Category: Zelda

Lenna’s Inception is 2020’s First Good Zelda

Being a Zelda-like in 2020 means that you’re facing a ton of comparisons to other games right out the gate. The actual Zelda games, pseudo-Zelda games like Anodyne and 3D Dot Game Heroes, and departures that still retain a lot of Zelda DNA like Hyper Light Drifter. Do I think Lenna’s Inception stands up to any of these? Not really, but it’s a good, breezy way to start off a slow-starting year. The soundtrack is… pretty good! The procedural map generation is… good enough that you usually won’t notice that the world isn’t hand-crafted! The writing is… actually kind of great on occasion, but that’s balanced out by scenes like the one in the opening with a dead old man in a cave who smeared “IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE” with his own blood.

I had to add this picture so you would believe me about just how dumb it is. Good on him for remembering the apostrophe.

Edgy. Thankfully those moments are few and far between, and instead we get a pun loving librarian (“ISBN missin’ you!” got me pretty good) and an evil sorceress trying to convince one boss to stop opening his mouth because his weak spot’s in there.

If you’re familiar with Link’s Awakening, a form of the shell upgrade system is back. In Lenna’s, every overworld screen with enemies will drop a reward for defeating them, usually a limited-use material that can be used to upgrade any of your many items. Items like bombs, arrows, and swords. You get it. My biggest complaint with the game is that this progress isn’t tracked anywhere. This leads to you needing just one more meteorite to upgrade your bow, and you’re forced to wander the map aimlessly massacring every screen of enemies hoping that maybe this is the one you hadn’t cleared before. The weirdest part is that there IS a map and every screen has its own square you can hover over. Please, please just plop a checkmark somewhere on there if I’ve already cleared it and save us all the trouble.

Oh, also, you can swap between two completely different graphical styles at any point. Want it to look like a weirdo NES The Legend of Zelda? They got ya. Prefer a vastly superior art style that seems like what the game intends you to choose? Do what I did and slap those SNES graphics on and never look back.

If you’ve noticed by now a lack of mention of puzzles, it’s because there really aren’t many to speak of. Lenna’s Inception gates progress by whether or not you have the next item, but doesn’t require a ton of thinking beyond that. Shoot arrows at the targets, bomb the rocks, etc. This is an action game where you occasionally push a block to the right spot to open a door. Don’t go in expecting a wild variety of dungeon puzzles like in A Link Between Worlds. This isn’t that. Go in expecting to see a cool map and fight some rad looking boss monsters to get better armor and swords.

If you’re ready to save this odd world, check out Lenna’s Inception on Bytten Studio’s itch.io or Steam page.

February 8, 2020
Ittle Dew 2+ Might Be Better At Zelda Than Zelda

If the wait for the Virtual Console on the Switch is killing you slowly, maybe this can ease the pain. The Switch’s ever-expanding and, honestly, surprising library just got even better with the release of Ittle Dew 2+.

I remember playing the first Ittle Dew game several years ago and not being super impressed. It felt like a bog standard but serviceable Zelda-like with maybe a few too many block pushing puzzles. This one is different. When I think about Ittle Dew 2 in a handful of years, I know it won’t just be hazy memories of moving a block around a grid.

Ittle Dew 2 shares a bit of DNA with Breath of the Wild just as it does with its more obvious 2D inspirations, even though it predates the former by several months. You’re tossed into a huge world after a (thankfully) hasty introduction, and are told that you can go anywhere you want. Do the dungeons in any order. Discover secrets in any order. You’re permitted to explore any corner of the map you can get to, and to feel free to progress as you see fit. It’s a breath of fresh air, and one that Nintendo itself finally started to breathe in with A Link Between World’s openness.

You’ll rush your way through cavern after cavern, stumble across dungeons, find portals that take you to even secreter secrets, and more. Ittle Dew 2 never gives you a moment to get bored. You’re constantly finding new areas to explore, coming across a new mini-dungeon (very, very similar to Breath of the Wild’s shrines), or finding hint givers who nudge you towards something you might have missed. Nearly ever screen you happen upon will have at least challenge to complete, and I found myself losing hours just to find “one more cave”, which of course leads to another and another. Some puzzles you’ll blast through in seconds, others will give your brain a genuine workout to find the solution. The entire game is filled with so much variety that it’s hard to put down once you’re sucked into its delightful flow. It’s also laugh-out-loud funny at times, and has better writing than any actual Zelda game could ever hope for.

If I have anything to complain about, it’s the game’s bosses. The vast majority of them, especially the ones you’re likely to stumble across early on, are essentially just standard enemies with a bit more health. They don’t look cool, they don’t do anything particularly interesting… they just kind of stand there as you tank hits and stab them for 10 seconds. Then they die without much fanfare, you’re given your reward for finishing the dungeon, and you move on. Compare this to the fanfare and spectacle of any of A Link to the Past’s bosses, and it’s tough to gloss over. If not for that, I think this would be the essential modern 2D Zelda-like, joining the likes of 3D Dot Game Heroes and Anodyne, and even besting some of the games the developer obviously adores so much.

If you’re ready to play the second best Zelda game on the Switch (and it’s on everything else, too!), check out the game’s website here.

January 20, 2018
Let’s Talk About Breath of the Wild’s Problems

This should come as no surprise to anyone who has seen me in the last month or read my latest post on the game, but the new Zelda is real good, ya’ll. I thought, instead of singing its praises all year long, I could take a minute to talk about the issues I have with the game after spending upwards of 80 or 90 hours with it. Yes, it’s up there with the most fun I’ve ever had with a video game, but it’s far from perfect. If Nintendo follows up Breath of the Wild with something similar, here’s how it could be improved.

I. The Reward System

One of the biggest issues with Breath of the Wild is its almost nonexistent rewards outside of the shrine loop. Since BotW loads you up with almost all of the permanent upgrades you’re going to get right from the beginning, there’s very little in the way of meaningful progress you make outside of gaining more hearts and stamina. That kinda sucks. The actual *play* of Breath of the Wild is so incredible, it’s easy to let this slide for a very long time. But when you’re dawning on your final hours and wrapping up shrines and sidequests I kept thinking, what exactly have I gotten from this?

The unique sidequests and mini games are fun, and I think Nintendo saw the act of doing them as the real reward, but after getting *another* stash of nearly useless rupees I found myself curious if this shallowness felt as obvious to anyone as as it did to me. Whenever you find a chest in a shrine or dungeon, what’s the best that can happen? You’re forced to drop a lame sword from your inventory to pick up a slightly less lame sword. The *one* occasion where they ditch this is when you get the Zora’s armor. That thing rocks and I couldn’t believe they would give you such a cool ability just as an equippable item. And then they never do it again.

Wouldn’t it have been better if there was a larger variety of equipment to find, or maybe even some kind of equivalent to Heart Pieces, or a larger arrow or rupee bag…or just… something? In trimming the fat from older Zelda games, I think Nintendo cut a little too close to the bone.

II. The Dungeons

-SPOILERS- If you haven’t finished the Divine Beasts you may want to skip past the next two sections . -SPOILERS-

So what’s up with these guys? If you’ve frequented as many Zelda forum posts as I have in the last month, you’ve probably heard the same complaint over and over: The Dungeons Suck, and are the worst thing Breath of the Wild did to the series.

I disagree.

I think I’m in the minority that believes the Divine Beast dungeons are (for the most part) very well crafted and are some of my favorite content in the game. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement. I do miss the themed levels from the rest of the series, like the Shadow Temple in Ocarina of Time or the Snowpeak Ruins Mansion in Twilight Princess. The closest we get to that is the Salamander Beast, which culminates in you flying into a volcano to explore a giant lizard. That’s pretty awesome.

The Divine Beasts themselves were all exciting to explore, if a little on the short side. Instead of feeling like an expansive “dungeon” of Zelda’s past, they mostly feel like a larger, more involved version of one of BotW’s many Shrines. Each one has a gimmick, with the Elephant’s water spewing trunk being the most unique, but the Camel and Salamander’s level shifting rotations are super cool, too. The bird is the weakest of the bunch from start to finish. Its gimmick is to… slightly shift to the left or right. It’s not bad, but it’s definitely bland in comparison. Do I wish that Zelda dungeons of old were still scattered about? Absolutely. Would I wholeheartedly trade them and lose my unique, weird animal challenges? Probably not.

Would I kill a person to get a spooky shadow temple filled with ReDeads and Poes? Just give me a name and I’ll take care of the rest.

III. Boss Variety

Soooo… like what happened here? The first Blight you fight is fine. It’s not mindblowing, but it gets the job done as your first boss. Then you fight the second one and you realize that this is all the game has to offer. Get ready, because this is when I continue talking about Ocarina of Time’s Shadow Temple. It’s maybe my favorite level in gaming, okay?

This is the mini-boss of one dungeon in Ocarina of Time. Nothing in Breath of the Wild compares visually with how unique and weird Dead Hand is.

Then you ride a spooky ghost ship to the actual boss of the Shadow Temple.

What happened, Nintendo? You remember you use to make incredibly weird stuff, right? Each of the four bosses of the Divine Beast dungeons in Breath of the Wild are almost visually identical. *But* one of them stands out above the rest and helps me forgive them as a concept, if only for a moment.

The boss of the Camel dungeon is Thunderblight Ganon, a flying dude who shoots lightning and teleports quickly around the arena, forcing you to learn how to dodge and parry or be stricken down in moments. Once you master this section, he flies high above the stage, and you instinctively shoot arrows at him to no avail. He rains electrified pillars down at you and you’re forced to sprint around the room and avoid them as you come up with a new strategy. It took me a solid couple of minutes before I even considered grabbing these pillars with my magnet to send them flying back at him to win the fight. It’s one of the most frantic fights in the game that actually ends with a well-crafted puzzle, and I wish I could say that for literally any of the other main bosses in Breath of the Wild.

There are, surprisingly, some other really unique boss fights in Breath of the Wild. They just don’t come at the end of a dungeon. During the Gerudo quest to find away inside the Camel Beast, you sneak through a hidden camp full of thieves and end up fighting their incompetent leader in another of the game’s best fights. You do the typical stabba stabba stabba, but there’s also an element of using your other abilities to take him down. He’s also just a fun character that I wish ended up with more screen time.

Then there’s the giant dragon resting on top of a snowy mountain. You fight it by jumping off the peak and slow-mo shooting weak spots off of it until you bring it down. That blew my damn mind. Same goes for the Skeletal Hinox and the Desert Gobble Gobble Boy (that’s his name don’t look it up that’s just his name ok). These fights are optional in a Zelda game with the lamest collection of main bosses in the series. That’s weird, right?

All of this isn’t to throw unnecessary shade at Breath of the Wild. I’d be hard pressed to say it isn’t tied for my favorite Zelda game of all time. But at times it just doesn’t feel like a Zelda game, which I guess is what makes it such an oddity when compared to the rest of the series. It feels like a bunch of geniuses borrowed Zelda elements and slapped them into an unrelated open world masterpiece. And that’s okay!

Nothing is perfect, but getting pretty close still makes for one of the best games of all time.

(Nintendo, please make a weirder, darker side story using this engine a-la Majora’s Mask and I’ll never say anything bad about you ever again ok bye bye)

April 7, 2017
Zelda: Breath of the Wild is Nintendo’s Modern Masterpiece

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild seems like the game Nintendo always intended The Wind Waker to be. In many regards, Wind Waker is my favorite Zelda game to date. The aesthetics were more on-point than anything else in the series, the world felt wide enough that anything could exist in it, and the dungeons were just side attractions to what the game was really about: Exploring. I don’t know that anything outside of the Souls series has ever matched the feeling of sailing to a brand new island for the first time and discovering what secrets it had in store. A lot of the time…there wasn’t much, but the feeling of wonder and excitement about just the possibility of new things to see was enough to keep me sailing through that incarnation of Hyrule for the past two decades.

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March 10, 2017