Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

La-mulana. The PC remake.

FYI, Viy is a jerk.

Still Phoenix Wright Trilogy, but in a very slow mode ! First game and last "trial" only !

Wolf Bird wrote:I hear good things about the FE games, yet somehow I just can't work up the interest to try one. In any case, I hope you enjoy it.

I started Ocarina of Time 3D a few nights ago. I have this weird thing with Zelda...all the individual elements that go into Zelda are generally things I love. On paper, I should really enjoy Zelda games. Yet, somehow, it seems every time the ingredients are strung together something gets lost along the way and I lose interest. I have yet to beat a single Zelda game in my life because I just stop caring, stop having fun and put it down.

Let's see if Ocarina can change that.

I hope Ocarina does change that for you. My first Zelda game was A Link to the Past. I liked it, but I wouldn't have played that game on my own. When I saw that I got Ocarina for a present years and years back, I thought that I wouldn't like it because of ALttP, but in instead I fell in love with it after a few hours. I found it the perfect example of what an adventure-rpg should be: I loved the story that spanned through time; I loved the quirky and cute characters, I loved the music, I liked the battle (definitely dated compared to modern Zelda though); and the creativity of the world and dungeons. I like Ocarina and Majora's Mask a lot more than any of the other Zelda's, even if they are technically better on paper. But that's me ranting. Ocarina is a ten year old game, so there's definitely going to be a lot to be desired if you have never played it before.

@Myau56: Oh my gosh, I'm at the same spot in Phoenix Wright! We have to hurry and finish--I heard that there is an anime coming out.

Well, I am playing the updated 3DS version, which as I understand, does make minor changes/improvements to gameplay. I'm not too far in yet, and have not rendered my harsh but fair judgement either way. We'll see. It really is perplexing to me since as I said, all the ingredients are there, and of course I really love games like Okami that definitely are very inspired by the Zelda model. But on the other hand, if something doesn't interest me, it doesn't interest me, and I can't really force it.

@Myau56: Oh my gosh, I'm at the same spot in Phoenix Wright! We have to hurry and finish--I heard that there is an anime coming out.

Ah ! I've already finished (quasi) all of the Phoenix Wright games but I love to play them again as it's one of my favourite video game serie ! And play in french then in English (whin I can ! ). Yes I've heard about the anime ! And the 6th one !

I'm going through Majora's Mask 3D right now.

Like I said before, I never liked it growing up and preferred Ocarina of Time over it. That said, I am enjoying it now (and still do prefer Ocarina over Majora), but I do appreciate it and understand why people overwhelmingly liked Majora's Mask over Ocarina of Time.

Bombchu bowling can still go straight to hell, though. Other than that, I enjoy Majora's gameplay over Ocarina's, but I think Ocarina had the better story.

WB: Least-noticed change from Ocarina of Time to Ocarina of Time 3D: Adult Link twirls his sword if you leave him alone for a few seconds. (Because his descendant has the same habit in Twilight Princess/Twilight Princess HD.)

Wolf Bird wrote:Well, I am playing the updated 3DS version, which as I understand, does make minor changes/improvements to gameplay. I'm not too far in yet, and have not rendered my harsh but fair judgement either way. We'll see. It really is perplexing to me since as I said, all the ingredients are there, and of course I really love games like Okami that definitely are very inspired by the Zelda model. But on the other hand, if something doesn't interest me, it doesn't interest me, and I can't really force it.

I think there's a very important part to video game design that doesn't get talked about a lot, and that's flow. How well a game flows from one part to another. This is really important for beefier, lengthier games that go on 60+ hours - if the momentum of the game halts all the time then grinding through it is a hard thing to ask of the player.

I've always felt a lot of Zelda games just don't have good flow and I kind of have to force myself to get through the games. Compare to this to like, Phantasy Star IV whose best asset is probably how smoothly the game flows from one part to another.

Hukos wrote:I think there's a very important part to video game design that doesn't get talked about a lot, and that's flow. How well a game flows from one part to another. This is really important for beefier, lengthier games that go on 60+ hours - if the momentum of the game halts all the time then grinding through it is a hard thing to ask of the player.

I've always felt a lot of Zelda games just don't have good flow and I kind of have to force myself to get through the games. Compare to this to like, Phantasy Star IV whose best asset is probably how smoothly the game flows from one part to another.

Hukos, I think you're onto something with flow. I read this before sitting down with OoT for a few hours tonight, and as I played, I was thinking about this quite a lot. It seems to me that Zelda games are often a bit unclear on purpose, and while that can make you a think a bit about what to do/where to go next and make the player explore, it can also end up making the player run in circles and just experiment until something works. For some people, that's fine and all well and good, but it can also be pretty flow-breaking. And in my action-ish RPGs, where my gold standard is Okami and my silver standard is Crusader of Centy, I like flow. Okami and CoC both have flow - sure, they generally make it clear where to go next and give you a sense of what to do, but I guess I prefer some clarity of direction for the sake of momentum than being obtuse to make the player explore to figure out what's next. I don't need hand-holding (though I don't think that's necessarily and always bad thing), but enough direction from the outset to keep the momentum going would be good. I can't help but agree with you that flow is a bit lacking in OoT, and maybe that in general is what keeps killing Zelda games for me. I don't mind a game making me think and solve puzzles, but like any other element of game design, it is not inherently good nor bad, but depends on how it's used, fits into the larger picture and what the game is trying to accomplish.

I haven't given up on OoT yet, but it is running out of time to get me invested enough to finish to the end. I do lack nostalgia for this title having not grown up with an N64, so it may be getting hurt on that front too. For me, retro (permit me to define that as "games from the N64/PSX/Dreamcast era and back") 2D sidescrollers/platformers and JRPGs age better and I find them consistently more enjoyable from a 2016 standpoint when compared to other genres, especially early 3D titles which I find often age the worst, and that may be a third front on which OoT is hurting for me.

It may also not be getting helped by the fact that I finally finished my data gathering and now have several half-started Steam games that I really want to finish, including Bioshock Infinite, Wolfenstein: The New Order and the DLC campaigns for Shadow of Mordor.

I think there's a difference between nudging a player in the right direction versus hitting them across the head with a forced tutorial. Subtlety is still a thing you know? There's nothing wrong with giving a couple of subtle hints here and there. Even something like an NPC saying "Oh hey I know there's something suspicious in that cave halfway across the world." is fine to me.

The breaking point comes when the game drags you along and keeps telling you that over and over again like you're three years old. If there's anything that can get me to want to quit any kind of medium, its the when authors start disrespecting their audience and treating them like they're idiots. That's a quick ride to nopeville for me. But in between those, there's a lot of wiggle room.

I think this is why I really prefer 2d platformers to 3d ones. Even something like Banjo Kazooie has moments where I've forgotten one specific note and it kills the flow trying to find it.

I think the other thing that kills Zelda games for me is the lack of characters - as in Link, Zelda, et. al. are not characterized beyond "thems the good guys, thems the bad guys." They have basically no personality. They're bland and show about as much character and emotional depth as a plain plastic picnic plate with some baby carrots glued to it in lieu of a face. I know that's a Nintendo thing to help the player project, but in an action-RPG game that's trying to have an actual story like Zelda, characterized characters are very helpful in bringing the world and story to life and getting me to care. In a game like this, lack of actual characters doesn't work for me, and you have to make up for it with something.

I hear you on 3D platformers - many of those are hit or miss, and the "Oh I missed just one ______" can be aggravatingly flow breaking.

I'll probably play more OoT today, but this weekend is likely to be its make-or-break time.