Mew Ami wrote:

I don't if it's me, but I feel like the controls are bit slippery? Like sometimes I go to jump and I end up missing and fall to the ground. Could just be my clumsy gamer skills.

At first I didn't think anything of the sort, but then I reached the ice dungeon and noticed I had a strange tenancy to run off of things when I meant to run along them.

One particular issue is that the camera tends to act weird in certain areas, randomly changing direction and since you're holding up on the circle pad the entire time, it can turn you around when you're not intending to.

The camera also has an annoying habit of random jerking away in some random direction when I'm using the bow. It happened both when fighting the ice dungeon's mini boss and when I was doing the "protect the milk jugs" side quest. Using the gyro controls suddenly tugged the camera far off to the side, and I couldn't get it re-aligned until the milk jugs had already been hit a couple of times.

It probably has something to do with this game being made for the "New" 3DS that can freely move the camera around.

As for the bosses, I was super confused on how to do anything fighting the first one. I waited and waited until he lunged at me to fire the bow like normal and it didn't do anything. He blocks or jumps over every arrow. The only way I could effectively fight him was by using the Deku Mask to fly over him and drop those sparky nuts on his head, which causes him to fall over and expose the eye.

I'm not sure why they changed things like the bosses. It gives off the impression that the original Majora's Mask was either a beta or Christmas Rushed, and this remake is their way of fine-tuning it.

I no longer have the article, but person on the staff mentioned in the interview that there may have been changes to make the game a bit easier. There are a lot of Zelda gamers who have never finished MM.I will admit I was one of them, but during my college days I tracked down the GC port and gave it a second chance. But me quitting the first time has nothing to do with the bosses.

Two Reasons Why People Dropped MM:

1) The game a has very slow start. 

2) The time mechanic. A lot people don't like being rushed with time in video games. 

MM was hard because you had to planned your each session out.SO:  During this three day cycle I'm going to do x, y, and z. The Temples are bit changeling, but the bosses were easy.Even with the ability to slow down time players can still feel pressure. 

I quit during my first playthrough because of the time mechanic. 

Now, I'm not saying MM is the hardest game on the planet, but it's a bit challenging. 

As for the remake while it's a nice remake there things they should have left alone. 

They didn't need to move some of the fairies.
Change the bosses' weak points.
Move two of the masks. I am dead serious! The Stone Mask is found in the fortress with the pirates and I forget the other mask that was moved. 

All it needed was a better save feature and the improved Song of Double Time. Which they did! 

Yeah the game clearly wants you to get the new 3ds. I hate the gyro feature it makes using your bow so awkward. For the alien side quest I didn't use Epona because of that.  

I am planning getting the new 3ds. I have the money for it thanks to Christmas. I'm waiting for more colors.

I HAVE the GC Collector's Edition and let me tell you, any time related stress gets magnified when you discover that this particular port of the game has an annoying tendency to freeze at random.

Now recall how the saving mechanic works and you can imagine why this is AWFUL.

The only solace is that there's an exploit you can use with the owl statues. If you use the owl statues periodically, suspending your game and then copying the save file onto the second slot, you won't lose the entire three-day-cycle's worth of progress.

I just got the stone mask, it's easy enough to get. It's just right there at the base of the central watchtower in the pirate's fortress. Just take out any nearby pirates with arrows and you're golden. THE PROBLEM IS if you don't know he's there, you'll have to go all the way back to get a red potion. I ended up forgetting and went ahead and got the hookshot first.

Kinda bummed they altered the Zora mask to swim slower, but I can understand why they did it, since that form is kinda difficult to control. The Goron and Deku masks are pretty well improved though.

I also would have liked if they let you save using the Song of Time. I liked when you start up the game again and the first thing you see is [ Dawn of the First Day ]

^^*

I didn't beat MM until I got the digital version on the Wii because of the freezes. It only froze on me twice. BUT THE SECOND TIME IT DID IT I WAS IN THE MIDDLE WORM BOSS FIGHT. I HATED THAT FINAL TEMPLE SO I RAGE QUIT SO HARD BECAUSE I DIDN'T WANT TO REPEAT IT. ....I wish I thought that of exploit.

Yeah I wish you could still save with the song of time.

That's odd, it's never frozen for me during dungeons, only out in the field, particularly in places near water like when I'm collecting the Zora eggs or when I'm heading toward the swamp spider house.

The first time it did it was when I was swimming around as Zora Link.

So I got to the battle with Twinmold last night, and I have one thing to say.

UGH.

Wow. I was okay with most of the changes to this game, but they made this battle not only much harder, but much more boring and time consuming. The Giant's Mask is not only super slow now, but also very short ranged, as instead of being able to use your sword and shield, you just mindlessly wail on the enemy with your bare hands.

And you HAVE to use it. It's difficult enough to avoid getting hit by the fireballs Twinmold uses now, but the amount of wailing you have to do on the dumb thing ate up so much time. It took over an entire day in game time to beat the stupid thing. Good thing I had a Chateau Romani going.

I heard about that. -_-

UGH FOR ME TOO!!!

Just got the Zora's mask I totally hate when they did with swimming. For once I have to keep magic or that milk on me. You think they would have pots with magic in it in the fortress?

On the bright side I've read about one thing about the Twinmold battle and learned one thing by trying it again.

The thing I read is that the large spherical objects that can be picked up, if hurled at the boss will immediately knock it down. Since you have to knock it down three times, this saves a lot of time.

The thing I learned myself is that when either Twinmold is on the ground you don't HAVE to grab them by the tail. Seeing a giant Link put a giant worm monster in a headlock is a strange sight indeed.

So it seems Hyrule Warriors is going to get a 3DS release. Very interesting. I didn't have much interest in the game, especially since I lack a Wii U, but this inspires me to give it the time of day and maybe consider it.

Apparently it's the same game, same story and all that, but with a couple of new additions, like being able to immediately switch characters via the touch screen, plus new characters Tetra and the King from Wind Waker. They can also be transferred to the Wii U version and played there.

I imagine there might come out Wii U exclusive characters to do the reverse with, just to make it fair.

They better make it fair. I own the game and I see no reason to buy a 3DS version of it. It's a fun game. I really should play it sometime I did buy the DLC package. I haven't tried them all out yet.

And now we have Triforce Heroes. An online multiplayer Zelda game. As bummed as I am that it's not a genuine Four Swords title set in the same verse, I can't be too bummed because honestly it does basically the same thing.

The key difference seems to be that there are only three characters to choose from, each with the same hair color as their designated tunic. I can understand why they did it. Gather four players might be a daunting task. But at least it doesn't have to rely on the absurd set up that the Gamecube Four Swords needed.

In the digital E3 video they explained about how a fourth player would make the stacking too high. In the game you jump on the other Links' backs to solve puzzles.

I recently rewatched Arin's sequeilitis video about the Zelda series, and upon rewatching it I definitely see where he's coming from on a lot of points.

Particularly the enemy designs in Ocarina, where a lot of the normal enemies boil down to "stand around and wait, then attack when they're open" and the bosses basically amount to "wait until you can stun them with the dungeon item, then swing your sword" I at least like the fact that the Stalfos are designed this way, since it reminds me of real life fencing, where you have to wait for the right moment to thrust.

Same goes with the part about "stopping to look for a diamond to whack". That's not really a puzzle. I do like the one where you have to stand on the spinny thing and shoot through the fire to melt the ice.

One of the things he criticized modern Zeldas for is sticking to a strict formula of the dungeon item being relevant to the dungeon, and also essential to beat the boss. While I like the idea of the Zelda series mixing it up with a boss that's not beaten by THAT item in particular, I feel like this kind of thing is thematic.

You go into a dungeon covered in ice. There are powerful ice enemies and places and things blocked off by ice. So you have to struggle through this daunting dungeon until you find the lantern or wrecking ball that can destroy the ice. Suddenly there's a turnabout, where you're the one in command and you've become more powerful for your struggles.

But I can definitely see where he's coming from about things being predictable like "I got a bow, the boss has a big glowing eye, maybe I need to shoot it in that big glowing eye!"

I think a lot of the praise he gave the original LOZ comes from the limits of the NES. There aren't any cut-scenes or anything, there's no real discernible story (unless you read the manual or let the title screen sit for a few seconds) and I'm 90% sure the game was meant to be played with some kind of map.

For all the criticism he gave Ocarina for the whole golden gauntlets thing, it's a heck of a lot more bearable than walking into a room and having some monster say "grumble grumble". If you don't know to give him the meat (or know that it exists at all) not only would you be stumped for quite a while (in an era where gamefaqs didn't exist) but then you'd have to backtrack out of the dungeon to find it.

There are so many moments where you can just be completely stuck because the game is so unhelpful. You can only carry 8 bombs at a time. Places that can be bombed tend to have no indication of such, and what happens when you run into a boss that you have to feed bombs if you've run out?

Then there's the NPCs, who are a special kind of unhelpful due to being incredibly cryptic. "East-most peninsula has the secret!" ...Thanks. In English please?

A Link to the Past was better about this, but there are still times where it's badly designed. Arin praised the boss battle of Turtle Rock for having to use an item you didn't even find in a dungeon, the ice rod. But the problem is, it's found way out of the way in the bottom corner of the map, where no dungeon is anywhere near, so if you didn't explore and happen to find it, you'd never know it was there. And when you end up in the room with the boss that requires it, you have to either die or quit the game.

Arin Hanson wrote:

But Zelda - from its roots - it’s not the kind of game that holds your hand. There’s no explanation or even really like a goal, but there’s adversity everywhere. And you could approach it anytime you want, whether you’re prepared - or not. You run the real risk of facing off against something that will kill you! In a fucking second! It’s fucking awesome!

I like having the option of knowing where I'm going, and while you CAN approach dungeons in any order, they're labeled to you know that if you've only beaten "level 1" and you find "level 8" hidden in a bush, you're likely NOT going to be ready for it. But you can try and if you do succeed in getting part-way through it, you're going to end up with a magic key and a red river blocking your path, keeping you from going further until you get the ladder thingie.

And I don't think I would like the Zelda series as much as I do now, if there wasn't such a rich mythology and story going for it. Majora's Mask is an example where emphasis on story and characters is a great thing. You see all these people going about their daily lives, you get to know their names, what their deal is, and then... they all die! But you're the only one who can prevent it, so you might start to care about these people. When the aliens show up and abduct that little girl because you failed to hold them off, you feel like complete garbage. XD

You go through all these steps to reunite a couple, only to have to play the song of time because you can't stop the moon. It hurts.

Arin Hanson wrote:

I think the idea that you’re told you’re a hero saving a kingdom is at least somewhat unnecessary. When it’s an order delivered by the game, it becomes a task. It’s like a job. The message should be in that: as a player, your idea of fun ends up making you a hero. Fighting monsters is what you live for, and isn’t what, say, this fucking guy lives for.

The whole "Hero of Destiny" thing WAS in the first game, but again... title screen. I do like his feelings on this, and it reminds me of one of the reasons I liked Finn from Adventure Time, before he became a hormone-addled teenager.

Maybe it's cause I don't really care for the whole metroid-vania type thing, but I prefer the game to at least have the OPTION of telling you where to go. A huge wide world where all you do is kill one monster and collect items and move on to the next place just feels directionless. At least with the Triforce pieces you're able to tell that you're accomplishing something.

Quote :

You find killing mosters fun. You find ridding the world of evil things fun. That makes you a hero. Not the dialogue, not the story. A book can tell you the main character is a hero with dialogue. A movie can too. But a game? In a game, you can feel it. You can experience it firsthand. You don’t need dialogue.

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Why was the inclusion of so many semantics necessary? And I don’t buy the argument that they’re only there to richen the world with story, because adding those contexts to the situation is devalueing design aspect. The game literally stops for you to complete some asinine story task.

Anyone who watches Game Grumps with any kind of regularity knows that Arin is ALLERGIC to text in games, and this puts a lot of perspective on that. I can respect the part about having to do silly things like fetch quests, but again, I wouldn't like the Zelda series nearly as much as I do if it didn't have SOME story.

As I just said, I don't really like feeling like things are directionless, so it would probably make me angry to go up to Death Mountain just to find that I couldn't do anything because I don't have the right gear. That's the #1 cause of Zelda-based frustration for me. Trying to explore the world and not being able to because you need some item to get past an obstacle. Either guide me along the path to getting that item, or don't make it necessary.

And now I'm all burned out from rambling, so I'm gonna stop here and leave this embarrassing waste of my life for all to read.

I get a vibe that Arin really isn't into modern gaming. I hate feeling lost in video games, but I love exploring and finding out things myself. But it's stupid if the game has you backtrack to get an item that isn't found in that dungeon. So you can beat the boss. OoT did let you pick between the Shadow and the Spirit Temple. It didn't matter which one you went too. In fact in the menu screen Shadow Medallion comes after the Spirit one.

Looking back OoT is bumpy, but it set the stone for future Zelda games. However Nintendo has branched out with them. Are they all prefect? No neither are the 2D games. Link to the Past is a wonderful game, but the enemy placement is bad in Hyrule field. They beat the crap out of you. In the 3D games the Z targeting thing can be a pain the butt, but has gotten better since OoT.

From what I've seen from Zelda U's trailers. We are getting a mix of 3D and 2D Zelda games. I really wished they showed more of it at E3. =(

It will be great to have a new Zelda game without motion controls. While I had no problems with the controls in SS, I still rather have normal controls. WW HD was great on the Wii U and how they handle with the menu was wonderful. I didn't need to pause to switch out my items. Also they place some items on different buttons so you can have more access to weapons.