What is it about Zelda?

BoboTheMighty said:

Main Story in Open world games should more slowly build their tempo, focus on investigation and player driven discovery, and use lore/side quests to reinforce it.

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I have yet to play a game like this. Even Witcher 3 i got bored half way an just rushed to the end, I never played the expansion for that reason.

Looks like there are some interesting environmental abilities in this new game as well, like a magnetism ability that lets you move metal objects around to solve different puzzles. Watched Mike Matei play a bit of the game last night and it looks pretty crazy. The world seems huge with a lot of interesting exploration.

This is the exact thing I was wondering right now. I was watching a video about the multiple reviews for Breath of the Wild, and everyone seems to be salivating after it. And I also cannot see it. I mean, the video I was watching, quoted various parts of the reviews, and they seem to be gushing at the mouth for every basic feature. They were actually excited that the Zelda game now had cooking.

I believe it's mostly just nostalgia around the franchise. From what I can see they basically copy-pasted every open-world mechanic (mechanics that were in other games for ages) into their game.

Full disclosure: I haven't played any Zelda game, so I may be missing something. But I seriously doubt it. Witcher 3 was incredibly more ambitious and amazing. But again, I'm biased towards Witcher.

Don't really think you can compare Witcher 3 and Zelda just because they are both "open-world"…

I mean, does Witcher have many unique dungeons, full of environmental and item puzzles, locked doors that require hidden keys, hidden treasure items that are used throughout the entire game to solve future puzzles (a hookshot that acts like Batman's grappling hook, an Ice Staff that freezes enemies, a bow that you have to manually aim to hit certain targets, etc.?)

I'm just talking about older Zelda games. The new one is different as it may or may not have a Hook Shot, etc.. It has a magnetism item that lets you move large metal objects around, solve puzzles using that, or create new paths to travel (placing a large metal door to repair a bridge across dangerous water, etc..) I'm not sure how cooking is implemented but it likely has some serious gameplay affect (I saw that one cooking dish gave cold resistance, which may be mandatory to travel in the frigid areas.)

For past games, you had many temples that were quite treacherous and brain-teasing to explore. You had to use reflex and smarts in combat, often having to hit a certain weak point or time your attack well. On top of that the dungeons were full of puzzles, secrets, sometimes challenging to the point people couldn't figure out how to complete them for many hours. The world itself has secrets galore, hidden items, heart pieces that raise your health, even hidden fairies that upgrade your equipment if you can find their locations. Ocarina of Time had an element where you had to learn songs for the Ocarina in the game and play them at certain times to make environmental events happen (temples rising from the ground, entire lakes draining of water to reveal a hidden temple and so on.)

So the Zelda games have pretty much always been innovative games, from the first Zelda to present day. Maybe try playing the games and see what they are about. I've always been a fan but haven't really played much Zelda since Twilight Princess on the Wii (which also had an interesting element of being able to travel to and from the "netherworld" type area. This feature was also used for the Magic Mirror in Link to the Past on SNES, where you could travel to and from the Dark World, often using it to solve puzzles, find secrets, etc.. The Dark World in that game even had an entire map to explore that paralleled the Light World, but was full of deformed monsters, twisted, gnarled trees and had a whole weird and creepy spin on the Light World. Pretty amazing stuff at the time.)

danutz_plusplus said:

This is the exact thing I was wondering right now. I was watching a video about the multiple reviews for Breath of the Wild, and everyone seems to be salivating after it. And I also cannot see it. I mean, the video I was watching, quoted various parts of the reviews, and they seem to be gushing at the mouth for every basic feature. They were actually excited that the Zelda game now had cooking.

I believe it's mostly just nostalgia around the franchise. From what I can see they basically copy-pasted every open-world mechanic (mechanics that were in other games for ages) into their game.

Full disclosure: I haven't played any Zelda game, so I may be missing something. But I seriously doubt it. Witcher 3 was incredibly more ambitious and amazing. But again, I'm biased towards Witcher.

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I think it is better than Witcher in every way except for the RPG elements and crafting. The actual gameplay in Zelda is miles ahead. I am dying a ton in the game because the game punishes you for not using your shield and dodging properly for example. It's a night and day difference.

Damian said:

I think it is better than Witcher in every way except for the RPG elements and crafting. The actual gameplay in Zelda is miles ahead. I am dying a ton in the game because the game punishes you for not using your shield and dodging properly for example. It's a night and day difference.

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I haven't played Zelda, so I can only speak about W3. I loved the gameplay/combat system in Witcher 3. It felt very much skill based. The only issue I had was that sometimes that auto-targeting went haywire, and I would move/attack someone I hadn't intended. Dodging, parrying, all felt very important. I was playing on Death March, mind you. I heard that the lower difficulties really allowed you to spam attacks.

danutz_plusplus said:

I haven't played Zelda, so I can only speak about W3. I loved the gameplay/combat system in Witcher 3. It felt very much skill based. The only issue I had was that sometimes that auto-targeting went haywire, and I would move/attack someone I hadn't intended. Dodging, parrying, all felt very important. I was playing on Death March, mind you. I heard that the lower difficulties really allowed you to spam attacks.

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I was playing on the hardest difficulty that you could select at the start. I dont know if you could select death march back then. It was only a little difficult at the start of the game when I was getting used to things. Half way through it stopped being a challenge at that time until the double golem warlock boss near the end, I forgot his name. I think i failed like four times on that boss. I've died like 4 times in the intro area of Zelda and 10 times total included the next area. I've simply left mobs for later because I found them too hard in this Zelda, never had that problem in Witcher 3.

In Witcher 3 you could dodge at will and timing wasnt a factor at all or even beneficial. Parrying was quite easy but most of time unnecessary except for the last boss IIRC. In Zelda you cant even sprint for long and you are punished with slow speed if you completely deplete your stamina meter. Playing PC games for so long has greatly depleted my skills as a gamer at the basic level.

Damian said:

I was playing on the hardest difficulty that you could select at the start. I dont know if you could select death march back then. It was only a little difficult at the start of the game when I was getting used to things. Half way through it stopped being a challenge at that time until the double golem warlock boss near the end, I forgot his name. I think i failed like four times on that boss. I've died like 4 times in the intro area of Zelda and 10 times total included the next area. I've simply left mobs for later because I found them too hard in this Zelda, never had that problem in Witcher.

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You must be one super duper stud gamer, because I encountered many mobs in The Witcher 3 that I had to run from, and I'm pretty damn good at real-time combat.

JDR13 said:

You must be one super duper stud gamer, because I encountered many mobs in The Witcher 3 that I had to run from, and I'm pretty damn good at real-time combat.

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I didnt do anything special in fighting in witcher 3. Just dodged till i had an easy few hits, then rinse and repeat. I do remember using a damaging elemental skill to do damage. My friend who is even better at games than me said the shield magic is the most powerful way to get through game without too much trouble.

Damian said:

I didnt do anything special in fighting in witcher 3. Just dodged

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TW3 is not Dark Souls. Next time try not to dodge at all - play with Quen and upgrade it to reverse Quen ASAP. Well… I mean don't dodge except brawls where signs don't work.
And don't watch Angry Joe's playstyle, he thinks you need to dodge everything everywhere, get some bruiser or tank strategy for a change.

JDR13 said:

You must be one super duper stud gamer, because I encountered many mobs in The Witcher 3 that I had to run from, and I'm pretty damn good at real-time combat.

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Some mobs outlevel you too much - you have to escape then return later.
You can get rid of them only very early if you have an unkillable NPC sidekick with you (during some quests) so you can abuse it.

danutz_plusplus said:

Full disclosure: I haven't played any Zelda game, so I may be missing something. But I seriously doubt it. Witcher 3 was incredibly more ambitious and amazing. But again, I'm biased towards Witcher.

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Put things another way. Some pro reviewers played TW3 in the next year. When all awards were already given away. These sites gave GOTY to microtransaction scams like MGS5 - I'm not saying MGS5 is a bad game, it's great, but better than TW3, not a chance.
Some of those pros probably still didn't play TW3.

But they all played Super Mario on gameboy. And after that Super Mario, years of it, then years of Zynga cowclickers and phonegames, now they got new Zelda. Never saw TW3. What will those pro reviewers write on this new Zelda?
They'll think it's the best game. Ever.

It's not you who is biased.

Damian said:

I didnt do anything special in fighting in witcher 3. Just dodged till i had an easy few hits, then rinse and repeat. I do remember using a damaging elemental skill to do damage. My friend who is even better at games than me said the shield magic is the most powerful way to get through game without too much trouble.

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Gameplay is very different between both…Witcher is great at synergy between spells, bombs, alchemy and swordplay, Zelda is much better at weapon variety, attack combos/parries and env interaction.

One thing Zelda's do better than all other games is mechanics of exploration…even best open world fully oriented on this, do not come close to it.
I'm not too fond of too many "treasures" littered across the world…heavy reliance on it,sort of like with,audio/journals, exposition through items as driving point of the plot, creates a fake sense of the world.
But in everything else….gameplay, story, characters, world design, side quests, lore…even art…I'm just not seeing it, they are very clearly surpassed.

I think long and iconic status of the series has given it a sort of "taboo" status among the reviewers. Last one is considered a massive disappointment and still ended up among the highest rated in it's year.

danutz_plusplus said:

This is the exact thing I was wondering right now.

I was watching a video about the multiple reviews for Breath of the Wild, and everyone seems to be salivating after it. And I also cannot see it. I mean, the video I was watching, quoted various parts of the reviews, and they seem to be gushing at the mouth for every basic feature.

They were actually excited that the Zelda game now had cooking…

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With Zelda it seems to me this franchise ran out of gas a long time ago, so they're injecting more infantile BS (into a franchise that always was directed towards 7 year olds) to elicit sympathy from the men-children that now comprise its gross audience.

Damian said:

BoboTheMighty said:

Main Story in Open world games should more slowly build their tempo, focus on investigation and player driven discovery, and use lore/side quests to reinforce it.

Click to expand...

I have yet to play a game like this. Even Witcher 3 i got bored half way an just rushed to the end, I never played the expansion for that reason.

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Uh, Morrowind? Gothic? Stalker? Arx Fatalis?

BoboTheMighty said:

One thing Zelda's do better than all other games is mechanics of exploration….

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Same reply.

luj1 said:

Uh, Morrowind? Gothic? Stalker? Arx Fatalis?

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Nope no sense of urgency at all in all of those games for me except stalker, I havent played that.

Never could get into the Zelda thing, saw a friend playing it once and it just struck me as the ugliest, lamest looking cartoony-thing that I'd ever seen.

I firmly believe that Ocarina is one of the greatest games ever made, definitely the greatest coming of age tale told in the medium (in my opinion). I have always enjoyed the Zelda games, dating back to the original (never played the snes or handheld ones). I bought the GameCube simply for Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. Even though I have sworn off consoles, I have once again been suckered in to by a Nintendo console just for one game. I can't say beyond a doubt that the hype is deserved for this one yet, but I am quite enjoying it and the world is MASSIVE. Much bigger than I was expecting. Zelda just always does combat, items, and puzzles really well.

I've played Zelda since the original NES game and have enjoyed most of them. That said, the series does tend to be slightly overrated at times. (Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask are especially overrated)

I really liked Zelda 1&2 on the NES and A Link to the Past on SNES, although I've tried to replay them in recent years and found that they haven't really aged well. Twilight Princess is my favorite modern Zelda game by far, and Wind Waker wasn't bad either.

The only console Zelda that I've never played is Skyward Sword. I didn't feel like it was worth buying the special Wiimote for.

The world seems more dangerous than most RPGs I've seen. Just peeped a bit of it and Mike was getting wrecked in some areas. Apparently you can try to beat the game at any point, go right to the end area, but you're obviously going to get wrecked. I also saw that he had picked up a bunch of armor and what not, which is one thing Zelda does well, too. Usually the armor upgrades are not found a lot but when they are they are significant, almost like Gothic-style except you usually find them in a dungeon or something. That goes for loot in general in Zelda games.

I just played about 10 min of this on my brothers switch. The controllers that plug into the side are awfully small and felt very cramped. I could have used another inch to inch and a half for my thumbs to be comfortably on the analog sticks. Game seemed responsive no stuttering or what not. I have no experience with Zelda games. I played probably a few minutes of the first one way back then but I was strictly a TB gamer back then.

He just got it so niether of us knew the controls or anything.pressed all the buttons but could figure out how to block or roll. In very close proximity of each other I found monsters that I could 1 hit and were embarrassingly easy and monsters that 1 hit me and were impossible to kill. Not sure if there was a way to tell which is which until you engage them. Combat seemed ok but I doubt it'd be the highlight it seemed like there was a lot to explore but as I said I only had 10 min. The worst thing in my limited time was weapon degradation. In my 10 minutes I had 3 weapons break. An axe, club and a branch I picked up because all my other stuff was broken.

If I were a Nintendo fan I'd probably pick up a switch it seemed well made and pretty quick for what it is. It did get quite warm though but not more than other phones or tablets. Since I don't like Zelda, Mario, donkey kong or really any of thier first party titles ( at least not enough to play them for more than an hour or so)It'd be a waste for me.

sakichop said:

In very close proximity of each other I found monsters that I could 1 hit and were embarrassingly easy and monsters that 1 hit me and were impossible to kill. Not sure if there was a way to tell which is which until you engage them.

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You arent supposed to use your best weapons on the weak enemies and save your best weapons for the harder ones or fights. I had the reverse problem as you, always too many weapons.