Games of Last Year

It'll take me a couple of days to get through the Necrogond Cave. It seems like a good time to reflect on the last year.

At the beginning of last year I was getting ready to do three challenges on Dragon Quest III. I actually did do a no-magic playthrough. I did that playthrough while simultaneously playing through the Super Famicom, Game Boy Color, and Android versions of the game, like I did with Dragon Quest I and II. But Dragon Quest III is a bigger game, and by the end of it I had burned myself out a bit on Dragon Quest. After being away from it a few months, I'm starting to dive back in to my Solo Challenge. 

I've played some other amazing games this last year. Perhaps most notable was playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild through to completion. That is a truly remarkable game. At some point I'll jump back in to resume the daunting task of trying to find everything in the game. But this game is at least a magnitude of order larger than any previous Zelda game in terms of the size of the game world and the things you can do inside it. And I don't have the Switch version, so I can only work on it at home.

Another game I finally decided to play through which has been on my list a very long time is Super Mario Galaxy. I had been wanting to finish 100% on its predecessor, Super Mario Sunshine, but I finally decided, to heck with it. I have 118 Shine Sprites on Sunshine, and it seems obvious to me that the other two Shine Sprites are tied up in 15 blue coins that I haven't found. But it's incredibly difficult to summon the energy to play through the levels yet again to look for them. It's the hardest of the Mario-64-style 3D Mario games for me to get into by far. It has the least interesting level environments of any Mario game, and you have to revisit those same bland levels over and over and over again. It just gets very tedious. 

I only recently realized that this was my real complaint about Mario Sunshine. I had a hard time driving myself through it both times I played it through and couldn't quite put my finger on why I didn't find the game as enjoyable as Mario 64. (I always knew it wasn't Fludd, who works really well as a game design element, even if he doesn't work well as a character.) It took playing through Mario Galaxy to really emphasize to me just what was different about Mario Sunshine.

Super Mario Galaxy, by contrast, has even more variety in its environments than Mario 64 did. And a lot of them are very enjoyable. I never felt I was working overtime in any given level, and didn't get overly tired of any particular part of the game. It was quite a delight to open each new galaxy and try every new level that I unlocked. 

The story of the game is also the best story of any Mario game that's not an RPG. Rosalina's storybook actually made me cry when I finally got to the end of it. I couldn't put this game down until I got all 120 Power Stars.

Super Mario Galaxy reinvigorated a many years dormant love of the Mario series and spurred me onward to play more. This last Christmas I got Super Mario Galaxy 2 and played it through to the end and got 120 stars in this game too, though I set it down before going after the green stars.

I finally started Super Mario Odyssey, but have temporarily put that game back on hold while other games have called me.

In between Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, I started replaying Super Mario 3-D Land and finished it to 100% completion, and finally played through Super Mario 3-D World to the end. I'm still working on that bit by bit, having beat every level with all four of the starting characters and the first three worlds with Rosalina. I'm kind of holding back a bit while trying to help my wife finish her file, which has all the levels completed with everyone except for the Crown world levels. The mystery box on her file still needs Rosalina and the Champion's Road still needs a single character to finish it. But she doesn't have much patience to sit down more than a few tries on either of those levels. But she'll be sad if I finish my file out and hers gets passed over, I think.

I also did a replay of 100% completion on Super Mario World, which I have on my Wii.

Lots of great games. I've had fun despite a challenging year. And I hope to complete many more good games in this coming year.

Dragon Warrior III Solo

So, rather than start out trying to play catch-up, I think I'll just write a little bit about the now.

Just recently, I resumed a years-old game file on Dragon Warrior III. It was the first "challenge quest" I ever started: a solo Hero on Dragon Warrior III. When I started it, I had gotten up to Baharata, just before the second Kandar fight, but I stalled out. A year or so ago, I picked it up again and beat Kandar, but didn't go any further. I've decided it's time for me to finish this attempt off.

Now I'm going to tell a story that probably just shows how strange and weird my approach to some games can sometimes get. It starts off when Dragon Warrior was a brand new game, and I was about nine years old trying to finish it. I got stuck searching for the Stones of Sunlight, which were rumored to be in Tantegel Castle. Nintendo Power didn't cover that game that far, as I recall, and so I was left to my own devices to figure it out. I used the Search command on every single square in that castle, and still hadn't found it. I had a friend over who decided he wanted to look. I told him he wouldn't find them, not after I'd gone through that painstaking effort without any results. It turns out, I was only half right. When he gave up looking, he exited the castle to the right. I looked up just as he did, and I noticed what I hadn't before, that he didn't exit the map until several steps after he left the apparent edge. So even though he didn't find them per se, his effort led to my discovery of the item.

I always remembered that effort of searching for them. It may have been at least part of my inspiration for an odd playthrough I did many years later. When I replayed that game the first time as an adult, I decided I was going to step on every tile in the game.

It's a little quirky, I realize, but I did it nevertheless. And that was the playthrough where I first discovered the game's level cap, which I had never previously reached or looked up. But stepping on every square, I hit it naturally before getting to the end, without any other dedicated grinding.

Inspired by my level cap discovery, I decided to try the same thing in Dragon Warrior II. It was a much more involved effort, but I also hit and discovered that game's level caps for the first time in like manner. I have mused a few times since, that it would almost require a strategy like this to find the Thunder Sword without a guide or a lucky drop from an enemy.

Soon after that, I did that for Dragon Warrior III as well. But I was disappointed, because I finished the game without hitting any level or experience cap. I was in the mid forties for my character levels, which I later learned was less than half of the max level in the game.

But when I started my solo challenge some years after that, I reasoned that with just one character, I might well hit, or at least come much closer to, that level cap with this strategy. So I started my file with that in mind.

Well, as I've noted here before, I've hit the level cap on this game on a different cartridge for the hero and all other job classes. But even though I started this file years ago and circumstances have changed, I find myself unable to convince myself to not finish it in the same way I started it. So I've been bravely trudging along, stepping on every tile in the game.

It makes it take longer, but I've been making steady progress the last two weeks. Last night I got the Sword of Gaia. I've completed everything else in the game possible without doing the Necrogond Cave, which I plan to start tonight. If all goes well, I hope to be able to attempt Baramos's Castle before the weekend is over.

Has it Been That Long?

Wow. I knew it had been a while since I'd posted anything on my blog, but I didn't actually realize it had been more than a year. The old blog has been coming into my mind a few times lately, and I finally decided to load it up. I'm not sure I'm fully ready to write much now, but there were two posts I began on 2/15 of last year still saved as drafts, so I thought I'd post what I started writing but never finished:

Post 1:

I'll take a quick tangent, since it came up, and since I never got around to blogging about it last year. My mother-in-law bought our family a Nintendo Switch for Christmas, partly because my daughter is her only granddaughter and her only grandkid that's under 20 years old, and she likes to spoil her. But she also knew I'd been dying for once since well before it came out

I'm a die-hard Nintendo fan. I was disappointed somewhat with the Wii U, a system that I always felt should have been better than it actually was. I don't think the core idea was a bad one at all, but I don't think Nintendo themselves ever quite figured out what they actually wanted to do with it. And they really seemed to be taking a step away from the amazing innovations that the Wii brought to the table. This generation marked the first time I really began to wonder if Nintendo's days as a console maker were numbered.

I followed whatever news, or lack thereof, I could about "Nintendo NX" for a long time before they finally unveiled the system with its official name and first trailer near the end of 2016. I was floored, and very intrigued. It was exactly everything that had been speculated for some time, but it was somehow also completely different from anything I'd imagined. I found myself getting very excited, and was checking daily for any further information clear until they had their full unveiling.

When they came out with the full reveal, detailing all of the features of the system and Joy-cons, I was ecstatic. I knew right away that I had to have one, something I never really felt with the Wii U (at least beyond my own desire to collect Nintendo systems). When I really understood how versatile and capable this system actually was, I was overwhelmed with an excitement that paralleled the excitement I felt when the Wii was first unveiled to the public. This, I thought, was the true successor to the Wii, as well as an appropriate successor to the Wii U. 

I finally have one now and am quite happy with it. The only down side is that I still have no money for games, and the hit games currently on it are too far out on my play queue (like Super Mario Odyssey) or difficult to justify buying because I already own it on the Wii U (like Breath of the Wild). But I've enjoyed playing the games we do have with my family, like Mario Kart and Pokken Tournament. We also got 1-2-Switch, which has been fun when we've had company over, and really helped my wife stay awake on New Year's Eve.

Post 2:

Since completing 100% on Dragon Quest III, I have been devoting time here and there to several different games. But truthfully, most of those games are also Dragon Quest III. I intend to do everything with this game that I did with Dragon Quest I and II, which includes playing through the remake versions and comparing them to the originals, and playing three challenge quests: a no-magic challenge, a solo challenge, and a minimalist challenge, all with the same parameters I used in these challenges on DQI and II. I'm also trying to take a few hours each weekend to advance my Hero Mode file on Skyward Sword, and I've been playing around a little bit with the Nintendo Switch demo of Dragon Quest Builders, which is very intriguing to me. My five year old daughter found that demo and has been playing quite a bit more of it than I have. It seems to be her new favorite game.

End Old Drafts.

I wanted to write about Dragon Quest III and the Switch, but apparently didn't find time to finish my thoughts on either one. I think I just had so much more I wanted to write than I had time and energy for, and I got tired of feeling behind on my thoughts, and life started pushing down hard around that time and for some while after, so I just kind of crashed and burned.

I think I really would like to start writing a bit more, but the time situation hasn't changed much. When I'm home, I'd rather play games than write about them, and I just don't have much other time besides my lunch break at work, when I usually end up napping and/or browsing Facebook.

But I feel like I'm coming out of a haze I've been in during yet another stressful year, and I want to start trying and doing more things, so I might just come back here a few times.

Dragon Quest III, 100% Completion

Near the end of last year, after deciding to play Skyward Sword mostly on the weekends with Savannah, and having finished my Dragon Quest II solo challenge, I decided it was finally time to make a push to complete my game file on Dragon Quest III. On my Famicom file from several years ago, from small pushes over the years, I had pushed my eight characters into about the 60's level range, and had obtained every item in the game except for the elusive Staff of Reflection, to use the NES name for the item.

The Staff of the Reflection is easily the rarest item in this game. It has a drop rate of only 1/128, the same as Dragon Quest II's Mysterious Hat from that game's Magic Vampirii. But there are some key things that make the drop even harder to get.

First of all, the Archmages that drop it are less common encounters. Magic Vampirii are one of the most common enemies on the upper floors of the road to Rhone, which location is easy to get to from the game's last save point. Archmages, on the other hand, though they have more locations you can meet them, seem to appear only rarely in all of those locations except one. The last few floors of Zoma's castle are the only place I could find where you meet them with any kind of real consistency. But, unlike the other locations, where you frequently meet them by themselves or in groups of two with no other monsters, the Archmages in Zoma's castle always appear with other enemies.

That leads straight into the next difficulty. In both games, item drops are based off of whichever enemy is killed last in the battle. Magic Vampirii are possibly the easiest enemy to kill in their respective groups, and it's usually a fairly easy matter to dispose of all other enemies in the battle within the first round or two of battle. There's a little danger of them putting you to sleep if you save them for last, but if they are the only ones left there's little chance that falling asleep will actually be dangerous, since their attacks are weak. It usually takes little effort to dispatch all enemies in the battle and save at least one Magic Vampirus for last.

Archmages, on the other hand, pose a unique challenge. They are the only enemy in the game with the Revive spell, which they cast almost every time they have a fallen ally, as long as they have MP to do so. This makes it very difficult to save them for last without a drawn-out battle that exhausts all of their MP. It's not a problem if they're the only ones in the battle to start with, but as I said before, any location where this happens also has a very low encounter rate for this enemy. And unfortunately, most of the enemies they appear with in Zoma's castle are enemies that are tedious to fight, that usually take more than one hit for even the highest-level characters to kill.

I used the depths of Zoma's castle for a while as my primary leveling spot, hoping to snag the Staff along the way. But it wore on me after a while. I prefer to grind with the Golden Claw, but getting to the lower floors takes forever with it. If I left my system on, it wasn't so bad, because I could get there, take a break, and spend a few play sessions there. But at least once I ended up losing my progress after a few play sessions without saving, which initiated one of my several-month-long breaks in this game. Ultimately it became tedious to level here more than occasionally.

When I resumed in earnest a few weeks ago, I found myself spending most of my time near Rimuldar. I was surprised just how much quicker it went. Experience yield per battle is somewhat lower, not counting Metal Babbles, but my time rate of experience seemed to increase nevertheless due to the speed at which the battles were being finished. And it's just plain more fun to fight Metal Babbles, and delightful to beat them, and they are quite plentiful around there.

I did experiment briefly with the second floor of Zoma's castle, where Archmages appear with Metal Babbles from time to time. It's a near ideal combination, because, at least in the Japanese version, when they Revive the Metal Babbles, you still keep the experience from the first kill and you can get it a second time if you kill the enemy again. And if they run away, you don't have to worry about not killing the Archmage last. The only problem is, as with other spots, the Archmage encounter rate is just too low.

With Rimuldar as my primary spot, I accelerated my level up rate quite a bit. I was originally expecting it to take me until March to get all eight of my characters to 99, but I ended up finishing in the first half of January.

For anyone interested, a merchant peaks out the soonest, followed by the hero, then the soldier, then the goof-off. I can't remember which hit first out of my pilgrim and wizard. Fighter takes second longest. The sage takes the most experience, at over 9,000,000. All classes hit 99 before reaching the max experience possible, which is 9,999,999. (I read somewhere that it was 9,999,990, but that's not true from my observation. Maybe the U.S. version is different.)

Incidentally, the experience cost for these last two classes is worth it. The fighter far eclipses all melee fighters by this time, and the sage leaves other magic users far in the dust (although a wizard remains useful due to their high agility, especially in metal hunting). My fighter maxed out her strength naturally, and came very close to maxing out her agility. Although, curiously, in those last ten levels, she became the only character I ever saw level up without gaining a single stat bonus!

Feeling very accomplished with all level 99 characters, I resumed my quest for the Staff of Reflection. After some mathematical research and calculations, I settled on a number of fights that should give me a great chance of getting the drop. I used the drop rate of 1/128 as a reference, and calculated after how many fights my chances of NOT getting the drop would be 1/128 or less. I arrived at the number of 619 battles as my target number. Then I rolled up my sleeves and went to work.

At level 99 you can sucessfully run from any regular encounter in the game, so it didn't take long to get down to those lower floors, even with the golden claw. I ran from nearly every encounter that didn't have an Archmage, though I did fight a few revenge fights against enemies that surprised me just to break up the monotony. I left my game on between sessions to minimize time travelling and maximize time fighting.

On my first weekend I logged in a total of 128 fights, choosing to end there because the drop rate is 1/128. I didn't get the drop, which was discouraging, but it was still below my target number, and I calculated that at this point I still had over a 30% chance of not getting it. So I trudged on through the following week, fighting 10 to 20 battles a night.

By the start of my three-day weekend I was nearing 200. I was starting to get discouraged because I knew that I had over an 80% chance of getting it by now, and still didn't have it. Somehow or other, psychologically, having an 85% chance of getting it feels greater than having a 15% chance of not getting it. I had to keep reminding myself that the numbers still had plenty of room, and that I still had a long way to go for my target. I had to patiently work to my target.

By Friday afternoon I had passed 256, and felt like I could have two by now. I remembered all the many battles, likely well over 100, that I had fought before I started counting, and estimated that I was rather unlucky at this point. But even plugging that in, my calculations still showed that my chances of not having it were as good as 1/11, which is still reasonable. I realized that at the rate I was going, I would probably have the staff by the end of the month, which still seemed reasonable if I could just keep from getting discouraged. I had to trust the numbers.

I decided to try and push it to 300 fights before the end of the night, but I didn't quite get that many. Because at the end of fight 293, after seeing my experience rewarded, that little blinking arrow appeared, that I had longed to see for hundreds of fights, which indicated that there was more than just experience and gold to be had for the fight. I gasped aloud and hit the button to reveal the following text, which showed the Japanese name for the Staff of Reflection, and let out a giddy squeal that my wife heard from the other end of the house. After a brief celebration, I quickly cast my Outside and Return spells to immediately save my game. I probably saved it two or three times just to be sure, then reset and backed up my game file to the other two adventure logs.

So I've now conquered this game with 100%. I took me a long effort, on and off for several years. But it feels very worth it. Now I have begun simultaneous efforts to max out levels on Dragon Quest IV, and to play the remake versions of Dragon Quest III. I am also planning out my challenge quests for Dragon Quest III, including a minimalist challenge that I am very excited to try out.

Dragon Quest II Solo

It's high time I finally finish my account of finishing Dragon Quest II solo, without any kind of aid from the two ally characters.

When I left off around a year ago, I had made it all the way to Rhone, but was having difficulty progressing. Part of that was due to inadvertently accepting an unnecessary restriction that nearly cripples this challenge at the end stages. Namely, I wouldn't accept a death for my character without resetting.

It wasn't originally my intent when I started the challenge. But I started doing it to save gold, and by the time I got to where I didn't need to anymore, some twisted OCD-like behavior took over and I just kept at it. But it's not possible to keep from dying in Rhone, whether in a solo challenge or not, and getting experience becomes considerably more tedious with this restriction. Especially if you happen to be playing on a Famicom cartridge, where you have to put in a lengthy password whenever you restart.

The tediousness of it all caused me to defer playing this game for several months. I came back to it a couple of times during the year. At some point I finally made the decision to drop the death restriction, and finally began to move forward.

I was using as a guide the posted experience of a user on gamefaqs.com who had previously done this challenge. Based on his account, I assumed that Atlas would only be beatable with a critical hit, and would therefore be impractical to attempt without the Sword of Destruction. So at some point early in the grind, I dropped my Thunder Sword and fought Giants (called Gigantes in the original Japanese) until they dropped one. I actually found myself able to beat Atlas with it as early as level 37.

I forget the details of my first time through the boss run, but from the beginning of this challenge I had planned to make one major difference from the account that I read. Whereas he fought all the way through with the Sword of Destruction, and was lucky enough to finish Malroth without freezing at the wrong moment, I realized that this wasn't necessary. The Sword of Destruction is useful only because it gives you a much higher critical hit chance, but Malroth is immune to critical hits, so the sword becomes a liability at that point. But except for Hargon, none of the other final dungeon bosses respawn until you reset the game or turn it off. So as long as you don't do one of those things, once Atlas is dead, who is the only one that requires a critical hit to beat, you can go back, uncurse, and re-equip the Thunder Sword to fight the others.

I attempted to follow this strategy after beating Atlas for the first time, but after leaving my system on several days my wife accidentally unplugged the system. I didn't lose my level, because I kept getting passwords, but I knew I would have to go through the process again of getting the Sword of Destruction, beating Atlas, and getting the Thunder Sword again (I couldn't carry them simultaneously because I wasn't using inventory spaces outside of the main characters, and there just wasn't enough room).

Anyway, after this setback, I ended up taking another break for a few months. Then, closer to the end of the year, I think around the time I finished Twilight Princess on Gamecube, I moved the Famicom to my man-cave room and this game replaced Twilight Princess as my default not-in-the-TV-room game.

By the time I had successfully beaten Atlas again, I was in the lower- to mid-40 level range. When I finally made it to Malroth (I can't remember if I quite got to him before this point) I realized that I was going to want every stat boost I could get from leveling. Although I think I did try the fight each level, I'm pretty sure I didn't best him until a few tries after hitting level 50, which is the maximum level.

Taking inspiration from a video I saw on the Internet, I sought out the Light Sword for the final fight. It took a bit of a grind, because once I ditched the no-dying rule my gold reserves quickly went to zero and stayed there, but its Surround effect works on Malroth, and even though Surround in general is noticeably less effective in this game than every other Dragon Quest, any time Malroth misses you is a huge bonus. You can keep yourself alive for quite a bit against him with the Shield of Strength, as long as he doesn't put you to sleep, but it takes, if I remember, 4 or 5 hits to beat him, and if you have to take time to heal yourself, the odds of him casting Healall are very strong. A single miss from him can make the difference in the fight. If you're lucky enough to have two, your odds go way up. The tradeoff, unfortunately, is that with no backpacks I had to get rid of my helmet to make room for the other sword.

Incidentally, I did try fighting him with the Falcon Sword, which is the sword I actually used most of the time I was grinding. Against most enemies, it ends up the superior weapon. But against high-defense enemies, it loses its advantage. Two hits with the Falcon Sword consistently does noticeably less damage than one hit with the Thunder Sword against Malroth.

(I'd like to note that the same is true with Metal Babbles--the Falcon Sword can easily fail to kill one in two hits long after the Thunder Sword is guaranteed to kill one in one hit, even at level 50 if I remember right. There's only a very small window, I think, where the Falcon Sword is more effective than other weapons against Metal Babbles, but that window might actually be closed by the time or shortly after you can afford the Falcon Sword!)

I don't remember how many tries it took at level 50, but I think it was several, but I finally did it. I finished nearly a year after I had blogged about getting to Rhone, but at last it is done. And when I finally finished the last of my challenges for Dragon Quest II, I decided it was finally time to focus on finishing 100% on Dragon Quest III, which brings me up to my current endeavors.

Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, Finally Catching Up

It wasn't until after I'd started on A Link Between Worlds that I finally got around to revisiting Twilight Princess. I started as in my other games by loading up my game file and revisiting each environment, looking for hidden items. I used my wolf sense across the entirety of the overworld map, just to make sure I was thorough. In this way I found all of the Golden Bugs, and also found and went through the Cave of Trials that I had somehow missed the first time around. But I was still missing at least six Pieces of Heart. Not sure how or where I could have missed so many, and feeling disheartened (no pun originally intended, but I like how it came out), I knew that I'd probably need to do one more playthrough.

Unlike the DS entries I've just covered, this had been my second time playing through this game, and my first time on the Wii. For my last replay, I decided to go back to the Gamecube version, which would allow me to digest my opinion of it alongside the Wii version. It would also allow me more time to play, since the Gamecube is in a different room from the main TV and I could play while my wife watched TV, for example. Whenever I found something, I went back to my Wii file and got it there, too, until I finally found everything.

On my last playthrough I repeatedly had a maddening experience. As thorough as I thought I'd been, I still found nearly half a dozen different locations I had previously missed. Each time, with eager anticipation, I walked up to the previously unknown treasure chest. Each time, I was seriously disappointed when I pulled out an orange Rupee. 

On a side note, if you look at the amount of Rupees you can find in the game, and the amount of things in the game you can spend those Rupees on, and take the ratio of the two, I think you would find that Twilight Princess has the highest such ratio in the entire series. It is surprisingly difficult to not have your wallet maxed out in this game. I think, in retrospect, that the single most useful feature of the Magic Armor is not for defense, but to give you room to accept the 97th orange Rupee you find in the game.

Anyway, it took a while, but I finally did find them all. It wasn't as bad as I initially thought; it turned out four of the ones I was missing were in two dungeons. I'm not sure how I missed those, as I always make it a point in every Zelda game to collect every chest in every dungeon. But there it is. I know at least one of them was one that I couldn't figure out how to get, in Snowpeak Mansion. I had speculated maybe I needed to come back later, but I finally discovered the solution was something you can do while you're there the first time. The other one was easy though, I must have just missed seeing it somehow with my compass. As for the two in the Twilight Realm, I honestly can't remember why I might have passed those by.

There was one I found on the overworld, which you need the spinner to get to across a chasm near the entrance to the Hidden Village. It's easy to overlook since it's across a chasm.

The last one I found was also at Snowpeak. This is where doing a replay may have helped. I had tried very hard to get a good time racing the Yeti on my other file, not to get a reward, and not remembering that there was no reward for the very first time you race him. When I saw that on my last file, I scratched my head. But then I did something that I'm surprised I hadn't done before: I spoke to the Yeti's wife after the race. Sure enough, she challenges you to a more difficult race and gives you the Piece of Heart for the reward.

Twilight Princess as a whole is a game that I have mixed feelings about, which I can't quite resolve. And not because I have any bad feelings about it. It's more like I have these really great feelings about it, but when I look back on the game after I put the controller down, for some reason I can't put my finger on, it seems like something was missing.

There's really nothing negative I can find to say about the game, and every time I've played it through I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I actually can't stand having such thoughts and impressions that I can't qualify, so I'm always trying to find a reason why. After thinking about it a lot, the only thing I can come up with is that, whereas most of the Zelda games work hard to come up with some angle or other to really make themselves stand out, Twilight Princess mostly reworks concepts that have already been used. It is obviously aiming to be like Ocarina of Time, but the things that the game does to set it apart from Ocarina of Time are things that have been done before in other games. The Twilight Realm is highly reminiscent of the Dark World from A Link to the Past. And the wolf mechanic is essentially the same as the transformation masks on Majora's Mask. So all in all, even though everything this game does is done extremely well, it just doesn't end up standing out in memory the way other games in the series do. (I think this line of reasoning also may apply to A Link Between Worlds as part of the reason I wasn't as impressed by it.)

But I absolutely love the story in this game. It's right up there with all of the other 3-D Zelda stories. The characters in this game are very well done. It has all the right moments to tug at all the right emotions. And Link's companion Midna is far and away one of the most interesting characters in the entire series, and one of the only guide-type characters that I really came to care about. She may be my favorite, but it's hard for me to pick a favorite between her and Zelda from Spirit Tracks.

This game also possibly has the best dungeons of any Zelda game, which has always been one of my favorite parts of any Zelda. I also love the range of new types of equipment, such as the Spinner and the Ball and Chain.

Finishing Twilight Princess brings me to one of my most pleasant surprises in playing through the series, which is playing through The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I have yet to digest my full opinions on this, because I have still only played this one through once. My first playthrough must have finished around March or April, because I remember that I didn't finish it before the release of Breath of the Wild. 

After finishing my last replay of Twilight Princess, which must have been near the end of November, I spent several weeks looking for the collectibles in Skyward Sword. I wanted to find them all before starting a replay, if I could, because Hero Mode replaces your original file, and I wanted the original file complete. I considered replaying a non-Hero mode file if I couldn't find everything, but it turned out unnecessary, as I found all of the remaining Pieces of Heart and Gratitude Crystals in my final scour of the game. In general the environments in this game are a little more compact than previous games, so it's not as difficult to go through the whole game again. And this game's Piece of Heart count is the smallest of any 3-D Zelda, and any Zelda since the Oracle Games. I think the last Piece of Heart I found was one you get racing mine carts in Lanayru.

As I believe I mentioned in one of my early blog posts, Skyward Sword is a game I tried to play years ago, but I didn't get past the second dungeon before I put it down and didn't pick it back up again. I couldn't quite put my finger on why it didn't grab me then, but I always knew that a part of it was because I felt out of touch with the series as a whole. It was a primary motivation for me to go back and replay the series, including the games I hadn't played yet.

I have to say that once I finished that endeavor, coming back to Skyward Sword was quite a different experience, and far more engaging than I had expected. Even though I had tried through the years to avoid anything about this game on the internet, I had nevertheless gotten some wind of the impression that it hadn't been received as well by the community. So I tried not to get my hopes up too high. But I also was determined not to keep them too low either, as I certainly don't always agree with the internet population's general consensus. But the overall experience very much surprised me. I think that this might actually be my new favorite Zelda game, even before digesting my impressions in a replay.

The game's story is every bit as good as other 3-D Zelda's. In some ways it's particularly engaging because of Zelda's more active role in the story. I don't know if the story is actually better than previous games, but I really enjoyed it. I love the way they developed Groose's character through the game, and the game's incarnation of Impa is probably my favorite. This game's ending makes me tear up a bit, perhaps more than other Zeldas.

I absolutely love this game's soundtrack. The Ballad of the Goddess is a new favorite of mine, but I really like the music all the way through. Although I do wish that there were a bit more to the harp you play in-game.

I am part of the camp that absolutely loved the controls in this game. I know that this is a dividing point among fans, but it's one area where I can't fully understand the other point of view. I thought that what they did with Wii Motion Plus was amazing, and I am very disappointed that it probably won't be the future direction taken with the series. This game has the most engaging sword combat in the entire series, and sword combat is the one thing that Breath of the Wild feels like it's taken a step backward in. It's hard for me to go back to traditional controls after playing this game. Yes, there are things in this game that could have and sometimes maybe should have been done with traditional controls. But nothing beats using your actual controller as your sword. Also, throwing and rolling bombs or other items, cracking your whip, swinging the bug net, and aiming your bow or slingshot are all things that come off better with the Wii's unique control capabilities. I'm very grateful that the last one on this list, at least, was not abandoned in Breath of the Wild.

Lastly, one of the things I loved about the game was its difficulty. In my last entry I described my feelings about the general challenge level in the Zelda series since Ocarina of Time. In this game, for the first time since the series went 3-D, combat became a real focus to the point that it actually takes some skill to stay alive. At first I was a little put off when I started the game with six hearts, something very nontraditional for Zelda. But then I learned that for the first time in forever, you actually need those hearts. It's the first Zelda game I played in decades where I actually felt a danger of dying, and the first one in decades where I actually found myself actually using the potions and fairies I had on hand. Part of this is due to the learning curve associated with the new control scheme, but I found that even when I had gotten used to it, I still found a lot of challenge fighting enemies. This game involves actual skill in gameplay, something that I hadn't really seen in Zelda since the NES days. And it's something that definitely adds a lot to the experience.

I have been very excited to try the game's Hero Mode, especially since playing the one in A Link Between Worlds. I started about a month ago, but I haven't made much progress. My little 5-year old girl was watching me as I played through the game's opening areas, and she took a great interest in it. So I've decided that I'm mostly going to play it when she's around. That has so far limited me to a few hours a week, when both of us are home on the weekends and my wife is not using the TV. I finished the first dungeon last weekend. I died twice in Faron woods before the dungeon, and once inside, but otherwise managed to make it through, though I used my only potion before I got to the boss. Fortunately I caught a fairy in the large room outside of where you get the beetle. Ghirahim took all of my hearts, but my fairy kept me alive, and I was able to best him. I definitely got a lot of practice on him on the Thunder Dragon's challenge on my first playthrough.

I don't mind the slow progress, because I've been using my former Zelda time to resume a focus on Dragon Quest II and III. And I've really made a lot of progress there, and am really excited for a few things to try with that game on the horizon. More about that soon!

Spirit Tracks and A Link Between Worlds

After first playing, then months later replaying The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, I think I have decided that it is my new favorite handheld Zelda game. I don't even know if I can fully put my finger on why I enjoy this game so much, but it was definitely the one I looked most forward to replaying, and the one I had most fun replaying.

For one thing, I love the music in this game. It has one of the my favorite soundtracks of any Zelda, handheld or not. I could listen to the train-driving theme for hours, and I also love the background music in the regular areas. I like the new tools this game introduces. And even though its operation seems inconsistent at times, and doesn't work well at all on the trains I ride every day, I still love that you have to play a musical instrument by actually blowing into the system. Some day I want to master this instrument.

I also really love the story. In particular, this is one of the best and most engaging incarnations of the character Zelda in the entire series. This version of the princess is also easily one of the best companion/guide characters in the series, possibly even better than Midna, who was my previous favorite. This is actually the only handheld Zelda game with more than minimal involvement from the eponymous character. But her presence in this game rivals her roles in the best of the best console iterations.

Spirit Tracks didn't really have any particular collectibles whose acquisition stumped me overall. I do remember having a hard time with trying to deliver Dark Ore to Linebeck, before I realized I wasn't taking the correct path (and in fact hadn't even unlocked the correct path at that time). I really liked the variety of things to search for in this game, from Heart Containers to filling a stamp book to finding rabbits in the overworld, and ultimately finally finding the special scrolls. This game has a lot to offer for an intrepid treasure hunter.

I also liked the treasure and train upgrade system in this game much better than the one in Phantom Hourglass. It's a lot more fun to look for the treasures when they have more specific uses than just selling them. I also find it fascinating to see how the treasures from Phantom Hourglass evolved into this game's system, which was the clear predecessor to the crafting system in Skyward Sword, which preceded a much more massive and detailed crafting system in Breath of the Wild.

This game also has my favorite final boss sequence of any handheld Zelda.

Even though both DS games seem to get less love on the internet, I enjoyed think Spirit Tracks in particular is fantastic. On the other hand, A Link Between Worlds seems to have been much more popular in general, but my first impressions of the game were relatively underwhelming.

A Link Between Worlds is a good game, and I've had a great time with it. It is great for evoking nostalgia, which is probably a huge reason it was so well received. And it does wonders with the flattening-into-a-wall mechanic prominent throughout the game. I think the main problem with it is that it does very little to set itself apart from previous hits. In particular, when comparing it with its predecessor, A Link to the Past (and the game invites direct comparison on every level) it seems inferior at nearly every point of comparison. It's still a great game, and better than many of the other overhead 2-d entries. But it's not better than A Link to the Past, and I'm not sure it's definitively better than Minish Cap either. 

There is one very important caveat to my impression of A Link Between Worlds, which I only discovered on my replay, which I'll discuss in a moment. This is the first game that I did not need to do a replay to find pieces of heart or anything else, because I found all of those with ease on my first playthrough. I actually found all the Pieces of Heart before I had even completed the game, making this the easiest game in the series to find all of the Pieces of Heart. And the Maimais aren't too hard to find with the Maimai map. In retrospect maybe I should have tried without using it, but it's so integrated into the map display that I didn't even really think about not using it.

But, aside from reliving the story and giving myself a chance at a second impression, there was still a very compelling reason to replay the game, which is the Hero Mode that unlocks upon finishing the game.


And, wow! It's amazing how much the Hero Mode impacted my overall impression of the game. This was my first time trying a Hero Mode in the Zelda series. The only other one I've played that has such a mode is Skyward Sword, but my replay of Skyward Sword didn't start until after my replay of this game. I found the Hero Mode to be one of the most refreshing things I've seen in this series for a long time.

I've loved the Zelda series since before it was a series, when I had Zelda for my NES as a child. Before I entered adulthood, I was a dedicated fan who had played every game in the series. Even though overall I have loved the direction the series has taken, there is one major complaint I have had about its direction, which has been a valid complaint at least since the series went to 3D in Ocarina of Time. My complaint has been that the games are too easy from a combat perspective. There's a great amount of challenge in solving the dungeons and finding pieces of heart and other collectibles. But when it comes to just staying alive, the games have been ridiculously easy for a long time. 

For example, I always get frustrated with keeping space in my bottles. For, even in my first playthroughs of every game at least since Majora's Mask, every time I've obtained a potion, I've never found on occasion where I actually needed to use it. I usually have to end up drinking it at some point just to make room for something else in a bottle. But once you get one or two heart containers, there's just nothing there to put you in danger of dying.

I remember in the original Legend of Zelda that there were enemies that would do two entire hearts worth of damage to you if you just had your green clothes. At full health that would take eight hits to kill you. With the blue ring you could extend that to sixteen hits, but there were a lot of these enemies in the late stages of the game, so potions were a necessity unless you were particularly good at avoiding damage. Zelda 2 is notorious for its difficulty in keeping your character alive, and even though Link to the Past was easier than both of these games, it still kept more of the challenge than entries since then.

So when I first tried the Hero Mode here and the weakest enemy in the game did two hearts worth of damage to me, after I picked my jaw off of the ground I went through and found myself thoroughly enjoying the rest of the game. I died many times, and I actually found use for my potions. In fact, when I fought the final boss I had to use all of my potions to survive my first try.

This game offered a very refreshing challenge that I haven't seen in so long. Although, as I'll probably write in my next entry, the challenge is one of the things I loved about Skyward Sword as well, even not considering the Hero Mode. When I subsequently replayed Twilight Princess, I found myself being very careful to avoid damage and then a little disappointed when I would get hit and realize how unnecessary it was. At some point, I really want to play the Wii U versions of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, just because I know they added Hero Modes.

I'll finish this entry with a quick note that I just need one more Streetpass medal to get all fifty and really finish 100% completion. Unfortunately, as of this week, my 3DS doesn't seem to be working and is in need of repair. Hopefully that won't be too expensive, or else I may be 3DS-less for a little while.