Desbreko

[color=#4B0082]I prepurchased earlier today and am super excited for the first beta weekend, which will apparently be some time late this month. The combat and dynamic event systems look amazingly fun, and it sounds like I might even enjoy World vs World PvP. My only reservation is that I'm still a bit concerned the preset weapon skills and the much more limited selection of slot skills I've seen in videos will get stale after playing the game for a long time. A big part of what's kept me playing the original GW for so long is the huge variety of skills and the ability to create tons of different builds to keep the gameplay interesting. Hopefully, what we've seen in the videos isn't the entire selection of skills that will be available at the end game, and the trait system will also add a lot of variety beyond skill selection.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]There's one at the bottom of the forums â?? or any page, actually â?? in the footer.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]But... but... How do I connect the cable to the cartridge in a North American NES when the whole cartridge slides into the loading slot!?[/color]

[color=#4B0082]I finished Shakugan no Shana III last night. Given that the first two series were painfully mediocre and road almost entirely on Shana's character design and tsundereness (dat KugiRie), Shana III really surprised me by how good it was. I almost want to say it's worth watching the first two series for, but it's been so long since I watched the first two that I'm not quite sure about that. Also finished Black Rock Shooter, which was great all the way through, and even better than the OAV, which was good but slow in parts. The TV series keeps things moving at a better pace and involves more characters.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]I'm guessing that all of our customizations to IPB's default bbcodes got overwritten (didn't this happen once before when upgrading?), so there might be a few more tags that need tweaking. I'll try to get around to checking them all soon, but if anyone notices other tags not working as expected, post a heads up and I'll fix it as soon as I can.[/color]

[quote name='Sangome' timestamp='1332366570' post='710820'][font=trebuchet ms,helvetica,sans-serif][color=#9900ff]I don't think this is as much of a bug as it is the way the layout is coded, but the 150 x 80 avatars are cropped down to what I'm guessing is 100 x 100 or lower now. I'll live if it can't be messed with, but I thought I'd just point it out[/color][/font].[/quote] [color=#4B0082]Avatars work a little differently than before. Instead of having separate avatars for the postbit (which we could control the max dimensions for) and square profile pictures for other stuff, it now uses the same image for both and crops/scales it as needed to fit the space allowed in each place it's used. I tweaked the postbit setting to allow avatars up to 150 px wide to be displayed without being cropped, so all our old avatars would still work, but that seems to be the only option related to this.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]Whoa, thread revival. That is indeed Nichijou.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]Link is left-handed in the GCN version of Twilight Princess and the [i]entire game[/i] was mirrored for the Wii version to make him right-handed in that. Not that it actually matters at all since all sword control is done through the control stick, just like earlier 3D Zeldas, and the only differentiation that actually matters is simply vertical, horizontal, and stabbing. I'm actually kind of surprised that being left-handed makes that much difference in SS, even. About the only time I've noticed a significant difference between left and right swings is when you need that little bit of extra range on a backhanded swing.[/color]

[color=#4B0082][media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmwSfUqnDvA[/media] For some reason, this is the video game theme I find myself humming or tapping out the beat to most often. It's not my favorite piece of game music, my favorite in the FF series, or even my favorite in FFVI specifically, but it's stuck with me ever since I first heard it back in 1995.[/color]

[quote name='Ellerby' timestamp='1323230489' post='710518']One of my favourite songs from the game so far has to be when I walked inside a random house and heard the classic "someone else's house" song.[/quote] [color=#4B0082]Every time I hear this theme in a new Zelda game, it makes me think of the first time I played OoT and running around Kokiri Forest. SS has some beautiful music, for sure â?? the piece that plays while chasing after Fi was also an instant favorite of mine â?? but my problem is that not much of it has been memorable to me. When I think of locations in OoT, MM, and TWW, a lot of the music from those places instantly comes to mind, but I can hardly recall any of SS's music even when I consciously try. Maybe this'll change once I play the game more, but I also had the same problem with TP. I can recall a grand total of one of TP's original themes at this point, that being the Hidden Village theme.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]The enemies aren't especially smart, but some do react to how you're holding your sword and guard in the appropriate direction. So, like, a baddie will block most of your slashes if you just flail randomly or telegraph your swings too much. And if you do get a hit in but just keep swinging in the same direction, it will put its guard up to block and stop you. (Well, usually. Bokoblins are slow and you can stun lock them if you swing at the right frequency.) Quick and precise slashes are much more likely to get through, and of course you have to make sure that you're swinging in a direction that isn't currently being guarded. So even if the AI isn't terribly complex, combat does require more thought than past 3D Zeldas. The way the customization works is that you've got a separate pouch for shields, bottles, medals, and other misc. upgrades in addition to your main item inventory. You start off with four slots in the pouch and can buy upgrades to expand it to eight max. Anything you don't have room for in your pouch can be left back in Skyloft at the item check, and if you find something while your pouch is full, it automatically gets sent to the item check. Shields have to be equipped to be useable, but after doing so, you can then freely swap to other pouch items. So if you're running around with your shield out but then you need to use a potion, you can pull out the potion and use it without your shield being disequipped. Medals and other upgrades â?? like +5 bomb bag capacity, for example â?? always provide their benefits as long as they're in your pouch. The economy seems better than TWW and TP so far, but I get the feeling I'm going to run out of things to buy before long. Also, they make you buy wallet upgrades, so it kind of feels like you're collecting rupees just so you can collect more rupees sometimes. But rupees aren't quite as common as in TP, it seems like. I've barely seen any reds as drops, and I've only found reds in dungeon chests; I think the only purples I've gotten were from a minigame. Some silvers and golds can be found from exploring the overworld, though. About exploration, it seems all the big items are still handed to you as part of the story, but there's still incentive to explore. The way it works is that when you're down on the surface, you'll find this certain type of block, and when you hit it with a skyward strike, it'll disappear. Then when you go back into the sky, one of the locked chests scattered around the islands up there that corresponds to the block you activated will be unlocked â?? and it's nice enough to show where it is on your map â?? allowing you to open it. This seems to be how you get a lot of the upgrades and medals that go in your pouch, or else you get silver or gold rupees to buy that stuff with.[/color]

[quote name='Brasil' timestamp='1322878079' post='710451']When I do play SS, I'm hoping for a more tempered combat system anyway. Loved the faster-paced, hyper-responsive arcade-style killing in WW, but I'd like to see something more methodical. Give me a few slower enemies and make'em murderously deadly instead of a bunch of cannon fodder whose corpses will explode into Rupees. Would help with the difficulty, too.[/quote] [color=#4B0082]I think you'll like SS's combat, then, as that's pretty much what it's like. The enemies haven't been especially kill-you-in-the-face yet (I'm still between the third and fourth dungeons since I haven't played in a few days), but hearts are much less common, so even losing a heart here and there from stray hits really matters... Unless you're carrying the Heart Medal, which makes hearts drop plenty frequently like they did in OoT, but that's an optional item. But yeah, that intro... If you know what to do and don't care about talking to the townspeople, you can probably get through it in about half an hour, so you might want to just look up how it goes and save yourself some raging.[/color]

[quote name='Brasil' timestamp='1322724395' post='710430']I had high hopes that SS might pull it off. Guess 1:1 won't happen for a while, huh?[/quote] [color=#4B0082]SS is as close to 1:1 as I'd want for a game like Zelda, really. While it's pretty close, being exactly 1:1 would make hitting enemies that require precisely angled slashes a huge pain, not to mention the headache that would come from trying to swing at such angles while the camera is facing Link from some odd diagonal and the sword control is still relative to the direction Link is facing. (That happens a lot while targeting because you wouldn't be able to see the baddie if it centered perfectly behind you.) The idea of perfect 1:1 control is cool and all, but the more precise you require the input to be, the harder it becomes to make Link do exactly what you want â?? and no one wants to play a game when they feel like they're fighting against the controls more than the actual enemies.[/color]

[quote name='James' timestamp='1322607261' post='710405'][font=palatino linotype]Yeah, I don't really view it like camera control as such. I think the reason is partly because centering your view is more of a controller problem with MotionPlus rather than just being a viewing angle problem specifically. That is to say, it [i]feels[/i] - however vaguely - like the controller isn't quite working as sharply as it should. And I think that has the effect of slightly affecting that suspension of disbelief. At least when you move around in Mario and you click a button to center the camera, it pretty much "just works". With MotionPlus, you might not be thinking about centering and you go to aim at a point on the screen...but Link lurches wildly to the left or right because you have to re-center. It just has the slight effect of feeling a little broken at times. But maybe this is not really a widespread feeling. I just wonder what those more "casual" players think.[/font][/quote] [color=#4B0082]It's more a limitation of the game mechanics more than the controller, I think. To give you that amount of freedom with the cursor, the game has to have some manual input from the player for it to function correctly at all times. Likewise, the game can't always know the optimal camera angle, so manual input is required to move it. In both cases, you can force it to be automatic (screen centered pointing and fixed camera angles), but you give up some freedom that way. You just can't get away from this with pointer-based aiming; even a mouse would require you to pick it up and move it back across the pad when you reach the edge, or else the limitation would become how far you can aim in any one direction. Really though, this stopped being a problem for me after the first couple hours of gameplay. I rarely need to recenter anymore, now that I'm used to moving the remote to a good neutral position before I go into aiming mode. And if I do need to, it's become a natural reflex to reach up and hit the d-pad just like I would for changing the camera angle in a Mario game or picking up the mouse on my PC.[/color] [quote name='James' timestamp='1322607261' post='710405'][font=palatino linotype]On a totally unrelated note, it's good to have a [i]real[/i] gaming discussion here at the moment... there have been a few good ones lately, but I find myself missing the days when our gaming forums were full of discussions and debates. *sigh*[/font][/quote] [color=#4B0082]I do, too. Remember when a new game in the series would spawn at least half a dozen threads in the Zelda forum? =/[/color] [quote name='Katie!' timestamp='1322614625' post='710407']I set up my second Wii at school today, and came to the sad realization that my game data was not saved on the disk. I don't know why I thought this, but now I'm sad and don't know if I should start a second save file on my other Wii. :c[/quote] [color=#4B0082]I'm pretty sure you can copy Skyward Sword save files to SD cards. So if you've got one, you could copy the save and take it to school, copy it to the Wii there to play, and then copy it back to the SD card when you're done to take back home.[/color]

[quote name='James' timestamp='1322545031' post='710396'][font=palatino linotype]Yeah, that's absolutely right. I know [i]why[/i] there's a need for re-centering, but that doesn't make re-centering okay as far as I'm concerned. I just think it feels sloppy. To some extent, it goes against Nintendo's own design principles. So, to answer your following point, I would much prefer if MotionPlus incorporated the sensor bar in its design. I'm sure there's a middle-ground to be had here - rather than using the sensor bar exclusively to aim, perhaps the sensor bar could simply automatically re-center the controller every time you point at the screen (and then the controller disengages from it once centered). This [i]might[/i] be an elegant way of solving the problem, at least in part. Although I'm sure Nintendo's thought of that, at any rate.[/font][/quote] [color=#4B0082]The problem with that is you'd still be stuck only being able to aim while pointing at the screen because that's the only place it would center on. I much prefer being able to aim from any odd position I want as it's much easier without having to bring my arm up from its usual position down by my leg. It's especially nice when I'm having to quickly switch between sword control and aiming while fighting baddies. I view having to recenter the cursor (and really, you only [i]have[/i] to recenter it if you change position after starting to aim) the same way I view camera control. Sure, having to do it manually is more effort, but it provides much more freedom than any automatic way of doing it. See: Mario Sunshine's fully manual camera, which I love, vs. Mario Galaxy's fully automatic camera, which I hate.[/color] [quote name='James' timestamp='1322545031' post='710396'][font=palatino linotype]Interesting. The funny thing is, this whole scenario simply never occurred to me. I guess that's why I haven't included it as a criticism of the game in my own comments - it simply hasn't occurred to me to try to snipe enemies from afar using the skyward strike.[/font][/quote] [color=#4B0082]I tend to take full advantage of any abilities the game gives me in abusing the AI, so yeah, this occurred to me pretty early on when I was getting annoyed at having to fight so many Bokoblins one-on-one. :p Really though, it's no worse than spamming spin attacks in OoT or TWW, or the wolf jump attack in TP, so I can't fault SS too much for it. By the way, another good use for skyward strikes is cutting large amounts of grass at once. A horizontal one really mows it down.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]Some enemies aren't as vulnerable to skyward strikes, yeah. But even against some stuff that can block, like Bokoblins, it's not hard at all to abuse. Just charge up a strike as you're running up to it, shoot the beam when you get to the edge of its range, and the Bokoblin usually won't get its guard up in time. It's an easy, no risk knockdown that lets you hit it with a fatal blow afterwards. (On the other hand, a dash jump attack usually also works because Bokoblins aren't exactly quick.) Skyward strikes also make quick work of those three-headed snake monsters. Normally, it's pretty tricky to catch all three heads in a single slash even if you get the angle right, since you have to do as large a swing as possible to reach all three, but the range and size of the skyward strike always gets them as long as you swing at about the right angle. Basically, against anything that doesn't block constantly or require something special, like flipping over Skulltulas, keeping your distance while firing off skyward strikes makes for an easy victory. About the motion+, you're never going to get away from the need to recenter the cursor. When you go into a pointing view, it takes wherever the remote is currently pointing as center and goes from there for any movement. But then if you move your arm to some other position to get better range of motion or something, you need to recenter to take into account the new positioning because the game has no way of telling that you're just shifting position instead of aiming. Recentering was really weird for me too at first, because I was expecting it to act like a mouse, where the cursor stays in the same place when you lift it up and move it back to the center of the mouse pad, but I've gotten used to it by now. And I'll take motion+ pointing over sensor bar pointing any day, where you're locked into a single position that's usually awkward unless you're at least six feet away from the screen. The motion+ is also a lot more precise; you no longer have to deal with your aim jumping around like it always did in TP when trying to hold it still to hit small targets. Having to recalibrate the motion+ every now and then [i]is[/i] annoying, though. Mainly, it's because it can be hard to tell when you need to do it. I sat at the second dungeon boss door for, like, two minutes trying to get the stupid key to rotate the right way before I thought to recalibrate, and then I got it immediately. I found a pretty good way to tell when it's gotten off and needs recalibration, though. Just open up the item circle by holding B and move the cursor around the circle; if you can't get to each item slot easily, or if getting to one side of the circle is harder than the others, you need to recalibrate. I wonder if the new remotes with the motion+ built in are any better about this.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]So, anyone else finding that skyward strikes are incredibly easy to abuse? I beat the third dungeon boss without getting hit earlier, and while I did avoid a few attacks with nicely timed dodges, I mostly just spammed skyward strikes for the first part of the fight. Not only do they let you keep your distance, they're also a lot easier to hit with when you need to swing in those tricky diagonal angles. Still, despite completely owning the thing, that boss was the most fun of the three so far. It felt like a classic 2D Zelda boss where you have to both attack and defend at the same time instead of the same old stun-and-slash pattern nearly every other 3D Zelda boss uses. I hope to see more like it. Also, I found [url="http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/9683/tingledoll.jpg"]this little Easter egg[/url]. [/color]

[color=#4B0082]You don't actually need to point the remote at the screen for aiming. Except for the initial motion+ calibration where it makes you point at the center of the screen, or if you recalibrate from the pause menu, the game doesn't seem to use the sensor bar at all. All aiming is done through controller movement with the motion+, so you can be pointing completely away from the screen and it still works. And if you shift the position of the remote and the aiming becomes awkward, you can just recenter it with down on the d-pad.[/color]

[quote name='Petie' timestamp='1322233165' post='710350'][color="#0000ff"]You can get an iron shield now that you're there :)[/color][/quote] [color=#4B0082]I noticed that in the shop... after I got back from beating the Earth Temple. So I bought one, upgraded it once, and took it out to Lanayru Desert. Suddenly, enemies with electric attacks. orz But I have a fully upgraded wooden shield going into the Lanayru Mining Facility now. Of course, I tried using my shield on other Lizalfos in the Earth Temple and found myself getting hit more often than if I just dodged, so I didn't end up using it in there anyway.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]I've been playing the game entirely while sitting and it's worked fine. But then, my chair doesn't have arm rests to get in the way, so that makes it easier. I wouldn't want to play in a chair with arms rests, since stuff like looking or aiming downwards or rolling bombs, where the remote needs to be pointed downwards at a steep angle, is really hard if you can't hang your arm down by your side. Your movements have to be bigger than what you could get away with in Twilight Princess, where even tiny flicks of the wrist would make Link swing, but not by a whole lot. You can still get by entirely on wrist movement for sword control. In my first play session, I clocked about six hours and my wrist was a bit tired afterward, but it didn't hurt at all. In fact, I didn't really notice until I went to work that evening and using the feather duster required more effort than usual. :p But a lot of that initial play time was just spent running around Skyloft for the intro section, so it wasn't full of action. And oh yeah, I have a shield, don't I? I've kept it disequipped all through Eldin Province because I didn't want to get ambushed by some random Fire Keese and have it burnt up. [/color]

[color=#4B0082]Yeah, don't get me wrong; the game's still been fun. It just starts off slower than other Zelda games. It looks like the combat is picking up in the second dungeon now, too. I've only gotten part way through it â?? yay for save points inside dungeons â?? but I've fought several Lizalfos and they're much more fun than anything else I've encountered so far. Though ironically, the motion+ control doesn't actually play much part in fighting them. They can block your sword with their shield, sure, but most of the time they'll just autododge if you swing at them from a direction they're not protected. By far, the easiest way to hit them is to just swing at them a few times until you see their attack animation begin, backflip away to dodge, and counter while their guard is down after the attack. This is actually really similar to how you fight them in OoT, just a little more complicated and requiring faster reflexes. I managed to land jump attack + fatal blow combos on all of them I fought by doing that.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]The control is good, but as of beating the first dungeon, it feels kind of wasted. All the overworld baddies have been extremely simple, and there are barely any baddies at all in the dungeon; it felt extremely empty in there. Also, I am not too thrilled by enemies like the Bokoblins that amount to standing there in front of them and following prompts telling you which way to swing your sword. That is extremely boring, and after about the third one, I just started using a skyward strike (the sword beam attack) plus fatal blow combo to completely bypass their blocking. I expect the combat to get more fun later, but with the way-too-long introduction/tutorial area (so much dialogue... wtf is this, MGS?) and such a disappointing first dungeon, SS's start seems the weakest of the 3D Zeldas to me. Yes, even moreso than TP making you run around as a wolf for the first hour or so. At least with that, you got to kill more than a few Keese and Chuchus in the process. By the way, I noticed that although they give you six hearts to start with instead of the standard three, it doesn't actually lower the difficulty at the start because most enemies that would do half a heart in other Zeldas instead do a full heart of damage. Rather, I guess it's supposed to raise the difficulty later in the game, since increased damage from baddies lowers the effectiveness of extra heart containers. (6+2 hearts takes 8 1-heart hits to kill you instead of 3+2 hearts taking 10 1/2-heart hits, for example.) It'll be interesting to see how that balances out. [b]Edit:[/b] Got to the second dungeon but haven't done anything in it yet. Bokoblins are a little more fun now that they're coming in groups, but I still wish they'd attack more often than, like, once every fifteen seconds.[/color]

[color=#4B0082]Okay, so let's see... [b]"...I imagine I'll still be here in another [strike]two[/strike] [three years]."[/b] [ â??] [b]"I wonder where I'll rank [in post count] when this is opened."[/b] Still in third, though Gavin seems to be sneaking up on me. >_> [b]I'll probably also still be on the staff in some position or other in [strike]two[/strike] [three] years."[/b] [ â??] [b]"Recently I've been working more on the technical side of things as well as regular site management so maybe that will increase."[/b] [ â??] [b]"...it would be nice if I had finally gotten around to learning PHP by the time this is opened."[/b] [ â??] [b]"Hopefully I'll add a couple more [DailyOtaku articles] over the next [strike]two[/strike] [three] years."[/b] [ â??] [b]"I don't have any plans to do this [fansubbing] regularly..."[/b] The more I learned how to do things right, the more I learned how much most subbers fail, and thus the more I felt driven to make good releases of anime I really like. orz [b]"Maybe by the time this is reopened I'll have actually put to use some of the AMV ideas I've had floating around in my mind for years."[/b] [ â??] [b]"I seriously hope I'll have figured out what I want to do by the time this is opened back up."[/b] Uh... I think I have? Still kinda vague. This turned out to be a bit depressing. [/color]