#have access to a switch and play botw (i've been playing the game a lot recently)

[justworthlessreblogs]

important question for my followers and the precure fandom as a whole: who do you think the kirakira cures (+ rio and bibury) would main in smash bros

[blueskittlesart]

how do u play zelda games... or are u just very familiar w the lore without having played all of them? i only have a switch and have played botw and totk it's the only console i've ever had and i'd like to play more games like ocarina of time and wind waker and majoras mask but idk how to access them and also. expensive 😭

i've played every game I talk about on here! I try not to talk about ones i havent played bc i don't have a full understanding of them lol. for me it's been about 10 years since I started playing zelda games so I've had some time to get this many under my belt but I can definitely recommend some good games & methods for new players!

since you said you only have a switch, i'll start with legal ways to get older zelda games on the switch. many of these will be expensive and arent actually the method i recommend to play them but. for the sake of being thorough. im gonna mention them.

skyward sword HD remake (highly recommend!!) this game would probably be a pretty good starting point after botw and the remake is notably easier to play than the original. it is $60 tho when the original game was $30. so

NES and SNES virtual consoles which are free with a nintendo online subscription have the original zelda, zelda II, and a link to the past on them. as a new player i wouldnt SUPER recommend any of these but alttp is definitely worth it if you DO end up liking some of the more modern games in the series.

the dreaded n64 virtual console has oot on it but im just straight up gonna tell you not to buy that shit. oot is a must play but there are millions of better ways to play it

the fucking $60 links awakening remaster. don't buy this

the way I personally played most of my games is either via console or hacked console. if you're willing to invest in a secondhand wii to hack you can emulate basically any console that came before it, including the n64 for oot and the gamecube for wind waker. if you're willing to invest in OR you have an old 3ds lying around (preferably that hasnt been updated recently but you can get around that) you can hack it to play GB/GBA/DS/3DS games, which includes link's awakening, minish cap, albw, oot 3d, and majora's mask 3d!

if you're looking for a COMPLETELY free option, my next suggestion is emulation. you want a decent PC to be able to run most of this shit without speed drops, and some newer consoles won't run perfectly no matter what. wii games especially are really dicey because of their reliance on motion control so there's not a lot of emulators out there for them.

for anything before the N64 (majora & any game released before it) I recommend the MAME vintage game emulator. this thing was originally built for arcade games but runs a lot of vintage consoles pretty well too and is generally intuitive and user-friendly.

Visual Boy Advance is a good option for GBA games (link's awakening, 4 swords, minish cap, oracle games.) these may also work on MAME

Desmume for DS games (phantom hourgass, spirit tracks)

Citra for 3DS games (requires high processing speed & decent graphics card, most laptops will not run it) (oot & mm 3d, albw)

for gamecube (wind waker) I used dolphin emulator on my hacked wii so I can't vouch for how it'll run on anything else but i believe it should also be able to emulate wii games? (sksw, tp)

hope this helps fuel your loz adventures! if you ever have specific questions about emulation or hacking i might be able to help also lol i hate paying for games so i do this a lot

[fioras-resolve]

This Enemy Is Too Strong

So like, I've been playing Final Fantasy XII again, and I've been thinking about in comparison to that other single-player MMO, Xenoblade Chronicles. There's a lot I can talk about there, and I probably will later, but the thing I wanna talk about is level scaling.

The thing is, right, both of these games let you fight enemies that are far above your current level. They just go about it in very different ways.

Xenoblade Chronicles is largely a linear game. You will go to Colony 9, then Gaur Plain, etc. It's a chapter structure, the Switch version literally has chapter markers.

But these areas are massive, you can spend several hours in one just exploring the place. And from the very first area you can venture off and find monsters way above your level. They're just scattered around the place, Xenoblade has some of the most level diversity you'll ever see in an RPG.

And since a lot of them attack on sight, or on hearing your footsteps, or detecting the game's magic equivalent, it means you genuinely have to watch out when you're exploring. Like, this is an ecosystem that you have to keep in mind, and it's honestly pretty damn lifelike in a lot of ways.

FF12, on the other hand, is different. Let's start out with the major difference in terms of structure. Yes, this game does have a linear story, but you have a fair bit more freedom in what areas you can access and when.

From the beginning, you can go to the Estersand, the Westersand, or Giza Plains branching off from the hub city of Rabanastre. You'll have to go through all of these branches at some point, but the freedom is pretty nice for an open world feeling. If you visit the Salikawood early, and get past a boss, you can visit Nabreus and Nabudis, optional lategame areas that will almost certainly kill you if you try to go through them too early. It's a lot of freedom for a game like this, and I appreciate it for that open feeling.

...But this runs into a problem when you get down to the realities of each area. Because FF12 doesn't really have level diversity in its areas. If you're encountering a high-level enemy, that's because you're in a high-level area. If you can't fight one enemy in Nabudis, you're probably not going to have a good time in Nabudis. And, conversely, going back to an old area kinda sucks, because every enemy is a pushover.

If you want to actually play at the right difficulty level and have a good time, you basically have no reason not to just play the story normally. And it honestly makes the game feel more gamey. FF12 just doesn't have the kind of unique enemy behaviors that XC does, and it makes each enemy feel like, well, mobs in an MMO. I can appreciate in some sense, like FF12 is not trying to hide the fact that it's a video game, and in a lot of ways that's really good. But it kind of makes the game feel more lifeless, you know?

In a post-BotW world, it can be kind of trite to think about these kinds of semi-open-world games. Like yeah, it's the Switch era, everything is open-world now. Fucking Sonic and MegaTen have these massive areas, you can't escape it. But there's a lot of room to talk about how to do these things well.

If anybody sees this, which I fuckin hope people do, tell me what you think about this! How do you like these kinds of games to be structured, and how much do you care about stronger enemies?