What rob said. Also I've never had any problems with comfort issues or anything. I make typos pretty often but then I just backspace them and it gives my brain a chance to catch up with my fingers.

I wish your shading were more...considered? The rough and scribbleish nature of the shadows I think works to the great detriment of the image. It's something I've noticed in a few of your other "soft shaded" things as well.

or maybe you've just gotten lucky

For the longest time the third image wasn't loading so I thought arma was talking about the first two, which makes no sense. The tiles on the third one do look a little bastionesque...I guess...but yeah that's about it.

and knowing level layouts.

I think that, yes, you should be better at a game because you know its layout, but I don't think not knowing should make you suck. If I'm running into things every ten seconds it doesn't much motivate me to replay the level until I know the location of every obstacle just to be able to play without sucking. I guess some people like that but to me it's just frustrating and makes me not want to play even more.

Donkey Kong Country Returns is pretty flawless, and executed quite well. The boss in the third or fourth world, I don't remember which, was horrible, but the rest of the game (so far!) is really fun and cool.

ah I forgot about this one, I only played it once very briefly but it was pretty fun. Much much better than my memories of the gross old DKCs.

Sonic - what xrabohrok said exactly. Was never fun to me. Playing was always a terrible time. Tried to like, never could. Fucking spikes and walls and shit as soon as I get up to speed. Fucking jumping in directions other than up. Fucking awkward ass low-speed platforming.

Donkey Kong - I like the original. The countries, I could never get past the hideous prerendered graphics. Also, felt like remarkably generic platformers. Though I never really managed to get more than two or three levels in. DK64 was mad awesome, though.

Kirby - I can't really think of anything I dislike about Kirby.

Megaman - Maybe I just don't like blue characters. Aside from not liking the megaman's actual character design I can't think of much I dislike about the actual games, just never managed to get into them.



What I'd change about Sonic:
make it Uniracers with combat and scenery. (keep the tricks)

What I'd change about DK:
Make DK64 2, except yeah maybe with less collecting.

What I'd change about Kirby:
Set it in a huge, open, persistent world, where characters give you quests and you can join/do missions for different factions. Combine up to two powers at a time. Bring back the animal companions from dreamland 3.

What I'd change about Megaman:
Iunno.

ever played the Violinist of Hameln? It's not anything like that but it has a violinist in it.

I'm sorry for eating all of your pie and ice cream

Can we just talk about precious the whole Lump Pumpkin sidequest is? From how it's initiated to how adorable the building is, to balancing pumpkins- seriously, why pumpkins, of all the possible vegetables?

yes, at first I was like '...pumpkins?' but by the end I was like 'pumpkins!' And the quest trigger was pretty great, too. I was like 'oh, game, you know me too well!'

I was actually hoping the item shop's wife would have a similar quest when I broke her shit but all she did was take my money

sorry guys I was dead for pretty much the whole game, hope I didn't ruin things

Considering how much wandering around you have to do, I am glad its an option. I never filled all my slots, though.

I agree. As much as I love the director's design choices in the oracle games, minish cap, and SS, the one thing that I can't stand about his philosophy is contained in this quote from wikipedia:

"According to Fujibayashi, the most important aspect of game design is making the fundamental rule set of a video game absolutely clear to a player constantly throughout the game and at every available second whether the player needs to hear it or not."

I see nothing wrong with this, as long as being made clear isn't the same as it being force fed to me.

the bit that bugs me about this is the "whether they need it or not" bit. If I don't need help I probably also don't want it, and sometimes even when I do need it I don't want it because fuck yeah exploration and experimentation. The stone tablets with the clues to puzzles were also not riddley enough. "Just...do this exactly." The video-clued gossip stone was more than enough help for the very few bits I didn't eventually figure out on my own.

the 'more dowsing things' was totally a lame upgrade, though. I was hoping that would mean I'd eventually fill it up with stuff I care about but that never happened. Only ever used it for gratitude crystals and the sky-treasure box things

the harp was pretty terrible. When you do it right it isn't fun and when you do it wrong it's hard to tell why. Should've gone with a drum, or hey a baton would've made much more sense in this than in wind waker. A trombone?

Anyway, I tried the lumpy pumpkin thing exactly once and said 'fuck this'.

Finally beat it yesterday, gonna give hero mode a whirl later on this winter.

Really enjoyed it. The flying was mostly pointless, I think, but it never lasted long enough to become tedious. Final battle was a bit short imho, the previous two 3d zeldas had much more satisfying ends both in terms of execution and cinematics.

I wish there were a proper night/day cycle, and I don't really understand why there wasn't. That's kind of become one of the Things I Associate with 3d zelda games: time passes, and things are different at night. This isn't really a complaint so much as an 'I wish'.

I also wish the things that happened with the people in skyloft felt more substantial. Seemed like it was mostly just 'hey can you help me with this thing?' and then 'hey thanks for doing that thing.' Iunno.

Honestly I haven't got very many complaints. I absolutely hated Fi. No personality, interrupts with long-winded, obvious information and repeats herself. Swimming was kind of annoying, but being able to dolphin all over the place almost made up for it. Even though Zelda was supposed to be hey-ho Zelda, goal of my efforts, I kept forgetting she existed until the a cutscene reminded me of it. And then again seconds later.

I love the addition of the item pouch and medals, and I really hope they use that in future Zeldas. With as many and varied medals as rings in the oracle games. The item upgrades were neat but most of them felt pretty unnecessary, except the shields, ammo expansions, potions, and net. I also found the non-pausing item switching to be a welcome change.

I wish more items had an effect on enemies, like being able to whip unaware enemies to make them run away, or letting the leaf blower knock them off balance and blow smaller foes around. Even though the obstacles they were meant to overcome showed up throughout so that they never went completely obsolete (except slingy), it seemed like there was no room to improvise and use them in situations outside of those exact contexts.

I didn't like the design of the bokoblins. Seeing as how they're the most common enemy in the game... :\. Much preferred the ones in wind waker. They got rid of the pig-nose and made them too round! All the other designs I dug, though.

fuck yeah this sounds exactly like the type o shit I dig

in magic > shouts, it should show how many dragon souls you have and you press (x on xbox) to spend them to unlock the words you've found.

most useful shouts I've gotten so far are ice form and the full unrelenting force.

I don't get how you guys are playing without shields, it makes the game so much easier and is also satisfying. I also find shielding+slicing right to be much more satisfying than just wild flailing (though I do do that for the three-headed skull dudes. I can never manage to slice them right)

To each their own though, I guess - if you don't need it you don't need it.

you might be able to map at least a few shits to xbox buttons anyway? On the 360 actual, left and right d-pad do nothing. Would be nice if I could assign hand sets to them. Up and down bring up the favorites menu, but that could easily be contained to either up or down, and another preset assigned to the remaining direction. If this were the case I'd set the directions to my most common offensive sets and save the favorites menu for only rarer spells and potions.

if you hold left or right d-pad on an item in the favorites menu, it maps that item to left or right so you don't have to open the favorites menu

aaaah

does it say this anywhere in-game? I never would've found this.

I like flying but my complaint is the same as it was for wind waker: I want more things to kill. Further, aside from the chests unlocked by the box thingies and a scarce few others, there's pretty much absolutely nothing on any of the islands beside the main couple. Even before the game came out I saw screenshots of the map and was like 'wait wat, it looks like nothing's there.'

It's been a while since I've played ww but I remember having mad fun at sea. Not while sailing of course, that shit was boring, but with the submarines and towers and islands that actually had stuff on them.

Anyway I pretty much completely agree with what gilbert said in his previous two posts. I am thoroughly enjoying the game so far. Just about to enter the sixth dungeon. It feels a bit strange though because, as has been mentioned, and as was intended, there is less distinction between dungeon and overworld than in previous zelda games, so this feels like it'll be more than just the sixth dungeon, since I had to go through so much shit to get just from one dungeon to the next.