147 replies to this topic

[Orithan]

I don't get all the hate either. Most of the haters I've seen use the Wii-version's controls or its linearity to hate it. It would have been nice to have it less linear, but that shouldn't be enough to turn away from it. Believe it or not, linearity doesn't necessarly make a Zelda game 'bad' like a lot of people think. You can have exploration with linearity.
Another reason it gets so much hate is that I suspect many are using linearity among other minor things as half-baked excuses to not show they hate it out of nostalgia.

[Aevin]

Or it could be there are different types of gamers who have different kinds of likes and dislikes.  I don't think anyone approaches a game going, "Okay, let me find excuses to hate this thing." I really wanted to enjoy TP, and as I said before, I've tried to make it through on three separate times, trying to approach it with a different and better mindset in each. I don't seek out "half-baked excuses" to keep the secret motive behind my dislike of the game hidden. I didn't enjoy the game as much as others, and I'm just trying to explain why.  Is it really so hard to believe others disliked the game for perfectly legitimate reasons that simply didn't bother you as much? Or that there were things that appealed more to you personally that outweighed the flaws?

Edited by Aevin, 23 July 2013 - 05:12 PM.

[Orithan]

I was not talking about you.
I was talking about the majority of haters I see on other places who are like "It sucks because its linear." or "Zelda can't be linear!" and even "The Wii sucks, therfore this does". I've seen SS get the same kind of comments.

As for what I liked about TP; most of the dungeons were pretty good, better than what OoT had. They may be linear, but OoT was pretty linear too. Many of the bosses were pretty lame (especially the Fryus), but who said OoT didn't suffer from that problem, ableit less severe (Queen Ghoma was the biggest offender in OoT, though there were a couple of other not so serious offenders). The overworld was vast and spacious (not to mention better handled than OoT) and I actually liked most of the music in it, particularly the Hidden Village theme.
In short, I'd put this on the same level as OoT - A really good game, but it has too many flaws to become a truly great game. So far, I only consider LttP, OoA and SS to be truly great Zelda games.

Actually, while I'm at it... (Zelda rankings)

• A Link to the Past.
• Skyward Sword.
• Oracle of Ages.
• Link's Awakening.
• Ocarina of Time.
• Twlight Princess.
• Oracle of Seasons.
• Majora's Mask.
• Legend of Zelda.
• Adventure of Link.
• Phantom Hourglass.
• Four Swords.

Haven't played/ actually watched someone play fully:

• Four Swords Adventure.
• Minish Cap.
• Spirit Tracks.

[The Satellite]

They may be linear, but OoT was pretty linear too.

Oh, so, so wrong. OoT is very nonlinear. You can play almost all of the adult dungeons in any order. Some of them require gear you need to find in earlier dungeons, but you can still trigger events early. Ice Cavern and the Well are accessible almost immediately, the Fire Temple can be beaten before the Forest Temple, the Spirit Temple can be beaten before the Shadow Temple... The last thing OoT is is linear.

[strike]

I'm not really one to enjoy Twilight Princess either.

-Mediocre sound track (Besides Midna's Lament and the Hidden Village).
-Empty Overworld. Now I'm sure people will disagree but I found the Overworld so bland. There's simply not enough to actually explore for how large it is. The only real argument that I have seen people use to defend it is that it was better than Hyrule Field in Oot. Yeah, Hyrule Field was terrible. We get it. Twilight Princess's Overworld was pretty bad too.
-Lack of depth. There were not enough secrets. The world did not feel dynamic. I cleared the game on my first run in 21 hours and ended up having all the heart peices except three. I was pretty disappointed to find that they had not hidden secrets more carefully. I wasn't even trying to get all of them.
-Sidequests that emphasize progress over development. The lengthy Sidequests in between dungeons seemed so much like filler. They didn't actually teach you anything. You just knew you had to do them because if you keep on the strict path the game lays out for you, you will eventually arrive at a dungeon.* Did not enjoy them.
-Tedious dungeons. This is probably just me but I felt like the dungeons were too repetitive and formulated.
-Obsolete items. Spinner, dominion rod, and Ball and Chain. All of them had so much potential! What happened?
-Too similar to Ocarina of Time in terms of layout and location. Everything about the game seems to beg to be compared with its predecessor. I wish it had tries to be a little more like its own game.
-Sometimes completely incomprehensible plot.
-Twilight Bugs of Death thing.

I also like a lot of things about it, but I'm kind of tired of typing, so, yeah. Alright game just not the best. It has some serious problems.

-Strike

*Accidentally typed dingo the first time.

P.S- Just saw TS post. Yeah, I'm currently thinking about doing the Child dungeons backwards. They can be done in so many ways!

Edited by strike, 23 July 2013 - 06:27 PM.

[The Satellite]

P.S- Just saw TS post. Yeah, I'm currently thinking about doing the Child dungeons backwards. They can be done in so many ways!

 

Well... is that possible without exploiting glitches? I'm just talking nonlinear through regular means. The child dungeons are on a pretty set path, but the adult ones are pretty open.

[Orithan]

That's if you know how to sequence-break OoT. I was able to sequence-break LttP like that but I haven't called that 'non-linear'. I also discovered that you may be able to sequence-break OoS by going to Level 5 before 4 (that's if you were able to activate the bomb event to gain access to the Fall temple).
Also, weren't you supposed to beat the Fire temple first? I do agree about Spirit Temple before Shadow Temple though.
Yeah, I would call it semi-linear now.

By the way (Sequence-breaking LttP in the Dark World)

• You must complete the Dark Palace first to obtain the hammer.
• You have the choice of taking on Swamp Palace or Thieves Den.
• After you enter the Swamp Palace to obtain the Hookshot, Skull Woods and Misery Mire are opened up to you.
• After obtaining the Firerod from Skull Woods, you can enter the Ice Palace.
• After you do Thieves Den and Misery Mire (as well as Dark and Swamp Palaces to open them up!) to get the Titan's Mitts and Cane of Somalia respectively, you can then take on Turtle Rock.

[strike]

My Plan:

1) Get sword and Sheild
2) Get on top of the Hollow Tree that guards the entrance to Hyrule Field by jumping from Mido's house (how did they not catch that?)
3) Fall off and jump slash over the guards head
4) Talk to Zelda and get Zelda's lullaby and letter
5) Collect Ten Gold Skulltalas and Adult's Wallet
6) Get over Gerudo Fortress as a child by jumping over the gate with a cucco (difficult but possible without exploiting physics)
7) Do Gerudo Fortress as a Child
Get over the sink sand by running over the side (again, how did they not catch that?)
9) Buy Bombchus for 200 rupees from the carpet salesman
10) Blow up the rocks guarding Zora's River with Bombchus
11) Complete Jabu's Belly using Bombchus where the Singshot would normally be used
12) Use Bomchus to light the eyes in the giant dead Degondo in degondo's Cavern thus skipping the part requiring the Slingshot
13) Do the first dungeon as normal

As you see, none of the steps explicitly break any mechanics, just do things in an order that the designers did not expect. Got to go!

-Strike

Edited by strike, 23 July 2013 - 06:58 PM.

[The Satellite]

Also, weren't you supposed to beat the Fire temple first?

... no. The Forest Temple is meant to be the first. But thank you for demonstrating my point.

Also, interesting display, strike, I might have to try that out later next time I play OoT.

[Shane]

OoT was linear? Color me impressed, I thought it wasn't that linear nor hard compared to Twilight Princess Skyward Sword.

 

A) You could beat at least two dungeons (Spirit/Shadow Temple) legitimately (as in glitch free) in any order.

B) OoT's Hyrule Field did a better job at making Link go to Point A to B less boring. You could stop and visit several other places and do stuff. Note that the size of OoT was just right because Epona was optional so you had to walk on foot where as TP, Epona ties in with the plot thus an opportunity to make Hyrule Field bigger.

C) The bosses were far more challenging than what TP offered.

D) Some enemies were hard; OoT Stalfos are harder than TP's and SS's in my opinion, mainly because it's harder to break their defense.

E) Also got to say at least OoT didn't (read carefully:) feel like they were going to shove Ganondorf down your throat after beating the primary antagonist. OoT also made Ganondorf threatening (but WW developed him the best but TP made him and Zelda so underdeveloped.).

 

TP and SS were great games; I prefer OoT more though. But I agree; it is not the best Zelda game... WW and LA are. OoX should get a worthy mention at being two very fun titles as well.

Edited by Shane, 23 July 2013 - 07:46 PM.

[Russ]

 Actually bro, look at what you typed...

the Fire Temple can be beaten before the Water Temple,

 That said, Orin, OoT is non-linear without sequence breaking. For example, the Shadow and Spirit temples. You can do them in either order, no sequence breaks required.  Same with LttP; who's to say you have to do Skull Woods before Thieves Town? I think there's actually a ton of different orders you can do the dungeons in LttP without sequence breaking.

 

Edit: To clarify, I would say that what Strike is doing is sequence breaking, because you're exploiting oversights to do stuff out of order, whereas Spirit before Shadow isn't sequence breaking, because there is little nothing to tell you you can do one before the other, Navi just hints about the Shadow Temple's location before the Spirit's.

[The Satellite]

Actually bro, look at what you typed...

That never happened.

[Orithan]

Thanks for clarifing what is sequence breaking and what is not. It appeared that I had very different ideas to what you do.
Also, I missed the fact that the Firerod is needed to complete Turtle Rock but my 3DS can't edit posts here.

[Avaro]

When I played OoT the first time, I know, I just beat the dungeons in some order and though it was the only possible one. I didn't even know it wasn't linear.

 

I am looking forward to the reviews of the DS games Phantom Hourglass will probably appear very underwhelming after playing a game like TP.

[Nicholas Steel]

Man, I really hated the wolf segments in Twilight Princess but not because of what you did as the wolf. I hated those segments because it made everything a bland brown/gray lifeless colour. The final dungeon in the game is also like that but it has some tron-esque colour portions in it that distracted you a little from how boring the graphics were in that area.

 

I Too feel the dominion rod, ball & chain and Spinner items were poorly implemented. Yes they're used outside the dungeons but the Spinner for instance is god awful without a track to connect it to. They could have made it awesome without the need for a track, making it an awesome alternative to Epona for traveling as well as an alright tool for slaughtering enemies with... but no, they made it a paper weight if it ain't connected to a track.

 

Dominion Rod has one very specific use and can't be used in any way to directly harm an enemy. It's essentially a literal key. Would have been awesome if you could get a book or something (Reference to Zelda NES) that gave it an attack.

 

Ball & Chain is the least dull to use outside of dungeons but it isn't exactly great because of that. I find it too slow and cumbersome to bother with.

 

 

 

The reason I find the 2 Oracle Zelda's and Majora's Mask overworlds fun to explore is because of the Rings and Masks you can find (They essentially serve the same purpose as each other). Various Rings/Masks can be pretty darn useful (More so then heart pieces/ammo/currency). Masks in MM were the best though as most of them involved interacting with people who provided little tidbits of info/story/lore or required small puzzles to acquire.

Edited by franpa, 24 July 2013 - 03:30 AM.