Topic: Episode 482: The Legend of Zelda: Olivia Wilde

[NWR_Lindy]

I thought Nintendo was above making licensed games.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/rfn/42929/episode-482-the-legend-of-zelda-olivia-wilde

Last week, we gave our E3 reactions; this week we return to our standard show format. James kicks off New Business with a game Nintendo doesn't want you to know about: Rhythm Heaven Megamix. As a big fan of the series, James found his flow quickly, but Greg is around to allay some of his fears. Greg has concluding thoughts on Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest. Did being the tool of a monster ruin the experience for him? It hasn't for nearly a decade of RFN. Jon continues the strategic thinking with his Non-tendo Game of the Week: the beta of Halo Wars 2. Warthogs not getting stuck on every pebble may take you out of the Halo experience, but Jon may have found his inner tactician. Lastly, Guillaume concludes the segment with yet another assault on Castlevania, with Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia. Shockingly, picking up a nearly decade-old save did not yield the most positive experience.

After the break, we get down to our first post-E3 Listener Mail segment. Topics covered: self-induced blackouts, movie puns, the dumbing down of the university system, developer vs. publisher vs. BUSINESS, Tomodachi Life: The Movie - starring YOU, and an email picked exclusively to let us use the NX alarm. You can trigger our alarms by sending us an email.

[Penguin_Of_Thyme]

You really outdid yourselves with this week's episode title. Bravo folks.

[ClexYoshi]

I... am deeply afraid of listening to guilamme besmirch the name of my 5th favorite game of all time. X_X

[ClexYoshi]

so, uh... I'm someone who's replayed Order of Ecclesia as soon as last year. Hard mode lv. 1 with all boss medals, no glyph union spam. I did use a New Game + with maxed attribute points, though, so I haven't done the true level 1 raw challenge.

First off, Favorite Castlevania soundtrack, period. some of the pieces are your sort of standard fare Igavania area stuff, but pieces like Clashing of Waves, Ebon WIngs, An Empty Tome, the Tower of Dolls Remix here, the boss theme for albus... I STILL listen to to this day.

For the record, I still get so much of a kick out of this.

the problem is that all the good level design is at the back end of the game or in hard mode where they'll line a corridor with spikes and set you up to have to dodge enemies while you're bounding from Magnes to Magnes pole while over a giant corridor of spikes or such.

Order of Ecclesia is the Igavania Magnum Opus. the atmosphere and strengh in art design is there. the sublime combat that forces you to change up in order to defeat enemies is there thanks to how much enemy weaknesses are a huge part of being able to dispatch stuff in any sort of efficient manner...

I love it. on my list of favorite games of all time, Order of Ecclesia is technically the top metroidvania on it. Maybe if I am going for Metroidvania exploration, I'll go for La Mulana or Super Metroid. If I'm going for a 2D platformer with incredibly thoughtful combat, it's either this or maybe Salt and Sanctuary?






also, it's funny. when James was talking about Birthright, I was playing Conquest. When Greg talked about Conquest, I was wrapping up birthright.

[KDR_11k]

I play Metroidvanias for the exploration so I did find it sad when everybody was cheering for more linearity in Fusion and Castlevania...


Guess I'm getting my exploration from Zelda: Death of the Child then.

[SonofMrPeanut]

I find Greg's "budget model" recommendation to be problematic.  Let's not forget that the Wii U also attempted this with their "Basic" model which didn't take long to disappear.  However, this also led to Lorne Lanning putting off New N' Tasty for Wii U so that it could fit on the basic model's ultra scarce 8 GB storage.  With a budget system, you're either telling developers to put more effort into a better version or limiting the game to fit within said accessible hardware.


Also, my mis-title is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of Fire.

[Yoshidious]

I did not recommend a budget model in general; I advised that Nintendo should avoid building the NX platform around a hardware feature that would drive up the cost of the device(s) to the consumer without delivering the requisite added value to make it an attractive proposition overall.


Simply having a budget model does not in itself achieve this goal: the Basic Wii U came with a Gamepad just like the Premium set, and as such it could still be deemed to be overpriced by those who didn't see much value in the special controller. The same can be said for the 20GB PS3 launch units; yes, it was a cheaper ($499!) version of the hardware, but both models made consumers pay for a Blu-ray drive and a Cell processor architecture, which many felt did little to enhance their gaming experiences on the console at that time.


The very fact that Sony and Nintendo offered cheaper models for those platform launches demonstrates that they recognised there was a price/value problem to deal with, but removing a few GB of internal storage or some USB ports is nothing more than tinkering around the edges. The platforms remained inextricably linked to those aforementioned costly-but-superfluous hardware features, and thus the budget models had little impact.


That being said, a budget model could hypothetically be part of an approach that avoids repeating this kind of mistake, and I raised that possibility because there's been so much talk about the NX platform being spread over a family of systems. However, there are lots of other ways to avoid weighing down the NX's launch without making a separate entry-level device, and for me the most important thing is not exactly how Nintendo can do this, but simply that they can do it at all.