I'm 22h into the game. Just finished the third temple/dungeon (ZOMG!
Shadow of the Colossus
boss tribute deluxe), got the
master sword
and I am now running around exploring Hyrule's vast fields collecting
poe spirits and golden bugs
. Gonna head to the
desert
tomorrow.
Excellent game. But I have some minor complaints/questions. 1) Why does a "You got a X rupee" screen appear randomly when I pick up a ≥5 rupee, 2) why does bass heavy audio (Hyrule field trumpets especially) sound bad and 3) why is this game so unbelievably fantastic? That's all
Now, what about the bad (sounds low quality) bass heavy audio? Am I the only one experiencing it? I'm playing the US/NTSC version on a PAL GameCube with composite (gonna get my RGB cable soon) using a Freeloader.
Just beaten the game... and its one of my favourite games ever. I've always held Link to the Past above the 3D Zeldas, but this was such an incredible experience that I'm now reconsidering.
I've made a crude graph that kind of illustrates what happened to my interest/excitement as I played the game. The thin black line across the horizontal represents my expectations. At most, this game fell below my expectations only twice:
For those who are wondering what dungeons the numbers represent (spoilers):
1. Forest Temple
2. Goron Mines
3. Lakebed Temple
4. Arbiter's Grounds
5. Snowpeak Ruins
6. Temple of Time
7. City In The Sky
8. Twilight Palace
9. Hyrule Castle
TWILIGHT PRINCESS = AN EVER IMPROVING EXPERIENCE
The game starts very well. The tutorial is a little on the slow side, and I've got to confess -- my crapness at fishing held me up quite some time in Ordon village.
As we all know - events eventually occur that see you transformed into a Wolf.
Waking up in Hyrule Castle and slowly finding out where you are was awesome. The underground sewer segments of the castle remind me very much of A Link to the Past, so perhaps older Zelda fans may have been more inclined to know straight away.
So far so good!
The game then follows the Link to the Past / Ocarina of Time style convention of having three small dungeons before the larger quest unfolds. I say "small", but they weren't actually small at all. Each of them were very fulfilling actually, its the parts inbetween them that I found to be a bit of a mixed bag.
On the one hand - the game introduces you to Midna and makes you familiar with the wolf in a very cool way.
I loved the way you could sense smells, and they'd be illustrated by trails of gas. Very cool, and I'm glad it was employed more than once!
The first real dip you can see there on my "interest chart" is meant to specifically represent the second time you are collecting droplets of light
in Kakariko Village and the surrounding area
.
Some of the things you observe as the wolf while your presence goes unnoticed, was quite dark and interesting. However, it was pretty much the same (in terms of game mechanic) as the first time you did it in Faron Woods. I was getting the sense that there might be some formula to the next few hours of the game... a collect-a-thon of sorts. It almost brought back some bad memories of playing through StarFox Adventures, or Wind Waker's triforce quest. Naturally, having just ripped open my new system, I was eager to get into the meat of this new Zelda game, so I was probably somewhat impatient and easily bored at this point. The next time you have to do some light-collection as it were, is made significantly more interesting by the mode of travel. Its quite relieving when you realise thats the last time you will find yourself doing that particular style of mandatory search mission. As soon as you've gotten yourself in and out of the first three dungeons, the majority of the overworld becomes available to you and the game becomes much more exciting.
For me the dungeons in general got progressively better -- in part because of the items, in part because of the cool, varied locales, and in part because of the boss battles. I was going to try to rank them, but I don't think I really can. They're just so well designed. They get quite devilish in parts, especially after you've drawn the Master Sword and can
transform at will
.
IN TERMS OF STORY:
If you were to look at it on paper (try the Wikipedia entry) the game's story seems incredibly convoluted... but its not. For the most part Twilight Princess is an excellent story IMO, with wonderful twists and turns that take you from one massive part of the world to the next. It makes a wonderful amount of sense, and it makes my head spin thinking about how they actually designed this game. But is it perfect? I don't know about that.
The other dip in my lil' "interest chart" is related to one moment in the game's story in particular. It may well be a popular moment for most people, but something didn't sit right about it for me.
Having been to the Sacred Grove, and drawing the Master Sword in a place that (visually) bridged the sword's resting place in both Ocarina of Time and Link to the Past, I was getting the sense that perhaps a really cool story revelation was coming up that would tie Twilight Princess to either one of those games. Certainly, the fact that you end up doing battle in the Temple of Time, suggests some link to Ocarina of Time at least.
So after completing Arbiter's Grounds and getting to the Mirror Chamber, I was kind of hoping that we would find out how Ganondorf escaped that white other-worldly prison at the end of Ocarina of Time... I suppose I would have preferred that the sages atop the Mirror Chamber had been the sages from Ocarina too: perhaps ghostly images similar to the slain Queen of the Zoras. That would have been amazing imo.
But instead the Sages were these weird, wailing, white beings with floating faces. They admittedly had quite a cool design but it just wasn't what I expected. With regards to Ganon, this game appears to sit on a timeline of its own, with a new Ganondorf being born and then imprisoned for the crimes he had tried to act out with his evil magic.
How about a possible connection to Link to the Past? I was thinking that it would have been nice if the Twilight Realm had turned out to be The Dark World - as it was in A Link to the Past. In LTTP's Dark World, you are transformed to whatever your heart reflects -- Link being a noble Wolf could have sustained and supported this story element, as could Ganondorf's presence there. Additionally, the Sages could have been the sages mentioned in the opening introduction to LTTP -- those who sealed away the Dark World / Golden Land from those who wished to pursue the Triforce, or invade the Light World and cover it with darkness. Initially I thought this would be the case: but the more I encountered more dark monsters, making crazy electro-digital noises and was being increasingly reminded of Metroid Prime rather than Zelda, I knew it probably wasn't going to happen.
In any case, I liked the cut-scene that revealed Ganondorf was a force in this game, but it wasn't really a shock, and I think it was touched on too lightly. We *knew* Zant and Ganondorf weren't one and the same, thanks to the cutscene after the Lakebed dungeon. So who is Ganondorf? Its thrust upon us all of a sudden, and we don't get a sense for the scale of his heinous acts and why he's being imprisoned in the first place. In Ocarina of Time, there are visions of him riding in a fire, dark threats throughout the early parts of the game that spell out clearly what it will mean to have Ganondorf succeed. It was good seeing him survive a stab wound and go on to kill some wailing white dudes, but it was over all too fast for my liking. Its some time before you see any mention of him again.
Before the Twilight Palace and Hyrule Castle, the game mostly concerns the threat that Zant poses... while I'm mentioning him, I think he was quite a nice new Villain. Up there with Agahnim and Vaati.
Final thoughts
As you can see by the graph anyway - all of those plot concerns, and my desire to see something significant happen with the characters I mentioned, were laid to rest eventually. The game gets better and better from dungeon 4 onwards. As you approach the latter parts of the game, you're on the up and up (quite literally). It really goes out on a high...
And the most wonderful, brilliant, beautiful part of this game has got to be Midna. Not
Zant, or Ganondorf, Zelda (in either her puppet or normal forms) or any number of the other wonderful moments with NPCs
-- but Midna. I really cared about this character by the end of the game: she really was at my side the entire time, throughout one of the most epic adventures I'm sure to experience. There was something about this game that made me feel I didn't want it to end!
ok you know just north of the Eldin Bridge there's ledge you hookshot up to, to reach the cave that looks like its in the Gorgon Mines, there's lava and magnetic beams. you start off high above everything. but WTF am i suppose to do? I thought, sure I'll just put on my iron boots and fall off the platform and that magnetic beam will catch me, but nope, i fall straight into the friggin lava every time. there doesnt appear to be any hookshot locations in this cave. to the left and way below there's an area with a few enemies i can snipe with my arrow_hawkeye, and that's it.
here's what gamefaqs says about it
Heart Piece #17
Location: Eastern Hyrule Field (just Past Eldin Bridge)
Equiptment Requirements: Hookshot/Bombs/Arrows/Iron Boots
Details: North of Eldin Bridge, there is a cliff you can hookshot onto. Blow up
any rocks in you way and follow the path until you reach a cave. Once inside
use your boots to navigate the magnetic walls in the lava cave until you reach
the bottom, then claim your prize from the chest.
that didn't help.
what magnetic walls??? i dont see any, only the magnetic beam that i fall right through when i use my iron boots.
Uhh, can anyone explain to me what the deal is with the
singing statue / ghost wolf thing?
I saw the first one on my way up to
Death Mountain
and tried everything to
play the song,
but nothing worked. So I figured it was meant for later and skipped it. Except that I just read somewhere this isn't the case and that I already missed the
I went back after I went through the Zora's-domain-as-a-wolf-part and it was ****ing awesome.
I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I'm using GCN version by the way.
I hold down A, then point up, neutral, down, all the way up, neutral and down. It matches the example. But it's not doing anything. No confirmation, sound or cutscene or anything. Anyone have any idea?
I went back after I went through the Zora's-domain-as-a-wolf-part and it was ****ing awesome.
I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I'm using GCN version by the way.
I hold down A, then point up, neutral, down, all the way up, neutral and down. It matches the example. But it's not doing anything. No confirmation, sound or cutscene or anything. Anyone have any idea?
When you do it correctly for a specific sequence of the song, you'll see a blue length extend (and remain) denoting that you nailed that note's pitch and duration.
Keep on trying again and again until all of the blue bars are filled. (The golden wolf's demo of the song gives you a hint as to the length and positioning, if your memory is good enough).
Playing the song is simply a matter of holding down the A button to initiate the howl, then tilting up with the analog stick, tilting down, or leaving the analog stick in the neutral position in order to change your howl's pitch to one of three corresponding levels, as dictated by the song you're howling.
I interrupted your "double post". Check that for additional help.
Also, when I mention keep on trying the song until all of the blue bars are filled, DON'T cancel out and start from scratch. Keep on attempting it without leaving the screen.
Haha, wait til you see the later songs. They're much more complex. But now that you've understood the mechanics, you'll be fine. I'll admit that it took me a few minutes to realize that I needed to nail not only the pitch, but also the length of each note.
When you do it correctly for a specific sequence of the song, you'll see a blue length extend (and remain) denoting that you nailed that note's pitch and duration.
Keep on trying again and again until all of the blue bars are filled. (The golden wolf's demo of the song gives you a hint as to the length and positioning, if your memory is good enough).
A completely satisfying conclusion. Beautiful, masterpiece.
Has its flaws, but its game of the year for me... no surprise there I guess
The one thing that drove me nuts though was the sky city music. Holy crap... that little Ooccoo chant thing repeated every 90 seconds for a 2-4 hour dungeon is enough to drive anyone mad.
I nearly wanted to take out the disc and break it in half the music was that annoying, but I perservered, because the stage itself was pretty cool. Next time through, I'm putting the game on mute as soon as I get to that city though.
The end boss battles... completely satisfying.
Indeed, the whole last dungeon was combat heavy and very awesome for it.
Heh... one of the gated fights (the forcefield pops up and rings you in with a bunch of enemies) had me facing off against 10+ trolls. They all run in at once.... I wait until they get to me... pull out my sword and samurai chop their asses, causing them to all die simultaneously (worth noting that each one of these guys takes about 6-8 hits to kill normally), few more pop up behind me and I whirl around and lay waste to them; then to top it all off, Link does his little twirling resheathing move (the one he does after boss fights).
One particularly amusing scene was after the big spider boss fight... Link goes to do the twirly resheath, camera zooms on his face... and his jaw drops open; the boss's body is dead, but the eye gets up and starts skittering around, while you chase after it and kill it to give you the real ending. F$ckin hilarious.
true. anyway, I love the look and atmosphere, etc of Wolf howling tunes with the other spirit Wolves. it's overall so much cooler and mystical than normal Link piping out tunes on his Ocarina. i know some will disagree, but i think it's just beautiful.
Just beat the game and the final boss fight was absolutely terrific
At first I thought pig ganon was the final boss, and I was like what the heck is this, people were impressed by that lame battle? But then it all unfolded brilliantly. The best part about the final battle is the fact that they actually realized the spaceworld demo fight, complete with Ganondorf taunting Link with his come here gesture and I was so glad to fight one more horse battle
How are you so sure? I'm not talking about how the camera is just locked behind link throughout the whole game since there is no camera movement. But if it really does that would be great. I wonder why they decided to go with that kind of locked camera view in Castle Town? They should have just kept it the same as it was for every other town.
Just beat the game and the final boss fight was absolutely terrific
At first I thought pig ganon was the final boss, and I was like what the heck is this, people were impressed by that lame battle? But then it all unfolded brilliantly. The best part about the final battle is the fact that they actually realized the spaceworld demo fight, complete with Ganondorf taunting Link with his come here gesture and I was so glad to fight one more horse battle
yes, they pretty much realized the SpaceWorld 2000 demo fight. not with graphics & animation that were as good technically, but much better artistically, and fun.
This is probably because of your speakers. I'm running the audio over an amplifier which shows how much it stresses the boxes. At bass heavy parts like in temple number 2
when you use the magnetic pads with your boots
it stresses the boxes a LOT.
My roommate comes complaining all the time that my bass is to loud and it interferes with his learning :S
How could my TV do anything to this game, when all the others games are perfect (Wiisport is so sharp...Gamecube games are really good looking, xbox 1 games in 480p are beautiful....but zelda is over blurry...and im using an YUV (not official but i dont think it choose zelda to be blurry and not wiisport lol)
How could my TV do anything to this game, when all the others games are perfect (Wiisport is so sharp...Gamecube games are really good looking, xbox 1 games in 480p are beautiful....but zelda is over blurry...and im using an YUV (not official but i dont think it choose zelda to be blurry and not wiisport lol)
I think I'll drop the game and come back to it in a week or so. I'm really burnt out on it and I rushed through the seventh dungeon (ignore almost all the treasure).
are there any difference between the two versions aside from the world being flipped?
I've heard the Wii controls can make the game a bit easier and it doesn't have frame-rate drops (GC has a few, the most noticeable are the ones in larger town areas).
Does anyone know of a place where I can find high-res non-watermarked artwork from TP? I want to make my own boxart, not a big fan of what they ended up giving us.
