But Epic Games Store is evil! 🤣

Trojan horse. Get in for free and then release the kraken. You are doomed.

I finished it earlier and there just aren’t enough hours in the day to list off all the ways that it’s amazing.

But one thing I will say that you didn’t touch on much is the dungeon maker.

Eeeeehhhhh you know, the rest of the game doesn’t suffer because of its inclusion so I don’t really count this as a ding against it but, wow, this is entirely uninteresting to me. It just doesn’t hit any notes for me, because it’s all stuff you’ve done before, just remixed. There’s not a lot of room to do anything interesting there.

I had thought this was a beta test for a Zelda maker, but I read an interview where apparently the devs were asked to make something like Mario Maker for this and struggled to find a fun way to do it.

That, and the FPS dips (I think it goes well below 30), are the only complaints I have about this. The original Link’s Awakening was a strong contender for my favorite Zelda game, and this remake pushed it just high enough so I can say yes, this is it. This is my favorite. I love the new art style. I don’t think it’s necessarily better or worse than the original blocky pixels, but it’s a great modern yet simple take on it. But really, it’s the QoL updates that let you do things without so much micromanaging.

And the new score, holy cow. Yeah, the original chiptunes are great like you said, but this score feels like what the composers originally intended, even though the Gameboy couldn’t quite pull it off.

I think the score is symbolic to the game as a whole: the original and the remake can coexist well. This feels like the original, so much that I still remembered where some stuff was, and the maps from the old game are still accurate (except for a few minor things). But this could also be brand new. And in this way it excels in a way most remakes don’t: it almost immaculately recreates the original without being beholden to its mechanics that may have aged out.

To put it simply: this is one of my favorite games of all time, recreated to be even better than I ever remembered it.

Also I’m not seeing a bunch of similarity with Link Between Worlds, honestly. I don’t think people are talking about it much because it’s a very different visual language. I’ll give you the music a bit, but visually it seems more like an attempt to bridge the 2D and N64ish era rather than doing its own thing. It doesn’t seem like just a platform limitation but a whole different set of inspirations.

Back in my day games ran at 15 fps and we liked it! :) It is sad to hear about the FPS issue. Do you see the same performance docked and in handheld?

I never tried it handheld, only docked. It definitely wasn’t game killing and it seemed like it was mostly around transitions from inside a dungeon to outside, or after fast traveling.

Interesting analysis: https://youtu.be/UnckUk830HA

You can't install the cartridge games to internal memory. Which sucks but it makes sense.

However, there are more graphically (and presumably data) intense games on the Switch that run fine, so I'm hoping this is just an optimization issue they can patch.

Ha, now I wish I still had a save file with Marin.

> The skill seems perfect for a wyvern fight. I'm sure if I had this before when I fought the wyvern both times, I wouldn't have died at all.

Think about it this way-- warrior primal scream can give you a 3x attack, OR the Disappear ability gives you (functionally) a 5x attack, but the Rogue attack strength will generally be lower.

Mage still has White, which can nearly one-hit the wyvern if you've planned well.

Yep, that was a typo :D

Haha, oh man, I want to start the game with 50 million gold now. 😂

I found Mage's skill pretty much useless up until the Wyvern. The number of times you can use a spell vs the number of fights you have seems a little unbalanced.

>> The number of times you can use a spell vs the number of fights you have seems a little unbalanced.

>I don't quite understand what you mean, sorry.

Meaning I am forced to use my weapon the majority of the fights. It doesn't feel very balanced to use your spells. A mage should use their spells first and foremost while a weapon should be secondary. I feel like magic is secondary. Maybe I have the wrong expectations here based on other RPGs.

> Frankly I think Mage is the most powerful class in the game right now, and we might fix that but I loathe nerfs.

I must have played Mage horribly then, as so far I found it to be the weakest. :P

> Also. It might be worth considering that we change the class name to something that's more like a fighter with magical abilities. That would being it more in line with what the class is, which is kind of a hybrid.

I like this. Going into it, I expected to find a traditional Mage and was disappointed when I found a class similar to the Warrior with some magic sprinkled in. The class felt more like how I would play a Paladin than a Mage.

> White is a 10x attack. Mage has the worst random skill gain (+3 hp) but with white, wowee, get ready for the hurt Wyvern!

I did use White to knock Wyvern out.

If it makes you feel better, White is still massively powerful!

I love the hats and the new Rogue ability. Thanks guys!

Did GregoPeck get the CGA graphics patch? :P

Wait for the webGL patch, where we render that text using your graphics card!

You may have been able to one shot the wyvern the first time through. You’re at 3 kills right? It gets harder each time. But I’m not sure you can one shot it on the first time through with reasonable weapons by that level

The big thing for me was the Jedi Outcast reveal. I had no idea that was coming to current gen with new controls.

I have a few problems with it.

1. Look at killedbygoogle.com and consider things that don’t pan out get killed. Which is fine, but considering the massive investment required for this, if the service isn’t profitable it will die, and your purchases will be lost forever.

2. This isn’t Netflix for gaming like a lot of people compare it to. It’s more iTunes for gaming. If it was a subscription for a ton of games that I can play whenever I would be all over this honestly.

3. Even if they stay afloat for 50 years, they’ve removed games from people’s Google Play accounts when they have a dispute with a publisher. You could just lose $60 because your game’s publisher decides to stop selling on Stadia.

4. The any device idea is great until you consider, how the hell are you going to play Rage 2 or something on your phone? You’d at least need a controller and even then, full console/pc games are made to look good and play well on large screens.

5. The one time I could think this would be the most useful is traveling, but what percentage of hotel WiFi you’ve used has been decent?

6. You can stream 4K/HDR video on your tv and play a 4K disc, and you can tell a lot of difference in quality. The compression will always introduce some level of quality loss. So you’re always paying for an inferior product.

7. But mostly it all comes down to ownership. You don’t own the hardware or the software with Stadia, you’re just paying for a license to use the software, that Google can revoke at any time. Digital distribution on PC at least has ways around that. Valve has said that in the event that Steam closes down, they’ll provide a way to get your games before it shuts down. Gog games are yours to do whatever with.

But one thing I neglected to even mention in that comment: I’ve talked myself out of preordering a couple times already. I’m interested in it just from a technical standpoint and cool factor if nothing else.

This is an absolute steal for two amazing games (six kinda). The Aladdin SNES game being missing is kinda expected, and welcome. See the awesome Portscenter rundown for more info why:
https://youtu.be/gfV-uMoSSPk