So I have alot of Amiibos. Certainly nowhere near all of them, probably not even a third. But I still have alot. I also haven't really used any of them for any real reason beyond acouple recent instances which I'll get into later. In most cases, I'd just bought them because they look nice, or they're so wonderfully dumb that of course that's something I need to buy (lookin at you Wii Fit Trainer, posing majestically on my shelf).
I mean I'd bought the 3-pack of Splatoon Amiibos purely because I thought they looked cool. I know there was stuff to unlock with them, but I didn't play enough single-player to ever actually get around to using them.
Literally the first time I'd used an Amiibo was two weeks ago when playing Twilight Princess HD on Hero Mode, was in a dire situation, and remembered "Wait, doesn't the Zelda amiibo restore hearts?" I tapped it, and hey, it worked. Couple days later, I was in a dungeon, was low on arrows, and the same thing happened with Link. Of course these were one-time uses per day, so I didn't get into a habit of relying on them. But they were handy to have in a super tight corner. Especially when it came to tackling that Cave of Shadows dungeon (fuck that place, by the way. Never made it past the mid-30's).
I'd never really had too big of an issue with Amiibo. They're a dumb collectible if that's all you want them to be, and I can't think of too many instances where they locked stuff that really mattered. For the most part it was pretty superfluous stuff. The Smash Bros. use case of "YOU CAN TRAIN UP YOUR AMIIBO" seemed so bizarrely nebulous that I saw no real draw to it. I mean additional characters in Fire Emblem Fates wasn't a big deal because they were just these weird bonus characters units that had no impact on the story. I mean we're not talking like Javik in Mass Effect 3, here...
And FE: Awakening already had similar legacy characters available as DLC, but I never wanted them because I only wanted the fleshed-out units that could really interact with one another.
Mario Maker locked some skins behind them for immediate use, which seemed like a cute inclusion. Mario Kart 8 did some similar things. But it's always been a question of what is too much to where you're locking players out, but what is too little that they feel like their money is wasted...
So now we come to Breath of the Wild...
And I'm having a similar thought to my experience with Twilight Princess HD. These are cheat codes. These once-per-day bonuses that are completely avoidable, but if you have them, can be super helpful if you're in a corner and want to engage with them. I got the Guardian, Zelda, and Rider Link amiibo simply because I thought they looked nice. I haven't even bothered taking them out of the package yet. But I can see the use for them at the same time. I mean they could certainly break the game a bit early on when you're dealing with alot of low-level baddies, and having a Guardian Arrow in those opening hours sure as hell would stifle some threats. But simultaneously, the later you get, they're not so useful that one player may have a wildly different experience than another. They're handy, but certainly don't break any competitive balancing, don't lock other players from meaningful content that they can't get anyway. It kinda feels like the best use of the system going forward.
I can imagine in a Mario game, tapping an amiibo gets you 3 mushrooms per day or a fire flower or whatever. And like... yeah, that can be super handy in the right situation, but people without it aren't feeling scammed out of anything meaningful. And the people with it might be grateful in the right moment to have had that in a certain moment.
How do you feel about how the last couple Zelda games have used these, and is this an appropriate balance to justifying Amiibos beyond just collectibles?
I mean I'd bought the 3-pack of Splatoon Amiibos purely because I thought they looked cool. I know there was stuff to unlock with them, but I didn't play enough single-player to ever actually get around to using them.
Literally the first time I'd used an Amiibo was two weeks ago when playing Twilight Princess HD on Hero Mode, was in a dire situation, and remembered "Wait, doesn't the Zelda amiibo restore hearts?" I tapped it, and hey, it worked. Couple days later, I was in a dungeon, was low on arrows, and the same thing happened with Link. Of course these were one-time uses per day, so I didn't get into a habit of relying on them. But they were handy to have in a super tight corner. Especially when it came to tackling that Cave of Shadows dungeon (fuck that place, by the way. Never made it past the mid-30's).
I'd never really had too big of an issue with Amiibo. They're a dumb collectible if that's all you want them to be, and I can't think of too many instances where they locked stuff that really mattered. For the most part it was pretty superfluous stuff. The Smash Bros. use case of "YOU CAN TRAIN UP YOUR AMIIBO" seemed so bizarrely nebulous that I saw no real draw to it. I mean additional characters in Fire Emblem Fates wasn't a big deal because they were just these weird bonus characters units that had no impact on the story. I mean we're not talking like Javik in Mass Effect 3, here...
And FE: Awakening already had similar legacy characters available as DLC, but I never wanted them because I only wanted the fleshed-out units that could really interact with one another.
Mario Maker locked some skins behind them for immediate use, which seemed like a cute inclusion. Mario Kart 8 did some similar things. But it's always been a question of what is too much to where you're locking players out, but what is too little that they feel like their money is wasted...
So now we come to Breath of the Wild...
And I'm having a similar thought to my experience with Twilight Princess HD. These are cheat codes. These once-per-day bonuses that are completely avoidable, but if you have them, can be super helpful if you're in a corner and want to engage with them. I got the Guardian, Zelda, and Rider Link amiibo simply because I thought they looked nice. I haven't even bothered taking them out of the package yet. But I can see the use for them at the same time. I mean they could certainly break the game a bit early on when you're dealing with alot of low-level baddies, and having a Guardian Arrow in those opening hours sure as hell would stifle some threats. But simultaneously, the later you get, they're not so useful that one player may have a wildly different experience than another. They're handy, but certainly don't break any competitive balancing, don't lock other players from meaningful content that they can't get anyway. It kinda feels like the best use of the system going forward.
I can imagine in a Mario game, tapping an amiibo gets you 3 mushrooms per day or a fire flower or whatever. And like... yeah, that can be super handy in the right situation, but people without it aren't feeling scammed out of anything meaningful. And the people with it might be grateful in the right moment to have had that in a certain moment.
How do you feel about how the last couple Zelda games have used these, and is this an appropriate balance to justifying Amiibos beyond just collectibles?
