Tears of the Kingdom, Part Eleven
Jun. 18th, 2023 07:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingThe fire temple is a minecart hell level. This is exacerbated by:
- it's underground, and it's dark
- the walls and fixtures of the temple are also dark
- the are flying sparks creating visual noise
- Yunobo is following you, and his AI is shit
- Yunobo is big and obstructs your field of vision
- Yunobo is surrounded by magic ribbons, which create more visual noise
- the mine carts move faster than the camera
- certain areas trigger severe frame rate drops
I played this temple on a huge HD television, in total darkness, with the brightness and contrast optimized, and I could not see shit. I can't imagine trying to do it in handheld mode, or in a room with even the slightest bit of sunlight.
The dungeon isn't that complicated; you just can't see anything. To make matters worse, the flat 2D map doesn't accurately represent the vertically-oriented space, so you don't have any tools to help you understand what you're supposed to be seeing. It took me four hours and four separate online walkthroughs to make it through this mess. To give a point of comparison, the wind temple took me 45 minutes with no walkthrough.
There's also a mandatory sequence toward the end where you have to use Link's Ultrahand ability to manually build a long bridge, piece by piece by piece. You're given a very limited area to work with, and it's easy to accidentally fall into the lava or fall off a cliff because the camera can't accommodate the large scale of the project within the confined workspace. Also, because everything is visually muddy, you can't judge distances. If the bridge is too short, too long, placed in the wrong place, or placed at the wrong angle, everything falls into a pit and you have to start again. Just this sequence alone took me a solid hour.
This is what I mean when I say Tears of the Kingdom feels like homework. I don't see how this is supposed to be fun.
- it's underground, and it's dark
- the walls and fixtures of the temple are also dark
- the are flying sparks creating visual noise
- Yunobo is following you, and his AI is shit
- Yunobo is big and obstructs your field of vision
- Yunobo is surrounded by magic ribbons, which create more visual noise
- the mine carts move faster than the camera
- certain areas trigger severe frame rate drops
I played this temple on a huge HD television, in total darkness, with the brightness and contrast optimized, and I could not see shit. I can't imagine trying to do it in handheld mode, or in a room with even the slightest bit of sunlight.
The dungeon isn't that complicated; you just can't see anything. To make matters worse, the flat 2D map doesn't accurately represent the vertically-oriented space, so you don't have any tools to help you understand what you're supposed to be seeing. It took me four hours and four separate online walkthroughs to make it through this mess. To give a point of comparison, the wind temple took me 45 minutes with no walkthrough.
There's also a mandatory sequence toward the end where you have to use Link's Ultrahand ability to manually build a long bridge, piece by piece by piece. You're given a very limited area to work with, and it's easy to accidentally fall into the lava or fall off a cliff because the camera can't accommodate the large scale of the project within the confined workspace. Also, because everything is visually muddy, you can't judge distances. If the bridge is too short, too long, placed in the wrong place, or placed at the wrong angle, everything falls into a pit and you have to start again. Just this sequence alone took me a solid hour.
This is what I mean when I say Tears of the Kingdom feels like homework. I don't see how this is supposed to be fun.
