This game is structured more like Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks.
>>737076857No wonder it sucks ass. All 3 do.
Nah, PH and ST have fun overworlds
>>737076857It has pretty good dungeons at least
All bad Zeldas were heavily involved with Hidemaro Fujibayashi, and Oracle/Minish were only good because it was Capcom developing the rest of the games.
>>737077594There are no bad Zelda games
everything about this game is botw beyond actually having dungeons and not having an overworld
>>737077758Its literally the antithesis of BotW wtf are you talking about
>>737077594Iwamoto directed PH and ST>>737077083Can't deny that. I also personally like tje hubworld and Bazaar.
>>737077843NTA but Skyward Sword was literally designed to be as much of a normie game as possible, since it was meant for the Wii's motion controls. Hence why the game has a reputation for assuming the player is an idiot.
>>737078645At the very least the HD version removed some of the complaints.
>>737076857Up through Skyward Sword, Zelda slowly but progressively got more linear. You could begin to REALLY notice it with Link's Awakening, but even then the world was just a bit more explicity item-gated than Link to the Past already was compared to the NES titles. It's not until Wind Waker that the problem of story gating via invisible walls and NPCs really starts to rear its head, and by the time you get to Twilight Princess and the DS games you're all but on a story-gated path with little room or reason to deviate. By this point, a game like Skyward Sword was all but a foregone conclusion, not terribly surprising in retrospect.
>>737078306>Iwamoto directed PH and STFujibayashi was sub director on Phantom Hourglass, so he must have had a pretty big impact on that game just based on the fact that he was promoted to main director of the home console zelda games after that.
>>737079858I feel like Skyward Sword is at odds with itself due to presenting itself as this big thing despite not feeling that way while playing it. It feels more like traversing the Temple of the Ocean King/Spirit Tower but now that structure is basically the levels.
>>737078645>NTA but Skyward Sword was literally designed to be as much of a normie game as possibleWell they failed. Normies wanted Skyrim, they want open worlds. I'm sure they realized that themselves after SS got absolutely mogged in terms of success.
>>737080383Yeah the Wii's initial success really blinded Nintendo on how irrelevant the system was in 2011. But for their next Zelda game it was just Skyrim, except without all the unique NPCs, locations, side-content, RPG mechanics, and sense of adventure & immersion. And somehow it managed to be the best selling Zelda game and glazed to all hell.
>>737076857Phanto Hourglass and Spirit Tracks are both better than Minish Cap and Skywar Sword is better than Wind Waker
>>737080940I love that pic lol
>>737081494>Phanto Hourglass and Spirit Tracks are both better than Minish Cap HOLY FUCKING WRONNNNNG
>>737076857Just beat it and it was good. Felt like a real slog at times, though.Infinitely better than spirit tracks. That game was dog shit.
They should just remake PH and ST as WW style games
>>737085315Watch how they get bundled up for Switch 2.
>>737085315I actually like PH more than WW, at least PH feels finished for what it is. Maybe that kind of reenvisioning would make for a straight up superior WW as well. I don't think there's any saving ST's train though.
>>737077674BOTW/TOTK.
>>737089672Wrong
>>737077036Another empty ocean and literally on rails?The dungeons for ST and SS were good though, sadly they gutted dungeons altogether afterwards
>>737091159Zoomer.
>>737091332ALBW and EoW have dungeons, they just do away with the convention of acquiring a specific dungeon item. Honestly, I think EoW handles that specific point better than ALBW does. Both absolutely shit on the Ubisoft Zeldas either way.
>>737092031I just don't like EOW's puzzles. It veers too much in the totw direction of "you have a million options but some options are so much more broken and universal than others" so you just end up using the same solution for every puzzle.
>>737092184Yeah, it still has that problem but it's at least a step back to where ALBW was thinking in general. I don't think any of these games are necessarily perfect, but I do think some throw the baby out with the bathwater.
>>737076857It's literally Ocarina of Time #5
>>737077758>literally the same thing except it's all different and stuffastounding assessment , my dear Watson
>>737079858>You could begin to REALLY notice it with Link's Awakening>It's not until Wind Waker that the problem of story gating via invisible walls and NPCs really starts to rear its headPeople that talk out of their ass, you faggots need to sit down until you have something wise to say. Have you even played Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time? the shit is like that already by then.
>>737092854>No interconnected overworld>No flexibility in dungeon orderIt's not. Besides, OoT is just aLttP2.0
>>737092854That would imply that Skyward Sword didn't do everything in its power to kill the concept of an overworld in Zelda, or to turn literally every meaningful interaction (including combat) into a dungeon puzzle. Skyward Sword was absolutely framed as a departure from tradition at the time of release, it's just that Breath of the Wild made it hold its beer in the years since.
>>737091558I'm a younger 'llenial unfortunately
>>737083474
>>737093043>>No flexibility in dungeon orderWho fucking caresMost people do them in order anyway. >Eh... Actually i did water temple firstSure you did, shithead. Now everyone else didn't.
>>737093002Ocarina's child dungeons are a bit more guided than ALttP's first 3 dungeons but not by much, and the adult dungeons are hardly less open to interpretation if you ignore Navi. Majora's Mask is more like Link's Awakening in that it's largely item gated, the story has nothing to do with how you progress through its overworld. Wind Waker will straight up have KoRL tell you that you can't go this way or that way because of reasons for the entire first third of the game, that's entirely different and no Zelda prior to it worked that way.
>>737093043>No interconnected overworldThe areas are like dungeons.>No flexibility in dungeon orderOh, just like Ocarina of Time #2, 3, 4It is, unless you want to go into the weeds of listing the games as ALTTP clones, sit down.
>>737093050>That would imply that Skyward Sword didn't do everything in its power to kill the concept of an overworld in ZeldaYou get to fly around the overworld and touch down wherever you want. That's not hardly "killing an overworld" just admit you don't like the sea in Wind Waker or the sky in Skyward Sword. It'll be fine.
>>737093189Again you're dodging the point, you cannot do MM dungeons out of order. OOT had already leaned too hard into cinematics for the franchise's own good.
>>737093373It's not missing the point, I said it's a slow inch towards that linearity and Majora's certainly fits that mold. You can still go into a dungeon, grab its item, and sometimes turn around to go explore a different region. It's not worth anyone's time to do so, but you can. A good example is the Ice Arrows in Great Bay, you can grab those, leave without finishing, and go fuck off to Ikana Canyon instead. No one will, but you can. Link's Awakening is when this sort of design begins to be applied, and the Oracles sit in a similar vein as well. It's Wind Waker that starts getting lazy with it and saying the player can't do this because...well, you just can't. It's a slow, steady decline.
>>737093298>touch down wherever you wantYou mean one of the handful of designated dropoff points that make the sky about as interactive as Metroid Prime 3's planet selection, but much slower.
>>737077594I got way more invested in the plot and mysteries of the Capcom Zeldas than anything Nintendo shat out
>>737079858The dungeons in the NES games literally have an order number explicitly displayed to you in game, and with Zelda 2 I'm pretty sure you basically had to do it in order unless you used a glitch or something to sequence break.Zelda has always been very linear, it was just a little easier to sequence break in older games.
>>737094127There's a guided order in every classic Zelda, it just gets harder and harder to ignore over time until they make it impossible. It takes some nine or ten games to get to "impossible".
>>737093619>You can still go into a dungeon, grab its item, and sometimes turn around to go explore a different region.That's just pseudo nonsense, creating more work for yourself. You would have to come back, and there's no reason to go doing that shit.
>>737093663Or any of Oot's loading zones into and out of an area/ or the warp songs that drop you on a platform.
>>737094127Even Botw has a guided order, as long as you are near a body of water in the Zora region there will be characters to tell you to head to the domain.
>>737095273I agree in a practical sense, but all the same you still can. There's nothing in the game that stops you from doing so. The games reach a point of restriction over time to where you can't even do that if you want to. The point in the grander scheme is to illustrate that the games were slowly getting more and more restrictive over time, well before Skyward Sword happened. My point is that a game like that didn't happen overnight.
>>737095672>but all the same you still can. There's nothing in the game that stops you from doing soIt's pointless postulating, as if having to come back out of a dungeon opens up any possibilities you don't get by just finishing it. This is all a reach around to act like "storygating" is the evil, and not rightfully "gating" or "item gating". Truth is everyone loves Botw, and they just want better designed puzzles that stump them is all.
>>737095843I'm a bit at a loss as to what you're taking umbrage with here. I'm not necessarily disagreeing here, I'm just looking at how these games get narrower and narrower over time. Wind Waker is the first time you see something like, as an example, being unable to do the Wind Temple before Earth Temple very specifically because Makar won't appear in his intended spot until you deal with Medli's shit. That, to me, is a noticeable difference from how the previous games worked. You can have the tools you need to reach Wind Temple before Earth Temple, but the necessary NPC isn't spawning in the right place so you literally cannot regardless of the tools in your possession. Previous Zeldas didn't do that, if you have the tools then it's fair game.
>>737096095>That, to me, is a noticeable difference from how the previous games worked.Not to me, because to me I had to do the dungeons in order in the previous games already. Because as I stated I'm not going to just up and leave a dungeon without finishing it, it would be a waste of time. It sounds to me that this "narrower" thing you're talking about is just the nail that sticks out gets nailed down. It just saves player's time to know that they cannot waste it in these remedial ways. That's what the previous Zelda games strove to do, "refine" what they were. Cinematic guided set pieces.
>>737096095>Previous Zeldas didn't do that, if you have the tools then it's fair game.Which is what Botw strove to do. They have given you tools ahead of time to do the very thing you are propping up, doing dungeons outside of an intended order.
>>737093081More like Minnish SLAPS
>>737093234>Oh, just like Ocarina of Time #2, 3, 4But it's not. aLttP and OoT are the last games that have a noticable flexability in their dungeon order, until ALBW pops out. And even with OoT it's reduced flexibility compared to aLttP (without considering obviously unintended sequence breaks like Bowless Water Temple or crossing the river of sand early). Point being that MM, WW, TP and SS are completely linear. >>737093619Well you can actually do Ikana without the Ice Arrows, but it clearly wasn't intended by the devs.>>737095273MM might be the one game where it does happen due to the time limit.
>>737096213You argue from a point of practicality and, outside of the sake of my argument, I respect that. The waters get muddied with that after ALttP though. For games like LA, MM and the Oracles I would say they adhere to this brand of refinement. The Oracles especially make it truly a pain in the ass to come and go from dungeons, you are absolutely intended to reach them, finish them, and never come back based on the world design. LA and MM do this, but not quite as aggressively. The latter two-thirds of OoT still functions more like ALttP, but with an annoying fairy buzzing in your ear every once in a while. But none of that is the same as some of the stuff WW pulls, especially given its seafaring concept. With that game specifically, why shouldn't I be able to explore the world like its Zelda 1 the moment I get a boat? It's silly, but instead it's the most openly restrictive Zelda to date in some critical junctures.
>>737096426Don't you need the Ice Arrows to freeze the Octoroks just to get into Ikana Canyon in the first place?https://youtu.be/5yEcvtqgq3s?si=tB0jhgmG89h7kYJQ&t=1029
>>737096213>That's what the previous Zelda games strove to do, "refine" what they were. Cinematic guided set pieces.Except that they're fundamentally meant to be adventure games. The inspiration is Miyamoto wandering around the forest in his childhood. While some level of linearity should be tolerated to allow for a stronger story and complex progression, there's a big difference between some and complete linearity, especially the arbitrary kind like de-spawning Makar.
>>737096582Standing at the very edge of the river lets you reach one of the hookshot trees. And Ice Arrows are used purely to get across that river, so once you've bypassed that sections they are a non issue. As I said, purely unintended, but it's nice to know.
>>737096656See, this is the kind of shit that disappears in Zelda as the 00s go on.
>>737076857Not really no.This game is structured like Mario Sunshine.
>>737096797It'd be better if it was. Having gates to the surface world in Skyloft would cut the pointless middleman that is the sky out. Basically the same effect, but more efficient and time-saving. Of course, the game could also actually use the goddamn sky for more than 2 and a half destinations and the occasional story event too.
>>737096924It's still structured like Sunshine, it's just that every level select is that one Yoshi boat ride that takes forever.
>>737096249more like midish Cap
>>737097049>it's just that every level select is that one Yoshi boat ride that takes forever
>>737096656>>737096793You can also bomb yourself over the fence to Great Bay. Doesn't mean that this stuff was intended, hence Nintendo removing that stuff as time went on.
>>737096426>But it's not. Oot #1 and proto Oot had more flexibilityOh, so Ocarina of Time #2, 3, 4 don't
>>737096438I agree WW is ass, and a randomizer fixes pretty much everything wrong with it. I'm excited for the next open world Zelda.
>>737076857this game is good and i never pretended it wasn't
>>737097183>You can also bomb yourself over the fence to Great Bay.That's based though, needing Epona to get to Great Bay sucks because fuck powder kegs, and while you need fire arrows in Great Bay Temple you don't need them for everything before it.
>>737096797Except no game is as god awful as Sunshit
>>737097323THIS FUCKING PARTHALF THE MISSIONS ARE SHIT BUT NOT AS SHIT AS THIS STEAMING PILE OF A SEQUENCEI AM MILDLY IRRITATEDCAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL
>>737097319Again with what I said about the nail that sticks out gets nailed down, and the games are cinematic guided set pieces. The developers made it a point to set you on a path that led to faster travel (epona & bunny hood) and an empty bottle, as you come up on the need to bottle and return seven Zora eggs.
>>737097385Mario Sunshine is THAT part: The Game. Rolling the watermelon across the dock, the pichinko board physics, shadow mario chases, multiple red coin objectives per level, the camera gets stuck on things, Mario has zero acceleration, the hotel level starts you outside on each shine requiring you to go inside, and lava boat has a companion in the poison lilly level, I could go on and on because the game is just so dog shit.
>>737097393>and the games are cinematic guided set piecesBy the time you get to Twilight Princess, yes. And given that the 3D games increasingly positioned themselves as these sort of guided set pieces, that perhaps makes that game the most honest of the 3D Zeldas in terms of intent. That all said, compared to the earliest games you can argue that the plot was lost in pursuing this, and given the general response to Skyward Sword it wasn't the right direction to take Zelda. I don't love Breath of the Wild's direction either, but at least it's trying to operate in the spirit of adventure like those earlier games.
>>737097481I always say that Sunshine's not so bad if you beeline to the credits screen, but God help anyone trying to 100% it. Blue coins are enough of a deterrent on that point alone.
>>737097592>but at least it's trying to operate in the spirit of adventure like those earlier games.While also throwing out every structural element of those earlier games.
>>737077674Zelda 2
>>737097232Yes, and were much better games for it.
>>737097703No, Zelda 2 is a fine game. You are a bad player.
>>737097592botw is so good, real zelda
>>737097701Correct. I did say I didn't love it.
>>737093234I gave skyward sword an honest try. I really did. I think i got more than halfway thru (finished Sandship) before having to admit the game was just not enjoyable.At no point in the game are you ever allowed to do anything at all except what the story wants you to do. It feels like one of those linear ps2 action adventure type games. There is basically zero room for curiosity or exploration. The "overworld" areas are indeed like dungeons which is not a good thing. The core of zelda is supposed to be explore -> dungeon -> explore -> dungeon. This sense of pacing is what keeps the experience fresh and engaging. Skyward sword is dungeon -> dungeon -> dungeon -> dungeon, and it just gets old, how there's always exactly 1 thing to do next and its really obvious. The closest it gets to letting you just explore is when it locks you in a small overworld area and says "find 3 things to continue." The actual sky which takes the place of an overworld doesnt even count, there's nothing going on except whatever chests it marked on the map and theres nothing to do except point link in a direction and wait 5 minutes.
>>737098337>It feels like one of those linear ps2 action adventure type gamesIt's basically a high budget instance of that, yes.
>>737098337It and BotW are two sides of the coin. SS is pure dungeon grind linear cinematic set pieces, BotW is pure freedom at the cost progression and coherence. Pic related broke Aonuma lol, but as point out in this thread TP was already failing to live up to the aLttP/OoT formula.
>>737098440That score was so dumb, because TP is better OOT, and OOT is sitting at 99. I think games should be rerated yearly so we can see that OOT in 2026 is a 7, might humble some people.
>>737098337>At no point in the game are you ever allowed to do anything at all except what the story wants you to do.and you want to do something other than "the story" because?This just reads like "I went into Call of Duty and it didn't deliver Borderlands".
>>737098337>explore -> dungeon -> explore -> dungeonThat was my experience with SS though. Dropped into an area, explore and complete "the dungeon" which opens the dungeon, and you're free to explore, and to come back later and explore. It does seem like you want to wander around doing whatever the fuck, and I wager for some baffling reason you find Botw & Totk unappealing.
>>737098440>It and BotW are two sides of the coin100%. Both games are equally flawed in that they swing too hard in one direction over the other.>TP was already failing to live up to the aLttP/OoT formula.Yes and no. TP maintains a surface familiarity to ALttP, it "looks the part" but really isn't the same kind of game, it's much more guided by its narrative. That said, it is a strong refinement of what OoT tried to do beyond merely being "ALttP but in 3D", which is to say upping the ante in terms of presentation and setpiece construction. If OoT opened the floodgates for the series to begin walking that path then TP is arguably where it was perfected. It's flawed as an adventure game, but as a string of cinematic setpiece moments it is VERY competently made while not going as overboard as SS did.
>>737098583Presumably because he wanted to play a Zelda game. Zelda games weren't heavily story driven prior to WW, even the N64 games have their stories at arm's length. The back end of OoT is basically "get all the medallions, we don't care how" for most of it, and MM's overarching narrative almost entirely takes a back seat to the NPC quest interactions.
>>737098548>weaker story>much worse pacing>dungeons aren't any better and a far more formulaic>purely linear gameIt's not better than OoT though. It does some things better for sure, but frankly that 8.8 was deserved.
>>737077674C D IIIIIIIIIIIII
>>737098936No one actually counts those. They're a meme to us and a mistake to be swept under the rug to Nintendo.
>>737098661What you do when you get dropped into an area isnt exploring. Its basically just a linear path. Enemies and puzzles are along the path but there is basically only 1 thing to ever do. In every other zelda game you have stuff like exploring the map, information gathering from npcs, pursuing side quests, etc.Lets compare the fire areas from zelda OOT and skyward sword.In OOT you leave kokiri forest and the owl tells you your next goal is meeting princess zelda in the castle. Along the way there you can spend some time at lon lon ranch or hyrule castle town for bottles, heart pieces, sidequests, minigames, etc. You go thru the castle stealth section (waking up talon in the process with a funny think-outside-the-box puzzle), meet zelda, learn zelda's lullaby, she sends you to find the other spiritual stone at kakariko. You leave hyrule castle and head across the overworld to kakariko where there is more side stuff to do like getting the bottle from the cucco lady if you want. Eventually you find the path to the mountain and make your way up. In goron village theres more npcs and side content to do if you want but the main goal is getting the spiritual stone. Its not there so you ask npcs and find that darunia is the person to talk to. First you have to figure out how to get in and then he's depressed so he doesnt want to help. From information gathering you learn he wants to dance to some forest music and somewhere in goron city, you find a little shortcut to kokiri forest. You make your way through the lost woods (learning why and how to do so by gathering infromation from kokiri npcs and the owl), to the sacred forest meadow. At the end saria teaches you saria's song, then back to darunia to cheer him up and get the power bracelet or whatever to pick up bomb flowers. You learn the spiritual stone is inside dodongos cavern and that you can blow it up so you do so and walk in to start the dungeon.(cont'd in next post)
>>737099590In skyward sword after beating the forest temple, you get a huge beam of light pointing you to the fire area. You go there directly and get dropped down a good ways away from the temple. It is one single linear path that takes maybe an hour or so. At no point is it ever possible to wonder what you're supposed to do because there are only ever 2 directions to go: forward and backward. At no point do you ever need to gather information from npcs and synthesize that info to figure out what to do. There are several combat encounters and puzzles along the way that act as a tutorial for bomb flowers and the digging mitts. You just continue along the completely linear path, fighting monsters and doing puzzles, until the path just eventually ends and you are at the fire temple.The fact that you dont recognize this means your opinion is invalid.
>>737093189>Ocarina's child dungeons are a bit more guided than ALttP's first 3 dungeons but not by much, and the adult dungeons are hardly less open to interpretation if you ignore Navi.I just ran Spirit and Shadow in the past couple hours alongside the BIggoron Sword quest, and honestly for the hardest pre-final dungeons of the bunch, they're so linear it hurts. You either take a wrong door into something you can mess with and then double back, or you bomb one wall you overlooked before and after that it's pretty much one or two correct rooms to head towards. I don't play these games super frequently but there isn't really any freedom-freedom, besides the occasional side room that mostly exists to drop rupees/refills. I'd go so far as to say without LTTP's overworld design of secrets every other square, OoT is pretty damn barren in general and reliant on the dungeons and repeat trips to the areas to bulk out your experience.Its been a long while since I played LTTP, but I remember the puzzles and dungeon design there at least expecting a bit more out of you. OoT is only easy to me because I grew up with it, but it really is the spinoff/handheld games that experimented a lot more with complex puzzles and dungeon layouts whereas the main games got more and more streamlined because of the "anybody's first Zelda" mentality.
>>737080383You're right, but nintendo is always dead last on the bandwagonI expect to see a metroid extraction shooter about 5 to 10 years from now
