Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Catch-All

I'm going incredibly slow at this game (mostly because I've been letting the girlfriend play more than me but I digress). Just finished the second dungeon...

Spoiler:

Is this the first game where they've used failure as a driving reason for the protagonist to become a hero? The exchange with the Impa-esque character when reaching the spring was an interesting direction to take I thought.

Starting to get used to the combat in this game. I'm shifting away from wildly swinging at stuff (aside from the !Moblins when I sneak up on them) and just focusing on learning patterns, blocking with the shield at the right moment, and then delivering a flurry of strikes. Just like in Infinity Blade

Just finished the first dungeon. What a nice, compact dungeon with an enemy that was a throwback the to the original Zelda and a good boss battle that really makes you work the sword controls. Seriously, the map was positively tiny compared to anything in Twilight Princess, but there was still lots of stuff to do.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

Just finished the first dungeon. What a nice, compact dungeon with an enemy that was a throwback the to the original Zelda

Which enemy was that?

Also that boss battle was incredibly frustrating, although I got him on the second try. It just felt like the game needed to give a little more feedback on the technique since he's not a standard Zelda boss in the sense there's a glowing weakpoint and you use the dungeon item to open it up. I think Fi gave me a little bit of a hint when asked, but that was definitely a difficulty spike that comes out of nowhere.

I understood the technique with that boss battle, but actually executing was a huge PITA. The game insisted on reading my "try to reposition my sword to change the direction of my strike" movement as "swing away!". I didn't even bother

Spoiler:

trying to slash his little dagger things back at him. I knew there was no way the game would recognize both the correct direction and timing of my strike, so I just dodged those.

Chaz wrote:

I understood the technique with that boss battle, but actually executing was a huge PITA. The game insisted on reading my "try to reposition my sword to change the direction of my strike" movement as "swing away!". I didn't even bother

Spoiler:

trying to slash his little dagger things back at him. I knew there was no way the game would recognize both the correct direction and timing of my strike, so I just dodged those.

Spoiler:

You can bounce 'em back with your shield, which is much easier.

What made him a Female Doggo for me was phase two. I died the first time because I assumed each time he charged, you had to dodge his strike and attack when he was open. For some reason Link felt like dodging into the attack instead of away half the time, and as a result I was killed pretty fast.

It wasn't until my second attempt that I accidentally swung the Wiimote right before he struck, and managed to learn the ACTUAL strategy. It felt counter-intuitive, though, to attack the guy before he swung considering the nature of the rest of the fight.

ccesarano wrote:

What made him a Female Doggo for me was phase two. I died the first time because I assumed each time he charged, you had to dodge his strike and attack when he was open. For some reason Link felt like dodging into the attack instead of away half the time, and as a result I was killed pretty fast.

Ouch

It wasn't until my second attempt that I accidentally swung the Wiimote right before he struck, and managed to learn the ACTUAL strategy. It felt counter-intuitive, though, to attack the guy before he swung considering the nature of the rest of the fight.

I ended up doing the stabbity thing while he was charging up as well. Then, once he charges, shield bash to block the attack and stun him once I got the timing down.

For a game that emphasizes the swordplay, there's a lot of good reasons to be patient and deflect attacks to create openings.

shoptroll wrote:
mrtomaytohead wrote:

Just finished the first dungeon. What a nice, compact dungeon with an enemy that was a throwback the to the original Zelda

Which enemy was that?

Oh, I got my dungeons mixed up.

Spoiler:

Anyways, it's Gleeok, the 3 headed dragon. In SS, he's the guy right 2 rooms before the boss.
http://media.ignimgs.com/media/ign/i...
http://www.zeldadungeon.net/Zelda14/...

edit: double post

Spoiler:

I was wondering if that was who you meant. Yeah, the guy was clearly designed for you to swing your sword based on how his heads were lined up, but I said f*ck it and just slashed wildly until all heads were gone.

ccesarano wrote:
Spoiler:

I was wondering if that was who you meant. Yeah, the guy was clearly designed for you to swing your sword based on how his heads were lined up, but I said f*ck it and just slashed wildly until all heads were gone.

I slashed once and *poof* he was gone before I had a chance to figure out what I was doing. Don't know what happened, but was sad it was the shortest initial encounter of the game so far, including the bats.

mrtomaytohead wrote:
Spoiler:

Anyways, it's Gleeok, the 3 headed dragon. In SS, he's the guy right 2 rooms before the boss.
http://media.ignimgs.com/media/ign/i...
http://www.zeldadungeon.net/Zelda14/...

I was wondering if that was the one you were talking about, but I thought you meant they dug up an old Boss and I know they didn't bring that one back.

I think those get harder later in the game in terms of the patterns they make based...

Chaz wrote:

I understood the technique with that boss battle, but actually executing was a huge PITA. The game insisted on reading my "try to reposition my sword to change the direction of my strike" movement as "swing away!". I didn't even bother

Spoiler:

trying to slash his little dagger things back at him. I knew there was no way the game would recognize both the correct direction and timing of my strike, so I just dodged those.

When I fought him the first time, I would have agreed with you about the game's ability to read moves. Unfortunately for my ego, I later learned that I was wrong; the game is perfectly capable of interpreting the correct input, it's a question of performing it in the right fashion.

For me, the learning curve was longer than I expected with the motion controls, and that fight really puts it into sharp focus. By the half way point, Link was doing exactly what I wanted him to do every time, and I realised that my whining about the motion controls in the early running was misplaced.

Whether it is any more acceptable that it took an experienced gamer that long to learn the nuances is a different story, of course!

Nevermind, got it. Hurray for outside the box thinking.

Yeah, if it takes you half the game (and this seems to be a 30-50 hour game) to learn how to get the sword to do what you want when the entire combat system depends on being able to do that, something's the matter. Either it's not in tune with how you actually use the controls, or it does a lousy job of teaching and giving feedback.

From what I've heard talking to other people, the controls are really hard for hardcore gamers to get right and really easy for kids and novices. The big difference, from what I can tell, is that kids and newbies swing the remote around like it's a real sword while expert gamers sit prone and play it with their wrists. It might be less that Skyward Sword has poor controls than that gamers have been conditioned by all the other Wii games to use flicks and waggle.

Erm, nevermind.

Yeah, I've found myself wondering why the controls don't work only to realize I've fallen back on waggle from time to time. Took a while to get used to actually moving my arm, but it helps that the game doesn't seem to actually require drastically larger motions to work.

Although as soon as the

Spoiler:

beetle and swimming

controls get uncalibrated, nothing seems to fix them short of reloading the game. Doesn't happen with flying, ever, though. Flying is always perfect.

MechaSlinky wrote:

Although as soon as the

Spoiler:

beetle and swimming

controls get uncalibrated, nothing seems to fix them short of reloading the game. Doesn't happen with flying, ever, though. Flying is always perfect.

Yeah, what is up with that? It's infuriating when the damn things won't go straight. Mine always cheat to the left when they get out of whack. I have found that I don't have to re-load the game, though; just turning off and re-calibrating the remote works. Still all kinds of annoying, though.

Minarchist wrote:
MechaSlinky wrote:

Although as soon as the

Spoiler:

beetle and swimming

controls get uncalibrated, nothing seems to fix them short of reloading the game. Doesn't happen with flying, ever, though. Flying is always perfect.

Yeah, what is up with that? It's infuriating when the damn things won't go straight. Mine always cheat to the left when they get out of whack. I have found that I don't have to re-load the game, though; just turning off and re-calibrating the remote works. Still all kinds of annoying, though.

I've had no issues with those, but I do have issues with the

Spoiler:

bow. It gradually sinks lower and lower, and I'm not sure why. By the end of that pumpkin shooting minigame, for example, I'm practically holding the remote straight up to be able to shoot straight.

If there's one thing that just never worked for me period, it would be the skydiving. Things that should be relatively simple to reach turn into things that I have to repeat a lot to pull off since the controls feel completely unresponsive.

Anything with first person targeting can be recentred by pressing down on the dpad, or the motion plus can be recalibrated from the menu on the 1 button. I never had to restart my Wii!

It seems to me that the first-person targeting stuff zeroes itself to wherever your remote happens to be pointing when you pull the weapon out. If you're pointing it straight up when you draw your slingshot, 'straight up' will be the zero direction; if you're pointing it straight, it will be more correct. I don't think it uses the sensor bar at all for that stuff.

Yep. It's centered when you pull the weapon out. Press down on the d-pad to recenter it. I've had no issues when I've been doing that.

Not sure if this was previously reported, but you can hit the Z button while flying around on your bird to change the camera angle to a top-down view. This should make lining up dives a little easier for anyone having trouble.

Also, loving the area outside the 3rd dungeon. Such a nifty idea.

Spoiler:

It's awesome how the music changes depending on which time period you're in

Well, what I mean is that it starts out straight, and by the end I have to be pointing up to aim straight. In the spot in question the weapon is never put away, yet it seems to recalibrate itself after each shot or something.

Minarchist wrote:

just turning off and re-calibrating the remote works. Still all kinds of annoying, though.

Or that. Which requires taking the frigging batteries out or waiting forever because there's no actual way to just turn the damn thing off.

shoptroll wrote:

Not sure if this was previously reported, but you can hit the Z button while flying around on your bird to change the camera angle to a top-down view. This should make lining up dives a little easier for anyone having trouble.

You are my new Messiah for this.

Finished just shy of 50 hours, with about an hour of item-collecting thrown in at the end.

As I suspected, it stands as my favorite game of the year. Probably my favorite Zelda game, too. Sorry, Wind Waker.

Spoiler:

I actually got choked up a couple times at the end there.

Guess what I found under my Christmas tree? Now if only everyone would stop playing with the Roku box Santa brought, I could use the TV...

By the way, if anyone got hit with that game-killing bug, there's a channel in the Wii Shop that will repair you save files.

spider_j wrote:

Anything with first person targeting can be recentred by pressing down on the dpad, or the motion plus can be recalibrated from the menu on the 1 button. I never had to restart my Wii!

That recenters the pointer dealy, but it does nothing for the swimming controls.

So, I got this game for Christmas. Thought it was funny that, given absolutely no indication of what I might like for Christmas and knowing nothing about games, my parents end up picking one of the best games of the year. The last time they were in this situation, I wound up with Rampage for the Wii. Quite the improvement.

Guess I'm returning it and getting Super Mario 3D Land. Good stuff.