#but i'm annoyed that the story in BOTW was so well done and in TOTK they just sort of said 'yeah we got it don't worry'

[arkon-z]

TOTK is a good game and it's got a good story to boot. But the thing is, that story doesn't connect very well to BOTW. It really does read like a sequel fic of someone who loved the source material but really wanted to gush about how awesome the Zonai were. I'm not a game dev or writer, so maybe this is just my inexperience showing, but with two delays, you'd think they'd have enough time to polish up the story.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

i know many have said this but your totk thought pieces are SO cathartic to read, it puts my grievances into words as i found the story to be all vibes and no substance. i'm really curious to hear your opinion on the yiga in totk, as unlike ganondorf they actually have fleshed out motives. i'm happy with their goofy team rocket portrayal but disappointed with their absence in the plot. at times it felt like they only existed for zonai schematics and depths tutorial advice.

Heyy!! Thank you so much, I am very glad to read this. It's always good to be reminded that there is a use for all this virtual ink despite the growing complaints. At the same time, I know many people who were really disappointed who almost felt like they were going crazy in the never-ending wave of praise, and... Yea. Like the game is enormously good in many ways, but I don't think it's bad to point out that there is massive room for improvement still; that way, the next game can be even better! I'm also not sure why people think it's a lost fight by default, like Nintendo will NEVER improve and NEVER change, even though they clearly listened to the complaints about the lack of immediacy, the weapon durability system, the dungeons... I even think they listened for the story, even though I feel very little love for what they prioritized and how it was done and, to be a little ungenerous and not 100% fair, I think a lot of people conflate narration and setpieces --but it apparently worked for the majority, so?? They did improve. It's only a lost cause if people are not vocal and already call themselves perfectly content with what already exists (which, for people who are, I guess is fine --but I'm not fine with this, so I am Annoying on the Internets). I guess that's how I justify the time spent writing about it? Who knows. Anyway! Thanks!

The Yiga Clan was so fun! Everytime they showed up I was so delighted by their shenanigans and the energy and the life and conflict they bring to the table inherently. I suppose they could have been integrated better (but like, nobody was well integrated in my opinion, and they were pretty low in my list of priority of "good integration" I suppose, since they were tied to the Sheikah and therefore a more relevant presence in BotW anyway), but I also kind of love that they have all of this secret content you only unlock by investing in their presence in Hyrule, which isn't at all that obvious to stumble upon for the unassuming player. The Yigas were one of the high points of the game for me, even though we do lose some of their original motivation (which was never super present in BotW either tbh), and we continue having this problem of no meaningful opposition to Hyrule's supremacy, but. The silliness was a breath of fresh air and Kohga and his onesided courtship of Ganondorf that we keep on rudely interrupting was really Something, and I had a great time making his life worse and also probably saving his life in the long run in a roundabout way Kohga baby no you Can't Fix the Demon King he won't magically become different and special for you no matter how many mechas you build him I'm sorry :((

[rosezemlya]

TotK impressions

Officially finished the game! Thoughts under the cut. Potentially light spoilers.

Mechanics fun, visuals beautiful, everything related to the story... weak.

If I split the story into two parts - part one being the ideas and maybe like a bulleted list of events, and part two being the actual "writing", like dialgoue and how the world reacts / interacts with the story: Part one (ideas), good. A lot of promise. Cool thoughts / interactions / images potential. Neat additions to existing lore (usual mixed of bag of confusing additions to, but welcome to Zelda, I guess). Plenty of opportunities for interesting character development or emotional growth or world building.

But the second part (execution) is where it all kind of falls down for me. In the first BotW, the flashbacks ADDED to the story, they didn't repeat each other, they interacted additively or multiplicatively with each other, but they could exist on their own. They tended to define or elaborate on character and relationship dynamics, with only light touches on plot points, which you were mostly getting through the modern-day interactions. I think that's probably most of how it didn't wind up confusing no matter what order you found them in.

I found in TotK the flashbacks were repetitive as Hell and often confusing. At first I thought maybe I was just finding them in a bad order, but then I found them all and I was like, oh, no, it wasn't the order. They just were trying to tell a certain kind of story with a vehicle that's either ill-suited or else they didn't know how to use it properly. I was so confused so often and there were so many things I just had to accept because it was clear the game was never going to offer anything more on the subject.

There was very little character development. I think I was supposed to care about Mineru waaaaaaaay more than I did by the end. This is the closest I've come to liking a Rauru in a Zelda game, and I actually think I could get there with this one, except there was a weird kind of vibe that left me feeling like the was stealing attention/thunder/story from Zelda that made me low key awkward, even when he was being cool.

The tone shifts in the flashbacks were wild, and there was little to no build-up to those shifts. There didn't feel like there was any real emotional continuity or arc between them, even though they had an order, and were relaying a linear narrative.

The world in general utterly failed to acknowledge ANYTHING I had done or knowledge I had at any point, and that significantly contributed to my confusion. I knew where Zelda was and what was going on with the stories about where she was waaaaaaaaaay before I got to the end of those questlines. So why did the world act like I didn't? I had the Master Sword and the world kept pretending I didn't yet.

I am EXTREMELY confused about how this game fits into the official timeline. With the note for those who are somehow here and yet not aware of my general position about the timeline, which is that I don't care about it and don't consider it much overall. But they made an official timeline, and there's supposed to be some sort of internal logic to stuff based on it. So why did this game feel SO MUCH like a complete retcon replacement of OOT? Is it supposed to be? Because it felt like it. Except it can't be. But it kind of has to be? But it's not. But I think it's meant to be? I'm confused.

Where'd the Divine Beasts go? Where'd the Sheikah tech stuff go? Why do people who I definitely knew very well in BotW not know who I am?

Why are the original sages wearing masks all the time and they don't get to be actual characters or people?

I just have a lot of questions and I'm honestly annoyed at the waste of a Zelda story with such good bones.

[veebs-hates-video-games]

And now the Switch counterpart for the previous post, this time with all the Switch games I've started playing in the past five years but haven't finished but also am at least pretending I'll get back to eventually.

Hades is one I did technically finish, but only the main story the one time. I do want to play more and get some more of more people's stories and unlock some more stuff, but I just keep having other stuff to do. Great game though, and I'm looking forward to the sequel.

Final Fantasy 12 is one I keep going back to every once in a while. I do genuinely like a lot of stuff about it, but I inevitably run into something really annoying about it too every several hours and then take a break for a few months or a year. I do plan to finish it eventually though, and I'm slowly getting closer.

Bayonetta 2 is a lot better than the first game, which had some great ideas but just felt to me like it wasn't quite done figuring out what to do with them. I stopped like halfway through because reasons and haven't picked it up again yet at least partly because I feel like it would benefit from being on the TV instead of handheld, but I can't see the TV well enough.

Theatrhythm Final Bar Line is another one with the TV problem. I could play it just fine handheld, but the music in it deserves better than the built-in speakers, and the headphone jack is just awful quality. Unfortunately I can't see the TV and don't have my little audio box I run the Switch through so I can use my headphones with it while it's docked.

Tears of the Kingdom is also another TV victim. It's pretty low priority for me to get back to because I really don't love the direction they've gone with BotW and TotK, but it at least partially solves a lot of the problems I had with BotW so I've enjoyed it more. It's completely unplayable handheld for me though because the control setup is bad with a pro controller and literally unusable on the joycons, so it's on hold indefinitely until I can do something about that.

Dragon Quest 11 is so painfully slow replaying the first dozen hours that I already did in the demo on my computer a few years ago, and it makes it hard to work up the motivation to push through it. A lot of stuff about it is great though, and I really enjoyed this stuff the first time through, so I'll deal with it eventually. Probably.

GrimGrimoire OnceMore (or GRiMgRiMoiRe OnCeMoRe if the logo is anything to go by) is something I wanted to finish before Unicorn Overlord comes out, but that's almost definitely not happening. I got sidetracked and stopped playing it for a few months and totally forgot how everything works, and it's really not very forgiving of that. We'll see if I can remember how to video games one of these days.

Disco Elysium does so many things so well even though it's really not my usual kind of thing. I just haven't felt like my brain is in the right place for it lately.

Baten Kaitos is still fun 20 years later. I've been taking a break though because my ADHD brain decided it was time to do something else after like the first dozen hours or so. I'm in no rush with it because I've already played it before forever ago, so it'll get there when it gets there.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land has kind of made me like it less as it goes on. Like it's still plenty of fun, I just kept finding more little annoyances toward the end and lost my momentum. I've finished the main story and rolled the credits and everything, but I only made it partway through the postgame stuff before needing a break.

Jack Jeanne I'm actually actively working on, or was as of a day or two ago. I may or may not need a break because it takes forever to go through all the different routes, and after doing the neutral route first I don't like the individual character ones quite as much. That first time through that first route was my favorite thing so far this year though.

Egglia Rebirth is one of those things I go back to for a few hours a couple times a year. I still really like a lot of things about it, but it gets a little grindy and repetitive trying to do too much at once, and my brain is not suited to coming back to games for like half an hour or an hour once a day for days or weeks in a row. I need to do like 12 hours straight in a single sitting and then not touch it again for six months, which is really not the ideal way to play this.

Fire Emblem Warriors is also another few hours every few months game. I have an overly complex spreadsheet that I built off one of the existing ones online but added a bunch of stuff to it and enhanced it, and slowly checking stuff off is satisfying. I'm a good chunk of the way through history mode, but it'll take approximately forever to finish everything if I ever do.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is also a few hours every few months between other games. I already finished it a while ago and am just going through the story again on NG+. I still really like the characters and story, but this experience is quickly making the combat system become possibly my least favorite in the entire series, when before I felt like every game got better than the previous one.

The House in Fata Morgana I guess can be included too. I finished the actual main story last year and it was great, but I'm still pretending I'll try to get through the extra side stories and stuff one of these days. We'll see, I guess.

Between these lists in these two posts I'm at least theoretically in the middle of playing like 30 games. Why yes, I do have ADHD and a variety of other weird things going on in my brain. How did you guess?

[crystalelemental]

Would you recommend ScarVio for someone who stopped playing around Sun and Moon? I was going to skip it due to bare endgame and looking like a game made in crunch time, but the DLC sounding very promising and fun (And there is a discount going on).

No.

...okay, I want to just leave it at that, but I literally can't shut up so let me explain.

If you are interested in Scarlet and Violet, I think there are a few questions that need to be answered.

First: Why did you stop at SuMo?  I feel like this is the biggest question, because Gen 7 is smack in the middle of the GarbAge of the series, and a lot of things did not improve from that era.  Specifically, a lot of people in that era started to hit the "these games are to easy" assessment, due to EXP Share being a thing, and the general backpedaling of well-designed challenges.  ScarVio is possibly the worst offender of "Too easy" the series has.  It's so bad that I think many of the criticisms levied against specific fights as being "too easy" are mis-attributed to things like poor team design, when the real problem is it's piss-easy to accidentally over-level by like 20 levels and shit-stomp the entire game. But, another issue is the constant start and stop for story beats and being push through plot sequences with literally no deviation in path. ScarVi is actually better about this than I want to give credit for. You can do things in any order you want, and because the specific events are highlighted, very little prevents you from playing for hours just running around catching things or battling trainers. The caveat being, none of these challenges scale based on what you've already done, and the indication of intended order isn't clear until you've beaten things, with late and early gym levels being really close together in a way that makes it really, really easy to be over-prepared.

Second: How well do you tolerate visual glitches and poor performance?  This is one that broke a friend of mine, he cannot play this game because it agitates him so much.  And by these issues, I mean not just things won't render, I mean the screen will be like a strobe lighting effect as shadows glitch in and out of reality in the cliffs, the game will absolutely chug and jutter anywhere near a body of water, etc.  I didn't have issues that actually impeded gameplay, but performance is BAD. I'll fully admit this isn't something that bothers me as bad as most. I think it's inexcusable for a company as well off as Pokemon Company to not produce something to quality, but I'm personally more annoyed about the lack of good design for major battles or proper level scaling.

Third: How do you like open-world?  Are you a BotW/TotK fan?  If so, I don't get it, but maybe this is your speed.  But if you look at open-world like man, I'm sinking a ton of time into this to not even get that far, and a lot of these regions feel kind of exactly the same?  That's the vibe of the game.  I do think Pokemon handles it a little better than something like modern Zelda, if only due to greater variety in creatures you encounter, but Dexit did limit how much variety we're actually dealing with, so...

Fourth, and perhaps most significantly: What have you heard from the DLC that makes it sound good?  If it's story content, you are correct!  The story and characters in this game are pretty good for Pokemon. If it's gameplay related, find better friends/news sources, because it's just the same problems as the main game.

I cannot in good conscience recommend ScarVi, because realistically, the game itself isn't enjoyable. While I generally push for good story and character, games exist so you play the game, and if playing the game is mostly wandering aimlessly trying to find trainers to fight to get a little reward, just to wind up being over-leveled for the actual boss encounters, or god forbid, trying to do the god-awful raids? It's not worth it, and that's literally all there is to do post-game. Even with the DLC, you finish the DLC and guess what! Raids are all you have left. "But what about the school tournament you can do again?" Incredibly boring, because everything is still super low level and unthreatening. "What about the super battle fights in the DLC?" They're definitely tougher, and this game at least gives you the tools you need to perfectly EV train Pokemon unlike BDSP, but if you know how to do that stuff they're not that hard, and if you don't, don't worry, you're probably still over-leveled and it'll take like 15 minutes to beat them all once you look up where they are, because let me tell you, trying to hunt things down in big open world map sucks shit and no one should do it.

The only good in the game is story and character, and not all of the story is really worth it. I'd personally argue the majority of it would be entirely skippable barring like one or two pieces of background for the rivals to contextualize The Way Home, which is the good part. If that's what you're after, just watch someone play it on youtube. It'll take an hour or so. But I wouldn't encourage someone to waste this kind of money, even on whatever discount they're offering, for such a glitched-out disaster of a fairly mediocre game experience, just because some of the story stuff seems fun.