The only thing I hated about Skyward Sword was the back tracking, at least the Hero of Song Quest.
As far as the controls, I didn’t have major problems for swinging the sword. My problem was when the calibration would fuck up and you cannot select your weapon. I’m not sure if anyone else had this problem but you can’t fix it simply by centering the camera (there is no option to center the camera when you’re selecting a weapon), you have to unplug the wii motion plus and plug it back it. I think it tends to happen when the batteries are low. A similar thing happens when you’re swimming or using the beetle, the thing just would not go straight because it senses neutral as off axis or something. Problem can only be solved by taking out the wii motion plus.
Anyway, yes OOT is quite a boring game in my opinion. Twilight Princess shits on it for free. I’ve never played Zelda 2 but hearing some praise, I’m about to start it right now on emulator.
Zelda 2 is my favorite. Will one day write an essay on why.
Favorite story Links: Wind Waker (expressive) and the Link in my avvie from the wildly underrated American show. Fuck the haters.
Anywho, I posted about it earlier, but now it’s official:
Timeline revealed. Japanese companion book sanctioned by Nintendo. THREE timelines, all based on Ocarina as the branch point: one where Link succeeded but disappeared from time (led to Wink Waker and beyond), one where Link re-appeared in the past with knowledge of the future (led to Majora’s Mask and beyond), and one where Link FAILED (led to A Link to the Past, the GB/GBC games, and the NES games).
IIRC just pointing the IR camera at the screen for a few seconds would recalibrate. That’s what I’d do, anyway. The motion control is shared by the IR camera a bit as a last measure of stabilization, so if you lose sight of the sensor bar for too long, shit goes crazy.
But this is the kind of shit I’m talking about. It’s so much hassle, so much fluff, all for this alternative control style? Just give me a damn twin stick pad. It works fine.
Realizing a part of my hypocrisy, I really shouldn’t have OoT in my list where it is. Bottom of mid-tier at best after removing the nostalgia goggles. Twilight Princess is to OoT as LttP is to LoZ. Games that shit all over their predecessors.
LoZ does control well, the dungeon layouts are great… where it fails so hard in my opinion is the incredibly ambiguous overworld. It has some shit to it that rivals Castlevania II’s shenanigans. Dare I say burn a random bush to access a dungeon is almost comparable to squatting next to a wall for 10 seconds with an item in your inventory. A lot of things in that game are incredibly vague and lead you to have to either draw a map out IRL to figure out wtf to do half the time, or in this day and age, open an FAQ.
Z2 is good, but 10:1 odds unless you want to suffer through doing weird random shit to get you through… you’re gonna need a FAQ. I always say that it took me 8 years to beat that game (mainly because I couldn’t find the down jab which I knew I needed). After getting that I was able to mostly find my way though it.
I liked Zelda 2 but it was just from coincidence. On Christmas in the late 80s I wanted my dad to get us Legend of Zelda. But the game was sold since it was so popular. So he got me Zelda 2 instead. I cried out of frustration but I had this game so I had to play it whether I liked it or not.
In the end I learned it by heart and perhaps spent the most hours in any video game ever at that time. My brother perhaps even more.
Very captivating game. What was the best thing was that Link was adult, same for the monsters and bosses. Not the blob figures of Zelda 1, Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time. I thought I had a serious game, a game that was dinstinctly Japanese, while Zelda 1 had some western rpg traces.
Too bad that the bosses had to be tiny, while in the illustrated manual they looked huge. Looking at the manual of Zelda 1 and 2 and its illustrations, I thought there was a serious japanese anime at that time and was dissapointed to find out there was only an american cartoon with atrocious design.
Later I borrowed Zelda 1 from a friend, reached Ganon after many frustrating hours but could not find the red ring and lost. I did not have any maps, just remembered things my friend did when he was playing the game though he had not the time to finish it when I was nearby.
Then I realized that 2 was better and the last palace was a nightmare, much more difficult than Zelda 1 final dungeon.
The backtracking was kind of funny I actually laughed at the whole water dragon part because it was like you had to do the quest for the quest, so you could do the quest that would let you start your quest. I’d have put up with them leaving that game in development (seriously who missed it?) for another year or two just to add more scenery. I thought it was extremely clever the way the worlds were setup for backtracking, but there was SOO much opportunity to just add more shit. I actually wonder if this was laziness or the developer’s attempt to be clever. On the controls I’d say they were 70-80% accurate which is atrocious. Many times it wouldn’t matter because any old attack would do, but when you need a specific attack and I can only count on getting it 3/4 times I think this is a problem. Straight jabs were the worst for me.
and yes TP is everything that OoT should have been. Granted that’s kind of impossible given console limitations, but for Z64 it’s like they bit off more than they could chew and just gave out a barebones game. I know that isn’t the case, but it just feels so empty.
Yeah the straight jabs messed up for me a lot. I found the best way is to do it very slowly and precise, and it will come out a second later as if there’s input lag.
I don’t know, after doing that long ass quest to beat the 6th dungeon, I have to do swim for almost an hour? fuck that shit. I did not like the volcano areas. And this was basically the whole game. [details=Spoiler] Step 1) Scale the volcano area, 2) beat volcano dungeon, 3) scale volcano again for tears, find secret area, back track, 4) beat volcano dungeon 2, 5) get your shit stolen, scale volcano area again. 6) do some more volcano stuff in the last dungeon. [/details]
If they would have skipped the 5th part, I think it would have been better off, pacing wise. I didn’t mind the desert part because I actually found the timeshift things interesting and new.
I can only glance at some things at a moment but I do want to respond to some other things when I get a chance. And you’re good Radiant.
I actually started on Zelda 2 on my 3DS for the first time. It’s interesting. The real reason I wanted to respond is to tell you that you don’t have to unplug the wii motion plus…you just press down on the d pad to recalibrate it. I’m pretty sure that they actually mention it to you several times in the game.
One thing I am curious about is why exactly Nintendo decided that they wanted to rely on pointing and everything by purely using the accelerometers and not have the IR used at all ala Red Steel 2. Red Steel 2 actually used both where as everything in this game uses the accelerometers in the wii mote. Might have to do with how the Wii Mote communicates to the Wii when it’s using both and it could probably mess up certain things I.E. Skydiving. That might probably be it and probably explains after the initial pointing at the screen at the start of the game they immediately shut the IR off.
Except SOTN is over rated as fuck XP. Neither one of those games is very good (SOTN is ok and CVII is awful) while Zelda 1 and 3 are pinnacles of game design.
Get on it son!
Also I miss drawing maps an shit. I had spiral note books full of hand drawn maps for games back in the day like Zelda 1 and 2, Metroid, and a bunch of other games.Games nowadays all hand you maps, some do it like candy, you don’t even have to find them. I think if I ever became a game developer it would be something I would be tempted to experiment with. Pack my game with a book for drawing dungeon and temple maps in, making notes on where you find shit, and just in general being your “Grail Diary” for the game. Would probably be considered a failure considering how lazy people are these days but would still be fun to try. Was one of my favorite things to do back in the day.
Sonic: Did you not read my post? That’s like twice now you didn’t read clearly, or are just trying to defend the game.
I never had a problem aiming. That was easily fixed by pushing down as if it was off axis, or I simply re center myself in real life, before drawing the weapon and going into aim mode. My problem was the inconsistency when selecting a weapon and swimming, and sometimes controlling the beetle. If it has something to do with the IR sensor like Cyntalan said, then this is new to me. But you cannot center the camera while holding B and selecting a weapon. There would be times when the calibration is fucked up that in order for me to point to the left side WHILE SELECTING A WEAPON, I’d have to rotate the wii remote clockwise (basically pointing in the opposite direction), while holding it vertically or something crazy like that.
And how do you recenter the camera when swimming? You can’t do that either. All I do is hold A with a steady hand and link starts swimming around in circles. Once I recalibrate it, he goes straight again. So it’s either, take out the remote, or go into the gear menu/options and recalibrate it from scratch.
Three timelines ha I knew there was two but the third was totally unexpected. I’m glad that a lot of my favorite games are on the same timeline - Season, Ages, Link to the Past and Zelda 1 & 2 at least.
Am I the only one that is actually terrified by Fi? I was fine with her 'til the singing segments, where her face just creeps me out to the point where I can’t unsee it.
Actualy, as terrifying as I find it, I really could stand for a gif of that for an av…
I’ve read somewhere that this may be Ninty trying to reconcile that OoT was supposed to be a sequel to aLttP. That said, it’s nice to finally see this revealed.
You aren’t the only one. I had an issue with the first time doing the harp tutorial and I thought I was pretty on point with the timing. It didn’t take me nearly as long though. I don’t know why they they made the tutorial as strict as it was in comparison to doing the other songs but after doing it a couple times it generally went naturally. It’s still very poorly implemented regardless and for me that’s probably the biggest blemish this game has.
I wouldn’t say the idea of what skyward sword is implementing would be too hard to do on a twin stick pad…come to think of it I’m wondering how MGR: Rising is going to have the controls set up for it’s slicing mechanics. From what I can tell from the trailer of that game though I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not done in a 24/7 matter and done in finishing manuver/NMH kind of manner…that or it’s a mode that you switch on after locking on to an enemy. If it’s any developer who I believe would probably find someway of making it work and make sense it’d be Platinum.
I sense a hint of annoyance within your post…chill. As much as I’d truly love to defend every aspect of this game I know this game has flaws even if I’ve enjoyed the hell out of it and I know that not everybody’s experience with it is going to be the same. I could see that from the earlier reviews. You probably don’t have another way of checking using a wiiremote plus/another wii motionplus to check and see if the motionplus is acting up. I may have had a small problem with the item wheel here and there but swimming there wasn’t an issue for me.
I’m not trying to push anything on you, I’m guessing I just want to make sure that everything is working properly so you could have a chance to enjoy it as much as I did.
And there in lies the problem of motion controls. With a real control scheme with some form of response you can visibly comprehend, you know if it’s you or if it’s a problem with the controller itself. You push A, nothing happens, you have a fucked up controller. You just don’t know with the motion controls. It could be you failing, it misreading due to a flaw (Fluzzard in SMG2 where too quick of a twist is interpreted as the other direction), it being unresponsive due to lag (Wiimotes lag like a bitch) or slow read interpretation (I’ve noticed this happen a lot, it gets confused with movements and thinks for a brief moment or just outright drops your action), the game itself unable to properly interpret the movement in question (old school Wii Sports Bowling spinning left and interpreting right because the game doesn’t recognize direction of spin), or there could be some actual defect in the thing itself. The sad part is the last one is most likely the least likely.
I have the new wiimote that came with the collector’s edition and had similar issues a couple times with the controls, but I eventually got use to them enough to overlook it. I still won’t bother swinging at enemies who have electric weapons and opt to open them up with alternatives (perfect block or other means) and re-centering certain weapons slows down the pacing sometimes, but it’s manageable for me. Eyeballs were really gay, but I only remember having to do that in the 1st dungeon (100% completed the 1st playthrough a few days ago). Straight jabs weren’t a problem for me though.
-I don’t remember if I ever legitimately did a no-heart piece/container run in a Zelda game, but I’ll try my hand at it when I get started on Hero mode for SS. I really liked this one.
Slight weapon spoiler/complaints
[details=Spoiler]A few things I would’ve liked to see is the bow not going into first person mode if I’m already locked-on to something and just shooting at the locked-on target instead… that just slows things down, and more ways to use the secondary weapons on enemies like in WW (e.g. the clawshot pulling in lighter foes while pulling you toward heavier foes, or the whip stealing multiple items from monsters like the grappling hook did in WW). Also that big ass sword you use to fuck up Koloktos, the 6-armed boss… I would’ve LOVED to carry that shit around the world and break everybody’s guard with it.
-Weapon combinations would’ve been cool. The D-pad could’ve been designated to assign/use weapons like the 3-item-assignment system in older games, and pressing two directions simultaneously could result in a combination, but I guess they thought that would be too overpowered.
I still need to test the gust bellows on some more stuff the next time I play, but there are a few things where you’d expect it to behave one way and it doesn’t work (e.g. blowing at torches won’t put them out).[/details]
Still though, they achieved their purposes in the game and I like that a lot of dungeons and the overworld employed the usage of multiple weapons/items and wasn’t as restricted to only using the most recent item you found in the dungeon as older games.
