there are so much knight, royal, and royal guard level equipment there for near free. Especially if you wear Majora's mask.
Every base weapon you need to forge a champion weapon is available as a respawning weapon in the town where you get that forged weapon. You never have to look for them.
Also remember that the guardians you fight as part of your Trials of Strength also respawn with the blood moon so you can revisit those shrines to test your strength and to also farm their ancient weapons.
There's a cache of nice Gerudo weapons in a cave blocked by rocks next to the Gerudo Highlands tower. Lot of good stuff there.
There's a korok spear behind the Deku tree, a golden bow in the training area, a sparrow bow at the flight range, a good zora sword and shield (and bow?) on the left bridge out of town. And even if you don't need to remake your champion weapon (or don't have it at all yet) you can still pick up the base weapons because they're useful.
All of the elemental weapons eventually are carried by the monster in the Colosseum. You don't even have to fight them (or any monsters really) if you don't want to. Just shock their asses with shock arrows, a lightning spear, or Urbosa's fury and you can just pick up the weapon and leave.
If you can fight at all, farming Lyonels gives you the best equipment in every category and they respawn. 5x bows, 3x bows, amazing shields, OP 1-handed and 2-handed swords. You master that flurry rush and you'll never want for weapons again and once you have Lyonel weapons it's a lot easier to just kill more Lyonels and stock up. Especially if you have an Attack+++ potion, food, or armor, all of which are fairly easy to come by.
Aside from that it's just utility weapons like leaves, torches, hammers, and axes and most of those are piled up outside of nearly every stable.
The most important tip to conserving weapons is to always use the weapon that can kill an enemy in the fewest hits, preferably 1. This means both exploiting enemy weaknesses and using SNEAK ATTACKS which do 8x damage, whenever you can. If you do that you'll always collect weapons faster than you burn through them and your biggest issue will be a lack of weapon slots and you'll be throwing away rubies the size of grapefruit in no time.
In BOTW weapons are expendable but bombs are unlimited. In past Zelda games bombs were expendable and usually situationally far more required but we didn't feel as much stress about saving bombs. Some stress but not as much because we think of bombs (and arrows) as replenishable and we know how to easily do so. In BOTW weapons are equally replenishable as you familiarize yourself with the map and the map pins give you great tools for remembering what's where.
Also, money grows on trees. luminous stones are easy money, and talus's are walking money goblins. Death mountain is a money field.
Re: Random: Addicted To Fortnite? Try Playing Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, Says Psychologist
As for the "therapeutic" benefit of BotW. In 2017 when it came out I had just gone on a 3-month medical leave for issues related to depression/anxiety. I was miserable, barely wanted to get out of bed, found little enjoyment in most activities. I was burnt out. I just happened into getting a Switch because I'd heard there would be shortages so I waited in line with a friend. Then I basically played BotW 10 hours a day for a month straight. Exploring every nook and cranny of Hyrule, getting every shrine, (I've found 810 Korok seeds so far without the mask). Then I would talk to me friend ,who was also playing the game, for 2-4 hours about our different experiences and what we liked about it ("I fought a goddamn Dragon today and it was a total surprise!"). It pulled me out of a pit a little. It made me appreciate creativity again, it was artistically made with such care that it inspired me to want to create great experiences in my own field (programming) again. It was like a month long vacation. By the end of it I felt like I'd been to real canyons and islands and deserts and climbed real snow-capped mountains. I shudder to imagine what my medical leave would have been like without BotW. It didn't completely cure me or anything but it reinvigorated me a little and rebuilt some of my happy neural pathways. I can totally believe that it is helpful in unplugging from the kind of adrenaline driven action of Fortnite.
Re: Random: Addicted To Fortnite? Try Playing Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, Says Psychologist
@keihtg 8-hours in? I'm not trying to invalidate your opinion, just to understand the underlying differences in desire that make it boring to you.
I've put in at least 400 hours up to this point but I really enjoy meandering around exploring things and discovering stuff. Just reaching the top of a mountain is a goal for me just to take in the view (or paraglide down). I spent relatively little time in the game on combat. It happened but the "point" wasn't to take out Bokoblin camps. It was more often "get to that shrine", "ooh that tree looks interesting, wow found a korok seed" so I never really experienced "vast distances between destinations" because I don't really see it as having "destinations" and even though I have a really fast horse, I rarely use it. I'm not running back and forth on fetch quests and the land is just an obstacle, the land is the point. Paragliding from tall places is the point. Climbing is the point.
I love Dark Souls too but combat is the point in that game. I wasn't exploring the catacombs or the duke's archives or lost izalith to "take in the sights" or find collectables. I would have liked to have that level of accessibility but the environments are so perilous. You can't swim in Ash Lake. You can't go into the different buildings of Anor Londo. You can't dive off the waterfall in the Darkroot Basin.
So, I can't tell if you just like a different kind of game (go here, go here, get that, now go here next, in sequence) or if you enjoy other open world games but just had the wrong expectations for this one (expectations that would totally be reasonable for any other Zelda game). Did you by chance play Xenoblade X?
Re: Random: Hmm, This New Kanye West Song Sure Sounds Familiar
Sounds like a mashup waiting to be made. I'll be waiting over at OCRemix!
Re: Random: New Glitch In Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Gives You Infinite Korok Seeds
@Eric258
Did you ever use the Korok mask? I haven't used the mask yet but it's getting hard enough that I'm probably going to go get it so I can get the last 90 seeds. Please don't say those last 50 need the guide even with the mask. I'm trying hard not to use a guide.
@Jayofmaya
That's how it was for me too. The first 650 or so was just accidental in playing the game. I probably looked for the next 50 or so to 700 then the next 100 were incidental while I was trying to complete my compendium--tracking down rare sparrows. I don't really think Nintendo wanted finding all of them to be fun. I kinda suspect they made the prize so bad to actively discourage trying.
Re: Random: New Glitch In Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Gives You Infinite Korok Seeds
I have found 809 Korok seeds so far using only my own skills. I shall not be tempted by this chicanery!
Re: Monolith Soft Director Would "Love" Xenoblade Chronicles X On Switch, Money Stands In The Way
@MarinoKadame Yeah, I saw some of the parkour videos. That is true. I just tried my hardest to explore as much as I could without Skells at all because a lot of people think you can't do anything without them. But the vast majority of even Cauldros you can get to (include the sky platforms above the bases) with your feet and it's kinda more fun that way, to me. It's all in the augments you craft. Pathfinders for Life!
Re: Hands On: Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild VR Made Us Want To Puke
In December 1996 I got a Nintendo 64 and Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire for Christmas. The first day I played the battle of Hoth, spinning around in that damned snow-speeder I remember I got so nauseated I just couldn't play anymore. I worried it meant this whole 3D thing was just not going to work for me. But After a few play sessions my brain adjusted and I've been happily enjoying 3D gaming for over 20 years since. Had a similar experience playing "Alien" in the "Alien vs Predator" games, a creature which literally walks on walls and ceilings and has a constantly changing direction of what is "Up", unrelated to the direction of gravity.
It's a brain thing. I don't yet have the VR goggles but I still want to check it out. This really might be a hard limit on the specs for a VR system but based on my past experience of being temporarily nauseated by new 3D tech/experiences I'm still willing to give it some time for my brain to adjust across a few play sessions before making a final call on whether it can't work.
Re: Super Mario Odyssey And Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Getting Labo VR Support
@Snakesglowcaps would the approach suggested by @link3710 not work? What about software updates + a polarized or color-coded anaglyph lense filter add-on to the headset? Considering we're comparing it to the 3D effect created originally on the 3DS, which required no glasses, is the bar really that high?
Of course, given that the 3DS isn't even end of life yet it's probably a wholly unnecessary endeavor, I'd actually just prefer a 1080p version of those games on my 65" TV anyway. But given Nintendo's... proclivity, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to MacGuyver up a solution to preserve some of the original novelty of the OoT 3D and MM 3D remakes. I don't care how they convince themselves to do it; I just want the games
Re: Nintendo Releasing VR Updates For Super Mario Odyssey And Breath Of The Wild
This could be the first step before a play to re-release Ocarina of Time 3D and Majora's Mask 3D on Switch without sacrificing the stereoscopic 3D effect. I also love the idea others have suggested that this sets up Metroid Prime Trilogy well. All of that especially if a Switch Pro model comes out that ups the resolution/framerate to make those experiences slick. This makes me very hopeful!
Re: Square Enix Trademarks Term Used To Describe Octopath Traveler's Unique Art Style
I'm not a big SNES fan because I didn't have that system as a kid, but if Nintendo did an "A Link to the Past HD" Remaster in the Octopath art style they would have my money instantly. It would simply teleport from my bank account to their bank account auto-magically. It could be so gorgeous, I think, and I'd really love to at least see a fan-made attempt/proof-of-concept.
But, I agree, I don't want to see every new 2D game do it, no.
Re: Monolith Soft Director Would "Love" Xenoblade Chronicles X On Switch, Money Stands In The Way
@Spectra, @OorWullie
It's not true that you need the flying skell to "REALLY" explore the map. I specifically avoided it until as late as possible and installed all but a handful of data probes across the planet. You can get to all of them in Sylvalum but because you need the Mechanical 5 skill (which requires flying to earn) you can't actually install 1-2. I couldn't physically get to 1 in Primordia, 1 in Oblivia, 1 in Cauldros, and 2 in Noctilum but other than that I went everywhere. Flying skells just help you complete the exploration (the floating island in Oblivia--you can use a non-flying skell to get to the island in the pit in Oblivia, the Divine Roost with the hardest indigen in the game in Noctilum, the Noctiluscent Sphere with the 2nd hardest indigen in the game in Sylvalum, the island off the coast of Cauldros, the top of the huge structure in Primordia). But other than that 95% of the game is open to exploration without skells and that's how I did it. I maxed out my characters before I got my skell license at all.
That's what I loved about it. You just need to look for alternate "safer" routes and use items and tactics. There are actually multiple places you can "enter" cauldros and some of them are more friendly to being on foot. Also there's an item you can craft which negates the lava damage entirely if you want to get crazy.
Agree with @Spiders
If you really want to enjoy exploring the map in this game I highly recommend NOT getting a skell and running through and climbing (mountain goat style) as much of it as you can before getting a skell. You pay attention to a lot more of the details and even avoid certain encounters because certain monsters don't attack you on foot (giant robots in Sylvalum). It's not some extreme glitching exploit thing either, it's built into the game--you get XP for discovering "scenic views". I remember my epic quest to summit the volcano in Cauldros--Pro-Tip: cloaking device(s). The sense of accomplishment was incredible! Then I had to jump in.
Skells actually ruin exploration, if you ask me. You don't have to "work for it". Even after 200 hours I'm still surprised sometimes to discover a BC I just didn't trek past already (and get XP for it). I was Pathfinder division all the way.
@BulbasaurusRex: I didn't have those problems but you they seem to have really bothered you so there's nothing I can really say. Some things are just below your tolerance. It's hard to mark unpassable terrain since so much of it looks unpassable but actually is. But the paths up mountains depend on their steepness and where you start. It's not Breath of the Wild climb everything freedom but the mountains look far more unclimbable than they are in most cases.
As for the sound track, I get it. It can be hit or miss but then it can also dig in on you. Like one commenter said on this thead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfk-dQceR3Y&t=744s
'First time hearing it"What us this crap lol"10 hours into the game"U know, this is kinda catchy."30 hours into the game"I CANT HEAR YOU!! I CANT SEE YOU!!!!"'
And once I organically made my own infinite overdrive build the only song I heard for the rest of the game was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGUaVZN2ttw