What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Marc]

I don't know if 'fun' is enough for some these days, but the PS4 and PS5 VR titles were near Nintendo level. I'm not biting at £55 but as soon as it's £30ish I'm on it. Great to play with the kids as well.

[To Far Away Times]

Has anyone played AstroBot yet? The reception is nothing short of shockingly explosive right now.

I don't mean to imply anything about the game. It's just when a game is this lauded by reviewers and big YouTubers so rapidly, I tend to side eye it even if it appeals to me. This deluge of 10/10's tells me the game was braindead easy enough for them to get all of these superlative laden, non-critical fluff pieces out on time.

I can't take the commentary seriously.

I have not, but I have high hopes for it.

Astrobot is the kind of game Sony should be making. Platformers are a prestige genre. No more graphics first movie games and skummy live service mega flops.

[Steven]

Has anyone played AstroBot yet? The reception is nothing short of shockingly explosive right now.

I don't mean to imply anything about the game. It's just when a game is this lauded by reviewers and big YouTubers so rapidly, I tend to side eye it even if it appeals to me. This deluge of 10/10's tells me the game was braindead easy enough for them to get all of these superlative laden, non-critical fluff pieces out on time.

I can't take the commentary seriously.

My copy was supposed to be here today, but Amazon hasn't shipped it for some reason. Busy until possibly Wednesday, but I'll get it eventually. Astro's Playroom was far better than a tech demo had any right to be, so I hope this is just as good, and preferably better, and if it isn't, I will be disappointed.

[Lander]

Those defense and spacing GIFs. Immaculate

I swear, TNWA is like that one christmas present you delay opening because you know it's going to be top-notch. Except christmas has looped back around several times, and I'm still inundated with Top Priority cool shit to further delay gratification. One. Of. These. Days!

Nosferatu: Wrath of Malachi

Odd duck, that one. Earnest truly-classical gothic horror and stuffy family members, all wrapped up in a big packet of self-rearranging jank.

Then the good ending happens, and jaw meets floor.

Get thee behind me, Satan.

Because I'm a man and a half



Good thing Mad Uncle Frank thought to pack his Vickers alongside the usual vacation items!
(Bonus score for showing all the gear on the character as well - doesn't happen nearly often enough.)

Dusk seems neat. Great atmosphere, silky smooth, decent weapons, nice, concise levels. Impressed so far.

The best is yet to come you can really feel Szymanski getting a handle on his gameplay model when the later episodes start ratcheting up in ambition, relative to the already-great E1.

How. How the FUCK did I forget, even for a moment (around ten years), that Mr Driller is simply every single thing that is joyful and fun about gaming, condensed into a huge, shit-eating-grin sugar rush?

You know what, me too. I played the GBA version of Mr. Driller to death back in the day, with a solid chunk of link-play versus in there too. Shit's a compulsive flow-state machine under the right conditions!

skummy live service mega flops.

Ah yes, Concord. I believe that's getting a feature-episode in the upcoming Secret Level anthology TV thing, which should prove quite the lead balloon when it airs next month

That, and jesus fuck what did they do to Pac-Man.

[To Far Away Times]

Double post

[To Far Away Times]

Minish Cap is done. A rather excellent 2D Zelda. Really impressive art, animation, and music in this. Great instrumentation of classic songs and a few new ones that are so good they could be put in a Castlevania game. Top tier presentation and a joy to just look at it and take in the soundtrack. The game is a little shorter than the average Zelda, clocking in at six dungeons instead of eight, but has a little bit more overworld complexity than the other 2D games. This is a much better choice than needlessly padding out the game to hit a desired run time. And it’s nice to be left wanting more than to want the game to be over already. Nice gimmick in this with the shrinking system. Quite a choice to portray that sense of scale on what amounts to slightly more powerful SNES hardware. I imagine that was quite difficult to pull off but they did an excellent job. After a little bit of a slow start the game really picks up. It does have one overdue library book fetch quest I could live without, but it does encourage the player to explore the town. The game ends on a strong note. It saves the best two dungeons for last (the Wind Temple and Hyrule Castle), and they are both excellent.

The credit roll has a who’s who list of top tier creatives in it. Fujibiyashi, Kondo, Inafune, Miyamoto, and Iwata all appear in some form or another. 9/10.

Mr. Driller is beautiful. I bought Drill Land hoping for more of the same but I don't think it's quite as great as the original.

I love Drill Land. You get five modes of varying quality, but the dungeon mode and Aztec puzzle mode are seriously great additions. And of course you get the classic Mr. Driller arcade experience too. Menus are incredibly slick as well, from the same UI designer as Ridge Racer Type 4. It’s the definitive Mr. Driller game, in my opinion. It also goes on sale for $4.79 around once a month, and it’s a total steal at that price. It’s worth the full $30 regular MSRP and the some.

[Daytime Waitress]

Dusk seems neat. Great atmosphere, silky smooth, decent weapons, nice, concise levels. Impressed so far.

The best is yet to come you can really feel Szymanski getting a handle on his gameplay model when the later episodes start ratcheting up in ambition, relative to the already-great E1.

That's a beautiful summation, Lander.
The entire first episode is fantastic precisely because it allows you to get accustomed to the ridiculous mobility you possess contra the enemy hordes.
(Another reason the game just plain clicked with me is that it gives you weapons, rather than gatekeeping them behind unlocks or some sort of tacked on progression/choice system - just plain, "you reached level six, here's a grenade launcher!").
And while enemies are dripfed a little more sporadically than the arsenal, you've seen pretty much the entire cast upon entering the first couple of levels in episode three.
So the back third of the game really has to rely on solid level design and remixing what's come before and messing with player perceptions of what's possible.
And it does that magnificently.

[To Far Away Times]

On to the last remaining Zelda game, Spirit Tracks. Early impressions are not great. I saved this one to the end because I liked Phantom Hourglass so much. The train mechanic is pretty terrible, fonts are pretty bad, lots of stuff doesn't look as nice, music that's just sort of there, and we've already had a stealth escort mission before even getting the sword. Welp.

[XoPachi]

Spirit Tracks is the only Zelda I never finished. I quit about 3 hours in. Hate that game.
Even with all the crying I might have done over Wild and Tears and maybe Skyward Sword, that one will always sit at the bottom of my list.

[ryu]

Dragon's Dogma. Bought the game two years ago but didn't feel like playing it much until recently.

Reminds me of Skyrim, only not completely awful. Still seems like not much more than a timesink unfortunately. But I like the music.

[Lander]

And while enemies are dripfed a little more sporadically than the arsenal, you've seen pretty much the entire cast upon entering the first couple of levels in episode three.
So the back third of the game really has to rely on solid level design and remixing what's come before and messing with player perceptions of what's possible.
And it does that magnificently.

It certainly does, even outside of Ep3. In particular:

Ngaugh

Big John himself, obviously!

...And that awesome sky city behind him, since Lovecraft does what Lovecraft wants.

Doctor Memes, please report to Executive Oshry's office

Escher Labs, and Homecoming(? The Ep3 mindscrew stage.) - superb, I love seeing weird Antichamber type stuff in games.

You know who

STEPHAN WEYTE. How perfect to bring back the voice of Caleb for a Blood spiritual successor. Nyarlathotep is a pretty left-field pick for secret elder god villain too, most respectable.

Are seriously impressive, along with a list of other rad shit that goes beyond the typical "just another E1M* boomer shooter map" structure.

Spoiler

*SCARE CHORD*

Another reason the game just plain clicked with me is that it gives you weapons, rather than gatekeeping them behind unlocks or some sort of tacked on progression/choice system - just plain, "you reached level six, here's a grenade launcher!"

It also (iirc) pulls a Duke 3D and puts all of the Ep1 weapons in Down On The Farm's elaborate super secret, so experienced players can dunk straight to maximum fun.
Good arsenal too; it feels very fundamental, while still mostly dodging the Punch Pistol Shotgun Chaingun Rocket Plasma BFG id model that became so ubiquitous in the genre.

And, barring a certain unmarked illusory wall in mission 1, the secrets are bloody good. Always something useful, a little wink-nudge humor, unexpected shortcuts, or a secret level to be had.

Dragon's Dogma. Bought the game two years ago but didn't feel like playing it much until recently.

Reminds me of Skyrim, only not completely awful. Still seems like not much more than a timesink unfortunately.

Did you kick the Ox?

Be persistent with Dragon's Dogma; the presentation's a bit goofy and threadbare relative to its ambitious opening quotage, but the vocation systems and back half pick up very nicely. Bad endings recommended for the full experience - they're generously-checkpointed, and worth seeing.

The postgame Bitterblack DLC area is good too, as a well-considered mechanical challenge porcelain.

Though, fun fact: DD's damage scaling is b u s t e d due to subtracting level disparities instead of multiplying them, so good elemental gear (+ stackable buffs, healspam) are A-number one, and biting off more than you can chew is total suicide!

But I like the music.

The J-Rock main theme that got replaced in Dark Arisen is so good, too.

[ryu]

Ox?

Yeah the game immediately picked up again once I got done with all the errand quests from the first village and got to dive into the Witch Woods. Unfortunately it's only a matter of time until I reach the next hub area...

You really got to wonder what's wrong with the world that live service game time sink content was pushed into single player games. I miss when RPGs didn't feel like they were a massive waste of time. Even EIyuuden was overstaying its welcome for me, and that was a semi-indie game. Sigh.

[To Far Away Times]

Spirit Tracks is the only Zelda I never finished. I quit about 3 hours in. Hate that game.
Even with all the crying I might have done over Wild and Tears and maybe Skyward Sword, that one will always sit at the bottom of my list.

Yeah, this game blows. I’m only playing through it for completion’s sake.

[Daytime Waitress]

And while enemies are dripfed a little more sporadically than the arsenal, you've seen pretty much the entire cast upon entering the first couple of levels in episode three.
So the back third of the game really has to rely on solid level design and remixing what's come before and messing with player perceptions of what's possible.
And it does that magnificently.

It certainly does, even outside of Ep3. In particular:

Ngaugh

...And that awesome sky city behind him, since Lovecraft does what Lovecraft wants.

I legit put the mouse to one side and stopped playing when that was revealed.
Game gets memed on because it's constructed from paperclip bitmaps and macaroni (and New Blood are Pennsylvania, New Zealand's biggest meme exporters), but that was legit awe-inspiring.

It fundamentally drove home the progress you'd made

You've clawed your way out of a farmhouse basement with barely enough room to swing a cat-shaped saw-blade, fought across an entire entire county of full of Pennsylvanian Gothic nightmares plus a small military incursion, and just now you've mopped up the single biggest running battle in the entire game so far - in-and-of-itself practically dwarfing pretty much every self-contained stage and enemy count combined (Erebus Reactor is a truly magnificent playground of verticality and co-mingling enemy hordes).
And then the sky opens up and everything up to that point is completely, utterly insignificant.
You are insignificant.
And what you're up against can't properly be comprehended.

Spoiler

That is proper Lovecraft, not gribbly bloody tentacle monsters

Fucking hell I adore this game.

along with a list of other rad shit that goes beyond the typical "just another E1M* boomer shooter map" structure.

It's not just the creativity, it's the yoke.
While you can get the entire arsenal by the second map, you're only ever given completely free reign in measured doses.
You're constantly on the receiving end of thematic whiplash because the game is rocketing between polar opposites of "claustrophobic subterranean tunnels" and "sandboxes full of explosive ordinance"; between feeling like you're a god and being terrified of a melee only enemy because it's idle sfx is horrific and you can't see a damn thing down here in this hole.
And then Szymanski goes and mixes in those - said with the utmost love and affection - gimmick levels where you legitimately don't know which way is up.
Distinct facets, but utterly seamless when stitched together (kinda like a shotgun-toting scarecrow).

It also (iirc) pulls a Duke 3D and puts all of the Ep1 weapons in Down On The Farm's elaborate super secret, so experienced players can dunk straight to maximum fun.

I see what you did there

And, barring a certain unmarked illusory wall in mission 1, the secrets are bloody good. Always something useful, a little wink-nudge humor, unexpected shortcuts, or a secret level to be had.

Probably because I played them relatively close together first time around, I always (uncharitably) contrast Dusk's use of secrets with Ion Fury's. The latter felt like they were stuffing handfuls of +2 armour shards into eighteen separate closets across the sprawling maps and were such a chore that I stopped bothering after a time.

[Lander]

gribbly bloody tentacle monsters

Arr, the black goat of the woods with a thousand young never did get her due in the genre.

You're constantly on the receiving end of thematic whiplash because the game is rocketing between polar opposites of "claustrophobic subterranean tunnels" and "sandboxes full of explosive ordinance"; between feeling like you're a god and being terrified of a melee only enemy because it's idle sfx is horrific and you can't see a damn thing down here in this hole.

It is as well Szymanski has a real handle on horror. I didn't realize he was the creator of Squirrel Stapler (among other fringe things, and that soon-to-be-a-Markiplier-movie with the submarine) but it makes a lot of things click into place. The whiplash touches that too, such as an early ghost.png committing dishonesty-through-omission of what's to come.

Probably because I played them relatively close together first time around, I always (uncharitably) contrast Dusk's use of secrets with Ion Fury's. The latter felt like they were stuffing handfuls of +2 armour shards into eighteen separate closets across the sprawling maps and were such a chore that I stopped bothering after a time.

Ion Fury's secrets inspire a particularly pure distillation of vinegary piss. All manner of ridiculous elaborate edge-case nonsense. The rewards seemed alright on the face of it - elaborate in cases like the Blade Runner roof, but have no chance at all of standing up to the hour or so it takes to reverse-engineer convoluted entire-stage switch puzzles and arcane edge-case platforming to actually get your mitts on them.

Plus the you missed X of Y secrets mind-goblin that pops up before each exit. Why I oughta...

Ox?

You'll understand by the time you reach the major hub, for better or worse which is, mercifully, a lot less sleepy than Cassardis - all the interesting sidequests and subplots start fanning out from there.

Yeah the game immediately picked up again once I got done with all the errand quests from the first village and got to dive into the Witch Woods.

Ah, the early side area, good show - if memory serves doing that now makes sure you don't miss out on a minor quest chain later.

[Daytime Waitress]

gribbly bloody tentacle monsters

Arr, the black goat of the woods with a thousand young never did get her due in the genre.

Got done real dirty - casually minding her own business millennia later, still chuckling it up over Cthulhu copping a tugboat to the noggin, when this fucken Ranger guy hups through one portal too many and...

You're constantly on the receiving end of thematic whiplash because the game is rocketing between polar opposites of "claustrophobic subterranean tunnels" and "sandboxes full of explosive ordinance"; between feeling like you're a god and being terrified of a melee only enemy because it's idle sfx is horrific and you can't see a damn thing down here in this hole.

It is as well

The form is so desiccated - how can the sound be so moist?

Szymanski has a real handle on horror. I didn't realize he was the creator of Squirrel Stapler (among other fringe things, and that soon-to-be-a-Markiplier-movie with the submarine) but it makes a lot of things click into place. The whiplash touches that too, such as an early ghost.png committing dishonesty-through-omission of what's to come.

Played Fingerbones back around the time Dusk got out of early access, didn't care for its belaboured writing and walking simulatorness.
Dusk felt like all the spoops, carefully refined, absolutely none of the excess.

Squirrel Stapler is similar in that respect: infinitesimally short, but carries the writing-prompt-brevity with acid-laced PSX visuals, jank in just the right amounts and places, and true existential dread.
Throws 'em all up on its two-hour-wide shoulders and just marches on.

Chop Goblins is ghost.png as a whole game.
"Why did that happen?
I've no idea.
I'm delighted it did, though."
David Sillymanski at his silliest, big bang of dude who loves FPS but also played a lot of N64 platformers with CG.

Probably because I played them relatively close together first time around, I always (uncharitably) contrast Dusk's use of secrets with Ion Fury's. The latter felt like they were stuffing handfuls of +2 armour shards into eighteen separate closets across the sprawling maps and were such a chore that I stopped bothering after a time.

Plus the you missed X of Y secrets mind-goblin that pops up before each exit. Why I oughta...

I could typically give less of a shit about that when I play one of the legitimate gigabytes worth Doom maps on my harddrive, but you're right - it definitely got me in IF.
Still liked the combat in that one, though (when it wasn't straight Spider to the Face).
Folks lambasted it for a lack of enemy variety, but I felt that the bipedal enemies were close enough to off-brand FEAR-through-Build that I enjoyed almost every encounter.
Selaco absolutely fucking smokes it in that regard, though - I gotta get back to that one.

[Lander]

Got done real dirty - casually minding her own business millennia later, still chuckling it up over Cthulhu copping a tugboat to the noggin, when this fucken Ranger guy hups through one portal too many and...

Ranger as well! It was nice to see grimacey-chops back when Quake Chumps was making the rounds, though I couldn't bear the endless empty bot servers, broken matchmaking, and extra cruft long enough to root out the lore scraps about his fambly, gradually deteriorating mental state, and how the great big spiky teleball got miniaturized for convenient pocketing.

And well, given that your fight is neverending is the modern id protag thesis, you'd think he'd get a look-in.

I could typically give less of a shit about that when I play one of the legitimate gigabytes worth Doom maps on my harddrive, but you're right - it definitely got me in IF.
Still liked the combat in that one, though (when it wasn't straight Spider to the Face).
Folks lambasted it for a lack of enemy variety, but I felt that the bipedal enemies were close enough to off-brand FEAR-through-Build that I enjoyed almost every encounter.
Selaco absolutely fucking smokes it in that regard, though - I gotta get back to that one.

The intentionality is what seals it for me. The secrets are obviously super hard on purpose, so prompting the player feels less the QoL nicety it would in anything else, and more like a spiteful poke.
Duke and Blood were never like that; it was intuitive with some mad stuff sprinkled in for flavour (How did you find this!!) Haven't had chance to really appreciate Shadow Warrior beyond John Gault's priceless Whoooo wanta sum Wang??! VA, but it seems comparable on that front.
Sticks out more for everything else being so high-bar, I think.

Selaco is unjustifiably in a position I'd rather it not be in, resp. my game queue. Looks fantastic though, and being spoiled on a certain upper-mid-profile boom shoot 'tuber reference was a good chuckle.
Too much cool stuff, nowhere near enough time! Still haven't touched Trepang2, beyond the initial demo, and I haven't seen juice like that in a game for a considerable while.

[evil_ash_xero]

I've been sorta bouncing between games. I finished up my first playthrough of Stellar Blade. It took forever as I wanted to try and get as many outfits and power ups as I could.

I'm still sorta messing around with Wukong, but it's boss rush thing is kinda keeping me at bay. I'll have to get more serious about it.

But first, I want to finish Shadow of the Ninja Returns, and I'm starting up on Astro Bot. Speaking of which, other than being easier than I'd like, it's quite wonderful.

[Sumez]

The game is a little shorter than the average Zelda, clocking in at six dungeons instead of eight, but has a little bit more overworld complexity than the other 2D games.

That's one of the most surprising takes I've ever seen on Minish Cap.

On to the last remaining Zelda game, Spirit Tracks. Early impressions are not great. I saved this one to the end because I liked Phantom Hourglass so much. The train mechanic is pretty terrible, fonts are pretty bad, lots of stuff doesn't look as nice, music that's just sort of there, and we've already had a stealth escort mission before even getting the sword. Welp.

Spirit Tracks is the only Zelda game I've played that I truly didn't enjoy.
Skyward Sword deserves its criticism but I'd be lying if I claimed I didn't at least enjoy my time with it. But hell, let's include the two side-view CD-i games as well. I have played those, and they might be hot garbage but they are god damn enjoyable garbage.
More importantly I really enjoyed Phantom Hourglass too. The revisited dungeon that everyone complains about felt like one of the game's strengths to me.

But Spirit Tracks to me just felt like a chore to play.

[it290]

Picked up Astro Bot to play over the weekend, and holy shit am I glad I did. The previous entries in the series were impressive, but this one really takes it to the next level. It's probably the most impressive video game I've ever played in terms of pure craft and attention to detail. Every level has a unique look and feel, and almost every single object and surface within each level is uniquely programmed not just in terms of appearance and physics, but how it interacts with the haptics and speaker of the DualSense. The game has a ridiculous number of cool setpieces and easter eggs, and is basically a love letter to the past 30 years of Playstation gaming (with lots of nods to other iconic PS games, not just Sony's). The gameplay is pretty similar to Rescue Mission's, sans the VR element of course, but there's a bigger emphasis here on unique powerups that also have cool interactions with the world and haptics. It's been a while since I've had this much pure fun playing a game.

[XoPachi]

That's one of the most surprising takes I've ever seen on Minish Cap.

Is that not generally agreed upon? I thought that was the normal takeaway for Minish Cap in that's absolutely jam packed and layered.

[Sumez]

The overworld in previous 2D Zeldas, especially the GB and GB ones, is a large and sprawling map which really invites exploration into every nook and cranny with stuff to find everywhere.
Minish Cap felt to me more like something like Zelda 64's overworld in a 2D game. It's much more simplistic, and it's the primary thing that let me down coming from the Oracle games.

That said, it's due for a replay for sure, I need a more fresh take on it.

[Sima Tuna]

I've almost finished AssCreed 2.

Spoiler

Believe it or not, but I do like the older AssCreed games. I'm a big history nerd, especially for historical weapons and battles. AssCreed 1, 2, 3 (to a lesser extent) and 4 are all fun. They all definitely suffer (except AC1, which has different problems) from the typical Ubisoft bloated open world, but skipping the majority of the side content works fine. Anyway, I wanted to mention AC2 because I've been (re)playing it. I played it years ago on xbox 360 and never finished it. I'm playing it again with all the DLC and... I really wish I hadn't gotten the version with the DLC in it. The game has been moderately fun, but now I'm in Chapter 13 and it's fucking torture. The Bonfire of the Vanities DLC is complete garbage.

So let's set the scene: You've just had a multi-stage boss fight with the Evil Spanish Guy, who is Very Evil. You beat him off (heh,) and your friends all gathered around you. They praised you as the "prophet" and inducted you into their Super Secret Cool Guys Club.

Then there's a 10 year timeskip.

Next thing you know, a woman you met for 5 minutes 20 hours earlier in the game is asking if you're a Bad Enough Dude to rescue her children from two evil dudes who have nothing to do with the story. Also, Spanish Guy dropped a metal apple on the ground in the last chapter, which you picked up and it just got stolen again... This apple is going to get stolen even more. This entire chapter is just fighting 50,000 armored enemies. Mostly knights or armored fast guys with knives who never stop attacking. Oh and these are protect missions too. You have to keep your lemming allies alive. They do have a lot of health but the enemies can still kill them, so you can't take your time fighting the endless waves of enemies. That's "Siege of Forli" in a nutshell. You kill a billion knights and then you kill even more, you rescue some kids by killing more knights and then a monk steals the apple at the end because fuck you.

Next up is Bonfire of the Vanities dlc, the absolute pits. Siege of Forli is a bad DLC but not this bad. Right off the bat, the game sends you back to the first city of the game, except now it has a billion knights in it and every mission starts with you at max suspicion rank. There are guards everywhere, but especially on rooftops and in overlapping view ranges. You're ordered to kill 9 "lieutenants" of some evil guy who is Vaguely Evil in a way that might be magic or might not. These 9 dudes have no relevance to the story or anything, and they have some pretty bullshitty and obnoxious mission requirements like "never be seen." After every assassination, you get to run from the 50,000 angry knights with halberds who will be chasing your ass.

It's just so fucking boring! The game was all set for a climactic final battle with the Evil Spanish Guy, but then it forced me off into this 10 hour fucking circus sideshow of grindy bullshit! Whoever thought this dlc should have been made mandatory has been huffing Ubi fumes. If the two DLCs were removed, the length of the game would have been about perfect. The game before this was mostly fine and enjoyable. The Tombs were hard as heck but at least they were a fun challenge.

I've also been playing Assassin's Creed 1 and honestly? Still probably the best game in terms of story and atmosphere. Black Flag takes it for gameplay, but AC1 has everything else. I like the idea of a linear game using an open world as set dressing. That's been done in a few of the early open world games and it's done again here. It's not a true open world and most of the side content is trash anyway, obviously just put in there as "stuff to do" if you really want to keep playing. The meat of the game is investigation -> assassination -> conversation -> repeat. If you keep to that tempo, I think AC1 is still a fun game.

[Steven]

So Astro Bot is pretty good.

The only potential negatives that I can see are that it's really easy (it's not really the type of game that's supposed to be hard, so while others might consider this a negative, I don't think it's a problem) and that the camera movement speed is WAY too slow with no options to adjust the speed at all. I also noticed that some LOD pop-in occurs at very close and surprisingly close ranges, but it's nothing really important. I also think it only unfortunately runs at 60 FPS instead of reaching 120, but I don't have a 120Hz display anyway, so in my case it makes no difference.

As of right now, the only thing I'd want them to change is to give some options for camera speed, because it's agonizingly slow.

[XoPachi]

The overworld in previous 2D Zeldas, especially the GB and GB ones, is a large and sprawling map which really invites exploration into every nook and cranny with stuff to find everywhere.
Minish Cap felt to me more like something like Zelda 64's overworld in a 2D game. It's much more simplistic, and it's the primary thing that let me down coming from the Oracle games.

That said, it's due for a replay for sure, I need a more fresh take on it.

Putting it this why, that makes sense. I never really noticed too much because there seemed to always be something to do with the kinstone fusing. Though some of it is empty because a handful of times it's kinstones that lead to kinstones which is pointless. I know Minish Cap also has the single worst heart container in the series and the nature of it's acquisition is further proof of how bad gacha systems are. The Mirror Shield was also really pointless.

[To Far Away Times]

In Minish Cap there’s some over world puzzle solving you have to do to get the bow and the power bracelets. The swamp area has multiple puzzles in it (and I think even a combat room), and almost feels like a mini dungeon. You often need more than just the previous dungeon’s item to navigate to the next dungeon. That was more of what I was referring to with the “environmental complexity.”

[XoPachi]

Oh yeah, Castor Wilds was a big ass puzzle wasn't it.

[To Far Away Times]

Legend of Zelda: Spirit Craps is done.

Awful game. I never had fun during any part of it. The train is terrible and a slog, and there’s a ton of it. This is a super lazy sequel that takes tons of assets from Phantom Hourglass, and reuses almost all the same dungeon items. Every way that the game deviates from Phantom Hourglass makes it worse. The flute mechanic just straight up doesn’t work properly, and asks for things the microphone can’t handle. The final trek through the tower is the worst Zelda dungeon ever, and you have to keep changing floors and backtracking dozens of times. Half the game is either riding the stupid train or doing cruddy escort missions in the tower. This game is so devoid of creativity that one boss is a straight up rip off of Vega in Street Fighter II; he has a claw, climbs a cage, and dives at you. And why are so many NPCs in wheelchairs?

Ugh. I am trying to decide if this is the worst Zelda game. I think it might be. This game even has me questioning if I should have liked Phantom Hourglass as much as I did. I give Spirit Tracks 1 point for booting up and not crashing, and 1 point for synchronizing the train chugging with the theme song. That’s all it gets. 2/10.

[Sumez]

This game even has me questioning if I should have liked Phantom Hourglass as much as I did.

Had the same effect on me, as one of the bigger issues I had with Spirit Tracks was the annoying touch-screen focused controls which as far as I could remember were also in Hourglass where I wasn't as bothered.
But I don't really dare replaying PH to find out.

If Spirit Tracks isn't the worst Zelda game, I have no idea which one it would be. All the other ones are pretty fun. Maybe Zelda's Adventure is worse, but I haven't played it. And although it looks pretty bad, I'd probably like that one better too.

[To Far Away Times]

Had the same effect on me, as one of the bigger issues I had with Spirit Tracks was the annoying touch-screen focused controls which as far as I could remember were also in Hourglass where I wasn't as bothered.
But I don't really dare replaying PH to find out.

If Spirit Tracks isn't the worst Zelda game, I have no idea which one it would be. All the other ones are pretty fun. Maybe Zelda's Adventure is worse, but I haven't played it. And although it looks pretty bad, I'd probably like that one better too.

Yeah, I remember liking the touch screen use with Phantom Hourglass. I think the difference is that Phantom Hourglass is very aware of the strengths and weaknesses of its control scheme and Spirit Tracks is not. Spirit Tracks writes checks that it’s controls can’t cash. That stupid flute is straight up busted.

I’m putting together a ranking right now and out of the 17 “official” Zelda games I have it dead last.

But I got the CDi games working tonight, so uh… the worst may be yet to come.