#like most sidequests of other games just pale in comparison

[athetos]

Dead Cells is my favorite roguelike, and easily one of my favorite games of all time, and it boils down to one simple reason - you can never get bored of it.

Let’s compare it to Hades, the most popular roguelike (that I’m aware of) right now. The game is championed for its replay-ability, and they’re absolutely right! The game is phenomenal! But it still pales in comparison to Dead Cells. A broad overview: Hades has 6 weapons, each with 4 permanently upgrade-able aspects that change your abilities. There are 4 biomes, with random rewards for clearing each room. There are about 2 dozen permanently upgradeable talents that give you stat boosts or luck. There are about a dozen gods that can give you one of a dozen or so boons, which can stack with others. There are keepsakes and buddies you can earn by gifting characters items you earn on your journeys, which when equipped give you new abilities. There are a plethora of side quests you can take on by forming relationships with those same characters. You can use gems to upgrade the underworld’s appearance, typically for purely cosmetic purposes. And, of course, once you’ve beaten [redacted], you can use punishments, which give you more rewards, but make your mission much harder.

It sounds like a lot of content - and it is! It was downright overwhelming at first. But there are a few things that make the game become less enticing to keep returning to. The weapons, even with their different aspects, all have the same general play-style, and you can’t switch weapons during a run. The biomes must be fought in the same order in every run, and the environments and enemies/bosses found within can grow tiresome. The talents are useful and can be swapped out, but only a couple will drastically change the way you play. The side quests are entertaining and can even be emotional, but getting the proper dialogue to keep them progressing can be very frustrating and tedious. And the punishments, while some are very creative, can also grow stale if you’re looking to play more casually, but still want to farm items for quests and renovations. For some people, these are minor hassles and won’t deter them from putting hundreds of hours into the game, but for others, it can make the experience seem rote.

Dead Cells, on the other hand, while it may not have the more universally appealing plot and characters, makes Hades seem downright plain. There are about 20 biomes and 10 bosses, and you can take different routes on every run. There’s at least 100 obtainable gear, all categorized as either melee, tactics, or survival, which are found within stages or purchased at shops, and can be swapped whenever you desire. The weapons and skills range from one handed swords, two handed swords, shovels, whips, giant needles, bows, shields, force fields, bombs, little buddies who follow you around, boomerangs, and axes, just to name a few. Each weapon has a unique way to deal critical damage, and has a number of random affixes that alter how much damage it deals, what status conditions it afflicts, and more. There are mutations you can stack at the end of every biome that can drastically alter your play style to better suit which weapons you have on hand. There are over a hundred purely cosmetic costumes you can unlock. The game is infinitely customizable to whichever difficulty level you want, with the ability to change how much gold you start with, whether certain things damage you, what your starting weapons are, if food can poison you or not, etc. and yes, you can even change whether food you find is meat, fruit, or veggies, and if you’d rather the music was modern or 8-bit. While sidequests are not really a thing, the frustration in obtaining them isn’t there as well.

But the thing that really makes Dead Cells great, in my opinion, is that it came out in 2017, but is still getting new free and paid dlc to this day. They’ve done crossovers with other games, like Hollow Knight and Hyper Light Drifter. They’ve added dozens of weapons, bosses, biomes, costumes, mutations, and lore rooms. They continually update the game’s mechanics based on player feedback - re-balancing weapons, adding or removing affixes, fixing bugs, making the game easier to speedrun, etc. like, nobody is doing it like these guys. Next year we’re getting a Castlevania crossover! With Richter and Alucard! Like, holy shit!

The whole point of this is to say that if you love Hades, but fell off the bandwagon at some point because it grew boring or tiresome, you really owe it to yourself to check out Dead Cells.

[dustward]

Playing BotW2 made me realize how much I liked certain aspects of BotW1 (+other older Zeldas) and how that was always going to be a one and done kind of playthrough. Can’t recall if I did all the sidequests, but I got all the shrines, messed with all the mini-games, and got at least 400 koroks, maybe? I explored every inch of that world and felt pretty damn satisfied with having done so. I already hinted at how I felt punished for having played BotW1 this way, so this is a good time to partly explain why via the games’ minor and major enemies, and any likes/dislikes I hold for both BotWs’ rosters.

I miss the Ancient Guardians. They were kinda techy in the way I find myself disliking the Zonai for, but somehow it worked for me back then. They worked as this unique, new and imposing enemy you knew you didn’t want to deal with until you were absolutely ready to. And the smaller ones, I can’t believe I never realized how adorable I found them!? The Zonai in the sequel pale in comparison, I’m sorry. Not sure why the devs decided to scrub the world of any evidence of them existing save for their use in the new Ubisoft towers and a little broken one by Purah’s. It really sucked to see they were so readily discarded. They could’ve at least had one little pet follow Purah around or something, but I guess they’re just old news now.. Also where did those old shrines/towers go? No way they all were so entirely, effectively disposed of in just a few years.

While the Zonai replaced the smaller guardians, a new imposing enemy replaced the larger ones. The gloomy hand brigade was yet another downgrade in my eyes. They were far more frustrating to deal with and after killing one, I no longer never felt compelled to fight them. And so, I simply ran away till they gave up and disappeared into nothingness every time after. The way they’d suddenly appear in what should’ve been a moment of dread was instead a moment of growing annoyance. I’d much preferred the Ancient Guardians’ being clearly visible from a distance (and them being able to spot you from that distance...) Ancient Guardians were also a good deterrent to players going certain ways, while the hands felt like a badly executed scare tactic with how they were always temporary, aside from the handful of times they were a required fight. When you successfully kill one, Phantom Ganon shows up. 

On paper this feels like a major osht moment that I should feel iffy mentioning given how spoiler-concerned I get for other people, but this “phase 2″ fight shouldn’t have existed at all. It’s a very dull 1v1 with the least exciting iteration of Phantom Ganon (I miss you Wind Waker variant.) What’s worse is that he’s a required fight in the main quest, a moment that’s made sour if you attempted to slay any pairs of hands beforehand (which I’d done in the first 10 hours). Can only imagine how this moment felt for folks that decided to kill every group of gloom hands they ran into.

Early on I fell into the habit of running past most enemies, especially older ones from the first game (the constant popup of all the old skeleton types got old fast). I fought plenty of Hinox, so thanks but no thanks? Was similarly done with the Talos till I saw they dropped unique, unhoardable fuse material. Keese, Moblins, Lizalfos, no thanks I’d done 150+ hours of that already. Lynels were a rare fight while not being an elaborate mini-boss, so I can’t say I hated seeing them again, though it was unfortunate I ran into an armored, gloom ridden one within my first 10~15 hours of gameplay. Ow

New enemies do show up, but it baffles me how they weren’t the standard for the depths region. That’s The New Area, why is it filled with roughly 80~85% botw1 enemies??? Knowing enemy variety was so stinted down there really sucked the fun and novelty of exploring that region when I first found it. Thank goodness for the giant Frog mini-boss, which was my favorite new fight. I went out of my way to fight a bunch of those in a depths-combing toward the end of the game. The Flux Construct was another highlight when it came to new mini-bosses. While I’m iffy on Zonai tech in general, that encounter grew on me. It was also nice how this was something you could encounter both in the depths and in the Sky Isles. I only fought one Fire and one King Gleeok, but they were decent enough fights as well. Everything new was good or at least decent, but there sure wasn’t much new in the grand scheme of things. This is excluding the major boss fights on that note, which...almost all get reused. Just like Phantom Ganon. For me, this undermines nearly every story-based confrontation, a story which already suffered from the heavily formulaic nature placed on it.

I couldn’t give an exact number, but there needed to be more new enemies and bosses. If the game’s concerned with scaling things up, then save a couple of them for lategame first time encounters. As it stood, I only fought a couple groups of each type voluntarily. Had a feeling the game would require me to fight more than that anyway, and sure enough via sidequests, main quests, and the various colosseums I’d had more than my fair share of the game’s various threats. It’s a shame harder variants of each monster are just a difference of hp/damage dealt and nothing more unique.

Also kinda surprised there wasn’t a larger variant of the Evermeans. That enemy was a good laugh at first but little more than an annoyance afterward. The Sky Islands had nothing unique on the enemy front that I can recall - what’s up with that? The newer Aerocuda being so easily oneshot was a bit of a letdown given it was one of only two new flying enemies. Gibdo and it’s variants were well handled, on that note. As with the bosses, general enemy designs held a similarly high quality. It’s just a shame there weren’t more new entries. Gloom and armor variants don’t count as those are simply new modifiers similar to paletteswap damage/hp swaps.

A lot of Zelda staples naturally carried over to the direct sequel in the same way they tend to with any subsequent Zelda game, but this carryover doesn’t work so well when it’s the exact same creatures in look, feel, and behavior. Variety was far more necessary as a result, and not simply a variety of elemental types.

Ah right, yet another lacking quality of life: hostile wild animals still can’t be targeted, eh?

[mamthew]

So I finished Horizon: Forbidden West. It took me about 85 hours, but I’m definitely in the upper limit for time, there, as I did almost every sidequest I could find (skipped the hunting lodges and the races) and tracked down nearly every collectible. I did about the same with Zero Dawn, and it took me 50 hours, 60 with its DLC, so FW is definitely a much larger game.

It’s…very very good. It’s the most beautiful game I’ve seen, graphically, and its art direction is gorgeous as well. While large, the world is not nearly as large as many open-world games – it’s no AC Valhalla, for instance – but in return, it’s much more memorable and navigable than others in the genre. I usually knew where I was and where I was trying to go without relying on the map, which is always a more immersive and rewarding experience than the alternative. The trade-off for this is that the world is comically small compared to the actual geographic area it claims to represent – it’s maybe a ten minute walk from Las Vegas to California’s Redwood forest, for instance – but I was mostly willing to suspend my disbelief, as that realism was a small price to pay for biomes as lushly detailed and intentionally crafted as the ones here. The soundtrack is one of the best – if not the best – I’ve heard in a Western AAA game. That might be…a very subjective point not everyone will agree with, but. Composers for Western games – especially Western AAA games – tend to score their soundtracks like big-budget films, setting a tone without distracting from the dialogue or spectacle. Conversely, big-budget Japanese game soundtracks tend to be much more melodic, calling back instead to the style of older games, when melodies were the only music they could manage. Clearly, I prefer the latter; I think the best game soundtracks are the ones with melodies memorable enough that hearing a song reminds the player of the location and emotions associated with that song. While still filmic, Forbidden West’s soundtrack is also incredibly melodic. It combines sweeping orchestrals – especially cellos – with folk instruments like acoustic guitar and fiddle, and even some folk singing. Rarely – if ever – do I pause in an open-world game because the music impressed me, but the artistry and craft put into the music at every turn had me stopping to just listen in almost every new area I entered. I’m listening to the soundtrack right now, and I’m not sure I’ve done that with a Western AAA game since Bioshock Infinite – which pales in comparison. Here’s a track, as a treat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV-h3JjlNM0 The gameplay is much more fluid than in the previous game, with a considerably more forgiving difficulty curve, and it’s much easier to settle into as a result. The game isn’t not a survival game like the first, and on higher difficulties I’m sure the friction of survival still comes through, but on normal, I very rarely needed to scavenge supplies after a fight, even a difficult one. One reason for this is surplus materials go to a stash you can access at any town, which means if you really are desperate, you can just fast-travel somewhere to stock up on health items and ammo. Early enemies are also much easier than those in Zero Dawn, and while the difficult enemies are just as hard as in Zero Dawn, the fights are generally much less drawn out. Very rarely – and never in the main plot – was I stuck on one boss for 15 minutes. The melee combat system has been overhauled as well, to varying success. It’s definitely a better system than the first game’s, but it actually suffers from the fact that Horizon can’t really have a lock-on button. I’d often try to use combos and move past enemies or turn in weird ways and lose them, which is especially frustrating when the combat relies on chaining attacks to build up a big energy hit. Still, the ranged combat and stealth both sing, and that’s where most of the fighting is anyway. The story is mostly very good. I have disagreements with a few plot decisions, but those don’t do much to mar the overall package. Building on the foundation set up in the Frozen Wilds DLC, Forbidden West’s Aloy is a much more defined character, with understandable flaws she comes to recognize and redress over the course of the story. The opening hours are a little clumsy at setting up the world, as the game opens with an awkward voiceover laying out the major plot beats of the previous game, and then every character unsubtly exposits details of those plot beats to each other for a time. After a tutorial gameplay section, we’re treated to a pretty awkward section where Aloy walks around the last game’s boss arena, talking to several fairly minor recurring characters. The previous game’s story and setting are certainly complex, and this game picks up right after that one lets off, so I understand the worry that new players might otherwise feel lost, but I can’t help but feel like there had to be a better way to get them acquainted. Still, the awkward exposition is helped by the fact that dialogue is hands-down the best part of this game. I’ve never seen such smooth and dynamic motion-capture in a game before. Every character’s performance – both vocal and physical – is a treat. This was the biggest revelation after playing the first game, where the character models stared forward through glassy eyes, incapable of making facial expressions, which put me off enough that I skipped most of the dialogue trees. Here, though, it just feels like watching conversations, or maybe television performances of conversations. That’s the case across the board; every sidequest conversation is fully mo-capped, with facial expressions, camera angles, the works, and it makes this world come alive in a way the previous game had honestly failed to do. This game is able to express character beats through gestures and facial ticks in a way that has me excited for the future of the entire medium. A few big-name actors play characters in the game. Lance Reddick’s character returns, joined by Carrie-Anne Moss and Angela Basset, and their performances for the game get to be physical as well as vocal, which makes their inclusion feel more justified than many celebrity game appearances. The game also has a much larger ensemble cast. Every character in the first game’s story except for Lance Reddick’s antagonist felt minor – blips in Aloy’s journey. This aspect of the first game ends up informing a believable character flaw in Forbidden West’s Aloy. At the opening, one of those minor characters from the first game tracks Aloy down and insists that he help her. Aloy tries to shake him off, convinced that she can only work alone, but he refuses to relent, and even collects a sort of RPG party of allies Aloy can trust. By the mid-point of the game, Aloy grudgingly admits that she likes and even relies on these characters. The game treats this supporting cast like Mass Effect party members; each one has a linear story quest introducing them, a number of dialogue trees in the hub town fleshing out their characters, and an optional linear sidequest focusing on their character arc. They aren’t…actually an RPG party. They only fight alongside the player at specific, scripted events, which means the rest of their role is spent sitting in the hub town, talking about how much they’d like to do stuff once they finish their homework, but I can see this system being fleshed out into a much more robust companion or party system in a third installment. As a result of its larger scale, the game is less thematically tight than the first game, but many of its images and questions are much more striking and thought-provoking as well. Archives are a major theme throughout. As in the first game, most of our insights of 2030s-2060s humanity are gleaned from written and recorded records. Unlike in the first game, however, these records influence Aloy’s present much more tangibly. Misunderstood snippets of sound are the basis for one culture’s entire mythology, while another culture has gained limited access to an ancient corporate database and take marketing and propaganda claims from that database at face value, which leads to disaster. Aloy’s allies are all given the same device she has and instructed to learn as much about the past – our present and near-future – as they can. As the characters develop, their understanding of these databases also becomes more sophisticated, driving them to ask more pointed questions or find especially sharp parallels between their own lives and those of past humans. In one striking scene, Aloy finds an art gallery, preserved over the ages, and struggles to see the meaning and value in a priceless Rembrandt. Later, she sees the same piece and finds that it has gained new – entirely unintended – meaning for her as a part of the story of how she found it. As contexts erode, the game suggests, art built on those contexts becomes meaningless. If we are to have a reason to archive art, we must also preserve the world. Forbidden West loves people. There’s a real sense of empathy across the whole game. As with Zero Dawn, the story’s conflicts are metaphors for our own looming climate disaster, and Aloy’s ability to rise to the occasion is placed in direct contrast with our own inability to do the same now. Every town is beautifully detailed and lived-in, the wilderness is lush and teeming with life, every character interaction is performed with unparalleled dynamism and humanity, which is all in service to the game’s thematic heart: this fictional earth already lost everything once, and they’re terrified that it might happen again; our real earth with real towns and a real wilderness and real people is on that precipice right now, and we should be terrified to lose them, too. The game expertly balances joy with melancholy. Much of that melancholy is saved for us, right now, in the real present. Much of that joy is a reminder that if we can't save the world, even in the worst cases, there will always be something worth fighting for.

[loveydive]

i love yakuza substories sm. dare i say, they are better written than the main stories of the game.

[oldbaton]

Some more detailed thoughts on FF XV now that I've beaten the main quest:

I love the concept of a buddy road trip final fantasy and this one suceeded in some ways and didn't in others- but a great jumping point

The dynamic between all four was fabulous. Again, that mid credits cutscene just. Reduced me to tears. The issue is only prompto is actually interesting on his own. The other three are just not compelling when separated from the others. My roommate and I commented that they just sucked all the good writing and likability into prompto. I'm gonna watch the extra episodes on youtube but the only one I'm purchasing and playing is prompto because he's the only one compelling enough to spend that solo time with. But their banter in the car was great and endearing and I loved spending time with them as a group. But Prompto is the only one with the design and the writing for me to like. Carry with me.

Some really great design. Eos is gorgeous and it made me want to take a road trip through the west. And most of the towns were decently designed. Loved the throne room particuarly. But you could tell it was RUSHED. Tons of scenes with awkward animation that just paled in comparison to FF VII which was released jus a couple years later.

I loved that Chocobos are heavily present in this one

For me the most fun here is in the sidequests. I loved driving around (even tho the manual controls are shit) and doing these quests and customizing the car and it was just by far the meat of the experience for me. The main quest felt a bit like a chore.

And the lore.... oof. Confusing. Every scene I always feel like I'm missing just a tidbit of information that would allow me to know what I'm seeing. I still don't really understand who or what Ardyn is. And that's a bad thing. We should need ALL this supplementary material to figure that out. And even though Ardyn was present from early on it still took all the steam out of the battle because I... did not know WHAT I was fighting or what he wanted revenge for? And I asked the gods to explain it too!! And I was still like... huh? It was incredibly hard to follow. I was always confused on what was empire territory and what wasn't. And if Tennebrae is independent then how was the marriage supposed to- you get my point. They drenched it so heavy in politic that there were so many loose ends. And not in a ~mystique~ way. In a confusing way. I thought bar none the world building was the game's biggest failure. (Also don't get me started on the oracle thing and how Luna being from Tennebrae made me ask a ton of questions about how they were allowed to interact as children without like a diplomatic negotiation? idk)

I will give it credit for bar none going for a sad ending. Despite my misgivings it managed to hit. I was not expecting them to go desolate like that. But very few characters really make it out of this alive.

Some of the dungeons had some cool design! But most were just like. Some caves.

I dont know why they wanted me to be invested in noctis and luna when they met ONCE as adults like

It was fine. When it was good it was REALLY good. But you can tell this was pushed out. And I'm looking into all the supplementary stuff and getting... overwhelmed. The game should be able to stand on its own without all of this.

[dany36]

SIGH so i’m done playing breath of the wild. i beat it about two weeks ago but i just now completed all shrines and sidequests. i thought about hating myself even more by trying to collect all 900 korok seeds but it’s not worth it just to have that 100% in the map screen (plus korok seeds stopped being useful a long time ago). i have 100%d all zelda games i own (except OoX) but i just can’t be bothered for this one.

having replayed all zelda games at least twice, i can’t say i will be doing the same for botw. here are my [long] thoughts about it (spoiler-free):

i can’t say i loved it. i think i was just playing just for the sake of playing it because....duh, it’s a zelda game (plus i sort of spent a crapload of money on the game+console). as a long-time zelda fan, it just...didn’t feel like a zelda game to me. i’m not opposed to change, in fact i was extremely excited to finally play this game, but the overall product just didn’t satisfy me at all. it just felt like a very dull and unfulfilling experience.  

- the overworld. i kept saying it over and over in my head while playing this game: it’s just too damn fucking huge for its own good. and it’s boring as hell to traverse. there aren’t really that many interesting things to do other than look for shrines. oh cool you can climb that mountain way over there? for what? oh haha a korok seed. most of the time, nothing. good job. it just felt tiring and bothersome to explore huge empty spaces of nothing. horses aren’t very useful since most of the time i was warping to try to not bore myself from wandering around empty spaces. i replayed the original loz at least like 5 or 6 times and i absolutely adored exploring every corner of the overworld. botw’s? yawn snore zzzz.

- weapon durability. i mentioned it in an earlier post but i hope this is something that never comes back to a zelda game. it’s especially shitty when you beat a shrine and your reward is a weapon. oh, a weapon that will break after 20 hits or less. so your reward disappears instead of it being something useful that you can actually keep for the rest of the game. this might just be a personal preference but i just hated the weapon system, especially when you find out that the master sword and the hylian shield can actually also break instead of being able to use them infinite number of times (and don’t tell me “oh it’s because otherwise you would never have used any other weapon!” bc idgaf, frost weapons and spears are cool and i would have used them either way)

- the story. oh my god. i know this is supposed to be a throwback to the original zelda, where you can go straight and kill ganon, but my goodness....it’s 2017. how is it that we got such a barebones story?? when i finally got to zora’s domain i was excited. i was finally getting to the story. boy i was wrong. the game gave me zero reason to care about saving the world and its inhabitants (except the gorons, which i think were the greatest in this game). i fucking hate that the story is mostly told through memories. the worst part is, the story told through the memories is more exciting than the one you play through the game. i hate that we are told from the start “you have to save hyrule and the princess because um....you’re a hero, you just don’t remember haha! so GO!!!!” instead of showing me actual, emotional reasons to want to save these people. through the memories we just become spectators, instead of the story actually making us bond and feel something for the people we are saving (except, again, yunobo, who i will save 1000 times if i have to). not even princess zelda’s incredible character growth (which, once again, HAPPENS IN THE MEMORIES and NOT in the present) can save the story from being lackluster. i would talk more about this but then it’d take up the whole post.

- the music. i’ve also complained about it before, but it’s a fucking joke, especially since it’s a zelda game, which are mostly known from having really good soundtracks. for me, there are zero memorable soundtracks. i think i only liked two, the one where you are near a Tower and when you are near a shrine. even minecraft, a freaking indie game, had better ambient music than botw. exploring the overworld becomes 3600% more BORING because as you’re walking, all you hear is link’s footsteps and clanky armor. so the overworld becomes twice as empty because 90% of the time, there is no music. except the five random ass piano keys you hear from time to time. it’s just bad and it makes me sad. people seemed to have hated SS’s OST, but at least it gave us Fi’s Theme and the magnificence that is the Lanayru Sand Sea theme. now THAT’S music that truly takes you into the game and gives it the proper ambiance that the overworld tries to portray. botw? a sad, sad attempt. i’m honestly wondering what they will play during botw’s section at the symphony of the goddess’s tour.

- the sidequests. 90% of the sidequests are boring fetch quests and “kill this type of enemy plz”. it’s just boring and tedious and the rewards are a joke (mostly, rupees, materials which you can easily find ANYWHERE, or food). it’s time for zelda to step up in the sidequests department and give me good, engaging, emotional-investing sidequests that tell me more about a certain character, or which tell me more about the world, or overall just make me CARE about its inhabitans that i’m trying to save. MM is the king of sidequests and botw once again pales in comparison.

- the dungeons. the first one (Vah Ruta) was cool. then it got boring and repetitive, really fast. all the dungeons look identical. the dungeons are for the most part short. there are no enemies inside the dungeons except these flying skeletons that die with one hit. oh yeah and maybe a robot here and there. so there’s some enemies but nothing tough. the premise revolves around manipulating the dungeon by rotating it to discover new areas. so it’s like playing four Stone Towers from MM. Except i guess the Gerudo dungeon, which added an element of electricity (that was cool). but other than that, all of the dungeons are pretty much the same and after you’ve played one, you’ve pretty much played them all, which is sad because it takes away the element of surprise and “oh man i wonder what the theme of the next dungeon will be?”

- the enemies. the lack of variety is a joke. there’s like 4 or 5 types of bokoblins, which just differ in their color and strength. oh and that’s the same for octoroks, moblins, lizalfos, chuchus, lynels, and wizzrobes (which are a fucking joke in this game. remember when wizzrobes were actually tough in the original game?). oh crap, i’ve actually mentioned 90% of the enemies you will face in the game... i think in total there might be 10 or 11, which is PATHETIC when you consider how fucking huge the overworld is. sad sad sad.

- stamina is stupid and so is climbing. stamina was tolerable in SS because of those silent realms you had to beat: you had to be careful of running and climbing and wearing out your stamina because of those crazy-ass guardians. so it made sense because it adds a challenge to the silent realms. in botw, for a game that focuses so much on exploring and climbing, stamina becomes a hindrance that actually makes it annoying to explore the world. you better not run out of stamina while trying to climb that mountain over there lest you run out and have to start all over!!! joy.

- the graphics. can nintendo please try something else with zelda graphics now. don’t get me wrong, i loved TWW and SS, but....these cel-shading graphics (or whatever they’re called) are getting tiresome. i didn’t like how most of the time the game looks bloom-y and blurry af (it’s especially bad when it’s raining or snowing). people complained about TP’s bloom effects but i feel like botw’s light effect (or whatever the hell that causes it to look like someone just put 200% of brightness on an image using photoshop) really takes away from trying to enjoy the scenery and view that the game tries to offer. for the next game can we try something like hyrule warriors or tp or hell even mm 3d? thx.

- the rain. it. rains. so. fucking. much.

haha oh man i never realized how many things i didn’t like about this game. i think i’ll stop here and talk about the things i did like:

- the shrines. although i didn’t like how all of them had the exact same design, the puzzles in them were cool and very zelda-ish.

- the warping system. thank god there are so many warp points to traverse the overworld because otherwise i would have never finished this game.

- the clothes system. i really liked all of the costume options the game gives you, and the fact that you can change the color of the clothes. it takes me back to the OoT days except with more variety. very nice.

- the runes. i loved not having to worry about running out of bombs and the ice rune was very cool and useful: it’s like having infinite ice arrows from MM to make platforms on the water! also the puzzles that involved stopping time with the statis rune were awesome. oh and grabbing treasure from underwater with magnesis never gets old.

- yunobo. yunobo is pure and great and needs to be protected at all costs.

- lynels. for once, a deadly enemy you actually have to be careful with and prepare yourself with good strategy to beat. i remember when i saw my first lynel i was so scared to approach it. they gave lynels such a great treatment and it’s the same one that wizzrobes should have gotten.

- the variety of the weapons.

- revali’s gale. saved me from having to climb so many mountains with its gust that elevates you so high. also after 3 it re-generates in 5 minutes. a blessing.

- the towns. i loved how lively they look. it’s like clock town from mm and it’s great.

- princess zelda. great character development and she has become my second favorite zelda (behind ST Zelda which will always be the best [while oot zelda continues to be the worst])

summary: while i enjoyed some aspects of the game, overall it just was very tiresome and unfulfilling. for a game that boasted about being open world, the world itself was just so barren of interesting things to do and explore. exploring the world of Xenoblade Chronicles, a fucking Wii game, was way more exciting because the environment, story, and music had more to offer. if there’s one thing i can thank botw for, is that it re-awoke my love for zelda games such as TWW, TP, and SS, which i will probably re-play next. i’m all for evolving the zelda series, and i thank botw for trying, but i honestly hope this game will not be the new zelda formula to follow. PEACE OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[gamerszone2019-blog]

Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition Announced for Nintendo Switch

New Post has been published on https://gamerszone.tn/pillars-of-eternity-complete-edition-announced-for-nintendo-switch/

Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition Announced for Nintendo Switch

Publisher Versus Evil is partnering with Obsidian Entertainment to bring Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition

to the Nintendo Switch on August 8, 2019, for $49.99 USD, with a 20% discount for pre-ordering.Pillars of Eternity originally started as Project Eternity and, at the time, became the most successful video game Kickstarter of all time on October 16, 2012 with $3,986,929. It was then released on PC in 2015, with Pillars of Eternity: Complete Edition releasing on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2017.

The Nintendo Switch version will include The White March: Parts I & II DLC and all the major updates from the original PC version, including a raised level cap, expanded party AI options, and new difficulty levels.

One of the Best RPGs since Baldur’s Gate

In our review of Pillars of Eternity, we scored it a 9/10 and said “Obsidian (and its Kickstarter backers) have done it: Pillars of Eternity is one of the best RPGs since Baldur’s Gate.”

In addition, we also reviewed the Complete Edition for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and said that “for an RPG of its complexity, it’s surprising how pleasingly intuitive its gamepad control scheme is, and its easily legible text makes it feel just as good to play from the couch as from a desk.” Hopefully that holds true for the Switch version.

Pillars of Eterntiy: Complete Edition Nintendo Switch Screenshots

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire released for PC in 2018, and in our review, we said “Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire’s characters are outstanding, including the archipelago on which it takes place. Its central conflict pales in comparison to its rich sidequests and deep, customizable tactical combat.”

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire will be released on other consoles, and Obsidian Entertainment and Versus Evil has thanked everyone for their patience and will have more to share next month when the game appears at Gamescom and PAX.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer who has always meant to play this game and this feels like a great excuse to. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst.

Source : IGN