vanguard333

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.

Yeah; I heard about it. Basically, you save at the owl statue, then you copy that save to the second file, giving you a backup owl-statue save. It seems like a good idea, but it also sounds a bit too much like a bug if that makes sense; something about it just doesn't sit right when I think about it. I might try it if the game crashes again, but right now, it was just the one and it was obvious what caused it. Plus, I can only use that trick if I actually save at an owl statue, and I've only done so once so far.

Well, after more than a decade of owning and playing Majora's Mask on the Collector's Edition, it just had its first ever crash. I headed through the door to the Deku Palace, the screen just went black and stayed black. I gave it a bit of time, in case it was just struggling to load the transition, but nope; it was an actual crash. And here I was actually beginning to think I would get through the game without a crash or even a major framerate issue. Well, hopefully it will be just the one crash. Thankfully, it was morning on the first day and I had done nothing new yet. EDIT: Plus, I think I figured out what caused the crash; I went through the door to the Deku Palace at the same time as the monkey. This time, I waited until the monkey disappeared before then heading through the door, and the game worked perfectly.

I'd say that it's worth it, though the extent to which it is worth it depends on the weapon that's being forged. For instance, forge any of the magic weapons and they go from having 1-2 range to having 1-3 range, which is very useful. The rapier+ is also a massive improvement over the standard rapier. I like giving both the levin sword+ and the rapier+ to my Byleth, and when combined with him normally learning both grounder and bane of monsters, it means he can effectively use both physical and magic attacks while also being able to do effective damage to everything that can take effective damage, be it cavalry, armor, flying, monster, or dragon.

Ah, so it was probably both the luck stat and supports. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah; Soren and Ilyana are better than Bastian and Calill, mainly for one reason: they can use staves upon promotion if the player chooses wisely, while Bastian and Calill are locked into having knives as their second weapon type. I personally would also suggest that another reason Soren's better is that he has the adept skill by default, and having an occasional extra follow-up attack is very useful; it's one of those things that you never want to plan your strategy around because it's based on chance, but makes things a lot easier when it happens and it happens often enough to make a noticeable impact.

I agree with this. Mia develops good skill and speed, and vantage is definitely a good skill for a swordmaster character to have by default, but her strength rarely ends up well enough for her to actually defeat opponents. Zihark, meanwhile, actually develops good stats all around. Interestingly, on the playthrough where I used both Zihark and Stefan, I found that Zihark's often a lot more likely to dodge attacks than Stefan is. I wonder why that is? The only reason for that that I can think of would be Stefan's atrocious luck stat, as that and defense were the only two stats where my Stefan was significantly worse than my Zihark. I suppose it might've also been their supports, but I don't think I actually got around to either of them having supports yet. But it has been a long time since that playthrough.

I'm not Scottish (I'm Canadian), but I am very fascinated by Scottish culture & history, and I'm the only person in my family that doesn't care about football (which we in Canada refer to as soccer solely because we sit right next to the US), so I sympathize. I can say that I did watch some of the England vs Germany match (someone else in my family put it on, and I just happened to be in the room) and, while I normally don't care much about football, I was hoping Germany would win.

Yeah; I was just saying I wasn't sure why it made sense to them (as in the dev team) to streamline one but not the other (personally, I would've gone with streamlining neither of them). That's interesting. His aim looked fine to me, especially since he then showed it clearly working in the original after two attempts on the 3DS version failed. Did you spawn closer to the left side of the cave (making it more of a forward line to the lily pad rather than a diagonal) or something like that?

If you watch the video I left a link to earlier at around 13:10, you'll see the reticle. I think it appears in the remake as part of being able to hold R while flying to look straight down.

Yeah; his Majora's Mask remake video was the first video of his (though definitely far from the last) that I watched. Oh, yeah; for me, going back to these games (namely Ocarina and Majora) after experiencing IR pointer aiming with the Wii version of Twilight Princess and gyro aim with Wind Waker HD and Breath of the Wild just makes the aiming in these games feel very stiff and clunky. It really shows just how bad the control stick is for aiming.

I know it would require failing a lot of attempts; I was just saying the possibility is there. I see. I read it online in a few places, but here's a video that actually shows the cave in question (go to 2:30 and watch until about 2:52)

I see. That is definitely a good change, though I suspect it was born out of necessity due to the 3DS' small screen. Perhaps. But, if you're going for the piece of heart that you get from the mini-game, you have to beat the time record on all three days within the same cycle. If you fail to do so on any particular day (most likely on the Second Day, when all the platforms move horizontally at different speeds), you have to go back to the Dawn of the First Day and start all over again. So, one could argue that the mini-game also has the potential for backtracking issues, albeit only if you miss too many times. By the way, regarding Deku Link, I heard that the 3DS changed his movement in ways that made the swamp more tedious. It made it that he takes a bit of time to get up to speed, which apparently made it a lot harder (and not in a good way) to hop from lily pad to lily pad, and I heard that it removed the ability to hop faster & further if you spin-attack on your way into the water. Apparently, these things combined even made it that you could not escape a certain cave in the swamp without either using the song of soaring or awkwardly and carefully running along the mouth of the cave to build up momentum.