IrrelevantNotch
Banned
You are my friend
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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - $19.99 at K-Mart starting 5/6 - 5/12
- Thread starter MagicWithEarvin
- Start date
You are my friend
My only exposure to this game was the demo kiosk at a Walmart where I tried out the boss fight.
It was... Not fun. Had a bitch of a time ever landing a hit and never beat him despite trying for far longer than I should have.
Tried it again at a different Walmart in case there was just something up with the remote at the first store and met with a similar result.
Is the whole game like that, or was the boss demo particularly unfun?
It was... Not fun. Had a bitch of a time ever landing a hit and never beat him despite trying for far longer than I should have.
Tried it again at a different Walmart in case there was just something up with the remote at the first store and met with a similar result.
Is the whole game like that, or was the boss demo particularly unfun?
Was the boss Ghirahim? If so, you have to trick him with the sword(like motion as if you're going to swipe from the right then quickly do the left or something) to quickly hit him.
The full game has a load of issues to me, but the controls themselves and the bosses especially aren't one of them.
Too much hate on the motion controls, and not enough complaints about the fact it simply wasnt a very good Zelda game.
LOL YOU DIDN'T LIKE IT - ZELDA CYCLE.
Yeah the motion controls were a net benefit I would say, although they did have some low points for me.
However going back to TP, which I loved at the time and still enjoy, swinging your wiimote to slash is so goddamn annoying. But I like the pointer controls... I wish Miyamoto had stuck with his guns and kept the sword as a button press in the wii version.
butter_stick
Banned
The controls were an irritation, but it was the majority of the game design that ruined it. I love Zelda and didn't even beat the game. I lost the will to live.
James Sawyer Ford
Member
This game was tremendously disappointing. And in relative terms, yes, it did "bomb". Did very poorly by Zelda standards world wide.
It's like Nintendo doesn't understand the magic that most traditional Zelda fans loved from the LTTP/OOT era.
It's completely gone, displaced by zany over the top anime-like designs and an abundance of fetch quests.
FWIW, most people that were fans of Zelda moved on to Skyrim (a game I'm not a fan of at all, but at least the scope was impressive). That's one reason why Zelda has seemingly done so poorly. The wonder and excitement of a huge mysterious land is what Skyrim offered, and was a primary reason for OOT's success. That same feeling is completely absent in Skyward Sword.
It's like Nintendo doesn't understand the magic that most traditional Zelda fans loved from the LTTP/OOT era.
It's completely gone, displaced by zany over the top anime-like designs and an abundance of fetch quests.
FWIW, most people that were fans of Zelda moved on to Skyrim (a game I'm not a fan of at all, but at least the scope was impressive). That's one reason why Zelda has seemingly done so poorly. The wonder and excitement of a huge mysterious land is what Skyrim offered, and was a primary reason for OOT's success. That same feeling is completely absent in Skyward Sword.
What a bunch of nonsense lol
Games with high expectations always have backlash. Add to that the general dumbfuckery surrounding the Zelda fanbase and you have extreme opinions that go all over the place.
I find this kind of questionable when we haven't had any sales data since Dec when it sold 3.5 million its its first month or so. I mean the average for the series is like 5 million lifetime sales for console entries. The only region we know it did poorly in is Japan.
This Zelda fan moved on to Dark Souls. I got both last year, put 120 hours into DS so far, 35 into SS and stopped.
James Sawyer Ford
Member
It underperformed in all regions compared to TP which sold at least 7 million world wide (OOT did over 7.5 million).
Skyward Sword was also incredibly front-loaded, evidenced by the price drops we're seeing now.
Oh, so it is a opinion thread again?
I personally really liked Skyward Sword, and everyone in the house who played it liked the game, too.
No one of us really had problems with the motion controls (it happened once or twice that the cursor suddenly moved to the very left, but I'm used to worse things). The game did much right, but also much wrong, but for me, the good outweighted the bad by far.
I liked it that it was more difficult than the games before and that the items are all used thoughout the game (too many items, not used enough was a common complaint about TP). The soundtrack is excellent and Link moves better than ever through the world. The dungeons are well done and there are some of the best bosses ever in Zelda history. Looting and Upgrading was fun, and there was more stuff to find in Treasure chests than just rupees and heart pieces (oh look, another complaint they fixed). It's also nice that there is more stuff to spend your rupees on and the sidequests are much better than in most zeldas.
But it also didn't allow you to skip some text (but to be honest, it didn't bother me too much) and that it told you every time which loot you just collected after you started the game again. And it had to much of these fetch quests (another common complaint about TP was that there wasn't enough stuff to do between dungeons) and filler (Imprisoned, why). Even though these quests are rather annoying, they are at least not as bad as the final fetch quest in Links Awakening.
Yeah, I really liked this game. Gonna replay it in Hero Mode soon.
I personally really liked Skyward Sword, and everyone in the house who played it liked the game, too.
No one of us really had problems with the motion controls (it happened once or twice that the cursor suddenly moved to the very left, but I'm used to worse things). The game did much right, but also much wrong, but for me, the good outweighted the bad by far.
I liked it that it was more difficult than the games before and that the items are all used thoughout the game (too many items, not used enough was a common complaint about TP). The soundtrack is excellent and Link moves better than ever through the world. The dungeons are well done and there are some of the best bosses ever in Zelda history. Looting and Upgrading was fun, and there was more stuff to find in Treasure chests than just rupees and heart pieces (oh look, another complaint they fixed). It's also nice that there is more stuff to spend your rupees on and the sidequests are much better than in most zeldas.
But it also didn't allow you to skip some text (but to be honest, it didn't bother me too much) and that it told you every time which loot you just collected after you started the game again. And it had to much of these fetch quests (another common complaint about TP was that there wasn't enough stuff to do between dungeons) and filler (Imprisoned, why). Even though these quests are rather annoying, they are at least not as bad as the final fetch quest in Links Awakening.
Yeah, I really liked this game. Gonna replay it in Hero Mode soon.
If we take OoT and TP as a standard, most Zelda games would've bombed.
Henry Jones Jr
Member
I'll check my local k-mart for this tomorrow. I don't have a Wii motion+ controller yet, but $20 is too good to pass.
TheLastCandle
Member
That's a damn good deal, worth a grab for sure.
James Sawyer Ford
Member
For the modern console iterations they are the standard. We typically only get 1 big Zelda game per generation (TP was weird since it was sort of split between generations). So why is it somehow not fair to compare Skyward Sword to OOT & TP?
Handheld is a different beast with different expectations.
Mgoblue201
Won't stop picking the right nation
Because they are the top two selling Zelda games of all time. If we compare SS to the other console Zeldas, then its performance looks much healthier.
Silver_DNA
Member
I love that game. I wish I had a Wii Remote+ because in my experience the Motion Plus dongles and nun chucks don't act well together.
The Iron Yuppie
Member
Great deal! Bad game, though. No amount of discounting would make flailing around in front of the tv for 20+ hours fun.
Mgoblue is right. We could also compare the sales of SS to these of Wind Waker and Majoras Mask, which sold less than Skyward Sword, and no one can tell that it bombed. And why should we exclude Handhelds? Nintendo has sold a ton of handhelds and quantity-wise, the GBA also had just one game, Minish Cap (the other one, as you may know, was a port).
awilliams213
Member
Legend of Zelda: SS Directors Cut for WiiU just saying.
You flailed around for 20+ hours?
Hale-XF11
Member
This Zelda is the first console Zelda that I skipped on entirely. Skyrim delivered (for the most part) what I was looking for all these years in an epic adventure and really kept me happily gaming all throughout winter. It was such a refreshing experience for me. I just can't imagine trying to enjoy a Zelda game now after having my first magical experience with a TES game.
Since the 3D era, there have really only been four main series Zelda games: Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword. Everything else was either a spinoff like Four Swords Adventures, a gaiden game like Majora's Mask, or a handheld game.
To your first point, that was over multiple years of sales. As to the 2nd point, this is a sale price not a price drop. It appears to be full price everywhere else, so is this not just kmart making room for the updated version of the game?
And for some reason, these don't count. They even play a part in this timeline, but who cares. Do you really think that Majoras Mask didn't sell that well compared to OOT or TP because everyone thought that it is a gaiden game and therefore not worth it? Surely not. A Zelda game is a Zelda game and most fans surely don't give a damn if it is a Gaiden game, a 2D or a 3D Zelda game because it is Zelda and it has to be bought.
Of course buyers care if a game is a gaiden game. Gaiden games always sell less than the main series games, not just for Zelda, but for all video games franchises.
I don't remember that it was really marketed as a side game. And even then you still have the 2D zeldas.
eXistor
Member
The fuck? Skyrim is one of the most shallow, repetitive rpg's this generation and it has some of the most shitty dungeon designs to grace mankind (mysterious? really?). They remake the same game over and over and they hardly even try to make things better or different with each iteration. Even Fallout 3 managed to feel exactly like Elder Scrolls.
Majora's Mask was called Zelda Gaiden during development and it was originally previewed as Zelda Gaiden to the press:
http://ign64.ign.com/articles/069/069708p1.html
The 2D games also all sold much better than Skyward sword as well.
Mgoblue201
Won't stop picking the right nation
The distinction between a "gaiden" game and a "main" game is illusory. Majora's Mask has every right to be included with the other four console 3D Zelda games. Nintendo certainly doesn't treat it any different. The gameplay is still fundamentally the same. I don't even think that gaiden was anything more than a working title before it was officially changed.
What?
That means that it took 5 months to clear out most of the 2011 shipments. If that's not bombing, I don't know what a bomb is.
Bombs fix things, right?
Considering it needs Wiimote+, and was released when the Wii was pretty much dead, it's sales weren't that bad, in my opinion. This is coming from someone that thinks SS is the worst Zelda game in the series, so it's not like I want to defend it either. I mean over 3M in less than a year is pretty good.
I wonder what the budget was. They worked on it for 5 years. Obviously the game was not in full development for five years but I still wonder.
Dr.Guru of Peru
played the long game
The game was by no means perfect, but it was still an excellent video game. Easily superior to the grind that was Twilight Princess. It's a shame that it didn't do that well.
Nintendo's official internal numbers from the 2004 GDC:
http://game.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/20040325/zelda03.jpg
Legend of Zelda: 6.510 million
Zelda II: TheAdventure of Link: 4.380 million
A Link to the Past: 4.610 million
Like I said, under the Wiimote+, and Wii death circumstances, I don't see how SS selling over 3M in less than a year is bad. By the time the next Zelda comes out the numbers may be closer to 5M, because people will pick it up cheaper.
Eh, not sure if your serious with the Zelda Cycle thing, but my opinions of each game in the series have pretty much stayed the same, despite multiple playthroughs.
I wont go into extreme details about what disappointed me about Skyward Sword. In summary, it felt like a massive overcompensation to fan criticisms, and was therefore an incredibly watered down experience. (my opinion).
Some of the reasons listed in this thread about why the game hasnt sold as well are a bit weird though. Some of them, like the general experience, or the story or even the motion controls, you cant really make that assumption without buying the game first.
I think it was probably due to the release timing in the Wii's life cycle and the motion plus requirement.
Also, just to chip in, when I was a kid I thought Majora's Mask was a weird side game and didnt buy it til some time later. Some of my friends, who were Nintendo and Zelda fans, still havent played the game because they thought the same, and the moment passed.
So I'm confused why you would think those numbers are better? You're comparing lifetime sales to the 3.5M that SS did in a little over a month. Unless its amazingly front loaded it will certainly pass those 2 games at least.
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