Legend of Zelda thread - Lorefags GTFO!

I mean, there were all the many different puzzles in the world and shrines,
If I could upload an image right now it'd be something funny to express my disdain for shrines.

the multiple ways to approach each enemy encounters
You're going to just do whatever is most effective unless you're purposefully fucking around. I remember early on there was a boulder set up to show me how to use physics to crush some goblins. I was like okay, but I can kill them just fine with my fragile shitty weapons. In fact, I think I might have just killed them before I noticed it, I can't remember. I just know I scoffed at their intentions, like they're really telegraphing this like I should care? This is their game design?

how the Guardians require entirely different tactics from Bokoblins and vice-versa,
I sure hope different enemies require different tactics in a video game. Everything after Pong nailed that concept dude.

all the landmarks and different biomes that the world had
It was nice but it all felt samey to me and the areas didn't seem to flow naturally. That early ice area is so random. Like you're in a nice grassy area, and there's just this chunk of intolerable instakill frozen hell up here on the starting area? Okay... Who designed this map? It felt auto generated.

more things to find such as the giant mazes, Eventide Island, the dragons, the towns, challenges that lead to shrines, the memory flashbacks, new outfits, the Great Fairies, etc. Plus by the end, I no longer had any problems with the weapon system.
I didn't play far enough to find a Dragon or town. Everywhere I explored was ruins with not an NPC in sight, and huge barren areas with the same enemies and only finding more shitty weapons and seeds. I couldn't understand what the point of continuing was, I figured it was to find Shrines in this dead wasteland, which I immediately grew tired of after the second one once I saw they were copy pasted mini nothings.

And for the record, I found what music there was in BOTW to be very fitting to the atmosphere that it was going for.
Me too because I don't remember any of it, just like I don't remember any actual content the game had.
 
No need to be a party pooper here
The "no fun" brigade is trying hard today though. Let's give them a round of applause for their efforts and screenshot their bullshittery.
I just can't imagine being such a consoomer that any kind of dissent jeopardizes my excitement for a product that isn't even on the market yet.

This is why Game Freak can release games that run at single digit FPS with bugs that corrupt saves.
 
Minish Cap is amazing. I really liked having a new antagonist even if he wasn't that great.
Vaati was cool because he showed up in a bunch of different games before Minish Cap released. If you were a Zelda fan at the time, it was really awesome to see his origin story. His design is also great. Black eyeball monster never misses,

1200px-FS_Vaati_Artwork.png
 
It was nice but it all felt samey to me and the areas didn't seem to flow naturally. That early ice area is so random. Like you're in a nice grassy area, and there's just this chunk of intolerable instakill frozen hell up here on the starting area? Okay... Who designed this map? It felt auto generated.
This is something Xenoblade X did much better (I mention that because that game's world was the reason Nintendo got Monolith to do the world design for BotW). The game had 3 distinct progression points, on foot, in skell, in flying skell. The map was designed so that you can only access a limited area on foot, and then later in the game when you get a skell a larger chunk is accessible, but its still limited, finally you get the flight module at the end of the game and the entire world is accessible. BotW doesn't have this multiple layer exploration thing, because it gives you the paraglider and the ability to climb anything right off the bat, there is no progression to the exploration of the world. You can access everything as soon as you leave the plateau.
 
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This is something Xenoblade X did much better (I mention that because that game's world was the reason Nintendo got Monolith to do the world design for BotW). The game had 3 distinct progression points, on foot, in skell, in flying skell. The map was designed so that you can only access a limited area on foot, and then later in the game when you get a skell a larger chunk is accessible, but its still limited, finally you get the flight module at the end of the game and the entire world is accessible. BotW doesn't have this multiple layer exploration thing, because it gives you the paraglider and the ability to climb anything right off the bat, there is no progression to the exploration of the world. You can access everything as soon as you leave the plateau.
Hey any advice for getting into the Xenoblade series? Where do I start and what should I skip?
 
Hey any advice for getting into the Xenoblade series? Where do I start and what should I skip?
Start at the beginning IMO.
The order in which they came out is a pretty good way to go about it. Besides X, everything is on Switch so it should be easy enough.

1, 2, and 3 are not directly related to each other but playing them in order does add a bit to the experience.
 
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Hey any advice for getting into the Xenoblade series? Where do I start and what should I skip?
I am what would be called a Xeno-Boomer, so my reccomendations are biased against the new weeb versions of the games.

Xeno is not just Xenoblade, it goes back to a PS1 JRPG called Xenogears, the game ran out of time and was released with an unfinished second disc. There was an entire story plan for 6 games, the story outline of the first 5 games was released in a book called Xenogears Perfect Works (there is a translation available online, read it after playing Gears). Square screwed over Xenogears 2, instead using the funds for their shitty final fantasy CGI movie, so the Xenogears team left Square to found Monolith Soft, they then made the Xenosaga series, which was planned to tell the entire 6 game story, but due to poor sales of Xenosaga 2, was cut to only 3 games. Nintendo bought monolith after Xenosaga 3.

Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii is not technically part of the 'xeno' series, it was originally going to just be called 'Monado: Beginning of the World', but Iwata said that the themes of the story were similar enough to the Xeno series, so he made them call it Xenoblade. It's important to remember that Xenoblade 1 was always a standalone title, they later retconned story changes from Xenoblade 2 they made to forcefully adapt it into telling the Perfect Works story in the Switch remaster, its just some tiny things, visual only, but I'm a purist so it bothers me.

Xenoblade X was announced for the Wii U and is completely disconnected from Xenoblade 1 other than sharing the Nopon characters, and some references or easter eggs. Xenoblade X was made with a lot of the original staff that worked on Xenogears, specifically the original character designer who worked on Gears and Saga. Xenoblade X plays like Xenoblade 1 but refined and taken to its logical extreme. It's absolutely a hardcore JRPG, where Xenoblade 1 is pretty easy and you never really need to fully learn the systems, Xenoblade X requires you to understand its systems or else you can hit a wall and not be able to progress. Xenoblade X seems to be their attempt to return to trying to tell the Perfect Works story, but due to the game being on Wii U, and Nintendo making them add online features (which meant they had to scrap the story they had written in order to accommodate custom player characters and stuff), the game didn't do very well. It's personally my favorite in the 'Blade' series, it has the strongest gameplay.

Xenoblade 2 was started development at the same time as X, it's a soft sequel to 1, you don't need to play 1 to play 2, but its probably a good idea. Gameplay is much more simplified compared to X, a lot of interesting systems were cut or streamlined down. It's a more casual game. I'm not a fan of the artstyle change, and I personally don't like the story. But its still a good game. My issue with it is that it brought in the Persona fans to the fanbase, the ones that care more about shipping characters and jerking off to Pyra than the actual game. Regarding gameplay, its much slower than XC1 or XCX, based more on attack canceling and combo building. I found it really easy, but perhaps that's because I spent so much time playing XCX. The story does drag a little bit, but thats because Nintendo took most of the staff to work on BotW, a lot of the game was outsourced, and you can see that in the Blade characters, they are all done by different artists so the style completely contrasts.

Xenoblade DE is the remaster of the first game on the Wii. Personally I'm not a very big fan of the character artstyle change, but that is the new artstyle they are keeping going forward, nothing I can do about it. The game is mostly unchanged, other than the before mentioned visual retcons. They re-recorded some music, its preferential, but if you are playing the Switch version first instead of the wii version I always reccomend people use the original soundtracks. Other than that they changed the UI to make it in line with 2. There is a post game epilogue added, which just wraps on some character threads, entirely optional but its pretty good.

Xenoblade 3 I think has the best story, I didn't like it at first, but after replaying Gears and sitting on it I'm coming to appreciate it more. 3 is the literal mix of 1 and 2, the world, gameplay and characters are from the respective entry. Gameplay is a blend between the faster style of XC1 and the slower combo of XC2, its still too slow for my taste (again, I played a LOT of XCX) and it struggles from battles just taking a long time due to having 6 active characters in a battle, so they output less damage per character. 3 has a LOT of references to Gears, the plot is pretty much ripped from a plotline in Gears even, the main character is named after Project Noah, the codename for Xenogears, he even looks like Fei.

I never finished Torna, the DLC/Expansion story for Xenoblade 2, its a prequel that goes over story events that get covered in the story of 2, and you already know the ending if you played 2. I didn't like 2 enough for me to really even get into the backstory or care enough about the gameplay to really enjoy it. It's just more world building for 2 pretty much.

As for playing the series. I reccomend you at least play Xenogears on the ps1, before or after you play the Xenoblade games. Its a rough game, but its the foundation of the series, and has the best story of them all. Absolutely play Xenoblade X though, it runs really well in Cemu these days, and you can even use some graphics packs to boost FPS to 60+ and access online content alone. Xenoblade X still has the best gameplay in the series (the ENTIRE xeno series) and its just a good time to play. The main storyline is pretty weak, but the core of the game is in the sidequests, characters, worldbuilding and gameplay.

For playing the numbered games, I always recommend people play the Wii version of Xenoblade 1, but if that's not possible for you, the remaster is fine. You can play 1 or 2 in any order, but you need to play both for 3 to truly shine.
 
Hey any advice for getting into the Xenoblade series? Where do I start and what should I skip?
As someone who generally dislikes JRPGs and anime shit, Xenoblade Chronicles 1 is a fantastic game. X was fun too, but mostly just because the world and art direction is amazing. 2 was a massive disappointment and soured me on the entire series. I refuse to play 3 because I hated 2 so much.
 
Back to the topic at hand, I honestly found that the ideal way to combat the enemies wasn't always just using
weapons all the time. Often, experimenting with the physics and the environment, sniping from afar, dropping rocks or other heavy objects, or using elemental attacks was a far more effective way than just swinging your sword willy-nilly, so I have to disagree on the notion that just using the weapons was the most effective and fine solution most of the time.

I won't comment on SSJ not playing all that far in though.
I just can't imagine being such a consoomer that any kind of dissent jeopardizes my excitement for a product that isn't even on the market yet.

This is why Game Freak can release games that run at single digit FPS with bugs that corrupt saves.
Game Freak isn't making this game though, so I doubt that any major bugs will be present in TOTK.

For me at least, there hasn't really been any major warning signs that I saw in the final trailer for me to be too worried. But I guess I can understand why, if you weren't the biggest fan of BOTW, this one won't seem all that enthralling.
 
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