Nintendo Switch Press Reactions

[A Black Falcon]

I don't necessarily think that LttP is too hard; I died less in that game than I did in my first times through the three GB/GBC Zelda games, after all, and I like all three of them a lot more than LttP. I did find LttP difficult in some annoying ways, though, such as how much more of a dungeon you have to replay in LttP when you die than in pretty much any newer Zelda game, how the near-useless shield made things harder, etc.

Anyway, if BotW is going to be the hardest 3d Zelda game, okay... but how hard are we talking? Is it going to be a lot harder than the combat in the hardest 3d Zelda game, which I would say is OoT? Unless we're talking ultra-difficult, which I doubt, no, I think that there are a lot of reasons that I expect to dislike BotW, whenever I play it (and I doubt it will be anytime soon), a lot more than the difficulty. In my good-length posts from last E3 on why I don't expect to like this game (here http://tcforums.com/forums/showthread.ph...f-the-Wild ), I didn't mention difficulty in the 'it'll be too hard' sense, only in the 'I don't like the TES Oblivion-and-beyond-like level-scaling concept, if this game does that." It's not one of my bigger potential issues with the game, the core concept is the main problem, but while it sounds like there are harder areas and easier areas, that you can go anywhere, even right to the final boss, right at the start... no! I do not want that in this series, that's all wrong! Progression is key in games, and if you remove that you're left with what, "just wander around and stuff"? No thanks, that's boring.

And on that note, a few weeks ago I started playing Twilight Princess for the Gamecube again, meaning to just start from the beginning and play it a bit...

... and seven hours later I finally managed to force myself to stop and put the controller down. That's still an absolutely exceptional game across the board, and I'm definitely going to keep going through it again! It really is an exceptional masterpiece in almost every way, the slow start and mediocre story being the main weak points. It's pretty sad that Nintendo didn't keep making Zelda games like that; as much as I do like Skyward Sword, it's not quite on TP's level...

And this talking piece of felt was pretty convincing. Apparently it's a launch option that's become more popular lately because it works pretty well. Do an initial launch aimed at the Nintendo diehards, then after building momentum and fixing issues with that initial user base this base also promoting the thing to their friends and family and building up some hype, do a full blown "holiday launch" marketing push closer to Christmas. It wouldn't be a true "soft launch" as it's normally used, but it would be a similar idea and how the 3DS ultimately ended up taking off after a pretty dry first few months. No clue if this is actually what Nintendo's plan is, but it would explain things. That said, if it's the case, I do feel like a bit of a sucker paying premium price for the chance to be Nintendo's beta tester, but hey I gotta get me that Zelda.

Yeah, with the very thin release schedule through most of the year, marketing that is significant but not all-encompassing, seriously lacking OS featureset (no VC, video/internet apps, etc.), and such, the idea that it is kind of a soft launch makes some sense. Is it as good of an idea as Arlo says there, though? I mean, if it works out, sure, it should be fine. But if sales struggle because of those factors it can really damage the platform. You can make up for a bad launch, but it hurts, and in a some cases has badly damaged platforms, the Saturn for example. The N64 in Japan also never recovered from the very thin release schedule in its first year, where after Mario 64 and a couple other games at launch there was next to nothing for months. I fully expect that the Switch will do better than those systems, and yes, most casuals won't be paying attention until Christmas, but it is a potentially risky move. Should they have released the system when they had things more together to launch everything at once? Well, we'll know in a few months I guess. Right now who knows, it could go either way.