Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker both do it really well, as Ganondorf actually has a proper presence in the game throughout the entire thing. In Ocarina of Time, you see him in a strangely prophetic dream, he gets talked about early on, you see him introduced as a threat but you can't do anything about it (explained that you're powerless), you then hear about him a few more times before you come face to face with him in a cutscene that culminates in his easy victory. Turns out, he was manipulating the situation as he knew you'd have the keys he needed which is why he lets you live. While you're kept safe in the sacred realm for 7 years, he wreaks havoc. You get to see the contrasted world in which he's king. He actively taunts you in the Forest Temple, not just because he's a good ***** but because he needs Link, Zelda and himself to come together in one spot to reassemble the triforce, and just like how you held the keys before, knows that you're the best shot at doing it. The first iteration of Ganondorf might be one of the simplest, but his motives and when he goes hands-on and hands-off make by FAR the most sense, because his goal isn't complete due to the nature of how the Triforce works in Ocarina of Time.
Even if he's not necessarily there, he's still very involved in every action that's taken. In Tears of the Kingdom on the other hand, he seems evil mostly to be as evil as possible. And I'm not saying he can't just be a d*** for the sake of it, but he's not present at all for most of the gametime, not even in a passing mention sometimes.
@NorthwestEagle In terms of script retranslation, the original was known to be at times completely inaccurate and had issues such as accidentally forgetting to swap "who's talking," playing soundclips from characters not even in the conversation and overall the localization of the original introduced an absolute heckload of bugs that were incredibly hard to fix. As an avid RF3 player, they've redone pretty much the entire script, which is constantly taking me by surprise. They also redid either a lot of, or all of the english voices (some I can't really tell the difference on tbh). Most likely had to be done because the script is so different now. It's a shame too because I miss Daria's original interpretation of being incredibly, incredibly loud, which is no longer the case.
I'm left with a load of questions. Are crops actually profitable now or should I still be practically ignoring them in the earlygame? Are the cow shenanigans still there? Can I sell the damn goat or make it useful again? I have no idea how this stacks up against the original which is held back by a buttload of realistic, but odd-for-a-videogame design choices...
Editing this comment because it's been replied to and it is so high up:
Cow/Goat Milk is eternal, crops are buffed, the earlygame is smoothed over a good bit as a result. This is what causes later game upgrades to be hit with inflation which doesn't necessarily correlate to the buffs given to money gain in the earlygame but for those who could never get into the game out of annoyances with the earlygame this is really big!
Cow Milk no longer requiring to keep up a gestation cycle is on its own a massive buff though as you no longer need to keep barn slots empty just to be able to keep the gestation cycle rolling. Now you can use more than half the barn :')
@JohnnyMind The main thing is that Nell is supposed to teach you how to skip field training if you answer that you've already played before and answer that you want to skip field training but then just kinda... doesn't. That's the main thing that needed fixing tbh. Being able to skip field training is honestly for the best but to hear that it's been inducted moreso into the main campaign will probably just make it a bit annoying as now those bits aren't skippable at all anymore. I just wanna get going, and maybe be able to select the hard mode campaign for AW1 from the start too. That'd be neat.
Then again, I'm not sure how confident I am in saying that as the tutorial continuing into the main campaign already was the way it was to begin with (what's an airport, again?) As long as it doesn't do the same as the actual tutorials where it forces me to make moves in incredibly specific fashion, I'll be good though
The tutorial was mandatory in Advance Wars GBA, but the ending of the tutorial sets up the start of the main campaign — I was never too bothered by it because you're allowed to simply skip to Lesson 13, do that one and then go into the main campaign. Didn't really need to be truncated tbh :x
But then again, I don't think Advance Wars has been played recently since the War Room is also not new at all :')
My main questions are whether or not they use AW2 balance for AW1 and if supers are integrated into it now.
@Bret Chill. They don't look like gamecube games. They look like a weird hybrid between gamecube and modern games. The worlds and such present themselves as gamecube games, with long drawn-out and/or blurry textures and bland geometry for quite a few locations.
The character designs (human and pokemon) are on par with how they've been for the last 7 years or so, which is to say very good and in some cases just straight up unnecessarily detailed to the point of detriment to the game.
I'll happily admit that these new games look like a step forward, but when you look at other open world or even just large scale world games released through the lifespan of the switch, you would think we could expect a little more from Pokemon, yaknow?
Anyways, on the topic of the actual post... This might've been confusing if you're trying to analyze every little thing. As for me, I just kinda watched it with my pokemon expectation lens, laughed at megaman and moved on. If I end up buying the game, I'll just play it without trying to know literally everything beforehand
5 and 17 respectively are placeholders from earlier development in earlier Ocarina of Time builds. It's well-known at this point that the story of OoT shifted a lot during development. With the numbers somewhat matching the ages that the character could've been, it's probably still somewhat relevant in discussion as they don't seem to be random.
Majora's Mask, with its shorter development cycle has more reason to believe these ages for the new forms, but the chance of them just being placeholders born from remnants of older story beats and not being fully accurate is there.
This statement feels weird coming from him, because if he had still been NoA boss I highly doubt anything would be different. It feels like he's throwing Nintendo under the bus for his own clout.
@scully1888 Perhaps if you had so much fun with it, maybe write a review that tells us how much fun you had with it rather than harping on the bad points to the point where the 8/10 score makes zero sense. Practically half of the paragraphs in this review start out in a negative fashion.
There's plenty of games out there that make me smile as well, yet if I were to review them I wouldn't be able to give these games as high as an 8/10 score because the games themselves are flawed to the point where I avoid certain aspects of the designs entirely.
So all the pros are story-related and all the cons are gameplay-related. I think I'll just pass on this, all the funny dialog in the world can't save a bad gameplay experience.
@scully1888 I'd probably have a lot more fun with this game and color splash if I got them for free too, but I unfortunately have to pay 60 EUR for these games and quite frankly if I can't stomach a large portion of the game, I don't think I'm getting my money's worth out of this and probably won't be enjoying the overall product all that much. It's always difficult for me to consider this, but in the end I do believe it's worth considering how the perceived value of the game stacks up to the MSRP.
However, my main problem with the review is simply in the disconnect between the actual review and the score. There is so much negative, yet the end score is an 8/10. While I can respect your stance on judging a game on its merits of the singular game in question, I think the score makes no sense seeing as the conclusion piece is incredibly apologetic. Particularly this line stands out to me: "they aren't so awful that everything else shouldn't be experienced as a result"
Based on what I'm reading, the game feels more like you considered it a 6-7/10 rather than an 8/10.
Since Nintendo Life asked you to review it for them, I do think what I'm about to say isn't really a criticism towards your review specifically, but I do wish to say it. Back in the day, people complained when things were getting low scores because NintendoLife was using the "full scale" of 1 to 10. Nowadays I think this has gone out of the window, considering the amount of apologetic-sounding 8/10s we've been getting, but it's still something to consider when looking at this site's history. I do not think an individual reviewer is fully accountable for this, since you're not the one publishing in the end, but I do wonder what's up with that.
Are you lot sure you want to stay a nintendo oriented news site? Feels like you're kinda reaching to get your news quota by constantly saying "will this come to switch" on games that aren't announced for Switch.
Can we please stop with all these "news" "articles" about Hideki Kamiya and Platinum Games? You guys report on every single little thing these guys say, moreso than any other news site. I came for nintendolife, not platinumlife.
@Xiovanni it is actually a notice in the game itself, the news feed in the game pulls from the same back-end as the website so they mirror each other perfectly.
@SuperEndriu What defines a solid Pokemon experience? How does being a series of games affect the rating of the singular game being reviewed?
Better graphics is subjective so I would like to keep that can of worms closed. Better animations though? It'd certainly help to immerse in a world if not every attack looks either entirely shoddy or turns into a beam of light. For example, I was interested in Sirfetch'd, and he has his own unique move. It started out well, but then lo and behold, he turns into another beam of light, before turning back again into his regular model.
It'd also help if pokemon had more than one physical attack animation, so that your starter doesn't headbutt using his feet.
Point is, the graphical side of things is not entirely "pretty pictures does not make a better game".
Then there's the fact that these games simply run poorly when they're already not graphically impressive, with the games looking like upscaled 3DS games.
So then you start looking for where the effort went. Did it go into making sure all the content is there? No, this is the first pokemon game where many corners were cut regarding mechanics, moves and the pokemon itself. So is it a long game? No, it's about 20 hours, give or take depending on players. Well then there must be some postgame content to keep you busy, right? No, wait, there's just a regurgitated battle tower featuring randomly generated trainers from a pool of pokemon and trainers.
...So where's the effort? And why all the (alleged) lies and lack of communication about these cuts from Game Freak? And why are so many features gone? Could they not be bothered programming an off switch for the exp share? Was implementing a GTS suddenly too difficult for them after 4 generations of having it?
Wow, an 8/10, just like any other seemingly controversial Nintendo game on reviewed on NintendoLife. Seriously. Paper Mario Sticker Star, Star Fox 0, this... It's pretty much a running gag.
That being said, this did not read like an 8/10 review. The game is plagued with technical issues, it runs at 30fps despite looking incredibly unimpressive, framedrops slow down the entire game.
No mention on postgame either, and it's a hilariously short game for full switch title price. I remember an indie game being criticized for having a low money to hours rate - is that not a thing when it comes to Pokemon then?
And this sentence, "Disappointingly, there are just as many moments when things look (not wishing to put too fine a point on it) really quite underwhelming.", does not belong in an 8/10 review.
I wonder if we're really entitled for wanting our games to be as fun and content-filled as possible. No, I don't agree that hurling insults at developers is the way to go, and believe that everyone who is (understandably) miffed about it should just, yknow, not buy it.
But that's not to say that we're not allowed to publicly criticize the actions that Game Freak and The Pokemon Company have taken during this pre-release period. There have been so many flat-out lies, from Pokemon Let's Go and being told they want to prevent what happened in Gold, Silver, Crystal to Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald to happen again. They lied that they're working on higher fidelity animations. They either lied about the comments, or are incompetent when it comes to managing. I'm not calling the modelers incompetent.
The notion of "you can't judge a game you haven't played" is entirely stupid, though. You don't eat moldy bread because it looks moldy, right? You don't go see a movie if you don't like the trailer. If games are to be treated the same as other media as forms of art, then it also has to start abiding by these rules. We can't be equal "but I'm more equal than you".
This game is actually somewhat of a decent time-waster, although it's really easy.
Make an elemental sword chip folder, take Iceman, Elecman, Woodman and Fireman, fill it with a few meteor chips for fireman in case you run into a certain field type that doesn't allow swords and treebom chips for woodman... you pretty much win.
The L/R slot-in system can get somewhat more useful later, but not much. That's all I have to say about this one. The music is catchy, though!
Comments 21
Re: Random: Could Mewtwo Take LeBron One-On-One? ESPN's Stephen A. Smith Weighs In
@Diogmites I read through all the rules and it doesn't say it isn't allowed
although one could argue there's not been precedent for such a rule to be written down
Re: Soapbox: TOTK's Ganondorf Is Great, But Zelda Needs To Do More With Its Villain
Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker both do it really well, as Ganondorf actually has a proper presence in the game throughout the entire thing. In Ocarina of Time, you see him in a strangely prophetic dream, he gets talked about early on, you see him introduced as a threat but you can't do anything about it (explained that you're powerless), you then hear about him a few more times before you come face to face with him in a cutscene that culminates in his easy victory. Turns out, he was manipulating the situation as he knew you'd have the keys he needed which is why he lets you live. While you're kept safe in the sacred realm for 7 years, he wreaks havoc. You get to see the contrasted world in which he's king. He actively taunts you in the Forest Temple, not just because he's a good ***** but because he needs Link, Zelda and himself to come together in one spot to reassemble the triforce, and just like how you held the keys before, knows that you're the best shot at doing it. The first iteration of Ganondorf might be one of the simplest, but his motives and when he goes hands-on and hands-off make by FAR the most sense, because his goal isn't complete due to the nature of how the Triforce works in Ocarina of Time.
Even if he's not necessarily there, he's still very involved in every action that's taken. In Tears of the Kingdom on the other hand, he seems evil mostly to be as evil as possible. And I'm not saying he can't just be a d*** for the sake of it, but he's not present at all for most of the gametime, not even in a passing mention sometimes.
Re: Review: Rune Factory 3 Special - The Same Great Farm Sim/RPG, Though 'Special' Is A Stretch
@NorthwestEagle In terms of script retranslation, the original was known to be at times completely inaccurate and had issues such as accidentally forgetting to swap "who's talking," playing soundclips from characters not even in the conversation and overall the localization of the original introduced an absolute heckload of bugs that were incredibly hard to fix. As an avid RF3 player, they've redone pretty much the entire script, which is constantly taking me by surprise. They also redid either a lot of, or all of the english voices (some I can't really tell the difference on tbh). Most likely had to be done because the script is so different now. It's a shame too because I miss Daria's original interpretation of being incredibly, incredibly loud, which is no longer the case.
Re: Review: Story Of Seasons: A Wonderful Life - Slow, Old-Fashioned Yet Fulfilling Farming
I'm left with a load of questions. Are crops actually profitable now or should I still be practically ignoring them in the earlygame? Are the cow shenanigans still there? Can I sell the damn goat or make it useful again? I have no idea how this stacks up against the original which is held back by a buttload of realistic, but odd-for-a-videogame design choices...
Editing this comment because it's been replied to and it is so high up:
Cow/Goat Milk is eternal, crops are buffed, the earlygame is smoothed over a good bit as a result. This is what causes later game upgrades to be hit with inflation which doesn't necessarily correlate to the buffs given to money gain in the earlygame but for those who could never get into the game out of annoyances with the earlygame this is really big!
Cow Milk no longer requiring to keep up a gestation cycle is on its own a massive buff though as you no longer need to keep barn slots empty just to be able to keep the gestation cycle rolling. Now you can use more than half the barn :')
Re: Switch Online N64 Controller Restock Now Live
Can't afford one myself right now, but the Netherlands also has them right now! Go grab them if you want them.
Re: Hands On: Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp - Slicker, Shinier, Sassier Strategy
@JohnnyMind The main thing is that Nell is supposed to teach you how to skip field training if you answer that you've already played before and answer that you want to skip field training but then just kinda... doesn't. That's the main thing that needed fixing tbh. Being able to skip field training is honestly for the best but to hear that it's been inducted moreso into the main campaign will probably just make it a bit annoying as now those bits aren't skippable at all anymore. I just wanna get going, and maybe be able to select the hard mode campaign for AW1 from the start too. That'd be neat.
Then again, I'm not sure how confident I am in saying that as the tutorial continuing into the main campaign already was the way it was to begin with (what's an airport, again?) As long as it doesn't do the same as the actual tutorials where it forces me to make moves in incredibly specific fashion, I'll be good though
Re: Hands On: Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp - Slicker, Shinier, Sassier Strategy
The tutorial was mandatory in Advance Wars GBA, but the ending of the tutorial sets up the start of the main campaign — I was never too bothered by it because you're allowed to simply skip to Lesson 13, do that one and then go into the main campaign. Didn't really need to be truncated tbh :x
But then again, I don't think Advance Wars has been played recently since the War Room is also not new at all :')
My main questions are whether or not they use AW2 balance for AW1 and if supers are integrated into it now.
Re: Poll: Is It Just Us, Or Was That Pokémon Scarlet And Violet Trailer A Little Confusing?
@Bret Chill. They don't look like gamecube games. They look like a weird hybrid between gamecube and modern games. The worlds and such present themselves as gamecube games, with long drawn-out and/or blurry textures and bland geometry for quite a few locations.
The character designs (human and pokemon) are on par with how they've been for the last 7 years or so, which is to say very good and in some cases just straight up unnecessarily detailed to the point of detriment to the game.
I'll happily admit that these new games look like a step forward, but when you look at other open world or even just large scale world games released through the lifespan of the switch, you would think we could expect a little more from Pokemon, yaknow?
Anyways, on the topic of the actual post... This might've been confusing if you're trying to analyze every little thing. As for me, I just kinda watched it with my pokemon expectation lens, laughed at megaman and moved on. If I end up buying the game, I'll just play it without trying to know literally everything beforehand
Re: Random: Zelda: Majora's Mask Debug Feature Reveals Ages Of Link's Forms
5 and 17 respectively are placeholders from earlier development in earlier Ocarina of Time builds. It's well-known at this point that the story of OoT shifted a lot during development. With the numbers somewhat matching the ages that the character could've been, it's probably still somewhat relevant in discussion as they don't seem to be random.
Majora's Mask, with its shorter development cycle has more reason to believe these ages for the new forms, but the chance of them just being placeholders born from remnants of older story beats and not being fully accurate is there.
Re: Switch Online Should Leverage GameCube, Wii And Deliver "More" N64 Content, Says Former NoA Boss
This statement feels weird coming from him, because if he had still been NoA boss I highly doubt anything would be different. It feels like he's throwing Nintendo under the bus for his own clout.
Re: Review: Paper Mario: The Origami King - A Puzzling Battle System Can't Kill This Funny Adventure
@scully1888 Perhaps if you had so much fun with it, maybe write a review that tells us how much fun you had with it rather than harping on the bad points to the point where the 8/10 score makes zero sense. Practically half of the paragraphs in this review start out in a negative fashion.
There's plenty of games out there that make me smile as well, yet if I were to review them I wouldn't be able to give these games as high as an 8/10 score because the games themselves are flawed to the point where I avoid certain aspects of the designs entirely.
Re: Review: Paper Mario: The Origami King - A Puzzling Battle System Can't Kill This Funny Adventure
So all the pros are story-related and all the cons are gameplay-related. I think I'll just pass on this, all the funny dialog in the world can't save a bad gameplay experience.
@scully1888 I'd probably have a lot more fun with this game and color splash if I got them for free too, but I unfortunately have to pay 60 EUR for these games and quite frankly if I can't stomach a large portion of the game, I don't think I'm getting my money's worth out of this and probably won't be enjoying the overall product all that much. It's always difficult for me to consider this, but in the end I do believe it's worth considering how the perceived value of the game stacks up to the MSRP.
However, my main problem with the review is simply in the disconnect between the actual review and the score. There is so much negative, yet the end score is an 8/10. While I can respect your stance on judging a game on its merits of the singular game in question, I think the score makes no sense seeing as the conclusion piece is incredibly apologetic. Particularly this line stands out to me: "they aren't so awful that everything else shouldn't be experienced as a result"
Based on what I'm reading, the game feels more like you considered it a 6-7/10 rather than an 8/10.
Since Nintendo Life asked you to review it for them, I do think what I'm about to say isn't really a criticism towards your review specifically, but I do wish to say it. Back in the day, people complained when things were getting low scores because NintendoLife was using the "full scale" of 1 to 10. Nowadays I think this has gone out of the window, considering the amount of apologetic-sounding 8/10s we've been getting, but it's still something to consider when looking at this site's history. I do not think an individual reviewer is fully accountable for this, since you're not the one publishing in the end, but I do wonder what's up with that.
Re: Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time Has Been Rated In Taiwan
Are you lot sure you want to stay a nintendo oriented news site? Feels like you're kinda reaching to get your news quota by constantly saying "will this come to switch" on games that aren't announced for Switch.
Re: Yep, The New FIFA Game For Nintendo Switch Will Be Another Legacy Edition
Now that's some support.
Re: So, Who Owns The Wonderful 101 IP Now? PlatinumGames Refuses To Say
Can we please stop with all these "news" "articles" about Hideki Kamiya and Platinum Games? You guys report on every single little thing these guys say, moreso than any other news site. I came for nintendolife, not platinumlife.
Re: Nintendo Of Europe Teases Blockbuster Switch Sale, Kicks Off This Week
I'm expecting a list with the best sales with only GBP listed because the rest of Europe doesn't exist. Prove me wrong, NL.
Re: Nintendo And Cygames Detect "Improper Use" Of Dragalia Lost, Warn Players Not To Violate User Agreement
@Xiovanni it is actually a notice in the game itself, the news feed in the game pulls from the same back-end as the website so they mirror each other perfectly.
Re: Review: Pokémon Sword And Shield - A Solid Start To Gen 8 On Switch, Despite The Hate
@SuperEndriu
What defines a solid Pokemon experience? How does being a series of games affect the rating of the singular game being reviewed?
Better graphics is subjective so I would like to keep that can of worms closed. Better animations though? It'd certainly help to immerse in a world if not every attack looks either entirely shoddy or turns into a beam of light. For example, I was interested in Sirfetch'd, and he has his own unique move. It started out well, but then lo and behold, he turns into another beam of light, before turning back again into his regular model.
It'd also help if pokemon had more than one physical attack animation, so that your starter doesn't headbutt using his feet.
Point is, the graphical side of things is not entirely "pretty pictures does not make a better game".
Then there's the fact that these games simply run poorly when they're already not graphically impressive, with the games looking like upscaled 3DS games.
So then you start looking for where the effort went. Did it go into making sure all the content is there? No, this is the first pokemon game where many corners were cut regarding mechanics, moves and the pokemon itself. So is it a long game? No, it's about 20 hours, give or take depending on players. Well then there must be some postgame content to keep you busy, right? No, wait, there's just a regurgitated battle tower featuring randomly generated trainers from a pool of pokemon and trainers.
...So where's the effort? And why all the (alleged) lies and lack of communication about these cuts from Game Freak? And why are so many features gone? Could they not be bothered programming an off switch for the exp share? Was implementing a GTS suddenly too difficult for them after 4 generations of having it?
Re: Review: Pokémon Sword And Shield - A Solid Start To Gen 8 On Switch, Despite The Hate
Wow, an 8/10, just like any other seemingly controversial Nintendo game on reviewed on NintendoLife. Seriously. Paper Mario Sticker Star, Star Fox 0, this... It's pretty much a running gag.
That being said, this did not read like an 8/10 review. The game is plagued with technical issues, it runs at 30fps despite looking incredibly unimpressive, framedrops slow down the entire game.
No mention on postgame either, and it's a hilariously short game for full switch title price. I remember an indie game being criticized for having a low money to hours rate - is that not a thing when it comes to Pokemon then?
And this sentence, "Disappointingly, there are just as many moments when things look (not wishing to put too fine a point on it) really quite underwhelming.", does not belong in an 8/10 review.
Re: Pokémon Fans Get 'Game Freak Lied' Trending As Sword And Shield Drama Intensifies Yet Again
I wonder if we're really entitled for wanting our games to be as fun and content-filled as possible. No, I don't agree that hurling insults at developers is the way to go, and believe that everyone who is (understandably) miffed about it should just, yknow, not buy it.
But that's not to say that we're not allowed to publicly criticize the actions that Game Freak and The Pokemon Company have taken during this pre-release period. There have been so many flat-out lies, from Pokemon Let's Go and being told they want to prevent what happened in Gold, Silver, Crystal to Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald to happen again. They lied that they're working on higher fidelity animations. They either lied about the comments, or are incompetent when it comes to managing. I'm not calling the modelers incompetent.
The notion of "you can't judge a game you haven't played" is entirely stupid, though. You don't eat moldy bread because it looks moldy, right? You don't go see a movie if you don't like the trailer. If games are to be treated the same as other media as forms of art, then it also has to start abiding by these rules. We can't be equal "but I'm more equal than you".
Re: Review: Mega Man Battle Chip Challenge (Wii U eShop / Game Boy Advance)
This game is actually somewhat of a decent time-waster, although it's really easy.
Make an elemental sword chip folder, take Iceman, Elecman, Woodman and Fireman, fill it with a few meteor chips for fireman in case you run into a certain field type that doesn't allow swords and treebom chips for woodman... you pretty much win.
The L/R slot-in system can get somewhat more useful later, but not much.
That's all I have to say about this one. The music is catchy, though!