#heinousactszx

[ponett]

Which netnavi was the biggest improvement design wise over their robot master counterpart, and which was the biggest downgrade

i'd be tempted to say sharkman.exe is the biggest upgrade, but i don't think that really counts since the DOS games aren't canon lol. i'd also consider stoneman.exe an upgrade, since i've always thought the original stone man just looked like a guts man reskin and the giant stone golem look makes his netnavi counterpart look way more unique. but it's not like stoneman.exe is one of my absolute favorite designs

okay, actually, on the subject of mm5 robot masters, i might say i think starman.exe is the biggest upgrade. he went from being just, like, a guy with star shapes attached to him, to this really unique shooting star grey alien lion thing. i've always really liked starman.exe

as far as downgrades go, i've never been too fond of flameman.exe, but his robot master counterpart is just A Robot With A Turban, so i can't say it's that huge of a loss

i think i'd probably give the biggest downgrade to dustman.exe. he just loses all of his charm when you get rid of the giant vacuum above his head that dwarfs his face

(also i never miss an opportunity to point out that dust man was designed by friggin' yusuke murata when he was like 12)

[pcktknife]

They don't know splatoon has one of the saddest yet most hopeful perspectives on humanity 😔

they don't know humanity and all it's cultures live thru the silly little sea creatures and that they keep our memory alive and honestly the sea creatures probably also don't know that

[chauvel]

Sally going super with the emeralds?

[maxknightley]

Opinions on the legend of zelda phatom hourglass

that game was dope as hell. linebeck owned and he should have become a series mainstay. sadly nintendo will never do this because they are fools and cowards

[pokemon-npcs]

What are your thoughts on scarlet and violet changing the order of trainer classes, ie instead of youngster joey now it's joey the youngster.

Eh, it doesn't really matter to me and it doesn't affect this blog. I do think "youngster joey" flows better, but that might just be because I'm used to it.

Scarlet and Violet having most trainers be students really messes with my trainer class tagging system, though

[solarsyrup]

Would love to hear your extended thoughts on totk (i haven't played it and only played about 10 hours of botw)

Oh boy! I've had a year to stew on this, so here we go!

...er, actually, before I really start tearing this game a new one, I have to acknowledge how central Breath of the Wild is to Tears of the Kingdom's shortcomings. While not championing (pun intended) Breath of the Wild, I do hope that comparing the two helps emphasize the many mistakes of Tears of the Kingdom.

Okay, with that out of the way, here's some stuff. A detailed and hopefully thorough examination of the faults of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, yes, but ultimately: stuff.

Why begin like this? Well, because Tears of the Kingdom LOVES stuff. There is a persistent and irritating theme across the game that you'll have more fun if they just keep dumping more things in your lap. More items, more enemies, more dungeons, more plot (well, sort of), more checklists to fill out, more stuff.

The game's central theme seems to be rebuilding, emphasized both with the general beats of the plot and the emphasis of the new construction mechanics. Certain other abilities were replaced, the weapons system received a major overhaul, and in something of a first for the series, you can actually acquire allies (of a sort) to fight alongside you.

There's a lot going on! I just wish that any of it was done well. Entire areas are introduced only to be practically empty. Central mechanics are a chore of almost hilarious repetition. Many elements introduced in Breath of the Wild were actively made worse.

In short: Tears of the Kingdom is a game that hopes it can dump enough stuff into your lap that you forget it's not actually good.

(If anyone is hoping to read this entire thing, I hope your butt is comfy; that was just the preamble.)

Before anything else, let's get the basics of the plot down: Ganondorf appears, Zelda disappears, and... well, actually, that's pretty much it. While Ganondorf's return and Zelda's whereabouts (spoiler: she was sent to the past and then turned into a dragon) provide the overarching impetus for the plot, very little else contributes.

Each of the major races introduced in Breath of the Wild faces natural phenomenon that endangers them (heavily alluded to be the handiwork of Ganondorf) but are otherwise mostly inconsequential to the narrative. Each arc concludes with a member of said race awakening as a sage and offering to lend their strength to Link, after they have acquired a mineral macguffin, a secret stone that —

Oh. Right. They're literally called "secret stones".

Call me nuts, but going in blind I was absolutely certain that they would be the titular "Tears of the Kingdom". Nope. Secret stones. I guess I'm the idiot for thinking that such a long development time would leave room for a second draft.

The narrative impact of solving these crises is virtually nonexistent. While the completion of each major dungeon in Breath of the Wild both freed the associated Divine Beast to help in the final fight and provided a useful power from its champion, Tears of the Kingdom instead opts to dump a nebulous promise of teamwork and and an eerie, green simulacrum to follow you around in the wilderness.

I cannot overemphasize how poorly implemented these "avatars" are, failing in almost every fundamental way. Rather than providing useful abilities at will, the player is left chasing after a dead-eyed NPC to activate practically worthless powers only when absolutely necessary. And far from providing a sense of camaraderie, the silent and omnipresent avatars can actually be unsettling. They're also miserable in combat, serving more as meat shields than a conceivable ally. To add insult to injury, the final sage — a GIANT ROBOT, no less — is borderline useless, thanks to the game's poorly-thought-out mechanics.

The practical shortfalls of Tears of the Kingdom is such a large topic that I'm practically forced to tackle it piecemeal. While larger constructions were the focus of much of the game's promotional material, I think the smaller Fuse mechanic serves as a better starting point.

A major point of contention within Breath of the Wild was the implementation of breakable weapons. With a very small handful of exceptions (namely, the ubiquitous Master Sword and the ever-recharging Bomb rune), weapons break after a set amount of use. Tears of the Kingdom attempted to remedy this situation by introducing Fuse — an ability allowing players to attach most items to weapons, shields, and arrows, increasing their stats and potentially giving them new properties.

This is a prime example of Tears of the Kingdom brazenly dumping stuff in the player's lap.

The system is an absolute mess. First, to encourage (borderline mandate) that the player engage with this new mechanic, the plot has decided that all weapons in Hyrule have degraded because of... plot. Making them anywhere near feasible for combat relies on using Fuse, meaning the player is in a constant loop of (essentially) gluing items to their weapons. Now not only are you scrounging for weapons, you're also looking for stuff to stick on to it — and reminding yourself to do so, as it's very difficult to do in the heat of combat. Adding insult to injury, there doesn't seem to be a particularly substantial increase in weapon durability after using Fuse. Some later-game items are sturdier, but their rarity makes them unappealing as mere monster mashers.

This leads into another issue with Fuse: constantly fighting for resources. Beyond previously-established uses from Breath of the Wild (making elixirs, cooking, selling, upgrading equipment, etc.), items are now also the means by which you strengthen weapons. Should you glue that horn to a sword, or will you need it for an upgrade down the line? Retrieving an item used this way isn't impossible, but it may as well be. And considering that you'll want to go into fights with weapons pre-Fused, players will constantly be scraping together more stuff just to keep their supplies healthy.

BOMB ASIDE: Okay, please forgive a moment of very specific nitpicking, but nowhere is the Fuse issue more evident than in the absence of bombs. In Breath of the Wild they were (obviously?) used to break cracked walls and as an emergency weapon. With their very notable departure, EVERY cracked wall in Tears of the Kingdom has a chance of spitting out rocks and rusty weapons when broken, just to keep up a supply of cracked-wall-smashing implements. So now even the WEAPONS THEMSELVES are needed for progression, and you have to keep gluing them together. Great!

This also applies to the game's Ultrahand power, allowing the player to cobble together vehicles, structures, and similar devices to complete quests and achieve goals. Aside from the ever-present need to collect more stuff (in this case, Zonai parts) to begin freely assembling these devices, the plain and simple fact is that they're cumbersome and — frankly — kind of lame.

Without going too in-depth (although, hey, if you're still reading this then maybe you'd be into that), the system is a slow process with a lot of room for failure. Misplacing parts frequently sabotages entire projects, trying to move individuals components is frustrating, and the results are generally unimpressive. Sure, there are interesting builds and neat combinations, but they're almost always more trouble than they're worth. More often than not, players will simply find spare parts littered around individual puzzles, slap together whatever the devs had in mind, and move on. Rather than feeling creative or ambitious, it feels like someone simply forgot to put the game together. More stuff.

But it's a good thing you can build vehicles period, because the game introduced entire new levels of Hyrule to explore: the sky and the depths. Each is ostensibly as large as Breath of the Wild's original map of Hyrule, both near-necessitate the use of Ultrahand and its construction abilities to explore, and both are some of the biggest wasted opportunities I've ever seen in a video game.

Both the sky and the depths are absolutely barren. While there are what I would loosely describe as "points of interest" in both, they hold surprisingly little importance. Oh, there are enemies to fight and chests to open aplenty, but it ultimately just acts as more stuff. More rupees. More minibosses. More materials for more upgrades.

Stuff. More stuff.

Since I've already gone this far down the rabbit hole, here's a running list of other bad design choices in Tears of the Kingdom that I can't feasibly include in an essay-style answer but are still worth complaining about:

The addition of caves throughout surface Hyrule was poorly implemented; Breath of the Wild noticeably shied away from using them for the exact reasons they stink here (difficulty in location and navigation, clumsy climbing mechanics inside, camera difficulties, etc.)

Quest and shrine rewards were noticeably less valuable, further prolonging the grind for materials and weapons

Having to upgrade the battery for Zonai devices isn't the worst idea; having to mine in the barren-ass Depths for the ore for it IS

The sheer amount of items in the game makes navigating menus and scrolling a constant issue, and even by mid-game trying to Fuse an arrow takes a preposterous amount of time

While I enjoy the boss designs, they (and their dungeons) are almost totally irrelevant to the plot. While I guess you could make the argument that this is truer to classic Zelda formula (most dungeon bosses being an unexplained monster) I feel like it doesn't hold up as well as the Blight Ganons' personal enmity with the champions

Many promising elements from Breath of the Wild (such as the Zonai mazes) receive zero explanation, relevance, or discussion, and many frustrating elements went completely unchanged (I cannot believe the Korok seeds/inventory upgrade system is the same beteween games, the mind BOGGLES)

The Zonai receive basically zero attention, except for heavily implying that one of Link's earlier incarnations was a Zonai? What a weird thing to purposelessly shoehorn in

Zelda is sent to the past for no other reason than to justify why this game also has ancient structures and technology, making it further baffling why the Zonai are essentially an afterthought to the game

I cannot overemphasize. Secret. Stones.

Shrines are much more of a chore thanks to the aforementioned issues with Fuse/Ultrahand

The house-building system is AWFUL and, just, straight-up, absolutely fails to capture what made the home-buying subplot of Breath of the Wild so beloved

Breath of the Wild's use of Malice (limited appearance outside of major dungeons) was much better than Tears of the Kingdom's use of Gloom (spreading it like peanut butter)

(also Malice is a way cooler name)

Huge tonal clashes throughout the game (trying to play up Ganondorf as a bigger threat than Calamity Ganon vs. mushroom mayoral election?)

The Master Sword absolutely sucks and reacquiring it is a huge letdown aside from the obvious "regenerating weapon" benefit

The Goron and Zora subplots are both awful, it feels less like you're saving a society and more like you're the janitor, the Zora plotline especially is just a miserable follow-up to Breath of the Wild's Mipha arc

Both Link and Zelda have significant alterations made to them that are completely undone at the end of the story, which really undercuts the whole "rebuilding" theme of the game

As much as I enjoyed Matthew Mercer's performance, Ganondorf really doesn't have much story presence and for most of the game her kinda just slides into frame every now and then like a Saturday morning cartoon villain

Speaking of squandered characters, poor Mineru is easily one of the best newbies and she gets like, absolutely nothing

...I liked Zelda's Breath of the Wild hairstyle better THERE I SAID IT

Tears of the Kingdom is a game convinced that if it hands you enough stuff, you'll stop worrying if it's any good or not. I've read that many of the new mechanics were originally conceived as DLC for Breath of the Wild, and I don't know if the devs understand what an indictment of Tears of the Kingdom that statement really is.

Because ultimately, that exactly what the game feels like. It feels like they took a completely different game and dumped some bloat on top of it — items, bosses, cutscenes, whatever.

And one of the most insulting aspects is that Tears of the Kingdom tries to frame it as freedom. You can build whatever you want! You can choose how to solve problems! The lack of cohesion is palpable, and it makes the entire experience feel like you, the player, are responsible for putting together any fun you want to experience. It's bizarrely apathetic.

I'm honestly surprised that more people haven't drawn comparisons to the likewise genre-twisting Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, considering the attention on mediocre vehicular gameplay and a similarly irreverent tone to its predecessor(s). It's uncanny.

...so anyway, there you have it. I had originally planned to have some kind of robust conclusion here, but I think I'm done with writing about all this... stuff.

[driftingballoons]

Playing the pmd games first definitely affects your perception of the rest of the franchise. I played explorers before i got into diamond and pearl, and i was shocked to learn after the fact that so many people hated bidoof in dp. If you played explorers first, you could never!

Yeah! Like all those pokemon you encounter in explorers…whenever I see them anywhere else it’s like that’s THE guy! There are permanently the characters to me lol. 

I definitely did feel it impacted my thoughts about the rest of the franchise as well. After explorers I played HG, and honestly it felt a little weird to be a pokemon “trainer” vs. one of the actively fighting “teammates”. Had to get used to having one fairly consistent team, as opposed to just cycling several in and out based on dungeon type advantages. Also has to adjust to how much slower the leveling up could be. I mean, there was a fair amount of grinding in pmd, but tying that to missions made it a little less tedious than running around in tall grass. Overall, pmd made the mainline games feel…kind of impersonal in a way. Less pokemon-centric. Like they’re certainly there, but you don’t get that pmd hero/partner relationship, and even though they have “personalities,” beyond the effects of battle stats, they seem mostly irrelevant. Plus, when they removed the overworld sprites, you really only really saw your team during battles or whatever mini game/gimmick they had going on, but it felt more like they were games featuring pokemon, as opposed to games about them. I always preferred the spin-offs; I think that’s where the franchise really gets creative and makes good use of the premise. It’s also fun playing as a pokemon—you get to be a human in most games, after all, but how frequently do you get the chance to play as a tiny lizard that can also kick your ass? Definitely a great game to enter the franchise with, and also the reason why I’m still So Normal about it, even today :)

[rotshop]

Trick and or treat!

omg hONE HUNDRED SPIDER RING ATTACK !!!!

[moonkitty]

Which gen had the best set of starters, in your opinion

i dont care if this is completely biased because soulsilver was my first pkmn game. look at them. litterally all winners and no miss here

[bixels]

What's the level of technology in fotm?

Quasi-pre-industrial age. Manufacturing hasn't been automated yet and products aren't mass-producible, so things are still handmade by craftsmen, artisans, and engineers. As such, the tech is very valuable and often beautifully ornate, with detailed engravings or paintings.

However, the world got a bit of a jumpstart when thousand-year-old texts, prototypes, artifacts, and blueprints of amazing technology from a forgotten Golden Age were uncovered. These discoveries included a way to control and channel Earthian magic through engines to power weaponry and machinery. Thus, the invention of light gunships. Certain electronic technology exists too. However, the people of this time haven't been able to properly reverse-engineer it yet.

I took inspiration from the Ghibli design philosophy of smooth, organic lines and strange silhouettes. For the light ships, I wanted to avoid showing propellers to make them look as non-mechanical as possible. I also used the designs of WW1 aircrafts as reference, as I wanted the light ships to be built mostly out of wood.

The heavier metal ships (which will make an appearance soon) are much more complicated, however, and require magicians on board to make them fly.

[rox-art]

Thank you so much @heinousactszx for commissioning me!! It was super fun to draw some more Splatoon characters :)

[kicktwine]

I'm fascinated by those doodles. What kind of world do cherry and scylla live in? Like ours but more advanced, or a totally constructed world?

aa ty!! THEY live in a world that’s a Lot like ours but more advanced, specifically like our world once or twice removed a hundred years in the future where a semi-apocalypse is already happening/has happened. It wasn’t a big terrible event it’s like a gradual ~10 year collapse of modern society that a lot of people were super tired of by year 2, and a lot of companies with stakes in the game either tried to pretend it wasn’t happening or they had a UNIQUE PLAN to FIX YOUR CRUMBLING LIFE and you should PAY US MONEY to help you. real “in these unprecedented times” nuttery. meanwhile internet and radio goes down, huge landmasses shift, natural disasters occur, nature and highways get a little funky, people are left with what they have around them almost entirely unregulated. So, most of them either clear out the walmart and head to a large settlement, or settle somewhere on their own in a small community to live and care for each other. Many larger companies, without any regulations being enforced, start doing desperate Unethical Science and robotics, trying to create protection circles and company-states or whatever

so, semi-concurrent apocalypse town, big upheaval landscape changes, tons of roads that wind everywhere, unique scraps-built settlements dotted everywhere between large sleek regulated settlements, drones and robots a la futuristic big dog, cars with rocket launchers attached. Most people use cars or trade to settle things.

Scyl and Cherry live in a self sustaining city full of small individual settlements run by “families” near one of those big company towns and they work at one of the last functioning lakeside resorts in the whole country. it is run by an eighteen year old and his three friends it got hugely popular by word of mouth and they have five cars and if a gang wants to stay in the hotel they have to leave the cars in the garage and they all race dirty

[pcktknife]

if you could give a pokemon an alternate/regional evolution who would you want to get one?

I've had a ghost/fighting or ghost/fire tepig line on the mind recently. hm a regional woobat might be interesting alt banette/mimikyu forms could be cool alt evo for beartic specifically

[theashemarie]

When you write pearlina, do you tend to imagine their relationship as public knowledge, or something they've kept private?

It depends on the situation! I actually haven't written a lot of established-relationship pearlina (until recently) believe it or not, so I haven't really thought about it. But, I generally don't try to pigeonhole myself into tight headcanons about stuff; I'll just go with what works best for the plot I'm working with. For the Side Order tetralogy, I went with the idea that it was public knowledge by that point, but I also think that a private relationship would be fun to write too!

[ponett]

Which order of no quarter knight is your favorite? And would they beat your favorite robot master in a fight?

my favorite knight is probably king knight and my favorite robot master is probablyyyyy... elec man? (picking blues would be cheating.) so the answer is a resounding no

[wcender]

I see you are a fellow smoliv enjoyer! Good taste

HAHA ty i just see something small and cute and round and im instantly attached

small, rotund, specimen