The Wind Waker HD Logbook, Day 2

Last night I kept playing until Jabun. In the Forbidden Woods I really like the rooms, where the sunshine falls in. The other rooms didn't look that great, especially with the all the fake lighting. I wished they would have opened up all of the dungeon's ceiling and let sun cast light in all rooms.

Hero Mode gave me a good time in this dungeon, for some reason I struggled quite a lot with the first double Moblin fight. I stil haven't died yet and at the point, where I am now in the game, I doubt, I'll ever will, but it's a lot tougher than the original game. Health can become a problem and you need to be prepared (or really good).

The Forbidden Tingle Statue inside Forbidden Woods can actually be gotten without bombs. There's a Bomb Flower in the room right above, where the chest would spawn. You can just throw it down (you might have to rebound it from the wall) and make the chest appear that way. Which is nice, because you don't have to backtrack there to get the Tingle Statue. You only have to do that with Dragon Roost Cavern. Usually I do like it, when there's backtracking in Zelda, but the entrance of Forbidden Woods is just really inconvenient to get to, so I'm happy about the fact that you don't have to backtrack for the statue.

Usually, in Zelda games I try to do sidequests as early as possible. For me it's a kind of memory training. I try to remember where I can what at every point in the game. And I pick things like Pieces of Heart up as soon as I can. However, The Wind Waker is one of the few exceptions here. Right after the Forbidden Woods, the entire world opens up. You can go everywhere (with the exception of Forsaken Fortress, I think). And there's something to do on every island. You can even get your first Triforce Shard right away. On the one hand this is pretty exciting for me and this is one of the things that really make The Wind Waker great. However, it's so much more convenient to wait until you get bombs and some other gear, because you can do more things at once at the individual islands and maybe even be done with one area in one run.

So, I continued the main quest until Jabun. Did the 999 hits on Orca though. Get the aweful stuff done early. This was also the last thing I did last night in zombie mode, before I fell asleep...

Today I continued the main quest right away and beat Tower of Gods. After this I started sidequesting. Usually just travelling, completing the maps, collecting Light Rings, conquering some platforms and visiting some islands (mostly the Fairy Islands). It seems like I have been right and all Light Rings now give you 50 Rupee. I guess, this makes them more worthwhile. However, there are still platforms, where you have to destroy four cannons, climb the thing, beat four monsters and in the end you get a 20 Rupees or a Boko Baba Seed... if anything they should have added more to the platforms instead of the Light Rings. They did add two new Treasure Charts (43 and 44, I even found 44 today) on platforms, but that's it. But those Light Rings give you so many Rupees... I have only gotten two or three big treasures yet, still I was able to effort everything in the golden Beedle shop... 50 Rupees per Light Ring is insane.

Also, the boat controls are somewhat messed up. Sometimes it's like they don't react in time. I'm cruising the boat to change my locations to the right spot, but the crane won't come out...! Then the boat keeps cruising, so that I miss the spot again. On the GameCube, the boat would stop instantly whenever you brought the crane up. And I really miss that, salvaging is kind of a hassle sometimes now. Also, the cannon does the same strange thing, where I want to put it away, but it doesn't react at all. I keep hitting the button, but nothing happens. I think this happens, whenever you cruise (steering the boat without a sail).

I also don't like that you aim with the right analog stick now. If you have the Bow or the Boomerang assigned to X or Y, you can't shoot and aim at the same time. It's very inconvenient. Of course there's the gyro aiming, which is good, but in Ocarina of Time 3D I preferred to use a mix of both. I would use the slide pad, whenever I needed to make big movements, and then use the gyro aiming for precision. Works just fine. But not in The Wind Waker HD thanks to the messed up control scheme. And if you use the Pro Controller, there's no gyro aiming and aiming gets very problematic. And why? Just because Nintendo thought you needed some FPS mode? They did change a lot of the controls from the GameCube version and I have a hard time adopting to them... In first person mode it might even happen that I accidentally walk off a ledge, because I still think that the left analog stick does the aiming. It would have been better if they let you toggle what the left analog stick does by pressing L. Simply press L when you want to walk around. Or include options for a classic Wind Waker control scheme.

Here are my Miiverse posts from today:

• Forbidden Tingle Statue 1
• Forbidden Tingle Statue 2
• Kalle Demos Figurine
• Big Octo Figurine (Missable!)
• Just had to...
• Tetra's Cabin
• Cyclos Figurine (Missable!)
• Goddess Tingle Statue 1
• Goddess Tingle Statue 2
• Darknut Figurine
• Gohdan Figurine
• Link Statue!
• Master Sword 1
• Master Sword 2
• Treasure Chart #44

The Wind Waker HD Logbook, Day 1

Played many hours today, I'm currently at the entrance of the Forbidden Woods, though I've done pretty much all available sidequests up to this point, which is why it took so long.

I'm not a big fan of the Wii U GamePad so far. It's quite heavy, playing with this thing for longer time periods is quite uncomfortable. And Zelda is a game, which you want to play for longer time periods. Also, it's not as helpful as I thought it would be. Changing your view between the TV screen and the GamePad can be confusing, it's not like with the 3DS, where both screens are right next to each other. You have to refocus your eyes constantly, which can cause disorientation in the game. I even switched to the GamePad only mode a couple of times, because it was more comfortable playing that way.

The Hero Mode does its job, at least early in the game it's quite challenging. Unlike in Skyward Sword here are rarely chances to heal yourself, in Skyward Sword you could heal while sitting, which made the Hero Mode there pretty easy, but you don't have this option in The Wind Waker. This must have been the first time, where the rats, who sell you Red Potions in Dragon Roost Cavern are actually useful and come at the right time. Also, it's a good move to assemble one additional Heart Container before Dragon Roost. It's doable, you can find one Piece of Heart at the Forsaken Fortress, you get one from the Killer Bees, one from Salvatore and one at Pawprint Island. You just have to make sure not to miss any. And at Forest Haven you can easily farm Blue Potions by giving the one Korok four Boko Baba Seeds. You even get your first additional bottle in the Submarine near Bomb Island. So, there's some strategy to overcome this.

I do like collecting the Tingle Bottles, but so far I haven't got any good messages yet. I for myself try to be useful, my first Miiverse message was an image of Kogoli (don't know if he's still missable, but just in case) and my second one was Gohma. Hopefully some people can make use of that.

I got the Swift Sail right after Dragon Roost Cavern, but not just that, I bought every other auction item as well... I got so much money so early in the game, it's not even funny. How? They changed the Light Rings! In the original those lose treasures mostly gave you only 20 Rupees, sometimes 50. Now it seems like they ALL give you 50. At least every Light Ring between Windfall and Dragon Roost and between Dragon Roost and Forest Haven gave me 50 Rupees. That's 700 Rupees already just from the first areas! I think, noone has reported this change yet.

However, there was one Light Ring from the chart, which I couldn't find. I don't know if this an error with the guide or if they removed this Light Ring. It's the one southeast of Dragon Roost. It might be that they removed some... I'll continue to investigate this.

The Swift Sail comes with a disadvantage. It's naturally harder to steer with this thing. I thought picking up the Tingle Bottles would be easier with this, but it's quite the opposite. I usually have to switch back to the normal sail to make precise movements. I think they removed the small boost that you got, when you equipped the sail. In the original The Wind Waker you would repeatedly turn the sail on and off to move faster, this doesn't work anymore. However, it seems to work with the Swift Sail. The Swift Sail seems to have some starting boost to it, so I think it's faster to mash A with this thing.

With the early Pictobox you can make pictographs of all Koroks right at the beginning, when they're all still at Forest Haven. I would advise doing so, because it's much easier than when they are all scattered all over the ocean. The Minintendo gallery now is a dream. It's nice to know in advance, when a shot is great, especially with bosses and other quick moving enemies. And that Carlov takes up to 12 pictures at once, makes it even better. No more playing Song of Passing hundreds of times. 12 Pictographs feels like the right number, you can usually cover everything inside one dungeon or an area with 12 pictures. The only exception would be Windfall and maybe Dragon Roost, but every other place can be done in one run.

Got The Wind Waker HD Wii U Premium Bundle + Limited Edition

Feels like Christmas. That's a lot of Zelda stuff at once and that's not even half of the Zelda merchandise coming out this year. But let's get this out of the way: if it wasn't for the limited stuff, I wouldn't have bought the game or the Wii U right now. I really bought all of this for the strictly limited Ganondorf figurine and the somewhat limited Wii U Zelda GamePad.

The GamePad itself is pretty heavy, much larger than expected. Buttons feel large and good. The Zelda design looks really good in real, similar the limited Zelda Nintendo 3DS those are not simple decals or sticker, it's high quality. And it goes really well along the Nintendo 3DS in the same style, like brother and sister:

I got the worst part behind me by installing the screen protector right away. Unlike with the NDS and 3DS there are official screen protectors from Nintendo and the screen is quite larger and a big target to bad stuff, so with this Limited Edition GamePad I really wanted to keep it safe. I hate installing these things, because it's hard to get it done without dust beneath it. I'm a very clean person and even cleaned my entire appartment yesterday, so everything would be as sterile as possible, but there's no escape from dust. I hate dust. But Nintendo added adhesive tapes to their package, which helps cleaning the screen from dust. And installing the protector went quite well, a lot better than the 3rd party protectors for the DS systems. So, I really advice buying the official screen protector, it's a lot better than the crap, I used to deal with on NDS and 3DS. My Zelda 3DS doesn't even have a protector, because those things are so bad. But I rarely touch the screen of my 3DS anyway and the 3DS Stylus is very soft.

The Ganondorf figurine is... cute... :D It's somewhat smaller than what I expected. But I like that the European version got a dome, which protects it from dust. (Have I mentioned that I hate dust?) Also, the European version has a dual sided cover, the other side shows the original artwork of the Ganondorf battle. I think the US version doesn't have the dual cover nor the dome. This let's me forget that they did have the digital version + console two weeks ago.


Haven't had the chance to play The Wind Waker HD yet, because the Wii U is still updating. I also had trouble with the system STAYING online, it connected, but disconnected after a while and then was unable to reconnected. Turned out manually setting up the security type did the job. I should be playing in a couple of minutes, so expect my first daily report from the game later on.

Aonuma Explains the Rental System in A Link Between Worlds

From Miiverse:

Hi everyone, I'm Eiji Aonuma from Nintendo.

Fans in Europe will have to wait a little longer, but it makes me happy to see so many of you using the Tingle Bottle feature to post in-game messages in The Wind Waker HD community. So thank you!

In today's Nintendo Direct, we revealed the name of the character in the A Link Between Worlds screenshot I posted here last time. His name is Ravio, and we also announced that you can rent and purchase items from his shop. You may be wondering what in the world we mean by "renting" items. Well, let me explain.

In Ravio's shop, each of the items you can use in the game are on display from the beginning. But Ravio only has one of each item in stock, so if he sells them he'll go bust! For this reason, he set the purchase price for each item at an outrageously high rate. Unfortunately, that means Link can't move forward and Ravio can't sustain his business, so he decided to start renting the items at reasonable prices. The rental period for each item is unlimited, so you can rent them for as long as you’d like, but if Link falls during his adventure and it's game over, the items will be returned to the shop. If you want to continue playing, you'll have to rent them again. After a while, you can eventually purchase the items, and once you do, you'll be able to keep using them even if you game over.

This may seem similar to the three day system in Majora's Mask where all your items are lost when you reach the end of the third day, but you'll be able to rent every item from the beginning if you can afford it. So unlike past Zelda games, you won't run into a scenario where you can't do something because you need a certain item that won’t be available until later. I hope all of you will experiment with many different items and play as you like.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds comes out on November 22nd. There’s still a lot more information to come, so please stay tuned.

Wait, what? I only lose the rented items, when I die? That means I'll never lose them, because when do you actually die in a modern Aonuma Zelda game? The games have been so super easy, most people don't even know how a Game Over in Zelda looks like. Or may it be that they actually amped the difficulty, so that you will die more often? It sounds like it and I hope so, but I also doubt it.

But if the game is as easy as any other Zelda game from the last ten years, the rental system will be a joke. Why should I ever purchase the items (except for completion)?

I thought the "you can only rent one item at a time"-system sounded a lot better.

(The above screenshot now confirms what the icons in the shop mean. The arrow meant that you rented the item and then there's a special "sold out" sign for items, which you have purchased.)


Also.. the comparison to Majora's Mask is "off". You don't lose your items there, the counters for Rupees, Bombs and Arrows just go back to zero and your bottles are emptied. But it seems like Majora's Mask is really on their minds lately, so I'm betting that they're currently working on Majora's Mask 3D.

A Link Between Worlds: Map Revealed

I completely forgot to talk about the map screen, which Nintendo released today, in my last post. But I guess, it's worth it's own (thanks to Lankelink for the reminder). So, here it is:

Topography stayed the same for the most part. But there are some new buildings here and there. Nintendo already showed us the new dungeon on the island at Lake Hylia, which has windmills all over it. Kakariko seems to be missing the houses on the west side and some areas appear to be more "open". We've already seen that there's a new path at the southwest corner of the castle directly going to Kakariko for example, but the entire forest west of Hyrule Castle seems to be gone (maybe it got lumbered... or it might be that it just appears that way on the map, you can't see anything at the graveyard as well for example). And the witch hut now seems to be a witch tower, or at least it's somewhat bigger.

The desert seems to have the biggest changes, it even appears to be shut off. It might be that this time it's the opposite to A Link to the Past. In the SNES game the Swamp of Evil, where the Misery Mire dungeon is located, was completely shut off from the rest of the Dark World. And the only way to get there was through a portal from the desert. It could be that this time the Swamp of Evil is the area with an entrance and you can only enter the desert in the Light World with a portal from the Swamp of Evil. Or it might be that there are special paths on the cliffs, which you can only use as a painting. Or you enter the desert with the caves that are right next to each other.

It's hard to make out stuff on this map. But what's more interesting for now is the stuff around the map. The button on the bottom right seems to be a switch between Light and Dark World. And we can also see the Lantern, the propeller wind rod thingy and the Master Sword equipped on the right side. But then there's this red pin with a 20 next to it. Could this be a collectible? And there's a mysterious shell creature button above the pin. Could this be another collectible?

Maybe you have to collect shell creatures (similar to Gold Skulltulas or Poe Souls) and the button shows you, where you already found some (which would be really handy in combination with a guide). I don't know what the pins could be for. Maybe you can mark locations on your map, but you're limited to 20 markings. But 20 is a lot. Skyward Sword gave you 5 or so and it was more than enough.

Also, there's this bell in the bottom left corner of the menu, which appears to be its own sub menu next to the items and the gear screen. Maybe it's Miiverse related? The 3DS is getting Miiverse in the next update and it would be a shame, if A Link Between Worlds would leave it out after how greatly Miiverse integration proved itself with The Wind Waker HD.

Lots of mysterious things here. I'm excited to learn more.

The Legend of Hilda: A Ravio Between Shops

Hah, ... what a day. This always happens, when Nintendo does a new Nintendo Direct... information overload. I was expecting some clarification on the whole item shop thing, but we got so much more than just that. A fat Zora queen, a black haired version of Zelda named Hilda, a new Maple, a female Ganondorf and something that appears to be Link's entire family...

Where to start? Well, let's start with Ravio's item shop, who only got "unintentionally inspired" by Nabbit. It finally got confirmed that the whole thing lets you chose the order of dungeons in the game. Finally some non-linearity! I was hoping for this for a while now. Interestingly you can't purchase the items right away, but only rent them.

This is another thing that reminds me of Ancient Stone Tablets. If you don't know, what I'm talking about, Ancient Stone Tablets was a Japanese exclusive Zelda title that got released for the Broadcast Satellaview expansion for the Super Nintendo. In this game they reused the overworld of A Link to the Past to make a new game that takes place some time after A Link to the Past. There are some changes and additions to the overworld including dungeons in new places. And there's a rental shop at Link's house, which lets you rent the Shovel, the Power Glove and a sword upgrade... Sounds familiar, doesn't it? There are many parallels between Ancient Stone Tablets and A Link Between Worlds. But since rarely anyone knows the first game, this will hardly get noticed.

I wonder how the renting will work in this case. With Ancient Stone Tablets the game had a clock and the renting was time based. But this doesn't work here, the items can't just go away after 10 minutes. Or is it more like that you can only rent one item at a time? So, if you want to rent the Hammer, but you're already renting the Fire Rod, you have to give back the Fire Rod first. I guess, this would make the most sense.

Of course such a system would limit you to one item at first. But they said that you can fully purchase the item at one point, which lets you keep it forever. It might be that you have to finish the according dungeon first. So, for example the Tower of Hera requires the Hammer, as we already know. And you can purchase the Hammer only after completing the Tower of Hera.

So, the more dungeons you complete, the more items you are allowed to carry at the same time. I guess, that later dungeons will require multiple items at once. They shown statues of the "Wind Rod" propeller item in front of a new windmill dungeon on the island on Lake Hylia indicating that you need the propeller item there. I could imagine that later dungeons will have more than one item shown at the entrace and that the final dungeon has statues of all items in front of it. That would be cool.

By the way, in the Nintendo Direct video you can actually spot Majora's Mask on the right wall of the shop. This is definitely a way better easter egg than yet another picture of Tingle and it also adds to the mystery of Ravio's character, who seems to be a normal human wearing a mask. And as I thought, he's actually living in Link's old house.

But it still seems like the bomb shop in the Dark/Other World will have a similar role. At least its locations gets treated with similar importance in the screenshots:

You can also spot a bird statues next to the houses. I guess, the Ocarina of Wind will return once again and the warp system will work similar to The Minish Cap. Also, it appears that they gave the monsters in the Dark/Other World their own design, which is not ripped from A Link to the Past.


We've also seen a bunch of new characters, which includes a dark haired version of Zelda with a staff with an inverted Triforce on top. She's probably Zelda's counterpart in the Dark/Other World and her name is "Hilda"... Hilda? Really? Zelda and Hilda? What is this, a new episode of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch? Come on!

Talking about witches, there seems to be a new version of Maple, who is called Irene. I really hope that she doesn't drop any random Pieces of Heart this time... :D But there's another witch shown in the artwork, who looks oddly familiar:

Seriously? First a they turn King Zora into a fat ugly queen and now a female Ganondorf? I really hope they don't get too carried away with all the gender bender. And I'm afraid that she will end up being yet another "I have to resurrect Ganon" pawn, but we will see about her. If it's a really she...

Also, there's a picture of what appears to be Link's family:

The father is wearing the same clothes, which Link got in the original screenshot of the item shop:

So, they should be related in a way. Maybe this is his little brother and his parents? Would be a new thing. Even though this contradicts my theory that Link is actually an old painting coming to life in this game. But the small boy also reminds me of the Flute Boy from A Link to the Past.

I have mixed feelings about some of the oddities like the female Ganondorf or Princess Hilda, but overall this games looks really promising. I can't wait to get my hands on it.


I really hope that Nintendo doesn't give us too much more info. I think the current mix of curiosity and mystery is making the game interesting enough. There's still some things, which I would like to learn beforehand, mainly if there's any multiplayer, but overall they shouldn't reveal too much this time. With Skyward Sword they spoiled 90% of the game at beforehand and that was really bad for the game.

Of course you can always just avoid any info from Nintendo. Sadly I do not have thix luxury as a reporter working for a Zelda website. Whatever Nintendo gives us, I have to analyse in great detail at beforehand.

Linkstagram ftw

https://twitter.com/Linkstagram

Just leaving this here. It's absolutely hilarious and shows how great the whole selfie + Miiverse thing really is. Also, Toon Link rulez.