• Welcome to ZD Forums! You must create an account and log in to see and participate in the Shoutbox chat on this main index page.

Link's Awakening Switch Link's Awakening (Swtich) is much better than BotW...

Joined
Jun 14, 2011
You didn't mention the boring fetch quests that almost every Zelda has. These started with Zelda 2, if you don't include fetching the letter for the medicine lady in Zelda 1, mind you that is still a fetch quest of sorts. They started getting annoying in Ocarina of Time onwards. Though I will say fetching hundreds and hundreds of rupees for the bomb/arrow capacity upgrade fairy in ALTTP got boring real quick.

I find it interesting you bring up fetch quests being annoying when BotW is the biggest insult to that idea in the whole franchise. Whether it was optional or not or down-right tedious, at least in previous games they amounted to something. Like if you went out of your way to complete them, you would have got something beneficial to aid you in your quest or in some cases actually progress the story.

In BotW, there really isn't much point in doing them with the exception of the Tarry Town side-quest. Apart from that quest which was well worth doing, the rest of them were pretty pointless. The awards you get for them you're better off finding them lying around the overworld.

And do I even need to bring up the Korok seeds? There is no doubt that the biggest up-yours to a fetch quest is finding every Korok seed in the entire game. There are so many in the game that the real benefit of collecting them stops after finding roughly half of them. But if you actually went out of your way to collect all 900, the award you get for putting in all those hours looking under every nook and cranny amounts to a big slap in the face and an unpleasant item in your inventory.

Breath of the wild has demonstrated that it has staying power beyond it's initial marketing. Look anywhere online other than these forums and the overwhelming response to the game is that it is a modern day masterpiece, with many lauding it as their game of the year at the time and praising the very aspects that you claim to be nontraditional and should be abandoned. It really sucks that you don't like it, but the sales figures and general opinion seems to be that it was a step in the right direction for the life of the series.

I've also seen elsewhere on the internet and even off the internet a lot of people saying they straight-up hate this game, to the point they can't believe it even exists. I personally wouldn't go that far, but it's definitely not the magnum opus others claims it to be. So if BotW is supposedly a masterpiece, how come the backlash is the biggest I've ever seen for a Zelda title?

Well, a huge part of that comes down to marketing hype. Because it was released the same day as the Nintendo Switch, there was no fear BotW wasn't going to sell. No one was going to buy a Switch to play 1-2 Switch or Bomberman R, it was purely for Zelda. Nintendo knew if they had stuck to their original plan of releasing it only on the Wii-U, BotW wouldn't have made near the number of sales it has made to this day. So they cleverly delayed the game to fall in line with the Switch's release, and that's the marks of a true salesman.

But while huge sales were a guarantee at this point, whether the game would actually be good was still debatable. I for one was really hyped for this game before it came out. I was a little concerned that they would go for an Open World style game but at the same time, my hopes were still strong, especially when I saw that story trailer. Everything I saw in that trailer got me excited for all the kind of things you'll get up to. It wasn't until I got the game and popped it in that the root of my hatred for this game sprouted.

While the Story trailer technically didn't lie, the way it presented itself compared to how it turned out actually created two completely different games. I envisioned a game where you'd actually encounter Zelda in the overworld and travel with her to all these fascinating places and meet all these characters where you ask for their aid to rescue the divine beasts as well as on the side learn from the environment what happened before you went into that 100-year slumber.

Instead of all that, you're on your own like always, Zelda is imprisoned yet again and the story, which in the trailer made out you would unfold in the present, ended up being pushed to the side in the form of memory flashbacks. And, yeah while it does show us what happened in the past and, while they are done pretty well, just didn't seem as powerful if you saw an in-game present-day cutscene and it was shown through the environment and with one of the characters giving a subtle exposition of what really happened, and maybe then go into the flashbacks. I know this isn't a movie, it's a game and that comes first. but if you are going to have a narrative, at the very least make it engaging. How more invested in the story and the characters would you have been had the game not shoved that to the side in favour of exploring an oversized empty overworld with nothing to show for it?

Not only was the story aspect completely shattered, but the exploration was a bore, weapons breaking constantly during a battle, death was frustratingly common as well as cheap and the whole climax was a complete joke. I still can't believe once you've completed the Great Plateau you can head straight to Hyrule Castle and take on the final boss with nothing but a stick, and it actually works! So what's the point of having this huge depressing backstory and the Master Sword that's supposed to destroy the Calamity if it can be beaten down with a bit of shrapnel?! That to me really destroys the foundation of the plot this game created! The only times BotW felt anywhere like a Zelda game is at the beginning on the Great Plateau, doing any of the shrine puzzles or if you actually follow the main quest. The rest of the game where it focuses the most is completely, utterly, unbearable.

That's where the majority of the backlash comes from, and while fan expectations have been dashed before, it was never done to this scale. And I am so glad I am not the only one who feels the same way. Say what you want about Skyward Sword, but at least it was more obvious what we were going to end up with. BotW completely tricked us with its trailers and marketing and it didn't matter because regardless, it was guaranteed a sale because of the joint release of the Nintendo Switch.

Now if you like BotW, great! More power to you, enjoy it to your heart's content! You clearly have a keen eye for something in the game that sparked your interest and you were able to bypass the marketing facade. But it's also important to understand that a huge amount of people were not so lucky and were decieved by the marketing hype and understandably feel betrayed by the final product and thus have a deep grudge against it. That's why when you ask one of them if they are looking forward to BotW2, they don't even want to know about it.

When Link's Awakening finally arrived, I instantly said to my self while playing it "this is so much better than BotW" because we knew exactly what to expect and we weren't lied to. I needed something to get that sour taste out of my mouth, and Hyrule Warriors, as great as it is, wasn't enough. I even said before Link's Awakening even came out I would enjoy this a lot better, even though I had huge doubts about the art style.

While it is too early to judge if Link's Awakening has won over fans or not, from early impressions, it seems to be mainly positive. not only have people said it may actually be better then the original thanks to its quality of life changes, but they also say the visual upgrade is a very stylized update which holds up very well compared to today's standards. Sure it's not going to sell as well as BotW, there's no doubt about that, but unlike BotW, Link's Awakening is not banking on people buying a Switch the very same day. Even if Link's Awakening doesn't sell as much as people hope it will, at least it will be easier for it to be universally praised and is unlikely to form a huge backlash because it knows what it is and is straight-up honest about the type of Zelda game it's going to be.
 

Pen

The game is on!
But even if I understand why I don’t like BotW, I still don’t get how this is the best selling Zelda game when it has very little in connection to its roots.

You say BotW has very little in connection to its roots. I beg to disagree. Of course BotW shook up a lot of traditional Zelda staples, but a lot of those staples were introduced in Zelda II, ALttP or OoT. Comparing BotW to its true roots, the original LoZ, there's actually a lot of connections and similarities. The original LoZ was an open world game of its time. If the developers of Zelda 1 had the technology I'm sure they would have ended up making something more more similar to BotW than to, say, TP for example.

Before the release of BotW the sense of free exploration in Zelda had never been stronger than in Zelda 1 (a case could be made for WW but that's for another discussion). With Zelda II and every game after it before 2017 the sense of free exploration was diminished by having large portions of the game world blocked off for various reasons until later in the game's story. In that regard all Zelda games that came out between Zelda 1 and BotW are the games that weren't true to the original formula.

At its core Zelda 1 had three main appeals, those being the exploration, the combat and the puzzle solving. The combat and the puzzles have remained a constant staple throughout the Zelda series, and even in BotW they're there. In fact, BotW offers engaging and varied combat along with cleverly designed puzzles that often have multiple correct solutions. However, as I pointed out in the previous paragraph the sense of free exploration died after the original LoZ because story started taking more focus as the games became more and more linear. BotW didn't just uphold the combat and puzzle staples of the series in an excellent way, it also revived the sense of free exploration which had been dead for the past 30 years. Thus BotW is the only Zelda game to truly connect to its roots by honouring all three core aspects of the original LoZ.

That said though, I think it's a little bit silly to compare BotW to LA. They're two very different games and I absolutely love both of them for what they are.
 
Joined
Jul 16, 2018
Your right, LA isn’t the first real Zelda game on switch. Cadence if hyrule is.
Cadence of Hyrule was not a zelda game... if anything it's a spin off like Hyrule Warriors, Tri Force Heros etc. I find it a little insulting that people say Botw is not real Zelda game. Why because it doesn't stuff lore down your throat like other zelda games do?! Myself I am not really into lore or timelines I am more about the game play. I don't fault anyone that enjoys those things to each own.. But don't call it not real zelda just because you don't like the game mechanics. I don't like Phantom Hour Glass and Spirit Tracks for my own reasons.. but because I don't like those games I won't go around saying they are not really zelda games that would be ludicrous.
 

thePlinko

What’s the character limit on this? Aksnfiskwjfjsk
ZD Legend
Cadence of Hyrule was not a zelda game... if anything it's a spin off like Hyrule Warriors, Tri Force Heros etc. I find it a little insulting that people say Botw is not real Zelda game. Why because it doesn't stuff lore down your throat like other zelda games do?! Myself I am not really into lore or timelines I am more about the game play. I don't fault anyone that enjoys those things to each own.. But don't call it not real zelda just because you don't like the game mechanics. I don't like Phantom Hour Glass and Spirit Tracks for my own reasons.. but because I don't like those games I won't go around saying they are not really zelda games that would be ludicrous.
Breath of the Wild plays nothing like a Zelda game though. Zelda has never been this open, even the first one railroaded you to quite an extent. It’s not that I dislike the mechanics, on their own I quite enjoy them, but they don’t belong in a Zelda game. Calling BotW a Zelda game would be like if sakurai made the next smash bros a dating sim and said it was different so it’s automatically good. The fact of the matter is that this is the most un-zelda Zelda has ever been, even the multiplayer titles. At least those still treated themselves as a Zelda game. Cadence if Hyrule at the very least had dungeons that felt unique and memorable, even though they were randomized. It had special items as rewards for said dungeons. Outside of the rhythm mechanic CoH was the closest to a real Zelda game we’ve had since LBW, and arguably even SS.
 

thePlinko

What’s the character limit on this? Aksnfiskwjfjsk
ZD Legend
I reiterate my FSA point. Literally some of the most high quality gameplay in the series, yet it’s level like structure is a far cry of what is common of a Zelda game. *****ing about stuff “not being Zelda” is more just people having tantrums about a game not being what you want.
FSA is easily one of the worst games in the series, even worse than TP, and god knows how much I hate TP. it’s fine to be different but if you’re going to make a game this different you might as well call it something else, because that’s what it was. Once again, this would be like making the next smash bros a dating sim. You can say it’s from the same series all you want, but at the end of the day it’s simply not even remotely similar.
 
Joined
Nov 14, 2015
FSA is easily one of the worst games in the series, even worse than TP, and god knows how much I hate TP. it’s fine to be different but if you’re going to make a game this different you might as well call it something else, because that’s what it was. Once again, this would be like making the next smash bros a dating sim. You can say it’s from the same series all you want, but at the end of the day it’s simply not even remotely similar.
It’s literally not though. A lot of the dungeons experiment with cool ideas that should have been brought back but never were eg the Cave of No Return and some of the ice puzzles in the Ice Temple, not to mention interesting variety such as capturing the thieves in Kakariko, finding the kids in the Dark World in the village of the Blue Maiden, or bringing items to the Deku Scrub in the Lost Woods. I’m sorry but this is just a bad take like all around.
 

Mikey the Moblin

sushi is a suspicious hello
Joined
Aug 31, 2014
Location
southworst united states
Gender
Dude
You say BotW has very little in connection to its roots. I beg to disagree. Of course BotW shook up a lot of traditional Zelda staples, but a lot of those staples were introduced in Zelda II, ALttP or OoT. Comparing BotW to its true roots, the original LoZ, there's actually a lot of connections and similarities. The original LoZ was an open world game of its time. If the developers of Zelda 1 had the technology I'm sure they would have ended up making something more more similar to BotW than to, say, TP for example.
why do people keep coming back to this when it's literally been disproven? Miyamoto was not making an open world game; he was making a game with locks and keys and dungeons.

I see so many narrow-minded individuals in here. What's so wrong with the Zelda series experimenting a bit? So many good things come from it. Try to keep an open mind, fellows. ^^
"I like sandwiches."
"here, have a tostada."
"hmm, it's a little crunchy. I prefer sandwiches."
"well, more people prefer tostadas so we're going to keep making those, and maybe branch out to tacos!"
 
Joined
Nov 14, 2015
"I like sandwiches."
"here, have a tostada."
"hmm, it's a little crunchy. I prefer sandwiches."
"well, more people prefer tostadas so we're going to keep making those, and maybe branch out to tacos!"
I mean, you still have a ton of... sandwiches left you could still play, and we just got a remake of a classic... sandwich.. released on Friday. I’m not big on this false comparison.

why do people keep coming back to this when it's literally been disproven? Miyamoto was not making an open world game; he was making a game with locks and keys and dungeons.
Right, at it’s core, the original Zelda was a dungeon crawler. Screw aLttP for taking the focus away from the dungeons and putting a lot of focus on overworld exploration. aLttP isn’t a true Zelda game, amirite fellas?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Pen
Joined
Oct 14, 2013
Location
Australia
I find it interesting you bring up fetch quests being annoying when BotW is the biggest insult to that idea in the whole franchise.
What you say is not wrong. However it's all optional. It's not required to beat the game like in SS or WW or other Zelda games. That's the important difference.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top Bottom