I enjoyed BotW so much that I decided to immediately spring for the DLC. Though there are technically 2 DLC packs and a bonus you get for buying the season pass (Expansion Pass), there isn't actually a way to buy both DLC's individually anymore, so it's just $20 for the whole thing. I did everything in it and it took me about 15 or so hours.
It adds like 20 or so treasures to go and find that are new tools like a teleportation node you can place yourself, a super saddle for your horse that lets you summon it anywhere, and a Korok Mask that starts to rattle when you're near an undiscovered Korok. You can also find new, fun armor that references older Zelda games (like a Tingle costume, Zant's helmet, or armor like the phantoms wear in the DS games). All of them are hidden through riddles, and only the location of the riddles are given to you. Most of them were pretty easy to find for me, but there were a couple I had to look up :P . They're neat, but given that the armor isn't upgradable, it's really only gonna be any actual use to you game-wise if you go for it around the time you start the game (the Phantom armor especially is basically tier-2 Berserker Armor but way easier to find, so that would've been a REALLY big one at the start of the game for me). Definitely an element of the DLC that you probably won't get that much mileage out of if you'd already gotten all 120 shrines and beaten the game like I had :P The other elements are the Trails of the Sword, which are a set of 3 progressively harder gauntlets centered entirely around combat that, if cleared, will power up your Master Sword to 60-power level all the time (not just around Guardians), and the Ballad of Champions. The Ballad of Champions is a new bit of story that is 16 new shrines and a little event you go through to unlock each of them, some harder re-fights of each of the original 4 bosses, 5 new memory cutscenes, and a whole new Divine Beast-style dungeon to go through complete with its own new boss enemy to fight at the end. I really liked this stuff. The Trials of the Sword need to be done only with equipment found within the trial, so they're probably some of the toughest actual combat in the game given that you can't even use your Champion abilities within them, let alone stock up on food beforehand. The Champion's Ballad is also a really well done set of new trials, with all the trials being longer, more challenging ones than a lot of the main game's original 120. The new music, of what there is, is also really good. I think the new boss' music track may be my favorite music track in the entire game <3 Verdict: Recommended. If you liked Breath of the Wild and want more of it, then the Expansion Pass is a safe bet for you. For the amount of content it offers proportional to the main game's, I gotta say that the cost is a little steep at $20, especially if you aren't a fan of the combat (therefore won't like Trials of the Sword) and mainly want the Champion's Ballad stuff. If you're someone who wanted all new lands to explore out of their BotW DLC, you won't find that here. But if you just want MORE BotW, then you'll probably be very pleased with what you find here :D
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I LOVED Mario's foray into open world game design on the Switch, and when I saw that Breath of the Wild was 25% off on Amazon last week, I thought why not pick it up and Link's open world adventure a try: I was certainly not disappointed! It's a game not without its faults, but what it does well is SO good that the bad is worth pushing through to get to the far more frequent good stuff :D . I got all 120 shrines, 203 Korok seeds, and did all the memories and story quests (but none of the DLC) and it took me about 60 hours.
LOTS of design changes this go around for LoZ. Even though it's a series that's fairly used to pretty significant design decisions, none have been so ambitious before. You have no dedicated sword, shield, or bow, because EVERYTHING has durability and will eventually break. As a result, any weapons you find lying around, even ones dropped from vanquished enemies, can be picked up and used as your own (with one-handed swords, one-handed wands, two-handed swords and axes, and two-handed spears/polearms as your 4 weapon choices). You have a whole slew of armor to pick up (that doesn't break, thank god) that can give you all sorts of bonuses ranging from swimming faster to dealing more damage. No more Epona (unless you have her amiibo): You gotta go out and find and tame your own horses to stable and ride! You can collect all sorts of crafting materials like plants, ores, and monster parts to cook meals and potions to heal yourself (no more finding hearts to heal!) as well as eventually use them to improve your armors to provide set bonuses for wearing a whole set of armor at once. This is all on top of a giant, almost entirely contiguous open world you have to explore. If there's a mountain, you can scale it. If there's an ocean, you can swim it. If there's a house, you can go in it. Even the 4 dungeons are all located in actual space within the world and are very unlike any way dungeons have been done before. All this with nearly no loading screens outside of fast traveling or doing shrines. Your exploration and fighting are only limited by your hearts and, another new addition, your stamina bar! You can find shrines spread all throughout the kingdom that contain challenge rooms inside, the contents ranging from physics mini-games to combat trials to puzzles to solve. For every one you get you get a spirit orb, and for every 4 spirit orbs you get you can either get a new fifth of a stamina bar or another heart container (up to 30 hearts and/or 3 full stamina bars). Only 120 shrines means that you'll technically be short 12 orbs from having all of both, but those 12 shrines are found in the DLC, from what I've heard (and being maxed out like that is hardly essential if you have good armor, weapons, etc.). As a result of all this open-world stuff, the game is extremely non-linear, even by the standards of most non-linear games. The closest DNA in the Zelda family design-wise would be something like Majora's Mask, where collecting all the masks gets you a mask that lets you WRECK the final boss, as well as letting you learn a lot more about the world and solve so many more of its problems. Breath of the Wild cranks that up to 11, as even almost all of the story and all 4 main dungeons are technically entirely optional (although you're certainly highly encouraged to do them), as nothing (short of your ability) is stopping you from immediately running to Ganon to kill him in just around 40 minutes. I thought the story was quite good for a Zelda game. Due to the non-linear nature, it wasn't really at the quality of Skyward Sword's story for me, but the way they approach Zelda's character was really interesting and was genuinely touching. The world building is hit and miss, with the Gerudo being the obvious standout race among the 4 present, but it's all very engaging nonetheless (the Gorons were my favorite (THEY LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH AND IT'S SO PRECIOUS <3 )). The game isn't without its flaws, though. Cooking takes AGES, only being able to cook one thing at a time, needing to pick each ingredient from your inventory and put them into your hand, then drop them into the cook pot and watch (or skip) the little cutscene to then get your single food item takes FOREVER when you start cooking a lot of stuff at once. This isn't something huge, but it's something that just came back to irritate me, especially given you need to FIND a cookpot in the world to cook in. You can carry around and light your own fires to wait at (you can't do the Skyrim "wait" just anywhere, it needs to be at a fire, and even then you can only wait until 6am, 12pm, or like 7pm), but you can't carry your own cookpot for whatever reason. Most of my complaints amount to something similarly small, and this is honestly one of the biggest ones (which shows you just how small these problems are). My only other really major complaint other than those would be that I wish you could set hotkeys to swap outfits more quickly and rebind the buttons (because using X to jump and holding B to run, even though you can swap those, is really awkward compared to most other open world games' control schemes, and if I'd been using the joycons more instead of the pro controller I would've gone absolutely nuts). My last design complaint is somewhat spoilery but something I just HAVE to complain about to someone XP. I think it's absolutely ridiculous that the Hero's Clothes that you get are SO bad when you get them and that you need SO many dragon parts to upgrade them to something awesome. It's not like they're easy to get. You've gotta do every shrine! Why make you grind like crazy with the immensely boring dragon pieces? to make the coolest armor actually worth using at all? If the dragons were tough enemies you have to fight, that'd be one thing, but they're no fun to grind at all, especially with the waiting system as weird as it is. When it's way easier to have a near fully/fully upgraded ancient armor set by that point, I have no idea why the Hero's Clothes are such a bitch to upgrade. /rantover :P Edit: I can't believe I totally forgot to talk about presentation! This game's presentation is faaantastic~. The graphics are beautiful, with the enemies and friendly NPC's all having wonderful designs that make them look vibrant and unique. The music is also amazing. This has to be one of the best Zelda soundtracks in recent memory for sure. The only flaw I'd mention about presentation is that the game has some pretty regular framerate dips in areas with lots of particle/grass effects. So in the middle of a grassy forest on flying around a volcano spitting up ash, the framerate is gonna stutter pretty bad. It's nothing that ever made the game unplayable, but it's absolutely something that's impossible to miss and is always annoying when it happens. Verdict: Highly Recommended. The good in Breath of the Wild far, FAR outweighs the bad. This has certainly topped Majora's Mask as my favorite 3D Zelda to play (not by that much, but it has still topped it). Nintendo didn't make a perfect game, but they made a world that, given its expansive size, feels alive in a way I've never felt any other open world game feel, and it's a truly impressive feat just in that regard on top of being loads of fun to play :D I really liked playing through the Mega Man Zero Collection on DS a few years back, so I picked up Mega Man ZX and its sequel. Now I FINALLY picked up the first one, because I was still in a very action game-y mood, and I needed a shorter game to play while I waited for Breath of the Wild to arrive in the mail XD . I played through on Normal mode and it took me just about 11 hours.
This game's level design hearkens back more to Mega Man Zero 1, where the entire map is basically a kind of open-world, almost Metroidvania design to it. It was bad then, and it's bad now, and it really does not do the game any favors other than making it confusing and annoying to get around anywhere to the actual missions :P . The mission designs themselves are fine. It's just actually finding them that's a big pain in the ass :P . When you beat bosses, instead of getting just one new weapon, you get a new armor set. Each one allows you to do things like break blocks, boost in the air/glide, swim, and hang from the ceiling (and they all look like bosses from the Zero games :D ). Their charged weapons require energy, like in a normal Mega Man game, but those aforementioned movement abilities can be done infinitely. Each one even has a special secondary function on the bottom screen of the DS, like analyzing an enemy health bar/weak point, or showing you a map of your immediate surroundings. While the design of the game's Metroidvania world isn't that great, the armors you get to navigate it in are very fun to use :D . The bosses you fight to get them are all the normal good designs. The game certainly isn't as hard as any of the Mega Man Zero games, as far as difficulty goes, but it's hardly easy. Bosses now all have a certain point on their body you can strike for a critical hit (like a front-plate or an armor bit) in addition to their elemental weaknesses that can be exploited through your armors' elemental attacks. It's not the hardest game in the X-line or its spin-offs, but it's hardly easy, and the bosses and levels provide a fun challenge ^w^ Verdict: Recommended. The overworld map design can really make navigating it infuriating at times, but it's still a fine Mega Man Zero game at its heart. As long as you don't mind just remembering where to go or using a map online, you'll have a lot of fun with this if you're a Mega Man fan :D I played and LOVED Shovel Knight back when it came out after I helped Kickstart it, and I've been sitting on my hands for AGES on playing the free DLC's for it. First up is Plague of Shadows, an alternate quest where you get to play through as Plague Knight, one of the bosses from the original game. Design-wise it isn't super different from the main game, but it's still loads of fun.
Most of the levels are more or less unchanged unless it's to encourage you to use Plague Knight's new controls or getting rid of bits that only Shovel Knight could use. Instead of the Duck Tales-style pogo-stick jump that Shovel Knight has, Plague Knight has powers similar to how he fights in the game as he can throw bombs, explode up or at an arc to the side for traversing stages, as well as a small second jump he can do after his tiny normal jump. Moving around the stages with the vertical detonation jumps is super quick and super responsive. The curio sub-weapons can still only be used by a combo of Y+Up, but a couple in particular really stand out in letting you climb all over the place as they either give you an uppercut for more air or an explosive platform to launch off of. It takes some getting used to, but it's great fun to fight as Plague Knight before long. Verdict: Highly Recommended. Other than a changed story to reflect our new hero Plague Knight instead of Shovel Knight (although Shovel Knight is still here sometimes XP), the bosses, map, and even levels are mostly unchanged from the main Treasure Trove game, save for a changed final boss. This isn't particularly a bad thing, but it may make Plague of Shadows a difficult sell if you've only just beat Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove and want something noticeably different. All the same great animation and level design are still here, just with a new playable character with his own new great playstyle and music. If you loved the original Shovel Knight, the first expansion is a pretty safe bet that you'll enjoy it. The second expansion for Shovel Knight REALLY changes things up as you now play a prequel to the main story as Specter Knight. He plays really differently, and Yatch Club Studios toted this as more of a brand new game compared to Plague of Shadows, and they weren't kidding.
Specter Knight once again controls quite differently from the other two playable characters. No pogo-hopping or bomb-exploding for him (and this is a prequel, so he also can't outright fly or teleport yet ). Instead, he can run short distances up walls and launch off of them, as well as use his scythe melee attack in the air to do angular dashes up or down at enemies or nodes nearby to go in for quick attacks or to get some quick altitude. To accommodate this radical new way of play, being that it's more Ninja Gaiden than Ducktales, all the levels have been radically redesigned from the original game, and even all of the bosses have been altered, sometimes very significantly, and it all plays and feels GREAT. Zooming around with the scythe dash feels awesome as you repeatedly try to slash through enemies to take down their health bars before they can smash at you back. On top of the great new levels and playstyle, the new music is some of the best they've done. There was more than once that it just straight up grabbed my attention away from playing the actual game, and I'm almost never one to do that (especially in Tinker Knight's stage). The new story is a touch more serious than the other two, but it's not exactly a tear-jerker. It's more than serviceable though and never irritating, so there's no need to worry about that UwU. Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you don't want something as similar to Treasure Trove as Plague of Shadows, Specter of Torment is an absolutely fantastic use of your time. This game is like Shovel Knight's level design and gameplay crossed with Ninja Gaiden's, with a smattering of Casltevania's aesthetic thrown in for good measure (Specter's fashion armor is even a SOTN reference <3) and it was one I enjoyed the whole way through. I got this for free from My Nintendo rewards and thought I'd give it a play while I listened to audiobooks. It's a fun diversion and a pretty good port of the Wii U version, but it has some noticeable flaws.
It's 140 levels of platforming speed-running with cameos of all sorts of indie game characters from Commander Video to Shovel Knight. It's fairly simple control-wise, but controls well. The presentation is still very nice though. It's easy to tell where your character is, and the music and graphics, while obviously a step down from their Wii U counterpart, are still very pretty UwU. My main complaint in the controls is that this has no reason to have both the charge and the punch bound to the same button (tap once for punch and twice for dash), as it makes the forward charge really finicky and delayed to do because it NEEDS to follow a punch. So many buttons aren't used for anything in this, and I didn't really see any real reason why it needed to be that way. The other kinda lousy thing in this port is the terrain, as occasionally you or enemies will get momentarily caught on it while you're walking and it'll throw off your momentum. The original game also had 9 player multiplayer, and this port has scaled it down to 4, although I never tried out that part of the game. Verdict: Recommended. Especially if you can get it through My Nintendo effectively for free with gold coins like I did, this is an easy game to recommend. If you carry your 3DS around with you like I do, it's a compelling speed run challenge at best and a fun time-waster at worst. Not a perfect port, but more than good enough. I went into this expecting it to be good, and hooooooly damn it was GREAT. Definitely my favorite 3D Mario ever. I certainly didn't intend on it, but I started and this game just got its hooks in me SO good I 100%'d it over the course of about 3 days Xp. All 880 moons and the final-final level all in a little over 40 hours.
Mario's controls are once again familiar but a bit different. Of course the game is centered around how he can throw Cappy, his hat, to attack enemies, use it as a platform to jump on, as well as take over enemies. The only really weird part of how Mario controls are things like his dive move. Because both A and B are jump and X and Y are to throw Cappy, you have to press X/Y in the middle of a ground pound in order to do a forward dive, which takes some getting used to. If you wanna get ALL the moons, you're gonna have to get good at that kind of thing as well, because this game really doesn't mess around with making you get really good at throwing cappy and controlling your running jumps to complete time trials and platforming stages (but you don't need the large majority of the moons in the game, so you can just ignore that stuff if you really wanna). You also can't crazy wall jump to cheat up to places like in Mario 64 or something. If you two walls aren't parallel, you aren't getting much distance up them no matter how close they are together. The other big control change is the use of Cappy to take possession of things, and even though it's a mechanic that could easily feel like a gimmick, but the levels just about always have a different main creature to possess (though goombas are fairly common), and it never felt like a cheap gimmick to me. They always felt fun and like a new, exciting way to get around the level rather than just some chore you need to do to progress, and they really make for a fun way to break up the pace of running around as Mario all the time (even though running around as Mario is quite fun). The layout of the worlds is a weird formula of a series of open-worlds where instead of getting kicked out when you get a moon (instead of a star), you can just keep going. There are about 14 worlds with anywhere from just under 10 to over 80 different moons to collect in each, but you only need like 130-ish to actually complete the game. I just had so much fun collecting them I got WAY more than that before I even beat it the first time XD . Then, when you beat the game, you effectively unlock the last half of the moons, so you can't even get them ALL on your first playthrough anyhow. That didn't stop me from getting nearly all of them before I'd beaten the game anyhow, though XD The personality to the worlds is just SO fun, too! They all feel very different thematically, with each one having different themes, aesthetics, music, and costumes to wear! The costumes are great fun and were always a fun surprise (especially the one in the world you unlock after you beat Bowser). Playing dress-up as Mario wasn't something I thought I'd care about at all but it ended up being a really fun part of the game for me X3 Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is an absolutely amazing Mario game. For me, it was to the level of "how the fuck are the ever going to top this," it was just that fun for me (after Mario Galaxy 2 was a bit of a slog, tbh). I cannot recommend it enough if you like 3D platformers and have a Switch, but if you fall into both of those categories then you probably already have this game XD |
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
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