Board 8 > Exdeath Plays Every Game in the GotD 2020 Contest

(+) Yeah! (+)

Hello board 8! My name is Logan, but you can call me Exdeath. I've been a lurker on this forum since almost ten years ago, when I filled out a bracket for the first Game of the Decade contest. I remember running with the logic that absolutely anything Zelda or Final Fantasy would win against anything else - which meant predicting games like Dissidia and FFXII would win several matches. A decade later, I had a 96th percentile score in the 2020 contest - an improvement, but well outside the range for leaderboard placement or prize eligibility.

I was quite satisfied by the 2020 GotD contest, but like with so many other things, nothing could live up to my first time. One thing I remember is voting for a lot of games I hadn't played. I voted for Return of the Obra Dinn based on its reputation. I voted for Disco Elysium and Divinity: Original Sin II because they carried the torch for games I loved, like Fallout 2 (and because KHIII looks like s***.) I voted for The Witcher 3 because it has every appearance of being a much better game than Skyrim, which I *have* played. Although it's in the past now, I wish I had been more informed. Thus this project.

Here's the deal:

- I will play every game in the bracket for GotD 2020, in order of North American release date.
- While I reserve the right to quit any game at any time, I will try to finish every single one.
- For games with no well-defined ending, I will play them for two weeks.
- I will play every day, and post an update every session.
- This will take years. My two-week rule for "never-ending" games implies a pace that will see me complete Death Stranding, the last game, in 2025.

If you would like to join me on this journey of discovery, expect the first update in the evening. I work night shift, and my bed is beckoning.

Good luck on this ambitious project.

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oh ya go my Xenoblade

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I'll be happy to join you on this quest for select games at least as unfortunately I don't have the budget or time for all of them.

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If you even make it to 20 games this was a resounding success

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Isn't LordOfDabu still working on all the games from the 2015 contest?

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ZaziGuado posted...
Good luck on this ambitious project.

Thanks!

ninkendo posted...

oh ya go my Xenoblade

I have the Wii version, shrink-wrapped. It looks like a game I will like.

BetrayedTangy posted...

I'll be happy to join you on this quest for select games at least as unfortunately I don't have the budget or time for all of them.

I would love that! And I don't blame you. I had some trepidation about starting this project for both those reasons. As of now, I'll have to buy 80 games to complete the collection. I think that I can afford it by slowly buying the games throughout the duration of the project. It helps that some of the older ones and the indies can be found pretty cheap.

pjbasis posted...

If you even make it to 20 games this was a resounding success

I'll definitely be very pleased with myself if I make it through 20 games without missing a day.

Leonhart4 posted...

Isn't LordOfDabu still working on all the games from the 2015 contest?

Tell you what - I'll race him.

I got up a little early, which should give me enough time to get started on my first game:

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Release Date: October 26, 2000
I will be playing: The Wii Virtual Console version
Previous Experience with Majora's Mask: Played up to the Goron Dungeon
What I expect from Majora's Mask: A fun, artistic Zelda game.

Well, it was in the contest! What a cool touch it was to have the Angry Moon slowly descending on The Witcher III as build-up for the bonus poll. It was just a bit disappointing to see MM get hyped up like that way only to come in and immediately get rolled. I felt kind of bad for voting Breath of the Wild when I saw the percentages.

I think Majora's Mask was the first game I bought because of a GameFAQs contest. As a teen I wasn't very fond of either FFX or Brawl, so I was grateful to MM for wiping the floor with those two. Today I respect FFX as a pioneering game in its genre, but still consider MM a pretty good winner. Shortly after the contest, I bought a $20 Wii Points voucher and downloaded the game, which was my third console Zelda after Twilight Princess and Link to the Past (The Wii, incidentally, was the first console I had at home growing up. I received it as a gift on my thirteenth birthday. Before that, I only had handhelds - which meant that Phantom Hourglass was my first Zelda game.)

I didn't get very far back then. I think that, like a lot of people, I felt a certain stress because of the timer, which became an ever-niggling concern that stopped me from enjoying the game as much as I might have.

But I've always had a high opinion of the game. I appreciate the surprisingly dark tone and the themes that come with it, and it is perhaps the most risk-taking Zelda game before Breath of the Wild. In what will be a recurring theme of these intro write-ups, the fact I haven't finished it says more about my habits and tendency to get distracted than it does about the game. I consider it a failure on my part that I never completed Majora's Mask through that Wii Virtual Console download - so we will begin this project by rectifying that mistake. I look forward to revisiting it.

The Xbox Game Pass might help financially, it looks like there's a little over 20 of them on there right now. Might be cheaper.

Also sweet Majora's Mask is one of my favorites, definitely joining for that one.

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i give this a 0% chance this will finish

but tag

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Majora's Mask begins almost immediately after the ending to Ocarina of Time. A retired Link is searching for Navi (I think) when he runs across the corrupted Skull Kid, an elevated minor character from the last game. In OoT he was just a friendly forest spirit you could get some items from. I don't think we really know what happened to him between games. The Skull kid ganks Link's horse along with the Ocarina of Time and transforms him into a Deku Scrub.

I remember wanting to get out of the Deku section as soon as possible every time I've played this game, but that's kind of the intention. It's meant to leave Link vulnerable, even humiliated. No one will give you the time of day as a Deku Scrub. You have to resort to playing hide-and-seek with some local rascals to earn their trust, and even then they won't accept you as a friend because you aren't human. Your only real means of self-defense is a slow-building bubble attack that drains mana, and you have to methodically float around with plant propellers (human Link has a much more effective version of this power in Wind Waker.

It's a very effective intro. This first cycle presents you with easy goals that can be cleared in the 3-day limit with lots of time to spare, and the hide-and-seek game is deliberately designed to get you acclimated to the different parts of the city. What I especially like is the slow build up to the reveal of the Angry Moon. Zelda in general is good at giving a lot of visual presence to its story and setting. The way Death Mountain is visible from almost anywhere in Ocarina of Time is an example of this, and in Majora's Mask, you can always turn the camera upward and see the moon pulling ever closer.

In his Deku form Link is hopelessly outmatched by Skull Kid. It's all that he can do to retrieve the Ocarina of Time and flee into the past, where he learns the Song of Healing from the Happy Mask Salesman (another very memorable minor character from the last game,) and finally turns himself back into a human. That's as far as I have time to play for now, but I feel pretty eager to go back to it. I'd say it has a good sense of deliberate construction so far. I like how the Mask Salesman "jump cuts" to different expressions rather than animating, for example. That helps convey the comic insanity of the character.

I love stuff like this because it means all the great games that were just fodder in the contest at least get played by someone new. Good luck making it to Celeste (2018).

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Very ambitious

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I hope it makes it past the game that really wasn't even part of the contest lol.

Also, how are you going through these, A-Z order? Release Date? Bracket Order Top-Down? Bottom-Up? Placement? Random number generator? Poll?

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So the Trails in the Sky game that made it into the contest is a direct sequel (the "SC" stands for Second Chapter) and shouldn't be played in isolation, because it starts right in the middle of things, doesn't really re-introduce characters that I can remember, and it would likely just leave you confused.

If you get that far in the project to begin with, you should probably play the first Trails in the Sky (Subtitled either just "Trails in the Sky" or sometimes "Trails in the Sky FC") available here https://store.steampowered.com/app/251150/The_Legend_of_Heroes_Trails_in_the_Sky/. These were originally intended to be one game anyways but ended up being released separately due to the length.

Anyways good luck with the project. I probably won't follow along closely just because I've only played 10% of the games myself, but it sounds exciting.
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BetrayedTangy posted...

The Xbox Game Pass might help financially, it looks like there's a little over 20 of them on there right now. Might be cheaper.

Also sweet Majora's Mask is one of my favorites, definitely joining for that one.

Unfortunately I don't have an XBOX One. I don't think it would be cost efficient to buy one just for the game pass, but the good news is that the project can be completed without one. If I'm right, the only game in the bracket that was ever an XBOX exclusive is Halo: Reach, which is available on Steam now.
LOLIAmAnAlt posted...

I hope it makes it past the game that really wasn't even part of the contest lol.

Also, how are you going through these, A-Z order? Release Date? Bracket Order Top-Down? Bottom-Up? Placement? Random number generator? Poll?

I'm playing them in order of North American release date. This is just for consistency. Three games were included in the bracket that wouldn't be eligible based on their original release dates. Trials in the Sky came out in 2006, while Bayonetta and Pokemon HGSS came out in late 2009.

pyresword posted...

So the Trails in the Sky game that made it into the contest is a direct sequel (the "SC" stands for Second Chapter) and shouldn't be played in isolation, because it starts right in the middle of things, doesn't really re-introduce characters that I can remember, and it would likely just leave you confused.

Alright, thanks for the tip. I'll probably treat them as one game if I make it to that point.

Evillordexdeath posted...

Alright, thanks for the tip. I'll probably treat them as one game if I make it to that point.

I'd say you're going to run into this a couple times. Danganronpa 2 without playing DR1 or Virtue's Last Reward without 999 is quite the choice.

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Evillordexdeath posted...

I'm playing them in order of North American release date.

Oh
RIP newer games.
Hopefully not.

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Well 999 I have previously played. I don't think I will revisit that game in particular.

The most obvious one, which I have been thinking about, is Mass Effect, since you're meant to load ME1 clear data when you start ME2. I do have the option of re-using the file I imported when I first played that game though.

There is a DLC that lets you make the major choices from ME1 in case you don't have an ME1 file. They included it when they ported ME2 to the PS3 since the 360 still had exclusivity rights to the original.

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_SecretSquirrel posted...

Danganronpa 2 without playing DR1

While the anime of the first one isn't great, it's could always serve as a good synopsis to the plot. That's how I experienced it the first time at least.

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Ambitious tag

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Also in regards to Majora's Mask yeah, the opening moments are so cool. I love how you're presented with this huge daunting task right as the game begins, practically dwarfing your feats from OoT in the process.

I played a little past where Exdeath did. Just took the time to get some pieces of hearts, rupees and useful masks (specifically Bunny Hood and Blast Mask). I'll likely not be able to play every day, but I'll try to do extra progress on the days I do.

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Alright, I played through my second "cycle" in Majora's Mask. Unlike Tangy, I have no idea how to get the useful items or the bulk of Pieces of Heart in this game, so I have yet to put together my fifth heart container or acquire the Bunny Hood. I did however get my hands on the Great Fairy Mask and the Mask of Scents.

My first task was to run through the hide-and-seek game a second time for the Bombers' Noteback and then revisit the Scarecrow to confirm how to use the reverse Song of Time to slow down the apocalypse. By keeping it on for the entire 72 hours, I had just enough time to figure out what I was doing in the swamp, clear out the first dungeon, get all 15 stray fairies in there and learn the upgraded spin attack, and put 99 rupees in the bank. The timing was so close that I was running through the maze for the Mask of Scents while the 6-minute timer ticked down onscreen and then slamming out the song of soaring just to make it to the bank.

Going back to this old control scheme always takes some readjustment. One definitely misses having the right analog stick for camera controls. I've never found this sort of thing to be a dealbreaker, though. I'm sure by the time I finish the game I'll have come to grips with it. I have a couple minor complaints about the mechanics, particularly how Deku Link respawns exactly where he was after falling in water. Against some enemies with a lot of knockback, I found it hard not to get shoved back in the moment I respawned. I will also say that after playing every console Zelda I start to notice some repetition. The maze for the Mask of Scents was very reminiscent of the Dampe maze from Ocarina of Time.

Usually a Zelda game is at its best when you're in a dungeon, and I definitely enjoyed myself in Woodfall Temple. The boss seemed to be an interesting digression from the standard structure. Instead of nailing him with the bow and then punishing him three times it felt like more of a brawl with many different tools for the player, designed to counter a lot of different attacks by the boss.

As the Deku Princess reconciled with her father and thanked Link for saving her realm, the sky grew dark and the Angry Moon was unmistakably visible overhead, which does help convey the feeling of futility the game is going for. I saved the princess and purified the toxic swamp-water, but now that I've time-traveled back to day one those heroic achievements have been undone. Ocarina of Time does something kind of similar with the world Adult Link inhabits. While you, the hero, slept in for seven years, the world decayed into a corrupted nightmare. In that game, I imagine it was a bleak metaphor for growing up.

I'll probably play a little more in the morning.

That's actually one of the things I love about MM. There's this open ended aspect to it. There's a ton of side quests you can do right away or you can jump right into the first dungeon.

Also for the Bunny Hood first you've got to get the Bremen Mask on the 2nd Night at the Laundry Pool. Then on Day 3 head to Romani Ranch and at the far end of the ranch you'll find two doors. The one on the right leads to a ranch with the cuccoos, if you put on the Bremen Mask and March around gathering all of them they'll start turning into adult roosters where you'll be gifted the Bunny Hood. Easily one of the most useful masks in the game.


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BetrayedTangy posted...

That's actually one of the things I love about MM. There's this open ended aspect to it. There's a ton of side quests you can do right away or you can jump right into the first dungeon.

Yeah, I agree - that's definitely something I appreciate. I think it's partially a fact of something else I like about the game, which is that is uses a smaller game-world that changes throughout the events of the story and a result of the player's actions. It's something you can see in some of my favorite games, like in Mother 3 where your hometown slowly becomes deserted over the course of the story.

I spent a cycle doing some side quests, including grabbing the bunny hood. I had to defeat the first boss a second time in order to get a piece of heart from the swamp hag's shooting gallery. I'm glad they give you a warp to the boss room if you've cleared the dungeon before. I also took the time to activate the owl statue at the northern village, which should leave me in a good position to start the Goron section next time I play.

I wound up spending a lot of time on side quests. In particular, there's one quite involved quest line concerning a missing child named Kafei. He's one of the first characters you'll probably meet when you start the game, because as soon as you leave the clock tower on day 1 he will be visible placing a letter in a mailbox while disguised in a keaton mask.

Kafei's mother asks Link to look for him, and by following a chain of timed events that covers all three days, Link is able to meet him and learn that he has been cursed to look like a child by Skull Kid and then had his ceremonial wedding mask stolen by the same thief we need to stop for the Blast Mask and large bomb bag. He then writes a letter that we can deliver to his mother in exchange for a second bottle - on the night of the third day, while she stays in town and waits for him even as most others evacuate. Well, I say most, but I've found a noteworthy number of characters already who stay behind for one reason or another.

We will return to these characters later! First we need to make some plot progress.

Went ahead and cleared both Woodfall and Snowhead. Holding off on the Snowhead side quests, because it's getting a but late for me and there's a ton of them.

I'll hold off on talking about Snowhead until Exdeath catches up, but yeah Woodfall is great. I love how it's essentially a distorted forest dungeon. You've got poison water everywhere, electric dragonflies, dangerous fire-loving moths, etc. It's the first dungeon and it does not pull its punches.

Odolwa is also great, his chanting and erratic movements really set the mood and yeah you'll definitely find that the bosses in this game are probably some of the most unique when compared to the rest of the franchise.

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I've taken to starting every single cycle by going into the Astronomer's tunnel and retrieving the silver rupee behind the bombable wall. This process is sped up a bit by the Bunny Hood, which gives us the power to go fast (valuable in any game, but especially so in one where time is always against you,) and the Blast Mask, which almost feels like an upgrade from The Binding of Isaac - it lets you use the effect of a bomb at the cost of some health. Before I had the Blast Mask, I had to run over to the bank, withdraw enough money to buy 10 bombs, and then use those to retrieve the silver rupee for a profit of 70. With this current setup, and the Song of Inverted Time, it's possible to get the 100 rupees, run over to the store, and buy arrows, a potion, and some bombs all before a single hour has passed, which is useful for a cycle where I'm planning on adventuring.

I find it tempting to spend a lot of time on sidequests in this game. I really shouldn't be pushing for 100% on this or any of the other games in this project, but before I went to Snowhead I got the Heart Pieces for clearing the Deku Scrub minigame and Honey and Darling's challenges three days in a row. The former I struggled a lot with but the latter was not too bad. I also found the Kamaro and Don Gero masks, though I can't get the Heart Piece from the frog chorus just yet.

The context and build up to Snowhead was really well done. One thing I especially liked was the design of the long-lipped Goron Elder, who would visibly sway and shiver as he tried to make his way up the mountain. Link discovers him frozen in a block of ice and has to fetch some hot water to defrost him, and if the player returns after getting what they need (part of a new song) out of him, they will find that he has frozen over again, which is a suitably bleak touch.

As a teenager I definitely didn't understand how much control the game gives you over the in-game time mechanics. This time around, once I had the Goron Lullaby and was ready to start the dungeon proper, I played the song of time so that I could have the full 72 hours to explore it - I remember my run killer last time I played MM was getting most of the way through this dungeon before running out of time.

Progress in Snowhead itself is usually vertical, which means that the player can find himself falling and having to go back over a lot of ground. I admit it happened to me a couple times - I had trouble controlling the Goron roll move well enough to navigate the ramps and jumps successfully every time. I definitely found myself growing frustrated at times, and it led to so much bumbling that I didn't complete the dungeon until just before the dawn of the third day.

The boss was neat. It feels atypical of most video game bosses, because your Goron Roll can brute-force past anything the boss can do, so he has to "outplay" you - normally this situation would be reversed. I like how he starts out trying to ram you only to seemingly realize that this won't work and try a new strategy, now running away and using ranged attacks.

Now that the second dungeon is cleared, spring temporarily returns to the mountain, and we are officially further into Majora's Mask than I have ever been. I know almost nothing about what happens from here on out.

An unfortunate consequence of taking so long to clear the dungeon is that, assuming the reward would be a Piece of Heart, I cleared the Goron Races on the third day, and then found out that the prize was in fact a bottle full of gold dust, which can be used to upgrade your sword - except it takes a full day. I assume (and certainly hope) you can complete the race a second time to get the gold dust again, and that will be my first task when I play the game again.

So I got a couple of pro tips for the Blast Mask and rupees. If you use the Blast Mask while shielding you won't take damage. Also there's a second silver rupee you can get, when reenter Clock Town from the hideout if you make an immediate left and go up the ramp and follow straight, you can do some rolling jumps to get across the gaps and it'll eventually lead you to another rupee.

Yeah Snowhead can get pretty confusing, I think this is my 3rd or 4th full playthrough of the game and I still got lost a bit, but I will warn you the next dungeon is even worse, so it wouldn't be a bad idea to plan for the worst on that one. I will say though I do kinda enjoy how complex the dungeons in this game are. It makes them feel just as important as the rest of the game, which is something I think later entries sort of struggle with.

Yeah I definitely don't recommend 100% this, as there's a lot of obnoxious minigames for just pieces of heart. I do however recommend collecting all the masks, as not only do they have really cool side quests attached to them, but you get a cool endgame reward as well. Finding the stray fairies can also pretty useful as that's how you get the Great Fairy upgrades in this game.

Also yeah starting a fresh cycle after clearing a dungeon isn't a bad idea, that way you have plenty of time to do side quests afterwards.

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Thanks! It will definitely be nice to have that extra hundred rupees. I had always wanted to buy a fairy from the trade shop at the start of each cycle but couldn't quite budget it in. I imagine that will also help now that I may need to buy powder kegs on the regular to pick up Epona.

I will say that I still had fun making my way through Snowhead. After I posted the last update I realized the way I had written about it probably came off as more negative than I had intended. I think I would say that I like the complexity of the dungeons too. There was a satisfaction to becoming more familiar with the layout as I went. If the next dungeon doesn't have as many mechanics where you can lose a lot of progress, as you could by falling in Snowhead, I might even be able to clear it a little faster, but I'll take your advice and brace myself for a tough one.

I have made a point of collecting all the stray fairies in both dungeons so far. The expanded magic meter definitely helped in the goron race. And yeah so far I find the sidequests interesting. I feel motivated to complete them more for the story content associated with them than the in-game rewards I think. I admit to using a guide for the Anju and Kafei quest because I was nervous about missing out on one of the steps, and I was impressed by just how many optional timed events they added for the sake of characterizing the townsfolk a little more.

One thing I've given up on already is the swamp shooting gallery. That one's tough! I just think it will require spending too much time attempting it and slowly improving.

I think you can actually find fairies outside the entrances to dungeons. So you can get them for free if you want.

Haha yeah a guide helps a lot with this game, since so much is only available in a small window of time. Also good call on skipping the Swamp Gallery, you have to actually beat it twice to get the quiver and piece of heart. The Clock Town one is even worse imho. There's a jumping minigame in the next area that blows too.

Yeah it's very easy to lose progress in the next dungeon. It's essentially the Water Temple on steroids.

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holy shit

good luck my dude

tag/track

https://i.imgur.com/RfiH3NK.png

I am putting this here so you can use it as a view counter for this project, sometimes I wonder how many people actually read my topics/posts but dont engage... for example, the female villains contest has an image in the OP I use as a tracker, it has over 1000 views now, so I know that even though not a lot of people are watching, a good amount are reading/interested. Use this to drive you forward if you ever feel people are not engaging with your thread. This is a big project and I dont want you getting frustrated

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Thanks, Zen! I appreciate that. For what it's worth, I think your Female Villain Quotes contest is the big exciting project on the board right now, along with Ulti's PCA.

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I spent a cycle taking care of these tasks:

• Upgrading the kokiri sword to the Gilded Sword after winning the races again
• Visiting the Ranch on day 1 with a powder keg, and learning Epona's Song as well as clearing the two sisters' quests for a bottle and the Romani's Mask
• Winning the horse race for the Garo's Mask
• Taking Epona to the great bay and getting the Zora Mask
• Performing for two gentlemen at the newly-accessible milk bar for the Circus Leader's Mask

Doing things this way meant most of that happening while I had no sword, and at one point I needed to kill Dodongos using fire arrows to get some money for the horse race, but otherwise it was no big deal. I knew I wanted to get the sword upgrades and the Zora Mask on the same day, because there was a treasure chest I needed to dive for on the spring form of the mountain. It turned out to contain a Piece of Heart. I'll still need to unfreeze the goron lands a third time if I want to conduct the frog choir. On the final day I went back to Great Bay and activated the Owl Statue there, leaving me in a convenient position to infiltrate the pirate fortress in the next cycle.

I find myself reluctantly using the Deku and Goron masks when I have to and playing as a human the rest of the time, but Zora gameplay seems really cool and fun so far. It helps that Zora Link's animations are so flashy and acrobatic. I definitely prefer this set of tools for going underwater to the iron boot method from OoT and Twilight Princess.

It's Victoria Day, so I don't go back to work until tomorrow night. Although I'm not sure I'll make it, I think I will try and finish off Majora's Mask tonight, if only because the idea of playing the game over the course of three days, with the last one being a holiday, is a little bit amusing to me.

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I did most of what you did as well, didn't get Circus Leader yet, but I got the Stone Mask (which is a big help for the Pirate's Fortress).

If you're going to try and beat it tonight, let me give you some hints to save you some time and frustration. I'll likely have it beat by Wednesday myself, which works because I'm skipping Bayonetta anyway.

-Bring a ton of Bottles into the Ikana well
-Bring Magic Potions for the boss fight of Stone Tower Temple

and most importantly
-BRING A POWDER KEG TO IKANA CASTLE, HOLY CRAP I ALWAYS FORGET TO DO THIS.

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I thought my goal of beating the top 16 from every contest was ambitious! Good luck!

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This is great

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Good stuff. I've done similar topics, and I can promise you that writeups are the biggest time killer for it.

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PostContestUlti posted...

Good stuff. I've done similar topics, and I can promise you that writeups are the biggest time killer for it.

Yeah, I tend to be a very slow and hesitant writer, which would be absolutely fatal to this project. So far I've managed to force myself to write quickly and avoid doing much editing.

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I went through the Pirate Fortress the "normal" way and got the Hookshot, but then exited without realizing I had to gather the Zora Eggs. Not really wanting to do it again, I did opt to head into Ikana Canyon and get myself the Stone Mask, which negates the stealth mechanics that send you back the second you're spotted.

While I was at it, I cleared both Spider Houses for the Mask of Truth and Giant Wallet, the latter of which let me obtain the All-Night Mask (which I wish I could have in real life,) and use it to sit through the grandma at the Inn's stories without dozing off, for some lore as well as two Heart Pieces. Now the Bombers' Notebook is complete except for those characters who are a part of the Anju and Kafei sidequest, which I could finish now but will save for after the Water Temple.

There's no way I'm finishing the game before the date change at this point, but maybe I can still manage it before 72 hours have passed since I started.

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Good luck! You still have a solid go yet

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Between the Pirate Fortress, gathering the rest of the Zora Eggs, and actually traveling to the damn place, just getting to the Great Bay Temple takes some work. By the time I manged it, I realized I was exhausted and needed to prioritize getting some sleep over any goals for the time-frame in which I finish this game.

The dungeon itself really is one of the more complex I've seen in a Zelda game, but it didn't frustrate me the way that Snowhead sometimes did - at least I never fell from a high place and had to trace my footsteps back through several rooms.

There have been a few times in my life where I have fantasized (I think that's the right word for it,) about becoming an indie game developer, and one of the concepts I was interested in was a game mostly based around swimming. I think the Zora mechanics in this game do a lot of justice to that sort of idea, actually. One thing you can do that looks very impressive is quickly break the surface and "leap" back in and out of the water, like some fish do, and you can use this motion to get back on land much faster than you would by climbing onto it as Young Link. It takes a bit of finesse, and if you mess up you'll smack your head against the wall and waste more time. I like that the movement controls award a degree of skill in that way. The technique is useful against the Great Bay boss, where you have to shoot him with arrows from on land, climb into the water to follow up, and then quickly return to shore before he bites you.

I managed to find all the temple's Stray Fairies, and once again this plus completing the dungeon itself took two full days. The reward is that all damage against me will be halved for the rest of the game. Between this and the sword upgrades, you can really make yourself overwhelmingly powerful through the sidequesting in this game. I also took the time to do the Frog Chorus sidequest. It only awards a piece of heart, and is oddly elaborate for such a small reward. In one cycle, you have to beat the frogs guarding the boss keys for both the Deku and Zora dungeons, who are possessed frogs that you can then speak to with the Don Gero Mask, and defeat the boss for the Goron dungeon, as well as finding two more frogs in Clock Town and the swamp. I wanted to do both this quest and the Zora dungeon in one go to reduce repetition, and I just barely managed it in three in-game days.

Next up: Completing the Bomber's Notebook.

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Yes, Zora swimming is absolutely awesome, honestly surprised we haven't seen anything similar to it since. Also really happy you're playing the original as the remake on 3DS completely butchers the swimming.

The upgrades are a really nice way of balancing the higher difficulty with this one compared to other Zeldas. Especially since you can get them fairly early on

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BetrayedTangy posted...

Yes, Zora swimming is absolutely awesome, honestly surprised we haven't seen anything similar to it since. Also really happy you're playing the original as the remake on 3DS completely butchers the swimming.

The upgrades are a really nice way of balancing the higher difficulty with this one compared to other Zeldas. Especially since you can get them fairly early on

Wow, that's really a shame about the remake. If that's true, I'm glad I'm playing the N64 version too.

I was definitely surprised that the game let me have the Gilded Sword so quickly. That one in particular might be a little bit too strong - taking down Dodongos with two jump attacks is crazy - but then a challenge-oriented player can always just opt not to get it.

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I did some exploring in Ikana to activate the Owl Shrines and picked up the Song of Storms, Captain's Hat, and Gibdo Mask. Then I went back to day one and completed the Anju and Kafei sidequest, gaining the Couple's Mask as my reward. The sidequest does lead to a bit of what I like to call "Shenmue Syndrome," where the player has nothing to do except wait for the in-game timer to advance. I like it a lot from a narrative standpoint though. We retrieve Kafei's mask and the two of them have their promised wedding - which requires them to stay in Clock Town even as the moon falls. They essentially choose to die together. Then Link travels back in time, so that Anju and Kafei are still alive, but everything he's done to help them is undone. I guess there's the potential to debate whether that's a good or a bad thing.

I've heard of some players doing as much as they can on their last cycle before finishing the game, so that even though the game doesn't show it, the world they leave behind will be as good as possible, but given that it brings you to the last 90 seconds before the moon hits, I don't think it's possible to complete the Anju and Kafei sidequest and finish the game in the same cycle. They can be together or they can survive, but Link is incapable of creating a world where both of those conditions are fulfilled.

On the periphery of their sidequest, we also convinced the postman to leave town and save himself, and got the Postman's Hat in return. With this, I have 23/24 masks, and should be picking up the last one shortly.

Incidentally, the only use for both the Couple's Mask and the Postman's mask is to gain one piece of heart. Given how much effort we have to go to for them, I wish they were a bit more substantial as rewards. Then again, you could argue they do lead to a more substantial reward later on.

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Something kind of interesting to note about the Zora gameplay is that this game came out just before a period of Nintendo seemingly becoming oddly fascinated with water, with Super Mario Sunshine, Wind Waker, and to a lesser extent Pokemon Ruby all being based heavily around it. For all the emphasis the FLUDD and Sailing had in those games, though, I don't think they're as fun as the Zora swimming. I wouldn't mind seeing Nintendo revisit it as a mechanic.

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I actually started Majora's Mask a day before its first match in GOTD 1 by complete coincidence (I was doing a bit of a Zelda run-through at the time), and finished the game a day after the contest finished. The dumb thing is that I remember feeling like some aspects of the playthrough were a chore, yet I can't in good faith call MM a bad game. Will be interesting if I ever re-visit it.

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Tag

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Tag.

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LinkMarioSamus posted...

I actually started Majora's Mask a day before its first match in GOTD 1 by complete coincidence (I was doing a bit of a Zelda run-through at the time), and finished the game a day after the contest finished. The dumb thing is that I remember feeling like some aspects of the playthrough were a chore, yet I can't in good faith call MM a bad game. Will be interesting if I ever re-visit it.

I think I'd feel some of that tedium of I were trying to 100% it. Though there are a couple parts in the main game that I'm a little unsure of (most of which I just finished, lol,) I've enjoyed the strong majority of the game so far and have felt fairly compelled to clear the sidequests.

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I'm bad at finishing games. There have been dozens of times, even in recent memory, where I've started a game, had no major complaints toward it, but still stopped playing before the end, for one reason or another. Even so, there are a few I've completed multiple times, one of which is Earthbound. Although parts of Earthbound's gameplay are antiquated enough to turn off some people, it's always been one of my favorites. I wish more games would emulate things like the instant-wins against weak enemies and I hold it up as one of the best examples of how to use the storytelling opportunities that come from video games in particular.

But one part of EB that almost everyone could do without is the Monkey Cave, where you have to run around delivering inventory items to monkeys who are blocking the way forward. On the bright side, all the items you need can be found in the cave itself, but it can still be a dull and tedious affair with a lot of backtracking.

I bring this up because Majora's Mask has it's own version of the Monkey Cave, in the form of the Well at Ikana Canyon. It's probably the more complex dungeon of the two and requires more preparation. You have to bring milk, a blue potion, ten bombs, ten deku nuts, and five magic beans from outside the dungeon if you want to go everywhere. It's definitely an area where I would recommend reading a guide. You could get most of the way through before learning that you need milk and having to run all the way across the dungeon to get out, and then back through a second time with the milk. That would be rather galling. This is plot-mandatory and the reward is the Mirror Shield, with a creepy new design in line with this game's aesthetic.

Still, I'm being a bit facetious, because I never really minded the Monkey Cave, and though I was glad to leave it behind, the Well wasn't so bad either.

With the Mirror Shield we can explore Ikana Castle, a miniature dungeon unto itself, and learn the last song in the game: the Elegy of Emptiness. This lets us leave behind motionless copies of ourselves in all four forms, which look like an unsettling Nutcracker version of Link and the true appearances of his Deku, Goron, and Zora counterparts. It's mostly used to weight down switches in the next area, the Stone Tower, which we have to scale to reach the game's last temple. So far there's no use for creating a clone of our Deku form, which is too light to keep a switch down. The Stone Tower ascent is a bit of a let-down because it's mostly just hookshotting and weighting down switches again and again. You have to go into the menu quite a lot to exchange your masks for one another. Although it's pretty cool visually, the Elegy of Emptiness would be better assigned to a single inventory item rather than a song with a long input, from a gameplay perspective. You have to use it much more frequently than any of the other songs, when clearing out this area, so the length of the method becomes a little draining. I activated the Owl Statue at the top of the tower before calling it a night.

I definitely underestimated how much was left of this game and how long it would take me to progress. For the rest of the week, this topic will probably slow down to a rate of one update per day, in the evening. Still, I'm closing in on the end of game #1. I'm hoping to be able to start the next game by Thursday.

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Did a big update today as well, I cleared Great Bay Temple and got caught up on the masks as well as a couple of heart pieces.

Yeah 100% sucks. I did it last year and it's just not fun at a certain point, but I think that might kinda be the point? Like we were saying earlier with doing side quests early/buffing Link up. There's so many different ways to do quests and gain items that each playthrough ends up being different and that's not even touching on the Easter eggs. Like take the Circus Leader's Mask for example it's only use is irrelevant, but it has constant tears streaming down its face. I never knew that until this playthrough!

Also it's funny that you mention EarthBound's monkey cave as when I reached that part during my playthrough I remember saying great it's like the well in Majora's Mask. Also I think you can clear it without leaving technically? Maybe not access every room, but I think you can get to the end.

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Beat Majora's Mask, looking forward to hearing your thoughts, Exdeath!

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