Two years ago I've been an advocate for a Zelda Smartphone game, where I even was quite excited about the possibility, mainly for three different reasons:
By now only the last point still stands. So, what happened?
Well, first of all, Link's Awakening happened. I was afraid that after Breath of the Wild Nintendo will mainly focus on a sequel (and they probably do), while the classic 2D Zelda experiences will be pushed to the sidelines. But of course the Switch is both a home console and a handheld, so it should be home to both 2D and 3D Zelda experiences, where GREZZO has now provided a charming remake of the GameBoy classic, which looks really beautiful and plays nicely as well.
This is where the future of 2D Zelda is at and not on smart devices with touch controls. A smartphone Zelda game will now only look bad in comparison... And there is tons of potential for follow-ups here: remakes of the Oracle games, a new single player Zelda game and some project that focuses on dungeon building and/or multiplayer. All of this possible and might come to the Nintendo Switch in the next couple of years.
At the same time I'm still quite happy with Fire Emblem: Heroes on my smartphone, which keeps me more than busy whenever I'm on the go. Even if it's more or less doing my daily "Fire Emblem chores", it's still entertaining enough to be enjoyable. But I can't say the same about Nintendo's recent smartphone outings in 2019...
Dr. Mario World was alright, but the way it limits playing and the slow Gacha killed my motivation after a while. It also didn't play as nicely as Fire Emblem: Heroes, because you often have to swipe your capsules all over the screen, which only works well if you're sitting perfectly still (and not in a bus or a tram). And to make things worse it requires a constant internet connection, even during the plays. In a time trial level the timer would even keep running, while the game freezes, whenever you're out of 4G. And this isn't acceptable for a mobile game.
So, Dr. Mario World was quite disappointing and I've stopped playing it, but at least I've still got the game installed just in case. Which is more than I can say about Mario Kart: Tour. As a fan of the series I was looking forward to this one, but it's just a horrible mess and everything that's wrong with smartphone games. The controls are bad and asking players for monthly paid subscriptions for the full experience is a giant rip-off, especially when you combine this with Gacha as well.
The worst about it is all the effort they put into making new courses and drivers. It's a lot of stuff that should have been DLC for Mario Kart 8 (Deluxe), which I gladly would have purchased, but instead it's all made for possibly the worst Mario Kart yet. And this stings.
The quality of Nintendo's mobile games really went down the gutter. And at this point I'm not sure I would want something like that for Zelda, where I guess most of you have arrived at that point long before me. Luckily, Fire Emblem: Heroes is still good and keeps me entertained, so I don't really need another mobile game. While its monetization is still horribly overpriced, at least I never felt the need to put any money into this game (which sucks for Nintendo and Intelligent Systems, but it's really their own fault with those orb prices).
So, the only thing that we would be missing out on is a Zelda game, which gets regular content updates over a longer period of time. Of course that's possible for a Nintendo Switch Zelda game as well, especially if they do something level-based like a dungeon maker or a multiplayer Zelda, but the past has shown that Nintendo isn't all that interested in updating Zelda games with new contents, outside of a few DLCs for a few months. Most Nintendo games don't even get DLCs beyond their first year. They could have kept adding to Breath of the Wild, but instead they've chosen to put their DLC efforts into a sequel (the Wii U version was probably a factor here, though).
It's still possible, but not as likely as with a mobile game. And in the end most Zelda fans want to enjoy a complete package anyway, so it wouldn't necessarily be a big loss.
- It would keep topdown Zelda alive.
- I've been enjoying Nintendo's mobile games for Android/iOS.
- It would most likely get regular updates for new contents.
By now only the last point still stands. So, what happened?
Well, first of all, Link's Awakening happened. I was afraid that after Breath of the Wild Nintendo will mainly focus on a sequel (and they probably do), while the classic 2D Zelda experiences will be pushed to the sidelines. But of course the Switch is both a home console and a handheld, so it should be home to both 2D and 3D Zelda experiences, where GREZZO has now provided a charming remake of the GameBoy classic, which looks really beautiful and plays nicely as well.
This is where the future of 2D Zelda is at and not on smart devices with touch controls. A smartphone Zelda game will now only look bad in comparison... And there is tons of potential for follow-ups here: remakes of the Oracle games, a new single player Zelda game and some project that focuses on dungeon building and/or multiplayer. All of this possible and might come to the Nintendo Switch in the next couple of years.
At the same time I'm still quite happy with Fire Emblem: Heroes on my smartphone, which keeps me more than busy whenever I'm on the go. Even if it's more or less doing my daily "Fire Emblem chores", it's still entertaining enough to be enjoyable. But I can't say the same about Nintendo's recent smartphone outings in 2019...
Dr. Mario World was alright, but the way it limits playing and the slow Gacha killed my motivation after a while. It also didn't play as nicely as Fire Emblem: Heroes, because you often have to swipe your capsules all over the screen, which only works well if you're sitting perfectly still (and not in a bus or a tram). And to make things worse it requires a constant internet connection, even during the plays. In a time trial level the timer would even keep running, while the game freezes, whenever you're out of 4G. And this isn't acceptable for a mobile game.
So, Dr. Mario World was quite disappointing and I've stopped playing it, but at least I've still got the game installed just in case. Which is more than I can say about Mario Kart: Tour. As a fan of the series I was looking forward to this one, but it's just a horrible mess and everything that's wrong with smartphone games. The controls are bad and asking players for monthly paid subscriptions for the full experience is a giant rip-off, especially when you combine this with Gacha as well.
The worst about it is all the effort they put into making new courses and drivers. It's a lot of stuff that should have been DLC for Mario Kart 8 (Deluxe), which I gladly would have purchased, but instead it's all made for possibly the worst Mario Kart yet. And this stings.
The quality of Nintendo's mobile games really went down the gutter. And at this point I'm not sure I would want something like that for Zelda, where I guess most of you have arrived at that point long before me. Luckily, Fire Emblem: Heroes is still good and keeps me entertained, so I don't really need another mobile game. While its monetization is still horribly overpriced, at least I never felt the need to put any money into this game (which sucks for Nintendo and Intelligent Systems, but it's really their own fault with those orb prices).
So, the only thing that we would be missing out on is a Zelda game, which gets regular content updates over a longer period of time. Of course that's possible for a Nintendo Switch Zelda game as well, especially if they do something level-based like a dungeon maker or a multiplayer Zelda, but the past has shown that Nintendo isn't all that interested in updating Zelda games with new contents, outside of a few DLCs for a few months. Most Nintendo games don't even get DLCs beyond their first year. They could have kept adding to Breath of the Wild, but instead they've chosen to put their DLC efforts into a sequel (the Wii U version was probably a factor here, though).
It's still possible, but not as likely as with a mobile game. And in the end most Zelda fans want to enjoy a complete package anyway, so it wouldn't necessarily be a big loss.
Not unhappy at all about the lack of Smartphone Zelda. Fire Emblem Heroes I can somewhat accept, even though I don't play it, because I think it helped increase the Fire Emblem series' popularity. With Three Houses being as big a hit as it was last year (you playing that btw? you should, it's great!), I'm fairly certain that FE: Heroes had quite a noticeable part in that game being as successful as it is. Zelda on the other hand doesn't need any of that.
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