vanguard333

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.

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.

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 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?

@Jotari My point was that he carries those remains through every cycle, just like he carries his ocarina, his bow, the gilded sword, etc. In regards to the Link's Awakening thing, I was making a joke, but yes; you did mention that, so I guess my joke doesn't really work since you had accounted for it.

It's okay. I've never been a fan of those kinds of theories anyway. Thanks. Majora's Mask isn't doing anything, but the goddess of time is: enabling Link to keep trying over and over again, and enabling him to continue to carry key items (such as the masks) through each reset. Link being able to keep certain items and free the four giants in different cycles would point to the idea of the goddess of time enabling certain things to converge in Link's favour. You might say it's a gameplay mechanic, but the Four Giants being freed in separate cycles means it's in-universe. I think Link's Awakening would like to have a word with you about that.

Doesn't he say that in the original game if you talk to him while wearing those masks? Just yesterday, I walked up to him while wearing the bunny hood and he said something along those lines. I see; I honestly think it is the convergence thing, as you're already dealing with the goddess of time manipulating time in Link's favour, and it honestly would fit the themes of the game. I've seen a number of people gush about how Majora's Mask explores themes of bleakness, despair and inevitability. While they are onto something, I think they are missing something key: that Majora's Mask in many ways is about overcoming those things; that it's about defying despair and grimness, and Link ultimately defies the seeming inevitability of the moon destroying Termina. I think it makes sense then to have such a game end on every good that Link did mattering, for that thematic reason. Considering that the lesson Skull Kid (the other kid-from-the-forest in the game and in some ways a tragic foil of Link) learns at the end is that the four giants are still his friends even after they've departed him, one could see Link as learning the same lesson by the end: that Navi is still his friend even though she's gone (and at least, this way, he doesn't have to hear, "Hey! Listen!" every ten seconds), so whether or not Link ever finds Navi doesn't really matter in that sense, as at least his quest through Termina does give him some sense of closure.

Ah, I see. Never mind about that reason then. My original point about the ending having it that all the cycles converged in the best possible way still stands.

In terms of graphics and art style, I would say that Majora's Mask on the N64/GC, like a lot of games from that generation, has aged horribly. Unlike those other games from the era, however, that aging is actually to its benefit: someone once told me about an eerie effect created from watching a classic horror movie on VHS that you can't get when watching the same movie on blue-ray because the image is too clean in the blue-ray version, and Majora's Mask on the N64/GC reminds me of what they were describing; because of the game's atmosphere, the visuals aging horribly has actually enabled the visuals to age very well by complementing that eerie atmosphere. The face of the moon in the 3DS version is greatly exaggerated compared to the N64/GC version, with the mouth being greatly stretched and the eyeholes being increased in size relative to the eyes themselves, among other changes. I suspect that it was at least in part to compensate for the small screen, but when you compare the two of them, the moon's original face is honestly rather ambiguous: it could be anger, pain, sadness, etc., while the 3DS moon, at least when viewed on a larger screen (don't know how it is on the 3DS) looks like it's angrily staring down Termina and getting ready to eat the city. Thanks. It makes a lot of sense that they'd write it that way, since, among other reasons, you can't help Anju and Kafei and get to the top of the clock tower in time to play the giant-summoning song in the same cycle. Plus, it's a nice little anti-nihilist (or at least anti-depressing) message: every cycle reset while the moon looms over the player's head can make it seem like it's almost all for nothing; that everything the player does gets undone, but in the end, every way in which you helped everyone ultimately did matter; you really did make a difference after all.

I see. Oh; okay. Gyro aim doesn't normally refer to stuff like Let's Go; it mainly refers to stuff like aiming in Breath of the Wild, where the gyro is mainly for making small adjustments and the stick is still used for wider camera movement.

…No; not really. I mean; maybe, but my point was that it seems like you lose the freneticism of the fight by having Odolwa stop dead in his tracks if you use a deku flower (and where the N64 version had just one flower in the center of the room, the 3DS version has a lot more flowers), so it's not really an upgrade then and instead is more of a trade-off, and I can understand people not liking it because of what's lost. I don't think so; Nerrel's video, for just one example, shows him spin-attacking as Deku Link while Odolwa's dancing, and it doesn't work. Incidentally, hitting him with the Gilded Sword in the same circumstance didn't work in the Nerrel video either. Indeed. I think it's the fact that Link is a stranger to them, while bearing a strong resemblance to the Deku Butler's son, that gives it away for them. The Gorons and the Zora mistake Link for Darmani and Mikau, respectively, whereas the Deku know that Link isn't the butler's son. Speaking of faces, to me, the Moon seems in pain in the N64 version, which would certainly explain the moon's tear. Why does the 3DS version look angry? The problem with that is that the ending of Majora's Mask converges everything you did across the cycles; every way that you helped the people of Termina, no matter which cycle you helped them in, is part of the timeline once Link's beaten the Majora's Mask thanks to the goddess of time converging it all in the best possible way. For proof of this, it doesn't matter what cycle you help Anju and Kafei in; if you complete the sidequest, their wedding happens after you beat the moon. It's almost certainly for the best; not just for Termina, but for Link himself. It means that there's a place where time enabled him to be a hero and a friend, rather than take those things from him. Plus, it also avoids him being guilty of a truly absurd amount of bank fraud.

So, I just cleared Woodfall Temple. It was surprisingly more straightforward than I expected. As for Odolwa... I agree with what Nerrel said about the N64 version of Odolwa (about it being a chaotic and frenetic fight with one rule: "first guy to die, loses"), though he does seem a bit... slower... than I was expecting. It was still a fun and chaotic fight; I particularly enjoyed exploiting when he dances to stun him and get close enough to attack with the Kokiri Sword, and I liked how many of his attacks seem designed to punish a player that remains stationary. One thing I noticed was that, when I burrowed into the deku flower, he didn't fall for it in any way; he kept doing what he was already doing, so I couldn't hurt him on the way out of the flower. But I did succeed in stunning him with a deku nut while flying. I find it interesting because, in all the footage I've seen of the remake, whenever someone burrows into a deku flower, Odolwa immediately stops whatever he's doing and just stands there looking around; unable to notice the player even after the player emerges from the flower. If that really is the case; that he's programmed to become stationary and unable to do anything the moment the player burrows into a deku flower, that does strike me as something that would just kill the pacing and tension in the fight. Another thing I noticed in my fight against him is that, if you successfully hit Odolwa with a spin attack as Deku Link, it won't hurt him, but it will stun him; opening him up to a hit from something that can hurt him. And yet, in all the footage I've seen of the 3DS version of the fight, hitting him with Deku Link's spin attack does absolutely nothing. If that is indeed the case, then that is an example of an old attack method taken away (and it's a pretty useful one, as Deku Link doesn't take damage from the moths and his spin attack is more likely to connect than a sword strike). I didn't get to try hitting him with the bubble attack, so I have no idea if that works in the N64 version. I'm going to have to fight Odolwa again to do the swamp boat archery game, so I'll be able to see if that does anything to him. Side Note: I find it rather hilarious that, despite how irrationally they behave when you meet them, the Deku are the only ones to realize that you're a shapeshifter. Seriously; after you deliver the Deku Princess, one of the Deku Scrubs in the room comments on the fact that they know Link is a shapeshifter. To be fair, in regards to none of them seeming to care about the moon, they're all preoccupied with their own more immediate problems (missing princess + poisoned swamp, curse of winter, missing Zora eggs, etc.) and some of them, such as the monkey in the swamp, do start to notice that some other ominous thing is going on after you save the region from the more immediate problem. …I thought you already could sell the zora eggs to the Curiosity Shop Owner? The TV Tropes article for the game lists that under the trope "Video Game Cruelty Potential".

…I inadvertently killed this thread by asking that the conversation about the 3DS remake circle back to discussing the GameCube port; didn't I? Anyway, I just cleared Woodfall Temple. It was surprisingly more straightforward than I expected. As for Odolwa... I agree with what Nerrel said about the N64 version of Odolwa, though he does seem a bit... slower... than I was expecting. It was still a fun and chaotic fight; I particularly enjoyed exploiting when he dances to stun him and get close enough to attack with the Kokiri Sword.

Oh; feel free to continue that if you're saying something along the lines of, "...It's hard to explain the difference; it's really something you have to play for yourself" or something like that. It's okay; you're forgiven. I completely understand. It's definitely a lot more clear now. Thanks. If it were me, I would say "Majora's Mask 3D" rather than "Majora's Mask" to make it clear that I'm referring to the 3DS remake. But the 3DS remake is the only remake the game has had so far, so it doesn't really matter.

There's the thing though: I'm making those prefaces to make it clear that they are not "my" criticisms. I wan't saying that the cases are the same; I was just trying to explain my... apprehension towards that particular accusation in general. I'm not saying that you were accusing me of it; I was just stating my reasons why I dislike that accusation. I wasn't trying to criticize it; merely bring up what I have heard, read and seen about it for confirmation/disconfirmation. Again; I'm not saying you're one of the people I encountered; I was just saying that I vehemently dislike the "they must be regurgitating what reviews said" accusation (even if it's not directed towards me), and why I dislike it. I never said that you did; I said that it sounded like you were saying that about people who criticized the Majora's Mask 3DS remake. Of course criticism invites defenders; no one's arguing against that. Side Note: Could you please adjust the name of the thread a bit for added clarity? At a glance, it kind-of sounds like it's saying that my thread ended and this is a sequel to that thread.

If I am nervous, it's only because this thread was mainly about the GameCube emulation of the game and I don't want to risk the topic getting derailed too much. Don't get me wrong; I like talking about the 3DS remake; I'm just saying that the conversation should circle back to the Collector's Edition every now and then when relevant. I too prefer analyzing and critiquing the media I consume, but in my case, it's because I'm an aspiring writer & developer, so all that analysis and critique is going towards seeing what works and what doesn't a lesson to keep in mind when going to make my own work. I'm currently writing my own fantasy war novel. Ah, yes; 'the phrasing of the complaints are somewhat uniform, so it must be because a couple reviews told them all to think this way and they're just regurgitating it.' I've always vehemently disliked that accusation because, from what I've seen, people tend to use critiques and reviews in part to help find the words to explain something they felt but couldn't communicate; I even do it all the time because I struggle with explaining stuff sometimes do to my autism. Another reason I dislike it is that I've seen it used all the time by defenders to dismiss criticism, and it ignores the fact that people are capable of independently coming to similar conclusions and even phrasing it similarly because there are only so many ways to say it. More than a few times now within the last half-a-decade, I've had the unpleasant experience where I voiced my criticisms of something (and they were criticisms I came up with entirely on my own because I hadn't watched any reviews or anything yet) only to immediately be met with an angry accusation that I just regurgitated something some reviewer said. I have to say; being angrily told that your thoughts aren't your own as a way to dismiss those thoughts is not a fun experience in the slightest. This is unrelated, but recently, since I'm going to be heading to the Woodfall Temple soon in my Majora's Mask playthrough, I tried fighting the spinners in the Forest Maze because I figured they'd be present in the dungeon. I kept trying to block their attacks and then strike their head when it poked out, but it never worked, even when I clearly hit the head. I then read Tatl's advice, which said, "These things never expose their weakspot", and I was thinking, "Their head pokes out all the time though?" I tried using deku nuts to stun them, and nothing. Eventually, I gave up and looked online, and I found out that their weakness is their underside, not their head. Yes, because when I always think of a turtle's weakspot, I always think of the hard bottom side of their hard shell, not their fleshy unarmoured head. Anyone else have a moment like this at some point, where the basic solution to something in this game ran counter to what you were thinking or what seemed like the intuitive solution? I ask because this has happened to me twice now (I already mentioned my reaction to the large jars in the Swamp Skulltula House).

I see. That was certainly true in the Wii era; motion controls were the main selling point, so it was placed almost everywhere. But the only games I can think of in the Switch era, besides the ones you listed, that require motion controls, are Mario Galaxy (a port of a Wii game), Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee, and I guess Breath of the Wild because of the gyro puzzle shrines (and even then, technically that's optional content). Far more often, the motion controls are optional. Even the Splatoon games make gyro aim an option, and apparently, around 80% of Splatoon players use the gyro. Speaking of Splatoon, something I just realized I forgot to mention: in my research, I found out that the developers of a lot of online shooters have to add a ton of aim-assists to stick-only aiming in order to make it viable in online multiplayer because control sticks are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to aiming compared to other controls; most notably keyboard & mouse, and these aim assists are still there when playing single-player content. I don't know if Splatoon has any of these aim assists for stick-only aiming, but I know that, if you're playing a third-party game that has aiming and shooting and multiplayer, and you're using stick-only aiming, the game's AI is actually doing the aiming for you. I'm not saying that aim assists are the reason you find stick-only aiming less cumbersome or awkward; I'm just pointing out that these aim assists are so prevalent nowadays for stick-only aiming that you may not have noticed that they're there. Even without them, you might still subjectively prefer stick-only aiming.

None in terms of its quality, though I have made some in regards to both its development and its discourse. I don't know what you mean by this, and I think you may have misunderstood what I was trying to say. To clarify, I was trying to say that Zelda games typically are about taking your time to be observant and figure things out, while Majora's Mask still does that, it also has the player under a constant, yet infinitely-resettable, timer, so it's an interesting tight-rope of expecting the player to be fast and expecting the player to take their time, and I think the way the songs of time work in the N64 version mostly pulls that off that difficult balance, with the only thing I'd want being more intervals available when playing the song of double time. So, I think nerfing the inverted song of time leans too hard in the "race against the clock" aspect. Does that make sense? To be fair to Nerrel, from the context, I'm pretty sure he meant "shoot anywhere within the bodies of water" as in, "there are no sparkly bits in the water that are the only places you can shoot to create the ice". If the ice arrows don't work on every body of water... okay, but his main complaint was the addition of the sparkly bits telling the player exactly where to shoot (and being the only places that freeze in the bodies of water where it did work), meaning there's nothing for the player to have to figure out, as well as the fact that the water in the Gyorg boss room doesn't sparkle; meaning players are likely to think that it can't be frozen even though it can, and nothing you've pointed out has disputed either of these. If a player got stuck because they couldn't figure out a good path to create with the ice arrows, then why not, for just one possible example, have it that Tatl can guide the player as an option for those who are stuck? You can press the button for a hint from Tatl, and Tatl could fly over the next area to freeze. That way, those who want to figure it out for themselves still can. Okay; I just wanted to know if there was a trick to getting better with dropping the deku nuts on enemies.

Recently, I was watching a number of videos and reading a lot about motion controls; particularly about the different hardware, common perceptions of motion controls, and about the ways in which motion controls have survived in the post-Wii era, and the main thing that came up was gyro aim. For the Wii, the one aspect of the motion controls that seemed to be the most widely-appreciated among players for more standard games was the IR pointer, as it didn't require much movement and it made aiming as fast and easy as it is with a mouse; arguably even faster and easier than on a mouse because of the lack of friction. For some examples of what I mean: to this day, the Wii port of Resident Evil 4 seems to be widely considered to be the best version of the game due to the pointer aiming, I came across a number of reviews of Twilight Princess where the reviewers greatly preferred aiming the bow and clawshots in the Wii version compared to the GameCube version, and I similarly saw a number of people saying that the Metroid Prime trilogy on the Wii was the best way to play those games because it put the IR pointer aiming in 3 into the first two games. In fact, a common trend seemed to be that games would be made with a standard controller (i.e. stick aiming) in mind, then the aiming would be remapped to the pointer, and aiming sections that were meant to be difficult were instead trivial. Perhaps the biggest case of this occurred during the development of an on-rails shooter game I previously never heard of called Sin and Punishment: Star Successor. An Iwata Asks revealed that the game was originally being made with a standard controller in mind, then it was converted into a Wii game during development. When Treasure: the company that made the game, gave it to Nintendo for playtesting, they (and Nintendo) fully expected Nintendo's playtesters to say it was too difficult. Instead, Nintendo's playtesters said it was too easy, and the game's difficulty ultimately was ramped up to account for the pointer aim before it was released. In the Iwata Asks, Iwata was very amused to learn about this; apparently saying to the person that told him about this, "Of all things, you told none other than Treasure to make [one of their games] more difficult?" Of course, the IR pointer wasn't carried over into later hardware, so instead, motion aiming on Nintendo consoles has been done through gyro aim, and it seems to be the one form of motion controls that's widely used across a lot of games on the Wii U and the Switch: the Wind Waker and Twilight Princess remakes, Breath of the Wild, Splatoon, almost every third-party shooter game that has a Switch port, and even Mario Odyssey (when controlling one of the tank enemies). And it's easy to see why it's so prevalent: it is a lot easier for many to do finer aiming with a gyro than just with a control stick, as it's functionally more intuitive to move the controller a little bit than to make small corrections with a stick, and it can be easily made an option that can be turned off if someone prefers to just use a control stick for aiming. However, all this made me wonder: is aiming really the only area in more standard gameplay where motion controls could be better than buttons & control sticks, or is there something else where motion controls would improve standard gameplay that normally would be done through button and stick controls? What do you think?

Forgive me: yesterday, I meant to add: "To be clear, I'm not taking anyone's side or anything; I'm just pointing out the argumentation and the different points being made" to my post yesterday, but I was really tired and forgot. With that most recent reply, I was mainly trying to focus on where I thought you had misunderstood his argument or presented something that countered a different argument from the one you said you were countering. 1) Again, I haven't actually played the fight, but I honestly think it would've been better if they didn't add the wrestling and just had you cut him to pieces with your sword in giant form like the original. I mean, it just seems like it would feel better (and probably be less tedious). Plus, if I I could grab a snake-like enemy in one hand, I wouldn't grab its tail and wrestle it (it might turn around and attack); I'd grab its neck and snap it. 2) Interesting. I can't really say more than that. 3) I can agree about that; I never got as far as the Great Bay before, but I saw my brother do so, and the zora swimming looked really fun. Why tie that to magic? As for Deku Link's movement, I have to say that I really like pulling off spin-attack hopping on the water, and I can imagine not having that would make the swamp a bit more tedious. 4) Wait; they seriously nerfed the inverted song of time in the 3DS version? I can't see why they'd do that; I'm not far in the game yet, but I honestly feel that the inverted song of time, as it is now, just gives me enough room to breathe, especially when it comes to the side-content and mini-games. I get that you're supposed to be constantly against the clock, but with Zelda games, you're also supposed to be careful and observant and take at least a bit of time exploring and looking around. I just cleared the Swamp Skulltula House yesterday, and it took almost half in-game day for me to complete it even with the inverted song of time (mainly because it took a while for me to realize that you're supposed to roll into the giant jars as human Link; since that's what you're supposed to do for the boxes, I figured the jars, being something else entirely, would require a different solutionl I tried throwing bombs into them as human Link and dropping deku nuts into them as Deku Link). Out of curiosity, what did you think of his point about change to the ice arrows, or the change to the Gyorg fight? Also, going back to the N64 version for a sec, is there a trick to aiming where the deku nuts will fall when flying as Deku Link? I haven't been able to be accurate with them while moving. In the Deku Palace, I tried dropping Deku Nuts on the deku scrubs, but I had to stop and fly directly above them, and by the time I got into position where I could drop a deku nut and be certain it would hit the scrub, the scrub would shoot me out of the air with a deku seed. Eventually, I gave up trying to use the deku nuts on them and used the bubbles instead.

Okay. I'm always trying to make sure; I have autism, so communication doesn't come naturally to me. I admit that I haven't played the remake, but in all my research, I've only found two ways: stun him with a deku flower or dropping deku nuts if you missed with the flower but are still in the air and then slash at his eye while he's stunned (which is what Nerrel showed), or hit him with the sword while in human form and then hit the eye while he's stunned. From what I've read and from what I've seen of people trying a lot of the old methods, hitting him with an arrow no longer works, nor does throwing a bomb or using the blast mask. Correct me if I'm wrong on that, but that's what I've found. Also, even if a lot more of the variety is retained from the Odolwa fight than he thought, that doesn't debunk the argument that Odolwa was made especially vulnerable to the flower method to the point of "standing around and waiting for the final blow", which Nerrell showed Odolwa literally doing. He wasn't saying the player stands around like a moron; he said that 3DS Odolwa does that if you use the flower method, and then showed footage of Odolwa doing exactly that.

I wasn't meaning to presume anything; I even tried to make clear where I was stating facts (like Aonuma's famous breakdown when making Majora's Mask) and where I was speculating and stuff like that. I admit that I'm not the best at communicating that stuff, but communication is not a strong point of mine. By any chance, did you watch the whole video or just the thing about leaving the cave? He had a lot more points than just that and the Zora swimming; he also mentioned the changes to the boss fights, Captain Keeta being a lot slower, the ice arrows only working on sparking water except in the Gyorg boss room, and a bunch of other stuff. Did you mean to have more to that last sentence? It ends rather abruptly and without a period at the end.

Yes; I've never played it. I should've prefaced, "From what I have seen in reviews and gameplay footage, and from what I've read about the development for both the original and the remake..." I avoid making criticisms for the quality of stuff I haven't played (as I can't really judge that stuff), but I'm more than happy to talk about behind-the-scenes stuff and speculate on things about the development and/or marketing. What I was trying to do there with my theory about the reasoning behind a number of the changes I've seen and heard about was an attempt at the latter; it was not meant as a criticism.

Honestly, a lot of the changes made scream of Aonuma playing through the original game (something we know he did do when making the remake), noticing something even remotely difficult, and, because he had zero confidence in the game because of the breakdown he famously had during the game's rushed development, going, "This is bad and needs fixing" even if it wasn't actually broken. I mean, if you look at what was changed, the remake really wasn't made with people who enjoyed the original version in mind (which is ironic, since it was fans that enjoyed the original version that created the fan campaign for the 3DS remake in the first place). Considering that removing stuff takes work, it's the only reason I can think of for removing the dawn-of-the-first-day save; Aonuma played through the game, saw the save system as broken, and said, "scrap it and replace it" rather than, "make it more convenient". Removing the dawn-of-the-first-day save system created a real problem for people who played the remake after playing the original: losing progress due to either not knowing about the change or simply due to muscle memory being a powerful thing. @Jotari can attest to that; he himself stated earlier in this topic that he lost a lot of progress due to the new mechanic, and he's far from the only person who went back to the dawn of the first day, shut the game off, then came back and wondered what happened to all their progress. The original dawn-of-the-first-day save system was originally born out of hardware limitations; because Majora's Mask has a lot more that it has to keep track of than Ocarina of Time while being made for the same console, the idea of saving by going back to the dawn of the first day saved space by making it that the save file didn't have to keep track of nearly as much stuff as it would have to if you could save at any time like in Ocarina of Time. The international version created the owl statue save as a suspend save, and they had to remove the third save file in order to make enough room for it. Of course, the dawn-of-the-first-day save system was born out of limitations but became a large part of the game, so I doubt Aonuma went, "This was only because we couldn't create a permanent save that stored everything, now we can, so let's get rid of it"; it's the "let's get rid of it" part and not just thinking, "let's add a permanent save that stores everything" that makes no sense to me and leads me to think he came with the perspective of, "This is bad and must be replaced".

Yeah; permanent saving by the owls does sound like a good addition. However, removing the ability to save by going back to the Dawn of the First Day was a bad change. In any case, the more I think about it, the more that double owl-save thing seems more like an exploit than a glitch if that makes sense, so again; I might try it if the game crashes again, or even simply the next time I save using an owl statue. However, that second one probably won't be for a while since I frequently go back to the Dawn of the First Day (i don't try to cram too much into one cycle), and I hope that first one won't happen again for the rest of the playthrough.