Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

You talking about the Switch release or the original GameBoy one? Because lets just say this.

You open your menu every 6 seconds in the original because your Sword and Shield are equipped to A and B. So need to a do a long jump? Open the menu, swap both out, do the jump, swap both back in the menu....over and over and over for everything.

I dont see how the fishing controls are hard, given all you do is mash A to reel it in, and stop mashing if it pulls on your line. Rinse and repeat until caught.

As for the fiddly and simple design, thats always been 2D Zelda. I prefer it 3D Zelda, where, lets take Ocarina of Time as the peak example, it takes ages to do what takes minutes in 2D, especially noticeable when you realise A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time share a structure and progression.

What takes 10 minutes in 2D, is 2 hours in 3D.

But of course, the simplicity of the game is due to being a remake. A Link Between Worlds was the last 2D Zelda and was far more complex, but it was also built from the ground up with new mechanics and ideas to make it so complex. This is a remake of a GameBoy game, and its simplicity is down to being....well....a remake of a GameBoy title.

Now sure they could have massively changed it, but then at that point it may as well be a new game, like ALBW. The developers set out to remake LA, and they did. If they set out to make a new game, itd probably be more enjoyable to you.

As for myself, as someone who can't play a 3D Zelda beyond BOTW for more than 10 minutes before becoming bored stiff, a 2D game is just what I look for. Its a shame they are few and far between now, so this is what I want from Zelda every few years. It especially helps that I never played much of LA, but I did get a copy earlier in the year and did the first dungeon. So as someone younger than the source material, this is a new game to me.

Which brings up the argument that a GameBoy remake shouldn't be £50, and as some internet personalities say, you can just play the original.

I'd argue that to play the original on my TV I'd need to buy a Gamecube, GameBoy Player, and copy of the game, and then hope it all works. That set me back around £220 earlier in the year. Or I can pay £50 and play it on this Switch I already own with most of its faults removed.

I dont get the whole "The game isn't worth x because y" arguments that people try and use to convince others that a game is too expensive. Worth and value are two different things, and this is confused when people are basically trying to tell people that a GameBoy remake for that price isn't a good value proposition.

Yet they forget that value is subjective, worth is monetary. An item could be worth pennies and sell for pennies, but its value to an individual could be enough to have them spend above and beyond that.

So to tell people that a game isn't worth £50 because its a remake is wrong, objectively, because yeah, factually, it IS worth £50 as thats what its selling for. That is its market worth. You just dont VALUE it at £50. /rant XD

@RogerRoger I will say I'm coming at this as a fresh face too.

How much value I get from the game depends on my free time due to the lovely reality of 40 hour work weeks.....ugh. This holiday is amazing.

Oh man I love Link's Awakening Remake. The main story is a carbon copy of the original till the 7th dungeon that I am now. There are bizarre and sometimes big framerate issues but nostalgia hit me hard with this game. The original game was one of my favourites back in the GB era.

Has anyone tried a Lite? I wanted one thought it would be 200 euros so I coud get one but in typical Nintnedo fashion the price is was way inflated in Europe for the 199$ base price one, it is 199 Pounds or 239 Euros in most eurozone counties. TBH I mostly play portable and the original Switch feels that it could brake every minute. Sometimes they cons went out during portable play. Since I have NSO and no desire to play online games where cloud saves are not supported I could game in the Lite and have the OG model always docked. Or I could simply trade the OG Switch both joycons suffer from this drift thing.

@belmont I've tried a Lite and it's weird. The yellow one specifically. The bezel being coloured probably doesn't help, makes it harder to focus on the screen. The buttons feel like they do on a Pro Controller and the D-Pad has issues opposite of the Pro Controller, namely now it's absurdly hard to press two directions at once which for fighting games is....yikes.

Holding the machine is nice but my hands got cramped pretty quick, and I've got small hands.

It's funny. Switch Lite is too cramped, but an Xbox controller is too big due to injuries. I can't win XD

But it's a nice bit of kit....IF you have a reason to buy one.

@Knuckles-Fajita According to a tear down The sensors in the D pad of the switch light are too far apart to rapidly and put two directions at once in fighting games.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=mF3hsaZviUU

@Ryall I know. That's why I said it was the opposite of the Pro Controller. The Pro Controller had closer sensors and a small tip to the D-Pad lending to easy presses.

Here Nintendo appears to have taken the criticism and just....eliminated it entirely.

@RogerRoger Yeah Link's Awakening, despite only being the 4th Zelda game, formed an identity for itself initially starting as an out of hours passion project by a programmer, that grew under people like Yoshiaki Koizumi who at the time only did art and ended up writing the story.

In fact, Miyamoto wasn't involved until the testing phase. Link's Awakening is very much an example of Nintendo's mantra: Create an IP, refine it, then get the young folk in with fresh ideas for it.

The basic difference Link's Awakening has if you compare it with most games in the series is that it has actually plot that goes beyond the usual kidnapping Zelda and defeating Ganon, interesting NPCs and a world that feels alive.

@belmont yeah, I haven’t actually played ALTTP through fully, but I got fairly far on the SNES mini recently and while fun.. the plot is so basic and pretty dull. I don’t know, maybe it picks up a bit later. But LA is immediately more engaging. I remember being very impressed by this aspect of the game back in the 90s and it still shines through now.

@Kidfried Except thats what Nintendo actually does, we just think they dont.

Yoshiaki Koizumi is now the head of Mario, after initially writing the plot for Link's Awakening against Miyamoto's wishes, and the same for Majora's Mask. Shinya Takahashi is now the producer on all Switch software, instead of Miyamoto and Tezuka.

Sure, Miyamoto and Tezuka still make the games every now and then, but how many has Miyamoto been directly involved in in the past decade? ARMS was made by the young members of the Mario Kart team, as was Splatoon for Animal Crossing because they liked playing Battlefield (Really).

The younger members are rising to the top in management roles, and it shows. Sure they've worked there for as much as 25 years, but they are the younger ones, with the untested ideas.

Heck those same young people are where the ideas for LABO and probably Ring Fit came from.

Even look at Astral Chain, it was the directors first game in charge, ever. Sure he had a high position in Nier: Autotomato but this was his world, and with help from his senior, Hideki Kamiya (Because you aren't going to do it without guidance for christs sake), he made his game reality. This is an industry wide shift. The young and wild ideas are rising, and thats damn exciting.

@kyleforrester87 yeah the story on ALTTP is pretty basic and I think all the Gameboy Zelda games vastly improved upon it in that department. I will say in general gameplay and exploration I do think ALTTP is a lot better than LA which can feel a little basic.

I'm enjoying the remake but I do feel it really could have done with updating now that the Gameboys limitations are no longer a factor. Maybe it's the recent Resident Evil 2 remake that has spoiled us by giving us something that was both very familiar but new at the same time, or even A Link Between Worlds (which yes was a sequel) but kind of felt like a remake. What we have is a game that is very charming because it always was but the general gameplay is pretty basic, the map a little constrained and with a bit of thought and some risk taking could have been truly special and feels like a missed opportunity. Oh and the ability to use the dpad if I can only move in 8 directions anyway would be nice 😉.

Well I have been playing an awful lot of Link's Awakening over the weekend and I must say I really really like it. As someone with limited attachement to the original it feels new and the basic nature of the gameplay is quite refreshing for me. Combine that with truly gorgeous visuals and I'm enjoying it a lot.

I feel like there are two kinds of remake.

The RE2 kind where a game gets not just a facelift but huge gameplay changes and is basically a new game using the plot of the original but expanded.

Or the Spyro/Crash/Link one, that's the original game prettied up, annoyances removed and modernised...and leave it at that. A literal remake.

@Knuckles-Fajita I'd agree and for me it is about removing the limitations imposed by the original hardware. The Resi remake was more of a reimagining because the game played the way it did due to the limitations of the PS1 hardware and a straight remake would not be successful. As good as it was, the tank controls and camera had aged badly.

However, Link or Spyro etc. had solid gameplay and environments at its core. Changing that would of been a waste really.

@Rudy_Manchego Its funny as Link's Awakening did remove the limitation of using two buttons, and thus having to open the menu constantly.

Also removing overworld screen transitions, making it one seemless map. Which Pokemon probably could have done...

@Knuckles-Fajita I guess that is a limitation but I would probably state that it was a quality of life improvement since they could have ignored the extra buttons. For example, I would lump the Shadow of the Collossus remake in the Link's Awakening camp but the controls are a little better for example.

I in know way think they should have changed how it plays, just that a game which is largely based around exploration could have benefited from mixing things up a little bit. For myself in particular I'm very familiar with the original game so I basically know exactly where to go and what to do all the time. Don't get me wrong I'm still having a lot of fun with it, it's just a shame they didn't take the opportunity to add some new areas or mix things up a little for returning players.

As someone who played ALTTP once 20+ years ago, a straight remake like this is absolutely fine, I couldn’t want more. It actually does have extra content, as I never played the Color dungeon. Not that I remember the majority of it anyway!

Finally joining in this topic now I've a Switch been playing Link's Awakening as well over the last few days and I'm loving it so far. Never played the original and I've played very few Zelda games in general, so this is feeling very novel to me. Love the aesthetic of the game, it looks so fun and inviting to explore, and I feel like it's more satisfying to control than gameboy Zelda's? I'm putting that down to the feel of the Switch controls.
Did find the first puzzle with the Raccoon tricky to figure out but since that I've found it relatively easy to work through, apart from my never-ending capacity to fall into holes!

@Hego The big difference, I hear, is that you can actually just use your gear once you get it instead of having to pause and equip different items constantly (and I mean CONSTANTLY; there's so much pausing and menu management in LA on the GB). You also, from what I hear, don't have to read some half-minute long textbox telling you to equip a certain item if you try to grab objects without it equipped. And don't have to sit through endless textboxes of the owl delivering useless information over and over because you accidentally clicked through his spiel too fast and told him you needed him to repeat the information.

The puzzles in this game are a bit more challenging than in most 2D Zeldas. A place called Eagle's Tower really baffled me for a long time, although, in hindsight, what I needed to do was absolutely obvious.

Probably my least favorite of the decent Zelda games (read: not Zelda I, II, Triforce Heroes, or the CDi games), but I'm glad to see people enjoying it for the first time in this clearly improved form.