This episode deals with all things Legend of Zelda. They rounded up twenty-something people to talk about which Zelda game was their favorite and why. Great fun to listen to. I contributed a little ten minute segment in which I tried to figure out which was my favorite. The results were unexpected.
WARNING: You may find yourself compelled to go back and play your favorite Zelda games after listening. In worse cases, you may find yourself playing them all back to back.
... I'm almost done with A Link to the Past now.
Can't wait to hear it. I've been hankering for another playthrough of Majora's Mask lately and I'm sure this will put it over the top.
ReplyDeleteRight now my fave may well be Spirit Tracks, which I'm sure is a very unpopular choice. It's practically a six or so way tie though with no clear cut winner at all.
Curiously, I tried Skyward Sword at E3 and came away unimpressed. I'm still confident it will be great by the time it's released, but early signs weren't good. I guess this blind faith is the first sign of being a fanboy.
Good podcast and I liked your segment :)
ReplyDeleteNow I REALLY want to play though all of them but I can't X( Time to get on e-bay!
ReplyDeleteI finally got around to listening to your segment and loved it. Furthermore, I agree that in many ways Okami is the best Zelda, though replaying it I noticed some design flaws that were far more prominent the second time around.
ReplyDeleteI'll start with the good though. Okami is better looking, has better writing, and has a more innovative control scheme than any Zelda game, ever. Forget motion controls, the celestial brush was a great way to combine 13 or so items in one, making cumbersome item-switching via menus a thing of the past. The world, as you pointed out, is flat-out gorgeous.
There were two crucial flaws I had with it though that I didn't notice until my second playthrough as I was so blinded by love the first time around.
1.) The puzzles are far too simple with too much hand-holding. It never tickled my brain in quite the same way as the trickier puzzles in most any Zelda game and that was truly a disappointment.
2.) It has too much padding. There's lots of stuff to collect with very little reward. Furthermore, the hidden items are generally not that interesting to find, often just buried in random places. Wind Waker suffered the exact same flaw with lots of pieces of heart and other, more useless treasure lazily scattered throughout the bottom of the ocean. Both absolutely amazing games, but held back by this need to spread itself a bit too thin in the collectibles department.
Still, no game is perfect but Okami is up there with the best of the Zeldas as games that come as close to that as possible, imo.