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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

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Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#671
post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

N64 limitations came in cartridge size — 64MB vs 600+MB for CDs. Voice acting and cutscenes were largely nonexistent.

As someone who hates cutscenes, that was fine by me. Cutscenes rip you out of the game to present a story in a different mode, and often it could be completely done by using the game mechanics directly. Not to mention until quite recently they would also take large loading times.

Even if you take cutscenes out of it, there's simply almost 90% less space for a game - and cartridges were more expensive for the publisher to boot.

There's no denying that there's great N64 games, but Nintendo crippled the console outside of first and second (Rare) party development. The same trend continued with the Gamecube (despite it being more powerful than the PS2, the Gamecube disc held 25% of the capacity of a PS2 DVD).

If their portables hadn't dominated the market, the mid 90s to mid 00s would've been a terrible time for the company.

Of course Nintendo is doing great now, so you could say it's all a moot point.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't even feel like a Zelda game. The original Zelda was open-world. I will agree that the game world felt sparse and underpopulated, but given the minimalist tone (as evidenced by so many other game elements, like the music or lack of hand-holding) it felt on-brand. > Weapon durability is literal cancer. They did this to discourage player min-maxing and to force some variety. I didn't like it either but appr…

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> Just sounds like a skill issue.

So what if it is? Some people want to play games that allow them to progress a certain amount without establishing skill mastery and there’s nothing objectively wrong with that.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#673

I was listening to a gaming podcast last week and they were talking about how this release was pirated and available for the last week or so on torrents. That in itself wasn't surprising, but the interesting point they talked about is that the game is much more enjoyable when played on PC with an emulated copy because modern gaming PC hardware is much smoother and higher resolution than the stock Switch. It really ma…

Is Switch emulation on PC that good? Maybe I should try it if so. I imagined it would be fairly janky due to the difficulty of emulating currentish hardware, and only old consoles could be emulated with good performance.

The below video would not be the typical experience but it should what it's possible when you throw hardware at it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fscwp3RkEvM

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "as a kid" is the operative phrase here. Nothing will ever live up to that nostalgia. That's not to discount the criticisms or "feel" you get from the game, but it's worth noting that nothing lives up to our childhood favorites.

I don’t think that’s true. I played Ocarina as an adult and loved it, but BotW left me feeling similarly cold. It’s just a different style of game. Meanwhile, Elden Ring drew me in like no other game in recent memory.

I've experienced the opposite, where I played OoT as an adult but thought it was only okay but got completely absorbed into BotW. OoT is too railroaded for my taste, especially the dungeons that often have one linear path. Towards the end of the game when you have to do several temples I thought of quitting. BotW on the other hand gives you plenty to do all at once and doesn't care how you do it. I enjoy devising my own approaches to things rather than finding the singular linear solutions to OoT's dungeons.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#675
post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When OoT came out I'd already played Link To The Past And Link's Awakening so I didn't find OoT very impressive.. it often had clunky camera and controls & the story was pretty lame(especially compared to Link's Awakening). It also just wasn't that creative.. a very safe Zelda. Majora's Mask was much better though.

I'd agree that it is closer to Link to the Past in terms of storytelling, but I also think that Link's Awakening is the best Zelda story in the entire lot of games. I don't agree that the story was lame. Doing so would just be a condemnation of the series as a whole, which has always been light on narrative with very simple themes. Link's Awakening was the exception. > It also just wasn't that creative.. a very safe…

In terms of story, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on in Orarina of Time that's gently implied but left as subtext.

I recommend the video essay called OCARINA OF TIME - A Masterclass In Subtext "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyUcwsjyd8Q"

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#676
post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those things have been fairly common elements of games for decades? For example "puzzle dungeons" is just a staple of Zelda as a franchise, there's a whole genre of games designed around being able to rush the final boss as quickly as possible even though there's plenty of other content to explore (Metroidvanias), and I can't even think of anything particularly remarkable about BotW's death/checkpoint system…

I'm surprised to see "Metroidvania" described as a genre where you can rush the boss quickly. Neither of the two defining games that name the genre, (Super) Metroid or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, allow you to reach the final boss without having explored a substantial amount of the world map and collected the majority of available upgrades. Both games do have low% and any% speedruns that skip a lot of stuff, b…

Neither low% nor any% speedruns of Super Metroid or Castlevania: SotN require the use of glitches. From personal experience, Super Metroid is beatable with less than 20% completion without using any glitches at all. Sequence breaking is not a glitch (which is an actual bug).

But also Hollow Knight, Salt and Sanctuary and Axiom Verge are some pre-BotW games that I've personally played where you can rush the credits without experiencing a significant portion of the game once you've gotten out of the early game.

shout out to Chrono Trigger and Super Mario World which, while not metroidvanias, have the same "rush the final objective once you can with minimum exploration" vibe that many of them have.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't even feel like a Zelda game. The original Zelda was open-world. I will agree that the game world felt sparse and underpopulated, but given the minimalist tone (as evidenced by so many other game elements, like the music or lack of hand-holding) it felt on-brand. > Weapon durability is literal cancer. They did this to discourage player min-maxing and to force some variety. I didn't like it either but appr…

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Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#678
post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who liked BotW the most are likely people who never really played many open world games, or none. To long time PC gamers it's nothing new of course. I liked the style, I generally enjoy world exploration and that was fun in BotW, and there were many cool experiences scattered around, but it does end up feeling a little empty. I still played it a ton mind you, but I don't consider it an important or ground…

I have played plenty of PC open world games and I think BOTW is better than any of them.

I think it's done fairly well, but the novelty isn't there for an older PC gamer.

I have heard plenty of people talk about how new the open world is to them in BotW (in a way that clearly suggests they've never tried it before). The novelty factor of any (to the user) new game genre amplifies the positive reaction.

Re: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Release

#680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> Just sounds like a skill issue. So what if it is? Some people want to play games that allow them to progress a certain amount without establishing skill mastery and there’s nothing objectively wrong with that.

Certainly, but Elden Ring and other FromSoft games are not made for the casual crowd. They have a set difficulty level intentionally so that everyone can share the same feeling of accomplishment.

My main gripe was not that BotW isn't Elden Ring, its that with as much money and resources as Nintendo has, they released a mediocore game. And then they did it again with TotK.

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