Board 8 > Kotaku Ranks the Legend of Zelda Games

(+) Yeah! (+)

foolm0r0n posted...

No, mainly that the vast majority of moons are the equivalent to coins or a 1-up in other Mario games. They are so inconsequential, littered around everywhere that you can't help but lose interest in them. Koroks are the same, like blue rupees in previous games. And that thoughtless quantity over quality became the main level design focus of the games.

Unlocking a few hundred more moons at the end of the game is a serious slap in the face too. What a waste of time.

I remember getting 250 moons and being rewarded with.... a god awful boss rush. Some of the levels after that were cool though.

Youre really only meant to get a little over half of the Koroks at least. Any after you max your inventory are totally superfluous unless you REALLY want that 100% notation
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You know, foolmo and I don't ever agree on much, but we both seem like we're on the same wavelength about game design stuff.

Korok seeds are the shits though. The rewards are terrible and they lock them behind a mini-game, so you feel obligated to waste your time doing them. If you're going to give people a crappy reward, just have them available on the map and you come across them and get them.

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I literally never went out of my way to find Koroks. If I didn't happen upon them organically, then I didn't bother.

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PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Korok seeds are the s***s though.

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damnit jakyl

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The thing about the Korok Seeds is that they aren't designed the same way pieces of heart, etc always were. They're meant to be organically found as you explore, and there are so many so you don't have to seek them out too much to get those inventory upgrades.

That is an unusual design by modern standards and I don't fault anyone for not being a big fan of them. I think it's a lot easier to appreciate them if you treat the seeds as the reward themselves, but not everybody can just turn that on.

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I always thought it was a nice bonus to get a Korok seed when I decided to explore. They were never my objective.

Which is the big difference between them and the moons in Odyssey.

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Korok seeds were fine, there was literally no reason to try and get all of them. I get why some people feel the need regardless, but it's not like the game encouraged you to go beyond the max inventory slots.

I guess I get the issue of moons being littered everywhere but it never bothered me, there's so many cool puzzles for them and I never felt unrewarded. I mean the alternative would be to add another sub-moon reward currency like the purple coins I guess, and I don't see the point of that.

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I think sometimes it comes down that old chestnut "How do I know when I'm satisfied?"

Too many gamers feel the need to 100% everything. It's a hard habit to break. Nintendo throws so many collectibles so that everyone can find their own path to "being satisfied". it's a decision that rankles completionists that view games as checklists of activities that must be dominated.

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I'm thankful I don't feel the urge to be a completionist. It makes my gaming life much easier.

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I might try to play Fenyx Rising soon, just to have an informed opinion.

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I'm often an OCD completionist but I still just never found any need to go out Korok searching because they're obviously immensely plentiful in a huge world so that's not the point of them. They're a nice reward for doing suspicious things as you adventure along.

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I always find it funny when people compare Mario Odyssey and BotW, because IMO they couldn't be more opposite. BotW's content is scattered across a vast, mostly empty world whereas Odyssey packs a similarly ludicrous amount of collectibles into way smaller spaces, thus creating a scenario where every inch of the level is actually engaging.

Yeah there are plenty of throwaways that you just trip over as a result, but the entire space is used to the absolute fullest and there are still far more cool moons in Odyssey than there are main collectibles in any other Mario game.

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I love Odyssey for different reasons too, namely that I could often get stars doing outside of the box things and totally unintended solutions - which is what I always loved about SM64 too and why it held to the top of my Mario rankings until Odyssey came along (as well obviously as the acrobatics)

Speedrun / obstacle course moon were also top tier too

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Xiahou Shake posted...

I always find it funny when people compare Mario Odyssey and BotW, because IMO they couldn't be more opposite. BotW's content is scattered across a vast, mostly empty world whereas Odyssey packs a similarly ludicrous amount of collectibles into way smaller spaces, thus creating a scenario where every inch of the level is actually engaging.

Yeah there are plenty of throwaways that you just trip over as a result, but the entire space is used to the absolute fullest and there are still far more cool moons in Odyssey than there are main collectibles in any other Mario game.

I would agree with this except what you're describing about Odyssey moons is the same design style as the Korok seeds. It doesn't really matter that Mario has multiple maps and Zelda has one. I bet they're about a similar density.

So the major difference you point out here is that Mario has "major" objective moons that are well designed. A lot of the minor objective ones are too! It's just that there are a LOT of minor moons that just exist to make the world dense. If you set out to collect all the moons, or even just get to 500, it starts to get tedious. By the end I was using tbe amiibo feature to mark my map and wasn't having a ton of fun doing what amounted to fetch quests for the amiibo roomba.

This isn't necessarily BAD but I'm a Galaxy > 64 type. Mario is best to me when the level design is tight. And like foolmo already pointed out, getting 120 stars/all levels in past Marios has generally been worthwhile so it took me longer than I should have to realize I was just doing Korok seeds past 500 moons. Part of that is on me but also I wish the game had differentiated the moons. Except, that would ruin the feeling of progression they want to achieve for exploration-focused players when you stumble across a random minor moon buried in the desert. It's whatever, it's not for me.

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Finished Links Awakening. Really great game. I havent played TP or OoT in ages, but so far LA is at least a top 3 LoZ for me. Really enjoyed it a lot other than Dampes Shack which you have to play a bit too much to get all the rewards, but hey thats optional.

Why is this god awful topic still going on?

sounds like a good time to spend 70 posts discussing the Kirby series

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PrestonWheee posted...

Why is this god awful topic still going on?

So there's always a blue dot next to it. And that blue dot annoys you, so you click the topic just to make it go away.

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swordz9 posted...

Finished Links Awakening. Really great game. I havent played TP or OoT in ages, but so far LA is at least a top 3 LoZ for me. Really enjoyed it a lot other than Dampes Shack which you have to play a bit too much to get all the rewards, but hey thats optional.

That's not in the original LA anyway (but basically everything else is)

lol for a second I was thinking 'why is swordz suddenly talking about Link's Awakening', then I remembered this is in fact a Zelda topic. LA is good, I'd be surprised if they don't do the Oracles in the same style as that remake.

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I played through LA fully for the first time on Switch and while I very much enjoyed it and understand why people like it, I still think it's pretty overrated. There were a lot of parts of it that annoyed me pretty badly and some of the puzzles were very frustrating, along with trying to figure out what to do next sometimes.

Also I still can't believe how poorly it runs on Switch, it's honestly baffling.

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yeah if Oracles had the same framerate issues as Link's Awakening I would not buy them, full stop

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The blur and reflection effects are deceptively expensive for how subtle they are. It's def out of character for Nintendo though. They used to have really awesome tricks for optimizing effects like that. BotW had the same issue so it seems like they just stopped caring.

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Iwata took them all to the grave
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