I'm saying that the stuff amiibo unlocks is often in-consequential and not needed to enjoy the game, and in the case of BotW can be unlocked through conventional means anyway. Plus, if a mode is locked behind amiibo, the game usually comes with the amiibo you need to unlock said mode. Twilight Princess came bundled with the Wolf Link amiibo which unlocks that extra dungeon.
Like I said, not all amiibo support is good, but it's not "the worst form of DLC imaginable" or some hyperbolic BS. However, I do agree that Nintendo should do a better job at shipping amiibo, and stop making some of them retail exclusive.
That isn't true at all. BotW has a fucking TON of content you can only unlock with amiibo. There's an entire line of Zelda amiibo with 7-8 figures in it that are the only way to unlock certain weapons and armor sets. And good fucking luck finding any of them in stores if you didn't preorder, especially since the last wave of them had amiibo that were store and online retailer exclusives. I was on the ball and I still missed the Twilight Princess Link, though I have Smash Link so in the end it doesn't really matter that much, in-game content wise.
Thank you! Exactly my fucking point!
It would be absolutely different if one character was all you needed for everything in that series. But that's not how they work. And that's bullshit. The ecosystem of products you need to buy into is simply too big if you want to access all of a game's features. Why shouldn't I have 100% access to a game's features for a reasonable price instead?
No. Absolutely not. Do you think if Nintendo only ever released Smash Link and that was IT forever, people wouldn't complain and want figures representing other versions of Link from other games? They should only make one Mario and never any others based on any other games that come out over the course of 5-10 years? Ridiculous! That isn't how collectible figures work, especially now that we have a line of toys directly from Nintendo where they can make figures that would have NEVER gotten any form of collectable in the past. And that's exactly what amiibo are - collectible figures, with the bonus of unlocking content across dozens of games and different hardware.
The trade-off would be what I suggested earlier, with the digital amiibo so that you can buy the ONE Mario figure you really like, and if there are others that come out that offer game-specific unlocks, you buy them digitally like normal DLC so that you don't need to have 5 Mario toys sitting on your shelf with 12 Links and 3 Samuses.
I 100% agree that people should not be forced to buy physical amiibo. Even if Nintendo weren't completely fucking incompetent at keeping figures on the shelves and retailers could have literally unlimited space for the 100s of amiibo that would eventually come out, unless you're some mad man with a ton of money and space in your house you're not going to want to buy every one of them in figure form, and that's bullshit when they lock stuff like Fierce Deity Link behind an amiibo that was a retailer exclusive and sold out in a matter of hours before it was even available in stores. Making Fierce Deity Link a $12 DLC code is a fucking rip off too though when the Link amiibo that unlocks him also works in like 10 other games. The solution is they need to make digital amiibo, that way they will never sell out, never be hard to find, never cost people $30-40 on eBay, never force people to import from other countries, never take up a ton of space in your house. The functionality would be exactly the same, it would be tied to your Nintendo ID so you'd be able to "take them" anywhere with you just like the real thing, the physical amiibo could still exist along side them for collectors, and the world would find balance.
Nintendo made that sticker collecting game for 3DS, I can't believe amiibo have been around for as long as they have and Nintendo hasn't implemented SOME form of a digital collection tied to your Nintendo account, let alone digital copies of the amiibo and their functionality. Click on your friend's ID and you get to see their online status, what game they played last, and which amiibo they have. It seems like a no-brainer to me, like something Sony or Microsoft would have done out the gate if they ever did something like amiibo, like their Trophies and Achievements that people collect and show off to friends, but then again Nintendo's MO for the past several years seems to be "One Step Forward Two Steps Back" so I guess I shouldn't really be that surprised.
