Hope you like it, Julian. Lusipurr’s reaction is promising that you will, though.

I kinda agree about the bosses. Underwhelming compared to Twilight Princess. That was one of that game’s strongest points.

Disagree mostly about the controls. I mean, I wouldn’t mind traditional controls either, but they are certainly better than you think. Like I state in my review, if you don’t instantly get it and stop trying, you will have the wrong idea. I did that for a while and got frustrated. But then I looked at them differently and actually practiced trying to forget my years of Zelda “training” and it started to feel really good.

I barely touched on it in my review, but I definitely agree about the buy-back stuff. A total bitch, and unnecessarily so. Glad it exists, but still.

@Lusi – I’m glad you enjoy her. The statistics are just so arbitrary that it’s hard for me to take her seriously. It just seems like her character comes from her shtick whereas the norm in the game is for a shtick to come from the character.

Although, you have a good point about The King of Red Lions. I think I just like his character design, and while he didn’t talk much, he seemed like a real character and wasn’t annoying like Navi. Speaking of, SN. Fi is certainly less annoying than Navi. In fact, I wouldn’t call her annoying, just disappointing. It is a beautiful thing when she dances, however.

@Durga – Absolutely. I gave back my review copy and bought my own after beating it and dabbling in Hero mode. I’m starting again on normal and STILL launching myself off islands is so satisfying.

Back to Andy, you’re crazy. Holding A makes the text scroll noticeably faster. It would be nice to have more detailed options, but I was never annoyed at the faster setting.

If I wasn’t so goddamned exhausted, I’d play more right now. It’s been a LONG time since I beat a game so quickly and still wanted to play through it again right after. Definitely not the case with Twilight Princess.

So much I wasn’t even able to talk about in my review. I look forward to further comments as you all play through so we can all discuss!

I’m surprised they didn’t implement the selling system better, as in having an actual dedicated UI (instead of borrowing the standard dialogue system), making it a real sidequest (have it keep track of which insects/drops you’ve sold), and possibly implementing a buyback option. Right now, you have to plow through an absolutely inane amount of exposition: “I’M BUYING BUGS. BECAUSE I LIKE BUGS. ONLY CERTAIN BUGS. THESE BUGS. THIS BUG? 20 RUPEES EACH. HOW MANY? 1? 1 BUG AT 20 RUPEES PER BUG EQUALS 20 RUPEES. THIS OK? OK. I’M TOTALLY GAY FOR YOU. DON’T TELL ANYONE. COME BACK SOON.”

I actually had massive problems with the controller when I started playing. I think it might have been a low battery issue, but the first dive that you do I had to redo 10 times, and the first time you get the sword? Took me a good 30 seconds to get the controller to register the right angel for the skyward charge. Combat still feels like a lot of flailing around. The motion controls are serviceable once you get used to them, but they’re never as reliable as pressing buttons. I’ve lost way too many hearts to Octoroks because the wiimote didn’t register a slash when I tried to bounce a bullet back.

The game is also difficult in a strange way. It’s easy to have your health depleted, but when it comes to challenges and enemy behaviour, it’s really hard to fail. There’s no way for you to lose in the ceremony (and trust me, I was nowhere near the other birds while I tried to figure out how to fly), and the bosses are perfectly content to walk around you without attacking if you’re not right up in their face. You get this strange sense of “OK, I don’t think I’m doing enough damage to this guy, but he’s not trying that hard to kill me either. So… should we just hug it out or something?”

Or the perennial “I’m going to save the princess! But first, I gotta take a nap in this guy’s shop so I can talk to him at night. And then I’m gonna go futz around in that giant pumpkin. And clean this guy’s house. And buy a bigger bug net.”

But you know, this game does get points for having you crawl up the back of a giant nutsack to get the slingshot.

I’m at work. Can you tell?

Even that notwithstanding–weaker than the King of Red Lions? He’s a BOAT. And he hardly ever talks!