(Man, I need to remember to update this thing.)
So. Twilight Princess.
For many reasons, I found this game unimpressive enough that I stopped playing it shortly after picking up the first mask, or shadow, or whatever those things Midna's telling me to collect are. Fused shadows? The gorons were the breaking point (they seem superfluous, being newcomers to the franchise that just kept showing up again and again after their introduction), but really, it just felt done. I liked Wind Waker. Wind Waker was full of things no Zelda game has done before, amongst them the end of Hyrule. The ending impressed me a lot, not just because Badass Pirate Zelda was a participant in the boss fight but because the king of Hyrule decided it'd be egotism to try and bring his kingdom back at the expense of the folk above and their not-very-Hyrule world. More and more I've become fond of stories that end, and Wind Waker works well as the last of all Zelda stories. Seeing the series return to ground thoroughly covered years ago was depressing.
After I put down Twilight Princess I picked up the original NES The Legend of Zelda on Wii Marketplace, and it made me realize Shadow of the Colossus is the best Zelda game I've played in years. Hear me out: large, empty landscape to explore; horse; kid in green with sword. Obviously it's not actually Zelda, but it's a lot closer to the sort of Zelda game I want to be playing than anything Nintendo's doing, and in a few ways that appeal to me, it's more faithful to the original Legend of Zelda than any of the NPC-rich sequels. Miyamoto famously doesn't care about story, but if your game is going to have minimal story then I'd rather play through a good story minimalistically told than have to deal with a bunch of cruft optimized for exposition-laden storytelling without any story that makes wading through the cruft worthwhile.
I figure this post about marks the point at which I should give Twilight Princess another go, so maybe I'll have to eat a bunch of crow in a big "I was totally wrong and should have stuck with it for longer!" post next week or month or whatever.
The one thing I'm looking forward to is more Midna. There's something appealing about taking the annoying quest-giving NPC who's always telling you what to do and making her fully cognizant of how annoying and bossy she is, so she can revel in it. But then, I don't identify strongly enough with Link to feel anything more than amusement at his misfortune.
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6 comments:
get out while you still can. i followed the same thought process to the end of the game, waiting for it to stop being 1) stupid 2) boring 3) redundant. it never happens. nothing in that game is ever capitalized on. i think a big problem is that the amount of gadgets you collect would require a much bigger game to fully exploit each one's possibilities.
Question. I loved wind waker instantly when i played it a few minutes at a friend, but i haven't really played any Zelda to its end, because i used to think they were inferior to the Final Fantasy series, but is it w good idea to begin with Wind Waker if you haven't played zelda before?
Also, non-existant game reviewing credentials aside, is Final Fantasy 12 good? I haven't really decided yet, all i know is i like the fighting, but not so much the story.
I HATE all those side stories. They're one of the main reasons I never play RPG's. That and the fighting is always boring.
But, seriously, I automatically skip dialog all the time in video games because I assume it's going to be long winded and unimportant. It messes me up when I actually start playing a good game. (and I get in trouble if I accidentally skip past anything the king of the cosmos says.)
You're high!
Twilight princess is amazing (even though there's nothing left to do after you finish the main storyline), also I haven't played ocarina so what do I know? All the boating in wind waker was gratuitous, however better looking than twilight.
Goron's first appaeared in Ocarina of Time on the N64, and later in Majora's Mask, the Gameboy Oracle of Season/Ages, Four Swords, Minnish Cap and Phantom Hourglass. Hardly newcomers to the franchise.
Anything that first appeared after Link to the Past is a newcomer to the series. Link to the Past and Zelda games before it are the old Zelda games; Ocarina of Time and anything after it are the new Zelda games.
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