I’ve gotten a bit further in Echoes of Wisdom now, far enough that I’m no longer travelling in disguise (which also apparently means being able to unlock additional outfits, as well as the “special” clothes given to the “Priestess of Legend”). What strikes me is that the entire game feels like someone was told to make a Legend of Zelda game where Zelda is the protagonist but the only stuff they can reuse from previous games is the names of specific characters. We’ve got plenty of familiar faces (Zelda, Link, Impa, the King of Hyrule, and even the bipedal pig/moblin version of Ganon) and even a few less familiar and interestingly odd choices from past games (Such as Dampe being an inventor now, rather than a gravedigger, and Lord Jabu-Jabu who is just sort of there, eating people again), but the power left behind by the three goddesses, in three parts, is called the “Prime Energy” rather than the Triforce or sacred stones or medallions or whatever else has popped up as some kind of source of power in the Legend of Zelda games. Which is to say that it isn’t strange that there’s a new kind of power in these games, just that it feels so strange for them to basically describe the three pieces of the Triforce but never actually call it the Triforce. Really, the whole game feels like it’s a shade off from what I expected. Not in a negative way. In an “uncanny valley” way. It feels like a Legally Distinct Legend of Zelda game and I can’t understand why they might have made something like that.
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Strong First Impressions In Echoes of Wisdom
After a few days of delay spent finishing Unicorn Overlord, I’ve finally started to dig into The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. While I’ve been mildly excited about it for a while, I purposefully kept my expectations lowered because there’s been just so much interesting fan art for what a Zelda-As-Protagonist video game might look like that any actual implementation of the concept would probably fall short. It was promising that, rather than go with the stylized but fairly proportional look of the two most recent main-line Legend of Zelda games, Echoes of Wisdom was adopting the more cartoony style that was used for the Link’s Awakening remake. I appreciate a game that isn’t trying to take itself too seriously and Echoes of Wisdom’s fairly simple but still highly detailed art has made for a refreshing look at a brand new game. I half-expected to only ever see that art style in future remakes of games from that era (by which I mean all the LoZ games that originally came out on a GameBoy of some kind), so I’m glad to see that they’re continuing to work with the look that they’ve established for that category of Legend of Zelda game on the Switch. In fact, the only issue I have with the visuals of this game (please keep in mind that I’m still not very far into the game, so there might be something up ahead that changes this opinion of mine) is that the game lags pretty heavily when you’re in “busy” towns with water features. I know that they want to make these games look nice, but they absolutely didn’t need to all-in on the water like they did. I’m not entirely sure that this was a “sacrifice performance on the altar of visual splendor” decision, but it sure is starting to feel like they’re expecting these games to be played on a console that’s more powerful than the seven-year-old Nintendo Switch. I’m not really one to dig too deeply into rumors of the Switch 2 or pass around conspiracy theories about making bad games to keep a franchise fresh in everyone’s mind, but I’m starting to feel like ignoring what seems like a bunch of stuff planned for a more powerful console that just hasn’t materialized would be more foolish than contemplating the idea that some new console has been held back for a couple years now.
Continue readingWrapping Up Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Spoiler warning for the recently re-released twenty-year-old video game, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. They’re casually sprinkled throughout, so best skip this post if you want to remain unspoiled for some reason.
Continue readingI’m Tired and Sad, So Let’s Talk About The Legend of Zelda: Episode 23
I’ve been replaying The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in my evening game time for the last month or two. I’m trying to re-experience the game without all the urgency I felt last summer and to take the time I feel I need to explore and enjoy it more fully. So far, it has been a better experience. I’m frequently lost and unsure of what I’ve been doing or have already done, but having the Hero’s Path means I can at least check where I’ve physically been. That, plus getting the Korok Mask and Sensor upgrade much, MUCH earlier this time around means that I’m reasonably confident that, for everything but my first twenty-to-forty hours of this file, I found all the Korok seeds and Shrines in those areas. Being on my second pass of the game means I’ve been able to more specifically target my efforts. I can easily prioritize the stuff I encounter because I already know how most it will turn out and I can more directly tailor my nightly gaming experience to what I want. Some nights I focus on shrines and filling up my map of the Depths with marks for lightroots. Some nights I spend trying to explore the depths in a fun but still efficient manner (so it stays fun to explore them rather than getting tedious like it did in my first playthrough). Some nights I focus on running quests, filling out my map, or just exploring interesting looking ruins. It’s a lot more fun this time around, even if I’m not as excited about it as I was the first time around.
Continue readingSuper Mario RPG Was A Fresh Blast From The Past
Well, it took a lot longer than I expected, thanks to hosting a holiday and briefly losing all of my free time to Baldur’s gate 3, but I beat Super Mario RPG. It was exactly as I remembered it. Well, broadly speaking anyway. All the challenges were the same. All the secrets I could remember were in the same spots. The boss fights where more or less the same. I struggled with the same action commands I always struggle with and had an easier time with some of the ones that relied on mechanical operation from the less-than-perfect SNES controller. The story was the same, the world felt the same, and I got to enjoy my walk through it the same way I’ve enjoyed every replay of the Super Nintendo original. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars is definitely one of those games that will always seem bigger and more beautiful in my memory from my childhood than it ever will from any of my replays. It was a big deal when it came out, taking Mario from the world of platformers to the world of RPGs while adding in a delightful cast of characters that never showed up again, and it was a big deal to me as one of the few games I got to play by myself. It felt different from everything else I’d ever tried before then and it was my introduction to RPGs as a whole (a style of game I couldn’t play much since most video game RPGs had scantily clad feminine character in them, something that would have gotten me banned from playing the game at least and probably grounded as well).
Continue readingThe Return of Pokémon Violet: It’s Shiny Time
After several delays due to life chaos and the general distraction of other video games, I’ve begun playing through the first chunk of Pokémon Scarlet/Violet DLC. It felt a little odd, returning to the game for the first time in several months. I’ve kept the software updated and I’ve gone back into the game once or twice since I finished playing last winter, but never for more than a couple minutes. I don’t think I even saved either time, since I was mostly going in to check something. I’d avoided it for so long because there’d been a lot of reports of save file corruption due to one of the late winter or early spring updates and I didn’t want to risk my complete Pokédex. I figured that, until Pokémon Home was available, it just wasn’t worth the risk. Then Pokémon Home came out and I still didn’t play. Normally, I’d have restarted it and played through the game again that instant, but I have been busy this summer (to put it simply), so it fell to the bottom of my list until I remembered the first of two DLC segments was releasing sometime soon. After that, it was mostly just a timing thing and feeling uncertain about whether or not I was up for more Pokémon. I was in the middle of a wave of depression, so it was difficult to start doing anything new. Once I did, though, I was glad I went back.
It was easy to forget given how much stuff has happened since it came out, but I think this Pokémon game was the most fun I’ve ever had playing an entry in the franchise. I mean, sure, it was incredibly buggy and had enormous performance issues, but it was the first entry in the franchise that I could play with my friends. Some of my best memories from the horrible period that was the start of last winter involve getting together with my friends to play together, do some raids, or even just hang out in voice chat while we all played by ourselves. I think the game would have benefited from a few more months of work of course, but the people making the games have shown that each thing they do is part of a cumulative effort to improve the franchise as a whole, so I remain hopeful that the next game will have everything Scarlet and Violet did, but better. I mean, its not like they’re going to be backsliding or somehow releasing a worse game than the last one. Sure, the games may not have lived up to everyone’s expectations, but they’re still better games than the previous iteration. I mean, hell, people give Sword and Shield a lot of guff, but at least you didn’t have to be taught how to catch Pokémon if you’d already caught one and it was SO much better than the hours-long intro of Sun and Moon.
All the company really needs to do is stop redoing all the Pokémon models every release or two and focus on other work. There’s too many Pokémon for that shit. I know a lot of people didn’t like this game and while I absolutely understand the frustration they’re voicing, I can’t help but think that, laggy moments aside, it runs better than most BioWare games I’ve played right at release. Sure, it would have been better if they’d focused on optimizing the game for the Switch’s admittedly limited hardware, but it’s still not that bad, compared to the general state of the video game industry. It actually delivered on the promises it made, even if did so at a subpar framerate. I’m not saying we shouldn’t voice our opinions or attempt to hold the company to account for what seems like a product they rushed to the market (likely against the wishes of the people actually making the game), I just don’t think it’s worth hating the game over. I mean, it would bug the hell out of me to have worked on a piece of software that was this full of visible issues when it got to customers, but I also know that sometimes your schedule says “release” and you’ve already done everything you could to suggest (or demand) that the product should be delayed for quality reasons, so you can only sit by and watch a minor disaster unfold (save those emails, everyone, because it can be really helpful to show you noted all those issues months ago when someone comes knocking on your door to find out how, as the bastion of quality, test let something this poorly performing get past them).
I haven’t gotten very far into the DLC since, true to form, I stopped following the plot and ran as far as I could in the opposite direction. There’s tons of new Pokémon to catch and I have to catch ’em. Which has worked out pretty well for me, all things considered, since I’ve caught three new shiny Pokémon in the three evenings I’ve spent playing the game [predictably, my rate of catching shinies has dropped off since I wrote this]. I caught two the first night (a shiny Poochyena literally walked up to me within a minute of being able to control my character in the new area we went to) and one on my most recent night. All completely random shiny spawns. Just wandering around the world for me to find. Which is funny, since I’ve tried to go shiny hunting before, when some of my favorite Pokémon were showing up in swarms, but I’ve never managed to get a shiny one during those times, despite how much I’d shifted the odds in my favor. I literally spent four hours shiny farming a Vaporean outbreak and had nothing to show for it, despite encountering enough Vaporean that I should have seen at least four shinies if the statistics I’d looked up held true. It’s been a bit frustrating, to see all my friends have a great deal of success with shiny hunting but be unable to get lucky even once when I’ve gone looking.
Every shiny I’ve ever caught, outside of plot shinies, has been the result of completely random chance. I’ll admit that Violet has been pretty good for shinies, but three of the four I’ve found were found just recently, in the DLC, and this is not exactly representative of my experience as a whole. Outside of Pokémon go and the aforementioned plot shinies, I’ve averaged maybe one per generation, and that’s even counting Pokémon Legends: Arceus (my previous record-holder for most shiny Pokémon caught in a single game). Still, Violet is a lot of fun to play. I miss the days when my friends and I played together, but it has been a long year and a lot has changed since then. Half the people I played with back then are no longer in my life (all thanks to the wizarding world bullshit of February), so it’s not like I could recreate that experience. Now, all I can do is hope that I make new friends who are just as into Pokémon as I am and that the ones I’m still friends with are still up for playing it even though I’m a month late to the party. Time will tell, I’m sure, but I will continue regardless. Pokémon used to be a solo experience for me and it will be fine if it goes back to being that again.
Even A Fun Nintendo Direct Couldn’t Break Through My Exhaustion This Week
We had another Nintendo Direct recently. I was hoping for news about any potential Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom DLC, but I wasn’t expecting any. The current official word on that front is that Nintendo has no plans to release any DLC and while we’ve been misled in the past (and I hope we’re being misled now), I wouldn’t be surprised if there was no DLC coming. After all, the entirety of Tears of the Kingdom was founded as a bunch of ideas for DLCs for Breath of the Wild, so it would be a bit recursive to start getting DLC for what was simply too big, complex, and complete to be a mere DLC add-on to another game. Plus, the DLC was basically announced from the get-go for BotW and there was nothing at all announced for TotK, so some reservation seemed wise (I’d be happy if we only got a Master Mode, so even my hopes for any DLC are pretty tame). Other than that unlikely reveal or the eventual announcement of the next entry in the Legend of Zelda franchise (which I’d be surprised to see so soon after TotK’s release), I wasn’t really expecting there’d be much for me. All the things I’ve been anticipating either had release dates from previous announcements, had come out already, or where just for different platforms, so I kept my expectations low in defense against the likelihood that there’d be anything of particular interest for me.
Continue readingSea Of Stars Was Worth The Wait
The very first thing I did after finishing Baldur’s Gate 3 was start playing Armored Core 6. The second thing I did was stop playing Armored Core 6 and start playing Sea of Stars. Armored Core was fun, but it was more intense that I was up for in the first full week of September since it had been just over twenty-four hours since I learned my grandmother was fading and I just did not have a grindy, punishing game in me. I’ve since learned that AC6 is a lot easier to play if you do it super aggresively, with a heavy emphasis on melee combat, so I think I’ll have a better time when I go back to it, but I needed something calming and Sea of Stars seemed like a better bet. Plus, since I bought it on my Switch, I’d be able to take it with me anywhere I needed to go. This turned out to be the right decision, though I suspect my sleep schedule would be in better shape if I was playing AC6 since I doubt I’d want to stay up super late playing that. Sea of Stars had been described online (mostly by people posting on forums and not at all by any advertisement coming from the game’s creators) as being similar to Chained Echoes and while I think the comparison was useful since it got my attention, I think it really does both games a disservice. Sea of Stars is wonderful and a joy to play in its own ways that have absolutely nothing to do with what makes Chained Echoes one of my top recent games.
Continue readingFinally Playing A Pair Of Legend of Zelda Games In Sequence
In one of the latest updates to the perks provided by having a Nintendo Online subscription, the Legend of Zelda games Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons were added to the Game Boy Color section. As a child, I was obsessed with the dual nature of these games. They’d blown my mind by introducing the idea of transferring save data between them by putting in specially generated passcodes or by using a link cable when you started a new game. I was not quite ten when they came out and it had literlly never occurred to me that you might be able to bring something from one game into another one. While a soft continuity (some aspects of a game carrying forward into another in a way that subtly influences your experience) are still fairly common, I don’t know if I’ve played another game that is quite so drastically influenced by including data from another. Technically speaking, I’ve never played any game that is this drastically influenced because while I’ve played both games, I was never able to play them sequentially.
Continue readingWrapping Up The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
I finally beat The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom over the weekend. Took more than one hundred fifty hours of gameplay over the course of two months (with, you know, a three and a half week gap of not playing at all), and I still have tons of quests, Korok seeds, and unexplored areas if I ever want to spend more time in the world before whatever DLC there will be comes out. It feels a little unreal, if I’m being honest, since I wound up doing the last few major portions of the game in a relatively short time. Mostly because I’d accidentally done huge sections of them while wandering around the world in search of shrines or just exploring something that look cool before I got to the part of the game that prompted them. I’ll admit I really struggled to do some of those things when I stumbled across them because it was clear that I wasn’t supposed to be doing them yet (I got the Sage of Spirit as my second sage, because I wanted to see what was inside the permanent thunderstorm and literally just got lucky since my interrupted flight toward said clouds landed me right next to the final shrine of those sky islands), but at least it let me do them when I got there. It was a pretty fun game and I definitely enjoyed it overall, but there was a lot of stuff that just doesn’t really feel like it landed (pun absolutely intended) well.
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