Hyrule Blog - The Zelda Blog

Super Mario 3D Land, World 5-2: The Zelda Level

2012-01-27T23:42:00.002+01:00

It'se Meeee, Touriaaaaannn!!

Well, I bought Super Mario 3D Land today. The game is okay, but the most fun and interesting part for a Zelda fan is definitely World 5-2, the Zelda dungeon stage made for the 25th Anniversary. Like most stages so far this level is pretty short, but it's a neat one. It's entirely displayed in an overhead view and you switch between the rooms with classic Zelda scrolling. There are spiked cylinders that make a similar sound to the ones from the Nintendo DS Zelda games, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, though I think this is the case with all spiked cylinders in the game. And there's a room with four torches and a closed gate. If you light all four torches with the (hidden) Fire Flower power up, the "solved puzzle"-jingle from Ocarina of Time is played and the gate opens to a secret room with a Star Coin. Also, I thought that the first Star Coin was cleverly hidden. If you don't have the game, you can watch a video of the stage at IGN.

I think this level gives a nice impression of how the 3DS Zelda game could look like. It looks amazing in 3D, specially in the "pop up" mode, where the camera is closer to the floor and Mario jumps out of the sceen. I think the 3DS Zelda game doesn't have to be a 3rd Person view Zelda game like Ocarina of Time 3D, the overhead style of this Mario level is so much more charming. It could actively use the 3D in many creative ways and be a very classic and old school Zelda experience at the same time. It would also fit Aonuma's statement that they are going to built on what was done in the Nintendo DS Zelda games.

Also, I still think that re-releasing A Link to the Past as part of the 3D Classics would be awesome, which would already be similar, though maybe not as impressive.

Skyward Sword: Ideas for Medals

2012-01-26T01:24:00.000+01:00

In my Skyward Sword review I complained that there weren't enough medals in the game. That it was a great idea, which felt like a last minute addition. Well, I don't want this to be nothing but hot air, so I will present some ideas for medals, which could have been made for the game. Many of them are based on the Magic Rings from Oracle of Ages and Seasons, others are inspired by masks and others are just new ideas completely.

Razor Medal: doubles your sword's attack power
Healing Medal: slowly regenerates you
Charge Medal: lets you charge Skyward Sword strikes in an instant (like at the end of Hero Mode)
Lightning Medal: half damage from electric attacks
Roc's Medal: increases speed of your bird, gives you one additional attack charge (four instead of three)
Pegasus Medal: increases running speed while dashing
Discovery Medal: shows the locations of unopened treasure chests on your map (outside of dungeons)
Hunter Medal: shows the locations of enemies on your map
Shield Medal: further increases your Shield Gauge
Bombproof Medal: no damage from own bombs
Toss Medal: lets you throw and roll stuff (like bombs) twice as far
Item Medal: lets Arrows, Bombs and Deku Seeds appear more often
Fairy Medal: lets Fairies appear more often
Hornet Medal: Deku Hornets won't attack you (perfect to collect Hornet Larva)
Quicksand Medal: crossing quicksand takes less stamina
Sacred Medal: no effect from curses
Steadfast Medal: you can't get knocked over by enemies and it's easier to keep balance on tightropes
Hero's Eyes: shows life meter of enemies (like the Hero's Charm in the Wind Waker)
STFU Medal: silents Fi

I'm aware that some of this stuff might make an already easy game even easier. But let's just pretend it was somehow harder. And some medals like the Toss Medal or the Quicksand Medal might break the game, but it's not like I could test these ideas. Well, my personal favorite would be the Discovery Medal. It's hard to judge whether you found all treasure chests on the overworld or not, it would have been helpful for writing my guides. And the Hero's Eyes would be cool, I thought that was a cool feature in the Wind Waker and would make perfect sense as a pouch item.

If you wouldn't have all the potions you could also add medals for the three potion effects:

Guardian Medal: reduces damage by half
Stamina Medal: increases stamina
Zora Medal: lets you breathe under water

Do you also have any cool ideas for medals? Post them in the comments!

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Review)

2012-01-21T03:42:00.003+01:00

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is the long awaited Zelda Wii game that was released last November. Now, after playing the game for 150 hours, beating the Hero Mode and writing all sidequest guides for Zelda Europe I'm finally ready to write down my final opinion. How does the game hold up in certain categories? What was done right? What was done wrong? How does it compare to other Zelda games? Read to find out.

Please note that the review is not entirely spoiler free! This is not supposed to be a help for purchase decisions, it's about how a longtime Zelda fan feels about the game.

Controls

Nintendo's big selling point of the game were the new MotionPlus powered controls, Skyward Sword was designed to be the pinnacle of the Wii experience. Taking sword and shield into your own hands. Ever since the Wii got introduced that's what we've been dreaming about. And it took Nintendo five years to make a game, which fully takes advantage of the Wii's possibilities and let's you play Zelda in a way that feels natural. Swing the Wiimote to swing your sword, raise the Nunchuk to raise your shield. It's simple and it works great for the most part. It feels powerful, you will love the feeling of hitting enemies by swinging the Wiimote. And it's all very intuitive, switching to items, using them and switching back to the sword feels completely natural. It's perfectly streamlined and the best use of motion controls on the Wii yet. Once you got used to the new controls, you might not want to go back to the old way. It just feels that great.

Still you might be struggling with some parts of the controls, because they aren't recognized correctly or lose the alignment. The controls work fine for the most part, but for example the thrusting or timing shield attacks correctly might give you a hard time. And in cases like this the game will frustrate you. Since Skyward Sword now let's you move the sword in any direction, Nintendo felt like they had to add a lot of "do the right move or suffer"-fights. If you can't slice in the right direction fast enough, the game punishes you. And the heat of the battle doesn't make it easier to perform the desired move. Let's say you need to stab an enemy in the chest or the eye, but Link does a shield bash or a vertical spin instead because you also moved the Nunchuk without noticing yourself. The enemy now uses this mistake to hurt you badly and you get frustrated. The controls can be a lot of fun, when the fights are more natural. They probably would be totally awesome in a game like Twilight Princess. But all the "slice in the right direction"-fights and puzzles feel too forced and point out the flaws in the controls.

Motion controls are also used for other things like navigating menus, swinging and balancing on tightropes, flying or diving. Some of it feels forced, especially the balancing feels like a minigame, but most of it works fine and blends in fluidly. Only the diving feels like a huge step backwards from the pretty good diving mechanics in Twilight Princess, it's just not enjoyable.

Gameplay

The motion controls are not the only thing new in this new installment of the Zelda series. There are many new gameplay mechanics, refinements and ideas like new sword beams, a stamina system, the Shield Gauge, the Adventure Pouch, new ways of healing, painting on Goddess Walls or the Dowsing to offer a fresh experience. Some of them certainly work great and have the potential to evolve into series staples, others not so much.

The title giving move is the Skyward Strike. Link rises his sword into the air, which charges it to release sword beams. Except for the Fierce Deity's blade this is the first time that sword beams are featured in a 3D Zelda game and it works surprisingly well. Link's pose when rising the sword into the air is so much cooler than holding it behind or infront of him (to charge spin attacks in previous games) and the Skyward Strikes can be a powerful weapon. It's cool, it works great and hopefully it will be included in every 3rd Person Zelda from now on.

After games like the Wind Waker or Spirit Tracks you might fear that the flying is a very dominant feature, but in fact you won't spent much time flying around during the main quests. It's somehow based on the Kargarok flying in Twilight Princess, but you have a more accurate control over the bird, the motion controls work fine when you got used to them, especially flapping the wings has a good feeling to it. But there isn't much to say about the flying, because there isn't much to it. It feels like they did flying just to do flying as a mode of transportation and be done with it. It's not what the game revolves around.

When Zelda fans run over Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time, they do not run, they somersault. All over the place. It looked stupid, it didn't make any sense, but it was faster than simply running. Now Nintendo let's you dash instead, which doesn't look stupid, makes perfect sense and feels great. However, it comes with the price of a new stamina system. It limits your dashing time, as well as other activities as climbing or moving blocks and even fighting. If the stamina meter runs out, Link gasps and needs to take a pause. Well, as long as you stop dashing before the meter runs out, this won't effect you. It's more a way of preventing that you abuse the spin attacks, which now can be quickly triggered with a single move. It doesn't really effect climbing, because they are usually Stamina Fruits on your way, which refill your stamina meter. And you won't notice the stamina system while moving blocks at all. Still you might get the feeling, that the stamina meter runs out too quickly. Especially when you need stamina the most during the Silent Realms. Well, there's the Stamina Potion to lengthen the effect, but you can't use its effect during the Silent Realms. And during the rest of the game you can't just always buy and drink potions, a more permanent solution (like a medal) would have been nice.

To test the new stamina system to its limits Nintendo included the Silent Realms, a mix between the Twilight Realm tear collecting and the Phantom gameplay from the Nintendo DS Zeldas. It's a really thrilling concept in a way, but it's probably not something that you will overly enjoy. You really just want to get over with these parts of the game and continue adventuring. Nobody likes tests. But you still may grow to like it and develop a certain affection for this kind of gameplay. The game let's you repeat all Silent Realms and even records your time doing so, which can turn into quite a sport.

A new innovation is also the Shield Gauge. If you raise your shield and an enemy hits it, the Shield Gauge depletes unless you perform a Shield Bash at the right time to deflect the attack, which makes fights somewhat more challenging. If the Shield Gauge runs out, your shield breaks. It also adds to the upgrade system, since you can strengthen your shields two times. The problem with this system is, that it might keep you from using your shield at all. Performing Shield Bashes with the right timing takes some practice and until you mastered it your shield will take a lot of hits. It's definitely something that won't be suitable for top-down Zelda games, but future 3rd Person Zeldas still might pick it up.

Your shields are stored in the Adventure Pouch together with other items like empty bottles, the medals, additional Bomb Bags, Quivers and Seed Satchels. It works like the menu for the main items, only that its content can be assigned freely. The Adventure Pouch can give space for up to eight items, all other items have to be stored elsewhere and can't be taken with you. With the exception of the rings from the Oracle games this is new for Zelda and it really feels like a nice RPG element done Zelda style. You have to think about what items you want to bring to your next adventure, you can't have them all. Of course on your first playthrough you don't really know what's ahead of you and you will probably just bring your balanced standard selection of items, because you're too lazy to return to the sky and change the content of your pouch. But it gets more interesting during your second playthrough, the Hero Mode, where things get harder and you might want to bring more healing items and the space for other items has to be used for the most important things. It's definitely a cool new concept, but it wasn't taken to its full potential, because there aren't enough important items. If you're good, you will only need a shield. But the Adventure Pouch could basically hold a greater variety of items that are used in a similar style. It could give space for items like boots, armors, masks and even the Lantern. On the other hand this could frustrate players, if they forgot to bring the right items. But it's definitely an interesting idea that could make a return in any of the future Zelda games.

Another nice example of how the gameplay offers fresh and surprising ideas in Skyward Sword would be the various ways of healing yourself. In classic Zelda you would look for a fairy fountain, in this game you sit down. Exactly, Link heals himself while he sits on a chair or a bench. It makes absolutely no sense, but for some reason it feels right and it totally works. What doesn't really work so well are the Goddess Walls. You can draw desired items on them to appear. However, the drawing with the Wiimote is not accurate enough to feel satisfying. It's something that should have been in the Nintendo DS Zelda games, but not in a Wii game.

Now, Skyward Sword is the only Zelda game next to Majora's Mask that works with savepoints, the Bird Statues. You can't save where you want, only at these statues, but similar to the Owl Statues in Majora's Mask they also act as a warp point. You don't really have to worry about this system, because they are plenty of Bird Statues everywhere. In fact going from one statue to the next might in some cases be shorter than going back to the sky and landing at the other statue. Well, it's certainly no match to the fast warp systems of other Zelda games, but it's better than what we got in Spirit Tracks.

Navigation also changed a lot in this game. Like in the Nintendo DS Zeldas maps now are a lot more detailed. In a dungeon the map item now combines map and compass. While this might be handy, it sometimes feels like there's something missing from the dungeons. You always had to look for at least one more item. Outside the dungeons you can set beacons on your map, which is a really cool tool and especially helpful when navigating the skies. But there are parts in the environment where you have to jump down from a great high to reach a treasure chest or similar things and thanks to the beacons you can accurately determine form where you have to jump from. And then there's dowsing... dowsing let's you scout for various targets by using your sword as a dowsing rod. And while it might be handy in certain situations, it gets to be a really cheap feature, because they let you dowse for everything. Hidden items, trading quest targets, rupees, collectibles, everything. Normally in a Zelda game you would have to look for stuff on your own. If a character asks for a certain item, you would have to think about where you could find it. But not in Skyward Sword, in Skyward Sword you dowse. In Ocarina of Time you would have to find all Golden Skulltulas on your own by thoroughly investigating all areas. But not in Skyward Sword, in Skyward Sword you dowse for secret items. It's cheap, it takes away all challenge about looking for things and it should never appear in any Zelda again. It only gets to shine during one part of the game, where you have to look for an invisible moving object, but that part was rather annoying.

Well, it's certain that they tried to introduce many new gameplay ideas in Skyward Sword, but at the same time they avoided certain cliches. For example there isn't a single light-the-torch puzzle in the entire game, which have been present in every single Zelda game ever since A Link to the Past.

Graphics and Sound

The overall presentation of the game is solid. The Wii was already outdated when it was released and that was five years ago. It's not an high end graphics system and the best solution is to cover it below some artistic style like Skyward Sword did. Like stated so often the visuals are basically a hybrid between the Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, it looks quite colorful like the Super Mario Galaxy games, but it got realistic proportions for the most case. The washy water color effect definitely hides the Wii's age, but while it looks great on an old tube TV, it might look quite terrible on an HD TV, other Wii games tend to look sharper.

It's the first time that a Zelda game gets an orchestrated score, but sadly most of the tracks aren't that memorable. There are certainly some catchy tunes like the Faron Woods theme, but overall the selection of music is not as great as that of other Zelda games. It's not bad either, but it's doubtful that any of it will turn into longtime fan favorites. It doesn't have the same touch as the music from games like Ocarina of Time. Only the totally awesome trailer theme (the Goddess' Song) will probably be remembered, but sadly this song gets rarely played during the game. On the other hand it's great that most of the songs are actually new themes. Not even the typical main theme from Zelda really appears, only very few songs like Zelda's theme or the Fairy Fountain theme for the file menu made a return.

There's still no voice acting save for Fi's gibberish and there's an ongoing debate whether voice acting would be a good idea or. But certainly the funny sounds that characters like Gorko the Goron, the Kikwi, Beedle or Groose make while talking have their own charme and can be entertaining. "Ohhhhhh, thank yooouuuuu.", "Q Q" - you only get to hear that in a Zelda game and it's certainly more charming than all the dull voice acting in games like Skyrim. And there's always the issue of synchronisation, especially here in Germany. Our translation already is downright terrible (for example they translated Lanayru with "Ranelle") and you should expect Nintendo of Europe to hire some lackadaisical voice actors without any spirit. So, maybe text and funny sounds aren't so bad. Voice acting could be totally amazing if done right, but it's not like the game really misses it.

Story and Characters

In a twisted sense the game basically presents a classic Triforce story revolving around Link, Zelda and some sort of Ganon. However, it's all very different to feel entirely fresh. Since it is the first game in the Zelda timeline, it tries to explain the origins of key story elements and characters. But it does a very poor job doing so, because all it does is introducing "origin substitutes". For example the Master Sword was made from the Goddess Sword and Ganon spawned from some new evil, which is just called "Demise". However, it never really is explained where Demise came from or how the Goddess Sword was made. They are just there. So, ultimately the story is not fully satisfying.

One important job of the story in a videogame is to motivate you. It's bad if the overall goal of the game is to rescue a princess, who you've never met and who means nothing to you. And Skyward Sword does a great job by introducing a very lovely and charming Zelda character. You will easily grow to like her and you want to save her. At first. While the story starts out great, it quickly loses its touch. Instead of really being in danger, all Zelda does is constantly run away from you, while Impa, who gets Zelda's new best friend, mocks you for being too slow. And you have to prove yourself "worthy" in various trials over and over and over again. You're said to be the Goddess' Chosen Hero, but it feels like they don't want you to save anything. "Oh, no... we can't just let you save Zelda. At first you have to collect 15 of these colorful thingys to prove yourself worthy." It's aweful and you might ask yourself "Why am I chasing after this girl? Why am I doing all this?! Let's catch some bugs instead." The story is ultimately a real motivator for doing all kinds of sidequests, but not what you're told to do.

And then there's time travel. In 99% of the cases a time travel story always leads to unlogical paradoxes. It's always better not to include any time travelling, because it makes everything too complicated. It's a wonder that the time travelling in Skyward Sword didn't create three new splits in the timeline. And it felt like an unnecessary last minute addition, which makes it even worse.

While the story may have its flaws, the overall setting and characters are well made. Skyloft is an interesting and well developed setting. And the chaotic Hyrule below is a something, that only very few Zelda games like the ones on the NES had offered so far. Zelda has always been known for its colorful and curious NPCs and Skyward Sword is certainly no exception. One who stands out is definitely Groose, who starts as a bully, but then turns into a funny and valuable asset. Fi, who is your sidekick in this game, might irritate you with her mechanical way of talking. And most of the townsfolk have an unique design to make them feel strange and curious like usually in a Zelda game.

Interestingly the game avoids old races for the most part, which is a good thing. Especially the Gorons have been totally overused ever since their introduction in Ocarina of Time and gotten stale. In this game there are only three Gorons, one of them is featured as an archeologist, whom you meet multiple times during your travels. The Gorons in this game feel like an interesting and fresh cameo. There's also one Sheikah - Impa, but there never haven't been many Sheikahs anyway. Instead of recycling old races Nintendo decided to create some fresh new ones. The Kikwi are a folk of forest dwellers who look like fat bush penguins and make funny sounds. The Mogma are a race of moles, where you usually just see their upper halfs sticking out from some hole in the ground. They are treasure hunters and because of all that they fit perfectly into an adventure setting and in dungeon environments, which makes them basically the replacement for the Old Man, who was giving you tips in dungeon rooms in the original Zelda. The Mogmas are smartly designed, quite funny and they are a great addition to the Zelda series. We certainly haven't seen the last of them. In the desert we get to meet the Ancient Robots, their design makes them look like funny little versions of Gohdan from the Wind Waker and they usually talk with a bad mouth or behave in other strange ways, which are unexpected from a mechanical being. Mostly the robot characters are just copy pasted NPC lookalikes, but two of them stand out as main cast. There's Scrapper, who helps you salvaging stuff from the surface. He can be quite entertaining, because he admires Fi and bullies Link all the time. It's really well made, because it doesn't feel out of character, it feels like he was programmed to hate Link, which is funny. And there's the Skipper, who once had a loved wife and family, which is also weird for a robot, but works here in its own way. So, overall the new races are all very well designed and entertaining - except for the Parella. They also added a new race to the water environments, but they just feel so pointless and unnecessary, they are like the Zuna tribe in Four Swords Adventures. You will hardly deal with them at all and it probably would have been more exciting to throw in one or two Zora cameos instead.

Skyloft and the Sky

One of the big themes of this game is the sky setting, you fly through the clouds with a bird and you descend to the worlds below. People like to compare it to Super Mario Galaxy, but I think Metroid Prime 3: Corruption would make a better comparison. In that game you have three larger planets, where the areas on one planet are all connected, and you can land your ship on one of various landing spots. The planets here would be the three overworlds and the landing pads would be the Bird Statues. The only difference is that you actively fly from one location to the other through a sky ocean. After all the complaints about the empty ocean in the Wind Waker, you might think that this Zelda game will finally make it better, but it doesn't. In fact the sky ocean has even less to offer than the sea of the Wind Waker. It's really just a bunch of rocks, some of them have a treasure chest on them and there are some locations for minigames and two more important places, but that's really it. There's nothing there. It's just a large boring and empty space, they wasted so many potential with this. The sky setting could have been simply amazing, if the islands were done right and offerend some variety. Just look at some fantasy art about islands in the sky, 99% of it will be a lot better than what we got in this game. It's amazing how dull this is. The bright side is, that exploring the sky is for the most part completely optional. So, if you don't like flying, you don't have to. But just because something is optional, it doesn't mean that they shouldn't put any effort in it.

Well, to be fair the focus really was on Skyloft itself, the big island in the center of the sky world. And it's a well made town, in fact it might even has more to offer than the fan favorite Clocktown. Every character in Skyloft has his individual home somewhere, there's the Bazar, the huge Goddess Statue as some kind of religious place, the Knight Academy, a waterfall with a nice and atmospheric minidungeon cave next to it, a graveyard and a huge plaza with a light tower. It will take you a while to explore all of Skyloft, but the heart of the town is definitely the Bazar. This is where you prepare for your next adventure, here you can swap you pouch items, upgrade your gear, buy new equipment, purchase potions and listen to fortunes or gossip. You might wonder why all of Skyloft's economy revolves around equipping adventurers, but it's a nice place filled with the most curious people and you will spent quite some time there. It's really your base in this game, while your actual home is the Knight Academy. This school feels somewhat similar to the Stock Pot Inn in Majora's Mask, only larger and with greater importance to the story.

For Skyloft they also changed the day and night system. Unlike in the other 3D Zelda games time won't pass outside of towns. The only way to switch between day and night is going to bed. And this works great, since you can lay in any bed in town. Exploring Skyloft at night is probably the most atmospheric part of the game, but sadly you can only visit Skyloft at night and two of the islands. It's not a real problem that they restricted the day and night system to the village areas, because in all previous Zelda games the villages and towns always have been the most interesting (and atmospheric) places during nights. The problem is that the game teased you early that you will be able to explore all of the sky at night. There is some talk about a special training and birds can be equipped with head lights. This gives you the expectation that you will learn how to fly at night as well. But it never happens and you're disappointed. It would have been better if the game simply told you "you can't fly at night, no matter what" instead of teasing possibilities that aren't available to the player.

Overworlds

From the sky you dive down to the overworld, only that there's not one overworld but three. The Faron Woods, the Eldin Vulcano and the Lanayru Desert. These three overworlds are really the stars of this game. They feel quite different from what we got as overworlds in previous 3D Zeldas and it's a giant step forward. You could describe them as massive playgrounds. They can be quite complex, they are usually content-filled and provide many obstacles. There's something to do, something to collect and something to fight in every corner. If you enter the main areas for your first time, they can be quite overwhelming and it might take a long time to fully familiarize yourself with them. And you should familiarize with them, because you're going to revisit them many times. While this might sound like lots of aweful backtracking to you, the environments constantly change throughout the game to offer new experiences.

The forest is a really bright and cheerful place, it's the perfect starting point for your adventure. It's a large open area with enough complexity to get lost several times. And the massive tree in the center can be quite overwhelming. Completely underwhelming, however, are all the side areas. Especially Lake Floria, it can't compete with the beautiful Zora Realms from previous games, the whole underwater part was a huge disappointment, it was just a tunnel, where they would test you with the bad underwater controls. They could have made a nice underwater paradise instead. The entire forest gets flooded at one point though, but this is only temporarily. The Eldin Vulcano is like a giant uphill obstacle course and a lot of fun in combination with the new stamina system. Only the Vulcano Summit side area might again feel somewhat underwhelming especially when compared to the Death Mountain Crater in Ocarina of Time. The Lanayru Desert on the other hand constantly offers new interesting and large areas. In fact during the second half of the game it even adds an entire sand ocean made in the style of Phantom Hourglass. This part is really outstanding and enjoyable. Overall the desert might be the best of the three overworlds. It's not only the largest area, it also got the time shift stones, where you can transform the environment back into a past state, so that you have two different versions of many parts of the environment.

But constantly morphing the environments or opening new areas only tries to cover the fact that the overall variety can be lacking. They didn't restrict themselves to three areas, they restricted themselves to three themes: forest, fire and desert. And this can get repetitive easily. For example the Fire Sanctuary dungeon just felt like a larger version of the Earth Temple. And the time shift stones in Lanayru, while it's an absolutely genious idea, just get overused after a while. Imagine a Zelda game only offers ice areas and ice block puzzles. It might be "cool", but it inevitably will get stale.

And variety isn't the only thing that's missing in the world design. The overworlds don't offer any optional parts at all. There are no hidden secret areas, no optional minidungeons or whatever. And this is sad. Probably the biggest strength of Spirit Tracks were all the hidden stations with their cool minidungeons. Those were awesome sidequests and Skyward Sword has none of these. There are no cool caves like in Twilight Princess, no Gerudo Training Grounds, nothing. A 50 story combat dungeon similar to the Savage Labyrinth or the Cave of Ordeals would have been totally awesome in this game. But there's nothing in the likes.

Quests

The game is overall very linear, not the most linear Zelda game, but pretty close. The only non-linear parts in the main quests are when you have to look for multiple things of the same kind at once with biggest of these quests being the three dragon quest at the end of the game. However, that one causes two game breaking glitches and it's sad to see that the only real non-linear part of the game is so flawed. The future of non-linear game design in the house of Nintendo doesn't shine all too bright. But an open and free to explore world is always more interesting than following a linear path. The linear path is just a lot easier to create for the developers. It's lazy game design. Non-linearity is always more interesting and it was everything the very first Zelda game was all about. It was about exploring a huge world on your own. It's sad to see that 25 years later the Zelda series more and more defies its roots.

The quests itself follow some repetitive pattern and feature quite some boring fetch and gather quests. The first half of the game follows the pattern "enter new overworld, get a new item, collect multiple things of the same kind using dowsing, beat the dungeon, get a key for the next world, repeat". The second half follows the pattern "learn song for Silent Realm, open Silent Realm, get new item, enter new area, do something, beat the dungeon, get better sword, repeat". Only the "do something" part in the new areas might offer some variety, for example you're going to revisit a dungeon and there's an escort quest. And the three dragon quest at the end of the game offers some interesting surprises and different quests, two of them even have the overworlds heavily altered. The individual tasks often require you to look for different things, however, the dowsing ability takes away the challenge completely. In other Zelda games you would have to think about, where you could get the needed item, or thoroughly search the areas. No need for that in this game, you just follow the beeping noise.

One of the quests that really stands out is definitely exploring the Lanayru Sand Sea, where you travel on a boat through an ocean of sand by using a time shift field that creates water around you. It's similar to the boat rides in Phantom Hourglass, only a lot more creative, and the individual islands are really fun. Another cool quest is when you get caught in the vulcano eruption and Bokoblins steal your items. It's an atmospheric mix between the Forsaken Fortress in the Wind Waker and the Tokay quest on Crescent Island from Oracle of Ages.

The Dungeons

Originally Nintendo planned to erase the borderline between dungeons and overworld, so that the player might not even notice that he has entered a dungeon. They demonstrated this at E3 2010 with a demo, where the Faron Woods area was basically one giant dungeon. It got cave rooms with Stalfos in it and you fought the scorpion boss (Moldorach) in a room on the tree top. It was a really interesting concept, that sadly got dropped entirely.

Instead you have seven normal dungeons, which now feel like a relic from Twilight Princess. Most of them follow the same basic linear design that plagued the dungeons in later games, but it's even worse. You usually get one or more central rooms with a saving point in them and the course of the dungeon winds its way through these rooms multiple times. That's how the first four dungeons work, sometimes you can even predict the entire dungeon course by just looking at the map once. The first three dungeons don't even have multiple floors. The dungeons always follow the one key principle, there's always only one locked door and one key to get at a time. At no point in the entire game you will be able to get two keys at once. Remember the classic Zelda games, where you could have up to five keys at once waiting to be inserted in various doors? There's nothing "back to the roots" about these dungeons, with one exception the dungeon design became an insult to fans of the classic Zelda games. Also, the dungeons are usually quite easy and some of them are also awefully short.

But it's not like the dungeons don't have anything to offer, some of them even feature new ideas with quite some potential. The Skyview Temple has to be praised for being a very solid starting dungeon and it offers a new interesting concept of revisiting dungeons. At one point in the game the Skyview Temple gets changed, one door gets locked again, there are harder enemies and new treasures to be found. As a sidequest this idea would have a lot of potential and it's disappointing that this was the only dungeon that got this treatment. The Ancient Cistern is just beautiful and offers two amazing contrasty settings, while the entire idea was based on a Japanese short story called The Spider's Thread. The Sand Ship dungeon also offers an extraordinary setting and even some non-linearity, though the whole timeshift idea got pretty old at that point. But the best dungeon in the game is definitely the Sky Keep, which arranged its rooms in one gigantic tile puzzle. While this idea alone is genious and has a lot of potential for future Zelda dungeons, it also offers the only true non-linear dungeon in the game.

The remaining dungeons weren't as good. The Earth Temple is even shorter than the Skyview Temple and its main puzzle with the globe in the lava wasn't any fun and just slowed you down. The Lanayru Mining Facility is a tedious experience, the visuals are ugly and the enemies are very annoying. The Fire Sanctuary is overall solid, probably the largest dungeon in the game, but it completely reused the Earth Temple's settings and visuals making it feel somewhat unoriginal.

Enemies and Bosses

Bokoblins, Keese and Chuchus. Bokoblins, Keese and Chuchus. Bokoblins, Keese and Chuchus. And maybe Deku Babas, if you're in the forest or desert. That's what you usually get during the game. There are different varients of Bokoblins, Keese and Chuchus depending on what area you're in, for example the Bokoblins in the desert (called Technoblins) use electrically powered blades and wear funny goggles. But overall it's Bokoblins, Keese and Chuchus and it feels a little bit stale and repetitive. Of course there are other enemies, which were usually designed for special environments. Actually the game has a lot more enemies than the Wind Waker, but it rarely uses them. And there are certainly some stronger enemies like the Lizalfos, the Moblins and the Stalfos. But they appear rarely in the game, especially the Stalfos, which only appear as minibosses. It would be much more exciting, challenging and varying if they would appear more frequently. And adding some other staples like Tektites, Redeads, Floormasters or Darknuts would have been nice. Especially Darknuts acting as true sword opponents would have been a must for this game, which is all about the sword fighting.

The enemy design on the other hand is really well made and on a par with the entertaining enemy behavior in the Wind Waker. The Bokoblins with their funny noises or the fat and slow Moblins are always good for a laugh. However, there is a series of enemies including the Deku and Quadro Babas, the Armos and Beamos, the Staldra and even the Stalfos, where you have to slice them in a certain direction or from a certain angle. The Armos and Sentrobes even have blue lines indicating how you're supposed to attack them. Those "puzzle fights" feel forced and very unnatural, they are usually not very enjoyable. It's understandable that they wanted to included enemies like this where you have to focus on the direction instead of just wildly waggling your way through all the fights, which even works for the most part. But it would have been better if this feels less forced and more natural. The Lizalfos would be a good example for that, they work great and it would have been nice to see more enemies on that level.

But the bosses are usually well made and fun, they didn't include a Boss Challenge mode for no reason. It might be the most solid collection of bosses since Ocarina of Time. For once they made some bosses, which are all about duels. Head-to-head sword combats against an equal enemy without any major gimmicks, which feels great except for the occasional "slice in the right direction" sequences. And there's the Imprisoned, where you have to stop a gigantic creature from reaching a certain destination, which you can approach in different ways. Of course they also got the typical giant bosses at the end of the dungeon, where you use the dungeon item to reveal their weak spots, but they only take up one third of the game's boss fights and they can be quite creative as well. And also a lot of fun. Scaldera for example is fought on a ramp, where the boss rolls down, which is a very dynamic fight. Another boss wields giant swords, which you can steal and use against him.

Actually it's sad that this is the only time where you can take an enemy weapon. Stealing your enemies' weapons was one of the coolest features of the Wind Waker and it would have been nice to play around with a larger selection of melee weapons in a game like Skyward Sword, where you can wield the weapons with your Wiimote.

The Items

In Twilight Princess you had many different items, where some of them rarely got utilized throughout the game. Nintendo decided to change this with the Nintendo DS Zeldas by reducing the number of items and giving them many different uses. And they kept this principle with Skyward Sword, there are only eight different "B-items" in this game. There's the Slingshot, the Bug Net, the Beetle, the Bomb Bag, the Bow, the Gust Bellow, the Whip and the Dual Clawshots. They all use motion controls in some way, but the transition is seamless and they work all very intuitive.

The only real new item and probably the star of the collection is the Beetle, which let's you scout through the entire terrain, as well as activating switches and collecting item from afar. You can also carry stuff like bombs around with the Hook Beetle upgrade. It's truly an interesting item that let's you explore the world in all it's glory and do many different things. The Bomb Bag now let's you store picked up bomb flowers, which feels great and completely natural. You might even wonder why they haven't thought of that innovation earlier. The Bug Net makes finally a return from A Link to the Past and is the only optional item in the set. It let's you catch various insects and some treasures and it offers even more motion freedom than the sword. It's also nice to see the Clawshots from Twilight Princess return. They didn't change at all, but there was no need, it still feels great to play Spiderman with Hookshots. The bow is very powerful and comes with the right timing. It can also be used in two different ways, one involves the Nunchuk as in WiiSports Resort, the other doesn't, but charging arrows will take longer. This is a nice compromise in a way.

Unlike in Twilight Princess the bow can't be obtained until further into the game, which gives the Slingshot the opportunity to shine a little bit more. It's not entirely useless this time, you will definitely use it a lot early in the game and might keep using it later to stun Technoblins or reveal hidden Rupees. However, the Whip and Gust Bellow items still feel heavily underused. You might think that in a game with only eight main items every single one of them gets used frequently, but this is not the case. The Gust Bellow is basically the successor of the Gust Jar from the Minish Cap, but this time it's really just a glorified leaf blower. It was planned that it also could suck in stuff, but they scrapped this idea and now the item simply blows. Yes, this pun was intended. It can blow away sand and cool down hot rocks. That's it. You might play around with it here and there, but overall it's a very underachieving item. It would have been more interesting, if it really was more like the Gust Jar. The Whip is cool, it's a fun to use item, but unlike in Spirit Tracks, where the Whip really felt like your secondary melee weapon, you won't be able to utilize it as much. You can steal the Monster Horns from certain Bokoblins, but that's it. It would have been better, if there was an upgrade to damage enemies. It has a longer range than your sword and is faster than Skyward Strikes, but it would deal less damage. It's sad that this isn't the case, because the Whip was really nice in Spirit Tracks and now feels like the stepchild of the item collection.

Next to the eight B-items there are also five more items that get (automatically) used in certain situations. The Sailcloth let's you slowly descent and prevents you from any fall damage. Because of that you can basically jump down from every height without any risk, which can fasten the gameplay in certain situations. It can also be used to move up airstreams, which feels similar to using Ezelo in the Minish Cap. Also returning from the Minish Cap are the Digging Mitts, which can be upgraded to the Mogma Mitts, which let you dig into tunnels. However, the Mogma Mitts are by far not as satisfying as the Mole Mitts in the Minish Cap, it's a lot slower and the tunnels usually don't hold any interesting secrets. There are also the Fireshield Earrings and the Water Dragon's Scale, which act as the Goron and Zora Armor in this game, only a lot more simplified. The Fireshield Earrings are certainly nice and offer this cool little effect when entering a heated area. But the Water Dragon's Scale, which is basically the Zora Flippers of this game, doesn't feel right. The controls are awkward and overall it feels like a backstep from the cool underwater gear in Twilight Princess.

And then there's the Goddess's Harp. We've seen various musical instrument in the Zelda series before, but this one has to be the most disappointing one. You can't really play it, you can only strum it which let's Gossip Stones and Goddess Walls appear and has some other hidden effects, but that's it. It's nowhere on the level of the Ocarina of Time or the Spirit Pipes, it's not even on the same page. There are five different songs, but all of them act as one time keys to open portals. There's no Song of Storms or similar songs with magical effects in this game. And the play sessions, where you have to follow a wave with your harp, can be quite annoying, though not as bad as the aweful duets in Spirit Tracks. So, there are no songs with interesting effects, no satisfying free style and only annoying play sessions. Where's the point of this instrument? It doesn't add anything to the game, it only acts as a tool to make the game more linear.

Additionally there are various Pouch Items, but keep in mind, that they are all completely optional. But it's interesting that this Zelda game has the largest collection of shields. There are four different shields in Skyward Sword, ten if you count the upgrades. It's nice how they handled the differences between the first three shields. The Wooden Shield burns like it would in Twilight Princess, but it protects you from electricity. The Iron Shield is very sturdy and protects you from fire, but you get zapped from electric attacks. Electricity really adds a great new dynamic to the game, in Twilight Princess the Wooden Shield would become useless as soon as you get the Hylian Shield, but not so in Skyward Sword. Then there's the Sacred Shield, which protects from all attacks and repairs itself, but has the lowest durability and is very expansive. Overall the three shield types are well balanced and you have to think about which shield to bring to your next mission. However, there's also the all powerful and indestructable Hylian Shield, which renders all other shields useless, but you get that one only at the very end of the game and you will have to earn it.

Also, this is the first time where they tried to do more with potions than just refilling your health and magic meters. They added four new types of potions, but mostly you will use the classic Heart Potion. Since there's now a shield instead of a magic meter, there has to be a potion to repair shields called Revitalizing Potion. The upgraded version, which works automatically like a fairy, can be nice, if you like to use the Sacred Shield. But usually you will repair your shield in the Scrap Shop. The other three potions cause certain effects like higher stamina, defense or air supply for three minutes. But you will use them very rarely, if at all. And because of that the focus on potions feels like an unnecessary feature. Maybe it would have been a better idea to offer the potion effects via the Medals, to have a Guardian Medal or a Stamina Medal, etc. That way at least the medals would have gotten more attention, but now we have two half-assed features instead.

The most important item, however, is certainly the sword. And next to the Practice Sword, which gets discarded after a few swings, there's only the Goddess Sword which slowly evolves into the Master Sword. There are no optional swords in this game, like in all Zelda games ever since the Wind Waker all sword upgrades are mandatory and story related. While it makes sense for this game, it's a bad trend for Zelda. In the first eight Zelda games there always have been optional sword upgrades or hidden better swords, cool stuff like the Seashell Sword, the Biggoron's Sword, the Gilded Sword or the Great Fairy's Sword. MASTER USING IT AND YOU CAN HAVE THIS, it was an achievement to discover a better sword, which now makes fighting the tough foes easier. Getting stronger swords was simply awesome. But now you get story related sword upgrades and the enemies become automatically harder. There's no achievement or challenge in this system. It's boring.

Sidequests

Like usually the game offers quite some sidequests that can distract you from the main game for multiple hours. The amount of sidequests is what we've been used to from most Zelda games, which means there's enough, but it isn't particularly overwhelming. The sidequests include activating Goddess Cubes, earning Gratitude Crystals and collecting resources to upgrade items.

The Goddess Cubes are probably the most rewarding sideqest, but also the most boring one. You don't really have to look for them, they are quite large and therefore mostly easy to spot. Some of them are hidden in some corners, but usually you won't have any big trouble finding them. And even if you do, you can use the stupid dowsing to easily locate them later in the game, which completely annihilates any challenge. Each Goddess Cube opens a treasure chest on the surface with valuable content, from tons of Rupees, over Pieces of Hearts up to the rare Medals, which are stored in your Adventure Pouch for various effects. The Medals are similar to the Magic Rings from the Oracle games, only far less in number. There's only ten of them, if you actually count the duplicates. The concept of the medals has tremendous potential, just look at the many different rings in the Oracle games. But Skyward Sword doesn't even scratch the surface of this potential. The majority of the medals only helps you collecting items, two of them act as Heart Containers and the last one lenghtens the potion effects. That's it. And you don't really have to look for them either, because nearly all of them are gotten from Goddess Cubes or Beedle's Shop.

The Gratitude Crystals are related to a sidequest, where a funny demon character wants to become human. You bring him crystals and he rewards you with certain items, usually a wallet upgrade. The crystals are gotten in two different ways. You can look for single crystals at night or you can earn five crystals at once by making a person happy. The latter might remind you of the mask quests in Majora's Mask, though the quests never get as complex as coupling Anju and Kafei or saving the Romani Ranch. But nearly every citizen of Skyloft gets one sidequest whatsoever. Some of these sidequests actually let you make a choice, which influences the further development of the characters, something that has never been done outside of the Capcom Zelda games and which was probably Fujibayashi's input. These choices can be interesting, but they can also give you the feeling that you're missing something. In fact one choice might lead to missing out one entire character. However, there are only three occasions, where you have to make a game altering choice. So, like many other things in Skyward Sword these choices feel like an experiment, something that got tacked to the game, but never fully explored. The single Gratitude Crystals a scattered through Skyloft at night. It feels similar to hunting Skulltulas at night in Kakariko Village and it's a very atmospheric sidequest, though quite a short one. Except for two crystals you can get them all at once. Only one of them is really cleverly hidden and for those who hate looking for things there's again a dowsing ability which takes away all possible challenge. It would have been a much more fulfilling collectible quest, if you could explore the entire world at night and if there were many crystals scattered through all areas.

Another new addition is collecting treasures and insects to upgrade your items and potions. And it's truly a great addition. They have finally perfected the treasure system from the Nintendo DS games, which could be very annoying thanks to randomness and some treasures being too rare. But here every treasure has its definite source like the spoils in the Wind Waker. But unlike the spoils there's still a some luck involved, so farming is not as easy. Still if you need a certain type of treasure, you will know where to find it instead of hopelessly playing the same minigames over and over again like in Spirit Tracks. Some treasures might be dropped from certain types of enemies, other treasures can be found in certain spots in the environment and others can be catched with your Bug Net like the insects. There are 12 different types and they all have their own preferred habitat and behavior. Catching bugs is fun and offers quite some variety, you might ignore your main tasks just because you heard some Sand Cicadas rattle in the background. The nice thing about all those treasures and insects is that they all really add something to the environments. In every corner of the world there is something to collect. Walking through the lands never gets boring, because there's always something to do. This really adds to the game and should be included in every future Zelda. It is really fun to collect the stuff and it's good that it's fun, because you probably wouldn't do it otherwise. The requirements for the upgrades are usually easily met, you don't even have to try hard. And you will rarely upgrade any potions, so collecting insects might feel completely unnecessary. But you can always sell your insects and treasures at night to make some money, though the selling interface is somehow inconvinient, especially when compared to selling things in the Nintendo DS Zeldas. But the only real annoying thing about the treasures and insect is when you leave the game. Because then it resets all the "got item"-messages and shows them again. It's like with the different Rupees in Twilight Princess, only ten times worse. Because there are far more individual treasures and insects and each time it opens the collection menu and shows how the number of the item gets incremented. EACH SINGLE TIME. This is so brutally annoying that some people decided to avoid treasures completely or never to turn the game off. What was Nintendo thinking?! You can always look up the description in the collection menu, there's no need to show it a second time.

The upgrades are varied, you can upgrade shields, bags, half of the main items and potions. Some of them are boring, for example upgrading the shields only increases their Shield Gauge and makes them look a little bit different or the upgrades for Bomg Bags only makes them carry more bombs. But some are more interesting and helpful like the Quick Beetle, which let's your Beetle fly a lot faster while pressing A. Or the Big Bug Net, which makes catching bugs a lot easier. These upgrades really feel like a cool achievement and it would have been nice if there were more. The Whip didn't get an upgrade for example, though it really could use one to make it more interesting and useful. It's also interesting that the Clawshots didn't get any upgrades, since the Hookshot was one of the few items to get upgrades in earlier Zelda games. And overall making upgrades is too easy. In case of the Bow for example you won't even have the chance to feel any difference between the different versions, because you might upgrade it instantly into the Sacred Bow. The requirements for the upgrades should have been higher.

The game also features the traditional Heart Pieces, though as usually they are not very well hidden or follow predictable formulas. A good chunk of them is gotten from Goddess Cubes or minigames. Though the minigames are surprisingly decent this time around. Half of them is entirely optional, like the good old Money Making Game you don't have to play them, if you don't want to. You won't miss any items. They are only used to win Rupees, treasures or insects. The others "only" give you a Piece of Heart, so won't have to beat them multiple times. And they can also be quite fun. The only frustrating minigame might be the minecart race, the motion controls feel flawed at first, but if you get the hang of it, this minigame also won't be a problem. Some minigames like the bamboo cutting can even be a lot of fun and you might just play them because you want to. One minigame that definitely has to be mentioned is the Lightning Round, which is this game's Boss Challenge Mode. Since the bosses were overall well designed such a mode is a welcomed addition, it can also be a good challenge, especially in the Hero Mode. It also let's you replay the Silent Realms, if you like the thrill or need more Dusk Relics, which can only be found during the trials.

Difficulty Level

Unlike most Zelda games Skyward Sword doesn't start with three hearts, but six. And it does that for a reason. The first steps are always the hardest and it might take you a while to adept to the new control scheme. You might struggle even with simple enemies like Deku Babas or Skulltulas. But you will get the hang of it sooner or later and then you enter a Zelda game that is relatively easy, because it doesn't keep up with you. Stronger enemies like Stalfos are a rare sight in this game, the game is very linear, the dungeons are quite simple and with two exceptions the puzzles are usually not that smart. And even if they are smart, there's a high chance that someone in the game will tell you the solution right away.

That leads us to Fi, who must be the worst sidekick yet. Don't get this wrong, she is an unique and cool character. But as a guide she is just an over the top, 4th wall breaking, never ending annoyance. "Master, this is a locked door, there's a 95% chance that you need a key to open it." - And she tells you that after you already got the key. She is really the Captain Obvious of the Zelda universe and for some reason she thinks she has to repeat every bit of critical information again like you weren't listening before. Forget Navi, Navi is a total saint compared to Fi. Navi just gives you general directions, while Fi guides you on every single step. It feels like Nintendo thinks their customers are all brain dead retards, who can't think on their own and who need someone to tell them what to do all the time. And it get's even worse when Fi starts to tell you things you certainly don't want to hear. Like the red blinking battery icon the lower right screen isn't already annoying enough, Fi has to tell you personally that your batteries are low. And if you can't figure out the solution of a puzzle immediatly, Fi pops up and gives you crucial hints even though you didn't want to hear any. If you need any hints, you can always ask her for advice, so there's no reason for this. Actually she is a nice source of interesting information, for example she can tell you the name of every enemy and character, a feature that is sadly missing in most games. But overall a guide like this is completely unreasonable. In the future Nintendo maybe should try to get away from the sidekicks and built more on the Sheikah Stone idea, because the Sheikah Stones can't annoy you.

The Dowsing ability is another unreasonable guidance. Normally in Zelda games you would have to discover things on your own, in Skyward Sword you just need to follow a pointer. It goes as far that the dowsing let's you look for hidden collectible items. Where's the point in even hiding stuff then? Why have secrets and hidden items, if you have something that points at them? Discovering secrets was originally part of Zelda's gameplay and cleverly hidden things were part of Zelda's difficulty, but it's all not really part of Skyward Sword. The problem with this is, that the game turns you into a processor. You don't have to think on your own, you just follow the guides and do what you're told to do. There's no real adventure in this.

The damage level of the game is usually okay, there are no quarter hearts or jokes like that. However, you won't take any damage from jumping into an abyss. There's no punishment for something that would definitely kill you! This is ridiculous, you can even exploit this in certain situations. But if you finished the game once, you can play the Hero Mode, where like in Ocarina of Time 3D's Master Quest the received damage gets doubled. Also, there won't be any hearts to heal you at first. This can be challenging, especially in the Boss Challenge mode, but they could have done a lot more to challenge the diehard Zelda fans.

Replay Value

Nintendo said that they would focus on the replay value of Skyward Sword. And in fact there's some animated replay value, which directly motivates you to play the game at least a second time. There are some choices to make throughout the game and while these choices are minor, they still might motivate you to play the game at least a second time. These choices usually revolve around the Gratitude Crystal sidequest and they change the behavior of certain side characters towards you. For example a girl will fall in love with you and can pretend to return her feelings or dump her. Naturally your decision will change her future behavior and you might want to try both variants, because both can be funny. Also, during various cutscenes the dialogs let you chose between multiple answers. While your answers don't have any further effects, you can provoke different reactions. For example in the beginning of the game you can tell Zelda that her costume looks great or not and both of her reactions are kind of cute. These kind of things certainly add some replay value to the game, because you get to see some different reactions and even different character developments. But overall this is really underdeveloped and no comparison to the possibilities you get in various RPGs.

To spice it up Nintendo even added a 2nd Quest, the so called Hero Mode. Sadly the differences to the normal game are rather minor, even less than what the 2nd Quest of the Wind Waker offered. To make things harder you receive double damage and no hearts will appear during the game unless you carry at least one Heart Medal. But to make things easier you keep your collection from your first playthrough and during the entire game the sword beam is more powerful. It's different and especially the Boss Challenge mode can be a lot more challenging (unless you use a cheap Guardian Potion+ like a certain someone, who is writing this review), but overall they could have changed more to add more to the replay value and the difficulty. It doesn't have to be a full fledged Master Quest, but could have at least tried. They constantly changed the environments throughout the game, so why not change the dungeons once for the Hero Mode? Letting some tougher enemies like the Stalfos appear more frequently alone would have worked wonders. And they could have altered the locations of the Goddess Cubes and the content of their chests. There would be a lot of simple ways to make a second playthrough more exciting and again the Hero Mode just feels like a missed opportunity. But at least it let's you skip the cutscenes.

Still with these additions you will definitely play the game at least a second time. The overall replay value really depends on how much fun you have with the controls and the combat. It's in some way similar to Metroid: Other M, which was awefully linear and had a bad story, but was still fun to play again, if you enjoyed the controls and the combat. If you enjoy the feeling of hitting Bokoblins with your Wiimote, you will definitely return to this game and play it again despite it's linearity and weak dungeons.

Conclusion

Skyward Sword is a well crafted and very detailed game that will last for many, many hours. And it's certainly the pinnacle of the Wii experience, the new controls feel so great, that you will instantly miss them in other games. Skyward Sword also tries to avoid various Zelda cliches and on the same time it introduces new ideas, where many have the potential to evolve into new staples of the Zelda franchise. It's a fresh experience, but there's still something from every other Zelda game present, which makes the game a good entry for the 25th Anniversary. But Skyward Sword is also plagued by the typical issues of modern Zelda, issues like high linearity, low difficulty and weak dungeons. Issues that have to be resolved in the future. Also, many of the new ideas feel like experiments, where they only scratched on the surface of its full potential. The game likes to built up expectations in you only to disappoint them. And this is why the game, no matter how good it may be, will ultimately leave you unsatisfied.

Zelda: Fire and Ice Prophecy

2012-01-17T01:02:00.000+01:00

Well, the big tide is awaiting us and many are finished with Skyward Sword but already hungry for more. Naturally we all dig every tiny rumor and even big fake ones. Like let's say obviously photoshopped fake logos of two upcoming Zelda games as seen above. These games are called "Fire Prophecy" and "Ice Prophecy", though there's something wrong with the spelling, which also indicates that this is a fake. They come from 4chan and... well, let's just ask Fi what she thinks about that. Fi?

Fi: Master, my analysis concludes that there's a 99% chance that this image is not official Nintendo material.

Thanks for stating the obvious, Fi!

Even though this is a fake, I really would like the prospect of a dual Zelda game release similar to the Oracle games. I remember clearly when the games were released in 2001, I got them at day one and I was really excited about them. Link's Awakening made me a Zelda fan and I loved the thought of not getting one but two more games in this style. And for some reason when I think about the excitement of getting a new Zelda game, I think about the Oracle games. You got two Zelda games at once and the dual mechanics were very interesting, I played the Oracle games for a long time.

Some might compare it to Pokémon, but I never really liked Pokémon, because I hated the thought of having multiple versions with exclusive content of the same game. I'm a guy, who always wants everything from a game he likes, and the different versions really would have gotten in the way. Which is why I never played Pokémon. But "Zelda Red and Blue" were completely different, they were not the same game, they were two individual games, which could be connected to enhance the experience. You could use passwords or a link cable, if you got two GameBoy systems. Today linking games would be even a lot easier, since they could share save data on your system memory.

Well, back then on the GameBoy they were able to go with the slogan "this adventure is too big for one game", since the GameBoy cartridges had limited capacities (though there were versions with Oracle of Seasons and Ages on one cartridge). But today this would feel like a rip off. Instead of making two games, it would be better to make one bigger game. Or release them both on the same cartridge (like A Link to the Past & Four Swords on the GBA). Of course this wouldn't give you the same feeling as the Oracle games and Nintendo would make only half the money.

Source: Screw Attack via Zelda Universe Forums

Skyward Sword Blade Log, Final Entry: Hero Mode 100%

2012-01-05T02:20:00.002+01:00

It's been a long journey, but it finally came to an end. Minutes ago I've beaten the Hero Mode and with that fully beaten the game for 100%. Since I tied all lose ends before Skyward Sword, this also means that I've fully beaten the entire Zelda series. Nothing left to do.

Well, as soon as you get a Heart Medal (from the second Goddess Cube in Lanayru) and hearts start to return, the Hero Mode gets a lot easier. Well, but a single Heart Medal doesn't seem to bring back all hearts (for example there still weren't any hearts in the boss room of the Skyview Temple), I think you have to carry both Heart Medals to get back to the state how it would normally be. But I might be mistaken. However, during the Hero Mode I definitely had more trouble deciding which items I should carry in my Adventure Pouch. During the normal game I usually just would change the content of my pouch if I got some cool new stuff. But in the Hero Mode you definitely want to keep both Life Medals with you and at least one Heart Medal. And you should carry one or two potions. And if you're a fan of the Sadred Shield, you also want to bring a Revitalizing Potion++ just in case. See, we already used 7 of 8 spots in the Adventure Pouch, so there isn't much room for capacity upgrades or any other medals. During my first game I would bring at least one additional Bomb Bag, one Quiver and a Seed Satchel. And I would always carry the Treasure Medal. While I still tried to use my Treasure Medal, I rarely used any capacity upgrades or any other medals like the cool Bug Medal. But it's nice that during the Hero Mode you have to worry more about the content of your pouch instead of just carrying whatever you want.

You also become much more efficient. I can beat most bosses without getting hit by now. And you learn a lot of tricks. For example I learned that you can actually destroy the Beamos by shooting an arrow into their eyes just like in Twilight Princess. I had to learn this the hard way during the Sand Ship, the room with the three Beamos defending the Boss Key is really nasty. But if you know the tricks it all gets a lot easier.

And not everything gets harder. The True Master Swords now lets you instantly load sword beams, which is really cool. And you get used to it quickly, I wouldn't want to return to the slow and weak beams from the early beginning.

Probably the toughest challenge in the entire game is mastering the Boss Challenge during the Hero Mode to get the Hylian Shield. For that you have to beat eight bosses in a row without any recovery items and with double damage. Actually I can beat most bosses without any major damage or without getting hit at all. The Imprisoned for example is always an easy win if you rely on the "jump on the head" strategy. Never attack the feat in any of his versions. You can stun him with the Groosenator and then jump on his head in the 2nd or 3rd fight. If you follow these tactics, you won't get damaged during the Imprisoned fights. That's three safe fights already. The first two Ghirahim fights are also quite easy. Scaldera and most of the other bosses shouldn't be a problem as well. Only the third Ghirahim battle might be difficult, but with some training you will manage this one as well. You don't have to worry about Demise, he always comes last, so you don't have to worry about him for the Hylian Shield. The only real problem is the Horde Battle, the one where you fight against dozens of Bokoblins and other enemies at the Sealed Grounds. Every hit costs you two hearts and there's no recovery, even if you try just dashing right through the whole thing you will get hit a lot. You might be lucky and you don't have to face the Horde Battle, but the chance that the fight gets selected during the eight battles is 70%. I first tried to beat the Boss Challenge without any tricks, I selected the third Ghirahim fight, performed well and then continued to play. It all went smoothly until the Horde Battle, which just murdered me.

But there's an easy and cheap way to get the Hylian Shield anyway called using the Guardian Potion+. You can drink it right before talking to the Dragon and the invulnerability effect will carry over to the fights. The Guardian Potion+ makes you invulnerable for three minutes, but you can lenghten this time span with a Potion Medal. You might wonder about this, because medals are not allowed during the Boss Challenge. But the Potion Medal only takes effect in the moment when you drink the potion. If you drink a potion while not carrying the Potion Medal, the effect will last for three minutes. But if you drink it while carrying the Potion Medal, the effect will last much longer, even if you put the medal back into the storage. So, if you drink a Guardian Potion+ while carrying a Potion Medal right before entering the Boss Challenge, you can stay invulnerable for multiple boss fights. The next step is to select the Horde Battle first, so you can get through that one without any damage. I could make it within three minutes and I was lucky that the third Ghirahim battle would follow instantly. But the effect of my Guardian Potion+ lasted until the 6th fight and the Hylian Shield was mine at the end. Using the Guardian Potion+ might be totally cheap, but it saves you from a lot of frustration.

When you reply a game you tend to do things differently. I personally have the most fun with replaying Zelda games that are less linear. Like playing dungeons out of order, using different paths or whatever. Sadly Skyward Sword is very linear for the most part. I occasionally tried to break the game course, but the game wouldn't let me. For example this time I tried entering the Vulcano Summit without the Fireshield Earring, but Fi just stops you right before the entrance. Or in the Fire Sanctuary I tried leaving behind the Mogma, who gives you the Map, but again Fi stops you. The only real non-linear parts happen when you're supposed to collect or discover multiple things at once. But in case of the three dragons I didn't dare to experiment much because of the game breaking glitches. And you can prematurely play the enhanced Skyview Temple, but I already discoverd this during my first playthrough.

But to enhance the replay value the developers included some choices of how to deal with certain characters during sidequests. In each case I already tried both versions for the ZeldaEurope sidequest guides, but I ultimately had to chose one. In my first game I decided to give the paper to the hand and to reciprocate Peatrice's feelings. So, during Hero Mode I did the opposites. Sadly I liked the previous results a lot more. The Pipit and Karane couple is boring and you're missing out one entire character, so I suggest to give the paper to the toilet. In case of Peatrice I thought it was more funny if she's in love with you. If you reject her, she later says that she got over you and now will get prettier every day. But nothing really happens. Maybe what she's saying is more funny in Japanese, but it would have been more funny and interesting if she actually gets really pretty after this choice. In case of Pipit there's also a dialog at his mum's house after you've cleaned it, where you can make a choice, and it's more fun to tell him the truth. But overall it feels like I made the inferior choices during Hero Mode and now my Hero Mode savegame doesn't really look like an ultimate savegame to me despite the nice Triforce emblen that decorates it after beating Demise.

This and the fact that my savegame tells me that I spent nearly 150 hours with the game. That's a lot and a majority of the time came from research for my guides as well as from crazy farming. But generally I don't like it when it measures the time. I already hated that in Twilight Princess, because now I feel like I have to beat the game in a faster time. I was able to fully beat the Hero Mode within 35 hours. If I hurry through the normal game and play the Hero Mode again, I could get a "better" savegame. I know this is idiotic, but something like this just bugs me. But I will replay Skyward Sword some day anyway and that might be a good motivation.

I will close this post with a fun fact. When Demise gets revived the same music is played as when you meet Batreaux for the first time. Due to that I just couldn't take this scene seriously.

UPDATE: I noticed something odd (spoilers ahead!!!!). At the end of my normal savegame Groose is standing next to the young Impa at the Gate of Time in the past. In my Hero Mode savegame he isn't there anymore. Where is he? He must be still in the past, because he's there in the cutscenes after the final boss battle. Either this is some kind of weird glitch or an easter egg, but I couldn't find him anywhere...

My final review of Skyward Sword will be finished soon.

2011 - The Year of Zelda

2011-12-31T15:00:00.000+01:00

The year is coming to an end and there's no overstatement in saying that this year was the year of Zelda. While celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the franchise we were blessed with many new things. Alone three new Zelda titles were released this year:

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

There's no doubt that Skyward Sword was the biggest of these releases. Five years in the making, revolutionary controls, great gameplay enhancements and fun environments make this one of the best Zelda games and a fresh experience. It certainly wasn't perfect though, issues like bad fetch quests, linear game design and mediocre dungeons make it obvious that Zelda still isn't fully back on track. But it's a great game nonetheless and probably the pinnacle of the Wii experience.

The other two games weren't exactly new, but enhanced ports or "remakes". Ocarina of Time 3D made the old N64 classic feel much more contemporary, it looks great and plays nice and smoothly. It's the perfect way of reexperiencing Ocarina of Time, however, the lack of any new content was disappointing. The Four Swords Anniversary Edition on the other hand was my personal highlight this year, finally after eight years I get to play Four Swords whenever I want and the game offered one of the biggest challenges of the entire Zelda series - the Hero's Trial.

Next to these new games some Zelda games got a re-release on the 3DS Virtual Console:

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX
The Legend of Zelda (3DS Ambassador Program)
Zelda II - The Adventure of Link (3DS Ambassador Program)
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (3DS Ambassador Program)

So far only one of these game is available to everyone, the other three were part of the 3DS Ambassador Program and are only available to you if you were stupid enough to buy a 3DS early (you've learned your lesson). But they'll most likely will be sold on the eShop sooner or later, for example The Legend of Zelda is already available in Japan. Well, the point is that this year was very strong release-wise. Only 2003 and 2007 have been as strong and only in Europe.

But that's not all of it, it wouldn't be the biggest Zelda year ever if it only was for the games. Nintendo celebrated the 25th Anniversary of Zelda and they celebrated it big time with different merchandise, special releases and events. Let's take a look at all their efforts:

Robin and Zelda Williams commercials for Ocarina of Time 3D, Four Swords Anniversary Edition and Skyward Sword
Ocarina of Time 3D Soundtrack CD for all early registrations
Link's Awakening DX as the first GameBoy Color Virtual Console game
a special remake of Four Swords dedicated to the anniversary available for FREE
a Zelda Flipnote contest
the Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony orchestras around the world
Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony CD bundled with all first edition copies of Skyward Sword
Golden Wiimote bundled with the Limited Edition of Skyward Sword
special Zelda stage in Super Mario 3D Land
three 25th Anniversary Zelda eShop cards
Limited 25th Anniversary Zelda Nintendo 3DS Edition Bundle
Golden Nunchuk (only Japanese Club Nintendo so far)
Hyrule Historia Artbook (only Japan so far)
the revelation of the official Zelda timeline
other merchandise like t-shirts and posters

Just compare this to the 25th Anniversary of Mario or Metroid. Mario got red colored hardware, the Flipnote contest and a disc re-release of an old SNES game. That's it. Metroid basically got nothing so far. Nintendo really put all their efforts into celebrating the 25th Anniversary and that felt great. Zelda got a lot of attention this year and saw many great additions to the franchise. Some of it was awaited for many, many years. Finally singleplayer for Four Swords, finally orchestrated Zelda music, finally the official timeline! What a year!

Of course most of it was done for marketing reasons, to built the hype. And I'm not happy with some of their stunts, for example adding preorder bonuses to Ocarina of Time 3D and denying a special Zelda 3DS bundle at first, so that Zelda fans would go for the game (and maybe a 3DS) early, and then releasing a 3DS Zelda bundle half a year later anyway. This is something that somehow ruined the Anniversary for me and I'm still pissed about it. Luckily I could sell my red 3DS for a good price, but I still lost quite some money and I probably won't ever buy a Nintendo system earlier than really necessary again. I've lost some of my trust in Nintendo due to this action.

Well, for myself I celebrated the anniversary by replaying pretty much all Zelda games, which was a nice and refreshing experience. I also finally got to 100%ly complete all Zelda games before starting Skyward Sword, a longtime goal of mine. So, that was basically my 25th Anniversary, I used the year to play a lot of Zelda (it's also my 25th year of age by the way, I'm as old as the franchise, I like that). And I will definitely always remember this year.

As a conclusion I can only say that this was without a doubt the greatest Zelda year ever. The only downside is that we probably won't get another year like that in the next 25 years until the 50th Anniversary. This amount of new Zelda games, merchandise and events in one year is pretty much unsurpassable. So, I hope you all enjoyed 2011, I sure did.

Happy new year!

Hyrule Historia Artbook Reveals Zelda Timeline

2011-12-21T15:28:00.004+01:00

I guess you've all heard about the Hyrule Historia Artbook by now. It seems like the 25th Anniversary celebration never stops. Well, this artbook contains not only tons of nice (concept) art for all the games, it seems it also reveals the timeline! Yes, you've heard me right. For the 25th Anniversary Nintendo actually releases a timeline! Some people wished for that, but no one would have thought that Nintendo actually does that. All they ever did was talking about their super secret document that nobody is supposed to see. I guess they changed their mind (that or this is not the official timeline). The artbook will be released this Friday in Japan. There are currently no plans for this book to appear in the West.

I always wanted to post my own timeline here on Hyrule Blog. But I really hate the discussions and it seems like making your own timeline isn't necessary anymore. I like the idea of having an official timeline. Now if somebody says things like "it's still a linear timeline" or "The Minish Cap takes places after Spirit Tracks", you can say to his face "that's wrong!!" - and I love that.

Well, here it is (courtesy of Glitterberry):

The A Link to the Past split is caused by "Link failing". That's interesting and really weird. If Link failing is an option, it should be available for every game. So, each game should create a split with a hypothetical alternate reality where Link failed. Skyward Sword should create a new timeline, where everything got eradicated by Demise. It feels weird, so far the only game where Link's failure really gets hammered into your head is Zelda II - RETURN OF GANON. But I guess the third branch also was created by all the time travelling and I'm eager to read the full explanation.

However, generally I like the idea of having three splits. Usually you would cram all 2D games right into the child timeline after Twilight Princess creating one long branch. But giving the 2D games their own branch makes it look neater.

But I don't like the placement of the Four Swords games. Four Swords Adventures was basically the direct sequel to Four Swords, at least the intro makes you believe that. Well, on the other hand Aonuma once made a statement, that Four Swords came before Ocarina of Time, which is probably the reason why the timeline puts the game there, but obviously it's contradicting with the intro of FSA. Also, I'd say that FSA really fits more into the story of the 2D games, especially since it shows how Ganon got the Trident. For me FSA was the Imprisoning War. You get the dark clouds covering Hyrule, Ganon is building an army inside the Dark Realm and the Knights of Hyrule are disappearing. It's all there and it feels much more war-like than Ocarina of Time, the only difference is that the Master Sword wasn't involved here. Instead they used the Four Sword to ban Ganon. However, the GameBoy Advance version of A Link to the Past basically backed this up, there you find the broken Four Sword inside the Pyramid. It's like Ganon broke from the seal and cursed the Four Sword, so that no one could ever use it against him. Also, in the child timeline they protected the Sacred Realm from ever being invaded by Ganondorf. But FSA deals with the Dark World in its entirety. So, if FS and FSA would take place before A Link to the Past, the timeline would be near perfect in my eyes. But I can live with that.

UPDATE: It appears that Aonuma was one of the editors of this book and that the timeline is indeed credible. I also did some "research" about FSA. The game was originally intended to be the Imprisoning War, which is why there are so many similarities, but then they simplified the storyline (see here), which is why the game was placed where it's now. It's sad actually, the game would have been awesome with the Imprisoning War. And yeah, Four Swords is not necessarily the direct prequel. So, well, I'm good with the timeline.

Source: Kotaku & Glitterberri

Skyward Sword: Second Game Breaking Glitch

2011-12-17T03:52:00.001+01:00

By now you've all probably heard about the game breaking glitch in Skyward Sword, where you can't advance in the game during the Song of the Hero quest. It's somehow triggered if you chose to visit the dragon in the desert first and by speaking to the Goron in Lanayru Cave before and after getting the part of the Song of Hero. The events in Faron Woods and Eldin Vulcano will now no longer be triggered. But fear not, Nintendo will provide a tool to fix your savefile.

It's sad that the only real non-linear part of the game seems to be the one causing the most trouble. Funnily while playing the game for the first time I actually tried visiting the Thunder Dragon first, but the Goron wouldn't let me enter Lanayru Gorge for whatever reason. So, at that time I actually thought that even the Song of the Hero quest would be entirely linear.

But now it seems that there's yet another game breaking glitch. It was reported once at GameFAQs and there's also someone over at ZeldaEurope who experienced a similar glitch. The glitch triggers the vulcano eruption sequence early in the game. You get trapped in the cell, but there's no way to escape it. The Mogma giving you the Mogma Mitts after lifting a barrel doesn't appear. In fact the barrel isn't even there. For the guy at GameFAQs it happened after the first dungeon while visiting Eldin for the first time. For the other guy it happened while he or she looked for the pinwheel. So far it's unknown what triggers the glitch, but it seems to be a rare occurrance.

Well, but lately Nintendo really has a thing for weird game ending glitches. Remember Metroid: Other M, anyone?

Skyward Sword Blade Log, Hero Mode

2011-12-17T03:17:00.003+01:00

So, after writing the sidequest guides for ZeldaEurope and farming like a lunatic I've finally started playing the Hero Mode. I will share my experience here similar to the Blade Journal, though probably not as thorough and interesting.

For starters, the Hero Mode is a simple 2nd Quest that features the following differences:

you take double damage
there are no hearts to heal you unless you're carrying a Heart Medal
the Goddess Sword already got the fully powered Skyward Strike
the True Master Sword now instantly loads Skyward Strikes
the Sheikah Stones offers you all visions right from the start
you keep your collection from the previous savegame
you can also fight Demise in the Lighting Round Boss Battle mode

That's about it. It all would be pretty cool, if they changed some more things. I would like to face tougher enemies like the rare Stalfos on a more frequent basis for example. But that's not the case, the rest of the game stays the same. Or they could have mixed up some sidequests like placing the Goddess Cubes in different locations. But they haven't. So, there's a lot of wasted potential here and all we can do is enjoy what little the Hero Mode has to offer.

Well, the problem with the missing hearts and the double damage can be quite tough in the beginning. Three hits kill you and this can easily happen, if you're surrounded by Bokoblins. However, it gets balanced by two things. You can now use the full Skyward Strike right from the beginning, which deals four times as much damage as the Goddess Sword itself. This is usually the best way to fight normal enemies from a safe distance.

Secondly you get to keep your collection, which was the main reason for me to farm items to begin with. And my collection is crazy. I got full 99 of each insect type and of 11 treasures. I didn't fully farm Eldin Ore, Ancient Flowers, Evil Crystals, Golden Skulls and Goddess Plumes, because there wasn't a real quick and effective way of farming those. However, I still got between 40 and 50 of each one of these. So, yeah, my collection is MASSIVE. This has two advantages. First of all you can now upgrade all items early, because you got all the necessary resources right from the start. The only remaining issue is money. However, Rupees aren't an issue at all, which is the second advantage. You certainly don't need so many insects and treasures, not at all, so you can sell them at night and make a lot of money. For example the Blue Bird Feathers are worth 100 Rupees. I collected 99 Bird Feathers, that's 9900 Rupees, which is the maximum your wallet could ever hold and more than enough to buy every last item. I'm not far into the game, but my equipment is already pretty impressive. I just got the Slingshot from the woods and the next thing I did was buying every single item from Beedle's Airshop except for the Piece of Heart (I need another Wallet Upgrade first). I got all three Extra Wallets, all three Adventure Pouch Expansion, the Life Medal (which might be a life savior), the Bug Net and the Bug Medal all at once. I also fully upgraded the Wooden Shield, the Slingshot, the Net and my first Seed Satchel, as well as my Heart and Revitalizing Potions.

When you first play the game you can't effort all this stuff for a long time. So, being able to buy all of it right away really feels great. I'm fully powered and ready for the first dungeon.

Miyamoto on Retro and Zelda

2011-12-14T15:18:00.001+01:00

In an interview with 1up Miyamoto said the following:

As you know, we have already collaborated with Retro for the Metroid Prime series in the past. And I think when we talk about any other franchise, Zelda might be a possible franchise for that collaboration.

That's the best fucking news in a while. If you followed my blog, you know, that I'm a huge fan of Retro Studios and their work. The Metroid Prime Trilogy is godlike and Donkey Kong Country Returns is one awesome platformer even for someone like me, who doesn't really enjoy platforming games that much. Ever since Metroid Prime I wanted Retro to work on the Zelda franchise. They are very good in understanding what made the classic games awesome and they know how to infuse this into a modern game. A Zelda game codeveloped by Retro could easily turn into the best Zelda game in a long time.

Well, it seems that after the successful collaboration between Nintendo and Retro to make Mario Kart 7 the chances for that now happening are quite high. And for me this would be a dream coming true.

Japanese Club Nintendo gets Golden Nunchuk

2011-12-14T15:08:00.001+01:00

Seriously, I want one of these. But our Club Nintendo just sucks. I've been waiting all year for some nice Zelda goodies. Because of the 25th Anniversary I though the Club Nintendo would be swimming in Zelda merchandise. But there's NOTHING. Nothing at all. I saved a lot of stars over the years and there's nothing I could spent them on. And right now I'm constantly using them each month. This month I will lose 600 stars. 600!! I bet the Golden Nunchuk will be available next month and I won't have enough stars, because I lost the 600. It's times like these where I am just pissed about Nintendo.

Source

The Minish Cap joins Ambassador Program

2011-12-14T15:01:00.000+01:00

The full list of ambassador GBA games has been revealed and as expected The Minish Cap is among them. It's a very strong line-up of GBA games that also includes Metroid Fusion, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Yoshi's Island and Wario Land 4. But the Minish Cap is definitely the highlight of the list. If you bought a 3DS early, you can now get this game and enjoy it for free. It's also the fifth downloadable Zelda game available on the 3DS. Only the the Oracle games and the Game & Watch Zelda are still missing (and a potential 3D Classics version of A Link to the Past).

Well, so far there are no plans to make the GBA games available for purchase at a later date. But we all know that Nintendo will release them at some point.

Source

Skyward Sword Sidequest Guide (German)

2011-12-09T23:50:00.000+01:00

Just so you know what I've been up to lately, here's an update. I've been working on the sidequest guide of ZeldaEurope.de. Here you can find individual guides. And this file contains all information in one 51 page large pdf file.

It covers basically everything. Pieces of Heart in order, Goddess Cubes sorted by region and order or by chests, Gratitude Crystals, wallets, adventure pouch ugrades, empty bottles, medals, and upgrades. It also contains the best farming spots and strategies for all treasures and insects. It got all the Gossip Stone informations, Goddess Walls, tricks and easter eggs. I think it's the first complete sidequest guide of the game available (for example IGN is still missing one Goddess Cube xD). Unfortunately it's all in German and I don't plan to translate it. But since I have some readers from Germany, I just wanted to inform you.

Check it out.

Got Zelda 3DS Limited Edition Bundle

2011-12-01T14:38:00.001+01:00

I'm weak. I admit it. I'm weak. I should have boycotted this thing. For the simple reason that Nintendo screwed every Zelda fan, who bought a Nintendo 3DS early. For releasing Ocarina of Time 3D with not one but two preorder bonuses, so that a lot of Zelda fans would buy Ocarina of Time 3D at its release (like I did). For even denying that they plan a bundle at E3. This was probably the biggest asshole marketing move Nintendo ever pulled off. And I'm still totally angry about it.... but I still couldn't resist buying it. :D It's really the bundle I've been waiting for ever since the start of the anniversary. And there's no excuse that this wasn't already released in June.

Well, here are some photos:

The Zelda 3DS is really beautiful, it's not a simple Cosmo Black mod, the entire lower side looks completely different and everything that was white or silver on the normal 3DS model is now golden. Some outer parts of the 3DS are sheer, which isn't the case with a normal model. And I got lucky this time, I got one of the "clicky" 3DS models, the one that makes a clicking sound when open and close it. Also, the buttons feel a little bit "clickier". While playing Four Swords on my red 3DS, I got quite some problems with the stiff D-pad. It even made some weird squeaking sounds. It might be just me, but the D-pad of my clicky Zelda 3DS feels much more responsive.

I think the "clicky or not" 3DS situation is another big issue. You don't have any control over what model you'll get, I think it depends in which factory the 3DS was made. You might as well get a not-clicky Zelda 3DS, if you're unlucky. I've never seen such differences in the production of a Nintendo product, that's not something that you'd expect from Nintendo.

However, the red 3DS is really sexy and until this point I wasn't sure, if I'm going to keep it or sell it. For now I have to keep it, because I need the system transfer update first, which will be released somewhen next week (what coincidence, Nintendo... a system transfer tool right when some idiotic Zelda fans might decide to buy a second 3DS? what are the chances? :D) - I hope it lets you transfer ALL of your data. Like Miis, Play Coins, play data and what not else. Because I got lots of play coins and I got lots of Nintendo employees from the press event in October in my Mii plaza. I wouldn't want to lose any of it. If this is done, I will probably sell the red one. There's no point in keeping two 3DS systems.

About the second Ocarina copy, I love the dual-sided cover. The US boxart isn't actually so bad as I thought, you just can't really see the golden effect on pictures. But they should always do this, I mean there have been at least two different covers for all the latest Zelda games. Instead of going with one cover in a region, they should include a dual-sided cover in all copies. That way I can chose which version I like more.

Well, so much about my big Christmas gift to myself.

My opinion? If you're a Zelda fan and don't own a 3DS yet, this is definitely worth getting. And it's not just Ocarina of Time, you will also be able to play the Four Swords Anniversary Edition, which you don't want to miss. If you're a Zelda fan and already got a 3DS, then I know exactly how you feel, because I am in the same stupid situation. And if you aren't a Zelda fan, then I'm not sure what you're doing here on my blog anyway.

Update: one thing though, they should have added Link's Awakening DX to the preinstalled software. That would have made the bundle a little bit more complete. And maybe Four Swords too.

Skyward Sword Blade Log, Day 12

2011-11-29T23:17:00.000+01:00

Yesterday was the first day since the release of Skyward Sword, where I didn't play the game. Just didn't get to it, but today I was playing all day long.

warning: potential spoilers

Well, most of the day I was farming. Looking for spots, where it's easy to farm certain insects. For example if you want a lot of Volcanic Ladybugs, there's the spot with the waterfall at the Vulcano Summit. Right next to the exit there are usually up to three Ladybugs at the wall. Just reenter and collect them, it's just a matter of minutes to collect 99 of them. I'm crazy about 99ing stuff, as long as it doesn't take a lifetime. I would never think about 99ing ship parts in Phantom Hourglass for example, that would be ridiculous. But for example I 99ed all spoils in the Wind Waker. All except the Blue Chu Jelly, you can only get 23 of those. Why did I 99 all other spoils, you ask? Well, why not? It was mostly about killing some time and the green numbers in the menu look nice. That's my collection so far:

99 Deku-Hornets
99 Blessed Butterflies
99 Starry Fireflies
99 Rhino Beetles
99 Volcanic Ladybugs
99 Sand Cicadas
99 Faron Grasshoppers
99 Lanayru Ants
99 Eldin Rollers
99 Amber Relics
99 Monster Horns
23 Goddess Plumes

Most insects are easy to collect in great numbers, when you know the right spots, where you can reenter an area. Only the Gerudo Dragonflies aren't too easy to catch, so far I only got 19. And the sky insects also would take their time, because there are no spots with more than one of them at a time. So, I probably wouldn't waste time with those. But it doesn't really matter. I collected more than enough to upgrade everything many times in the Hero Mode. I do the farming, because I enjoy it. Usually I would say that farming items in RPGs is totally idiotic. But in Zelda I kind of like it. Well, there's lots of variety to it, catching the insects and birds can be fun and there's usually an ideal spot for farming a specific item.

And in Hero Mode I can sell most of the unrequired items to get stuff from Beedle's Airshop as soon as possible. For example a Sand Cicada is worth 50 Rupees. I got 99 of them, do the math. I only need a few of them for Heart Potions++ and maybe one or two Revitilazing Potions++. Let's say, I just sell half of them, that still would already be 2500 Rupees. You only need 3 Goddess Plumes for all upgrades, unless you want more than one Large Quiver. So, I could basically sell 20 of them to make another 2000 Rupees. To buy all of Beedle's items you need 5850 Rupees, if I'm correct, that's already pretty close and I got tons of other stuff to sell. For example those stupid Blue Bird Feathers aren't hard to get, but one of them is actually worth 100 Rupees! So, yeah, farming is worth it, if you want to make your life in Hero Mode a little easier.

I practiced the third Ghirahim battle and I got a lot better at it. I can now easily beat him in the Boss Battle Mode, meaning within 18 Hearts. My problem was the thrusting. You have to thrust to attack his weak spot, but I usually fail at thrusting. This was already a giant problem with the Scorpion Boss. When I try to thrust, I usually move the Nunchuk slightly as well, but the Wii recognizes this and thinks I want to do a vertical spin attack. Sometimes it even just activates the shield and I don't attack at all (which is actually better, because then I don't get my ass kicked). I really have to focus, that I make a clear thrust forward without moving the Nunchuk in any way. In a heated battle this can be quite hard for me. But once I got the hang of it, Ghirahim became a lot easier. In his second phase you basically just have to shield bash all his attacks and then thrust. Which was the problem, I have to spam Nunchuk attacks and then I have to hold the Nunchuk perfectly still right afterwards, which doesn't always work. And the attack window is very small... But if you can reflect his sword beam shots successfully, then you can thrust him three or four times in a row to finish it. I got a lot more confident in fighting now.

I also played the minigames a lot as research for the ZeldaEurope sidequest guide. I got very good at the Rickety Roaster by now. My problem earlier was that I probably tilted the Wiimote too much. And I would say that the collection of minigames is very solid. Usually there's something that brutally annoys me (like the Rollgoal game), but all minigames are manageable, some are even a lot of fun. And half of them are entirely optional, you can play them to get some Rupees or treasures, if you want, but it's not necessary. Some minigames give you rare treasures early in the game, for example you can win an Evil Crystal at the Bamboo Slicing, which is required for the Big Net. Otherwise you would have to wait until the Ancient Cistern, but thanks to this minigame you can get the Big Net early. I think this is a nice solution for a minigame instead of always giving you a Piece of Heart.

The Rupee Dowsing gets more and more interesting. There are many weird spots, where Rupees just come out of nowhere. Usually you just can shoot something with the Slingshot and a Rupee pops up. Or roll against certain walls. The Gust Bellow also reveals some Rupees between flowers, mushrooms or something. It's really weird sometimes, but it's interesting. So, use the Rupee dowsing for some surprises.

Something what totally annoys me in this game is the low battery warning. As if the blinking red icon the in the lower right corner wouldn't be enough, each time you change the area, Fi starts to call you about the battery issue. The problem is, the batteries easily last another four hours. And during all those hours you get annoyed for nothing.

Also, it seems that the last part of the game is indeed supposed to be non-linear... but it might cause some glitching. Actually I tried getting to the Thunder Dragon first, but the Goron wouldn't let me... :D

That's it for today. I haven't started writing the review yet, because I'm busy with the sidequest guide for ZeldaEurope (just finished the minigame guide today), so don't hold your breath. But if you speak German, you can go to the Pirateboard, there I posted a "short" review. However, most of it is about what I don't like, like the weak dungeons. But the game has also tons of positive aspects, which I will highlight in my upcoming review.

Skyward Sword Blade Log, Days 10 and 11

2011-11-27T20:26:00.001+01:00

Yeah, I'm still playing.

At first I played the Hero Mode for a while. And I can't tell you how much I'm disappointed about this missed opportunity. Just some tougher enemies here and there. That would have been all to make this 2nd Quest really great. But instead it's the same old thing. It's a little bit tougher at the beginning without any hearts, but you'll make it. Because your sword is stronger now, you can use the fully powered fast loading Skyward Strike right from the start, which is quite useful. I've heard that when you get the True Master Sword, it shoots Skyward Strikes with every attack. That would be badass, I'm really looking forward to that. I think the only real problem might be the Boss Battle Mode, where you can't heal yourself this time, especially in case you have to fight Ghirahim 3 or Demise. I still can't beat Ghirahim in the old Boss Battle Mode with normal damage. Getting the Hylia Shield might be a tough challenge.

However, I quit playing the Hero Mode and returned to my old file for various reasons. I'm currently working on a sidequest guide for ZeldaEurope and today I was busy catching insects. I wanted to figure out the ideal farming spots for every insect. Also, you keep all your insects and treasures when you start the Hero Mode. So, I made it into my goal to collect as much stuff as possible and then start a new Hero Mode file with all that stuff. That way I can upgrade every item as early as possible. The only issue will be the Rupees. But for example I can get a Lvl3 Wooden Shield right away. Or upgrade the Bug Net immediatly into the Big Bet, get the Spreadshot right after the Slingshot, etc. And that feels great and might be helpful. So, I'm getting a giant collection first and then I play the Hero Mode.

The Boss Battle Mode actually includes the fight against Ghirahim's Army, which is great. That was a fun sequence, though the Hack'n'Slay'ish feel can get boring after a while. I prefer enemies, who offer some real fights. But I think it's also the only place, where you can find Stalfos now. Or any enemies for that matter. They even removed the freakin bats and slimes from Skyloft! I think this is connected to the Gratitude Crystal quest, as soon as Batreaux gets human, the monsters go all away. Even from the cave. That was a nice farming spot for Monster Claws and Jelly Blobs. And now it's gone. And the cats aren't aggressive anymore. For me this all of this was part of what the atmosphere in Skyloft at night so great. I think it's a bad decision to remove enemies from anywhere. Especially in a game, where you really want to hit things with your sword, because it feels great. Eldin is also very empty by now, only the Lanayru Desert kept its enemies, but fighting electric slimes isn't much fun. Well, that the enemies got wiped was related to the story, I get that, but in this case the story just sucked.

So, I got the last Dowsing ability from the Mogmas: Rupee Dowsing. And it's actually not that unreasonable this time, because it shows a lot of hidden stuff, which I never would know about. For example there are many spots, where Rupees come out when you shoot things with the Slingshot. I never knew that. And there are many bombable walls, which I just missed. They were all cracked, but the crack in the wall is very hard to see in Eldin. But I like this, ever since A Link to the Past bombable walls were way too easy to spot. And I was surprised how many spots I've missed, though there wasn't really anything valueable hidden in these places. No new medals or something, just some Rupees and treasures.

That's it for this post, nothing special, just a small update.

Skyward Sword Blade Log, Day 9

2011-11-26T00:33:00.000+01:00

SPOILER WARNING: END OF GAME, ENDING SPOILERS, DO NOT READ UNLESS YOU'VE BEATEN SKYWARD SWORD

So, that's it. I've beaten the game. Or at least half of it. Thanks for the anonymous tip in the comments to copy my savegame right before the final boss.

Well, the Sky Keep dungeon was totally awesome. It was smart, offered the right amount of challenge, got some good fights, it was non-linear (or at least it made me think that I have full freedom, still good enough) and you collect all three parts of the Triforce - something, which you've never done in the entire series. Surely one epic dungeon, it's without a doubt the best dungeon of the game and maybe one of my favorite dungeons in the entire Zelda series. It's the complete opposite of what the game showed so far, dungeon-wise. The only downside was that it reused old settings, that felt cheap in a way and reminded me of the game's bad dungeons like the Lanayru Mining Facility, ugh. But at least two of the rooms were placed in the "underground" setting, probably the coolest dungeon setting in the game. The game actually gave me a shock for the first time I obtained a Triforce, because it was located in the Silent Realm. But it was always just a room... though it would have been nice if the Triforces were actually guarded. Nothing big, maybe just a hallway full of those knights, where you have to dash to the Triforce. But better not, of course you want to enjoy the epic moment of obtaining Triforce.

Talking about the Silent Realm, in my search for the final two Pieces of Heart I also tried the Silent Realm Speed Run. Though so far I've only got the best time for the forest, I got raped multiple times in Eldin (usually in the beginning with the slope full of Sentrys) and Skyloft. I never even dared to try the desert. Well, that's something for later, it appears that you only get rare treasures for your efforts. The final two Pieces of Heart were given by the rare Gorons. One from demonstrating those sky walls in front of the archeologist (probably could have done that way earlier, I just happened to notice that now that you had to return to this area more often) and one from the Rickety Coaster minigame. The latter was a pain in the ass, this was the only time in the game where I would have preferred traditional controls. The motion controls for the mine cart are broken, it happened often to me that Link would turn in the wrong direction... But it appears that it's exactly like I said, the 19th and 20th Heart Containers are made by the two Life Medals. So, if you want all 20 Heart Containers, you have to sacrifice two spaces of your Adventure Pouch. That or it always looks like you haven't fully completed the game. I think that this is a weird design choice. But it's also somehow interesting. No matter what I now got 100% of all the sidequests, I think. Oh, wait... I'm actually missing something. Fi unlocked four more spots for dowsing abilities. I got treasure dowsing, Gratitude Crystals and Goddess Cubes. But what's the fourth one used for? (Updated: It's Rupee dowsing...)

As much as I was satisfied by the final dungeon, I was satisfied by the final boss fights, both Ghirahim and Demise. Those were very tough and challenging sword battles. Maybe a little bit too tough, you practically weren't prepared at all. But that's the rest of the game's fault for not throwing enough tough enemies at you. You were thrown in cold water with these fights, but I enjoyed the challenge. And there wasn't any bullshit. Just sword duels, the way I like it. Normally a final boss fight would utilize as many gimmicks as possible, but not even the Skyward Strike was needed. It was all about blades clashing at each other. And I love that.

The Ghirahim fight starts with this awesome sequence, where you run down the Sealed Grounds and fight against tons of enemies. Sooo much fun. I wasn't exactly sure, if there was some time limit (like at the same point in the Minish Cap), so I basically run from one green fruit to the next, only fighting the door guards. But I've never seen so many enemies at the screen AT ONCE in any game, let alone a Zelda game. I can't believe that this is actually a Wii game - that is something that striked me multiple times during the game, they really, really pushed the Wii to its outer limits, it's incredible. The system is five years old and was technically already completely outdated on its release. Yet this game looks as good as any other current game, just not in HD. But on my small tube the game looks awesome, I can tell you.

It turned out that Ghirahim is basically the Fi of some evil Master Sword. Nice twist, I didn't see this coming, but the game made the similarities obvious at the point. And fighting his final form was tough. I thought bringing two Heart Potions++ into the fight would be enough, but I was so wrong. I already accepted the fact that I had to start over, however, I could beat him with my last breath.

And Demise is actually a very nice guy. If he had fought me right there, he would have easily killed me. But instead he lets me save the game and fully regenerate. I used the opportunity to come prepared, it was time for a Pouch Change! Two Life Medals, three Heart Potions++ and my first Guardian Potion in the game, even the upgraded version that makes you invincible, combined with a Potion Medal to lengthen the effect. And my Hylian Shield of course. I think this was a 100% suitability rate for the fight. So, ultimately his kindness was Demise's demise.

The fight itself was epic. It was similar to the Ganondorf battle in Twilight Princess, my favorite fight in the game, only much tougher. But like with the Fishing Rod in Twilight Princess you could also use the Bug Catching Net to distract him! Hahahahaaa! This was even the first thing I tried! We made jokes about this long before the game was released and it's funny that this actually really worked. I loled so hard. But it was really tough and he would even pull out the electric sword joker. For the Technoblins I would usually use the Slingshot to stun them, so I didn't really have any good practice. But luckily I brought my Guardian Potion+! It's a cheap way to win, but he called it.

Yeah, and his hatred would later reincarnate to take the form of Ganondorf, we saw that coming, Nintendo spoiled this already miles away. Come to think of it, they even released an artwork of the final boss! They spoiled the entire game up to the final boss! The only thing I hadn't seen before was the Sky Keep.

Well, but I'm really happy with both the final dungeon and the final boss fights. The were epic, they were challenging and they were awesome! That's the way I like it! I will definitely practice both Ghirahim#3 and Demise later, Ghirahim was added to the Boss Challenge and you can always jump right into Demise.

And the conclusion of the story was nice. I was right about Impa, though it was obvious somehow. I loved the "Legend of Groose" joke, this could be a nice new Zelda spin off game. And I loved how this game sets everything in motion for future incarnations of Link and Zelda. It was touching to know that Fi's spirit basically always rested in the Master Sword in all the other Zelda games. Now when you pick up the Master Sword in Ocarina of Time you will definitely think of Fi. You might even miss her and wish that she would be with you instead of an annoying fairy. And unlike Midna it's entirely possible that she could return in a later game. "See you in another life, Master." (Loved that quote, it's so LOSTish)

However, it doesn't really fit. The resting place of the Master Sword looks more like the location in A Link to the Past. And the Temple of Time is a different location in this game, unless the Seal/Hylia Temple later becomes the new Temple of Time. After all it also got a time gate. But there's no Sacred Realm here. According to Ocarina of Time the Triforce was left in the Sacred Realm, but now it's out in the open, though it was hinted that they would hide it again somehow. I don't know, but I'm curious to see what timelime theorists will make out of this.

The credits were interesting, because they showed Zelda's side of the story. I always wondered "how the hell did she get through the temples?", well, it didn't really explain how she managed the Skyview Temple, but at least it showed her in peril at the Earth Temple. But it's better than the traditional "let's show all environments again"-part of the credits, which would follow. That part totally lagged. I don't know if this was on purpose or if my Wii finally gave in, but it only happened during these shots in the credits.

After beating the game, you can overwrite your savegame to access the "Hero Mode". I was actually totally hyped about this, "a 2nd Quest, yayyy", but according to GameFAQs the only difference is that you have double damage and that you won't find any hearts unless you use the Heart Medals. That's it? I mean this is better than nothing, but I was at least hoping for some stronger foes. Like more Stalfos. You rarely fight any Stalfos. I wasn't expecting a full fledged Master Quest, but would it have been so hard to add some more enemies in the dungeons? Come on... that's just disappointing. But I wanted to replay the game anyway, so here I go. And at least it let's you skip cutscenes now.

In case you wonder, it took me 71 hours to fully complete the game with all sidequests. Aimlessly running around included.

I will write a full review while replaying the game.

Skyward Sword Blade Log, Day 8

2011-11-24T23:44:00.000+01:00

SPOILER ALERT: up to Dungeon 7

If saying that there's actually 7 dungeons is already a spoiler for you, then I apologize.

Well, what a day! I've started to play exactly one week ago, I'm 64 hours in the game and I haven't beaten it yet. Well, I wasted a lot of time with running around, looking for treasures, insects and other stuff, but I'm overall very happy with the amount of time that I was able to spent with the game. And it doesn't seem to be over yet.

The part with the three dragons sadly didn't offer any new dungeons or revisited dungeons and unnecessarily you had to play all three dragons in a given order, but this part of the game offered some fresh surprises. It was mostly about reexperiencing old environments in a new way. You already did that with the Silent Realms, but now it was time for something different.

The forest area was completely flooded and you can dive all over the place. I had three empty bottles at that time, so I used this opportunity to try the air potion, I bought three of them and upgraded them all, so that your air doesn't go away. I also combined this with the Potion Medal, so I could dive for a long time without breathing. It's not necessary to do this, but thanks to the potions you can endlessly spin, which is quite some fun. Flooding the entire area was literally a fresh idea and I enjoyed it while it lasted. However, flooding the area had the goal to get rid of all the monsters. And save for Takkuris, Keese and Deku Babas this succeeded. No Moblins, no Bokoblins... even one of the Kikwis actually says that this is boring! Fighting is the most fun part of the game, so don't take away the enemies!!

Next stop was Death Mountain, errrrh... I mean Eldin Volcano. The volcano errupted, you get caught in an explosion and Bokoblins use this opportunity to steal all your stuff and to imprison you. You now have to break free, avoid the guards and get your items back in a certain order. It was basically a mix between the Forsaken Fortress from the Wind Waker and the part where the Tokays steal your items on Crescent Island in Oracle of Ages. This is the best way to describe it. It was well made, the lighting of the errupting volcano was incredible and the atmosphere was dense, you could hear your pulse when you get near a guard. However, the whole thing came to a sudden end. At the beginning you lose basically everything except for the Sailcloth, the Scale, the Earrings and your wallet. I was freaked out at that moment, my Adventure Pouch was full of upgraded potions and the Goddess Shield. And I actually thought that I had to track down individual "Bokoblays" to get all of my stuff back, I imagined that gettting the contents of your pouch back would result in later sidequests. But you only had to reclaim the Gust Bellow, the Clawshots, the Whip, the Sling/Spreadshot and the Bomb Bag. Then you get the Master Sword and the Adventure Pouch with all of the other missing items in it... then you meet the Dragon and the story is over. It felt a little bit sudden, I was thinking that I had to get the rest of my items at the Volcano Summit. And I was thinking that I would finally get to revisit the Earth Temple, but not a chance. It would have been nice if you had to track down some of your items at the Earth Temple. Maybe you get the Master Sword at the Volcano Summit and then you return to the Earth Temple to look for the rest of the items. Sounds awesome right? But nah... and after this part, it seems that the Moblins are gone. Whyyyy?! I'm at the end of the game, why do they REMOVE enemies? If anything, the places should be crawling with the most dangerous enemies! Everything should try to stop me. But instead they clean the forest and now even the volcano area of all stronger enemies? What is going on here?

The Desert didn't get any flooding or erruptions, instead you explore yet another new area! The desert is by far the largest area in the game, Eldin Volcano looks like your dooryard compared to the desert. I mean there's an entire ocean area in the size of one Phantom Hourglass map and that's not even half of it. It's impressive. Well, I was eager to meet the third Dragon, because a Gossip Stone tells you that he puts you into trials and may reward you with the Hylian Shield. It turns out that the third Dragon manages the Boss Challenge mode. And it's well made, you can pick a battle and at the end of the battle he gives you a choice. You can either leave and pick a price or continue playing, but you carry on your health and you don't know what the next boss will be. You're fighting against them all, but the order is random. Well, if you win four battles in a row, you can get a Piece of Heart. And if you win eight battles in a row you can get the Hylian Shield. He also let's you replay the Silent Realms, which is nice, because now you can always get more Dusk Relics if you need them. It's a nice challenge and there seem to be some prices as well, but I'm not sure, I haven't beaten any highscore yet.

Talking about Silent Realms, when I said "unless there's another trial in Skyloft" I was actually joking! JOKING! You should have seen my face when the game told me that the final trial handn't been final at all and that I had to do another one in the village! But it was fun, it was weird to see the guardians in the village, it wasn't really hard and by now I know Skyloft like the back of my hand. Unlike the forest. I replayed the Forest Silent Realm twice now and both times I got lost... lol. Interestingly Skyloft got its own submenu in the Silent Realm replay mode called "other places". Does this mean there's even a fifth Silent Realm? Because otherwise they could have just made a normal menu made of four selections like with the bosses. I hope not...

And nothing in this game is meaningless. I like how you stumble over certain details and wonder what they mean. Like when you find the windmill at Eldin Volcano, it seemed like a random detail, but later it would turn into a quest. Or those holes in the ground, you can plant a seedling there, even though only one hole results in a tree. I don't know why you can plant the seedling in the pumpkin fields or if there's any other sidequest that involves planting later on. And there was this weird bird statue with only one eye near the water fall in Skyloft. I always wondered what that thing would mean, but I never imagined that it would open the entrance to the final(?) dungeon!

Opening the dungeon was certainly an epic scene. When looking for the Gratitude Crystals at night I checked the sidewalk, where you followed Fi at the beginning of the game, maybe two or three times without any success. Turns out that nothing was hidden there for a reason, the whole thing crumbled down. But there was a treasure chest on that path containing 20 Rupees, first missable detected in this game. :D Not that this really matters.

The dungeon itself, called the Sky Keep, looks very, very promising. It only has eight rooms, but they are organized like a tile puzzle. You can move them around freely and try to proceed. This might turn into the smartest dungeon of the Zelda series yet... or not, I can't tell yet, because I left the dungeon to get the Hylian Shield first. I also want to finish all sidequests before the finale. Save the best for last. And the Sky Keep is actually the first thing, where Nintendo hasn't shown any preview material, right? I'm really excited about the dungeon, but this will have to wait.

I opened all of the black treasure chests in Skyloft by now, well, at least the menu entry of the cube dowsing tells me that there are no cubes left for my sword to react to. But I am disappointed about the content of the last chests. The best thing I got was the fifth empty bottle. Then I got a small quiver and a lot of Rupees. Like this chest in the Bazaar, it gives you 300 Rupees and I was disappointed. This was the most exciting treasure chest, because you see it plenty of times during the game. I expected some nice new medal for example. But there were no new medals. So far I only got ten medals, seven different ones and three duplicates. But there must be a duplicate for the Treasure Medal as well, so there might be more. I'm guessing the total is 12. I'm also missing three Heart Containers. I got two Piece of Hearts right now, so there will be at least an 18th one coming from sidequests. But I doubt there will be eight more Heart Pieces left. What does that mean? Two more bosses leaving Heart Containers? I doubt that somehow as well. Or is 18 the actual maximum? Because I got two Life Medals, which add an extra Heart Container. So, if you want all 20 Heart Containers you have to carry both medals with you? But this would suck, it just wastes space in your Adventure Pouch. Well, you don't really need all 20 Heart Containers, because the game is easy, but it just looks so unfinished. With 18 Heart Containers I always feel like I'm still missing something. It would have been better to get extra Heart Containers instead of those medals. But.. I don't know yet, it might as well be that I'm really just missing some Heart Containers and/or Pieces. Hopefully.

I finish this post with some minor details, which I've noticed. You can actually light torches by blowing up bombs. Considering that there hasn't been a single "light the torch"-puzzle yet, this is an impressive detail. And you can blow up Gossip Stones with bombs like you could in the N64 Zeldas. Nice. However, you can't scoop in the Potion Shop. Remember the little Potion Shop in Faron Woods in Twilight Princess? The one run by a bird? There you could scoop a potion and pay by putting Rupees in a box. Or simply steal it. It's not a big deal that this doesn't work in Skyward Sword, but it would have been a nice detail. The way I see it this game is all about the nice details.

Ah, wait... I've heard there's something called "Hero Mode". I'm curios what this will be. Of course I'm hoping for a full fledged 2nd Quest with Stalfos in every corner, that would be totally awesome. But I'm keeping my expectations low, maybe it's just a forced Three Heart Quest or something lame like that. But if the game manages to offer some challenge after all I will be pleased. And please don't tell me what the Hero Mode is, I want to find out for myself. It's actually already bad enough that I know that it exists.

Skyward Sword Blade Log, Day 7

2011-11-23T23:55:00.000+01:00

SPOILER WARNING: post Dungeon 6 + sidequests

The guy who upgrades your potions always says "I hope your expectations weren't too high"... While playing the Fire Sanctuary I had Aonuma's and Miyamoto's faces in my mind telling me the exact same thing. It was visually a nice dungeon, it was also the largest dungeon so far. But it was way too easy. Lizalfos were still treated like minibosses. The place should be grawling with those guys instead. Skyward Sword could be quite tough early in the game. You had to get used to the fighting mechanics and simple mistakes could kill you. You start with 6 Heart Containers for a reason. However, while you constantly grow and get stronger, the game itself doesn't. It doesn't even try. You will still fight bats and slimes as your regular enemies. I've only met Stalfos three times so far and each time they were a miniboss. By now they should be regular enemies. I have 17 Heart Containers by now, I can carry four Heart Potions++, which means I can fully heal myself eight times! I became very efficient with the MotionPlus controls. I'm a monster, ten times more scary than the Imprisoned. There should be much more tough fights. Lizalfos, Stalfos, Moblins... it doesn't have to be the pucking Hero's Trial, but at least try something! And where are Darknuts? Are there even any in the game? Probably not, because otherwise Nintendo would have showed them already like they did with ALL of the bosses.

But it was still a solid dungeon. I liked the part, where you had to jump down at the end. This could have been a nice Link's Awakening-ish dungeon puzzle, if the solution wasn't told you early by a NPC. It would have been better, if somewhere in the dungeon there was a hidden tablet giving you the cryptic hint. It just isn't much fun, if some character tells you the solution. *stares at Fi*

It was nice that you battle Ghirahim again at the end of the Fire Sanctuary. For a brief moment I feared there would be a boss, where you need to utilize the Mogma Mitts. This would have sucked hard. And fighting Ghirahim is fun, it's a nice duel. It was also interesting that you get an empty bottle in this dungeon, that's not usual. Which makes it good, I didn't expect to get the last(?) bottle there.

The place, where you find the Piece of Heart near the entrance of the Fire Sanctuary was magical. This small little green haven inside a giant vulcano.

I always wondered what these holes in the pumpkin fields were good for. I actually thought that the Mogma Mitts would give entrance to a cave here, but they didn't. It turns out that you can plant trees there, but I couldn't figure out how to do it yet.

It was generally surprising that the game is throwing new sidequests at me at this point. Because I thought the game was going to be over now, which made me sad. It felt like I finished most of the sidequests and that the Fire Sanctuary would be the last dungeon. Interestingly I had yet to face the part, where the Bokoblins steal all of your equipment at the Vulcano Summit. I thought this was going to take place before the Fire Sanctuary. So, it was time to head on and meet the next story twist.

Actual story spoilers ahead!

Well, after imprisoning the Imprisoned once again, who now grew a pair of hands, it was time to finally reunite with Zelda. It was foreseeable that she was related to te Goddess and that the cute girl would be gone when you meet Zelda again, replaced by a more mature and reasonable woman, who has no time for old feelings and priorizes duty. It was a sad scene, because all you wanted to do was reuniting with your childhood friend. You have to accept your fate hand the emotions really striked me here. Normally I don't get emotionally involved in a game, so it did a good job here. And there's the hope that you can get the old Zelda back, when all is over. But the Sheikah symbol on Impa's face, the tear below the eye, was very fitting for this scene. Actually I wonder if the old granny inside the Seal Temple is Impa from the past, it appears that she has a faint tear below her eye. That and a Sheikah symbol on her back...

Well, whatever, the fully developed Master Sword now also lets's you load the sword beam faster. Nice. I wanted this for a while now, it's nice to finally get it. And now it's time to get the... Triforce. Okay, let's do... wait, WHAT?!!! This would be awesome. I mean, there aren't many Zelda game, where Link actually claims the Triforce. It only happened in Zelda II and in A Link to the Past, in other games he would usually just possess the Triforce of Courage, if any. It was already weird that the Triforce of Wisdom was glowing on Link's left hand after the Sand Ship, but actually I forgot about it, because someone interrupted my play session, so I never gave it any bigger thought afterwards. But yeah, this is exciting. The fact alone that I'm talking about the game's story at this point should indicate the importance of this story twist.

The Triforce also adds endless possibilities for the outcome of the story. If you observe the map, you will notice that Skyloft fits perfecty in the middle of the three areas. With the Triforce they could free Hyrule from the evil and let the humans come home down to earth. There's no Skyloft in all later Zelda games, so such a story development would make sense. I would also like to see how the Master Sword ends up in the Temple of Time.

It looks like the game is getting a little bit crazier right now. The next stop was the fight against the posssessed flying whale deity, which was a lot of fun. The bosses are really great in this game, I'm looking forward to the Boss Challenge mode. The whale's name is Levias and he seems to be the older brother of the Windfish and the Ocean King, I don't know. It would be nice if he dropped a hint at some point. Now I have to look for three dragons and it might be that this is the first real non-linear part of the game yet, but I haven't tried. Going to Faron Woods resultet in YET ANOTHER fight with the Imprisoned. I battled this guy like five minutes ago, he really means it! But this really shows the urgency and the pressure of the situation. It also appears that all of Faron is flooded, I totally forgot about that! It was shown in some trailer and early in the game I wondered, why I never came to a sunken forest area. But I stopped here, I want to do check out the other dragons first to see if this part might be really non-linear. And I don't know what to expect right now. But I'm actually hoping that there might be one or two more dungeons. Because that would be awesome, I don't want this game to end.

Talking about dungeons, I'm obsessed with the idea of revisiting dungeons. It was really cool in the Skyview Temple and I hoped the Earth Temple would follow at some point. I'm regulary revisiting the dungeon just to check if anything has changed. I'm not even sure if the dungeon would be suitable to be revamped. But I'm so crazy about this, when I had to look for the fortune teller's crystal ball I actually hoped the dowsing would lead me into a revamped Earth Temple. Instead the crystal ball was on a pillar at the entrance... but maybe there will be a revamped Earth Temple for the Eldin dragon quest, hope dies last. The Lanayru Mining Facility on the other hand can stay as it is right now, that dungeon sucked anyway. Of all the dungeons in this game it was by far the worst.

Forgive me Din, for I have sinned. I actually used dowsing to find the last Gratitude Crystal. I was weak and I feel terrible about it. But why did Nintendo have to include dowsing for these thing to begin with? It makes the whole idea pointless. It's a quest where you look for hidden items. If I can pinpoint the exact location of the items, they are not so hidden anymore... Might as well just give me them from the start. I'm really mad about this and myself, but I was looking for hours and couldn't find it. I wanted to use the dowsing to exclude certain areas, where I tought I was sure nothing was there, but this backfired. Well, it was cleverly hidden in the sword training school, where I even looked multiple times... But I should have kept looking instead of using the dowsing. And looking for the Gratitude Crystals was a lot of fun, I love Skyloft at night. And now I have no reason to aimlessly walk around at night anymore. Argghhhh... what have I done?! But at least I found the other 14 crystals on my own without any help.

And there's a nice new minigame. In the tornado cloud there always was this weird island which looked like an obstacle course. I feared for some minigame, where you had to reach the top in some time limit, though this didn't make much sense because of the multiple paths. But it turns out that this island is used for a bug catching minigame. On the island all 16 types of insects are present. The bug guy shows you a list of different bugs and you have to find them as fast as possible. It's a mix between memorizing where the bugs are hidden and being fast in the obstacle course. But I was disappointed about the prizes. If you beat the record on hard level, you still ony get five bugs. There should have been a better prize, the Bug Medal would have been the perfect reward for example. I love the Bug Medal.

Skyward Sword Blade Log, Day 6

2011-11-22T23:54:00.000+01:00

SPOILER WARNING: Area post Silent Realm 3 + sidequests

My Phantom Hourglass boat trip continued. I love that part of the game, I love how Link gestures and makes "heyaaa" sounds to fire cannon and the robot pirate is a nice replacement for Linebeck. The are four different ports and the third one was a clever minidungeon, where you carry a time shift orb. The dungeon itself was called the Sand Ship, probably one of the most unique dungeon settings so far in the Zelda series. You could shift the whole ship between two times and I liked the joke how the "crew" that you had to rescue only consisted of one more robot. The dungeon also felt a little bit more open than usual, which was a good thing, still nothing on the level of classic Zelda dungeon layouts though. The boss was quite the stereotype though... tentacles attacking a pirate ship? Wait, where have I seen this before...? Oh, and this time we got the bow, so the boss must have a huge eye. And alltogether it was a silly looking mix of a Cyclops, Medusa and Kraken. Of all the bosses this was weirdest one so far.

The bow didn't let me down though. You can use it in two ways. Either you use it like the Slingshot just by holding down A. But you can also draw the arrow yourself with the Nunchuck, which loads the full power up much faster. Also, the bow gets two upgrades and you also can buy additional quiver(s), which also gets two upgrades. So, finally there was some new stuff for upgrading, something that I badly missed with the previous three items.

Talking about upgrades, by now I'm also looking further into potions and upgrading them. I never really did this before, because the normal Heart Potion was just fine, but I collected so many bugs and Rupees by now that I want to put them to use. And some of the upgraded potions can be quite useful. If you upgrade the Heart Potion twice, it restores all hearts and you can drink from it twice. The upgraded Revitalization Potion restores your Shield automatically when it breaks. I'm currently only using the Goddess Shield, which was very expensive, but has low stamina. It regenerates itself quickly, but sometimes in a heated battle I fear that it will shatter. But the Revitalization Potion gives me some reassurance.

Fi again spoiled a puzzle for me. In the Sand Ship there was a room, where had to hit the Time Shift Stone through the ceiling. It would have been a nice challenge to discover this for yourself, but instead Fi contacts you and tells you about it. I'm pissed about these things, why even put such a puzzle there, if Fi tells you the solution right away? If I'm stuck, I can always ask her or visit the Sheikah Stone. She shouldn't be telling you anything.

About that, with the second flame you can now dowse for all kinds of things. Some of it is useful, like dowsing for treasures. But other stuff is just a big spoiler. You can dowse for Gratitude Crystals for example. I think I'm only missing two single crystals and I will never ever use the dowsing feature for them. I will find them on my own. It's fun searching for them and it's terrible that the game offers such guides. Where's the challenge of hidden items, if you get a detector?

I wonder what the third flame will be. Well, the Skyward Sword will probably turn into the Master Sword, but there must be some new ability. Hopefully it lets you load the sword beam faster. This was an issue during the boss fight on the sand ship, where you had to cut the tentacles using the sword beam. A medal with the same effect would be fine too.

With the whip you can steal the horns that some Bokoblins are carrying. This is reminiscent of The Wind Waker, where you can use the Grappling Hook to steal the spoils from your enemies. But so far that's the only item that you can steal with the whip, but better than nothing.

I won a Dusk Relic at the Bow minigame. So, there's a way to collect them outside of the Silent Realms. Though I got a good stock by now, I collected 9 Dusk Relics during the third trial. I had some trouble with the first part to the west, where lots of Poes are on a sand slope. But before that part you could collect two Dusk Relics, which was a nice opportunity to farm them. I think you will be able to repeat the trials in the Boss Battles mode, but better use the opportunity right away. And I'm glad that I've beaten the final trial (unless there's another trial in Skyloft, lol), though I thought the second one was harder. The path was much clearer this time, in the second trial you could go anywhere and it was hard to figure out where to go next without running out of time. But in the mountains you follow a clear path.

The fire protection earrings are basically the Goron Armor of this game, much like the Water Dragon's Scale replaces the Zora Armor. I wonder if you actually could get to the Fire Sanctuary without the earrings. The path is not that long, you only need enough health. I never tried and I'm actually regretting that I never had the balls to do it. This would have been a cool discovery.

I finally got the chest in the Bazaar... and I was disappointed that it "only" gave me 300 Rupees, I was hoping for something more special. You're coming by this chest every day and you want to open it from that start of the game and then it only contains Rupees? Why not a cool medal? I still only got 7 different medals and two duplicates.... the whole medal thing feels like wasted potential right now. Every time I open a big treasure chest I'm hoping for a new medal. And most of the time I get disappointed.

I like that you get healed by sitting down on a chair or a bench. I never noticed until meeting the digging Goron in Lanayru Cave, he tells you something different if you sit next to him. During the talk I got healed, it takes a little time until the healing starts, which is why I probably have never noticed this before. But in the Sand Ship for example there were chairs in some places, so that you could heal yourself. It's an interesting addition, it doesn't make any sense at all, but it works.

Skyward Sword Blade Log, Day 5

2011-11-21T23:55:00.000+01:00

SPOILER WARNING: Area post Silent Realm 2 + sidequests

This game really takes me back to the Nintendo 64 Zelda times. I spent A LOT of time just running around trying to discover new details. And I usually even find out something new! And I'm not doing that at the end of the game, because I'm bored. I'm still in the middle of the main quests, I'm sidequesting, because I like it a lot.

The Gratitude Crystals are basically the Secret Seashells / Gold Skulltulas / Poe Souls / similar collectible items of this game. Though you earn most of them by helping people, it seems there are at least 15 of these crystals hidden in Skyloft at night. This was made for me, I love Skyloft at night because of the atmosphere and I love looking for hidden things. It's like Gold Skulltulas in Kakariko, just without the rattling. And they are cleverly hidden. I was right about Zelda's room though, you get in it through the chimney. There you can also discover, who's bathing at night. It's this humor and this level of detail which make this game great.

You get 5 Gratitude Crystals for helping people, but it seems there are various choices, that you can make, which leads to different outcomes. I already talked about the ghost hand and the couplings at the academy, now there's Peatrice, the Item Check Girl, who falls in love with you throughout the game. You can tell her at some point that you also like her or you can dump her. The first one definitely gives you 5 crystals, I'm not sure what happens if you dump her, my best guess would be that you get 5 crystals from the father... the father is funny, he's the guy from the bamboo slicing minigame and he's totally angry at you, which makes him "wanna slice bamboo", haha.

I love the medals, this system has A LOT of potential. However, I fear that this potential will never be fully tapped. So far I got 7 different medals and 2 duplicates. Yes, that's right, I got both the Life and the Heart Medal twice for whatever reason. The Life Medal makes sense, because it adds an additional Heart Container. The more you have the more extra Heart Containers you get. I'm not sure about the Heart Medal, do I know find even more hearts usual if I equip both? If that's the case I want two Treasure Medals, I ALWAYS have the Treasure Medal equipped, I'm such a treasure collecting junkie. But there's so much more potential in this, just look at the 64 rings from the Oracle games, which was a similar concept. They had tons of ideas for nice boosting effects. I hope there will be at least 16 different medals, that's a quarter of the rings and not too much to ask. But I guess I will be disappointed and maybe there are only 8 of them... I dunno and it's actually nice that I have no clue how many medals there are. Because the hope that there always could be a new medal left somewhere will keep me looking. But I definitely hope that there will be a red and a blue medal, one boosting your attack power and one boosting your defense. Like the Red and Blue Mail in Link's Awakening or the Red and Blue Ring in the Oracle games. It's a classic and this shouldn't be missing. Also, this would be a much needed optional sword upgrade, it's always boring when the sword upgrades are story related and not part of your own doing. Another possibility would be medal that lets you regenerate your health like the Heart Ring. I would also suggest medals boosting your stamina and air supply, but you already have potions for this and the Potion Medal to lenghten potion effects. But there are many possibilities. My favorite medal so far is the Bug Medal, which shows the locations of insects on your map. This is very useful, I would like a similar medal showing treasures you find out in the open. Another nice idea would be a medal, that makes your sword beam load faster.

I don't like the camera change to first person, it works different than before. In all other four 3D Zeldas you would switch into Link's point of view, but now Link will automatically look into the direction of your camera. I prefered the old way, but this is a minor detail.

I also got further into the main quests, I've beaten the Ancient Cistern and the second Silent Realm trial and I've explored the first two ports of the giant sand sea.

The Ancient Cistern was probably the best dungeon so far. It was still completely linear and not very large, but it got this underground area, which was simply amazing. That's how a dungeon is supposed to look like, visually. Dark, spooky, with chains on the wall, purple acid fluid, traps and Zombie Bokoblins. That's how you imagine a real dungeon. The atmosphere was totally awesome and a very nice contrast to the bright and colorful upper level. The boss fight again was a lot of fun, this game probably has the most solid and fun selection of bosses in any Zelda game. It was also the first and hopefully not the last time that you could swing an enemy weapon. I hoped that this feature from The Wind Waker would fully return, but instead it's just this one occasion. It would be nice, if you could use the Moblin's spears or the Hi-Tech Bokoblins electric swords for example. This is a game about swinging the Wiimote as your sword and there should be as many melee weapons as possible. But at least the whip is a nice item, it was already a winner in Spirit Tracks and might become a staple in the series.

The second Silent Realm trial was overwhelming. The area at Lanayru Desert was massive, you could easily run out of time and I was chased a couple of times. I never died though, only once at the beginning. It surprised me that the trial gave me the Clawshots, which then would lead to lots of sidequesting (fully explore Skyloft!). But yeah, it was mentioned earlier that they would give you all items as early as possible and I guess the bow will be next. Because before the Fire Sanctuary Bokoblins will steal all of your items (I remember that from Nintendo's spoiler marathon), which wouldn't be possible if you don't have all items.

But you actually got the full length Double Clawshots... especially in the first Zelda game that allows you to upgrade your items multiple times you would think that the Hookshot is the perfect candidate for upgrades. After all it's one of the few items that got constantly upgraded in older games. You get the Hookshot and then extend its chain to the Longshot in Ocarina of Time for example. Or the Double Clawshots were an upgrade to the Clawshot in Twilight Princess. You could have combined that like getting the Hookshot first, then add a claw, then extend the chain and then get a second one. The Beetle also got three upgrades and it feels a little bit inconsistent. Currently I can't upgrade anything anymore and I was hoping that some of the new items would upgradeable. But neither the Gust Bellow, nor the Whip or the Clawshots seem to have any upgrades. For the Whip it would have been nice to add an upgrade, where it damages enemies. But I still hope that the Bow will offer something...

However, the Clawshots let you do lots of sidequesting like entering Zelda's room. It was the second time in the game that opening closets was actually worth it. I do it all the time, but usually there's nothing in there. And you also get to peek into the bathroom... you basically could have guessed, who's occupying the bath all night, because he's the only character, who you don't meet at night...

And Lanayru definitely now is my favorite area in the game. It just gets better and better. A boat like in Phantom Hourglass with a robot pirate on it (so hilarious!!) and a time warp field around it, which turns the sand dunes into the water of the ocean which the desert used to be in the past? Hell yeah, why not? This stuff is amazingly creative and a lot of fun. No other game has crazy shit like this. The ocean area is about the size of one map in Phantom Hourglass. And the islands in the sand sea are very fun. Clawshotting my way through massive cliffs? Fast riding on minecarts? Rebattling old bosses? HELL YEAH!!

By the way, the Skipper's Retreat was a very nice spot for farming Sand Cicadas, Dusk Relics and even Goddess Plumes. Just go through the door on the top again and again.

Skyward Sword Blade Log, Day 4

2011-11-20T23:33:00.000+01:00

SPOILER ALERT: PRE DUNGEON 4, most sidequests included

It was a FUN, FUN day. Again I was busy with lots of sidequesting, especially some FUN, FUN minigame, and the main quests offered a series of surprises.

Well, the first thing I had to do was sealing the Imprisoned. It seems there are two ways of fighting him, you can either jump on his back or attack his feet to make him collapse. I only tried the second method, but I've heard you can also beat him the other way. The harp is quite a weird instrument. You can't actually play a song whenever you want like you could with the Ocarina or the Wind Waker. You can play the harp freely not following any song, which can cause different stuff like calling Gossip Stones (yay! didn't see that coming), but you can't play a specific song whenever you want. There are certain points, where Fi joins you with singing to cause a certain effect like opening a gate to the Silent Realm.

The Silent Realm is terrifying, my heart pounded when I was done. The guards never got me, but it was very close at times. I still hadn't fully familiarized myself with the forest, even though I've spent hours in this place, so I lost orientation here and there. But luckily you have these beams, which show you the location of the tears. That made things easier. And Eldin and Lanayru were a little bit easier to overlook, so I feel confident. So far the Silent Realm was the only place, where you can collect Dusk Relics. You need these to upgrade the Slingshot and the Sacred Shield. I wonder where you will be able to get these at the end of the game? Because it seems you can't reenter the Silent Realm. Luckily I got my Treasure Medal equipped, so I got 7 Dusk Relics, which was enough to upgrade everything for now. But in case my Goddess Shield gets crashed, I would need more of them.

I love the salvage robot, how he admires "Mistress Fi" and bullies Link. It's just not what a robot would do, which makes it so funny. The robots are probably my favorite of the new races, but all four new races are really something. That's one of Skyward Sword's strong sides, there's only one Goron in the entire game (so far) and they invented four new creative races with interesting characteristics. Well, I liked how you got to see the salvaged goods earlier in the game, you walked over the pinwheel and this... wheel thingy the FUN, FUN island guy wants earlier in the game. You probably wondered what this pinwheel was doing in the middle of the volcano area for example, it seemed to be a random detail. It was not though and it might had been more interesting to look for it without the dowsing, just relying on your memory. "Wait, where did I see a pinwheel before?". But many people probably would have been frustrated, because they forgot...

So, after the third dungeon you finally get to enter the tornado, which is an atmospheric area. I love the ruined towers inside the storm and the puzzle with the bridge was really smart. Luckily Fi didn't spoil it this time. Interestingly I only found one open Goddess treasure chest in the tornado. Which means I'm still missing one, where I don't know where the chest went.

Skyloft at night, is there anything better? I just love the atmosphere. One funny thing that I noticed is that these cats can actually fly with their big ears. I throwed one down into the abyss (one of the scary night cats of course) and it came back, which looked totally funny. At night there's also one of these hands in the toilet asking for paper. This leads to a very interesting sidequest, where you have to make a choice. One of the bullies fell in love with the only girl in school, however, she has an eye for the guy in the yellow outfit. The bully has written a love letter to her and you can now make a choice. You can give the letter to the girl or to the toilet hand. I tried both variants just to see which one was better. The outcome for you is the same, you get 5 Gratitude Crystals, but you'll get a different couple each time. If you give the letter to the girl, she will be interested in the bully, but then the yellow guy then gets jealous and in the end the yellow guy and the girl will be together, which makes the bully sad. If you give the love letter to the toilet hand, it will fell in love with the bully and harass him at night, which gives him nightmares. The latter one was funnier and meeting the ghost hand was kind of cool, so I went with this one. I don't know at this point, if this sidequest gets any further. But in general I don't like these kind of choices in a Zelda game. Yeah, yeah, I said earlier that video games are defined by their interesting choices, but I always want an ultimate save file in my Zelda games, one where I got everything. The only other Zelda games to do that were the ones from Capcom, especially the Oracle games, so this was probably Fujibayashi's input. But it adds somehow to the replay value. If you play the game a second time, you can go for the other variant.

The Gratitude Crystals seem to be another nice collectible quest. You can get 5 for making a person happy, but they are also single ones hidden in Skyloft at night. The latter is fun, it's very atmospheric to explore Skyloft at night an the crystals are hidden in clever places. One is inside Zelda's room and there doesn't seem to be a way to open it. But on the roof ot the academy there's a chimney, which you can enter with the Clawshot. It might be the way to enter Zelda's room, but I will find out.

Well, I got the FUN, FUN minigame to start and like usually I got frustrated at first. It seemed impossible to do it right. But as usual you get the hang of it and get better at it. If it wasn't for the Piece of Heart, I probably would have ignored the minigame alltogether. Actually I didn't know what I would be getting, he just said there's a special price and I wanted to have it. I thought it probably would be a Heart Piece and I was right. But before I got it I won tons of Rupees. In the thousands. You can win 480 Rupees with one game. I got so many Rupees by just playing this minigame all over again, that I could effort EVERY item in Beedle's Airshop except for the Heart Piece, which is sold for 1600 Rupees. And I only couldn't effort it, because my wallet only extends to 1400. But I got the last pouch, the Life Medal and the Bug Medal. The latter is really helpful.

I also won my first Evil Crystal at the Bamboo Slice Guy's minigame. 25 cuts with the weakest sword. The Evil Crystal was important, because I now could finally upgrade my Bug Net to the Big Bug Net, which is awesome and very handy, it makes catching stuff much, much easier. The Spreadshot is also a lot of fun, I love the upgrades. But by now I've made all possible upgrades, so I'll need to get more items first.

Now the real funny thing today was that I tried to do some sidequests in the forest after the Silent Realm, but I would accidently run into the next main quests. Twice. First I investigated an underwater hole in the giant tree. This would lead me to the tree top, where an old Kikwi gives guidance (he actually tells you "it's a secret to everybody", nice easter egg). But the view from the tree top is amazing. We've seen this already in the E3 2010 demo, but finally experiencing it for myself was amazing. Absolutely stunning.

So, before heading to Lake Floria I wanted to do another sidequest. I remembered that in Skyview Temple there was one single digging hole. I couldn't reach it earlier, because you needed to dive to get there. So, with my new swimming ability I returned to the dungeon and you dcan't imagine how much I freaked out when I learned that the whole dungeon got changed. Harder enemies, encounters with a Mogma, new puzzles and even a new boss fight against three Stalfos. I was totally HYPED. This felt so awesome, like they included a Master Quest right into the main quest. BEST. SIDEQUEST. EVER. - so I thought, yeah, I actually thought that this was a very awesome sidequest. The Mogma was talking about treasure hunting anyway... but at the end of the dungeon I was confused. Nothing was there except for a Goddess Cube. And I thought that can't be it. I even tried harping next to all butterflies, I actually harped all over the place. It didn't make sense, so I thought that maybe I get something special from the treasure chest, leaving the place. Then I had to learn that this was actually part of the main quest. If you go to Lake Floria first, the guardian water dragon thingy (I have a real problem with names today) wants Sacred Water. As it turns out there's a special spot in the source of the Skyview Temple, where you can get Sacred Water. So, the whole thing wasn't a sidequest, it was something I was supposed to do afterwards!

And while I'm disappointed that this wasn't just a sidequest (it would have been sooo awesome!), I'm actually really happy that the game let me get confused like that by playing the revisited dungeon early. This is a non-linear game course, the game let me do things in advance, even though I wasn't supposed to do them yet. I discovered the whole thing on my own without any guidance, just because I was obsessed with sidequests. And that's something that I will remember! Skyward Sword just got so much more interesting today. This also directly hits on my previous complaints. My biggest complaint so far about the game was that the first three dungeons all have the same linear, boring, small layout. This still holds, but the revamped version of the Skyview Temple was a lot more interesting. Non-linear, optional parts with hidden treasures, just more the way I like it. I'm guessing that the Earth Temple and Lanayru Mining Facility will get revamped too and I'm looking forward to it.

I'm at the entrance of the Ancient Cistern right now. Let's see how this dungeon will perform.

Skyward Sword Blade Log, Day 3

2011-11-19T23:58:00.000+01:00

Day 3 is over and I didn't come far actually... oh, wait, at first I have to raise the spoiler flag:

SPOILER WARNING! DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T BEATEN DUNGEON 3 YET!

Well, I've crossed the Lanayru Desert and beaten the Lanayru Mining Facility dungeon. Overall it felt all very similar to the first two dungeons. First you need to find a number of things that can be found using the dowsing feature before you can enter the dungeon. The dungeon itself felt very similar to the dungeon design of Twilight Princess, very linear progressing and there's some kind of main feature, something only this dungeon has. I swear that the first three dungeons all have the same layout! It's just one floor and there are two crossroad rooms in the center and you travel on a linear path through these rooms. It's the exact same dungeon layout in all three dungeons and it feels bland. It's like the dungeon creator never heard of z-axis or non-linear design. The boss fight one the other hand again was a lot of fun and quite creative. The only remarkable difference this time was that the dungeon item wasn't protected by a miniboss. The dungeon just didn't have one. That's the only variety that we got in the formula. However, this was the last dungeon before the midway story point, so I expect that the game's formula now heavily changes for the next dungeon. I guess at first you will have to deal with the Silent Realm in an overworld, then you will enter new territories in the same overworld, get to a new dungeon, etc. But the two dungeons after that will probably just copy the new formula again.

However, my next destination is the Sealed Grounds. I bet that this is where you fight the giant black thing for your first time... can't wait. No, actually I thought that this was the perfect point to take a pause and end this day, because I'm not really looking forward to the seal fight or the Silent Realm. Ugh.

But the Lanayru Desert was a lot of fun, I love the time warp idea and the music rocked. First I struggled with those electric sword Bokoblins (which look really cool), but this is what you get for only using your sword all the time. Drop a bomb on them with your Beetle or stun them with your Slingshot and these fights get easy. But before you could enter the dungeon, Fi totally spoiled a puzzle for me. I think it would have been much smarter, if you had to figure out the door mechanism by yourself. Looking at the map to see the pattern is genious! That would have been such an awesome "damn, I'm so smart!!"-moment. But instead Fi just pops up and tells you the solution right away. WHAT THE FUCK?! You can always ask her for advice, if you're stuck, so there's no reason that she tells you puzzle solutions like that! Come on! What's next, does she kill the bosses for me?!

The Lanayru Mining Facility itself wasn't too much fun. But I like the new Gust Bellow item, though I wonder what upgrades it might hold. I struggled with the Beamos, because I had problems performing a stab attack. Sometimes I accidently move the Nunchuk at the same time, which results in a vertical spin. Or sometimes it just doesn't recognize the move. It's aweful if you get your ass kicked by a Beamos, just because the controls failed on you. But the boss fight was great, again. It was the scorpion from the Forest Area demo, but unlike in the demo he would also hide himself below sand, so that you had to look for him with the Gust Bellow. But the overall fight was a nice battle of claws vs. sword.

Well, I've only beaten one dungeon today, because I again spent a lot of time with side questing. I farmed different items like Bird Feathers in the woods for two hours! But it was worth it. Additionally to the Quick Beetle I now got the Tough Beetle, which seems to be the final Beetle upgrade. It seems like you can get two upgrades per item in the Scrap Shop. I also fully upgraded a Bomb Bag and a Seed Satchel. And I bought the 7th pocket from Beedle. However, he also sells the last pocket for 1200 Rupees. I think it's somehow boring that he sells three of the four Adventure Pouch upgrades, but on the other hand this lets you get all pockets early in the game, if you're willing to farm Rupees.

And I thought about a nice strategy to get some easy money, but it failed. At the entrance of the Deep Woods, there's this hornet nest. You can easily collect all of them with your Bug Net, go back to Faron Woods, reenter Deep Woods and do the same again. The Deku Hornets are probably the easiest to catch insects and you can get 99 of them in no time. So, I thought about selling them. But you can't just sell treasures and insects like in the Nintendo DS Zeldas. The guy who buys them only looks for three different types per night. So you have to go to bed and sleep through many nights until he's finally looking for the item you want to sell. I don't know, I slept through 8 nights or so until he finally asked for hornets. And then he bought them for only one Rupee per hornet, which is not sufficient. So, my genious money making plan turned out to be a total failure. I really don't like the way how you sell your stuff. It should be more convenient, like in the Nintendo DS Zeldas. Why does Nintendo make a step back like this? They done it right before, why change it into something ineffecient?

You don't take any damage from falls... it makes sense in Skyloft, where you get catched by knights, but in dungeons you should at least lose one heart... there should be some punishment for potentially killing Link.

I still can't buy the blue potion, I guess it's for air when you dive. And I can't get the Slingshot upgrade because I'm missing Dusk Relics. I have no idea where to get them.

Skyward Sword Blade Log, Day 2

2011-11-19T01:55:00.000+01:00

Is it unhealthy to play video games all day long? Probably, but I'm doing it anyway. This game is addictive.

Beware of spoilers! I won't talk about the story though, only about game stuff.

I played a lot today and I'm currently in the middle of the Lanayru Desert. That might be not as far, but keep in mind that I'm sidequesting a lot. I'm usually neglecting the main quests and look around for hidden items and secrets. But this is a good sign, because this means that the sidequests in this game are fun and interesting. Normally I would rush through the main quests and do most of the siqequests at the end. Here it's more like the opposite, I really want to get all those cool item upgrades and I usually just progress in the main quest, if I need a lot of Rupees. Rupee-wise this game is the complete opposite of Twilight Princess. There's tons of expensive stuff waiting to be bought, for example I still couldn't effort the second Adventure Pouch upgrade in Beedle's shop or any of his medals. Rupees are hard-earned here and can be spent and very useful items. Nice.

I also got two medals by now. Like I thought the medals work similar to the rings in the Oracle games, however, you can use multiple medals at once. You don't have to equip them like your shield, as long as they stay in your Adventure Pouch, you will feel their effects. So, basically you could use eight different medals at the same time, if you got all pockets. The Adventure Pouch is a really interesting concept, which adds a nice RPG element to the game in a Zeldaish way. You can store bottles, shields, medals and capacity upgrades (like addditional Bomb Bags). But there's never the perfect combination, you really have to consider your next target destination and bring suitable items. For example an Iron Shield doesn't help in the Desert, where enemies fight with electricity. You need a Wooden Shield here, so you stow your Iron Shield at the Bazar and bring something else instead. The idea with the electricity is already genious, because in Twilight Princess the Wooden Shield would be totally useless after you got the Hylia Shield. The only difference was that the Wooden Shield burns and the Hylia Shield doesn't. It's nice that they put more thought into having different shields.

One of my medals lets me find more treasure. Which is helpful, because you use the treasures to upgrade your items, the more spoils you collect the better. For example I just got the totally awesome Quick Beetle upgrade, which lets your Beetle fly much faster. And I love it soooo much. Upgrading items is really cool, I'm obsessed with it. Collecting bugs to upgrade potions on the other hands doesn't really feel like it's worth it. I only had use for the normal Heart Potion so far, there was no reason to upgrade any of my potions. But collecting insects itself is fun. I love what they did with the Bug-Catching Net. There's this space in the Deep Woods, where you get attacked by hornets. I got freaked out first, but later I found out that you can simply collect the hornets by swinging your Bug-Catching Net around. This is one of the many details, that make this game great.

Surprisingly I still haven't fully familiarized myself with the forest area and Skyloft. I lose orientation quickly in these places. But this just shows how smartly those enviroments were designed. I love exploring Skyloft, it might be my favorite town in the Zelda series already. All the characters are really unique and bizarre and they all have their fully developed homes and stories. And Skyloft offers surprises in every corner. There was this sidequest, where you look for a girl. You'll actually discover a hidden area below the graveyard where some real crazy bat demon guy lives. I loved this part, the humor and the atmosphere were great and it extended into a much deeper sidequest, which involves collecting something similar to the Force Gems in Spirit Tracks. And there are hidden details everywhere. For example there's a Tingle statue in Zelda's room. You can't actually enter Zelda's room, but the room next to it, where you can peak through a slit in the wooden wall. Every character has a living room, which reflects his personality. And the personalities in this game can be quite crazy.

But while the Faron Woods and Skyloft are very well designed places, I wish I could say the same about the other environments. Eldin Volcano was just some giant obstacle course, which even felt repetitive at times. And the first two dungeons were rather short and disappointingly linear. I expect something small and basic from the first dungeon, but the second dungeon was entirely the same thing. The dungeons feel even dumper than in Twilight Princess, you only get the map and an item protected by a miniboss. The rest was a very linear course. The Skyview Temple was much more interesting in the demo, where you had more items to experiment. You even could skip over the miniboss battle. But the bosses were awesome. Ghirahim in the Skyview Temple was a nice and classic duel, I always dig 1on1 sword battles, and Scaldera was a very unique boss that took the Dodongo concept to an entire new level. I'm looking forward to the Boss Challenge mode.

But right now I fear that the game will remain to be entirely linear. Normally I would have the hope that the first half of the game is linear, but the second half let's you do stuff out of order. But this hope was already crushed early in the game. There's this fortune teller at the bazar, who can tell you, what items you will need in the next area. This already indicates that the order of the dungeons and overworld areas will be completely linear. He couldn't predict your next move, if the game wasn't entirely linear. And this is disappointing, linear game design is bad game design, because it's boring. Every idiot can make a linear game. A good video game is the sum of its interesting choices. I'm really happy that Skyward Sword offers some good sidequest where I can make my own gear, because this will probably be the only choices you have in this game. But I at least have the hope, that the dungeon design will improve at some point. Link's Awakening is also an entire linear game when it comes to the order of the dungeons, but I don't mind, because the dungeons theirselves offer a very smart layout with lots of possible solutions and optional parts. You can replay the dungeons in Link's Awakening many, many times and still have fun. But if the dungeons in Skyward Sword remain the way there are right now, the game will heavily suffer from it.

Like I said I'm currently in the Lanayru Desert. And the time fields are totally awesome, I love this idea. This is something that you would have expected from the Temple of Time dungeon in Twilight Princess. Instead they used the dungeon for this giant statue puzzle. It was a missed opportunity. But now we get an entire overworld area, where you can shift between two very different ages. The robot folk is really funny and the contrast between Lanayru in the past and present looks great. Lanayru might be my favorite part of the game so far, though it's still heavily linear. The Lanayru Mine was just one linear pathway, I wonder if I will ever return to this area...

So much about the general stuff, but I also want to talk about some details.

In Twilight Princess you had this really annoying issue, that after leaving and restarting the game it would tell you again how much worth the different colored Rupees are if you walk over a blue Rupee or higher. This was so stupid. Luckily this doesn't happen here, however, it now does the same for all items in your collection. Treasures, bugs and spoils... this is ridiculous. I'm actually thinking about leaving the game on when I'm making a pause, because it's brutally annoying. It just slows the game down that you have to listen to the description of 32 different items again after turning the game off. I already know what an Amber Relic, why are you telling me this again?! But it's not only the found-an-item-text, each time it will open the collection menu and show you how the item's counter gets increased by 1! Each single time! This is soooo annoying and I have no idea what Nintendo was thinking. This is even worse than the Rupees in Twilight Princess. Unless you only play the game in larger sessions, this will heavily annoy you.

Well, and it happened twice to me now that I activated a Goddess Cube, but I can't tell where the treasure chest appeared. It's nowhere on the map or on Skyloft... but there's no real way to efficiently check this, because you can only look at the map of the current area. It would be nice if you could check all of the maps all the time. So, right now I don't know where two of the chests appeared and I spent at least an hour looking in all houses of Skyloft. Maybe the chests appeared inside this giant whirlwind cloud, I dunno...

And what I like about the game, that hearts are actually a rare thing. Well, at least rarer than normally. But rare enough that the game actually gives you a heart dowsing feature. And sometimes you have to use the Beetle to collect some hearts. It happened to me several times now that I was low on health, but struggled to get a refill. Maybe the potions won't be so useless after all. But I also got a heart medal by now, which makes finding hearts easier. But I'm not using it, because I like the challenge and I want to use the space in my pouch for other items.

But sometimes I really get my ass kicked. It can be very different, for example I've beaten the two Lizalfos, who happened to be the Earh Temple's miniboss fight, without a scratch. However, the next Lizalfos, who was just guarding a door, nearly killed me, by kicking me into the lava two times. Sometimes you're lucky by simply swinging your sword like crazy (like you would do in Twilight Princess), but other times this can get you killed. In Lanayru the Bokoblins now fight with electric swords. There's no room for error here and the game can be quite hard. At least harder than other 3D Zeldas. I don't know, how anyone could say that this game is easier than Twilight Princess.

Remember the Faron Woods demo from E3 2010? There was this one room behind some bombable rocks, where you fight a Stalfos. Sadly they removed this room, now there's just a Piece of Heart in an alcove. It would have been more awesome if you still had to fight the Stalfos to get the Piece of Heart.

So much for today.

Skyward Sword Blade Log, Day 1

2011-11-17T23:38:00.000+01:00

Similar to the Spirit Tracks Rail Diary two years ago I will blog about my progress through Skyward Sword. Thoughts, early impressions, stuff... I call this the "Blade Log" this time. But most importantly, BEWARE OF SPOILERS. Only read this if you're already deeper into the game and/or if you don't care about being spoiled. I will talk freely about the game and I won't refrain myself in any way. Though I probably won't talk much about the story.

I'm currently five hours into the game and I just entered the first dungeon. So, I thought this was a good pause to write this post and get a good night's sleep afterwards. My first impressions? I'm impressed! This game has been really fun so far. It's full of nice and fun details, there's a lot to explore, it feels like the complete opposite of the empty game that Twilight Princess used to be.

Well, it takes some time to get started. It took me about two hours to get back to the point, where I started at the press event. There's a lot of story in the beginning and some tasks that have to be done. However, I was also exploring a lot, for example I would enter every room, talk to every person, etc. And the story is quite nice, like I expected earlier I'm totally into the cute Zelda, she's very lovely. And the story feels right, it's an interesting and fresh set up. The Knight Academy reminds me a little bit of Harry Potter. Actually I've never seen a Harry Potter movie or read any of the books, it just reminds me of it in general. But it's not a bad thing, the school setting is much cooler than expected and offers many colorful characters.

Also, most of the tutorial stuff seems to be completely optional, for example I think you can skip the sword tutorial. I did it anyway, but it's nice to know that you can skip it in a replay. So, overall it doesn't feel as bad as the beginning of Twilight Princess, where you have to herd goats, teach children sword moves, feed cats and other annoying things. Everything done in the beginning is somehow meaningful. However, it seems you can't skip cutscenes. I hope you can do this in a replay, because skipping cutscenes was probably one of the best features of Twilight Princess.

At one point they mention that the Knight Academy is celebrating its 25th Anniversary, which is a nice reference to the anniversary of the Zelda franchise. The 25th Anniversary logo even got included into the game.

When we played the game on the press event, we spent quite some time looking for Rupees to buy a Wooden Shield. It turns out that you actually don't have to buy it, one of the teachers of the academy gives you one... *facepalm* However, I thought it was more interesting to buy it on your own and to have the option going to the forest without a shield.

Since I already played the forest at the press event, I focused on exploring Skyloft first before going to the forest again. And it actually lets you fully explore the entire sky area, you can visit all the small islands, even though you can't do much on most of them. But there was one island with this pumpkin bar, where you can let a chandelier with a Piece of Heart on it fall down, which is a hilarous scene. Overall the game offers tons of funny stuff that you can do in the individual houses. The Knight Academy has a toilet, which you can use. Or there's this old lady which collects old vases and you can actually roll bump into her shelf destroying her entire collection. I bursted out laughing so hard, you can really screw around a lot in this game. Or you can look into people's shelves, which never appeared since Link's Awakening.

And you can actually go to sleep in ANY bed. Going to sleep is the only way to enter night time, which is very atmospheric. You can't leave Skyloft yet during night, but I'm guessing you will get one of those headlights for your birds. Maybe entering the overworld areas during night will lead to very different experiences.

One of the first things I did after getting the Slingshot was visiting Beedle. He sells a lot of useful stuff for a lot of money. I bought a Bug Catching Net worth 50 Rupees and two 300 Rupee expansions for the purse worth 100 Rupees each. But he also offers a medal for 800 Rupees and a one slot Adventure Bag upgrade for 300 Rupees. I also upgraded my Wooden Shield to the Bandaged Shield, got two bottles by now and collected quite some bugs and spoils. And there's tons of other stuff to buy. This game really puts use into your hard earned Rupees, which is great.

When you sleep at Beedle's he takes you out to a tiny island at night. He sits there at a camp fire and stares at his favorite bug. These are the moments, where the game really shines. It's a living world with many things and secrets to discover. There was clearly putten a lot of detail into the game.

Got Skyward Sword

2011-11-17T19:34:00.001+01:00

Finally... :D Got the game just now in our local media store. Amazon failed to sent the game today, so I cancelled the order. Others already got the game on Tuesday from Amazon... that's a four day difference! Well, that was probably the last time, that I ordered something from Amazon. It was my own mistake though, I should have sticked with my trustworthy Media Markt from the start. They got like 50 Limited Editions piled up all over the place. Preordering the game, my ass...

And Switzerland already started selling the game last week. So much for my head start, but I still got it one day in advance, which is better than nothing.

But all of it doesn't matter right now, because I finally have the game, HELL YEAH!!!! As soon as I'm finished typing this, I'll start playing. This is going to be a long night. :D Expect first impression tomorrow.

UPDATE:
Here's a shot of the unpacked Limited Edition Pack.

It's very similar to the Wii Play Motion bundle, which came with a red Wiimote Plus.

25th Anniversary Zelda 3DS Bundle Announced...

2011-11-08T12:26:00.002+01:00

FFFUUUUUUUUUUUU

What the hell, Nintendo? Are you fucking kidding me?!! I waited MONTHS for something like this! I think at some point it was even denied that a special Zelda 3DS bundle is planned. So, I went to the store with a clear conscience that there won't be a Zelda 3DS and bought the red one. And now, one month later, you betray me like this! You're punishing your faithful costumers AGAIN! Every Zelda fan who already bought a 3DS now got fucked by your bitch called marketing. Why not announce this earlier? Like at E3? Or at the 3DS conference? I would have waited. But there's no excuse, this should have been released since June or at least been announced at some point earlier!

This is unacceptable, Nintendo. And this isn't funny! I'm seriously pissed right now and I'm never going to buy a Nintendo handheld early again. Because you're always punishing the idiots who buy your products early, laughing at their faces. Something like this is the reason why people are hesitating to buy a 3DS. Nintendo just screwed every Zelda fan, who already bought a 3DS! And there are many. I mean, you can't release Ocarina of Time 3D with two preorder boni (the 3DS bag and the soundtrack CD), so that many Zelda fans go for the game, and then release an unannounced bundle for it half a year later... they screwed us. Imagine some Zelda fan bought a 3DS at the release of Ocarina of Time 3D. He would have lost 80 bucks due to the price cut and be unhappy that he didn't get the Zelda model. That's not fair!

So, what am I supposed to do right now? Buy this thing, sell my red 3DS, sell the second copy of OoT? I'm still losing money... Thanks, Nintendo! You just made one of your longtime costumers very angry and losing his trust in you.

Source: Nintendo Life

Four Swords Anniversary Edition, Extra Round 2

2011-11-07T16:57:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I again had the chance to play the new Four Swords Anniversary Edition in multiplayer together with the lovely Evelyn Jade from ZeldaEurope.de. By now she had already beaten the Hero's Trial, so it was an equal match this time and a lot of fun. This game can really bring out your worst sides. There's no other game in the world where you compete this much while you actually have to cooperate. It's an amazing multiplayer concept. And it's downright evil, I did some really bad things yesterday to win. I'm not proud of it, I won't give you any details, but I won. But to be fair it was very close... and she sicced Bow-Wow on me. :D

Well, we had to get the final Hero Key from Death Mountain and clear the third and final door of Vaati's Palace, the one with the 12 floors and all bosses in their strongest form. Getting the Hero Key went smoothly, we got into a new area, which I've never encountered before, where you had to move a large block through a maze. At the end there was an entire room filled with bombable and normal blocks, pretty much like a multiplayer area from the Bomberman games. Normal Wizzrobes would spawn there (yes, you were basically playing Bomberman with Wizzrobes) and we used this opportunity to farm some Rupees. The normal blocks would give cover and there were also some cleverly hidden treasure chests revealed by pushing some of these blocks. Of course we got the Hero Key on our first try, we are pros after all. While playing Vaati's Palace I got to see at least one new area for Vaati's Palace and one new key room for the Talus Cave. I've played all the stages so many times by now, that it's a miracle that I'm still getting to see new stuff. Capcom really put a lot of work into the original game, so that it could be enjoyed many, many times! But I'm repeating myself about that.

I have more than 360,000 Rupees by now... that alone should speak for the replay value.

Last time I stated that you couldn't exploit Rupee Wraiths and Rupoors during Rupee Fever. But actually the game still lets you do that, nothing has changed here and we even used this tactic a couple of times. I don't know why I was under the impression that they changed this, maybe last time Jade and me both run over a Rupoor at the same time, but I already fixed the review and updated the last post. Sorry for the misinformation.

That's it, after this match both Jade and I now got a 100% save file of the Four Swords Anniversary Edition. It's definitely a fun little game, a great way to kill some time until Skyward Swords gets released (ony 11 days left, yay).

Zelda 3DS > Majora's Mask 3D

2011-11-05T13:55:00.002+01:00

This is one of the bigger news lately save for all the Skyward Sword spoilers that I'm trying to ignore (the game comes out in less than two weeks, guys...). Aonuma made two interesting statements to a Portugese site about Zelda on 3DS and Majora's Mask 3D:

We are already preparing a new game of the series for the Nintendo 3DS, which will not be a direct sequel for the DS Zelda games, but will make use of much of what was done in the previous handheld.

I can assure you that I've talked with Miyamoto about [Majora's Mask 3D]. But we recently released Ocarina of Time 3D, a remake. We're seriously considering a new version of Majora's, but it didn't seem right to release two remakes in sequence. For that reason, the next 3DS Zelda will be an original game.

It's not a surprise that the Zelda team already started working on the next Zelda game for the Nintendo 3DS. Skyward Sword is finished and it's not like the Zelda team stopped working for the moment. It's also likely that they already started working on concepts for a potential WiiU-Zelda. However, the 3DS has the priority, because the 3DS badly needs software. It's a nice system, which totally got effortable after the pricecut, but the lack of any big software doesn't make it really worth it. The 3DS needs good games as soon as possible. But you still have to take into the equation, that a new Zelda game for the 3DS takes at least two years to make. So, we probably won't get this game until late 2013. Spirit Tracks was also two years in the making and this game recycled everything from Phantom Hourglass. But two years is way too long, what am I going to do with my 3DS until then? So, the statement, that the next 3DS Zelda game will be an original game, actually surprises me. Because this means, we're not going to get any new Zelda title on the 3DS for a long time.

Of course it would look bad to release Majora's Mask 3D right now, right after they already released two N64 remakes. However, in eight months this is already a different story. I was hoping to get Majora's Mask 3D next year as a little something to pass time until the original 3DS Zelda game gets released. And what's GREZZO actually doing right now? The Four Swords Anniversary Edition is done and I thought that they started working on Majora's Mask 3D right afterwards. So, I'm curious what they are working on if not Majora's Mask 3D. Okay, maybe they work together with the Zelda team on Zelda 3DS, maybe they are even the driving force of this game, but I'll doubt it. Or they are working on a Zelda project for a different platform like the Wii or maybe the WiiU. There are many possibilities, if there's someone who could bring back the BS-Zelda games for WiiWare, then it's GREZZO. Or they were removed from the Zelda franchise, which would be a bad choice.

Previously Aonuma said about Zelda 3DS that it will be a game were 3D really matters. But his above statement that Zelda 3DS will make use of much of what was done in the NDS Zeldas is somehow contrary. The NDS Zelda games were made with the touchscreen in mind. You can't have both, you can't have 3D and touchscreen controls. Maybe they keep the graphical style (Toon Link ftw) and maybe they keep the feature, where you draw stuff on maps. But you can't have a game, that features 3D and touchscreen controls at the same time...

Source: Zelda Informer

Metroid Database Bestiary

2011-11-05T12:55:00.003+01:00

My favorite Metroid Site, Metroid Database, added a huge update to their site, the Metroid Database Bestiary. The goal is to create the ultimate database of all enemies in the Metroid series. For this they recruited over 20 artists from DeviantArt making very impressive artworks of all the various foes. Here are some examples:

It's worth checking out the 120+ entries for the artwork alone. But you also get all the infos you need about the enemies. It's very cool and again a great gift for the 25th Anniversary of Metroid from the community.

Hidden 25 in Hero's Trial

2011-11-04T13:20:00.001+01:00

After the initial frustration I had with the Hero's Trial in the Zelda Four Swords Anniversary Edition I finally returned there to look more into it. And while replaying all three doors I discovered not only a nice shortcut, but also that the number 25 - as in 25th Anniversary - is hidden in various areas as an easter egg. When you play the Hero's Trial for your first time, you probably won't notice most of it, because you're too busy to survive. But right now I'm trying to find all of them... and this is what I got so far:

Door 1, Floor 1:
This is probably the most obvious one. Right after the goal there's an island in the water, the island and the bushes on it take the shape of a large 25.

Door 2, Floor 2:
In the northwest right after the part with the Moblin Archers, where the shortcut is located, there are some of these platforms, that only one player can see. Together they take the form of a 25.

Door 2, Floor 3:
There's this nasty area in the northwest with lots of bone throwing Stalfos, hidden Beetles under bushes and air streams on a large catwalk above the abyss. This catwalk actually has the shape of a large 25.

Door 3, Floor 1:
There's this large grate at the end, where all the Stalfos and Ball & Chain Troopers spawn on it. This grate looks like a giant 25.

My theory is that each floor got a hidden 25 somewhere, some of them might be not as obvious. For example it might be that an entire floor is built around a 25-shaped structure. This is hard to tell on the small screen and it would be nice if you could look at the areas in total, after all GREZZO made some impressive mazes here. For most of the 2D Zelda games there are full maps available in the internet, I hope someone does the same at some point for the Hero's Trial (and the Realm of Memories). But I will keep looking and if you know anything, let me know in the comments. This post will probably get updated regularily.

Awesome Shortcut in Hero's Trial Door 2

2011-11-03T16:24:00.001+01:00

Are you struggling with the Hero's Trial in the new Four Swords Anniversary Edition? I but you are, but don't worry, there's help. Some people at GameFAQs (look here or here) discovered a nice shortcut that let's you skip more than half of the second floor of Door 2, the ice level. Which got some of the worst parts in the entire Hero's Trial, like the room with the multiple Ice Wizzrobes accompanied by Ball & Chain Troopers. But with a nice little trick you can actually skip over this nightmare right to the final battle on the floor.

Well, this is how it works. At the beginning of the second floor, right after you dodged the Moblin Archers there are some bushes at the right side, 12 in total. Below these bushes there's a ledge with two treasure chests on top of it. The wall below the bushes right between the treasure chests is bombable. Here's a picture, the red X marks the bombable spot in the wall:

Awesome, right? Now, wait a minute... you don't keep the items from the previous floor and you don't get any bombs here. So, you do you blow the wall up? Well, a lot of luck is involved actually. You have to cut the bushes and hope that a bomb appears, be very quicky and throw it to the spot. Luckily this spot is early in the floor, you don't even need a minute to get there. So, if you fail, you just pause the game, use the "Retry" option and start the floor over. It took me about 10 tries to get it done, but that's still better than fighting lots of nasty Ice Wizzrobes. I also got 3000 Rupees from the first floor, which is more than enough for the final floor!

If you open the wall, you can enter the shortcut, which feels a little bit like a glitch, because Link suddenly appears magically between the two treasure chests on top of the ledge. But this part is right before the final battle against some Helmasaurs, Moblin Archers, Stalfos and two Darknuts, in the area with the many rocks right before the goal. You only have to do a little Magnetic Glove puzzle and then you're through. This saves a lot of time and trouble! I wish I knew this when I originally played through the Hero's Trial. So, keep this shortcut in mind, if you're having any trouble.

(Actually I remember that in Talus Cave on a certain floor there was also a treasure chest that you could only reach, if you happen to find a bomb under some bushes, unless you brought bombs from a previous floor. This is probably where this idea for the shortcut came from.)

Update: the whole thing also motivated me to replay all of the Hero's Trial. I definitely got a lot better since the first time I struggled through the thing. It's still a big challenge, but it's not as frustrating as it used to be. It actually starts to get fun somehow, especially now considering that you can skip one of the worst parts. But the Hurricane Spin Attack actually was not as useful as I thought it would be. It's not as overpowered as in The Minish Cap.

R2-D2 vs. Phantom Ganon

2011-11-03T13:17:00.000+01:00

Wait, what? Well, this is a nice fanart made by Andy J Hunter that features a Zelda x Star Wars crossover:

I guess R2-D2 just needs to keep still, Phantom Ganon is basically jumping right into the Master Sword. Useless Marionette...

Source: Kotaku

Farming Big Plays

2011-10-30T18:41:00.002+01:00

I love my shiny new Nintendo 3DS, because it lets me do lots of Zelda related things, which I wanted to do for a while now. For example farming Big Plays in Phantom Hourglass. You could say that until this point I never had a 100% savegame of Phantom Hourglass, because I never got the 16 Big Plays (those are awards you earn in multiplayer). The multiplayer isn't much fun, so I never really played it online. And tracking someone down, who also wants to farm Big Plays, is somehow inconvenient. And I never really thought that Big Plays count as something that you have to do for a 100% completion anyway. Scoring all Big Plays in multiplayer adds four treasure chests to the house on Cannon Island. All of them include golden ship parts, which is awesome, but you can easily get them on other means. And since I already got all golden ship parts, I never really cared about the Big Plays. But of course you could say that I never got all treasure chests or just count the Big Plays theirselves as part of your completion level.

But now I did it anyway. If you have two DS systems you can easily do it yourself. But you'll need a second copy of the game, because you can't earn any Big Plays if your opponent uses Download Play. So, I went back to the video store and rented Phantom Hourglass again. I already did the same earlier this year to replay the game, because I didn't want to erase one of my two 100% savegames. Funny enough my old "Dude" file on the rented game was still there. And no one created a second savegame. It seems like I'm the only idiot, who's renting this game. But thanks to that I could now transfer all the golden ship parts, which I got during my replay session, to one of my old files using the Contact Mode. You never can have enough of those shiny gold pieces.

Using a second DS and a second copy of the game also has the advantage, that you don't have to lose to someone. If you farm Big Plays online, you will need to let your partner win multiple times as well, which then counts against your win percentage. Unless of course you use two savegames, your actual one and a dummy. But that's even more incovenient and in my case I have two fully beaten savegames, which I wanted to keep.

I farmed all 16 Big Plays in both of my savegames. So, it did the whole thing twice. Here's the list of what you have to do:

No Items: Win without taking a single item.
No Dribble: Win, but don't drop Force Gems outside bases or safe zones.
Limit: Win a match, felling Link in the last 20 sec. of two turns.
Solo: Defeat Link in any one turn using only one Phantom.
Break: Break 10 or more of your opponent's helpful items.
Take: Pick up 10 or more of your own helpful items.
Perfect Master: Complete a Perfect and Limit at the same time.
Quick: Win a match, felling Link in the first 20 sec. of two turns.
Miracle: Win 1-0.
Get Everything: Win, turning all the Force Gems your color.
Guardian: Win without letting your opponent score any points.
Perfect: Complete both the Get Everything and Guardian together.
No Miss: Win without being taken down once as Link.
Guard King: Take Link down three times as the Phantoms.
Master: Complete a No Miss and Guardian at the same time.
Battle Master: Complete a Limit and Master at the same time.

Some of these goals are conflicting, for example you can't do Limit and Quick at the same time. But you can make it easily in three games. First focus on Quick and Get Everything, ignore all items. In the second game focus on the Perfect Master. In the last game go for Miracle. This is the perfect opportunity to get No Dribble, as well as Break and Take.

After scoring four Big Plays you will get a letter that a prize is awaiting you at Cannon Island. So, you get four letters in total. Talk to Fuzo, Eddo's apprentice, on Cannon Island and he will add a treasure chest to his room. The prizes seem to be fixed:

4 Big Plays: Golden Chimney
8 Big Plays: Golden Handrail
12 Big Plays: Golden Cannon
16 Big Plays: Golden Hull

I also used this opportunity to take a good look at all eight stages. Stages 1 and 4 are probably most suitable for farming Big Plays.

Well, that's it. After beating both versions of Four Swords, beating Ocarina of Time 3D and now farming all the Big Plays I can now claim that I have fully beaten all Zelda games with a 100% completion rate. That is until Skyward Sword appears in 19 days. But still this was one of my longtime goals and I'm really happy that I finally achieved that.

Thieving Bokoblins

2011-10-28T20:45:00.001+02:00

In the latest Nintendo Skyward Sword press material we get to see how Link is robbed of all equipment by Bokoblins:

Why am I posting this? Primarily because this is again something that reminds me of the Oracle games. As you all know Fujibayashi is the director of Skyward Sword and his influence on this game is heavy. He was previously know for directing all Capcom Zeldas and various elements from these games will be present.

When playing the full version of Skyward Sword at a Nintendo press event last week, we ran into two events, where certain ingame characters were attacked by Bokoblins. These scenes totally reminded me of similar scenes in the Capcom games, like when Impa gets attack by Octoroks in Oracle of Ages or when you first meet Ezlo in The Minish Cap. And the concept of the medals sounds very similar to the Magic Rings in the Oracle games. And the most obvious influence might be the return of both the Mole Mitts and the Gust Jar items from The Minish Cap.

Now the stealing Bokoblins remind me of Oracle of Ages, where the Tokays steal all your items on Crescent Island. It was a cool puzzle, where you had to get back all items one after another. I hope it will get more in this direction, because I seriously wouldn't want another full Silent World stealth sequence. I guess at the beginning you're helpless, but you will grow stronger continiously. You get your shield back, so that you can defend yourself from attacks. You get your whip back to attack and stun enemies, etc... And it would be interesting, if the Bokoblins use your items against you. This would be similar to Metroid Fusion or Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, where the X and the Ings stole your abilities and used them against you. It was a cool concept.

Source: ZeldaEurope

Entering Dungeons

2011-10-28T16:26:00.002+02:00

From the latest issue of Iwata Asks:

Fujibayashi: On the other hand, we paid a lot of attention to how to enter dungeons. In the original Legend of Zelda game, Link went into a dungeon with a tomp-tomp-tomp sound. I really wanted to recreate that!

I like Fujibayashi, I'm currently thinking that he has a good influence on the Zelda series and comes up with the right ideas. And the way how you enter a dungeon was a lost art. It basically started with Ocarina of Time, where they introduced the temple concept, which by now became very stale. The temples were basically holy places that got cursed. And because they were holy places, they are mostly open to the world. But I think a real dungeon should be a dangerous and scary place, something that has to be sealed to protect the people from what's inside. As you might know one of my favorite Zelda games is Link's Awakening and one of the many things I like about this game is how they sealed the dungeons. Usually you have to find a key to open it first and sometimes they were sealed on other means. That was a smart concept only copied by the Oracle games. And this now returns in Skyward Sword, for example to enter the Earth Temple you have to get its key first. Dungeons look way more dangerous, if they are not something out in the open.

Dungeons used to be places going deep underground. What you see on the overworld in earlier games is only the small entrance. That's part of what Fujibayashi meant about how you enter a dungeon in The Legend of Zelda, where Link goes down a staircase with a simple animation and sound effect. The way how they recreated this feeling is pretty impressive, we've seen footage of Link entering the Skyview Temple and the Earth Temple. In both cases he walks down a long staircase leading underground. Howling wind blows towards you and it's all very atmospheric. This is very reminiscent of classic Zelda and one of the many things in Skyward Sword done right.

Nintendo is Spoiling Skyward Sword

2011-10-28T15:54:00.000+02:00

Seriously... each Friday Nintendo adds a huge update to their sites showing you more environments and dungeons of the game. With all these previews they might as well just show us a walkthrough of the entire game. What are they thinking? And it doesn't seem like it will stop until the game gets released.

I don't get it. Never has there been so many preview informations for a Zelda game in advance. But they release all of this for a reason, they want you to see it. And it's hard to ignore it. I said to myself that I will stop looking at any preview material, but then I watch it anyway. And I'm beginning to ask myself, how much of the game actually gets shown here. How much will be left to be discovered by myself? It feels like they have already shown us more than half of the entire game. And I seriously hope that I'm not going to regret watching any of this.

Replaying Majora's Mask

2011-10-28T01:28:00.001+02:00

Since last December I was busy playing through the entire Zelda series again. It started with Spirit Tracks and at that time I wasn't even thinking about replaying all Zelda games, but I slowly began to revisit other titles like A Link to the Past or Twilight Princess. And before I knew it, it became a little project, where I would beat all Zelda games again before Skyward Sword arrives. I even replayed the BS Zelda games. And now this was my final destination. Actually I started replaying Majora's Mask on my Wii two weeks before I got my Nintendo 3DS. Then I paused to play the Four Sword Anniversary Edition and Ocarina of Time 3D, but two days ago I returned to finish the file.

Some Zelda fans would say that I saved the best for last, but at first I didn't really want to play Majora's Mask again, even though it's actually one of my favorite games in the series. What really turned me off are all the unfun minigames, which you even have to beat multiple times. Like beating them once isn't worse enough. I got pretty mad at the Deku flying minigame for example, the game on the 2nd day was quite frustrating, and it's always exhausting that you have to race the beever brothers FOUR times to get everything. I think all those minigames killed a part of the replay value for me. There's just a lot of stuff, which I don't want to do again. But after you've cleared the majority of minigames it gets better.

But the game allows you to replay basically every single part of it whenever you want. So, as a kid I replayed individual sections many, many times. Like replaying the Skulltula Houses, I love those and already played them a dozen times. Or rebattling the bosses using the Fierce Deity's Mask. That is fun and on the Nintendo 64 I spent a lot of time screwing around. It was like a giant playground. Today I wouldn't have much fun doing this, because it would feel meaningless. I only do stuff to get new items, everything else gets ignored. But as a kid I spent a lot of time with this game without ever actually playing it a second time from start to finish. However, I didn't have many N64 games and I just probably did it because I had nothing else to play. :)

Well, my main motivation to replay this game now was gaining a higher appreciation for a potential Majora's Mask 3D remake. I wanted to look for things that could be done in a remake, especially how they could rearrange the dungeons in a Majora's Mask 3D Master Quest. However, playing Majora's Mask on the Wii first and then playing Ocarina of Time 3D in comparison made me wanting a remake for the improved frame rate and better graphics alone! Ocarina of Time 3D just plays so much more nicely and smoothly than this game, I really want Majora's Mask to get the same treatment. Especially since the frame rate on the Wii Virtual Console version is quite slow and it's even worse on the Collector's Edition. The game running smoothly alone would be a huge improvement. Luckily I already was at Ikana and cleared all sidequests at the point where I would return to the game. If I wouldn't have been so far into the game, I probably couldn't have built up enough motivation to continue. I'm now spoiled by the quality of Ocarina of Time 3D and I want my Majora's Mask 3D next year.

It's also a game, where the 3D could shine. In fact it might be even more impressive than Ocarina of Time 3D, let alone the moon come closer at you in depth. And there's lots of stuff in this game, which could look quite impressive in 3D, it already starts with the chasing sequence at the beginning of the game. Or where Skull Kid turns you into the Deku, you get surrounded by lots of large Deku Scrubs. I would love to see this in 3D. Or the giants or Twinmold or... everything. A more subtle example would be the Mirror Shield. Unlike in Ocarina of Time the Mirror Shield here shines all the time when you stand in light and not only when you use it. So, if you look at Link from behind, the rays of light are coming right at you. This would make a nice 3D effect that pops.

While they're at it they could fix a bug that always bugged me. Namely that Link is missing in certain cutscenes. For example when you place yourself at the entrance of the clock tower at the night of the 3rd day and the cutscene starts, where the tower opens, Link isn't seen anywhere. They should fix this for the 3DS version. I also never understood, why Deku Link can't use the Magic Beans. After all the Business Scrubs are selling them exclusively to Dekus. And why can't Goron Link use bombs? After all that's their number one merchandise.

I already complained about all the minigames, but the hardest thing might be scoring a Perfect in the town's Shooting Gallery. The one with the Octoroks. You have to be really quick here, remember the formations and aim in advance. When I replayed the game on my Wii two and half years ago (see here), I came up with a nice solution. I forgot to mention this at that time, so I'm going to do this now. I made a list with sketches of all the formations and sticked it to the left side of my TV. Luckily I still have this list, so I could use it again. This is how it looks like:

It's certainly not pretty, but it gets the job done. It tells me where the next targets will be, so I can preaim accordingly. The little circles are the targets and the crosses are the blue Octoroks, which you shouldn't shoot. Well, if you try often enough you memorize the formations on your own, but the list heavily fastened the process this time. And nothing makes me happier than completing a frustrating minigame as soon as possible.

Overall minigames are also something, where a 3DS version would automatically improve the game. Aiming with the gyroscope is much faster and easier than using an analog stick. I doubt that I would have to stick such a list onto my 3DS. It wouldn't fit anyway. Or the Deku flying minigame is another example, it would be much easier to judge the jumps in 3D.

And the masks were basically made for the touch buttons! In Ocarina of Time 3D I complained that you can only use the touch buttons for items like bottles, something that doesn't get used extensively like the bow. Now more than half of the game's items would be masks and there are even six bottles... this item collection is perfectly suitable for the touch buttons!

Giving Link silly names is always funny, but this time I didn't do it on purpose. My first savegame on the Wii was called "Tourian", so I called Link "Tourist" this time (the file menu now reads Tourian Tourist, I do that all the time ^^). Well, Anju now actually called me "Mr. Tourist" when asking for the reservation. At first I thought that it was a little bit demeaning that she calls her guests that way, I mean a doctor doesn't call his patient "Mr. Patient" or a shop owner doesn't call you "Mr. Customer", but then I realized that she was actually using the name which I had entered, lol.

Yeah, and did I mention that I love the Skulltula Houses? If GREZZO adds something to the game, please let it be a third Skulltula House. You could get the Shard of Agony there or whatever.

And it always surprises me if I discover something new after all these years. I've been playing this game up and down ever since it was released in 2000 and you should think that I know all about it, but this time I actually discovered something new. I have several rituals at the beginning of the first day. I usually slow the time down first by playing the inverted Song of Time. Then I enter the Bomber's Hideout and use the Blast Mask to get the 100 Rupees behind the Skulltula in the left sewer tunnel. Then I leave the sewer and use the Bunny Hood to get the 100 Rupees above the Shooting Gallery. That's an easy 200 Rupees for every cycle. Then I warp to the Southern Swamp and head to the Woods of Mystery to get a Magic Mushroom. I give this mushroom to Kotake to get a free Blue Potion. Now it turns out that I actually never had to enter the stupid Woods of Mystery for this part. On the way to the witch's hut there's actually another mushroom, next to a sign before the pathway with two Deku Babas. I could have just picked this one up all these years and save myself some time. You have no idea how many times I went into the Woods of Mystery for basically nothing!

Well, it has been fun. I replayed all Zelda games, no exceptions, and I'm now fully ready for Skyward Sword, which will be released in exactly three weeks. The only other game that I might add to my current replay list is Link's Awakening DX, as soon as I get one of those Zelda prepaid cards for the eShop. I already played Link's Awakening earlier this year, but luckily only the classic monochrome version and not the DX one. But this might have to wait until after Skyward Sword, I'm probably going to play this on my 3DS when I travel home at Christmas.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (Review)

2011-10-26T22:18:00.002+02:00

If there's one issue with the Nintendo 3DS, then it's the current lack of good software. The biggest must-have title for the 3DS is actually 13 years old, the remake of Ocarina of Time. But is this game really something, which makes buying a 3DS worth it? Unlike my review of the Four Swords Anniversary Edition this review will only deal with the qualities of the remake itself, because there's no point in reviewing Ocarina of Time. We all know that the game is great, many still consider it to be the best Zelda game and it's certainly one of the greatest games of all time. If you haven't played Ocarina of Time yet, then go play it now. This review should primarily concern people, who played the original game and now want to know how much better the new version really is.

Technically this isn't really a "remake", it uses the original game as a base and it tries to be very faithful to it, it's more like an updated, remastered version. I will still use the term "remake" throughout the review.

Graphics and 3D

The main focus of this remake lies definitely on the visuals. This is primarily a graphical update of the game. And at first it's quite stunning, you will be amazed with all the new details, which they added to the game. And it runs so much more smoothly on a steady framerate, it's really enjoyable. But the euphoria about the new looks wears off quickly. The problem is that the level of detail is varying a lot. At some places like Hyrule Castle Town they went through a lot of troubles to remodel everything and add nice details in every little corner. You can spent hours just studying the new details. However, in other places it just looks like a simple texture pack. For example the staircases in Kakariko Village are still just simple textures and you start wondering how hard it can be to model an actual staircase. The answer is not hard at all. Another good example would be fences, in some places they are now actual 3D models, in other places like Hyrule Field or Hyrule Caste they are still sheet objects. If you look at them from the side they are nearly invisible. This shouldn't appear in a game, which is all about 3D! Some things even might look worse to you, the best example would be the muddy textures for Like Likes and the Dead Hand. They really looked much better on the N64.

But the 3D effect definitely works nice for this game. Unlike the flat 3D effects in Dead or Alive: Dimensions the 3D here goes very deeply and there are actually things popping out of the screen, for example when you get certain items or look at the lens flair effect of the sun. And if you think about it, this game was originally made for 3D, it was the first 3D Zelda game and one of Nintendo's first biggest games with 3D graphics, so the environments were really made with 3D in mind, even though at that time there were no 3D screens like today. I don't have much experience with the 3DS yet, but I'd say that Ocarina of Time 3D definitely shows the best use of 3D on the system.

Interface and Controls

Of course the game plays slightly differently on the 3DS than it did on the N64. It heavily uses the touchscreen for your interface and it adepts to the button layout of the 3DS, which is missing the four C-buttons of the N64. You only get to use the X and Y buttons for your items, but as a compensation the four corners of the touch screen now act as touch buttons. On the left side you will find the button for the camera and Navi and the button for your Ocarina. The buttons on the right side can be assigned with items of your choice. But since the touch buttons feel somehow unresponsive and you may not like touching the touchscreen with your fingers they are only suitable for items like the Eye of Truth, bottles, masks or boots. Something that doesn't get used extensively.

The new item menu works similar to the one from the early GameBoy Zeldas, you can swap items all around. The Iron and Hover Boots are now normal items like in later 3D Zelda games, which makes swapping them much faster and more comfortable. Overall the new item menu works nicely except for the Fairy Bow. To switch between the different arrow types you have to tap on the bow icon to open a little submenu and then select the arrow of your choice, which is even more inconvenient than it used to be. They also removed the nice glowing effect. It would have been better if they handled the bow like in The Wind Waker, where you can toggle between the arrow types live by pressing R.

The Ocarina is now played with the L, R, Y, X and A buttons in that order from lowest to highest note. You need to get used to it and you won't like it at first, simply because you have the original songs memorized, but after a while you will realize that it actually plays much better than in the original. And quicker. I can now play the Requiem of Spirit at the split of a second. You can also now look at all the songs while playing, which is nice.

But the best addition made to the entire game is the faster screen text! It was probably the most aweful thing in the original version, that you couldn't skip a text and you had to wait for it to appear slowly letter for letter. This could heavily test your patience during replays, like the four carpenters telling you the EXACT SAME things four times in very slow tempo. You should buy this version for the faster screen text alone.

The only real complaint I have about the interface is the use of the map. It's like they totally ignored the Nintendo DS Zeldas, which made really good use of the second screen for a map. The touchscreen just shows the entirely useless world map while you play the game or the current floor if you're inside a dungeon. The navigational map is still on the top screen, just very tiny and unlike in the original N64 version you can't deactivate it. There's also a larger version of the navigational map, however, it only appears if you visit the map menu! What were they thinking?

Master Quest

Master Quest was originally released on a bonus disc for the GameCube and was basically the same old game with rearranged dungeons. I really like Master Quest and it's great that they added this as a 2nd Quest to the game, which makes it finally complete. The new Master Quest comes with two twists, one of them literally. They mirrored the entire game and you now have to endure double damage.

For the mirroring they basically flipped the entire game graphics horizontally. What used to be left, is now on the right. What used to be in the east, lies now in the west. If you've played both the GameCube and the Wii version of Twilight Princess, you know what this feels like. It can be very confusing, it's the same old places, but everything is in different locations. You know where everything should be, but you lost your sense of orientation. It basically should be as simple as flipping left and right in your brain, but it isn't. Some areas look like completely new places alltogether and you can get confused easily. While you may not like it, there's no arguing that this really adds to the replay value. The dungeons might have been remastered in Master Quest, but the rest of the game, everything on the overworld, is the same. Playing Master Quest right after the normal quest would have been really boring if it wasn't for the mirroring. But now you won't really bother that you're actually doing the same quests again, because you're too busy getting used to the mirrored game world.

Additionally you will lose twice as much health if you get hit. This can lead to some challenges, for example Iron Knuckles now cause eight hearts of damage, but experienced Ocarina of Time players shouldn't have any real problems with it. It's definitely a great idea though.

New Features

Ocarina of Time 3D introduces to new features two the series, which will also be present in the upcoming Skyward Sword: the Sheikah Stones and a Boss Battle mode. One is meant for beginners and the other one for veteran players.

The Sheikah Stones are basically an ingame video guide feature. There are only two of them, one at your house and one inside the Temple of Time. They show you visions of how to progress through the game the game. These clips are quite short, for example there's only one vision for the entire Bottom of the Well dungeon. It's about 10 seconds short and it only shows four flashes, Link entering the dungeon's main area through a fake wall, Link playing the Ocarina to lower the water, Link entering a crawl space tunnel and Link fighting the Dead Hand. That's it. Reading my description here probably takes longer than the clip. And I can't really evaluate if this is actually helpful or not, since I already knew the game and wouldn't use such a feature to begin with. It would be nice to know if new players actually found any assistance in this, but some people just need full hand holding and might be still lost after watching these short clips. The Sheikah Stones are not present in Master Quest, which only makes sense, since Master Quest is supposed to be a challenge for expert players.

The Boss Battle mode is definitely more interesting for seasoned Zelda players and it let's you rebattle all eight normal bosses. Ganondorf and Ganon are not included, probably because you can replay them whenever you want anyway. You only get what you could consider to be the minimum equipment for each boss and you fight them against the clock going for personal highscores. If you've rebattled all eight bosses, the Boss Gauntlet opens, where you fight all eight bosses in a row. You get no recovery items at the start and only few Heart Containers, but after each fight two treasure chests appear, which might contain something useful like the Longshot or additional Heart Containers or something completely useless like Deku Nuts. It's a gamble, but it's a fun mode. In Master Quest the whole thing gets a little bit harder, because you get even less Heart Containers and the bosses all deal double damage, which can potentially kill you in one hit. The Boss Battle mode can be accessed by going to your bed after you've talked to Sheik at the Temple of Time.

The new features are basically entirely optional, you don't have to use them, if you don't want to, and they don't effect the original game in any way.

New Content

The biggest complaint about this remake is about the lack of new content. If you expected anything new, like new dungeons, new enemies, new sidequests, new items or new characters, you will be heavily disappointed. There's nothing new save for the added graphical details and the Boss Battle and Sheikah Stone features. And it's hard to understand, why GREZZO didn't add anything here, new content can be an important selling point. The best example would be Link's Awakening DX. When the game was released in Europe 1999, I didn't buy it because of the colors, I bought it because I wanted to play the new bonus dungeon, the one that comes with lots of new puzzles, enemies and two new tunics. This was an awesome addition and it was the main reason to buy the new version. Not the graphics. And if they would have added anything to Ocarina of Time 3D, it would be the same. But there isn't anything, in that sense they stayed a little bit too faithful to the original game. And it wouldn't be hard to add something, just place a new hidden grotto somewhere leading to a new minidungeon. Even another Cave of Ordeals clone would have been fine, in fact I would have liked something like this. They could have added enemies from Majora's Mask to make it more interesting. The item menu has two open slots, which is weird, so why not use them for some new items? An item like the Telescope or Hawkeye from previous games would have been awesome in 3D. Or add Pegasus Boots to make Link walk faster. Anything. But the lack of any new content is really disappointing and prevents this remake from being "perfect".

Other Changes

There are some small changes here and there, which should be noticed. Overall GREZZO really tried to be faithful to the original game. So faithful in fact that they even preserved some "bugs" like back flipping over fences. On the other hand they made a series of questionable weird changes.

Some of the sound effects changed like breaking pots, like in the Four Swords Anniversary Edition they are not really better or worse, they are just different for whatever reason. And there's a cool new detail, where adult Link twirls the sword while fighting an enemy like he does in Twilight Princess. That's really cool, I totally love it!

In the normal quest all puzzles that required you to spin through bars to activate a crystal switch were removed. There was one in the Water Temple and one in the Spirit Temple. They just placed the crystal switches in different locations for whatever reason. In Master Quest these puzzles are still present, so it's not a problem with the new engine. They must have thought that these puzzles were too tricky for the average or inexperienced player. However, this raises the question why they added the Sheikah Stones in the first place. They could have easily added a vision that shows Link spinning through bars. It's much better than dumbing down two entire puzzles.

Who also got dumbed down is Dark Link. It's now easier to fight him with the sword instead than with the Megaton Hammer or Din's Fire. Well, I guess, it definitely turns this fight into a more dynamic sword battle, but it also destroys an old phenomenom in this game. They could have at least preserved the old Dark Link for Master Quest.

Cojiro doesn't crow anymore in the Lost Woods. It's not really important, but it's also a part of the game's original atmosphere missing.

And if you would ask any Zelda fan how to improve Ocarina of Time, they would all give the same answer: mute Navi! She's such an annoying little fairy and this was the best chance to make her a little bit less annoying. But instead they made her even worse. Now she also bothers you in dungeons telling you to visit one of the Sheikah Stones or to take a pause from playing. And like this wouldn't be already bad enough, they added a blinking NAVI sign on the lower top screen. "Hey, listen, Link, hey, listen, listen, hey, hey!" It really distracts you from the 3D, which makes ignoring her even harder than in the N64 version.

Conclusion

Ocarina of Time 3D is all about reexperiencing an old love. At first you will reexperience it thanks to the visual makeover and marvel about all the new models and textures. Then you will experience it's mirror version in the new Master Quest. And this is great, replaying Ocarina of Time never was as exciting as on the 3DS. The lack of any new content is definitely very disappointing and some of the changes are actually questionable, but this still should be considered to be the ultimate version of the game. If you've played Ocarina of Time 3D, you never want to go back to the original version. Is it worth buying a Nintendo 3DS for this game? No, definitely not, just pick up an older version for ten bucks and save yourself some money. Don't buy a 3DS for this game. But if you ever decide to buy a Nintendo 3DS, this game shouldn't be missing in your shopping cart. It's the best game on the 3DS so far.

+ faithful remake
+ rexperience an old love with new looks and through the mirror
+ Mirrored Master Quest with double damage
+ new improved item menu
+ easier handling of Ocarina and the boots
+ new Boss Battle and Sheikah Stone features
+ fast text
- lack of any new content
- varying level of details
- questionable use of map
- inconvenient way of switching arrow types
- Navi as annoying as ever
- some weird changes

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition (Review)

2011-10-25T15:03:00.000+02:00

To celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Zelda franchise Nintendo decided to do something special. Not only is there are huge live Zelda Symphony orchestra, but Nintendo also decided to dedicate a new Zelda game to the anniversary. This game is an enhanced port of The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords as a downloadable title for Nintendo DSi and 3DS. And it's entirely free. If you got a DSi or a 3DS there's no excuse for not downloading and playing this game right now! However, the game will only be available for a limited time (until February 20th 2012) and in case that you don't own a DSi or a 3DS yet, you might have to consider buying one of these systems in order to get this game before it's gone. This review might help you with this decision. Unlike other reviews about the game, this one will be very thorough. So, beware of potential spoilers.

The Original Four Swords

Four Swords was originally made by Capcom for the GameBoy Advance and came as an addition to the GBA version of A Link to the Past. It was the first multiplayer Zelda game and it introduced Vaati, as well as the concept of the Four Sword to the Zelda series. And when it comes to multiplayer, I'd say that Four Swords still offers the best multiplayer Zelda experience. It's pretty much all about collecting as many Rupees as possible, but while you have to cooperate to beat enemies, overcome obstacles and solve puzzles in many clever ways, you're also competing all the time. The player, who collects the most Rupees, gets a Medal of Courage at the end of the stage. And it's fun to fight each other for who gets the precious gems first. It's this mix of cooperation and competition that makes this multiplayer game really unique.

Unlike all other Zelda games with the exception of the successor Four Swords Adventures this game is divided into individual stages. The original game only got four different stages not counting the tutorial, the Sea of Trees, the Talus Cave, Death Mountain and Vaati's Palace. That's a forest area, an ice cave, a fire area and a sky dungeon. So, at first glance it might be deceiving that this game doesn't have much to offer. In fact you can go through this game and beat Vaati within an hour. It's that short and most people stopped there, expressing their disappointment about this game in forums. However, the game is far from over when the credits roll, actually it merely started. The stages are randomly generated and offer three different difficulty levels for immensive replay value. The randomization works quite smart, a stage usually consists of three floors, where the final floor is the boss. The other two floors are completely random. You never know, what you will get. Well, it isn't fully random as in Minecraft for example, Capcom made all the environments per hand. But there are many different frames for a setting and one frame gets randomly chosen. These frames may have randomly selected puzzle rooms, where you usually earn a key. There are also many different rooms and countless combinations between frames and the rooms. And there are enough environments to play through the game dozens of times. Additionally the content of treasure chests with the exception of the keys is randomized each time. The player count is also taken into consideration and the levels get modified based on how many players there are. So, the large 4x4 blocks only appear during four player mode and so on. The only downside is that the ideas for puzzles and obstacles are somehow limited and it can get repetitive after a while. But it still offers enough variety for you to replay the stages many times.

Well, the game also encourages you to beat it at least two more times thanks to two additional playthroughs. To open Vaati's Palace you need to collect the three Silver Keys first. But Vaati's Palace has actually three doors, each of them leading to a different challenge. For the second door you need to collect all three Golden Keys from the normal stages. These require you to get 3000 Rupees instead of just 1000 and the bosses also get harder. And in the final run the Hero Keys demand a staggering amount of 5000 Rupees per stage, which can be challenging. Opening Vaati's Palace with the Hero Keys leads to a 12 floor stage, where the settings can be entirely random and where you face all four bosses from the game in their strongest form. Playing this final stage alone takes at least as long as beating the game for the first time. So, there's a lot to do to keep you and your friends busy for many play sessions.

If you want to know, how this game plays, feels and looks like just play The Minish Cap. Capcom basically recycled everything from Four Swords to make The Minish Cap, the entire engine, graphics, sprites, sound effects, items and even most of the enemies. However, this game has little to no story, you can compare it to the complexity of a Mario game's story, princess gets abducted by bad guy, hero splits up into four copies by using a magical sword, beats the bad guy, end of story. The only NPC interaction in this game happens with fairies inside the tutorial. So, if you're looking for some big epic tale, this game is not for you. It's all about the multiplayer idea and for this it sacrificed some of the things that might be important for you in a Zelda game.

Like in Four Swords Adventures you can only hold one additional item at a time. You start with shields, but you can also find Remote Bombs, the Bow, the Boomerang, the Magnetic Glove from Oracle of Seasons, the Pegasus Boots, the Roc's Cape, the Gnat Hat (the inspiration for the Minish Cap) and the rare, but fun Chain Chomp, inspired by Bow-Wow from Link's Awakening. Each item gets at least one secondary use in the game, for example the Gnat Hat doesn't only let you shrink, it also prevents you from sliding on ice, and all of the items get used equally throughout the game.

Something unique in Four Swords are the temporary collectibles, the Magic Seeds and Rupee Shards. You only keep them during the stage and they are always randomly distributed all over the level. The seeds can be found below grass, pots or rocks, the Rupee Shards can also be gotten from treasure chests. The idea of the Magic Seeds came from the Oracle saga, but in this game they are used to boost your stats. The red Razor Seeds boost your sword attack power, the blue Armor Seeds increase your defense and the Pegasus Seeds make you walk faster. You can collect two of each, but you will lose them if you die. The Rupee Shards are like Pieces of Heart only for Rupees, if one player collects four of them he gets a large golden Rupee worth 500.

Well, that's pretty much everything there is to the original Four Swords. For a little game that was meant to be a simple bonus addon this is pretty impressive. For it Capcom made their own engine and graphical style that later become popular with The Minish Cap. And the individual stages offer immensive replay value thanks to the randomization. It's a small game that got heavily overlooked due to the fact that you couldn't play it alone. Until now this might have been the most unrecognized game in the series save for the BS-Zeldas. And that makes it the perfect choice to be the base for some Anniversary game.

The Singleplayer

The biggest complaint about the original Four Swords was that you couldn't play this game on your own. You needed at least a second player, who also owns a GameBoy Advance and a copy of the game, and a connection cable. Otherwise you never got to play it and considering the fact that you were also missing out the new content in A Link to the Past that way, this was really disappointing. There were many Zelda-fans, who never got to play the original game or who went through quite some efforts like playing coop with themselves using two GBAs at once or linked emulators.

Luckily GREZZO came up with a solution here. They added a singleplayer, where you play the two player mode on your own by controlling two Links at the same time. It might have been inspired by the singleplayer mode in Four Swords Adventures, but it's actually quite different. You switch between both Links by pressing L or R. The inactive Link stays at the same spot and is invulnerable during the entire time. By pressing X you can summon the second Link to your side with your whistle, he will follow you around and automatically assist you in different actions. The best example would the Hikkuns, red enemies that you have to pull apart from two sides. The moment you start pulling one side, the other Link joins you by pulling the other side. He also assists you to push or lift large blocks, to kill Nokkens, which are enemies that need to be thrown, to light torches, to drive mine carts, to destroy rock walls and to attack Vaati's flowers. That's about it, but it's all you need to get through the various floors.

They also had to dumb down some stuff to get it to work in singleplayer. The most noticeable thing are the eye switches and levers. In multiplayer you have to activate them all at the same time. In singleplayer they now stay activated or retracted for a while, so you can hit or pull them one after another. You don't even have to quickly switch between the two Links, you can just use one and take your time. The timer is that long and it feels weird at first. Together with activating torches those were puzzles, where you had to time yourself with the other players. Coordination is a huge part of the multiplayer and simply not required in singleplayer, which is why some of the puzzles now feel somehow meaningless. Also, in the multiplayer there are certain levels, which were designed to encourage competition. For example there are raceways, where the fastest player gets all the treasures and the other players get locked out. These passages are completely pointless in singleplayer. And there are puzzles, where you need to find a way for all players to get to a certain point. In singleplayer you just use the whistle to summon the second Link and it's done. So, overall playing the game in singleplayer got a lot easier.

Some enemies were also dumbed down. Namely the Bulbuls and the Rupee Wraiths. The Bulbuls are red enemies with large, round, green belly and normally they would just bounce off your sword. The only way to defeat them was attacking them from two sides. Now in singleplayer you can defeat them with only one player, but you need to be really quick and persistent, so they are still quite tough enemies. The way how they changed them works really well. Rupee Wraiths on the other hand now do little to nothing. In multiplayer they make you drop many Rupees for a while. This keeps you busy with recollecting them and the only way to get rid of this annoyance is passing them onto other players. Well, in singleplayer there aren't any other players, so the Rupee Wraiths just disappear after they made you drop three Rupees. You can easily ignore them now. The amount of Rupees might get higher if you run into multiple Rupee Wraiths on the same floor, but usually they won't bother you anymore. Also, the boss Manhandla of the Sea of Trees now doesn't have any multicolored flowers anymore. But the boss is still very tough in singleplayer, so it doesn't really matter.

Those changes may feel like the game was dumbed down, but there's no real reason to complain about it. Unlike Four Swords Adventures the original Four Swords was never built with singleplayer in mind, this game was never meant to be played alone. So, what GREZZO delivered here is already as good as it gets. Because nothing was cut from the singleplayer. You get to play the entire two player mode expierence on your own, no floors or puzzles or enemies were cut from the singleplayer mode. And this is great.

Well, one thing got cut, the Rupee Fever. In multiplayer you earn double Rupees as long as all players have full health. Using Rupee Fever is the best strategy to get enough Rupees for the Hero Keys and without Rupee Fever it seemed pretty much impossible. Now you have to look for spots where stronger enemies respawn to farm enough Rupees, which can take a while and be quite boring. But this seems to be the only way to get the Hero Keys in singleplayer. On the other hand it might be that the Rupee Fever would have made the singleplayer even easier than it already is, which is why GREZZO removed it. There needs to be some balance for all the advantages that come with the new singleplayer. However, this isn't the only thing that makes collecting Rupees in singleplayer harder, the Rupee Shards became too rare in singleplayer. In fact you rarely will get four pieces. It happened to me many times that I found three Rupee Shards, but no fourth one despite opening every chest and cutting all the grass. This was not my inability to find the last part, there simply wasn't any fourth shard. They are hidden randomly and GREZZO just made them a little bit too rare in singleplayer.

The New Stages

In the GameBoy Advance version you could unlock two new sword techniques, the Sword Beam by getting the Master Sword in A Link to the Past and the Hurricane Spin Attack by solving the new Riddle Quest in the same game. Of course the new version doesn't come with a free copy of A Link to the Past, so GREZZO had to come up with different means of unlocking the sword moves. There would have been many easy ways to include them, but they chose to add two entire new stages to the game, the Realm of Memories and the Hero's Trial.

Unlike the four original stages the new stages aren't randomized. You only have to beat them once anyway. But like Vaati's Palace they have three different doors. If you beat one door, the next one opens. Each door leads to a different level made of three floors, no bosses. That's 18 new dungeon floors alltogether, which is a lot. This is probably the highest amount of new content that ever got added to a revamped Zelda game. And it will take you a while to get through the new stages.

The Realm of Memories stage is entirely dedicated to the 25th Anniversary, here you walk through familiar areas from past Zelda games. The entire graphics are overlayed with sprites from classic Zeldas and original tunes are played. The first door leads to environments from A Link to the Past, the second to Link's Awakening and the third to the original NES The Legend of Zelda. You get to play the first dungeon from these games and two areas from the overworlds, usually a forest. Especially the Link's Awakening stage is very cool, everything is shown in the classic greenish monochrome GameBoy looks. Though it might look like some fan mod at times and not like some professional Nintendo product, it's still a fun addition and offers a nice feel of nostalgia.

The Hero's Trial on the other hand features dark and twisted versions of the game's original four settings. For example the forest area looks quite wintery now. This stage is meant to be a challenge for Zelda-veterans and it's a hard one, if not the hardest challenge in the Zelda series yet. They key element here are relentless fights against hordes of enemies in the most hazardous environments. The developers really use everything the game had to offer against you. The enemies come in large numbers in the most evil combinations. For example you might run into Ice Wizzrobes to freeze you and Ball & Chain Troopers to smash your frozen bodies. In the GameBoy Advance version of Four Swords you would never run into more than four enemies at once, however, in the Hero's Trial you will be overwhelmed by swarms of enemies. And the enemies of Four Swords can be very, very nasty, especially the bone throwing Stalfos, the Spear Moblins, the Darknuts and the Wizzrobes. They are usually harder to defeat than their counterparts in The Minish Cap, for example Darknuts and Spear Moblins are nearly impossible to attack from the front. What makes the whole thing so brutally hard is the very short recovery time in this game. The invincibility window after getting hit is really tiny, even a smaller enemy can easily kill you by simply running into you. And GREZZO really abused this to create some cheap diffculty. In the Hero's Trial you get cornered by lots of enemies, which are hard to fight back, and additionally other enemies will attack you from the distance. Imagine Stalfos and Wizzrobes shooting at you from all sides while Ball & Chain Troopers surround you. You can't dodge all of it and you will die a lot. A LOT. It also likes to use all kinds of traps like pits, ice floors, Blade Traps, air streams, spiked floors and similar to make the fights even harder. And it never ends. The floors are very long, the longest in the entire game, and when you think it couldn't possibly get any harder the game ups the ante. It's cruel, it's cheap, it's relentless, it's exhausting, it's hell in Zelda. If you've beaten the Hero's Trial, you can call yourself a Hero for sure. And if you ever wanted a real challenge in Zelda, then this is for you. (As a nice easter egg the number "25" is hidden throughout the stage several times.)

Generally GREZZO's level design is quite bland. The levels are very linear and repetitive. They heavily abuse the big switches that spawn enemies as soon as all players step onto them. You're basically running from one of these switches to the next. There's some platforming here and there, rarely a puzzle, but mostly it's just progressing through the areas on a linear path and fighting lots of enemies. It gets tedious and in the Hero's Trial this kind of level design might kill your last nerves. It also kills all possible replay value. You might replay the Realm of Memories once or twice, but only because of its nostalgic charme, not because of the level design. And the replay value of the Hero's Trial is pretty low, in fact you might never want to play it again in your life as soon as you're done with it. In this way the new stages are the complete opposite of the original four stages, which offer very high reply value and open gameplay.

On the other hand the new stages were fully made with the singleplayer in mind, unlike the rest of the game. At no point the stages will feel dumbed down or weird. In fact playing the new stages in singleplayer might be an advantage. In the Hero's Trial you can abuse switching between the two Links in order to survive. In multiplayer you might die much more often here, because there's no way to safe yourself from being cornered. The new singleplayer mode really gets to shine in the new stages.

Other Changes

Next to the addition of a singleplayer mode and two new stages the DSiWare version underwent a series of other smaller additions and improvements.

Most noticeable are all the new sound effects. GREZZO occasionally changed some sound effects in Ocarina of Time 3D, but here you really get the feeling that there was some overly bored sound designer working on this game. From collecting Rupees, over swinging your sword to using the Pegasus Boots or the Roc's Cape. Many actions sound different in this version. And it's not like they are better or worse than the original sound effects. They are just different for whatever reason.

Since the DSi has two screens, the second screen now is used to display your seeds, Rupee Shards, the map, the current time, the stage's name and the floor number. Originally you could display the map and the collectibles by pressing L, while the floor number was in the upper left corner. The icons for the seeds and shards are quite large, so you can also easily see them while looking at the upper screen. The whistle that summons the second Link in singleplayer can be used to draw attention in multiplayer. And all except the first player can freely chose their color. In singleplayer you can chose the color of the second Link.

The minimal time bonus at the end of a floor now is 50 Rupees per player instead of only one. This is a lot, you basically get a good amount of Rupees for free.

Pots now can be broken with your sword. Originally you had to pick them up and throw them like rocks. Smashing them with your sword is much faster and feels nice, it also got a nice new sound effect. And there's a little easter egg, where something from N64 Zelda games made it into the Anniversary Edition, which was a nice surprise.

A nice addition to the game is the total Rupee score. If you finish a stage, all your Rupees will be added to this score. If the score reaches 30,000 Rupees the Hero's Trial gets unlocked (alternatively you can also collect five Medals of Courage). The score is a nice addition, because now you never play a stage for nothing. If you fail to get a key, the Rupees at least get added to your score. And if you replay a stage just for fun the Rupees also count and you can watch the score growing higher and higher.

Collecting Medals of Courage in multiplayer is now entirely optional. In the original version collecting 10 of them would unlock the Riddle Quest in A Link to the Past, which then would unlock the Hurricane Spin Attack in both games. Now in this version everything can be unlocked in singleplayer, which is a good thing.

No Online, No Download Play

The biggest complaint you hear about the Anniversary Edition is the lack of online multiplayer. However, the game was originally designed for local multiplayer and it wouldn't work well online. Communication is very important, you can't beat the game without cooperating, telling other players what to do and spot on timing. Quitting and griefing are also huge issues, which could turn an online version into a frustrating nightmare. And an online mode is a little bit too much to ask from a free game. The new singleplayer eliminates the need of an online mode anyway, if there's no one around you can play the game on your own now.

Download Play would have been nice, so that you could also use older DS systems. However, you can't save your progress using Download Play, which is probably the reason, why this feature wasn't included.

Personal Thoughts

Ever since Four Swords was released for the GameBoy Advance I was obsessed with the game. For one simple reason: it was the only Zelda game that I couldn't play. You needed a second player and there was no one with a GBA around. This year, eight years after the original release, I finally got to play the game, I went both through the original version on the GBA and the new one on the 3DS. So, this was already a pretty big Zelda-year for me and Skyward Sword isn't even out yet. The new singleplayer is an old wish coming true. Thanks to this new addition I can finally play the game whenever I want. I don't need to track down a second player or sprain my hands by using two GBAs at once. Considering that the game was never meant to be played alone, GREZZO did a good job here. Yes, it might feel weird at times and it's nothing but an afterthought, but I can now play this game whenever I want and this is totally awesome. What I really like about playing this game is that it allows short Zelda sessions. If you feel like playing some Zelda, but you don't have the time for a fullblown singleplayer adventure, then this is perfect. You can just pick up this game, play a single dungeon and then turn the game off. And thanks to the random levels you don't know what you will get and you might even run into something new. I've fully beaten both versions of the game, I replayed all the levels just for fun multiple times now and I still get to see new areas. Which is absolutely amazing.

And the fact that this is a downloadable game makes picking it up even easier, because you don't have to switch any discs or cartridges. I just turn on my 3DS and tap the icon. Ever since the introduction of WiiWare I saw the future of 2D Zelda games in download services. What survived on the GameBoy for many years is now a dying breed. Classic 2D Zelda games with nice sprite graphics might be a thing of the past, especially now that the current handheld system is all about 3D. But as small downloadable games 2D Zelda still might have a chance to survive. And the Four Swords Anniversary Edition is the first step in this direction, while it's not an entire new game, it's the first exclusive downloadable Zelda title. It's also the first new 2D Zelda title since The Minish Cap. And I bet that many Zelda fans want more Zelda games like this.

As a longtime Zelda fan and a real veteran of the series I was looking for some good challenge for a long time now. Usually a new Zelda game doesn't offer any challenge at all, you know the drill, you know the tricks, it gets routine. So, naturally I was really looking forward to the Hero's Trial. However, I didn't think it would turn into my personal nightmare. When I first heard about the Hero's Trial I was thinking on the lines of something like the Hero's Caves in the Oracle games. These two dungeons offer some of the best puzzles and challenges in the entire series. And I was looking forward to get a good mix between tough fights and crazy puzzles. But if you're looking for any puzzles in the Hero's Trial, you won't find any. There's some platforming, but usually it's all about cheap traps and getting you killed by tons of enemies. I certainly like the idea of the tough fights, I always enjoyed the dungeon simulator minigame in The Minish Cap or the Cave of Ordeals in Twilight Princess. But in the Hero's Trial I got sick of it. Because of the low invincibility time the fights can be really frustrating and you get totally overrun by all kinds of enemies. It all feels so cheap, it's not the kind of difficulty you would ever expect to appear in a Zelda game. Well, but in the end I certainly can't complain that I wasn't challenged by this. And the frustration came mostly from the fact that I just had to beat this in order to get everything. Now that I've finished the Hero's Trial, it actually starts to get fun somehow, without the pressure I can enjoy the fights much more. It's definitely a great new challenge, something the Zelda series hasn't seen before. Something really hard. Something people talk about. Forget Zelda II, this is the new killer.

Conclusion

Of all the Zelda games that Nintendo could have chosen to be revamped for an Anniversary Edition this was definitely the best choice. With this new version Four Swords went from zero to hero. Thanks to the new singleplayer mode many Zelda fans can now finally experience this game for their first time. The new Realm of Memories stage offers a fun and nostalgic trip through old times, while the Hero's Trial will challenge even the hardest Zelda players. The multiplayer might be the best in the series, but after all this game was designed for multiplayer. And because of that you shouldn't expect a full epic Zelda game here, there's no big story or character interaction, this is a Zelda game reduced to dungeon gameplay. But you shouldn't complain about anything, because it's for free. You don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Even if they just had dumped the same old game with wireless multiplayer on the DSi it would have been fine, since this doesn't cost you anything. But instead they added an all new singleplayer and new stages, which is pretty impressive for a free game. The only real complaint would be that this only stays available for a limited time. But maybe they will sell it later on the eShop because of "popular demand".

+ intriguing Zelda multiplayer experience
+ great mix of cooperation and competing
+ very high replay value of the four original stages thanks to random floors and multiple playthroughs
+ new singleplayer mode lets you enjoy the game on your own for the first time
+ new stages offer nostalgia and challenge
+ can be enjoyed in between
+ great way of celebrating the Anniversary
+ it's FREE!!
- level design of the new stages is linear and repetitive
- Rupee Shards are too rare in singleplayer
- only available for a limited time

Four Swords Anniversary Edition, Extra Round

2011-10-23T23:51:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I had the chance to play the new Four Swords Anniversary Edition in multiplayer together with Evelyn Jade from ZeldaEurope.de. She didn't have the chance to play through the game yet, so she was the host and we picked up her latest savegame. We've beaten the first door of Vaati's Palace, cleared the Realm of Memories and got all three Golden Keys. It was a lot of fun, after all this game was meant to be played in multiplayer and not alone. And I'm really happy that I had the chance to play the game with her.

It's also a little bit more challenging. You really have to work together at points and you can't abuse the warping. For example the Link's Awakening stage turned out to be much trickier in two player mode. You can't just go somewhere using the Roc's Cape, let the second Link appear right next to you and use his bombs to blow some cracked blocks up. One player has to get the bombs and he needs to find a way around the swamp. A lot more coordination is needed here. But after all that's what multiplayer is about... cooperating.

Okay... cooperating and competing. And what makes this multiplayer game so unique is that you do both at the same time. You work together but you fight for the Rupees. Since I already got the Hurricane Spin Attack I had the advantage and at the beginning I annoyed the hell out of Jade using that technique... :D It's especially helpful during Rupee Rain or during the credits, where all the fairies appear. Well, then I had to promise to stay fair and not use it. And resisting to use the Hurricane Spin was really hard for me, because after all I went through HELL to unlock this thing. But we both got some medals at the end and it's not like you need these things anymore. Unlike in the original version collecting medals isn't necessary to unlock anything. And maybe next time we will be equally powerful for a real match. ;)

Of course I wouldn't post this if I hadn't made any interesting observations. The 50 Rupee minimum time bonus stays in multiplayer and gets even multiplied by the player count. In our case we would at least get 300 extra Rupees per stage for doing nothing else but reaching the goal. In the original version it was 6 Rupees, one Rupee per player and per floor. This makes a 294 Rupee difference, which sometimes might be the difference between winning or losing. While playing the GBA version it happened that we were short on a couple of Rupees at the end of a stage. Something like 2930 Rupees while going for the Golden Key in Death Mountain for example... so, yeah, this can really make a difference. And in four player mode you would get 600 Rupees extra for nothing!

The second difference was that they fixed the exploit, where you abuse Rupee Wraiths and Rupoors (the Black Rupees) during Rupee Fever to your advantage. Ah, I missed Rupee Fever so much, especially the catchy tune. Scoring like 8000 Rupees? Not a problem when you really use Rupee Fever all the time (in case you don't know what Rupee Fever is, when all players have full health the Rupees count doubly). However, in the GBA version you could even exploit Rupee Wraiths and the black Rupees. You dropped Rupees, but you could recollect them and get twice the amount back. Let's say you touch a Rupoor and you drop four small red Rupees, that's 80 Rupees alltogether. If you recollected them, you would get 160 Rupees back thanks to the Rupee Fever. They fixed this in the Anniversary Edition, the dropped Rupees now also count doubly. You drop four red ones, you lose 160 Rupees instead of 80. So, no abusing of Rupee Wraiths or Rupoors anymore... that's bad, because it was actually a very clever tactic. UPDATE: Actually they didn't fix it, you can still use this tactic. I'm sorry for the wrong information, my mistake.

But except for these things the multiplayer works exactly the same as in the GBA version. They only other difference is that you can use the whistle to annoy the other player(s), which can be fun. The only thing that could make it more annoying would be Link shouting his "Come on!" phrase from The Wind Waker each time you use the whistle, that would be so unnerving.

Generally I'm pickung the game up every now and then for a short session. It's perfect for some Zelda action in between. I'm usually replaying one of the original stages, because maybe I get to see a new floor, which I've never encountered before. Love the randomization and I actually got to see some new stuff. It's really amazing how many different floors there are. The new stages on the other hand provide very little replay value. Especially the Hero's Trial. I replayed the first door, which isn't as bad as the other two, once using the Hurricane Spin Attack. But overall the level design is too linear and too tedious, one enemy spawning switch after another. And unless I feel like torturing myself I probably won't be replaying the other two doors anytime soon. But by now I collected a total sum of over 220,000 Rupees, which speaks for the general replay value. You're going to return to this game once after a while, which makes it different from other Zelda games. If you're finished with a normal Zelda game it might rest for years... but not this game and the fact that this is a downloadable game, where you don't have to swap any discs or cartridges, makes picking it up even easier.

Now after experiencing the multiplayer I'm finally ready to finish my promised review. Unlike all the superficial reviews of this game this one will be very thorough.

25th Anniversary Poster and Ocarina of Time Pen

2011-10-18T16:16:00.002+02:00

On yesterday's press event Nintendo gave both Jade and me nice a poster and a pen:

The pen uses a magnet to attach the Link chain. The poster is totally awesome, however, I'm sad it's missing Zelda II, the Oracle games, the Four Swords saga and Spirit Tracks... They added Ocarina of Time twice, but couldn't add any of the other games? :D Still very nice.

Skyward Sword Hands-On (both Demo and Full Version)

2011-10-18T03:20:00.028+02:00

Today I joined the lovely Evelyn Jade from ZeldaEurope.de on a Nintendo press event in Berlin. Best date ever. xD I can't thank her enough for this opportunity and it was incredibly fun. We got to play both the E3 2011 demo, which was showcased in the lobby, and the full version of Skyward Sword. We actually played the game for over an hour, which was enough time to get familiar with everything.

Please check out ZeldaEurope for my full impressions. To all of those, who don't speak German, I apologize, but this has to stay a ZeldaEurope exclusive. But I can definitely say, that Skyward Sword blowed my mind yesterday with tons of cool surprises and fun action.

A nice detail: Takkuri crows now actually poop on your head! It's hilarious.

Ocarina of Time 3D Master Quest Log 3

2011-10-15T18:31:00.004+02:00

100%. I've also cleared the Master Quest Boss Gauntlet. Nothing left to do.

Well, there isn't much to talk about. The only new graphical detail, which I've noticed, are skull shaped winds when you ride the boat in the Shadow Temple. I didn't notice that during the normal quest, where I probably was busy with the Stalfos. But I got really efficient at fighting them, so this time I had plenty of time to actually enjoy the boat trip and look around.

I got really stuck in Gerudo Training Grounds. Which is interesting, because I've cleared the same dungeon on the GameCube not long ago. Well, problem was, that I was missing a key and I couldn't find it. It was the key in the room with the two Torch Slugs and the black Iron Knuckle, inside a treasure chest protected by a ring of fire. But I didn't know how to let the chest appear. There's a hidden crystal switch behind the Gerudo symbol above the door. You can't see at all in this version. But naturally I tried to shoot the Hookshot at the symbol, like you would do in the Fire or Water Temple, but nothing happened. It turned out that you actually had to use your bow...

Boss Challenges went pretty smooth, except for Bongo Bongo. The most critical point of the fight is right at the beginning. If you fail to target the hands properly, you're dead. They can cause four hearts of damage in Master Quest. After the beginning it's all pretty easy, as long as you're quick. But while struggling with Bongo Bongo at first, I cleared the Boss Gauntlet on my first try. Only Phantom Ganon could cause a critical hit with two hearts damage. So, I was on the edge during the Volvagia and Morpha fights. But the big chest after Morpha gave me a red potion to heal myself.

The Boss Challenges itself became harder in Master Quest, you don't get any recovery items like Milk or Red Potions. As a kid you only have three hearts in all fights and as an adult only five. The Boss Gauntlet was exactly the same as in the normal quest though, the only difference was the double damage and that you start with three hearts. But you get the same items and everything. I don't even think that the content of the two treasure chests is random. Because I got exactly the same stuff this time. Here's a list:

Gohma
Small Chest: 10 Bombs
Large Chest: ???
King Dodongo
Small Chest: Recovery Geart
Large Chest: ???
Barinade
Small Chest: Heart Container
Large Chest: ???
Phantom Ganon
Small Chest: Empty Bottle (you need this for potions)
Large Chest: ???
Volvagia
Small Chest: Longshot
Large Chest: ???
Morpha
Small Chest: Green Potion
Large Chest: Red Potion
Bongo Bongo
Small Chest: Heart Container
Large Chest: ???

As you can see, I mostly opened the small chest so far. The Heart Containers are important, so are bombs and the Longshot. I only opened the large chest in case of Morpha, because I knew that the Green Potion would be useless for me (you only need little magic during the Bongo Bongo fight). But I will keep playing and testing what items I'll get. From what I've seen on GameFAQs/Gamespot people were getting completely different stuff than me (like the Bigger Quiver) despite always opening the small chests... It was just weird, that I got exactly the same items as in the normal quest.

Well, I'm done here. Expect reviews of both the Four Swords Anniversary Edition and Ocarina of Time 3D soon here on my blog.

Little Update: If you've cleared everything in the normal quest, the Sheikah Stone turns red and doesn't move anymore. To clear the Final Battle I had to save right before giving Ganon the finisher. So, don't forget to save at this point if you want to clear everything.

Stealing Weapons in Skyward Sword

2011-10-14T18:06:00.003+02:00

There's ton of new Skyward Sword info at the moment, but the one that caught my attention is that you can actually steal your enemies' weapons. Like in the Wind Waker. This was one of the coolest features in this game, but it never appeared in any other Zelda game up to this point. I was disappointed that you couldn't do that in Twilight Princess and I'm happy that this idea finally returns. It also probably adds a lot to the whole MotionPlus thing. I wanted more melee weapons than just the sword and the whip. And it seems like I'm going to get a lot of them. Awesome.

Source: Zelda Europe

Ocarina of Time 3D Master Quest Log 2

2011-10-11T23:35:00.001+02:00

Well, let's start with some good news. All the puzzles, that require you to attack through bars in different manners to activate switches or light torches are still present in Master Quest and work the way they used to be. However, this raises the question, why did they change the puzzles in the normal quest in the first place? Did they think they were too difficult? But what did they add the Sheikah Stones for? If something appears to be too difficult for the average costumer, just add a stupid video that shows how to do it instead of removing the puzzle.

However, that the "spin through bars"-puzzles were still intact let me hope that in Master Quest I'm going to face the same old Dark Link, the one that's hard to beat with the sword. But no, he acts the same as in the normal quest... in fact, it's even easier now to fight him with the sword instead of using the Hammer. Since I had full weaponry this time I used all different techniques on him. And using the sword worked best.

I got quite good at fighting Stalfos again. I'm saying "again", because they didn't really give me any trouble back in the day. And they certainly wouldn't bring me down like they did in this new version of Master Quest. Well, the best way is just spam-attacking them. If you hit them before they hit you, they don't deal any damage. I just spam them with the Biggoron Sword and everything is fine.

The Forest Temple was pretty interesting. If you got the Longshot, you can actually skip two locked doors and save yourself a lot of backtracking. You can pull yourself to a treasure chest on the ledge surrounded by water in the second outdoor area. There you can built yourself a staircase using these Song of Time blocks. And from there you can enter the area with the falling ceiling without using the twisted path from above. I still got the two extra keys and opened the doors for the sake of a 100% completion, but for a speedrunner this might be interesting.

One nice thing to notice is, that they "unmirrored" the frogs in the frog minigame. Their positions still correspond to the button layout, so the outer left frog is triggered by the L-button. I previously feared that the controls might be mirrored in this minigame, which would have been confusing.

After the Forest Temple I cleared the Bottom of the Well. Then I hunted Big Poes, got the Biggoron Sword and cleared the Gerudo Fortress to make my way into the desert. I basically cleared all possible sidequests before entering another temple. Maximum heart containers and stuff. And now I'm going for the default order of the dungeons... I did the Fire Temple first without any surprises. Then I went for the Water Temple and Shadow Temple will come next. I was thinking about some other crazy order, but I already experimented with the dungeon order in Master Quest just recently and I also played the dungeons out of order in the normal quest, so playing them in their intended order is actually quite refreshing.

Their was an interesting change in the Master Quest Water Temple. In the original Master Quest their was a spare key right in the room, where you would find the Boss Key in the normal quest. Now, in Ocarina of Time 3D there's actually a second locked door now, right next to the room with the spare key. So, the spare key isn't a spare key anymore.

Ocarina of Time 3D Master Quest Log

2011-10-09T22:10:00.000+02:00

Have you ever taken a picture of your home and flip it horizontally on your computer? Or look at your home through a mirror just to see how it looks like? It looks strange, yet familiar. Sometimes it even looks more comfy. It is this kind of feeling, that you get while playing the Master Quest mode of Ocarina of Time 3D. All graphics have been flipped horizontally to add to your confusion. What used to be on the left, is now on the right. The Lost Woods are now in the West and the Gerudo Desert lies in the East. Everyone, who has played both the GameCube and the Wii version of Twilight Princess, knows what I'm talking about. And it can be confusing. It's like you know where everything should be, but you lost your sense of orientation. It's not always as easy as "I would need to go left, so I go right", because certain places may look like completely new places alltogether. Or you just mix it up. It has been 12 years since the last time I got lost in the Lost Woods, but now I constantly run into the wrong direction. However, there are also places, where I really enjoy the mirrored version. Mostly Zora's River, I like this area somehow more, can't really explain it. And all places with a fixed camera, like Hyrule Castle Town, can be quite interesting.

But while it can be confusing, I think the mirroring is still a good thing, because it really adds to the replay value. Otherwise it would be very boring to play Master Quest right after the normal quest. All of the overworld and all the sidequests would be identical. There aren't many enemies on the overworld, so the double damage doesn't really bother you outside of dungeons. And the rest of the game used to be the same, so you basically spent half of the time doing things, which you've just done before. And that would be really, really boring. But thanks to the mirroring it all feels like a different experience. You might be doing the same things, but you're too busy getting used to the mirror world that you would care.

The double damage itself can be troublesome. It might not sound so bad at first, but it can easily kill you, if you're careless. The most thrilling part might be the Deku Tree dungeon, because you only got three hearts and you don't have any bottles yet with fairies inside to revive you. Making two mistakes in a row kills you here. A Gold Skulltula already does two hearts of damage. And there are giant Deku Babas and Gohma Larvas all over the place. The key to winning is abusing the hell out of the Slingshot. You can destroy the Gohma Eggs by shooting them, so that the larvas won't hatch. You can even kill the giant Deku Babas from safe distance. With these easy but helpful techniques I made it through the dungeon without dying once.

Naturally one of the first sidequests I did outside of the forest would be getting the first two bottles. But I wouldn't really need them until my first encounter with a Stalfos inside the Ice Cavern. Their Jump Strikes are hard to dodge, can't be blocked and deal four hearts of damage. The only more dangerous thing in this game would be Iron Knuckles. But I have yet to face one.

My course through the game so far is pretty basic. Right now I'm at the Forest Temple. I did all possible sidequests as a child, not only because I always tend to do sidequests as early as possible during a replay, but because every single Piece of Heart counts. As an adult I would get the Horse and the Hookshot first, then I got myself a Goron Tunic (less damage from fire) before heading to the Ice Cavern. And before the Forest Temple I made a detour to the Water Temple to get the Longshot. I just don't like the Hookshot, it's too short. A nice thing of Master Quest is that in three out of five temples you get the dungeon's main item early in one of the first rooms. So, if you want the item, but don't want to play the rest of the dungeon, you can just make a little detour. Which is what I did in the Water Temple, you basically get the Map, the Compass and the Longshot all right after meeting with Ruto in the same area. Well, I had to fight three Stalfos and got my ass kicked again, but it was worth it. The Longshot is very useful in this game. With it I can get Nayru's Love right after the Forest Temple (or even earlier, but I'll doubt I could make it through the mirrored desert without the Eye of Truth), which will help me a lot with the nastier fights.

In Master Quest the Sheikah Stones are gone. Leaving them would have been stupid anyway, the Sheikah Stones are meant for beginners and Master Quest is meant for people, who are looking for some extra challenge. But all other guides are still in the game. They could have improved Master Quest by muting Navi. I already played through the entire game, I don't need her guidance! So, why is she still telling me, where I should go next? Like I don't know that! I guess they wanted to preserve the feeling of the original Master Quest, but that train left the station when they mirrored the entire game.

And I still love the Master Quest dungeons. They are really fun and most of them got a completely different flow from the original. For example it's nice that you don't have to carry Ruto around inside Jabu Jabu's Belly. She basically stays in one room all the time. In the normal quest she could be a pain in the ass. Things that used to be important in the normal quest are gone now and the focus is clearly on other ideas. And I like that.

I also noticed two more general differences between the original Ocarina of Time and the new 3D version. A very cool adition is that Adult Link now twirls his sword while L-targeting an enemy like he does in Twilight Princess. For some reason I haven't noticed this until now, but it definitely wasn't in the N64 version and it's really cool. However, there's also a poor change. Originally when you entered the Lost Woods with Cojiro he would crow. It doesn't do that anymore, no crowing. That's completely missing from the game for no reason.

Ocarina of Time 3D Quest Log 5

2011-10-07T21:02:00.005+02:00

Well, after beating the Spirit Temple I didn't have many options. So, like in my Master Quest tour earlier this year, the Fire Temple came next to last. Well, you can't play the Shadow Temple unless you cleared the first three temples, which triggers the event in Kakariko Village. But like I said, I didn't have many options. And again I was entering the Fire Temple with the Mirror Shield equipped, which looks badass.

The Fire Temple was nothing special, but Volvagia was quite cool in 3D. Then I would enter the Shadow Temple and get the Hover Boots, only to leave the temple again and play the Gerudo Training Grounds first. I guess you can beat the Traing Grounds without the Hoverboots, but it makes things a little bit easier. Well, after getting the Ice Arrows I went back to the Shadow Temple and then made my way to Ganon's Castle. Pretty basic.

Nice new graphical details? The ship inside the Shadow Temple got completely redesigned. Instead of a bird it now features Death himself as the figurehead. And there's a door on deck. The ship looks really cool now. And then there's the new bridge to Ganon's Castle, but you've probably seen this already.

But there are also some graphical downgrades. I'd say the new textures of the Like Likes and Deadhand look even worse than in the original. Especially the Like Likes look very "mushy".

I also cleared all of the Boss Challenge including the Gauntlet. In the Gauntlet you start with five Heart Containers and only the basic items. Slingshot, Boomerang, Bow, Hookshot (not the Longshot!), Megaton Hammer, the Eye of Truth and all shields and tunics. No boots, no potions (like in the individual Boss Challenges) or bombs or anything. But after each boss, two treasure chests spawn, a small and a large one. I'm guessing that it's similar to the Goron Target Range in Spirit Tracks, the small treasure chest has the good stuff. It's mostly random, but in case of Gohma the small treasure chest always gives you Bombs, which helps a lot in the King Dodongo battle. And before Morpha I got the Longshot from the small treasure chest. I also got two Heart Containers and one empty bottle, which later only got filled with a Green Potion (small chest before Bongo Bongo). But save for the Bombs and the Longshot it all didn't really matter, because I didn't get hit a single time! I'm not joking, I cleared the entire Gauntlet without getting hit. I wish it would have been the Master Quest Gauntlet, where you only get three hearts and where a single hit can kill you... I bet I will never be able to do such a perfect run again and I will have huge problems with clearing the Gauntlet in Master Quest, lol.

When battling Ganondorf there's still this noticeable slowdown after hitting him with a Light Arrow. I don't know if that was on purpose to "preserve the game's original feel" or if the 3DS actually couldn't handle all the special effects.

The additional credits are nice. Not only that they added the orchestrated track, but there are monochrome images from the game shown in 2D and then slowly morphing into 3D and color. That was really nice. But they could have used the touchscreen to display the names of everyone like they did in the Four Swords Anniversary Edition, so that the names don't overlay or get in the way. But on the other hand, you would never read a single name then...

I also checked out the Sheikah Stones for the first time. There's one video I didn't clear called "Riding on Farore's Wind", I guess I should have used this item at one point. I never use it, I usually play dungeons in one session. I used Nayru's Love though, when fighting the Iron Knuckle as Young Link. Just as a precaution. In Master Quest I will probably use it more often though.

Talking about Master Quest, I have now unlocked "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D Master Quest". I'm going to start this tomorrow. I'm excited how much trouble the mirroring and the double damage will give me.

Medals in Skyward Sword: Return of the Rings?

2011-10-07T16:35:00.010+02:00

I said I was going to avoid any new Skyward Sword info (haven't watched the intro yet, etc.), but I stumbled over this article at Kotaku today, where the reporter goes "blah, blah, blah" about how Skyward Sword has more RPG-elements than the usual Zelda game. We already knew about item customization and optional upgrades by collecting spoils and bugs, so mostly this was not surprising. However, one part caught my attention:

I clicked the option for [Fi] to speak. She started talking about a rumor that "medals" will give you beneficial effects as long as you're carrying them. [...] I didn't even have the one she described, which was a so-called potion medal that extends the duration of potion effects.

This sounds very similar to the ring concept from the Oracle games. I loved the rings. They added so much to the Oracle games. There were 64 of them and most of them did have a special ability (there were a few useless ones given out as some kind of achievement like "1000 monsters killed"). The classic stuff is increase in defense or offense, but there were lots of unusual effects. Like the Roc's Ring prevented that cracked floors crumble. The Red Joy Ring made finding Rupees easier. Or the Pegasus Ring lenghtened the effect of the Pegasus Seeds (which sounds similar to the mentioned medal, which increases potion effects).

You could only equip one at a time, but there's a perfect ring for every situation. Ever since the Oracle games I wanted something similar to the rings in future Zelda games. But this concept was abandoned completely...

Until now it seems. If the medals are really something similar to the rings, I'm going to be very excited. There are many possibilites. There could be medals that make certain spoils appear more often. Need those horns? Just wear the medal. There could be a medal that boosts you stamina, so that you can run faster, etc. And of course there could be a Red and a Blue Medal, boosting attack power and defense.

It would also add to the picture that Skyward Sword is taking something from every Zelda game to combine it into the "ultimate Zelda". The best thing they could take from the Oracle games are the rings.

Ocarina of Time 3D Quest Log 4

2011-10-06T23:40:00.005+02:00

Originally I wanted to take the classic course through the game, nicely playing the temples in order like it's your first time. Now... this is how my path looked like so far: as an adult I went to the Ice Cavern first, then I've beaten the Forest Temple. After the Forest Temple I went back in time and played the Bottom of the Well. Then, back to the future, I cleared the Gerudo Fortress and then played the Water Temple. And after that I played the Spirit Temple. Only Fire and Shadow Temple left. So, you can't really call this the classic course, but that would have been boring anyway.

It's been a while since I played the classic Ocarina of Time dungeons. In the last years I usually played Master Quest and I'm more used to the MQ dungeons. So, it sometimes feels a little bit weird. In the Spirit Temple you run into a silver Rupee floating in the air, in this boulder halfpipe room. So, for a moment I actually thought I need the Hover Boots to beat the dungeon. But luckily you can get it with a roll jump combined with a Jump Strike. And then there was a rusty switch in the large room with the Desert Colossus statue and for a moment I thought I need the Hammer to beat the dungeon. But it turned out, that this rusty switch only opens the shortcut from the entrance.

The Water Temple went really smooth. Switching the Iron Boots with a button, like in The Wind Waker or Twilight Princess, made playing the dungeon much more comfortable. The navigational lines reminded me of the water pipes in the Great Bay Temple in Majora's Mask, just not as complicated. However, there was a reason why I skipped over the Fire Temple. I've heard that Dark Link became significantly easier, so that you can beat him using your sword only. So, I avoided getting the Hammer to force myself using the sword (or Din's Fire just in case). And it's true. You can defeat him with the sword, it's a joke now. And I don't like this change. It's Dark Link we're talking about here, the final boss of Zelda II. This guy is supposed to kick your ass in a sword battle. That you had to rely on cheap tactics like pounding him with the Hammer or using Din's Fire only showed how mighty he actually was. And they took this away... they made him look weak now.

Another noticeable change are switches placed behind bars. There aren't any. In the original game you would use a Spin Attack through the bars to hit the switch. A simple puzzle, which should still work in the 3DS version. But in both the Water Temple (the room with Skulltula behind bars) and Spirit Temple (the mirror room) they put the crystal switch somewhere else. In Master Quest there were puzzles in the Fire Temple, where the crystal switches behind bars were hidden in boxes. I wonder if they destroyed this as well... I'll see.

And while going through the Water Temple something odd happened. Something that has never happened before in my Ocarina of Time... Navi called me for no reason. "Hey!", "Listen!" What the hell? She does that outside of dungeons all the time in case you're lost, but never inside dungeons. But now she tells you to visit a Sheikah Stone in case you're lost. Damn... Ocarina of Time is known as simply one of the best games ever, but if there were any complaints about the game, then it was about Navi being annoying. There's even tons of fanart making jokes about it like Link squishing Navi to death. And Grezzo seriously thought they should make her even more annoying? Come on!

And the way how they handled the Magic Arrows is stupid. I hoped you can cycle through them by pressing R, like in the Wind Waker. But you can't. Now there's a little submenu icon above the Bow icon. If you click on the submenu icon a submenu with all four Arrow types opens... This is even more inconvenient than in the original game! Why can't I switch the arrow types in real time?

But there are also some positive improvements. Like the fast text. It always annoyed me in the old version that the text was so slow. Especially if you can't skip the text. For example when talking to the carpenters imprisoned inside the Gerudo Fortress, it took forever until the fight started. And you had to listen to the same text four times, which was annoying. After Ocarina of Time all Zelda games offered the option to fasten the text or just got fast text in general, so it's nice that this improvement finally made it into Ocarina of Time.

Another nice improvement is the Shard of Agony. It reminded me of hidden grottos, which I had log forgotten. For example the one behind the carpenters' tent. Or in front of the center entrance of the Gerudo Fortress, behind some boxes. There isn't really anything to get in these grottos, which is probably the reason why I had forgotten them, but it was nice to be reminded, that they were there.

As for graphical details, I like how you can see Hyrule Field from the embrasures inside the Ghost Shop. And there are some nice reflections on the floor of the Temple of Time, though this is a fake reflection using simple shaders. And I like the design of the Biggoron's Sword, it even got its own sheath now.

Well, and the Goron Bracelet still gets lost in the menu after collecting the Silver Gauntlets. This always bugged me and I hoped that this would be fixed in Ocarina of Time 3D. But it wasn't. I mean, you don't actually lose this item, young Link still wears it. So, why does it and all information about it get lost in the menu?

Sidequest-wise I got all Pieces of Heart by now and all except 12 Golden Skulltulas, 10 in the remaining temples and two at Death Mountain. The only larger sidequest left is beating the Gerudo Training Grounds. I'll do that after getting both the Hammer and the Hoverboots.

Ocarina of Time 3D Quest Log 3

2011-10-05T23:00:00.003+02:00

After fully beating the Four Swords Anniversary Edition it's time for Ocarina of Time 3D to get my full attention.

It's getting annoying that the window for 3D is quite small. You really have to hold the 3DS in the right way or otherwise it's getting blurry. If it's getting intense or when I want to use the gyroscope aiming, I'm turning the 3D off. Nintendo really should look into improved 3D screen technology. Also, turning off the 3D improves the anti-aliasing effects, after all they only have to render half as many images and the additional computing power can be put into improved visuals. I really like the 3D and turn it on whenever I can, but it comes with disadvantages.

Well, the game is still beautiful, though it can be quite erratic. At times the game looks like a simple texture pack, where they just plastered the old models with better looking textures. For example the stairs in Kakariko village are still a simple texture instead of actual stairs... what's up with that? How hard can it be to model some stairs? And in other places, for example all of Hyrule Castle Town, they put a lot of works into new models and details. It looks like a complete new place.

The Back Alley really surprised me. I didn't went there until I checked out the dying soldier scene and it flashed me with impressive details. They even got laundry lines hanging between the windows. Just wow. What also really flashed me was the Ice Cavern. It's stunning, really nice and clear textures, the red ice looks beautiful and has some amazing forms at times. I was also wearing the Goron Tunic during the dungeon, which gave a nice visual contrast.

Before becoming an adult I cleared all possible sidequests as a kid. Including showing the Mask of Truth at the Forest Stage. I've heard, that this bug was fixed, but I'm not leaving anything to chance. As an adult I got Epona first, then the Hookshot, the Goron Tunic and then I went to the Ice Cavern to get Iron Boots and the Zora Armor. I like to gear up before going to any of the temples.

I played the Forest Temple first, mostly because I wanted the bow, which allows to do more sidequests (like Big Poe hunting and archery minigames). But the main reason was that I can return to the past and play the unbloody Bottom of the Well. Learning the Prelude of Light also unlocks the Boss Challenge. It's a nice little addition to the game. But you don't get to experiment much, you only get minimum equipment. Similar to the bosses in Ganon's Castle in the Wind Waker, just not in black and white and they also reduce your number of Heart Containers to the minimum.

Adult Link kind of feels slower than usual, I don't know... it's like he moves his legs in an exaggerated way, it feels a little bit like slow motion. Very weird.

Arranging items is nice. It's different from Link's Awakening, because it let's you freely swap items all over the place. Interestingly I'm arranging the items in the way they used to be in Ocarina of Time. My bottles are in the lower left row. The three magic spells are on the right side. And so on.

I encountered two very nice details in the Forest Temple. The new Boss Key now has a crystal skull on it and looks really cool. And Wallmasters now drop a shadow in the form of a hand. Very nice.

But I must complain about some stuff they failed to improve. Namely Epona. She's as dumb and stubborn as ever. For example she still gets stuck in that spot on your way outside of Lake Hylia. I always got annoyed by this, why couldn't they fix it? And the Z-Targeting is messed up, it somehow manages always to target the wrong enemy. As in not the enemy which stands fucking right in front of you! Best example was the fight against the Poe Sister Meg. The one with the duplicates. I would turn myself into the direction of the real one and press L, however, the system targets everyone but not the one I wanted to aim for... what was that? I don't remember that this fight ever gave me any trouble. It's like the targeting even worked better in the N64 version. And Navi is a pain in the ass.... why does it have to blink NAVI NAVI NAVI NAVI NAVI on the top screen? Isn't her screaming "hey, hey, hey" enough? She never really bothered me in the N64 version, I could easily ignore her there, but that they added blinking letters to the top screen is just ridiculous.

Four Swords Anniversary Edition, Final Round

2011-10-04T23:50:00.011+02:00

100%. Like in the original game you get a nice golden Four Sword icon on your save file if you've beaten Vaati's Palace using the Hero Keys. I don't know if you also have to beat the Hero's Trial to get the icon, but I guess not.

First of all, I want to say that the new total Rupee counter is a nice thing. Not only is this a good alternative way of unlocking the Hero's Trial (normally you would have to collect 5 Medals of Courage to unlock it, which isn't possible in singleplayer), it also ensures that beating a stage is never for nothing. For example if you try to get a Hero Key, but weren't able to collect 5000 Rupees, the Rupees at least get added to your highscore. Or simply replaying a level also adds to the score, which adds a little bit to the replay value. I already got over 130,000 Rupees by now and this score will be growing. But it's a shame that the Hero's Trial is the only thing that gets unlocked by the Rupee highscore. They could have added some other extras.

Now let's talk about the interesting part: how to farm Rupees. Without Rupee Fever it is impossible to get 5000 Rupees in a normal stage, so all you can do in singleplayer is farming Rupees by slaying the respawning monsters. Preferably monster that drop those large Rupees worth 50, 100 and sometimes even 200 Rupees. Those are Bow Moblins, Spear Moblins, all types of Wizzrobes, Gibdos and Darknuts. Not the nicest selection, I know. The easiest to kill are Gibdos and Bow Moblins, so aim for those. Spear Moblins have better defense and offense than their bow brothers and can hurt you quite badly. Wizzrobes can be annoying and cast fire or ice on you, both aweful stuff. Well and Darknuts usually disappear before you can defeat them. And they are super rare. So, the best options are Bow Moblins and Gibdos.

The first stage, where I got a Hero's Key, was surprisingly Death Mountain. That was the stage that always came last when we played the GameBoy Advance version. First I tried farming with Fire Wizzrobes, which was a terrible idea. So, I headed on and the next floor turned out to be the ideal farming spot. It started with a minecart and Boomerang pedestals. Take those Boomerangs and head on. There will be an area, where only Gibdo spawn. Stun them with the Boomerang and kill them for lots of easy money. I also got two Razor Seeds, which fastened the process.

At the Sea of Trees search for Bow Moblins, because they are easy to defeat. I used the area, where the entire floor is surrounded by a ledge with lots of grass and treasure chests on it. You start in the Northwest, right near the goal, next to some Pegasus Shoes. In the northern lower area the Bow Moblins would spawn. This place was ideal, because there were plenty of grass to heal yourself. Not that the Bow Moblins made any real damage...

I guess you could look for Gibos in Talus Cave, but I found a nice spot, where farming with Wizzrobes actually works great. It's a small room north of the goal with normal Wizzrobes (red ones that shoot beams instead of fire) and these weird floor tiles that only one Link can see. There are four pathways made of these tiles leading to treasure chests and one is nearly completely surrounded by blocks. Stay there, the blocks will keep you safe from the Wizzrobe fire. As soon as one Wizzrobe spawns on the pathway I attacked him with the Hurricane Spin Attack. This is probably the safest way of using Wizzrobes to farm Rupees. Worked fine for me and I hate Wizzrobes. UPDATE: I found another nice spot to farm Rupees in Talus Cave using Bow Moblins. It's a spot, where the goal is on higher grounds surrounded by bushes. At the west side Bow Moblins will spawn.

There are some other details, which I have noticed. Rupee Wraiths were dumbed bown big time. They only steal three Rupees from you and then vanish, you can entirely ingore them. They might take more, if you happen to run into more than one Rupee Wraith on the same floor, but overall they are not as annoying as in the multiplayer. This is understandable, because they are a pure multiplayer element. It's about passing the Rupee Wraith to another player, so that he is busy losing Rupees instead of you. There's no point in having Rupee Wraiths in singleplayer, but at least they got a small appearance. In multiplayer I would use them to double the amount of Rupees I lose by recollecting them during Rupee Fever. That way a Ruppe Wraith actually turned out to be useful. However, there is no Rupee Fever in singleplayer and you can't use this technique. So, it's good that they didn't make the Rupee Wraiths stop you.

And Rupee Shards are definitely too rare. In most cases I couldn't get a full set. They should have made sure, that you get a number that is divisible by four in a stage setup. Or at least four shards per stage. It's stupid that you can only find three Rupee Shards during one stage, even if you turn every stone and cut every single straw of grass. I sometimes have the feeling that they replaced the Rupee Shards with fairies. There are so many fairies hidden in singleplayer (at least in the normal stages, in the Hero's Trial you're lucky if you find a single heart), it's excessive and absolutely unneeded. There were never so many faires, when we played the multiplayer on the GBA. But there were lots of Rupee Shards hidden under grass and rocks.

There's also a nice easter egg. When you replay one of the three key stages, the Great Fairy at the end will be replaced with a Great Fairy from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask in all her glory. I don't think this was the case in the GBA version and although I actually prefer the Great Fairy design of Four Swords and The Minish Cap, it's nice to see that something from the N64 Zeldas made it into the Anniversary game.

So, that's about it. Another Zelda game completed 100%. Only Ocarina of Time 3D missing. And Skyward Sword. I had a lot of fun and trouble with this game and I will definitely return to it regularily to replay some levels. It's perfect to satisfy a small Zelda hunger. Expect a detailed review of the Four Swords Anniversary Edition soon here on Hyrule Blog! Unlike other sites I only review a game after fully beating it. Some sites didn't even know about the Hero's Trial...

Robin and Zelda Williams Four Swords Commercial

2011-10-04T19:05:00.002+02:00

Didn't see that coming. Hilarious.

I love these commercials. I guess now, Skyward Sword will get one, too. Can't wait to see Robin Williams swinging the Wiimote.

Yet he smiles... but wait until he discovers the Hero's Trial. :D

Four Swords Anniversary Edition, Round 4: End of Hero's Trial

2011-10-03T22:08:00.003+02:00

Yeaaahhhhh! I did it! I've beaten the Hero's Trial!! I can't tell how relieved I am that this is over. This was the toughest and most enduring challenge in the entire Zelda series yet. Forget the Great Palace or the Cave of Ordeals. If you want a real challenge, play the Hero's Trial.

Well, my playthrough of door 3 took a very similar course to my playthrough of door 2. I somehow got through the first two floors and saved 2000 Rupees. Then I had to retry the final floor about four times until I finally did it. If you know the traps, you can prepare yourself and take many precautions in this floor, which makes things easier. The final room with dozen Eyegores was really fun. They were easy to beat, just gang them up and then switch between both Links. They dropped many Rupees, which really helped in the final fights, lots of Darknuts and Ball & Chain Troopers. Best way to deal with this is equipping both Links with Bombs when you enter this room. After you've defeated the Eyegores pick up the bombs again and start blasting. It's your best weapon in this situation. I'm actually surprised that they didn't also add some Wizzrobes to screw you up even harder. But I guess that even for the Hero's Trial this would have been too cheap.

Right before the goal there was another switch, but I already expected that this one will trigger fairies like in floor 1-3. And that was really nice, though I had enough Rupees left to survive even more terror. While I slashed myself through the faires I said to myself "I did it!" multiple times. Ahhh, this felt so good.

Now all that's left is the Hero's Keys. But this should be a breeze compared to the Hero's Trial and very relaxing. The Hurricane Spin Attack is lots of fun to use, it might happen that I will replay even some parts of the Hero's Trial using this.

Ocarina of Time 3D Quest Log, Day 2

2011-10-03T00:01:00.003+02:00

Today I've beaten Dodongo's Cavern and I finished most sidequests before Jabu Jabu's Belly. Like catching a big enough fish or getting the Pieces of Hearts in Gerudo Valley, planting Magic Beans, etc.

There's still the secret spot behind the lava fall inside Dodongo's Cavern, where you fight the first two Lizalfos. I thought this was cool. Also, the 3DS version of the game now features the longer version of the song, that is played inside Dodongo's Cavern. On one of my older Ocarina of Time soundtrack CDs the track was longer than in the game and featured some different sound effects at the end. That was never in the N64 version and it's nice to hear the full track now in the 3DS version.

Well, after I've beaten Dodongo's Cavern I could take a good look at some nice 3D effects.The Goron Ruby looked really impressive, it popped out of the screen, it felt like it hovered in front of me. 3D effects are a nice thing. And yeah, I actually didn't have to buy DOA to see some boobs in 3D, it was Great Fairy time. Though her model looked too much like the N64 version, they could have added some more polygons to maker her look rounder.

The Bombchu Bowling got a little bit easier, because the collision volume of the big Cucco seems to be smaller. And the Bombchus look really cool.

Last time I forgot to mention that playing the Ocarina is quite different from the N64 version. You play it with the L, R, X, Y and A buttons. A doesn't correspond to the same note A would play on the N64. It's actually the highest note now. To play Zelda's lullaby you have to play X, A, Y, X, A, Y. You basically have to learn all songs from new. But I don't have as many problems with this as I thought I would. Earlier I would just play by sounds, but now I got the hang of it. I could even play songs from Majora's Mask out of my head with the new play style. And it seems that the button placement was modeled on a real Ocarina. It's a good thing they didn't make you blow into the mic though.

I also checked out the hidden grotto at the beginning of the Sacred Forest Meadow. The one with the two Wolfos coming at you. I thought this might be the place, where we saw young Link fighting two Wolfos inside a room that looks like it's from the Master Quest version of the Forest Temple. This one. I don't know if this is somewhere in the game, but it's certainly not this grotto. This one now got a stunning look. They really pimped those crystal walls, it looks amazing. And this for a simple hidden grotto that you might miss with the Stone of Agony.

Talking about that, I got the Shard of Agony by now and it looks great. They should add this item in Majora's Mask 3D. Majora's Mask originally got the Stone of Agony as a default ability, which never gets mentioned in the entire game or the manual. I think for the 3DS version they should hide it somewhere, for example as the reward in a new Skulltula House, that would awesome. However, there where only two places in Majora's Mask where the Stone of Agony resonated...

I noticed two odd changes today. One is that you can't recollect bugs after placing them on soft soil to reveal the Gold Skulltula. In the old version I would release the bugs and swiftly catch one again. That way I don't have to go find new bugs afterwards, I basically reuse the same bug again and again. That didn't work in Majora's Mask and it now also doesn't work in Ocarina of Time 3D. And what's also weird is that those square torches don't stay lit. Like the ones in Goron City near the gateway to the Lost Woods. Or the torch down the stairs from the throne room in Zora's Realm. In the N64 version they stayed lit forever once you activated them, didn't they? But not in the 3DS version.

Four Swords Anniversary Edition, Round 3: Hero's Rising

2011-10-02T20:35:00.004+02:00

Zelda II is officially not the toughest challenge anymore, which the Zelda series has to offer. The Hero's Trial in Four Swords AE is the new king of the hill. But it shouldn't be proud, because all it does is abusing the game's mechanics to create cheap death traps. It's cheap, it's cruel, it's relentless and it's never ending (or at least feels like it at the moment). And it's our own fault. Zelda fans kept whining over the years how easy the new games were. And this is Nintendo's answer. "You want some challenge? How about this?"

All I played today for hours was the Hero's Trial. I've finally beaten the second door only to get my ass kicked again behind the third door. Well, you have to see what's coming and prepare yourself, if you get surprised all the time it doesn't help. Though the level of surprise gets lower. You know it won't stop until they at least spawned some Ball & Chain soldiers. It's actually surprising if not all hell breaks lose after stepping on a big switch.

I was really looking forward to the Hero's Trial, because I expected something like the Hero's Cave in the Oracle games. Some really good puzzles that can keep you trying and thinking for hours, some stuff where you have to show your skills and some badass fights. It should challenge you, but it also should be fun. The Hero's Trial, however, is just torture. I'm torturing myself with every second I spent in this dungeon. It's very repetitive, all you basically do is step on switches and expect to get swarmed by countless tough enemies. There's some platforming between the fights, but nothing exciting. The puzzles are no-brainers, if there are any. It's all about the aweful enemy combinations in the worst possible places.

Well, my second attempt on the second door went quite well until floor 3, the sky palace one. I died a couple of times during the first two floors, but I also collected 3000 Rupees. Door 3 then really tested my patience, I had to repeat it like five or six times until I finally got to beat it. Luckily there's the new Retry function that let's you reset a floor. Otherwise I probably would have gone crazy already. What gave me huge trouble were dozens of skeletons throwing bones at you while you navigate platforms and try not to get thrown into the pits by air currents and to dodge Spiny Beetles. At the end of the stage naturally they had to spawn two Ball & Chain Troopers and several Fire Wizzrobes on a small platform over the air. Everything else would have been ridiculous. Interestingly there seems to be a swarm of fairies like in the credits at the end of each door. Imagine that you get killed at the end, because one of the these faires pushed you into the abyss. I would have gone so mad...

Door 3 takes place at ... surprise, surprise... Death Mountain. The first floor focuses more on platforming, which was a nice diversity. And the second floor is actually the first non-linear dungeon design that Grezzo offered so far. There's a large room with a lot of fumaroles and locked doors. There spawns a key in the center each time after completing a section. It's not the most innovative non-linear design, but it's better than everything the new stages offered so far. Well, I was careless, died a lot and Ball & Chain soldiers killed me at the end. I will try again tomorrow and hopefully close this insane chapter of Zelda.

But I've heard that the Hurricane Spin Attack makes the Hero's Trial very easy. Just keep spamming the Hurricane Attack. Well, it was basically the same in The Minish Cap. Nothing could stop you after you got the Great Spin Attack. The Dungeon Simulator minigame also played with insane enemy combinations, but the Great Spin Attack made everything easy. So, I'm looking forward to abuse the Hurricane while replaying parts of the Hero's Trial. All those Darknuts, Ball & Chain Soldiers, Gibdos and Wizzrobes are going to get their asses kicked! Look forward to my revenge, game.

I also replayed the A Link to the Past level in the Realm of Memories. It's not as fun as the Link's Awakening stage though. If I had to rank them, I would say Link's Awakening is the best, A Link to the Past second and the NES Zelda stage third. This one I haven't even replayed yet.

Ocarina of Time 3D Quest Log, Day 1

2011-10-01T23:50:00.006+02:00

Hello, beautiful. Ocarina of Time 3D is out since June and I didn't get to play it until now. And I've been missing out. I wasn't really interested in this game, because it didn't offer any new content unlike the Four Sword Anniversary Edition. But after the torture that is called Hero's Trial I'm actually not sure if I want Grezzo to make any more dungeons, lol. Well, this is mostly a visual update of a classic. It's reexperiencing the game in a new way. And it really takes me back. The new visuals are simply stunning, it inspires aww all the time. Normally, when I replay Ocarina of Time, it's just routine. "Go to the tree, roll against it, get the Skulltula, now collect the chicken and bring it to Anju, ..." You just complete the tasks and you do not take the time to look at things. To explore things. You've seen it all already. But not in Ocarina of Time 3D. It all feels so fresh, it's the same old game, but there's something new to discover in every corner. Especially the insides of houses look great, there are tons of new details like the additional masks in the Happy Mask Shop, one looks like the Mirror Shield for example. Or Kakariko at night, where lights shine out of the windows, does not only sound atmospheric, now it also looks atmospheric. This new version really takes me back to the time when I first played this game in 1999. It's magical.

The 3D of the 3DS works great for me. The comfort window is very small though. By now they developed 3D screens that allow multiple angles and I'm guessing the next version of the 3DS will have one of those. But overall it looks very clear. And some of the effects are stunning, for example the lens flare of the sun comes in 3D now and when you play songs on the Ocarina Link got this shiny aura, which is different with every song. It looks amazing. What also made me marvel was collecting a red Rupee from a chest (in the grotto in Kakariko Village behind the fences). It just looked gorgeous. And the smoother frame rate feels nice. Before I got my 3DS I was replaying Majora's Mask on the Virtual Console, which likes to judder, so this felt like a vast improvement already. They should make Majora's Mask 3D for the better frame rate alone.

The new visuals also come with some advantages. The most noticeable thing was that you can now see through the grass. That way you can discover hidden grottos like the Forest Stage below grass if you look closely. Well, if you look closely, you will also see that not everything was modeled in 3D. There are still some 2D graphics present in the game, mainly the grass. But for example the fence at the Hyrule Castle ditch is a sheet. The fence on Lon Lon Ranch, however, was completely modeled in 3D and looks nice.

In the Royal Tomb they added a door right after the beam of light. That was not there before, in the N64 version you would walk down a long corridor into the rooms with all the skeletons and Keese. I don't know why they added this, but I thought that the original was "scarier".

They also changed some sound effects. Like when you smash a pot or when the Stalkids spawn in Hyrule Field. But it's not as many changes is in the Four Swords Anniversary Edition and the new sound effects aren't bad. It's just noticeable.

And for some reason you can't deactivate the minimap, which is present in the lower-left corner of the 3D screen. I don't know why you even need a minimap on the topscreen, when you actually got a second screen. All it shows is the stupid world map. The D-pad doesn't seem to have any function. They should have used it for going into first person, activating the Ocarina and toggling the minimap. I do not like touching the touchscreen with my fingers. Actually I hold the Stylus in my right hand while playing and use it each team I need to go into the menu. I'm that kind of person... it's just that I want my shiny new 3DS to stay clean and shiny. So, using the D-pad for shortcuts would have been a welcomed addition.

As of now I entered Dodongo's Cavern. Right before that I made a nice new stunt. Remember the Piece of Heart right above Dodongo's Cavern? Normally you would have to plant a Magic Bean and get it as an adult. However, I was able to get on the ledge by using a sidestep jump from the place, where you throw the Bomb Flowers down. I don't know if this was possible in the N64 version, I did this for the first time.

Four Swords Anniversary Edition, Round 2: Hero's Hell

2011-10-01T22:40:00.004+02:00

By now I've beaten the game on gold level. Getting the Golden Keys without Rupee Fever went surprisingly smooth. I had to farm some Rupees killing Rupee Likes and Fire Wizzrobes, but it wasn't that bad. And I don't worry too much about the Hero's Keys. It will take it's time, but it's manageable. It would be a lot more fun with Rupee Fever, but I can't help it right now. Unless Nintendo hears the voices (I'm not the only one complaining) and releases a small patch, there's no other way.

It also seems that Rupee Shards got rarer. This makes sense, because normally you would have to share the Rupee Shards with others. If there are four Rupee Shards and player 1 got three, but player 2 got one, you don't get anything. One player must assemble four shards, it's even a "common" multiplayer strategy to leave the shards to the player, who needs them the most, if you find them under bushes for example. Since there are no other players, it would be probably too easy, if there are too many shards. But Grezzo made them a little too rare. I only managed to complete a golden Rupee once so far... however, while Grezzo made it generally harder to collect Rupees, the lowest time bonus is now actually 50 Rupees. You always get 50 Rupees at the end of a floor. In the GBA version if you took too long, you would only get 2 Rupees, one per player.

Vaati's fight was very different from last time. He didn't use the Patra form, but the arm form and the volleyball form. It's the first time that I managed to beat Vaati using the volleyball form, in multiplayer we never could do it. That's how smooth the singleplayer works. I got really good at using two Links.

And there's a reason for that. Called the Hero's Trial. Or how I call it, the "Hero's Hell". I was always asking for some more challenge in Zelda games, because for a Zelda veteran the last games were a mere routine. However, you should always be careful with your wishes, because what Grezzo delivered here might be over the top. Even as someone, who likes playing Zelda II - a game that gives other Zelda fans nightmares -, I'm right now quite frustrated by this stuff.

Well, let's start with the basics. I was expecting some new settings and visuals, but there aren't any. It uses the graphics and everything from the original four stages. However, it now looks all gloomy. The forest stage looks wintery, but there's no snow, it's just that they added a different color tone to everything. The ice in the ice cave looks black for example. I guess the looks were inspired by the Silent Realm from Skyward Sword, the visiuals are quite similar. And considering that this game was made within three or four months, expecting all new graphics might have been too much. Well, the first door offers two floors in the forest and one in Vaati's Palace. And the second door offered two floors inside the ice cave... I haven't reach floor 2-3 yet, so I can't tell how it looks like. But I'm guessing the third floors always take place in the sky dungeon.

The first time I played the Hero's Trial it kicked my ass. It's main feature are mass enemy fights. Something you didn't get in the original stages, because the GameBoy Advance only could handle so many enemies at the same time. But the enemy combinations can be aweful and your biggest enemy is collision damage. I already complained about the enormous collision damage while playing the GBA version, if an enemy corners you, it's a safe death. There is litte invulnerability time and the enemies like to ran into you. That got me killed multiple times in the first door. The room, where four Darknuts spawn at once then gave me the rest, I managed to beat them, but I lost all Rupees during the process. Then the whole floor went crazy, respawning flying floor tiles everywhere, all hell was loose. That killed me in the end. The problem with the mass enemy fights is that you're all alone. Normally there would be three other Links helping you out, Four Swords Adventures style, but here you can only fight using a single Link. And you have to be very careful.

Well, the new singleplayer offers a nice tactic for being cornered, namely switching between both Links strategically. Let one Link rest in a corner (he can't be hit while he waits) and as soon as you get yourself trapped, switch to the other Link and attack from behind. You basically use one Link as bait and the inactive Link as your safety anchor. After I learned how to do this, the first door went down quite smoothly. But of course this was only hell's warmup...

Welcome to the Frozen Hell behind the second door! Navigating on ice floors in Four Swords is aweful, in no other Zelda game walking on ice floors feels so terrible. And this level abuses this big time. It adds Moblin archers to screw you hard while you try to walk on the ice... but the worst part are the enemy combinations. Ice Wizzrobes and Ball&Chain Soldiers for example. The Ice Wizzrobes freeze you and the Ball&Chainers give you the rest while you can't move. Not fun. And as soon as you die it's one giant downward spiral. You lose all your powerups, so it already gets much harder. And with each death you have to pay more. Before you know it, you lose 500 Rupees per death, which gets you a Game Over easily. And naturally there aren't too many Rupees in the Hero's Trial stage. Or health. In the normal stages you can find more fairies then you can count. Now a fairy is a rare sight in the Hero's Hell, if you're lucky you'll find a single heart inside a treasure chest...

Well, with four players the Hero's Trial probably would be easier. Because dealing with so many enemies at once using only one fighter is really hard. An alternative would be the Hurricane Spin Attack, using it could be very helpful inside the Hero's Trial. Unfortunately you have to beat the Hero's Trial to get the Hurricane Spin Attack! That's another Circus Leader's Mask. Remember that one from Majora's Mask? It's only use was to stop the Gorman Brothers from attacking the carriage. However, to get the Circus Leader's Mask you have to defend the carriage first. It feels similar, because you don't really need the Hurricane Spin Attack in the other stages. Maybe I'll replay the first door using the Hurricane Spin Attack, if I manage to beat the Hero's Trial. But right now I don't feel like replaying any of it.

While I think it's great to get some challenges and evil fights, the main problem is the length of the floors. They are massive and they go on forever. And Grezzo's level design is aweful, they are all very linear and all you do is running from one big switch, that rains enemies down on you, to the next. You get sick of this easily. And I hate the mere thought of having to go through any of this again. Luckily there's the new Retry function, which lets you reset a floor in case you've screwed up, however, both times I completely lost motivation to go on and didn't bother... I was looking forward to some challenge, but I wanted it to be fun. Not frustrating and demotivating.

However, there's a nice easter egg at the end of the first floor of door 1. They made a large 25 out of bushes on an island in the water. As in 25th Anniversary. I've heard that there are other 25s hidden, but I have yet to see one.

I also replayed the Link's Awakening level just for fun today. I just love how they made it, there's lots of cool stuff. For example where you would fight Moldorm in the Tail Cave, it spawns a Mini Moldorm. I thought that was funny, but it definitely fits.

Well, I hope that I can somehow beat the Hero's Trial. I've heard, that there are some hidden shortcuts, which make the floors easier. That would be totally awesome. But right now I'm taking a vacation in Ocarina's 3D Hyrule, it's very relaxing to play Ocarina of Time 3D after burning inside the Hero's Hell.

Four Swords Anniversary Edition, Round 1: No Rupee Fever and Realm of Memories

2011-09-30T23:28:00.010+02:00

The irony of buying a Nintendo 3DS to play a 2D game is quite big, but Four Swords is the game I was playing this evening. And I managed to beat Vaati once, as well as the entire Realm of Memories stage. Took me a couple of hours and that was not even half of the game. I'm very happy that I've beaten the GameBoy Advance version just recently, because now I can compare both versions in detail.

Well, it took me only one minute to notice that there was something very wrong with the new singleplayer mode. There's no Rupee Fever! For those, who never played Four Swords before and don't know what Rupee Fever is, in multiplayer when all players have full health a nice catchy music theme starts and all Rupees are worth twice as much as normally. This is Rupee Fever. Do not take Rupee Fever lightly, Rupee Fever is the one and only method to get Hero's Keys. To get a Hero's Key you need to collect 5000 Rupees in one stage. But there are no 5000 Rupees in a stage, no matter what. 3000 might be possible, but only if you're lucky. The only way to score 5000 Rupees is a permanent Rupee Fever. This leads to completely different tactics. For example you don't cut any bushes until it is necessary to look for hearts and fairies (or when the floor is wiped). Or never open a treasure chest unless you have full health. It was very challenging to get all the Hero's Keys in the original game, but with these tactics we made it.

I don't know how I am supposed to get all Hero's Keys without Rupee Fever. It seems the only way to farm enough Rupees is defeating the respawning enemies again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again until you got enough Rupees. But that takes forever and is boooooooring. This is not some stupid RPG, this is Zelda! And Rupee Fever was such a nice tactic. I do not understand Grezzo's decision to remove Rupee Fever from the singleplayer mode and I do not support it. Luckily this is a downloadable game and they can patch it. So, pretty please add Rupee Fever to the singleplayer mode!

What I also noticed are the changes in the sound effects. They changed a lot of sounds like for example the Roc's Cape or when you move a block. If you want to know, how the original game sounded like, play The Minish Cap, because pretty much all sound effects carried over from Four Swords. So, the new sound effects feel weird and it's not like the new sound effects are better than the old ones. Because they aren't.

But there's also good stuff. Remember that I wanted them to include the Rock Breaker, because lifting up all rocks and pots takes forever? Well, you still have to pick up rocks, but you can now smash pots with your sword. That's really cool and saves some time.

The singleplayer works well so far, as far as I can tell you play the same old two player mode all by yourself. However, they had to dumb some parts of the game down to make it work. Most noticeable is the expanded time window for all sorts of switches, like those pull levers or the eye switches. Normally this stuff has to be done all at the same time, but now you have a huge time window. You don't even have to switch between the two Links to do it fast enough, you just keep activating the switches with one Link. I don't know, this feels quite strange and kind of lame. And the Bulbuls (those red enemies with a huge green ball belly) got a lot easier in singleplayer, it's basically the same as with the levers, you have much more time for the repeated strikes. But okay... Four Swords was never meant to support a singleplayer mode, it's only natural that some stuff had to be simplified. It's not the only thing that makes the singleplayer feel inferior to the multiplayer. You're not competing who gets the most Rupees, which always was part of the fun. The fact that you're not competing for Rupees makes the game feel a little bit like Ancient Stone Tablets. There you also collect tons and tons of Rupees for no real reason.

Well, in Vaati's palace I haven't encountered a single pothole trap. Usually there are many potholes under the bushes and you have to be very careful while cutting grass. However, there wasn't a single hole anywhere. It might be that this is only the case in the easier difficulty level, the holes might return after I got the Golden Keys... We'll see. Also, Vaati used his Patra form more often than usual. I don't mind, because I like this form, but it was kind of strange. In the GBA version he mostly used the arms.

And they changed the credits. The credits are a lot longer now and different stuff happens. Now at the beginning Rupees appear on the platform, but some of them are Rupee Likes. Then the fairy part from the original game starts, however, at the end multiple treasure chests appear now.

So, after all this the Realm of Memories stage got unlocked. Naturally I had to play this one next. And boy was that fun! It felt good to finally get something new after all the replaying, which I've done this year. And the retro levels are great. Spoilers ahead! Do not read, if you don't want to know what the retro levels have to offer!

Well, each level gets two overworld settings and a dungeon, the first dungeon of each games to be accurate. A Link to Past got outside and inside Hyrule Castle and the Lost Woods. Link's Awakening has the Mysterious Woods and Goponga swamp as one floor, the Tail Cave and the Tal Tal Heights. And finally The Legend of Zelda gets some one floor around the big lake, one at the graveyard and a replica of Level 1.

The A Link to the Past level was pretty basic. It's kind of like the game would have looked like, if Capcom had been too lazy to make their own engine. Interestingly there were many areas, where lots of treasure chests would spawn. Now this really, really reminded me of Ancient Stone Tablets. The stage ends where you got the Master Sword in A Link to the Past, which fits very will. Because after all this stage unlocks the "Master Sword". Well, you only get the Sword Beam, I don't know why they called it "Master Sword", but whatever...

The Link's Awakening stage is my favorite one. This definitely brought back many memories, the GameBoy visual style is very impressive. And the details are great, for example they added the rare Chain Chomp item to the Goponga Swamp. Originally in Link's Awakening you had to take Bow Wow for walkies at the swamp to open Level 2. And the replica of the Tail Cave was amazing. I wondered what the final floor could be and it took me only one second to realize that the goal would be on top of Mt. Tamaranch at the Windfish Egg! Very nice! And the mountain music theme is still the best! Love it.

The The Legend of Zelda level then got more crazy and intense. Lots of Moblin fights and the graveyard with all the spring floor tiles was quite tricky. Visually not as good as Link's Awakening, but still very cool. Though I have to say that this was my least favorite one out of the three stages.

But overall the Realm of Memories stage is awesome, awesome, awesome! Great idea, nice way to celebrate the Anniversary, lots of cool and crazy stuff. The name is absolutely fitting, because this stage brings back a lot of memories.

So, by now I collected about 27,000 Rupees. Which means the Hero's Trial isn't far, I'm really looking forward to it, I have no clue what to expect except for the room with the many Stalfos. I've heard, that alternatively you can also unlock the Hero's Trial by collecting five Medals of Courage. That sounds fair and this is a good solution. That way the medals still have some value, but you can also unlock everything in singleplayer.

More tomorrow.

Got 3DS

2011-09-30T15:44:00.009+02:00

Say hello to my shiny new blood red 3DS:

It's a real beauty. I'm happy that I waited for the red one, so I could compare all three colors at the store. And there's no question that the red one easily tops the other two colors, boring black and everyone's blue. The photo above or any images in the internet for that matter doesn't do it justice, it looks totally awesome in real. Thousand thanks to jsf132 from the comments, who inspired me to wait for the red one!!

I was also stupid enough to buy a screen protector. I hate those things, it's absolutely impossible to install it without getting any dust between the screen and the protector. And I'm a very clean person, but it's very hard to get it right, you have to be quick and very lucky.

For now the 3DS' battery is loading and the weather is so awesome, that I won't be playing until later this evening. But I guess I will check out Ocarina of Time 3D first for a short session only to dedicate myself to Four Swords AE later. Four Swords is more interesting at the moment, because that's the game with the actual new content. I want to play the Hero's Trial and the Realm of Memories. Ocarina's Hyrule with some flowers added to the fields can wait.

But it's somehow ironic, that in the end the game that got me to buy a 3DS is a free 2D game and not some big retail 3D title.

The 3DS also gives me the possibility of checking out the multiplayer mode of Spirit Tracks for the first time, as well as easy Big Play farming in Phantom Hourglass. So, there's even more Zelda stuff to do, but this will have to wait until I'm done with both Four Swords AE and Ocarina of Time 3D.

I also bought DOA: Dimensions today. That's the boob game from Team Ninja that got the Metroid: Other M bonus stage. I also got all DOA games for the XBox and I liked them (yes, I'm a pervert, but who doesn't like boobs?), so this was a game I was going to buy anyhow. However, I probably won't be playing this until later, I only bought this right now to still catch some of the free DLC before it's gone. I don't want to miss that sexy white cat costume for Tina, right...? :D

But my D-Pad sucks. It makes weird squeaking sounds and sometimes feels a little stiff. It's aweful to play Four Swords with this...

Zelda Galaxy Confirmed

2011-09-29T20:39:00.003+02:00

Last year I started to fear, that Skyloft would result in some sort of Zelda Galaxy setting. Instead of a real overworld, you're getting the sky world as a hub and separate areas below. Now NGamer confirmed this. According to them the sky realm is the true overworld while Hyrule is made up of self-contained hubs.

Now the Japanese Skyward Sword site shows some sort of teaser map:

You have Skyloft in the center and massive areas around it. It sort of reminds me of Majora's Mask, where you got Clocktown in the center and one of the four different main areas in each cardinal direction. With the big difference, that the areas are self-contained this time.

On the bright side it seems that the areas will be MASSIVE. We already heard that you can spent hours in one area until you reach a dungeon. It might be that one area is already so large, that it makes you forget that there's actually more to the world. And the above map probably isn't all there is. We already saw, that there will be the forest, the vulcano and a desert area. But I doubt that this will be the end of it. Don't you think that there will be some ice area for example? And I still want my massive graveyard area! And look how the area in the east and the area in the west seem to be quite close. Maybe there's a connection there. And even if the three areas are completely independent, compare it to having three overworlds instead of just one.

Right now it might look like Zelda Galaxy, but I think the game still might be able to surprise us here.

Skyward Sword Overload

2011-09-29T20:15:00.006+02:00

Kotaku, IGN, NGamer, GameInformer, name them... right now it seems like everyone got some new exclusive coverage of Skyward Sword. And the more gets shown, the less I want to see. I'm very excited about this game, but I don't want to get spoiled. Right now you can watch the entire intro sequence and read impressions of the game's first hours. And I don't want to do that. I want to experience this for myself. I want the game to surprise me as much as possible. I want to explore Skyloft on my own and not watch some IGN guru doing the job for me. So, this is it, from now on I will keep my Skyward Sword input to a minimum. I will try to catch some interesting stuff here and there, but that's it. And after all this is a blog and not a news site, there are tons of Zelda news sites out there, no need for another one.

But let's take a look at some stuff. IGN released three new trailers. The second one is really interesting, because it fully supports my recent article about how adorable the new Zelda is and that she is someone, who you really want to save. In this trailer it looks like she's actually you're big love interest in this game. Before she gets abducted, you get to spend some time with her and you get really close to her. And she's very lovely... well, Nintendo uses the "princess gets abducted" scenario very often in their games, but this might be the first time, that you as the player develop a real motivation to save the princess. And I'm looking forward to this.

And according to NGamer this is the toughest Zelda game yet. Maybe NGamer never played Zelda II, but who knows...? They also reported that you can get cornered by four Stalfos at once. Sounds thrilling. I'm looking forward to some good challenge.

And the sword tutorial is very similar to the one in Majora's Mask, there's a sword dojo and lots of logs.