Kal-El814 said:

@Earendil@anon_mastermind

I couldn't get over the fact that this Zelda game was LITERALLY on rails.

Seriously though, that overworld was horribly designed. Warp points that didn't have any kind of labelled destination unless you did it and completely masturbatory sidequests. Eck.

I totally agree. But I was able to overlook it. Would I rank it highly? Perhaps not, but I'd put it at a solid 8, maybe even a low 9.

@Shadowlink

I remember the game pretty severely gimping your ability to freely sail the map until late in the game. I could be remembering that wrong though, I beat it near launch and haven't touched it recently.

@Earendil

I can't overlook the fact that the majority of that game is filler. Almost everything involving the train feels incredibly slow and is clunkily implemented. The fact that the rail map/shard hunt/bunny catching ONLY serves to give you more rail maps/shards/bunnies was a horrible design decision. It makes the OoT Skultulla hunt look like a great way to spend your in-game time, and that's saying something..

It's not hard at all to avoid the game ending glitch, at least the way I see it.

Levias asks you to find the three dragons. At that point, you had only met one dragon, Faron. So your first instinct is to go to Faron Woods. And if you do that quest before doing the Lanayru one, you're good.

@GelatinousEncore

That's how it worked for me.

I'm up to the last boss right now and that last temple was really easy. Maybe it's because I didn't find the whole moving around the rooms mechanic to be difficult in the slightest but it might just be the easiest temple in the game for me. Upon reflection though, I never had an issue with the temples themselves. The very few times I was stalled it was because there was something obscured from my interpretation of the puzzle or way to progress. Which is a little disappointing. It seems like they upped the challenge of combat enough to make it interesting but the intellectual challenge stayed pretty much constant throughout.

That last section right before the boss though was great though. Great use of the area.

I went to the Thunder Dragon first because I remembered the Goron talking about it. I don't know why visiting Faron never occured to me.

@PogueSquadron I was tempted to do that too, and also because the Sheikah Stone there says (basically) that the dragon gives you the Hylian Shield. I was very eager to get it, but in the end I decided to go to Faron first.

@PogueSquadron

I tried to get that last night. I died on the last boss. Stupid Imprisoned.

@Kal-El814

I know that certain sections of the overworld were blocked off until you got the sea charts, but apart from that I thought there was free navigation within the sections you had access to? Really not all that different from any other Zelda, locking off sections of the overworld via the need for items. (Except Zelda I .)

I'm a little over 32 hours in and I'm just about to start the fourth dungeon. I thought I'd never get through all of the precursor quests leading up to this place!

@Simbabbad That's true, I was lucky there I guess.

By the way, how awesome is it that (post dungeon 6 spoilers) the fact that the Ballad of the Goddess is Zelda's Lullaby backwards makes sense story wise? I think they did it on purpose. Because, Zelda is the Goddess and all.

PogueSquadron said:

I went to the Thunder Dragon first because I remembered the Goron talking about it. I don't know why visiting Faron never occured to me.

I did the Thunder Dragon first too, because I went to Faron Woods and couldn't get in (because I hadn't fought the Imprisoned a second time). I didn't think to go outside the Sealed Temple, I just assumed you had to do one of the others first. So I'm glad I didn't run into the glitch, because apparently I came pretty close.

Wow, just played through (post-dungeon 6 spoilers) the battle with Levias/Bilocyte. That was some exciting stuff indeed, and I had to use a fairy during the second half of the fight. Great atmosphere and design all-around, I felt like Leon Kennedy when I busted up that plaga. I like how the game has thrown in a few boss fights outside of dungeons this time around...it's pretty unexpected and a lot of fun to fight these monsters in places that aren't in a dank temple room.

I was a bit let-down by the 6th dungeon's fight. It was cool and all, but I'd rather have a unique tussle in each dungeon rather than a rematch with an earlier boss.

TBun's taking it slow! That's cool.

You're about to search for your username..

I'm taking it slower! I'm in the thick of dungeon 6 (just got the upgraded mitts) and enjoying myself immensely. I made some good progress while waiting for a stupid spot to open in the Mario Kart 7 room, lol.

GelatinousEncore said:

TBun's taking it slow! That's cool.

You're about to search for your username

How is this not a spoiler!? BBbot, get in here!

Sorry. I thought it wasn't much of a spoiler! It's like saying Ridley is in Other M.

But you're right, sorry.

So I beat the game just now and the last boss fight was really good. Very challenging, I even died the first time I fought him because I didn't realize you were supposed to use Skyward Strikes in the second phase. Once I knew that, it was doable but still tough. I went through a couple souped-up potions in the process.

The ending was good. I liked how everything was resolved and how it ties in to previous Zelda games. Nice way of inferring Ganon without just straight up including him.

Overall the game is very good. It drags in a couple places like the Song of the Hero section and between dungeons 3 and 4 but that's certainly forgivable.

On the topic of motion controls vs. traditional controls. I feel like the motion controls were justified in this game. The game made good use of them in order to to do things not feasible on standard controllers but they also make certain things easier than they were with a traditional controller. Moving forward though, I don't know whether or not they will be used again or if they should be. Ideally we would get a Wiimote with a second analog stick and maybe 4 buttons in place of the A button and then we would have the best of both worlds. That's just not going to be the case though, the next Zelda will probably use the tablet which will mean a switch back to more traditional controls. Great game, but at this point it was just too late to really make a difference in motion controls. Had this launched with Wii Motion Plus or even better at the beginning of the Wii's lifecycle it could have changed a fair bit.

@GelatinousEncore

You jerk, I didn't know if Ridley was in Other M!

Oh! I'm starting to feel bad now. I'll just shut up. But it was obvious!

@GelatinousEncore

Well I didn't actually know that, it was obvious enough that I just kind of assumed it.

Just giving you a hard time.

Got to what I assume is the final temple. Amazing music. Looks old school and hard.