Topic: Nintendo Switch --OT--

One thing I particularly appreciate in TotK is the continued rejection of RPG mechanics. Elden Ring had a ton of cool weapons, but I didn't experiment almost at all because using them efficiently would require rebuilding the character's stats, which is a pain. No such barrier exists in TotK.

@carlos82 I've had the same thought after a fight when I wanted to try a new fusion combination: "darn, that minecart-sword of mine hasn't broken yet!" Y'know? It reminds me of playing with legos when I was a kid, where I'd constantly break down my old stuff to make room for new creations.

@carlos82 "those costumes are unlockable in the new game itself as well as through Amiibo."

Do this be true? Can I finally explore this version of Hyrule with a proper hero's tunic

@Judal27 well I've unlocked one part from Ocarina and a friend has done so with Twilight Princess both without Amiibo and I know of a few others as well. This game really does reward your exploration

I love how Ultrahand allows you to come up with creative solutions to issues that would have prevented progression in BotW.

Example: needed to get into a tower to unlock it, but the front was covered by vines, and it was raining, so my fire arrows weren't working like desired. Solution? Use Ultrahand to build a make-shift awning around the entrance to the tower so I could shield the vines from the rain long enough to catch on fire.

There were piles of wood nearby, which makes me wonder if this was the intended solution all along. Maybe this area is sort of like the original where it's always raining until you do something in the main plot? The game design is so ingenious that it's often legitimately difficult to tell when you're the one solving a problem and when the game designers are leading you down a path with conceptual breadcrumbs.

@carlos82 holy crap, no more having to pretend with the hylian tunic! Which also means I just ran all the way to hateno village with almost no stamina for nuthin. Very nice 🙃

@Ralizah I was looking for a bit of cover to make a fire to clear those vines too, didn’t think to do that. Just fused a fire arrow in the end. Yours is better!

@kyleforrester87 OK, yeah, I'm guessing it must always be raining there, then.

Whatever works, man! You wouldn't believe how many shrines I've cheesed now by completely ignoring the intended solution and simply gluing stuff to rickety towers of stacked wood!

@Pizzamorg 'In BOTW it felt like you couldn't walk more than a few metres in any direction without Link dying from being too cold or hot or wandering into that miasma stuff. There was a lot of learning through repeated failure though until you realised the right ways to prep to push forwards.'

I'm going through this now with Ori and the blind forest. Once you finish a section it's like yee haa! But knowing the following sections will lead to numerous deaths until the solution presents itself fills me with anxiety. The platforms are tiny too at times which really doesn't help.

Hidden insta kill traps, spikes on awkward as heck angles and being completely underequipped early game - both with health and platforming capabilities. It's weirdly way easier now I've unlocked a load of stuff as I can make the odd mistake. In many ways it's similar to botw.

@Ralizah yeah, it’s a big reason why I enjoy the Divinity games. They give you some cool tools to exploit things.

@Kidfried I don't think they're necessarily OP, but they're quite good for crowd control. I've been missing having unlimited bombs in TotK!

They do seem pretty bloody powerful, but I guess being more limited than BOTW that makes some sense.

I do love Addison - “How’s the president standing?! It fills my heart with joy to see him doing so well on his own”

What a simple man.

@Ralizah As you probably already know from when I've talked about it before, the lack of discounting their own games is a major issue for me and effectively killed a lot of the excitement I had for diving into a whole new ecosystem. I mean this in the nicest way possible, but your reasoning doesn't really fly much at all and is not an excuse. Protecting launch purchasers screws over many more people than who buys at launch, and there should be no reason why waiting should actually be considered a bad thing. There's no reason why a now 6 year old game should cost $60. If anything, that should be considered a positive thing that PlayStation and Xbox games actually drop in price, but yet Sony is considered to be extremely greedy for their $70 price tag on a much more advanced console. Sure, they are, but at the same time at least I can get it cheaper down the road than basically every 1st party Nintendo game.

In no way is that a negative thing, and it's borderline selfish to consider expecting not to have to pay full price for a game when they got a Switch 5 years into it's lifeycycle just to protect the value of something you bought (especially when you buy digital anyways). Sorry, but I did take offense to a portion of your post. We're good obviously, but I do consider a lot of that to be BS.

@KilloWertz I do tend to agree with @Ralizah’s view on how Nintendo tend not to discount games.

@KilloWertz Bit of a puzzling post, Killo, so I'll take it in bits.

So, there's a few things here.

1) Nintendo doesn't need an "excuse" to price their products how they like. We are, after all, not talking about necessities, but entertainment. If Nintendo was selling Epipens, I'd feel differently, of course.

2) With that said, there's nothing wrong with disagreeing with this strategy, or with waiting to buy games, either. Paying as little as possible for your entertainment is in your self-interest as a consumer, so your feelings are perfectly valid and rational, as far as that goes.

3) Pricing decisions are economic calculations. So no, I don't think Nintendo actually cares about prioritizing the preservation of value of the product for launch purchasers, because pricing decisions always come back to profit and sales forecasts. Their strategy does, however, have the added benefit of being more beneficial to people who buy at launch, who also tend to be their most loyal fans

So, to be clear, when you've seen me complain about Sony's $70 games, that wasn't me saying: "shame, shame on Sony!" I don't think there's anything morally condemnable about (successfully) attempting to raise the base MSRP. Is it greedy? Absolutely. So is everything Nintendo does. Ditto with Microsoft. They're corporations. They're machines designed to generate a profit, not your friends. What I was saying is that I dislike the effect they were (successfully) attempting to have on the market, because, as someone who primarily buys games I want at launch, a higher MSRP isn't beneficial to me. But I wouldn't attach any sort of moral element to that. I don't think Playstation execs are terrible people for normalizing the $70 MSRP, if that makes sense.

As I said, pricing decisions are economic calculations. Companies price products according to what they think they can get away with in terms of maximizing profit margins. This does mean I think it is almost self-evidently obvious that if Sony thought they could get away with keeping their prices at Nintendo levels and continue to sell games like God of War like they were brand new, they would in a heartbeat.

Sony doesn't think they can get away with that without a sharper die-off in demand than they'd like, so they've instead chosen to prioritize milking day one purchasers more than they used to. Clearly this gambit has been successful.

So... you do realize I don't work for Nintendo, right? I'm not helping them price their games. So I have no idea why you'd be annoyed at me about this.

I buy some physical games. If I sold Breath of the Wild today, which I do own a physical copy of, I'd make back the majority of the money I spent on it. If I had purchased GoW 2018 at launch and did the same, I'd make back... I dunno, $10?

I don't even see how it's contestable that a person who buys even a few Nintendo games physically at launch is better off than someone who buys games from the majority of other companies at launch when it comes to a value preservation perspective.

Especially when you consider the voucher program and Nintendo gold coins means they're the cheapest of the big three to buy from on day one.

Beat the big bird so now got what seems like a ridiculously good ability to get around easier. I should probably look for the Master Sword but can’t seem to pinpoint the forest they’re mentioning.

@nessisonett Protip: Run around the game's various forests. When you suddenly notice the game running at 15fps, you've found the right one.

BTW, how many heart containers are you at?

@Ralizah I actually instantly found the forest because I was heading towards the last tower and it happened to be in that area! And yep, did notice the framerate tank as soon as it showed me the sword. I’m only on 11 hearts though so can’t grab it for now, I put more orbs into my stamina so far 😅

@nessisonett It sounds like you're done with two of the divine beasts and a decent chunk of the shrines, so how are you feeling about the game overall at the moment?

Who is your favorite character, and why is it Prince Sidon?

@Ralizah It’s the sort of game that I would describe as ‘hyperfocus or die’. Everyone’s experiences with ADHD are different but I find that a game which dumps you in an open world with minimal handholding can go one of two ways. Either I completely fixate on it to the point that I methodically clear swathes of the map at a time… or I completely switch off and the game eludes me. It took a couple attempts for BotW to stick but I absolutely get it now, the tools they give you essentially turn it into a physics sandbox and the million little systems all feed into each other perfectly. Weapon degradation isn’t a big issue for me really, once I got my head around not holding onto weapons for no reason. The fun seems to be in the fact that exploring is rewarded almost 100% of the time, similar to my thoughts on Elden Ring, another game that I fixated on to the point of sinking like 60 hours into in a couple of weeks.

Sidon is definitely a highlight to be fair, especially his specific brand of incredibly humble guy that you would expect to be cockier. The plot in general is pretty good actually, with the divine beasts being surprisingly poignant. I do need to find more memories to grasp the flashbacks a bit more though, Zelda’s still a bit of an anomaly. I keep finding things that make me smile outside of the main plot instead, I had no clue that Outset Island was in this game!

@nessisonett That explains the different reactions to the game between when you first played it and now.

I think I also cleared 80 hours of Elden Ring in, like, three weeks. It was fun. I really, really like this style of open world game design. I have issues with ER that keep me from embracing it as fully as some people, but considering I effectively avoided all From Software games until Elden Ring, and then I liked Elden Ring enough to also beat Dark Souls, I'd say they succeeded pretty thoroughly if their goal was to pull in a wider audience.

I've maintained before that I think BotW has a pretty decent story if you factor in the memories and whatnot. The flashbacks do a solid job of fleshing out the princess, IMO, so I do think they're worth tracking down. Also, tracking them all down leads to a somewhat more fleshed out ending to the game.

Sidon is so positive and wholesome that he's easy to simp for. Apparently I was fairly transparent about it, as someone even got me a Sidon T-Shirt for my birthday one year lmao.