ChuChuOfTime
Fish. Citizen of Foo
- Joined
- Sep 30, 2011
I personally think that dowsing made the game almost to easy when you had to look for anything, really is it that hard to find stuff? What does everybody else think?
I think that dowsing was interesting because it gave you a vague idea of where the object was, but still left it open enough that you had to look carefully for it. It was like that game of "hot/cold" many children play. Sometimes it was frustrating because it was horrible at vertical positioning, but that just made it a little more challenging than an easter egg hunt.
Yeah, I was surprised it couldn't be used inside the dungeons. The pre-release discussions about Dowsing implied that the reason there was no Compass in dungeons was because of Dowsing, so I expected Dowsing to be an optional tool for finding secrets in dungeons. Kinda odd they didn't do that.If they reintroduce dowsing they should do more with it like maybe have invisible switches that you need to use dowsing to find or something. It could have been a fun dungeon element kinda like the mirror from Occarina or something.
Yeah I think you put this well. Dowsing was a great way to make fetch quests less irritating, and because it was there, Skyward Sword's relatively high number of such quests was prevented from being irritating. And I'll tell you what, that is an impressive feat considering that fetch quests are almost universally bad in most peoples' eyes. At least from what I hear these days in reviews and whatnot about games that have a lot of them. It's just a tool to make sure things are fun. Use it if you like.The straightforward dowsing gameplay segments were distributed well throughout the game. Although these parts weren't particularly exciting, dowsing doesn't necessarily have to be used for more than a few minutes at a time. Fetch quests are made a little bit easier with the addition of the Master Sword's dowsing ability, but this is balanced out by the challenge of finding the item you're dowsing for. In the case of Eldin Volcano and the Fire Sanctuary, some of the pieces of the key were well-hidden and required some searching and thinking to be found.
However, dowsing isn't mandatory. If the player wishes to, he/she may looks for locations and objects without the help of the sword's dowsing ability, but I think this detracts from the experience. While I do like open exploration, you just wouldn't have the slightest inkling of where to look. Some players may stumble across these items quickly due to sheer luck, but for some it may take an hour or more before they can find what they're looking for. That is not the sort of frustration that we cherish in Zelda games.