PlayStation 3

Terotrous posted...

Its plot pacing is okay until the part where you become Adult Link. Young Link's portion is fine, as is the arrival into the Adult Link part. After that, though, everything just stops. "Go do 7 temples and come back when you're done" sums up the story for the second half of the game. There's no more plot progression until you finish them all.

It's 5 temples, not 7. With how the game handled the story, it didn't need plot progression. I initially had the same opinion on this as you, but now that I think about it, what did I want? Cutscenes showing Ganon sitting in his castle? Sheik's speeches were more than enough.

The lack of jumping prevents the move to 3D from being relevant. As long as he remains anchored to the ground, the game might as well have a 2D overhead camera like in Link to the Past. The auto jumping and all other "3D" aspects like climbing ledges add nothing to the game, they just make the rooms take longer.

One of the biggest problems with OoT is that you typically do no more to solve a puzzle or get through a room than you do in LttP, it just takes much, much longer.

No, it doesn't make it irrelevant. Zelda is SO much better in 3D, it gives the games an 'epic' atmosphere the series never had before. Riding through Hyrule Field on Epona after playing the Song of Storms at night just oozes epic in every way possible.

It's clearly at least 25%. The other 75% is running across long empty stretches of land that Ammy could cross nearly instantly with her faster run speed and air dash.

This is either exaggeration or you just haven't played the game. You seem to not include Epona anywhere in your posts.

This isn't even remotely debatable. Ammy has a far wider range of powers, all of which have puzzle-solving applications, and there's significantly more puzzles in Okami's dungeons.

Almost all Zelda puzzles are "kill all enemies, use the dungeon item to flip some kind of switch, push a block, get a key, open a door, repeat". There's basically no puzzles that force you to exhibit any kind of creativity.

Yeaahhh...no. No company matches Nintendo's puzzle design genius. While the Water Temple was tedious, it has the greatest puzzle designs I've ever experienced in a video game.

Your description of 'almost all Zelda puzzles' is incredibly inaccurate.

You're confusing the story with the setting. OoT's setting might be somewhat interesting (even then I don't really think so), but its story is clearly totally generic and uninteresting.

Wind Waker also has massive pacing problems thanks to the ship, but is otherwise a substantial improvement over OoT. Okami is still better though.

I'll admit Majora's Mask is the one 3D Zelda I haven't played.

It's the setting that makes the story interesting. Zelda is more about lore and settings than story (although SS kinda took away from this).

WW had no pacing problems until the last 10% of the game, which consisted of an annoying fetch quest. However WW has one of the greatest video game endings of all time, so it's more than worth it.

You should play Majora's Mask. It's my favorite video game of all time (although insanely depressing).
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Wind Waker is one of the greatest games ever made. Hoping the HD Remake does it justice.

LLL_Deadly posted...

It's 5 temples, not 7. With how the game handled the story, it didn't need plot progression. I initially had the same opinion on this as you, but now that I think about it, what did I want? Cutscenes showing Ganon sitting in his castle? Sheik's speeches were more than enough.

If we didn't need the progression, we should have just instantly moved to fighting Ganon rather than bothering with those temples. They weren't able to come up with a convincing way to incorporate those dungeons into the story, you just have to do them because they're there.

No, it doesn't make it irrelevant. Zelda is SO much better in 3D, it gives the games an 'epic' atmosphere the series never had before. Riding through Hyrule Field on Epona after playing the Song of Storms at night just oozes epic in every way possible.

Yeah, and then you see all those high ledges, and think "boy, with this game being 3D, why can't link jump over a waist-high fence rather than going around it?" That takes you out of the "epic" feeling pretty fast.


Also, this seems to be about the only reason anyone likes OoT. They played it when they were really young and had this "Holy **** this is 3D!!!!" reaction to it. However, it wasn't even that notable as a 3D game. Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon beat OoT to the punch and is also better than OoT in pretty much every way possible. And that's a much better example of an epic game, travelling across the Japanese countryside is actually impressive because you don't feel like your feet are tied to the ground limiting where you can go and what you can explore.

This is either exaggeration or you just haven't played the game. You seem to not include Epona anywhere in your posts.

Because you can only ride her in one area in the game, where you don't even spend all that much time, especially once you become Adult Link and you live your entire life in those temples.

Yeaahhh...no. No company matches Nintendo's puzzle design genius. While the Water Temple was tedious, it has the greatest puzzle designs I've ever experienced in a video game.

Okami's sunken ship also uses a water level mechanic and it's much better than the Water temple. The only thing Zelda dungeons do well is they make it easy to get lost because you don't remember which room required you to smack something with the dungeon item and get stuck.

It's the setting that makes the story interesting. Zelda is more about lore and settings than story (although SS kinda took away from this).

WW had no pacing problems until the last 10% of the game, which consisted of an annoying fetch quest. However WW has one of the greatest video game endings of all time, so it's more than worth it.

You should play Majora's Mask. It's my favorite video game of all time (although insanely depressing).

Okami has loads of lore behind it as well, drawing from the rich Japanese mythology. Also, Wind Waker is always kind of slow, it just gets much worse near the end, though I kind of like its sunken world (I find WW's world more interesting than OoT for sure).

As for Majora's Mask, if the rumoured 3DS remake surfaces, I'd probably buy it, and the day mechanic does seem like an interesting way to break up the monotony that plagued OoT, but my expectations still aren't that high.
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http://terosclassicgaming.blogspot.com/ - Watch me beat "GBA Summon Night Swordcraft Story"
http://www.backloggery.com/tero - My backloggery

LLL_Deadly posted...

Seriously? You consider it a flaw that the dungeons weren't incorporated into the story well?

Since when was Zelda story driven until SS was released? They don't have to be incorporated into the story perfectly.

The problem is other games show us how this can be done well. Obviously there's Mystical Ninja and Okami, but it's not unfair to compare other games that have an overworld / dungeon style progression, like RPGs. I think most people would agree that games like Chrono Trigger where the dungeons are incorporated into the story are better than games where they just say "we need you to collect X number of objects, please travel to these dungeons and pick them up".

No, it really doesn't. OoT's atmosphere lasts throughout, and the lack of a manual jump button doesn't seem to bother anyone but you. Also, you must have had trouble in those temples, because you don't live your life in those temples. The only temple that I couldn't do in one sitting was the Water Temple.

They comprise the majority of the game time as adult link. The only thing there's really still to do in the overworld is get the Biggoron's sword, which, incidentally is a sidequest that everyone hates.

The sunken ship isn't better than the Water Temple if we're objectively judging the puzzles. It is more enjoyable, though. Also, why do you think Zelda has dungeon maps? If you get lost, it's your own fault.

They don't indicate "there was something important here, you should return to this room later". At least not in OoT. Later on they do get better about this.

How was Wind Waker slow? It was pretty much Point A -> do optional things on sea that you come across -> Point B for me. And the duration of the sailing is insanely exaggerated everywhere.

Mostly because of sailing. It is exaggerated, but it does feel long because you do do a lot of it.

Anyway, from what I'm getting, it just seems like Zelda's 'style' isn't for you. You want a manual jump button, you seem to think Zelda dungeons aren't anything special etc...ah well. It can't please everyone. TWW and MM are genuinely masterpieces in my eyes, though, and are my 1st and 3rd favorite games of all time respectively.

The thing is, I quite like the 2D Zelda games, I just feel it didn't make the transition to 3D well. When a game goes 3D, I expect significant changes in the game formula to accommodate the extra dimension, compare 2D Mario and 3D Mario for example. But Zelda never really got them, they basically just took the same formula and added 3D graphics without updating the gameplay to use the third dimension well. The result is a game that doesn't do much the 2D games don't already do, and worse yet, the game is now much longer despite not having much more actual game content simply because doing the same tasks takes a lot longer. A room in which you have to beat all enemies in LttP might take 20 seconds. The same room in OoT would probably take at least 2-3 minutes. But you're still doing the exact same thing - walking up to the enemies and bopping them once with your sword. Heck, combat is actually even easier in OoT sometimes because you can just press Z and auto-lock on to enemies with distance weapons. In LttP you at least had to aim.


Okami finally gave me the feeling of a 2D Zelda adventure, but appropriately upgraded to 3D. The combat was more complex, the puzzles were more ornate, the level design was more 3-dimensional, etc.
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http://terosclassicgaming.blogspot.com/ - Watch me beat "GBA Summon Night Swordcraft Story"
http://www.backloggery.com/tero - My backloggery

Oni_Taedo posted...

nekrothing posted...

superbowl54 posted...

Angry Birds is a casual game you play on your smartphone while on the bus or waiting at the doctor's office. I wouldn't call it overrated because nobody but the casual-est of casual would coin it "the greatest game of all time"

that distinction belongs to FF7.

Name one objectively bad thing about FF7. For its time, it was the perfect game that revolutionized the JRPG genre.

Where do I begin?

The fact that the entire cast is made up of generic Japanese archetypes.
Magic has no depth to it.
Summons are overpowered.
The story is ripped STRAIGHT from RE (yeah, it is, you have to think about it a little, but the two share a lot of similarities).
Slow plodding battle-system
Terrible music.
Ugly visuals.
And one of the lamest, most pathetic villains ever.

Sephy is very awful indeed. The only bite he ever had was in Kingdom Hearts.
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Terotrous posted...

Oni_Taedo posted...

Magic has no depth to it.

Magic has plenty of depth, with the Materia system you're limited in terms of how much magic you can have and must think about the placement in order to affect your battle capacity. If you want the ability to multitarget your spells, for example, you must give up a slot that could be going to more types of spells or the ability to put that element on your weapon or whatever else. It's actually one of the deepest customization systems in a traditional RPG.

And it's completely negated by one materia, in every instance - Knights of the Round, which takes almost no effort beyond some tedious activity to accomplish. Catch a chocobo, raise and race him, do it a few more times, then blamo - gold chocobo and Knights of the Round, which is sitting unguarded in a cave in the middle of nowhere.

That one thing negates any challenge the game has, with maybe two exceptions - and two to three other materia make those negligible (final attack and Phoenix, and that underwater materia.)