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Skyward Sword Difficulty Concerns

Kybyrian

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Didn't I already answer this one?
If you've been keeping up-to-date with everything to do with Zelda recently, then you know that the Late Show with Jimmy Fallon just featured a visit from Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime. He was there to demonstrate the 3DS AR Cards from Kid Icarus, the new Wii U, and also... Skyward Sword!

It was a less than exciting little demonstration, though. It was a few seconds long in all as there wasn't much time to do anything. It featured Jimmy Fallon battling the first mini-boss of the first major dungeon of the game, Stalfos. The Stalfos looked big and intimidating... with a giant sword and a huge shield that covered half of his body. The thing about it, though, is that this undead monstrosity doesn't seem to live up to his image. Jimmy Fallon took a few steps forward and swung his Wii Remote around rapidly and randomly, landing many successive blows on Stalfos with absolutely no delay between the sword slashes.

Many of these slashes were blocked, around 4-7 of them in total, but Link still fell the giant within a few seconds. During the whole time, only 1 heart of damage was taken, with the count being 4 at the time of the battle. This poses a question... is Skyward Sword as hard as a lot of gamers are hoping? Difficulty has been absent recently, and people are hoping for a change in Skyward Sword. We were promised a puzzle in every enemy, to map their blocking and attacking strategies. In a game where you can defeat a mini-boss with no blocking and random slashes for an almost flawless victory, can every enemy truly be a puzzle? Is it going to be as hard as we were promised?
 

Xinnamin

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Personally, I still have very high hopes for the game. Think about it, in how many games have we had where the first mini-boss was really much of a challenge at all? I mean, with OoT, first "mini-boss" consisted of deflecting Deku Scrub projectiles. MM, I think it was enemies like Dinalfos, which aren't that tough at all. WW was what, Moblins? Still not that tough. TP, first mini-boss was Ook, and all you had to do was roll into him. Now SS gives us a Stalfos, and even with the blocking and all, I still wasn't anticipating it to be that difficult.

They have to add a learning curve to all of these games or else they'll lose a lot of less experienced players pretty early in the game, and being Nintendo, they cater to the casual gamer. I always thought the "every enemy is a puzzle" to be an exaggeration, as I don't see how much puzzle they can really add to the really common enemies like the various "goblin" enemies for example.

Does this mean all of the enemies are going to be easy? Of course not. Ook for example is by no means the toughest challenge in TP. I am excited to see what SS does with enemies like the Armored Lizalfos or Darknuts or whatever new tough guys they decided to throw at us. The first temple is never the best indicator of a game's overall difficulty after all.
 

Kybyrian

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Didn't I already answer this one?
I know it's true that we haven't exactly been thrown difficulty in our faces during the Zelda series, but at least something that takes a little bit of strategy? Even deflecting Deku Nuts is more challenging than swing your arm limply back and forth. With an intimidating enemy like the Stalfos, you may expect something more. It just makes me wonder, how are the casual enemies? What will it all be like? So far all we've seen are enemies that a) don't attack b) hang upside-down from the ceiling.
 

Xinnamin

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Again, first temple, not supposed to be the most challenging thing in the world. From what we've seen in the demos, my impression is that the first temple's goal was not to throw the challenging combat at us, but rather give us a taste of what kinds of puzzles we'll be expected to deal with. We saw things like the tightropes and the Beetle-only nooks and crannies and the eye locks, which gives me the impression that the learning curve for SS is focused first on mastering motion controls for exploration, THEN deal with the enemies. It's even possible that the lack of enemies we saw in the demos just means we haven't seen all the enemies there are in the dungeon. But still, first dungeon, can't expect them to throw out the tough guys so fast.
 

Kybyrian

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Didn't I already answer this one?
I have no doubt that the enemies in the first dungeon are a little lesser than what we would see throughout the game, but those are incredibly easy. I'm not talking dirt easy here, but to the point where it isn't significantly challenging. There isn't a whole lot to vary on when you're swordfighting. Let's say we have these armored Lizalfos you talk about. Let's say... you have to hit them in a certain spot because of their armor or something. If the battling mechanics work like the way we've seen them, 5 random slashes in any direction will land you a blow and if you're unlucky you'll get hit back once.
 

athenian200

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This thread title is ironic. Apparently, I'm not going to be satisfied if it IS as hard as you thought it was going to be... and you're not going to be satisfied if it's not so hard that most people will never beat it.

I hope Nintendo can meet somewhere in the middle, and manage to create a game that we can all live with. Nintendo has done a pretty good job of this so far, and I hope that they don't choose now to alienate their less skilled gamers, or their more skilled ones. I hope they can strike the same special balance they achieved in OoT. Zelda should not become a series that only people who are willing to spend hours on a puzzle can beat, nor should it become a cakewalk where you can simply play the game without dying.

Here is what Zelda should be. A game that tries to deceive you occasionally, but not all the time. A game where you might die a couple of times, but probably get it after that. A game where the solution to a puzzle may elude you, yet isn't impossible to discern without help. A game where enemies require a little strategy to beat, but not so much that it's a chore.

Zelda, so far, has lived up to these expectations of mine pretty well. I hope that I am not the only one out there who wants a moderate game rather than a ridiculously hard one.
 
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First I'd like to point out that the stalfos does not have a huge shield. He has two swords that he blocks with.

Ok, now down to business. If any of you had been watching the E3 demos, you would have noticed that the stalfos does NOT tolerate waggle. I have seen countless players die trying to waggle their way around this enemy. What this means is either:

A. Nintendo brought a toned down version for this very short demo session. This would make sense considering how long these battles can go on.

B. Fallon got extremely lucky. Even more likely. He used several spin attacks and just happened to to land a few. Does this mean enemies are going to be push overs? No, it just means if you try to waggle your way through the game, you are probably going to get lucky every once in a while and die countless time.

One enemy is taken down by luck and some people think it's the end of the world. Go watch some more demo footage and you'll see it's no walk in the park.

Just saw this in OP, and it's really important to what we're talking about: This isn't a mini-boss. It's just a normal enemy. This has been confirmed in one of the demo showings.
 
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Hanyou

didn't build that
This thread title is ironic. Apparently, I'm not going to be satisfied if it IS as hard as you thought it was going to be... and you're not going to be satisfied if it's not so hard that most people will never beat it.[...]Zelda, so far, has lived up to these expectations of mine pretty well. I hope that I am not the only one out there who wants a moderate game rather than a ridiculously hard one.

My thoughts exactly.

I'm a bit concerned about motion control being overemphasized--artificially raising the difficulty in spots--but not so concerned about it being too easy. That's rarely something to be worried about. Even easy Zelda games (The Wind Waker and The Minish Cap) are pretty widely recognized as quality titles.

If anything, Nintendo shouldn't give into the ridiculous demands of some of their "diehard" fanbase that every Zelda game be the most difficult one ever. Difficulty has little to do with entertainment, except that an overly hard game can be prevented from being fun.

As things stand, the difficulty looks just right for early portions of the game.
 

Ghirahim

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That's only one battle out of what will most likely be countless battles found throughout the game. I don't think a tiny piece of an entire game can say what the rest of it will be like. There will probably be easy parts, hard parts, in between parts..
 

Kybyrian

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Didn't I already answer this one?
TheCOngressman1 said:
Just saw this in OP, and it's really important to what we're talking about: This isn't a mini-boss. It's just a normal enemy. This has been confirmed in one of the demo showings.

Why does Reggie Fils-Aime refer to Stalfos as the mini-boss of the first major dungeon in the game, then?
 
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did you ever think that maybe he practiced off camera so he wouldn't look like an idiot? that's what i think or he got lucky. most people have had some difficulty with the stalfos and most people on here are making fun of those people. which i don't think they should because they might play the same way when they get their hands on the game. now you are complaining that the whole game is too easy? all just because one guy got a lucky shot? i think you're blowing this out of proportion. i think skyward sword will be a difficult game overall. but difficulty is in the eye of the beholder because what one person think's is hard another might think it's so easy.
 

JuicieJ

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I see no reason to think this game won't have some kind of stepped-up difficulty level. Keep in mind that the person playing this wasn't an amateur and was already used to the controls. And all the attacks were blocked because Link's shield was up, and that blocks all normal attacks (which is why a 1:1 shield aspect with the WiiU controller would enhance the combat even more in my opinion, as attacks would actually have to be manually blocked). Plus, this is early in the game. We can't expect too much out of the beginning of the game. I personally think that not only is the game going to answer the call for better difficulty, I think it's going to provide a whole new kind of difficulty, as the combat is so much different now. We're actually going to have to use our minds for just about everything. And having played Red Steel 2, I feel more inclined to say this, as you do have to hit things at certain angles in the game. Only thing is, SS is going to expand on that by far. So, yeah, I have no worries. And I personally feel no one else should, either. We're gonna get great things out of Skyward Sword, and possibly nothing but.
 

Ventus

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SS, from what we've seen in many of the demos, has difficulty in terms of damage taken. So far I've only seen up to 2 hearts being taken away from Link's supply, but there could be harder regularly seen enemies that require more of a strategy than hackandslash. They may even require multiple items including the sword to defeat, we don't know yet but I think it's safe to say that the game won't be a slashfest when it comes to enemies.

And Fallon seemed to have a strategy, it wasn't really random motion from what I've seen (though it WAS bizarre).
 
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Feb 23, 2011
Hee hee.... Gotta love Jimmy Fallon.:P

I think Skyward Sword will live up to it's promise of increased difficulty. A testament to this are the players of the demos who flailed wildly and did not use any strategy during combat; they got their behinds handed to them and some even had to be revived by a bottle fairy.

Moreover, I think Zelda will feature some enemies who aren't at all that difficult, but may still have a small learning curve in defeating them. While some moderate-difficulty enemies may be upgraded to Iron Knuckle-difficulty, with others upped to mini-boss level. All and all there will definitely be a varying learning curve between different baddies.

The stamina meter will prevent over-usage of the same tactics such as sheilding, evading, jumping, etc.
 
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There are a few enemies we've seen that wouldn't be possible to beat just flailing the remote around randomly lol, like the scorpion boss king, the spiders, and yeah... I'm worried about all the rest xD

Like someone else said though, it's only the first dungeon in the game, it's probably not showcasing the toughest fights in the game.
 

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