Was Majora's Mask 3D a Bad Remake? (Continuation of my Debate with Vanguard333)

[Jotari]

25 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

@Jotari My point was that he carries those remains through every cycle, just like he carries his ocarina, his bow, the gilded sword, etc.

Well yes, I don't think anyone was ever suggesting he was going back in time naked. Point is it's a nice head canon, but it's not something I see as definitively suggested by the game itself. We get all of two references to the goddess of time and absolutely no other detail on whether it is an actual real entity assisting Link or simply his own powers being utilized by the Ocarina of Time. And even if it were real, we have no reference at all as to what its character is and why  it ultimately is helping Link.

(also only the gilded sword goes back in time, not the razor sword, don't know why the goddess of time would make that choice, my theory is gold dust is immune to the effects of time travel).

Edited July 12, 2021 by Jotari

[Etrurian emperor]

Ehhhhh......I liked it but I didn't think it was good at preserving the spirit of the original. I think especially that the game was too generous in giving the players means to control time which was a very convenient quality of life feature but not really in the spirit of the game. I also was not entirely a fan of the revamped boss fights. 

[indigoasis]

As someone who never truly got to experience the original game, I think that the remake is serviceable enough for someone looking to play the game on modern hardware (not to mention on a handheld! That gives it great portability, so that's a plus). 

However, I can absolutely agree with the gripes that people have with the remake compared to the original. The changes made in the remake never really bothered me all that much since I just wanted to be able to play Majora's Mask, but I definitely think it would have been a better remake if they stayed faithful to the original (with the QoL stuff in there too, of course).

Basically, I think MM3D is fine, but it could have been better if they hadn't made unnecessary changes.

[Jotari]

36 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Ehhhhh......I liked it but I didn't think it was good at preserving the spirit of the original. I think especially that the game was too generous in giving the players means to control time which was a very convenient quality of life feature but not really in the spirit of the game. I also was not entirely a fan of the revamped boss fights. 

I'm glad you brought that up, because I wanted to, but I felt kind of petty to complain about, so I'm glad to see someone feels similarly about it. Time is an aspect of the game that I feel is kind of lost when you can just forward skip to any event. There's no need to make use of Granny's Story or the shooting gallery etc to make use of your time while waiting for a certain event. You just whip out your Ocarina and go to the exact hour. It's certainly more convenient, but the element of time itself is diminished when there's never any need to wait.

[FionordeQuester]

48 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I think especially that the game was too generous in giving the players means to control time which was a very convenient quality of life feature but not really in the spirit of the game. 

8 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I'm glad you brought that up, because I wanted to, but I felt kind of petty to complain about, so I'm glad to see someone feels similarly about it. Time is an aspect of the game that I feel is kind of lost when you can just forward skip to any event. There's no need to make use of Granny's Story or the shooting gallery etc to make use of your time while waiting for a certain event. You just whip out your Ocarina and go to the exact hour. It's certainly more convenient, but the element of time itself is diminished when there's never any need to wait.

I disagree with this.  Yes, you can always skip forward—but the downside is that you cannot get those hours back.  Think of "Click", and how much anguish the main character experienced because he kept fast-forwarding through his life.  If I truly want to maximize what I want to get done in each cycle, I have to be very careful in using it.

This is especially true in a game where they nerfed the Song of Inverted Time.  Do you think this might've been why they weakened its effect?

[Jotari]

6 minutes ago, FionordeQuester said:

I disagree with this.  Yes, you can always skip forward—but the downside is that you cannot get those hours back.  Think of "Click", and how much anguish the main character experienced because he kept fast-forwarding through his life.  If I truly want to maximize what I want to get done in each cycle, I have to be very careful in using it.

This is especially true in a game where they nerfed the Song of Inverted Time.  Do you think this might've been why they weakened its effect?

Only you can get those hours back. You can literally rewind time. If you fuck up and accidentally miss a timed event, the combination of rewinding and forward jumping means you can get back to the same level of progress pretty much instantly, unless you're required to defeat a boss, but I don't think any post boss side quests require waiting for a timed event. Well except waiting for your sword to be reforged, but good luck messing up something that simple once the sword forging process is underway. If there were some encouragement to multiple things per cycle like my suggestion of a carnival of time with events based on what happened in the three day cycle leading up to it, or even a Song of Time counter like I also suggested, then I'd see some credence to the idea, but in the way the game is you can easily just dedicate a cycle to a specific side quest and finish it super fast. The timed aspect of it is effectively removed and it becomes a pretty standard video game quest of "go to character, talk to character" only with playing the Ocarina once or twice in between.

[FionordeQuester]

57 minutes ago, Jotari said:

...but in the way the game is you can easily just dedicate a cycle to a specific side quest and finish it super fast. The timed aspect of it is effectively removed and it becomes a pretty standard video game quest of "go to character, talk to character" only with playing the Ocarina once or twice in between.

Wasn't that sort of how it was, regardless?  That most time triggers are easy to fast-forward to?  The only exceptions I can think of are...

1) Anju's Midnight Meeting (12 AM to 6 AM on Day)

2) The Hand Wants Toilet Paper (12 AM to 6 AM)

3) Sakon the Thief (1:15 AM on Day 1, cannot easily get by skipping to 6 PM)

4) Kamaro the Dancer (12 AM to 4 AM, cannot easily get by skipping to 6 PM)

5) The Aliens at Romani Ranch (2:30 to 3:00 AM before Romani loses, cannot easily get by skipping to 6 PM)



6) Milk Bar (10 PM to 6 AM, cannot easily get by skipping to 6 PM)

7) The Curiosity Shop (10 PM to 6 AM on Day 3 after foiling Sakon, cannot easily get by skipping to 6 PM)

8) Couple's Mask (5 AM to 6 AM, spat to 12 AM after getting the Sun Mask back)

That's like, what, three things I couldn't either spam the Song of Double Time for, or bash out in one clean sweep?

It's what I always did after getting the Chateau de Romani bottle and Powder Keg—start another cycle, use Granny to trigger Midnight Meeting, do the mini-games, then just chain the first five together so I could stop worrying about 'em 😛.

Edited July 13, 2021 by FionordeQuester

[Jotari]

4 minutes ago, FionordeQuester said:

Wasn't that sort of how it was, regardless?  That most time triggers are easy to fast-forward to?  The only exceptions I can think of are...

1) Anju's Midnight Meeting (12 AM to 6 AM on Day)

2) The Hand Wants Toilet Paper (12 AM to 6 AM)

3) Sakon the Thief (1:15 AM on Day 1, cannot easily get by skipping to 6 PM)

4) Kamaro the Dancer (12 AM to 4 AM, cannot easily get by skipping to 6 PM)

5) The Aliens at Romani Ranch (2:30 to 3:00 AM before Romani loses, cannot easily get by skipping to 6 PM)



6) Milk Bar (10 PM to 6 AM, cannot easily get by skipping to 6 PM)

7) The Curiosity Shop (10 PM to 6 AM on Day 3 after foiling Sakon, cannot easily get by skipping to 6 PM)

8) Couple's Mask (5 AM to 6 AM, spat to 12 AM after getting the Sun Mask back)

That's like, what, three things I couldn't either abuse the Song of Double Time for, or bash out in one cycle?

It's what I always did after getting the Chateau de Romani bottle and Powder Keg—start another cycle, use Granny to trigger Midnight Meeting, do the mini-games, then just chain the first five together so I could stop worrying about 'em 😛.

You've just listed like eight things. And all the Kafe and Anju stuff has to be done twice in order to get the two alternate rewards.

[FionordeQuester]

Just now, Jotari said:

You've just listed like eight things. And all the Kafe and Anju stuff has to be done twice in order to get the two alternate rewards.

Eight, out of how many?

[Jotari]

4 minutes ago, FionordeQuester said:

Eight, out of how many?

Eight of how many? Things to do in the game? Well there's a tonne of things to do in the game. But most of the stuff there are among the most memorable. I'm pretty sure you missed the postman's training too. I'm not sure when it actually starts, but you at least have to wait until after he's done with his morning rounds. Though maybe you can do it on the early evening too.

Edited July 13, 2021 by Jotari

[FionordeQuester]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

I'm pretty sure you missed the postman's training too. I'm not sure when it actually starts, but you at least have to wait until after he's done with his morning rounds. Though maybe you can do it on the early evening too.

Yeah.  You can do it in the early evening as well.

Admittedly, this is where my power-gamer tendencies might be biasing me.  You've seen for yourself how methodical and organized I like being in my LPs, right 😄 ?

[vanguard333]

I was just trying the archery mini-games, and I have to say: one area in which I can definitely say the 3DS remake is better than the original (although it's more a case of modern hardware being better) is that it has gyro aim. Going back to the 3D Zelda games on my GameCube and trying stuff like archery mini-games reminds me just how stiff and awkward stick-only aiming is and makes me immediately miss gyro aim on the Wii U and Switch, and especially miss the Wii's IR pointer that made aiming in the Wii version of Twilight Princess such a breeze in comparison to stick-only and stick+gyro.

At least Ocarina of Time made its archery mini-games largely come down to pattern-recognition and memorization to compensate for the stick-only aiming; Majora's Mask has the targets appear in a strict pattern, but it has a ton more targets than just ten, it also has targets you don't want to hit and can easily hit when you were certain you were aiming for one of the actual targets (the town shooting gallery) and a ton of small moving targets (the swamp shooting gallery). Kotake's boat-ride archery mini-game was a breeze in comparison as at least, for that one, there was plenty of room for error.

Then again, I have no idea what gyro aim is like on a handheld console compared to a home console, so it could be that the gyro aim is completely useless for all I know.

 

EDIT: One thing I meant to also mention was that, as I had to beat Odolwa again to unlock the boat-ride archery minigame, I was able to confirm something I had mentioned earlier in the thread: that the Deku Scrubs know that Link is a shapeshifter. After the cutscene that plays when you deliver the princess to the Deku Palace, all the NPCs in that room have new dialogue when talked to compared to before you rescue the princess, and one of the nameless Deku Scrubs now says something along the lines of, "You can take on many forms, can't you? That's a rather strange ability." So... yeah; the Deku Scrubs are the only ones to figure out that Link is a shapeshifter: the Terminians don't figure out your different forms are the same person, the Gorons think you're Darmani, and the Zora think you're Mikau. The Deku Scrubs are the only ones to connect the dots. I wonder why that is?

Edited July 13, 2021 by vanguard333

[samthedigital]

54 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

Then again, I have no idea what gyro aim is like on a handheld console compared to a home console, so it could be that the gyro aim is completely useless for all I know.

Gyro aim tends to be pretty good. I like to play FPS games on PC for example because I don't like stick aiming whatsoever, but gryo makes it tolerable.

Generally speaking I felt that the Majora's Mask remake was a letdown. Outside of the gyro movement feels worse for several reasons. A few have already been mentioned, but the lack of notches on the 3DS means that getting a good angle for the goron roll is annoying, and that's one of the smaller grievances I have with the game. I don't really like any of the changes either besides the visual updates.

[FionordeQuester]

14 minutes ago, samthedigital said:

Outside of the gyro movement feels worse for several reasons. A few have already been mentioned, but the lack of notches on the 3DS means that getting a good angle for the goron roll is annoying, and that's one of the smaller grievances I have with the game. 

It's interesting you bring that up.  Speedrunners have told me that one of the weird quirks in OG Majora's Mask was that there were no cardinal directions mapped, unlike Ocarina of Time.  You couldn't go exactly up, down, left, or right—there was always an angle of at least one degree.  If you don't believe me, try Z-Targeting while walking up against a wall, or flipping the stick directly down.  For most categories, it's only a slight annoyance—it's a deal breaker, however, in heavily glitched ones.

3DS didn't fix the issue with Up, Left, or Right, but they did fix the issue with Down.  Backwalking is easier, if nothing else—enough so that heavily glitched categories will use it for set-ups.

Interesting factoid, eh?

Edited July 13, 2021 by FionordeQuester

[vanguard333]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

Gyro aim tends to be pretty good. I like to play FPS games on PC for example because I don't like stick aiming whatsoever, but gryo makes it tolerable.

I know that gyro aim tends to be pretty good in general, as I own both a Wii U and a Switch; I just don't know what it's like to use it on purely-handheld consoles, where the very thing you're moving to use the gyro aim also has the screen you're looking at on it.

[AnonymousSpeed]

14 hours ago, FionordeQuester said:

Say, I had an epiphany on why Deku & Zora were changed like they were.  It's...well it's not a good reason, but it's a reason, with a semblance of logic behind it.  Wanna hear it?

Yes.

[Jotari]

8 hours ago, FionordeQuester said:

Yeah.  You can do it in the early evening as well.

Admittedly, this is where my power-gamer tendencies might be biasing me.  You've seen for yourself how methodical and organized I like being in my LPs, right 😄 ?

I like playing such a way too, which is why I think it's better off nerfed. With the ability to go to any hour you want there's less incentive to organize and plan routes in such a way where you try to accomplish multiple things at once.

2 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Say, I had an epiphany on why Deku & Zora were changed like they were.  It's...well it's not a good reason, but it's a reason, with a semblance of logic behind it.  Wanna hear it?

Yes.

Hazarding a  guess I'd say the Zora might have been changed to match the Goron roll requiring magic. Though I don't think that's a good reason with how both are utilized. That being said if Goron rolling hadn't required magic in the original and had been added in the remake I'd probably be similarly annoyed.

Deku I got nothing. It's probably an unintended side effect of changing something else.

Edited July 13, 2021 by Jotari

[samthedigital]

6 hours ago, vanguard333 said:

I know that gyro aim tends to be pretty good in general, as I own both a Wii U and a Switch; I just don't know what it's like to use it on purely-handheld consoles, where the very thing you're moving to use the gyro aim also has the screen you're looking at on it.

I mean it's basically the same thing as long as you're not in a car where it can get annoying =P.

7 hours ago, FionordeQuester said:

It's interesting you bring that up.  Speedrunners have told me that one of the weird quirks in OG Majora's Mask was that there were no cardinal directions mapped, unlike Ocarina of Time.  You couldn't go exactly up, down, left, or right—there was always an angle of at least one degree.  If you don't believe me, try Z-Targeting while walking up against a wall, or flipping the stick directly down.  For most categories, it's only a slight annoyance—it's a deal breaker, however, in heavily glitched ones.

3DS didn't fix the issue with Up, Left, or Right, but they did fix the issue with Down.  Backwalking is easier, if nothing else—enough so that heavily glitched categories will use it for set-ups.

Interesting factoid, eh?

It's interesting on a technical level I guess? I'd still rather have the notches as they make the minigame on the moon much easier to deal with.

[Armagon]

16 hours ago, FionordeQuester said:

Think of "Click", and how much anguish the main character experienced because he kept fast-forwarding through his life. 

Holy fuck, this awakened an ancient memory of mine.

Anyways, Majora's Mask 3D isn't a bad remake. As someone who has Majora's Mask as his favorite Zelda game, i actually prefer the 3DS remake. Yeah the original is good but the remake is just much more convenient to play. Between being able to save at any time (you can savescum the fucking Goron Race, thank God), improved notebook, the ability to actually see in a few places (Woodfall Temple in the original had places where you just flatout couldn't see), etc, it just makes for a smoother experience. The only legitimate downside is the Zora nerf but like that's it.

And yeah, i have seen a certain video about the subject. Didn't exactly find it convincing tbh.

[Dr. Tarrasque]

The best version of Majora's Mask is the 3D remake with the Project Restoration patch.

[FionordeQuester]

37 minutes ago, Dr. Tarrasque said:

The best version of Majora's Mask is the 3D remake with the Project Restoration patch.

Thanks for bringing that up—that's gonna tie into that epiphany.  So then!  

8 hours ago, Jotari said:

Hazarding a  guess I'd say the Zora might have been changed to match the Goron roll requiring magic. Though I don't think that's a good reason with how both are utilized. That being said if Goron rolling hadn't required magic in the original and had been added in the remake I'd probably be similarly annoyed.

You guessed correctly!  Grezzo also added magic pots in the Beaver Race mini-game to compensate for this.

Quote

Deku I got nothing. It's probably an unintended side effect of changing something else.

That's just the thing—it wasn't unintended!  They nerfed Deku Link on purpose, play-tested it, and then adjusted the lily pads as needed.  I was finally able to confirm this after reading a Reddit post by the Project Restoration guy:

So apart from fixing that shortcut (which didn't need nerfed hopping), it was indeed an attempt at adding challenge to the 3DS version, along with the nerfed Inverted Song of Time, most of the re-worked bosses (sans Oldolwa, since he come 1st), and Fast Zora Swimming burning magic.  Presumably, this was to counter-balance some of the other changes they made to streamline the experience.  This way (in their minds), they could confidently say that their version is just as hard as the N64 (without being obtuse ).

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-The-Legend-of-Zelda-Majora-s-Mask-3D/The-Legend-of-Zelda-Majora-s-Mask-3D/6-Every-Boss-Stage-is-Weird-/6-Every-Boss-Stage-is-Weird--959902.html

So for better or worse, every change they made was completely intentional and play-tested.  That in mind, I can't see any other reason for nerfed Deku Hopping other than "added challenge".

Edited July 13, 2021 by FionordeQuester

[vanguard333]

21 minutes ago, FionordeQuester said:

You guessed correctly!  Grezzo also added magic pots in the Beaver Race mini-game to compensate for this.

So for better or worse, every change they made was completely intentional and play-tested.  That in mind, I can't see any other reason for nerfed Deku Hopping other than "challenge".

I'm cutting the quote just to keep this from getting too long.

Adding magic pots doesn't strike me as a good way to compensate for it, as it means that, in addition to having to aim for the rings and keep up with the beavers, you're now also having to aim for magic pots that sit at the bottom of the body of water; it seems like it would just make the beaver minigame even harder (and not in a good way) unless you spend 200 rupees and drink a chateau romani so you can ignore the pots.

Speaking of which, I was thinking of doing something along those lines (namely drinking a chateau romani beforehand) in order to make the goron race easier in the GameCube version that I'm playing. However, if I recall correctly, you pretty much have to win the race on the First Day if you want to make the gilded sword, as making the sword takes up two full days (one for the razor sword and another for the gilded sword), so is trying to get a bottle of chateau romani beforehand actually a good idea or not?

 

Anyway, adding challenge in one area to compensate for lost challenge elsewhere doesn't necessarily strike me as a good idea, especially since there's a fine line between challenge and tedium (and that's particularly true in a game where you're constantly against the clock). For a classic example from Ocarina of Time, the Water Temple isn't difficult at all; it's merely tedious because you keep having to equip and de-equip the iron boots by going into the menu. Ocarina of Time 3D made the iron boots an item and added markers for the water level; eliminating the tedium while preserving any "challenge" the dungeon ever had.

Making the classic zora swim use magic or nerfing Deku Link's movement doesn't strike me as adding challenge; it strikes me as adding tedium, as it just means slowing the player down in a game where they don't have the time (and in the case of Zora Link, since the swimming is tied to a resource, the player isn't going to practice as much with it as they would've otherwise).

But, even if, hypothetically, they did get "adding challenge" in certain areas perfectly (i.e. they added challenge without adding tedium), I wouldn't say that makes up for lost challenge elsewhere since a lot of the challenges are meant to challenge the player in different ways. But this is just me speaking as an aspiring game developer, and not as a critic.

 

I can think of another possible reason: during play-testing, they ran off a ledge or a small platform, or kept having to reposition Deku Link multiple times just to get him close enough to the center of the flower to be able to dive, like a golfer constantly putting a ball that just won't go in the hole. That stuff happened to me a couple of times when playing the original recently, but where I thought, "I need to be gentler with the control stick", the play-testers might've instead thought, "Deku needs some start-up lag to make small and narrow movements easier". For spin-attack-hopping across water being removed; yeah, that was probably for adding tedium challenge.

[FionordeQuester]

36 minutes ago, vanguard333 said:

I'm cutting the quote just to keep this from getting too long.

That's ok—I've done the same since the start.

Quote

Adding magic pots doesn't strike me as a good way to compensate for it, as it means that, in addition to having to aim for the rings and keep up with the beavers, you're now also having to aim for magic pots that sit at the bottom of the body of water; it seems like it would just make the beaver minigame even harder (and not in a good way) unless you spend 200 rupees and drink a chateau romani so you can ignore the pots.

I thought it made it harder in a good way.  It's challenge I can blame myself for failing, rather than the game.

Quote

Speaking of which, I was thinking of doing something along those lines (namely drinking a chateau romani beforehand) in order to make the goron race easier in the GameCube version that I'm playing. However, if I recall correctly, you pretty much have to win the race on the First Day if you want to make the gilded sword, as making the sword takes up two full days (one for the razor sword and another for the gilded sword), so is trying to get a bottle of chateau romani beforehand actually a good idea or not?

It is not.  Apart from what you mentioned, the game rubber-bands you.  The faster you go, the faster they go!

Quote

Anyway, adding challenge in one area to compensate for lost challenge elsewhere doesn't necessarily strike me as a good idea, especially since there's a fine line between challenge and tedium (and that's particularly true in a game where you're constantly against the clock).

It's what I'd do, if I were remaking an old classic.  Not in all the specific ways they did, but the idea is sound.

Quote

For a classic example from Ocarina of Time, the Water Temple isn't difficult at all; it's merely tedious because you keep having to equip and de-equip the iron boots by going into the menu. Ocarina of Time 3D made the iron boots an item and added markers for the water level; eliminating the tedium while preserving any "challenge" the dungeon ever had.

Good example—I also like what Project Restoration did with the transformation masks and the Elegy of Emptiness!

Quote

Making the classic zora swim use magic or nerfing Deku Link's movement doesn't strike me as adding challenge; it strikes me as adding tedium, as it just means slowing the player down in a game where they don't have the time (and in the case of Zora Link, since the swimming is tied to a resource, the player isn't going to practice as much with it as they would've otherwise).

Deku Link's movements were almost certainly nerfed to make the platforms a bigger challenge.  Zora Link...well, that was probably also for consistency with Goron Link.  Also had the nice added effect (in their minds) of making the Beaver Race a tiny bit harder.

Quote

But, even if, hypothetically, they did get "adding challenge" in certain areas perfectly (i.e. they added challenge without adding tedium), I wouldn't say that makes up for lost challenge elsewhere since a lot of the challenges are meant to challenge the player in different ways. But this is just me speaking as an aspiring game developer, and not as a critic.

Depends on how it's done, I say.

Quote

I can think of another possible reason: during play-testing, they ran off a ledge or a small platform, or kept having to reposition Deku Link multiple times just to get him close enough to the center of the flower to be able to dive, like a golfer constantly putting a ball that just won't go in the hole. That stuff happened to me a couple of times when playing the original recently, but where I thought, "I need to be gentler with the control stick", the play-testers might've instead thought, "Deku needs some start-up lag to make small and narrow movements easier".

I think if they were that pathetic as gamers, they would've just made the Goron Roll have infinite magic (instead of making Zora Link use more)...or kept the Inverted Song of Time's original potency...or added more time to the Beaver Race...or made pretty much all the mini-games easier (instead of leaving every one of them untouched).

Quote

 

For spin-attack-hopping across water being removed; yeah, that was probably for adding tedium challenge.

Deku Link hopping was incredibly easy in N64, for me.  I had to be significantly more careful, in the 3DS.

I actually enjoyed the challenge, honestly.  I was just afraid to bring it up till now, because I wasn't sure if it was intentional or not.  Now I am 🙂 !

Edited July 13, 2021 by FionordeQuester

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, FionordeQuester said:

Thanks for bringing that up—that's gonna tie into that epiphany.  So then!  

You guessed correctly!  Grezzo also added magic pots in the Beaver Race mini-game to compensate for this.

That's just the thing—it wasn't unintended!  They nerfed Deku Link on purpose, play-tested it, and then adjusted the lily pads as needed.  I was finally able to confirm this after reading a Reddit post by the Project Restoration guy:

So apart from fixing that shortcut (which didn't need nerfed hopping), it was indeed an attempt at adding challenge to the 3DS version, along with the nerfed Inverted Song of Time, most of the re-worked bosses (sans Oldolwa, since he come 1st), and Fast Zora Swimming burning magic.  Presumably, this was to counter-balance some of the other changes they made to streamline the experience.  This way (in their minds), they could confidently say that their version is just as hard as the N64 (without being obtuse ).

https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-The-Legend-of-Zelda-Majora-s-Mask-3D/The-Legend-of-Zelda-Majora-s-Mask-3D/6-Every-Boss-Stage-is-Weird-/6-Every-Boss-Stage-is-Weird--959902.html

So for better or worse, every change they made was completely intentional and play-tested.  That in mind, I can't see any other reason for nerfed Deku Hopping other than "added challenge".

At least there's some logic to it, but I don't think it's particularly good in the challenge department. Especially in the case of the Deku Scrub. As it's not really that much more challenging to hop around lilly pads. Just tedious. The range and extent of jumps are pretty straight forward and failure is pretty minimal. I'd rather a more streamlined experience where in you can pass through them quickly with increased skill. The Zora argument could have some credence with something like the beaver race, but even if there was a similar race for the Deku (there is a Deku race, but I don't think there's any lilly pad section, or if there is it's a pretty small part of it and not the entire thrust of the mini game) slowing it down doesn't provide any more challenge. As it's not like there's much complex movement going on, it's just looking at a distance, judging if you can make it and then making it, unless there are any enemies around to disrupt you. I probably make more failed jumps in the original than in the 3DS by virtue of trying to move faster and overestimating distances.

Edited July 13, 2021 by Jotari

[vanguard333]

4 hours ago, FionordeQuester said:

I thought it made it harder in a good way.  It's challenge I can blame myself for failing, rather than the game.

It is not.  Apart from what you mentioned, the game rubber-bands you.  The faster you go, the faster they go!

It's what I'd do, if I were remaking an old classic.  Not in all the specific ways they did, but the idea is sound.

Good example—I also like what Project Restoration did with the transformation masks and the Elegy of Emptiness!

Deku Link's movements were almost certainly nerfed to make the platforms a bigger challenge.  Zora Link...well, that was probably also for consistency with Goron Link.  Also had the nice added effect (in their minds) of making the Beaver Race a tiny bit harder.

Depends on how it's done, I say.

I think if they were that pathetic as gamers, they would've just made the Goron Roll have infinite magic (instead of making Zora Link use more)...or kept the Inverted Song of Time's original potency...or added more time to the Beaver Race...or made pretty much all the mini-games easier (instead of leaving every one of them untouched).

Deku Link hopping was incredibly easy in N64, for me.  I had to be significantly more careful, in the 3DS.

I actually enjoyed the challenge, honestly.  I was just afraid to bring it up till now, because I wasn't sure if it was intentional or not.  Now I am 🙂 !

Okay. I'm just saying that I think it's an area where a number of people would blame the game and have reason to do so.

I see. I was already aware of the rubber-banding (which I've honestly never been a fan of in any game with a racing mini-game), and I wasn't thinking of the chateau romani as a way to go faster; just simply a way to not have to worry about failing to hit magic jars and run out of magic. The goron race has too many ways to automatically lose: you run out of magic, you lose; you get hit by another goron (even though you're the only goron with spikes), you lose; you go too fast, you lose due to rubber-banding; and I'm sure I'm forgetting about a dozen other ways in which, if the player does something even slightly imperfectly, the player loses.

I don't think so; it just strikes me as, "Oh, we forgot to put cheese on your burger, so we added extra tomato to compensate"; it's not how it works.

Thanks. Yeah; why weren't the transformation masks mapped to the control pad? That could've even been done with the original version: all the control pad is doing is acting as a toggle for the mini-map, and it only needs one of the four sides for doing that. Majora's Mask really makes you feel the weight of only three items being selectable at a time.

I wasn't meaning in terms of intent; I was meaning in terms of execution. Having to get a bit of a run-up on small platforms is something even I can see would only increase the tedium, not the actual challenge. I can't speak about parity between Goron Link and Zora Link as I haven't gotten to those parts in the original version yet, but I suspect that, while added parity between them would've sounded neat in their heads, in practice, it's like gutting the Wii U version of Breath of the Wild's touchscreen controls for parity with the Switch version; it comes across to the player as just nerfing one version to be a short form of Richard.

And I'd say again that I don't think it works that way.

That's the thing; I wasn't talking about gamers, I was talking about play-testers. Gamers think, "Let's see how well I can do this" while play-testers think, "Let's see how well the game works". I don't know; I guess I'm just more willing to consider the idea that play-testers can suggest an idiotic fix to a problem that never existed after I learned that the reason the Wii version of Twilight Princess was mirrored (with no option to un-mirror it) was because play-testers thought it would be "awkward" that players would move the Wii remote with their right hand and Link would swing the sword with his left hand, even though the motion controls in that game amounted to either waggle (meaningless shaking) or IR pointer controls, so it wouldn't have been awkward for righties at all and it opened the floodgates for Nintendo to just go, "Oh, we're making a Zelda game on the Wii? Just make Link right-handed and, while we're at it, make all the game's motion controls revolve around playing the game right-handed and give left-handed players absolutely nothing to be better able to play the game" with Skyward Sword. To sum up: if it isn't obvious already, I don't think very highly of Nintendo's play-testers.

Honestly, for me, the fun for the hopping was seeing what kinds of shortcuts I could take with the spin-attack hopping, and that often amounted to overestimating (or failing to pull off the spin attack hopping) and ending up in the water. For me, that's where the challenge was: you can navigate the swamp more quickly, but you have to have the practice and skill to pull it off, and if you can't, then you cost yourself time and may as well have just normal-hopped in less time than the time those tries took.

 

EDIT: I just tried again at the Clock Town minigame (this time trying for a perfect score to get a piece of heart), and this, for me, illustrates the difference between challenge and difficulty. I did everything I could to gain the upper hand: I learned that you only have to move the stick horizontally, I memorized all the octorock patterns and the sequence in each pattern will appear, I always have an arrow ready to shoot an octorock the moment the next pattern appears, I figured out the most efficient way to shoot every octorock in every pattern, I've proven through repeated attempts that I'm more than capable of shooting every octorok in each pattern within that pattern's timeframe. If this were simply challenging, then by figuring out every trick to the mechanics, I should have gotten that piece of heart by now. And yet, after more than twenty attempts, the best I've gotten is 49 octoroks out of 50.

I wanted to 100% complete this game; when going back and playing Ocarina of Time, the only thing that stopped me from doing a 100% completion was the gold skulltulas; I still got every heart piece and did every sidequest and mini-game, including the archery games. This game doesn't have any scattered collectibles like the gold skulltula tokens were in Ocarina of Time, so it should've been more than feasible for me to get that 100%. But I'm seriously considering giving up this stupid archery minigame despite how much effort I've put into it, and leaving Link at 19 hearts at the end of the game. Because this is just ridiculous; by every metric for challenge, I should've beaten this stupid minigame by now.

EDIT: I managed to get the piece of heart! I stand by everything I said about the mini-game being a pain, it is possible to complete it if you remain calm and try it a million times.

Edited July 13, 2021 by vanguard333