Do you see the black one...or the white?
Gender: Male
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Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2007 12:06 pm
Posts: 6664
I could never really get into Twilight Princess myself. I beat it and all, I think it's an alright game, but it fell short to me compared to other Zelda titles I have played.
To me, the dungeon designs felt all over the place. To a point where it felt like they had assigned different teams to create different dungeons. It was the feeling I got. When they did get a dungeon right, it was brilliant. Arbiter's Grounds and the Yeti Mansion are the definite highlight of the game for me and those are dungeon I have a lot of fun with. Arbiter's Ground, while I hate that they copied the gimmick from the Forest Temple in OoT, was executed quite well. The puzzles were great and the Spinner obstacle courses were a lot of fun. For the Yeti Mansion, just going out of the box and making a house a dungeon was awesome. The sense of progression was there and I liked doing the cannons. Having free soup when you needed it was neat too. Hyrule Castle, while I don't feel was quite up to the standard of the ones I mentioned, was still very good and a great final dungeon. After Arbiter's Ground, this dungeon definitely had the best atmosphere. The puzzles were also very clever. One puzzle that I absolutely loved that they gave you was in the room where you had to follow the spirits so you could see where you were going. To let you know to do that, they put the room full of those ghost rats that you have to turn into a wolf and use your sense to be able to get rid of them. While you're doing that, you see the spirits pointing in the right directions. I really thought that was a clever and well-thought out idea.
Dungeons that I definitely felt were just terribly lacking and I just didn't have fun with was the Lakebed Temple, the Temple of Light and the one in the sky. The Lakebed Temple just felt like poor design to me. It had an interesting concept of the water flow, but it was a bit jarring trying to navigate at times. I love exploration in dungeons, but the way the setup was just didn't make it fun for me. The Temple of Light I thought was really awesome in theory. The execution? Not so much. It was nothing but backtracking and I didn't like it. It just felt way to gimmicky and too straightforward. The sky dungeon... UGH. Didn't care for it AT all. I didn't find it difficult, but I didn't find it fun either. Waiting FOREVER to ride peahats from one place to another was a bore. Zelda is more about getting from point A to point B efficiently. If I have to go slow, it needs to be in a stealth section or I better be figuring out a clever puzzle. Being forced to wait in a dungeon to progress is not fun when I want to go kill things. I get the same sense from Goron Mines when I'm forced to walk on walls and the ceiling with the Iron Boots. It's a really fantastic concept, but I hate how slow and awkward it is.
Also, the Twilight Dungeon. Terrible, terrible, terrible. The beginning section with the hands is not fun. I hate it and it's one part I really dread whenever I do a playthrough. It's just annoying and unneeded. Then the boss key placement. They go and put it WAY out of the way to the point where many first time players will sit there stumped for long periods of time trying to figure out where it is or how to get there. While it's obvious to me now, I still don't like it, it's not a good placement choice. While I really like working to find my boss key, it should require, at most, some kind of logical thinking to be able to find it, not a wild stab in the dark of "hey, let me jump into this cursed goop that the game has made very clear that I shouldn't be jumping in."
As for the world of Hyrule itself. There's love and there's hate. It's massive, I love getting to ride around in it, it's lots of fun. If you have your horse. It DRAGS when you don't! But, it's a minor complaint. It still looks nice and I have fun traversing it. My problem is that unlike most other Zelda games, it suffers from not really having any secrets to explore. Ocarina of Time, I felt suffered this too. One reason why I hold Link to the Past in high regards is the amount of exploration Hyrule has to offer. Discovering new places by bombing walls, stumbling into secrets. Twilight Princess has only a few places that are like that, and it wouldn't be a problem, except that the world is MUCH bigger so I'd expect more places and secrets to find. Not a lot of dead ends that have nothing to show for it.
As for doing the Twilight stuff prior to the first three dungeons, I guess I'm impartial. There's nothing to really swoon and fanboy over, but it's not the worst thing either. My only complaint really is the enemy music in the Twilight Realm is atrocious.
The horseback riding stuff... maybe it's because I suck at it, but aside from, say the battle with Ganondorf, I don't like it at all. Doing the bridge showdown, it's another part of the game I don't like. The part where you have to accompany the carriage is just annoying. I do like how I can use my sword on Epona though, that's fun to do. I just don't really like any of the forced horse segements the game requires you to do. I don't find them fun.
For the story, I feel it tries too hard to be Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask and set itself apart from Wind Waker. I do like some of the subtleties of the connections to OoT, like the Stalfos who teaches you the moves is Link from OoT, but I feel like it's wanting to try to be the next OoT at times by trying to set up some kind of grand plot that doesn't really go too far. The story can get interesting at times, and then there are times where I really don't care what's going on at all. What I really hate is when it gets dark and it feels WAY too forced. I love Majora's Mask, but when it got dark, it felt more natural to me. This game would go through mood shifts too quickly and would leave me confused rather than awed. This is where I get the feeling too where it tried to shift from the "happy" style of Wind Waker by being purposely dark to try to appease fans who were upset about Wind Waker. By the way, Wind Waker, to me, still has the most brutal Ganondorf death in the series to me. A thrust straight into the skull still owns to me. I also hate how they build up Zant to be so promising as such a great and competent villain, only to show him as nothing more than a loyal coward to Ganondorf. Honestly, if Ganondorf wouldn't have been involved at all and instead the Zant the game promised us from the beginning to before his real personality reveal was the final boss instead, I would have loved it. Instead, we get a weak Zant, though I did enjoy the final Ganondorf boss fight, so.... hit and miss I guess.
Also, when playing Zelda, I'm ready to get into the action. Don't give me 2 hours of cutscenes and mundane sidequests before I can tackle my first dungeon proper/explore Hyrule. I don't want to be feeding cats, saving monkeys, helping a pregnant woman, and shooting beehives. I want to go and slash things. This is something that games like Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time got right, especially the former. It throws you right into the action and that's something, to me, that makes Zelda, Zelda.
Speaking of Action, I want to bring up the boss fights. A lot of them fall into the easy and formulamatic "hit them three times with dungeon item, enter phase 2, hit them with the dungeon items three more times, win" bit. That said, I found a lot of bosses to be uninteresting to me. The second phase of the Lakebed Temple boss was probably one of the first I liked. Felt like a Shadow of the Colossus feel and it was neat. Where I think the game really shined though was in Arbiter's Ground and the Yeti Mansion. Stallord is easily my favorite boss in the whole Zelda franchise. I love the fast pace this boss has to offer, the spinner is really fun to use, and it keeps me on the edge of my seat. I liked the Yeti boss if only for the reason that I really liked how they used the reflection of the ice to fight the boss. Reminiscent of one of Ganon's phases in Wind Waker, and I liked that. Added some puzzle to the boss. Zant... was disappointing. While the idea of a boss rush was interesting, he rehashed so many that were just downright dull. The final fight with him was nothing special either. With Ganondorf, while I wouldn't say some parts were fun, it was interesting enough. The various forms had some good strategy involved and using Zelda was a cool idea. The beast form was a neat idea. I guess my only complaint really would be that the final battle was too easy as it was just a button mashing battle, but I liked it enough to not care too much.
The music, overall there are songs I really REALLY enjoy and others I would never want to listen to again. Most songs in the Twilight Realm are horrible, such as the battle theme I mentioned earlier. The only one that I really love, ironically, is the Twilight Palace theme, my most hated dungeon. Another track that really stand out to me as bad is the Sky Temple theme (really, if the Ooccoos weren't in the background, it'd be a nice atmospheric theme).
While I do hate some music, there are many more tracks I actually like. The remixes, such as Zora's Domain (beautiful) and Death Mountain are nice. I like the atmospheric remix of Kakariko. The Lost Village theme is fantastic. Hyrule Field is a great piece of music. I also really enjoy the more somber themes such as Midna's Distress (beautiful), Lake Hylia, and Ordon Woods. Agatha's Theme is also quite charming I find. Hyrule Castle's song is an amazing atmospheric piece. I love how they piece the Hyrule Castle Theme from Link to the Past and add more of Ganon's theme to it as you ascend the castle! It's awesome!
As for the characters. None are really too memorable to me except for Midna. I loved Midna. She was a great partner. I enjoyed having her around. She was probably the only one I really liked. Zant would have been another if not for his ending. I couldn't find myself caring for the kids that Link hung with. Colin was... there. The other kids who I forget were uninteresting. And Malo. Malo is just some creepy, mutant baby. I didn't find myself making a connection with Ilia or the Zora child. There was nothing there for me. The soldiers of Hyrule were a great concept, but I wish they would have done more. I understand Link is the hero, but I wish they could have contributed more than just "let me show you where dungeon X is and we'll take out a couple of enemies in Hyrule Castle for you and never show up again." It bothered me because it was such a neat idea!
For graphics, while I understand they wanted to go with the realistic design, it hasn't aged all that well. Wind Waker, which came out years ago, still looks great by today's standards. Heck, I think Majora's Mask looks fantastic for an N64 game. While TP's graphics aren't horribly bad, they are showing their age. Gamecube has games which I still think look great today, and TP just isn't one of them.
I suppose I've saved my biggest gripe for last, and that has to do with items. It followed such a basic formula that I didn't like. "find item in dungeon X, use it in dungeon X, then it's only useful a couple more times after dungeon X". So many items, aside from things like the Boomerang, Bombs, and Arrows fell into this. The Clawshot, though kinda victim, saw a decent number of uses. However, amazing concepts like the Spinner and Dominion Rod were sold so short. They had no use outside of their respective dungeon save for a few more tiny things, like getting a Heart Piece. Also, what was the point of the Slingshot when it doesn't take too long after to get the arrows. The slingshot is a complete waste of time in the game. It doesn't even really get time to be useful. It's a huge gripe and it made the game feel stale to me. Heck, replaying Wind Waker recently, I really came to appreciate how useful so dungeon items were, and how they were continuing to come up with new concepts to make them useful or add more uniqueness to them to keep them fresh in later dungeons. The combo of the Hammer/Iron Boots/Deku Leaf to leap off and cover great distances was an awesome concept and they need to do stuff like that in more Zelda games. Keep the items useful. Even a widely held game like Ocarina of Time suffers from this somewhat, though I feel TP takes it to the extreme.
I apologize for the long wall of text and appreciate those who made it through. I want it to be understood, I don't hate this game by any means. I just have a lot of issues with it. It's definitely far from my favorite, this game is far too flawed. Like I said, I think it's an okay game. It's not terrible, but it's not a game I constantly want to play again and again for the experience. This game does have some terrific moments, but I just feel the bad overshadows the good this game can offer. It's average for me, and if I'm in a Zelda mood, there are other titles I feel way more worth playing. I'm not bashing on those who love TP, I'm all for gamers with differing opinions, it's just not the title that gets me excited.
On April 3, 2016, Court Records Forums experienced a miracle upon that day.
CatMuto wrote:
Pierre wrote:
Man...that looks dull...this actually makes me worried for KH3 (since that team worked on the battle system)
I feel the same