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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Oct 22, 2007 14:41:06 GMT -5
I wrote some notes on ZA after completing it (8 hours straight with no saving), and to be honest, I think it's one of the worst games I've ever played. What surprised me, is that WoG and FoE received a lot of harsh criticism, while ZA for the most part was spoken of fondly... I can only presume because it resembled LoZ and LttP.
The reason for it being bad is easy to explain: it was broken in almost every way possible, and I don't think it was finished, despite the fact you could complete it. It featured 30+ weapons/items, of which only 3 or 4 were ever needed. There were also a lot of useless items which had no purpose. One item, a crossbow, was essential to finish a dungeon, but the method of finding this crossbow was that a specific enemy would drop it when killed, except he looked like all the others and was quite easy to miss. There were also lots of strange things, like NPCs who did nothing, and buildings you couldn't enter, and an entire village which served no purpose, whole sections of game which were empty and dead-ends, and a dungeon which could only be entered by walking in a randomly generated bird.
It was also flawed in that some enemies could only be killed with a specific weapon (and had to be killed to finish a dungeon), but you didn't know which one. So you'd cycle through 20 or so weapons until you found the right one... Except they each cost rupees to use, and in one case, the weapon needed used 20 rupees a shot. By the time I found the right one, I was out of rupees and had to backtrack out of a dungeon to an area with lots of monsters.
It can be finished, but it's a ramshackle mess of a game. It's almost so bad it's good.
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Yuan
Full Member
The Original Wind and Water: Puzzle Battles Yuan
Posts: 248
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Post by Yuan on Oct 22, 2007 17:29:33 GMT -5
Hi. First of all, I really enjoyed the article and thumbs up for defending a title that you like. Also, you really made your homework there, thanks to you we know a lot more about how the game was made, which is always very interesting.
However, other than biased I think some of the statements should be a little more objective.
I can perfectly understand if it came to be your favorite game of all time, I had played them a little bit, and always knew they weren't the worst games in the world.
However, I must diverse in saying they are "expertly crafted" games.
The only studios I have worked on that have a similar way of working were actually studios/people who had never worked on games before, and make some "newbie" mistakes because no one else taught them to do things otherwise. Judging by the system specs and capabilities, there are quite a few things that I think should have been done differently.
Nobody gets it quite right the first time. You're not really good riding a bike when you have just started, even if you're incredible with a skooter. You might learn fast, but won't be a master unless you keep improving for a long time.
If they could have done another title, they would have certainly corrected some of the "mistakes" they did the first time, that's for sure. It's like playing chess a second time.
"Garou Mark of the Wolves", for instance, is what I would consider and expertly crafted title being objective: a game running on 10-year old 16-bit hardware that was so technically advanced it could only be ported faithfully to a "128-bit" console. Over 20 fighting games of experience to produce and incredibly mature fighting system, and pixel animation only matched by the best efforts elsewhere in the world, keeping an impressive look even after over 7 years of its release make that game one of the biggest efforts in game creation. I could perfectly say this even if I thought it were a bad game. There are very little things I would change to Garou.
I would risk to say "The Apprentice" for the CDi is a better contender for such a statement.
All in all, thanks a lot. It was very interesting and informative; I was going to play those titles one day anyway, but I hope it gives players who would "potentially like those games but got scared away" a chance to give them the fair chance they deserve.
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Post by vysetd on Oct 22, 2007 18:34:36 GMT -5
I wrote some notes on ZA after completing it (8 hours straight with no saving), and to be honest, I think it's one of the worst games I've ever played. What surprised me, is that WoG and FoE received a lot of harsh criticism, while ZA for the most part was spoken of fondly... I can only presume because it resembled LoZ and LttP. The reason for it being bad is easy to explain: it was broken in almost every way possible, and I don't think it was finished, despite the fact you could complete it. It featured 30+ weapons/items, of which only 3 or 4 were ever needed. There were also a lot of useless items which had no purpose. One item, a crossbow, was essential to finish a dungeon, but the method of finding this crossbow was that a specific enemy would drop it when killed, except he looked like all the others and was quite easy to miss. There were also lots of strange things, like NPCs who did nothing, and buildings you couldn't enter, and an entire village which served no purpose, whole sections of game which were empty and dead-ends, and a dungeon which could only be entered by walking in a randomly generated bird. It was also flawed in that some enemies could only be killed with a specific weapon (and had to be killed to finish a dungeon), but you didn't know which one. So you'd cycle through 20 or so weapons until you found the right one... Except they each cost rupees to use, and in one case, the weapon needed used 20 rupees a shot. By the time I found the right one, I was out of rupees and had to backtrack out of a dungeon to an area with lots of monsters. It can be finished, but it's a ramshackle mess of a game. It's almost so bad it's good. I see...Thank you for addressing my question. I respect your view completely, but there is one thing I should comment on and it's about the weapons and items. Truth be told, a lot of Zelda games had (and have) items like that and lots of unnecessary backtracking and the like. Not just LoZ and LttP, but Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask (with the whole distorting time business), Wind Waker, the Game Boy/ GBC games, and I'm willing to bet that Twilight Princess and Phantom Hourglass have at least a little of this too (I haven't played those yet). In essence, WoG and FoE are somewhat unique in the whole series. I personally thought that their animated cutscenes were pretty good for their time...IF they weren't so exaggerated! I mean, the King is moving back and forth and doing all this other crazy stuff! Reminds me of some old cartoon
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Post by ReyVGM on Oct 22, 2007 21:57:32 GMT -5
Twilight Princess and Phantom Hourglass don't have any fetch quests Actually TP has just a couple of minor fetch quests (nowhere near Ocarina or Wind Waker), but Phantom Hourglass has zero fetch quests (thank god) and it also has no heart pieces to find.
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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Oct 23, 2007 2:43:04 GMT -5
The thing with the weapons is that most Zelda games have a purpose for each item. ZA gave you items which you never needed to use, ever. It made me think they wrote up the design documents, implemented the weapons and items, but then ran out of time to implement the situations they were supposed to be used in.
Point taken about the craftmanship. I meant more in terms of design flow, since Dale had worked on quite a few other adventures (Below the Root being a personal favourite). Prior to Zelda he'd worked on several of the launch titles. The same team (AM) later went on to make Mutant Rampage, which is regarded by many as one of the CDi's best games, both technically and in terms of gameplay.
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Post by kyouki on Oct 23, 2007 6:23:25 GMT -5
The animated cinemas in these games are hilarious. The best part is where the king tells Link he must defeat Gannon, and Link replied, "Great!!! I'll go get my stuff!!!!"
I've not played these games in depth, but I played Link: Faces of Evil at a CD:I demo station at Media Play back in the day. It was probably one of the worst games I've ever played, the controls are just awful. I was intrigued by the premise ("looks like a sequel to Zelda II!!"), but the controls just ruin it.
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Post by ReyVGM on Oct 23, 2007 21:48:13 GMT -5
Yeah, if the game would have had decent controls I'm pretty sure they would have been liked a lot more.
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Post by ninjarygar on Oct 24, 2007 19:27:44 GMT -5
Seriously though... you can't ignore the cinimas in the article. That's just not right. You HAVE to add screenshots of what the animation was like.
It's embarassing... yes, but it's part of the game. And HG101 never does articles where it refuses to show you screenshots of a part of the game just because they're bad. Not only that, but the cinimas are the most memorable parts of those games.... and sure you can find them easilly (Youtube Poop) they shouldn't be ignored in the article. That makes it look biased and hard to take seriously.
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Post by vysetd on Oct 25, 2007 3:25:10 GMT -5
God...it's embarrassing. I must have favorited ten or twenty Youtube Poops in the span of about 1 week (they actually make up the majority of my favorites in my channel). I've only known about them for about that long too...and yeah, many of the poops use those cinemas.
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Post by Shinigami on Oct 25, 2007 10:51:07 GMT -5
What the heck are you guys talking about? Those cinemas aren't awful, they're hilariously awesome. They have authentic hand-drawn animation you don't find in this day and age. Every part of the character is animated when they talk, not just the mouth. And the dialogue is incredibly accurate, "It is written, only Link can defeat Gannon". If you can't find the humor in the cinemas, that's too bad.
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Post by jonrose on Oct 27, 2007 10:56:02 GMT -5
If we all learned to do that then we would love a LOT of bad games. This is absolutely true, and is what makes the article so pathetic. It's the same sort of lameass, apologetic spin that i come to this site to get away from. "Well, if you remove everything that makes it crappy, it's really quite good!". Yeah, thanks for that solid nugget of logic, jackass. If you ignore the blatant inconsistency in rationale and the patronizing concessions, your article is actually worth reading. It's not like he even had the decency to pick something that had a chance, or come up with points that actually made sense. You admit that the controls are extremely limited, then you condescend to tell us that they're really quite good? "You need to learn the subtler nuances"? Fuck you. "Some people complain it's impossible to avoid enemy projectiles without getting hit, resulting in repeated deaths. Not so! If you had read the booklet, you'd know that Link or Zelda's shield only become active if you stand still." WOW! No one ever thought about that, even though that's the way blocking has worked since the series' inception! Not at all a transparent attempt to apologize for controls that earned a reputation for being crappy! And hey, thanks for writing a flagrantly biased article with the implication that the only reason people don't see it like you is because they're biased. This article does not belong here. This kind of "writer" does not belong here.
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Post by necromaniac on Oct 27, 2007 12:26:10 GMT -5
Nice first post jonrose, makes one think you come straight from the gutters of gamefaqs. Instead cutting the author down, maybe you should try and point out what he can do to improve the article? I agree with you that it's overly apologetic and the author might tone that down a bit, but honestly, where else would you see someone defend those two games? Overall I think he did a great job considering it's his first.
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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Oct 28, 2007 10:55:25 GMT -5
I'd be happy to clarify or rewrite some sections. I honestly never had serious trouble with the controls and simply put up with them. I felt the need to explain how blocking works, because I've repeatedly read online people complaining about an inability to block.
I was actually thinking of adding more to it, along the lines of what is particularly strong about it, gameplay wise.
The 'hidden lock' section in Link's version is brilliant, I felt. Lock and key, side by side, but it's not obvious what the actual lock is (it's a skull)... You only get told what it is later by an NPC. Still, those who experiment might stumble across it early.
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Post by jonrose on Oct 28, 2007 13:30:44 GMT -5
Nice first post jonrose, makes one think you come straight from the gutters of gamefaqs. Instead cutting the author down, maybe you should try and point out what he can do to improve the article? I agree with you that it's overly apologetic and the author might tone that down a bit, but honestly, where else would you see someone defend those two games? Overall I think he did a great job considering it's his first. An apologetic defense for the apologetic defense. Fucking brilliant. To answer your question, you wouldn't see someone defend that game anywhere else. Two guesses why that is, genius. And thanks for the additional ridiculous assumption that reading it was not punishment enough; i'm now expected to essentially edit a giant trainwreck. Ok, fine: my suggestion for improvement is deletion. With extreme prejudice. Once you cross the line of delusional double-speak, you've pretty much rocketed yourself miles past the point of simple mistakes and second chances.
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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 28, 2007 15:23:53 GMT -5
Jonrose fails at not being a douchebag. Seriously, what kind of logic is this? The rest of the internet may have painted this as a bastard child of everything, but the writer obviously liked it and wanted to defend it. I mean I guess if you're a moron and go by the assumption that the masses are always right and anyone else who thinks otherwise should just shut up, then just please stop visiting this website, or any other website for that matter, because the internet would probably be better if dimwits like you just stayed away. God forbid people learn anything about "perspective" .
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