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This is probably my favorite dungeon in the game, and my favorite in any of the gameboy Zeldas. It ditches the usual "key hunt" model in favor of the entire dungeon being one big puzzle around getting the ball to the four columns. The whole mechanic around standing on the switch blocks blew my mind as a kid, both in terms of how many mechanics it integrated and that it was effectively 3D gameplay in a gameboy game. It'd be difficult to understand but all of the mechanics (minus hitting a switch while standing on the blocks) are taught in one room of the previous dungeon. 
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Oct 17, 2018 04:30
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Truthkeeper posted:I'm surprised Pacci's stick is getting so much grief. This is Zelda, a series all about filling your inventory with stuff to solve puzzles and maybe you'll use it for something else once or twice. They're not all going to be the hookshot or the seed shooter, most of them will be the blue candle. I think Minish Cap's item problem can't be understood in a vacuum. Other games have had items that are a pretty blatant "this is the red key that opens the red lock" (the level 2 glove and mirror shield in LA are obvious examples). The issue is that those games had puzzle design outside of that, while in Minish Cap "use the red key on the red lock" is all there is to the puzzle and Ezlo will helpfully ask you "have you tried using the RED KEY on the RED LOCK?" as soon as you enter the room. A good question to ask is whether you have to think about how to use an item to solve a puzzle. Compare bombs in Minish Cap to bombs in Breath of the Wild: in Minish Cap bombs are almost always a key used to open a clearly marked door type (with the occasional "find the door from context clues" puzzle) while in Breath of the Wild bombs are almost always a puzzle element (what and when do you break? how do you get the bomb to it? do you need to hit a switch? in what order?). Minish Cap feels like an attempt to input a mix of old and new items into an increasingly rounded off and less understood "Zelda formula" without thinking about what makes the games appealing (combat, puzzles, exploration). Fortunately it seems like they realized this recently and we've had things like "what if we played with the formula" (Link Between Worlds) and "what if we threw out the formula" (Breath of the Wild).
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Dec 9, 2018 16:43
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Explopyro posted:I might have more to say about Phantom Hourglass later; it's honestly a pretty forgettable game, even though it's perfectly fine to play and the control scheme (while weird and awkward in places) works better than I think anyone expected it to (even if, overall, I'd still prefer a more standard control scheme). I think the plot decisions were also pretty bizarre, doing a direct sequel without bothering to actually build on anything from the previous game. You could argue Majora's Mask did a similar thing, but at least that had a lot of interesting things to say on its own and a compelling atmosphere; I think PH sort of wanted to be MM but didn't know how to recapture the important aspects of what that game did. It's a pretty amazing technical achievement that they were able to implement a by-the-numbers Zelda game entirely using mobile phone controls. Skysword, Phourglass, and Soul Train all seem to come from an era where they realized they had no idea what to do with the Zelda formula and were frantically bolting bad control scheme gimmicks onto otherwise mediocre games.
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Jan 2, 2019 02:13
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CPColin posted:Wow, that dungeon is a linear-rear end snoozefest. I don't think it's a bad idea to break the pattern one or two mostly linear "gauntlet" dungeons, especially if they lean into the theme by being a constant ascent or descent. The problem is that this dungeon type relies entirely on combat encounters and single-room puzzles which are Minish Cap's greatest weakness. Like the Ice Palace in Link to the Past is incredibly memorable but that's because it backs up the theme of a greuling descent into an icy hell by making you fight fast-moving enemies that deal four hearts of damage while dodging projectiles and environmental hazards on slippery ice floors.
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Jan 12, 2019 04:09
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C-Euro posted:I really like the first form of this boss. I'm a big fan of the "rotating orbs that sometimes stop and shoot lasers" boss design. I mean it's good to have options
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Jan 23, 2019 06:25
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Commander Keene posted:Kinstones definitely weren't implemented very well. Otherwise, I'd agree with Thorn, that it's probably one of the best of the portable Zeldas, despite my personal fondness for the Oracle games. The problem with kinstones is that they effectively triple the amount of work in the challenge->reward loop. First you find a kinstone, they you fuse the kinstone, then you go to the marked location to collect the reward (which may be another kinstone). One of these steps may involve a challenge but it's mostly tedium. I guess the idea of whether Minish Cap is one of the best of the 2D Zeldas or one of the worst depends on how you value polish versus ambition. They might not satisfy the desire for exploration, combat, or puzzles, but the art and design displays an absolute mastery of the craft. Although much of the variance between best and worst here likely comes from the fact that all the 2D Zeldas are fantastic (note that I didn't say portable, Phourglass and Soul Train)
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Jan 27, 2019 15:23
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One of the other things I remembered is that at the beginning of the LP one of the comments noted that the game gets some credit for having a new antagonist...except that Vaati is for the most part a more generic OoT Gannondorf. It sort of goes with the problem of plugging new gimmicks/items/characters into the formula instead of shaking up the formula itself.
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Feb 7, 2019 23:52
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FoolyCharged posted:Eh, ganondorph was an evil king that took over the world. Vaati was a nobody gnome that used a fancy hat to gain unimaginable power. The only real similarity is wanting the macguffin to obtain godhood. There are flavor differences, but both games tell the same smug rear end in a top hat to ancient evil origin story. Obviously evil wizard shows up at Hyrule Castle under friendly pretexts, betrays them, afflicts Zelda with a mineralogical impediment, takes over Hyrule Castle, and turns into a big inhuman monster before being sealed for later games via the
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Feb 8, 2019 06:40
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 12:23 |
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Commander Keene posted:Either short hops or wavedashing depending upon momentum.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R20MXVdGUQ
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Feb 18, 2019 03:32
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