vanguard333

Today, the Pokémon company just released a Pokémon Presents video that provided a lot more information about current and upcoming games: What did everyone think of the announcements?

Well, I decided to go back to Monster Hunter Stories 2. Right away, there is a ton to love about the game; I love how the player character can actually ride the monsters to navigate the game's overworld, I like how the game rewards not just experience points but also monster parts whenever you win against a wild monster, and I really enjoy the depth to the combat. That said, I do have a few smaller issues: I like retrieving and hatching eggs to get more monsties. However, one result of this is that every new monstie starts at level 1. In Pokémon for example, since you're catching the wild Pokémon, they are (ideally) at around your team's level when you catch them, so it will not take too long for them to catch up to the rest of your team. If you hatch an egg late-game but want to use it on your story team, it will take a long time for it to get near the team's level. The game tries to mitigate this through exp-multipliers for monsties that are behind the player-character's level, and it does help, but it is still an issue. Another small issue I have is that it is really easy to end up over-leveled. I am not going out of my way to grind; the closest I've come to level-grinding is that I try to complete all the sidequests and everdens (and for the first part of the game, I didn't notice the "retreat" option at the very bottom of the combat screen), but I still found myself quickly ending up over-leveled. Nargacuga's stealth was great for mitigating this to some extent as it meant avoiding battles more easily, but I have so many powerful monsties that use speed attacks that I ended up removing it from my team for a while, bringing me right back to square one. As I've proceeded further into the game, I've begun to wonder if experience points and levels are really necessary for this game. Incentive to take part in the combat already exists through monster parts and getting monsters to retreat to their dens so you can obtain an egg, the experience system means that royal monsters like Tigrex and Monoblos become less threatening after just two areas and already need more powerful variations, it increases the hassle in adding new monsties to your team, etc. I don't see much value in the exp system being in this game; I honestly think that it (and a number of other RPGs as well) could easily be just as good (and possibly even better) without it.

I never said Nintendo was good at continuity; honestly, I doubt anyone would say that Nintendo is good at continuity. After all, they forgot that Link and Bowser Jr. are supposed to be left-handed. I agree that it's probably for the best that BOTW all but ditched the timeline by being purposefully vague. …Now that I think about it, we should probably get back to talking about Majora's Mask; it is in the topic's name after all.

I was mainly meaning in a stylistic and gameplay sense; that the game was very much trying to emulate Ocarina of Time, largely in response to the many fans that complained about Wind Waker being "cartoony" and "too different", and demanded a return to something more like Ocarina of Time (which is a viewpoint I personally never understood as I thought Wind Waker was really cool and I always thought variety was a strength of the Zelda series). Eh; while I agree that they don't connect that much on a narrative level, Nintendo had been making timeline placements long before Twilight Princess, albeit to a lesser extent than later games. Wind Waker, for example, makes it very clear that it follows from the timeline Link left at the end of Ocarina of Time; i.e. the adult timeline. It constantly refers to the old hero as having "returned to his own time" (i.e. gone back to being a kid) and the basement of Hyrule shows portraits of the OoT sages. Even Ocarina of Time was supposed to be the Imprisoning War from the backstory of A Link to the Past and was even advertised as such. As for Twilight Princess specifically, it placed itself as being 100 years after OoT in the child timeline long before Hyrule Historia was a thing that existed. Eiji Aonuma even did an interview saying that the scene of Ganondorf's execution took place several years after Ocarina of Time (unfortunately, I cannot find when this interview happened, but based on what he says in the interview, it reads like it occurred long before they created the full Zelda timeline for Hyrule Historia, and I found separate evidence saying that Aonuma confirmed Twilight Princess' timeline placement back in 2006).

@Jotari Fair point. You're certainly right about any in-game connections between the Hero's Shade and the Hero of Time being very thin. I guess I always saw that idea of the Hero's Shade being the Hero of Time as something I wouldn't put past Nintendo (if that is the correct expression) given how far they went elsewhere to connect Twilight Princess to Ocarina of Time. Anyway, going back to Majora's Mask, what do you think of my points about the game's ending?

I have only played Seasons so far, and even then I didn't finish it (I came fairly close though; I had beaten the second-to-last dungeon), so I can't really give any detailed, "I want this particular part of the game refined in this specific way" statements, so this will just be what I want overall. I would like to see them remade as a bundle that overhauls the visuals into something visually distinct from Link's Awakening while still nodding to the fact that the original games reused Link's Awakening's visuals, makes some QoL improvements, and leaves the cores of the games intact. Where I want the biggest overhaul to be is that the remake is a bundle of three games, not two: in other words, I hope that the remake includes the scrapped third Oracle game. It's time for Farore's game to finally get to see the light of day. As for cost, normally I would say that a remake, unless it is something like Final Fantasy 7 Remake (i.e. full-overhaul) should not be full price. However, what I am suggesting is a bundle of three games, one of which was never finished and would likely have to be made from the ground-up with little-to-no source code available to use, so this would probably be the the one other case where I could understand it being full price. But I would only see full price as justifiable in this exact scenario: remade as a bundle, and with the bundle including the scrapped third game.

I recently bought "SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom: Rehydrated" because it was on sale and I remembered liking it on the GameCube when I rented it once over a decade ago. It's far from the most polished 3D collectathon platformer ever made, but it was a fair bit of fun, and I was enjoying it; then I encountered a very major bug... There's a bug that will randomly make your progress unable to be manually saved. That would seem like not too much of a problem as the game seemingly has autosave, but the autosave only records where SpongeBob currently is for if you run out of HP or fall off a ledge; despite being called an autosave by the game, it does not save the game. As a result of this bug combined with the misleading autosave, I lost a lot of progress, and I'm not exactly eager to keep playing a game that at any moment can decide it won't let me save my progress. Naturally, I looked online and found that I was far from the only person to encounter this bug, with there even having been some who encountered it the day the game released and expected a day-one patch to fix it. I do not know how a major bug like this one has gone unfixed for as long as it has. I can understand wanting to preserve the kinds of glitches that don't break the game and that speedrunners love, but this is not that kind of glitch at all. I honestly think this kind of bug is worse than a game crashing; at least a crash happens immediately and tells you right away where the game abruptly decided to just give up working. I think it's safe to say that, if I hadn't bought the game when it was on sale, I'd be demanding my money back.

Poor wording on my part; I apologize. I just meant that in Majora's Mask they did try to make him come across as more experienced in general by adding stuff like that weird little flip he does while jumping; his swordsmanship is indeed largely unchanged. True; it doesn't have to be anyone in particular. That said, I think Nintendo probably did have it in mind that the Hero's Shade was the Hero of Time even when they were making Twilight Princess, as it's yet another example of Twilight Princess trying to be "Ocarina of Time 2" rather than just being Twilight Princess.

To be fair, Link in Ocarina of Time was virtually untrained in swordsmanship outside of reading a couple of signs in the Kokiri Forest, and he shows a bit of improvement in Majora's Mask to reflect his experience, so it's quite likely that he accumulated these abilities and techniques later in life. Plus, who else could it be? The Hyrule Castle Guard that everyone forgets (and who doesn't die in the child timeline since Ganon's attack doesn't happen)?

I see. Really? They didn't add an eyeball balloon to the different phases of the mask? …That's somehow not surprising. Yeah; that sounds about right given what we know. To be honest, I've never been a fan of the Twilight Princess Link being a direct descendant of the Hero of Time. Normally, I would probably like that idea of one Link being a descendant of a previous one, as that idea has a lot of potential, but it honestly struck me as yet another example of Twilight Princess trying to be "Ocarina of Time 2" rather than be Twilight Princess. I think Twilight Princess is a good game overall, but I feel that a lot of the stuff that was unique about it got underutilized and shoved aside in favour of emulating Ocarina of Time and contrasting Wind Waker; basically, I could never shake the feeling that it overcorrected in response to all that bile that got unfairly thrown at Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess Link being a direct descendant of the Hero of Time just strikes me as part of that emulation.

There isn't really much in the area of pre-gunpowder weaponry left that they haven't already used at some point in the series, and while early firearms could be interesting, I'm not really sure if I want to see them. I suppose that, rather than new weapon types, it would be interesting to see the three main weapon types (sword, lance, axe) have unique subtypes. What I was thinking was that these subtypes would be dedicated two-handed weapons: they have great stats and unique abilities, but they're infantry-only and can't be used alongside secondary equipable items (i.e. shields). For swords, the two-handed subtype would be greatswords (historical European examples include the zweihander, spadone, and montante, and historical Japanese examples include the nodachi). For axes, poleaxe, and for lances, pikes.

Oh; I don't think the bluntness of the themes was bad in this case, especially since, despite the bluntness, a lot of people still didn't understand the themes somehow; a lot of people focused on the bleak setting & atmosphere and interpreted the game as about futility, when the whole point is that Link's actions ultimately prove to not be futile, or they asked why Link is never shown to find Navi, only to miss that the lesson Skull Kid needs to learn (that his friends may have departed, but they have not ceased being friends) is one that Link also needed to learn. It honestly reminds me of how, whenever there's a satire, there's always a subset of the audience that doesn't realize that it's satire. I will just say that any little kid that played through Majora's Mask is either very brave, or ended up having a lot of nightmares (I, unfortunately, was the latter). Anyway, I was wondering: what is the fight against Majora's Mask like if you don't use the Fierce Deity Mask? Also, what do you think Link did after Majora's Mask? Continue looking for Navi, go back to Hyrule, or something else?

I don't know. It's possible. Though it would probably more likely have been a "Sea Sage" or something like that, as the sages that ensured the Master Sword's strength don't overlap with the six sages and "Water Sage" is one of the six. A YouTuber named Zeltik made a good video about some of the different theories regarding the two missing dungeons. In it, he mentions another reason Nintendo gave for not including them in Wind Waker HD: that a lot of the assets for those two scrapped dungeons were recycled in later games. Here's the video so you can see for yourself: Now, he connects the scrapped Stovepipe Island to the fire mini-dungeon because of the visual similarities, but I think that, if anything, it was probably a third temple; more than likely one that incorporated all four of the late-game items (iron boots, bracelets, fire & ice arrows) given that the Goron Mines in Twilight Princess uses the bow and the iron boots.

That could definitely work. It could even be written as Pamela's Dad doing one last bit of research in the region before planning to head back to Termina proper (as Pamela said she was going to convince her father to leave Ikana). By the way, what did you think of what I said about the game's ending?

Oh, yeah; the Oracle games did borrow assets from Link's Awakening. I would just say that 2D sprite-based games leave a lot more room for the mind to fill things in than 3D graphics do; Majora's Mask got away with the massive asset reuse despite the 3D graphics because it added to the surreal atmosphere of the game (as well as somewhat reflecting Link's emotional state of actually missing the adult timeline and searching for Navi). Something like an HD version of ALBW's style could work; maybe some sort of blend of that and the Link's Reawakening art style might be best? That way you get the reference to the original games' asset reuse (and probably also save Grezzo a lot more time and effort) without the remakes looking like a dream world and while keeping Link's Reawakening looking unique. Going back to content though for just a minute, one reason I hope that the Oracle games are remade with the scrapped third game included is that I do enjoy when remakes add back in stuff that was cut. One thing I found a bit disappointing in hindsight about Wind Waker HD (which was labelled as a remake and not simply a remaster) was that it didn't add in any of the content that was cut when the original game was rushed onto the shelves: no Jabun dungeon, no third sage temple, and no undersea sections of the temples. I read that, apparently, they were originally going to add that stuff into the HD remake, but then decided to "stay true to the original version of the game". To some extent, I can see what they mean, as Greatfish Isle having been destroyed by Ganon was likely a result of that very same rush and it added a lot to the game's atmosphere and would've been missed if adding the Jabun dungeon would've meant getting rid of that. But I still think it would've been better if they could've found a way to add back in at least some of the cut content without losing anything. With the Oracle Games, they really could make the scrapped third game finally see the light of day without having to remove anything from the other two games, so it's a perfect opportunity.

I am aware of that; that's the reason I specifically said "unkillable", which is how he is referred to in the show by Kakazu (a man who does not believe in immortality) and only means he can't be directly killed, not that he can't die. I agree with your point to a large extent; I personally would just phrase it more in terms of the characters than in terms of the themes/messages simply because I feel that doing so provides a broader definition can cover a lot more stories; hence why I looked at each example I gave in terms of the characters involved.

True; credit where credit is due for Shadows of Valentia, it did at least try to respect what made Gaiden unique (gameplay-wise at least) to the point of that being one of the selling points. I can't imagine that was an easy decision either, since Gaiden was basically Fire Emblem's The Adventure of Link. My problems with Gaiden are entirely to do with where it chose to be 1:1 and where it chose to overhaul/modernize being as if the team was conflicted on what they actually wanted to do with the remake, and not whether or not the remake was faithful to what made the original unique and interesting. I personally would love to see all three Oracle games be remade (or, in the case of the scrapped third game, made) using the Link's Awakening Remake's engine, though probably not its art style. I was one of the people that really liked the art style of Link's Reawakening, but with the caveat that it fit the game because the game took place in a dream world, and the toy-like design contrasted nicely with the more anime-like opening and ending cinematics. I don't think it would fit the Oracle games nearly as well.

Okay; so that's the genre. …What about the villain? What defines them in terms of who they are? A lot of interesting ways to dispose of a villain are ones that target the core of who they are as a villain; essentially disposing of them in a way that shatters their worldview and/or driving motivation, or has that driving motivation bring about their undoing; here's just a few examples to illustrate what I mean (spoilers ahead for Avatar: the Last Airbender, season 2 of Castlevania, and Aladdin). If not that, then another thing you could do is instead focus on the hero and their conflict with the villain for figuring out how to dispose of the villain: maybe the villain makes his debut by doing something to the hero and their ultimate defeat intentionally mirrors what they had done to the hero, or maybe the villain is defeated in such a way that the hero is just left somber about what happened; there are a lot of ways to do this that all depend on what kind of hero and what kind of villain you have. Here are some examples (spoilers for Mission Impossible 5, the Hidan & Kakazu arc of Naruto Shippuden, and season 1 of One-Punch Man). Basically, what I'm trying to say with both of these is that, for any hero vs villain conflict, there is always both a surface-level physical conflict of the hero needing to stop the bad guy and a deeper personal conflict that's about who the hero and villain are and their motivations, character arcs, and/or personal dilemmas (and to be clear, the villain could have nothing to do with what the hero is going through personally; just so long as there is a personal struggle that's affecting their conflict; I'm trying to be as general as possible when describing this), and how the villain is ultimately disposed of is a resolution to that surface-level conflict, but it should also be a resolution to that personal conflict in some way, whether it's the villain's personal conflict, the hero's, or both. Basically, what I'm trying to say is, if you want to figure out how to dispose of your villain without killing them, then you should start by thinking about your hero, your villain, and what's driving them, and that should hopefully lead to you figuring out the most fitting way to dispose of the villain.

The one problem I would see with that is that popular media has gotten to the point where if you do something like that; anything where a character says/could say, "We didn't find the body" afterwards, most audiences will interpret it as, "The villain's alive and will return in a sequel" without any ambiguity, as that's what happens 99% of the time, and it's to the point where readers might go so far as to criticize him if the villain doesn't return.

There are a number of ways to deal with a villain at the end of a story's climax; however you choose to do so should fit the villain, the conflict(s) you've created between them and the other characters, and the tone/messages you're trying to set. It sounds like you want to permanently dispose of your main villain without having them be killed. In that case, there is an old but versatile trope called "the Fate Worse than Death". Here's a really good video about it that goes into its various strengths and weaknesses; you decide if you want to use it or something else:

Story Tropes that I Dislike But Have Exceptions: 1. I generally do not like Tsunderes, and if I do, generally I like them despite them being Tsunderes (a good example being Noelle from Black Clover: I like her character except when she's being a tsundere). However, there are a few cases where I enjoyed a story's use of the tsundere trope because the story tied their tsundere attitude to their character development; basically that they start off very tsuntsun (if I have the terms correct) and become very deredere (again if I have the terms correct) over the course of their character development. These examples include the following characters: Midna from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Riley Miller from Valkyria Chronicles 4. 2. While I normally can enjoy a decoy protagonist, one thing that I'm not a fan of is something I call the "decoy villain" trope: a character that is built up to be the main threat and main antagonist with no sign of a villain that's higher up on the food chain, only for their spot as the big bad to be abruptly hijacked by someone else during the climax of the main plot. I find that it's not so much the trope itself so much as just how terribly it is normally done: they give all this attention to a character and the hero's inevitable conflict with them, only to immediately rip it away without any resolution and then try to get the audience to see this other person as the main villain, and most of the time, it feels like the story is trying to get us invested in a conflict, only to then laugh at us for getting invested. This is something where I have only seen one exception that I liked. Massive spoilers for the anime Black Clover:

I disagree with the notion that Shadow Dragon was too 1:1. Not only was it an international remake of a game that was Japan-only, but it did add a lot, just not in the script or the levels. The Archanea cast may not have been given more dialogue or voice acting, but at the same time, the remake did nothing to worsen them. Echoes can't use that excuse because it demonstrated that it was willing to overhaul things to fix perceived problems with the original, and my criticism isn't that it did too much or too little, but that it did so haphazardly. It can't go "Oh; it's a 90s script" because at least half of it isn't the 90s script; it's an awkward mismatch of a 90s script and a 2010s script. I'll admit that a lot of the side characters' dialogue outside the plot is pretty good; it's one of the things that reminds me that Shadows of Valentia had potential.

@Imuabicus I'm not going to quote all that, as otherwise this reply will be a mile long. That out of the way, onto the reply: When I saw the Kitsune chapter and saw that a number of them could do effective damage against cavalry, I though that would be an interesting challenge given the potentially-large number of cavalry units in Conquest. That part wasn't the problem; the problem was a lot of them having an "I can only take damage on certain turns and there's nothing you can do about it" ability that was just tedious; it made the map a boring and tedious game of red-light green-light. That's not challenge; that's just tedium. Challenge encourages the player to think; tedium makes the player roll their eyes and fall asleep. Then you're missing out on the better maps; again, chapter 12 of Crimson Flower was a particular highlight for me because of that almost rhythmic back-&-forth. It is not at all like what you described, and you yourself said you didn't play it and instead watched someone else do so. I try to avoid making any statements about the quality of something I didn't play; perhaps you should consider doing the same and avoid jumping to conclusions. Of course I didn't; you just tacked on a link to a reddit post for something I don't disagree with; there is a lot of map reuse in Three Houses. Also, I know that Conquest doesn't have skirmishes; I was talking about Fates as a whole, just as I have been doing this entire time. Can you please stop with the needless acronyms already? Anyway, there are plenty of useful combat arts; not just the brave ones. Just because they aren't always better than regular attacking or using a gambit doesn't mean that they're useless; situational usefulness is still usefulness, and is arguably better than always being better than the alternatives as it encourages you to think. As for battalions, they're not wasted outside of those situations; they're also useful against enemies that are in a dense group (which does appear multiple times), and accuracy and strength are improved by having other playable units nearby. As for monsters, they are more interesting than that. Again; please stop with the needless acronyms everywhere; they make your paragraphs harder to read. Gladly. Before Awakening, sales of FE games were never that good; after Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn both had underwhelming sales and the Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Emblem remakes failed to do much better, Intelligent Systems considered ending Fire Emblem: if Awakening didn't sell a certain minimum number of copies, it would be the last Fire Emblem game. That knowledge that it could be the last FE game was what made the dev team decide to make Awakening a sort-of "Fire Emblem Greatest Hits version" and was the reason for a lot of its mechanics. Of course, Awakening did extremely well; thanks to a combination of decent marketing and good timing, sales of Awakening greatly exceeded all expectations, creating a massive boom in the fanbase. Intelligent Systems wanted to retain Awakening's sales numbers, but they also didn't want to alienate pre-Awakening fans. The result was a game that tried to please everyone. For just one example of the steps they took to appease everyone and how it was clear that "trying to appeal to everyone" was exactly what they were trying to do, At E3 after announcing that Fates would be split into multiple versions, one of the first things they stated was that Birthright was designed to be more like Awakening and appeal to Awakening fans, Conquest was designed to be more like the older games and appeal to fans of those games, and Revelation was meant to combine aspects of those two things.

Wow; you had a teacher that bad? Yikes. By the way, I have a new topic about this (it's called "Nintendo Switch, Motion Controls, and Handedness in Gaming"), as this topic kind-of died (it hadn't been replied to in over a month and was no longer on the first page of this forum). Could you please reply to that topic instead?

It's not a terrible example though as even the deep dive you pointed out with the retainers shows that Corrin not actually being blood-related to the Hoshido royals does break the theme; I might've been surface-level in my explanation, but I wasn't wrong in what I pointed out. It's nothing like that Naruto example as I wasn't wrong about the theme being there; even if the description I gave for the theme might've been lacking. I hear that a lot, but I've played through Conquest multiple times and it was an exercise in frustration, annoyance and tedium. Some of the ideas had potential, like the Hoshido map having weather that can slow down or speed up flying units, but most of it was tedium. Case in point: the kitsune map that's an exercise in turtling up your units and playing red-light green-light; it's mindless annoyance. Have you? Because your description makes it sound like you only remember the optional skirmish maps. There are a number of maps I could point out that are not like that at all; my personal favourite is chapter 12 on Crimson Flower, where there's an almost rhythmic back-and forth as you progress in the map: you send your units down the middle and boom: enemies in the bushes, you send your units down the side and boom: Seteth goes on the offensive if you defeat Flayn, and when you get past Seteth, boom: giant golems appear, there are ballistae and magic towers, and you still have to worry about Catherine before confronting Rhea. It's one of the best chapters in the game. Map reuse is a large issue, but it is mainly confined to skirmishes and paralogues, and it's not like Fates had different maps specifically for the optional stuff. For a strategy game, I play to think. And guess what: Three Houses so far has made me think a lot more than Fates did. I don't understand what you're trying to say about combat arts. Battalions are not an imitation of pair-up stat bonuses; battalions offer another attack that can attack enemies or buff other playable units across an area rather than a specific tile, they don't require two units to become one, and they're overall a far better fit for Three Houses than attack & defense stance were for Fates, and they fit quite nicely alongside the new monster mechanics (as in how Three Houses handles monsters, not that monsters are inherently new as they're not), which are a great addition. I'll give you adjutants. I do not understand what you are trying to say with the rest of that; you're using too many acronyms and the sentence structure's hard to follow. If by PU system you mean pair-up system, you mean that attempt to balance Awakening's pair-up system that still ended up unbalanced? As for the debuffs, they were a decent idea in theory, but in execution, they made it that, outside of stuff like shuriken and knives, it was better to go almost the whole game mainly using forged iron weapons outside of a couple specific situations. Not to mention that you rarely are incentivized to interact with the system, as a lot of your best units have unique weapons that don't debuff and that you'll almost never want to unequip. Fates tried desperately to appease everyone; it's hardly even a criticism at this point as it's just a fact that we know about it and its development. You can't try to say that the circumstances around its development didn't happen, especially with that nonsensical an argument. Is inefficiency the worst criticism you can lobby at the monastery? I've made that criticism. The fact is though that's ingrained into the game, it is far more immersive and more rewarding to utilize, it's actually part of the story rather than something tacked on with a brief in-story explanation only to be immediately forgotten about by the plot. Sure; each has its strengths and weaknesses, but Three Houses utilizes the strengths of the monastery far better than Fates utilizes the strengths of MyCastle. Three Houses and Fates both have pretty much just as much support conversations. The difference is that the support conversations in Three Houses actually explore the characters and show some hidden depths to them; Fates' support conversations are mostly garbage, though it's not like they had much to work with. The characters in Three Houses have far more flesh to them than the characters in Fates by miles. I've already made it clear that I don't care much for the addition of voice acting and I vastly prefer the Three Houses cast over the Fates cast, so that argument doesn't hold much water.