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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

#751
post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm also not a huge fan of open world games in general and to this date In theory they sound great. In reality it seems to work against every open-world game I've played. Elden Ring is almost an exception, but the side quests are completely broken in this format without following a guide. I hated the Witcher 3. Much like RDR 2 it has great presentation, writing and VA - and everything else suffers. But it seems the…

Based on some of my recent YT watching: Open world games need the open world to work with how players explore and interact. Interesting sites should be visually distinct from each other and the environment, and frequent. They should not all be visible at once, to avoid players being overwhelmed with unclear choices. They should all be rewarding so players are confident they aren’t wasting their time visiting. There s…

That point about the UI is really important. I played a bit of BotW, and then at some point I had a dialogue with an NPC which slightly (not in am obvious way) hinted at some reward if I do something special. But then that immersion was immediately broken as this interaction was added to a "quest log". Instantly the feeling of being smart in the virtual world went away, and it was just a videogamey checklist with nice GUI. No need to remember what the person wanted you to do, or to recognize it as a quest in the first place. Apparently such quest logs are normal in games now.

Similar things hold about minimaps and teleportation. They make things easier, but also less immersive, and therefore probably less fun for most players.

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

#752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has aged incredibly well. A Link To The Past is still almost as fun to play as it was back then.

I also think it still looks great

As an early SNES game looks quite weak compared RPGs later in the SNES life cycle, which often had amazing pixel art, e.g. Seiken Densetsu 3 (Trials of Mana). They really should have made a second SNES Zelda.

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

#753
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People complaining about the Switch being underpowered are expecting PS5 level performance on a mobile device. Even if a new console would be twice as fast they still would be disappointed. It's perfectly possible to create innovative and - most important - fun games on something as powerful as the Switch.

More recently the comparison I've been hearing is against things like the Steam Deck, which are a little more fair. > It's perfectly possible to create innovative and - most important - fun games on something as powerful as the Switch. Of course, but there have been plenty of games released for the Switch that could seemingly do with a bit more oomph from the hardware, TotK being the current example.

I've just been playing TotK for a few hours and was so engrossed by all the little details that make the game world feel alive the frame rate didn't bother me at all. It's perfectly fine if you just want to experience the game.

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

#754
post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on some of my recent YT watching: Open world games need the open world to work with how players explore and interact. Interesting sites should be visually distinct from each other and the environment, and frequent. They should not all be visible at once, to avoid players being overwhelmed with unclear choices. They should all be rewarding so players are confident they aren’t wasting their time visiting. There s…

That point about the UI is really important. I played a bit of BotW, and then at some point I had a dialogue with an NPC which slightly (not in am obvious way) hinted at some reward if I do something special. But then that immersion was immediately broken as this interaction was added to a "quest log". Instantly the feeling of being smart in the virtual world went away, and it was just a videogamey checklist with nic…

> Apparently such quest logs are normal in games now.

Not in FromSoftware games. They relented somewhat in Elden Ring by adding NPC markers for last-known-location, but otherwise there is zero hand-holding for quests. In the other games it's more trivial since you tend to come across everything if you explore enough anyway, but Elden Ring is so absurdly huge that it's easy to miss a lot of content.

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

#755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That point about the UI is really important. I played a bit of BotW, and then at some point I had a dialogue with an NPC which slightly (not in am obvious way) hinted at some reward if I do something special. But then that immersion was immediately broken as this interaction was added to a "quest log". Instantly the feeling of being smart in the virtual world went away, and it was just a videogamey checklist with nic…

> Apparently such quest logs are normal in games now. Not in FromSoftware games. They relented somewhat in Elden Ring by adding NPC markers for last-known-location, but otherwise there is zero hand-holding for quests. In the other games it's more trivial since you tend to come across everything if you explore enough anyway, but Elden Ring is so absurdly huge that it's easy to miss a lot of content.

Well that seems part of the explanation why their games are so well-regarded. If you obviously can't miss things, you also can't get excited about discovering things.

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

#756
post #745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you didn't play BotW, then by all means, play one of the best-reviewed games of all time, which is probably a little bit cheaper by now. It's not like you'd be going back to 8-bit era and the technological whiplash would ruin the experience - they're basically the same in terms of quality, scope, and tech experience.

Sadly, at least on switch, it isn't cheaper. Exact same price as the brand new release. Nintendo can be very, very cruel with their prices.

lol, okay, guess I shouldn't be surprised at nintendo at this point, they're certainly consistent.

but that's just the digital download - the cartridge can be had at used game stores for probably about half.

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

#757
post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played OOT for the first time at the start of COVID after no gaming for 20 years. It's the best game. As a kid I liked Marathon and Mario but never played Zelda for some reason. OOT is just a perfect game.

As a kid Zelda might be too hard. You need to be able to read. And as me, read a foreign language, English. I could not play it properly until I was like 12-13yo. How would you compare it to MM? I think MM is better.

MM is better aesthetics but I enjoyed the storyline and adventure of OOT more.

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

#758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% agree. This is what I was hoping they would maybe surprise-announce just before TotK's release, but my hopes were too high. I'm excited to play it, but $70 for a game with PS3-era visuals at 30fps while everything else has modern visuals at 60-120fps with various techniques is a tragedy.

30fps, lol. Its goes down much below that, sadly.

Yea, they also added a 20fps limiter in certain cases when the hardware is pushed to its limits. Super unfortunate, and honestly, I'd be hard pressed to believe that it helps.

Nonetheless, the game performs loads better than BotW ever did. Quite a feat for such old metal.

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

#759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nintendo has always thrived on underpowered hardware. Correction, Nintendo has more specifically thrived on cheap hardware, which is often correlated with 'underpowered' but does not mean the same necessarily. The Wii's remote wasn't 'underpowered', but it was relatively cheap and added an interesting feature. > Why? Will it make the games more fun to play? Does it enable more fun games? These are not the only (tho…

> The Wii's remote wasn't 'underpowered', but it was relatively cheap and added an interesting feature. I'm not sure why you mention the controller or how to measure its power, but the console itself was definitely underpowered compared to PS3 or X360. Heck, it was comparable to 6th rather than 7th gen.

That's my point exactly - you can't measure it's power, yet that one feature made the Wii sell like hotcakes, and caused both Microsoft and Sony to try making their own versions.

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

#760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard the Steam Deck emulates Switch games like Zelda BOTW much better than the Switch. And it's not much more expensive either.

The Deck is impressive and wonderful, but it's not exactly a high end gaming device. Emulating ARM code efficiently requires a significant amount of CPU power and my experience is that the Deck doesn't quite have the CPU capacity to keep up with heavier emulated titles. I expect the new Logitech handheld (or the many other, even more expensive competitors) to perform much better in this regard. In a perfect world, em…

You're right (and interesting, I didn't know that about Android 14) but fwiw, Yuzu performance is vastly improved on the deck by installing the power tools (iirc) plugin via Decky, and disabling SMT. There's a bug in the OS which is due to be patched in the next major version which should prevent SMT from tanking Yuzu and various other games.
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