Category: Zelda
Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – August 2016
In August, I started organizing all my Steam games. To that end, I decided to actually start playing a few of those indie games I have hundreds of from cheap bundles. I also decided that it’s time to let go of truly “finishing” games and just call them done once I’m bored. For Steam games, that is. If I spend $80 on a console game, I’m damn well still going to try to wring every bit of content out of it.
~ Game Over ~
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii) – It is finished. Click here to read my long, rambling, final impressions, if you haven’t already.
Monster Hunter Generations (3DS) – Cleared both the solo and multiplayer campaigns. And by “cleared”, I mean “I did all the key quests to get to the final bosses and unlock stuff.” There is still a ton of content to play through! I haven’t even seen all the monsters yet. And the Deviants. Oh Lord, the Deviants!
Bonk’s Adventure (TG16) – I was really into Super Bonk on SNES as a child, and was so awed by the ads for Bonk games that appeared in comics, but I’d never played a “classic” Bonk before. Turns out, ehhhhh, not so hot. The framework of a decent game is there, but the levels are uninspired and Bonk’s got really strange momentum.
Skyward Sword Replay: Finale!
It’s been a long, winding journey, but I have finally completed The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (for the second time). But that’s putting the horse before the cart there. We’ve still got a lot of ground to cover!
Be warned: there are so many words here. Like, maybe pack a lunch before you dive in.
When last I left off, I had just revived the Thunder Dragon and gained a quarter of whatever magical song unlocks the last dungeon. It was a simple task that required me to traverse a new area while using tools I’d acquired to solve puzzles. This also unlocked the boss rush and let me replay the Silent Realm challenges. It didn’t feel like padding at all!
The next two dragons… didn’t fare so well.
The chase for the Fire Dragon made me climb up Eldin Volcano for a third time. Only this time around, it was a stealth mission and all of my equipment was taken away. This part really felt like padding. It would have been 100% improved if at the very least I was sneaking through a new area, like a monster base or something. But it was just the same old Eldin Volcano, this time with some new barricades and guard towers.
Meeting the Fire Dragon was a lacklustre scene as well, he just popped out of the lava, sang his song, and disappeared without so much as introducing himself. It felt unusually stunted to me, in a game where characters are constantly over-explaining everything.
Skyward Sword Replay: Week 8
As much as I’ve been enjoying it, I wanted to clear Skyward Sword off my plate so that I could focus my leisure time into other activities. Namely, a pair of games about tracking down ferocious and/or adorable monsters. So I hunkered down to play through what was left of the game. Once again, I failed in my quest to make it to the end, because there was a lot more game left than I had thought.
Like, after loading my save, I was standing there at the door to the Fire Sanctuary, thinking “okay, I’ve got this and then Sky Keep to go, then the final battle and we’re done.” That was not the case.
To open the Fire Sanctuary, I needed a “really big container of water” which had me thinking Water Dragon. No problem. Just warp over there, get her to do her thing, and we’re gold. Deities never give away help for free, though, so I- oh, wait, no. She did just hand over the big basin full of water, no questions asked. Well I certainly like how easy that was and how there was no pointless sidequest associated with it!
Oh, but then the little robot who was carrying the basin didn’t want to fly all the way to the top of the volcano, so I had to play a stupid escort mission all the way up Eldin Volcano. This is what, like, the fourth time I’ve had to climb this thing? Eugh.
Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – July 2016
Sometimes I think that I need to grow out of being upset that I don’t get summer vacation any more. I mean, it’s been well over a decade since I finished high school. In the time that I’ve been out of school, kids have started and finished school. But you know what? Nuts to that. I miss having two months to do whatever I damn well pleased.
~ Game Over ~
Final Fantasy VII (PC) – I’m amazed at how much shorter this game is than I remembered. I mean, I suppose it’s in part from not having sought out all the ultimate weapons and other fancy doo-dads, but even with a few hours of grinding and breeding a gold chocobo, the final time clocked in at under 40 hours. Crazy! (The time investment for prepping to fight the Emerald and Ruby Weapons is a whole other story.)
BOXBOXBOY! (3DS) – When I finished BOXBOY!, the only thing in the world that I wanted was more BOXBOY!. And now I have it! And it’s sooooooooooo good! And the ending suggests that there could be up to three more sequels. Hooray!
Skyward Sword Replay: Week 7
Between Monster Hunter Generations and the new season of BoJack Horseman, I barely touched Skyward Sword last week. Didn’t accomplish a whole lot, which shouldn’t come as a surprise.
My first objective was to round up some treasures from Goddess Cubes. Which, of course, was a short nightmare because it required flying to and fro in the sky. I know I’ve said it before, but flying is super tedious. Absolutely the worst part of the game. The sky isn’t really that big, just enough to create a good sense of scale, but it feels so massive and empty when you have to fly from one end to the other. Gah.
I also discovered that I had secretly gotten a new power: the ability to dowse for certain types of collectibles. I learned this after collecting a few more gratitude crystals and visiting Batreaux for a prize (rupees). Fi popped out afterward and told me I could now dowse for gratitude crystals. Then she popped out again after I upgraded a few weapons and gave me the ability to dowse for upgrade materials. I suppose it’s a good power to have, but most of the time, random materials lying around are just amber relics, which I already have like thirteen million of.
The best one, when I went back on plot, was when Fi let me start dowsing for Goddess Cubes. Which is mostly great, because they’re the big treasures, which can be great things like power-up medals and heart pieces but are sometimes less helpful things like rupees. Maybe extra ammo satchels? I kind of hope not. I just spent a lot buying and upgrading a new quiver because 20 arrows isn’t really enough. It’d be a shame to find one for free now.
Skyward Sword Replay: Week 6 (for real)
It was a mad rush to burn through the last few dungeons of Skyward Sword last week, as Monster Hunter Generations came out on Friday and, well, Monster Hunter trumps all else for me. Even then, I only had Tuesday and Thursday evening to play, and those were also shortened by the need to prepare food and engage in physical activity. Needless to say, I did not make it to the end.
To begin, here’s one of those stray observations: Fi is super creepy when she “sings.” With those big, dead eyes and a mouth that flaps open and closed like a wooden dummy, she is right up there with the Five Nights at Freddy’s animatronics on the Nightmare Fuel scale. Considering that the design docs in Hyrule Historia suggest that she’s supposed to come off as a shy teenager, they really missed the mark there. Simply animating her mouth better would have solved the problem, but it slides up and down so mechanically, and not at all synced with the music, that it just comes off as unsettling.
Skyward Sword Replay: Week 6
I didn’t play at all last week!
Opps!
Skyward Sword Replay: Week 5
Well, I was wrong. At least one dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has multiple floors. Indeed, the Ancient Cistern has both a 1F and a B1. Also, like the first two dungeons, it is a teeny-tiny little thing. Seriously, it’s like five rooms. Two of those rooms are massive, but that’s besides the point.
It’s also worth noting that the Ancient Cistern is aesthetically my absolute favourite dungeon in the entire series. It’s bright and vibrant, full of gold, blue, and green. It has a very pleasant Buddhist temple aesthetic that jives so perfectly well with the game’s painterly visual style. It’s just really nice.
Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up – June 2016
My free time from mid-April to mid-June was reduced very drastically by both school and my renewed efforts to get into slightly better physical shape, and now, now I am free from the clutches of higher learning (for a while) so that I can go back to wasting that portion of my spare time on mind-dulling television games.
😀 😀 😀
~ Game Over ~
Hyrule Warriors Legends (3DS) – Played through the story mode again for… collection purposes. Yeah, I’ll probably be playing this one forever.
The Legend of Zelda (NES) – All that Hyrule Warriorsing often makes me want to play real Zelda, and sometimes I do. Like this time, when I played the first one!
Kirby: Planet Robobot (3DS) – It’s almost exactly like Triple Deluxe, but the Robobot Armor is a much more fun gimmick than Hypernova. Also, the sub-games are somehow even better. You can expect that I’ll be writing a big ol’ thing about them soon. As another note, the final boss is friggin’ AMAZING. Fanservicey as all heck, and I loved it.
Kirby: Planet Robobot (3DS) – I also played through the entire Meta Knightmare Returns mode, which is playing through the game again as Meta Knight, but it’s all lined up as one super-long level, and all the bosses are powered up and there is a super-sweet trio of legacy bosses at the end.
Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game (360) – I got really frustrated with Ornstein and Smough in my Dark Souls replay, so I flipped over to something a little more friendly. In fact, this game is very easy to burn through when you have a maxed-out character. Still fun, and the music is phenomenal.
Cibele (PC) – A narrative game about a girl who meets a guy online, falls in love, and then meets up with him to bone. Guess how it ends.
Her Story (PC) – A narrative game where you’re sorting through hundreds of little interview clips to piece together the story of a murder. Only I didn’t realize that the game wasn’t functioning properly for me, so I only got audio clips when there were supposed to be accompanying videos! The game still worked, and I loved it. Recommended to everyone.
Mighty No. 9 (WiiU) – What was supposed to be the glorious (off-brand) return of Mega Man instead turned out to be half-baked and disappointing to most. I don’t hate it, but it’s generally underwhelming and the final boss is just so difficult.
~ Now Playing ~
Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii) – Speaking of wanting to replay Zeldas… I hadn’t revisited Skyward Sword since I beat it the first time, and man, I am really digging it. I’ve been writing about it weekly, so… you know. Read those entries.
Monster Hunter Explore (iOS) – Most of my playtime was during the bus rides home from school. Now that I’m out of school until ????, I probably won’t play it until then.
Fallout 4 (PS4) – Started up a new game on my shiny new Playstation 4. I suppose that above all else, this spells the end for my stalled game of New Vegas. Also, no other game makes me wish there were more hours in the day. So that I could squander them on pointless video games, you see.
Pokémon Pearl Version (DS) – This was a very spur-of-the-moment replay decision. I really can’t even remember why I decided to go back to it. What I do know is that even after I’d confirmed that all the important Pokémon had been safely transferred away, it still killed me to overwrite my old save. This is why I very rarely replay Pokémon games.
Final Fantasy VII (PC) – One thing I always forget about FF7 is that enemy attack animations can be really long, and as a result, really drag out the battles. I would like a separate timer just to see how much of the game time has been spent watching monsters do elaborate attacks. Or a switch to just turn them off like Pokémon has.
Zelda: Twilight Princess HD (WiiU) – Yep. Still poking around in this one. I beat it, but I wanted to go back to find all the stamps and poes (which I still haven’t accomplished). I’ve played the game like five times before, and never explored the world nearly as thoroughly as I have this time around.
Dark Souls (360) – I get about an hour in each Saturday afternoon, and have managed to make my way back to Anor Londo. Yaaaay. As stated above, NG+ Ornstein and Smough are an absolute nightmare. I did manage to get past them, though, so it should be easy street from here on out, right?