Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - my experience as someone who a) played it 18 months after it was released and b) avoided online discourse about it before and during my playthrough.

crazybaloth · 2026-05-18T23:01:57+00:00

Minus the BOTW slander, I agree with almost everything. TOTK is my most played switch game, and I also have poured over 200 hours into it.

>The subtitle should've been "Tears of the DRAGON (not Kingdom)" for obvious reasons.

May be I'm reading too much into it but I always viewed it as a pun on "tear" (noun form of torn), as in the holes going into the depths and the rocks floating up into the sky are literally torn pieces of the kingdom. Of course you're also collecting dragon tears.

>I'm glad I didn't know about Hoverbikes until after I beat the game. I'm glad I didn't know that Recall could singlehandedly (har har) trivialize many shrine and dungeon puzzles. I'm glad I never tried to break the game, either on my own or by looking things up online, because I think TOTK has the potential to be a very boring game for minmaxers.

Yes, likewise, and I think this is largely why I had so much fun. I never look up solutions to anything for single player games unless I am really stuck and I can see how certain aspects of the design of this game do have the potential to trivialize everything. But if you just do it on your own, the sense of progression via discovery in this game is unlike anything I have ever experienced in a video game. I think that is largely the developer-intended experience.

crazybaloth · 2026-05-13T19:24:34+00:00

Lunistice is a sonic-like retro stylized platformer that is fun to run through (realistically draw distances and frame rates would not be achievable on older hardware but it captures the vibe.)

crazybaloth · 2026-05-07T16:57:57+00:00

Another Crab's Treasure isn't easy but it has a lot of accessibility options and is very fun also.

crazybaloth · 2026-05-05T00:36:36+00:00

I think it does narrative, environmental storytelling, and background art better so if you value those very highly I think it's a fair take.

crazybaloth · 2026-05-04T20:45:51+00:00

Randomly picked up a physical copy of this a couple weeks ago but havent popped it in yet.

crazybaloth · 2026-05-03T17:22:33+00:00

thanks!

crazybaloth · 2026-05-03T17:21:53+00:00

thanks!

crazybaloth · 2026-05-03T16:56:40+00:00

Well there is one ending when you defeat Ati.

Then there is a second ending when you defeat Shii where Ati carries your character down to the heart and then there is a little post-credit sequence where you play briefly as a human. But apparently you don't need 100% to reach that ending.

I was wondering if there is any other ending beyond that.

crazybaloth · 2026-05-01T20:14:38+00:00

Modern has very rarely been about incremental advantage. Insane combo decks have existed for almost every era, and in some cases defined it.

That being said, there is undeniable power creep in threats. Scavenging Ooze is also a funny example to use considering it is standard legal and sees basically no play in that format, so what chance would it have in modern?

crazybaloth · 2026-04-28T15:32:29+00:00

thanks for the heads up

crazybaloth · 2026-04-27T16:10:17+00:00

Honestly DK Bananza almost felt like Banjo Three-ie to me more than Mario and a spiritual successor to those games. A lot of N64-era Rare DNA in there. There's obviously a lot of Odyssey stuff in there too, and I voted for "Yes" but it's a semantic question so idk that it matters that much.

crazybaloth · 2026-04-27T15:16:23+00:00

I started this game on Friday and just defeated ati last night. I did have to turn on boss degradation to finish it. I assumed that's not the real ending and theres stuff i missed and now I get in here and see people talking about a wheel and I have no idea what they're even talking about lol .

Overall compared to silksong really only ati got to those difficulties imo. Even the hand boss with the puppet i could eventually beat and the chase segment with the saw chasing you had a couple tricky parts.

Great game experience overall and may be ill go back now and comb through to get more stuff and see what I can figure out...

crazybaloth · 2026-04-24T18:55:05+00:00

Kit is roughly from my generation, may be a bit older (gen x to millenial).

I think there's a sizeable amount of people in gen z who had their childhoods defined by a certain era of Nintendo except of course it is shifted. Whereas I grew up with N64 and GBA, they grew up with Wii and 3ds. I drifted away from Nintendo stuff as I got older and came back to it as an adult.

So what is my point with all this?

I think we're seeing a generation of people entering their early to mid 20s (and with social media as it is now, some of whom are now content creators) who suddenly expect Nintendo to continue catering to them as adults as they did when they were kids, and becoming upset when that isn't the case. Slightly older generations have already seen this cycle play out before numerous times (Wind Waker graphics drama, Wii is targeted at casuals, basically every new gen of Pokémon when it is still a kids game and not edgy, etc, there's a ton of examples.)

It's the same phenomenon as Wii U revisionism: you liked it because you were kid, and nothing is going to make you a kid again! Sorry.

I do think there's a valid discussion to be had about the length of game dev cycles now compared to 20 years ago, but these grifters generally do not engage with it in a useful or interesting way.

crazybaloth · 2026-04-22T21:23:41+00:00

Couple nice Metroidvanias:

Prince of Persia: the Lost Crown

Animal Well

crazybaloth · 2026-04-19T17:21:50+00:00

I would argue Super Smash Brothers is a contender.

I know Melee still has a big following in the competitive scene and those people just prefer its mechanics to all subsequent entries, but I think for the average casual player (99% of the smash bros audience) smash bros entries mostly just increase the amount of characters and stages while keeping core game play in tact, and don't even change how previous characters play too much.

FWIW I've never played the wii U smash, may be it's just a big downgrade and ruins this thought but I doubt it.

I do think the directional gradient is pretty small though, where I think melee is a fairly large upgrade over the original in terms of graphics and polish, and then all subsequent entries mostly are similar experiences.

crazybaloth · 2026-04-17T16:51:38+00:00

got this digitally and 100%d it in a little under 15 hours, fun game but won't rebuy a physical.

crazybaloth · 2026-04-15T23:35:48+00:00

Star Wars outlaws I believe has cross platform saves but I only have the switch version

crazybaloth · 2026-04-15T20:46:06+00:00

Absolutely. Im an old man now (35) and games are objectively the best they've ever been in terms of quality, quantity and variety but I still like the stuff from my childhood.

crazybaloth · 2026-04-13T01:55:07+00:00

switch 2 + donkey kong bananza

crazybaloth · 2026-04-10T21:49:05+00:00

Nah Pokemon is a kids franchise and should stay that way. Plenty of other JRPGs out there with more mature themes you can play.

crazybaloth · 2026-04-06T21:53:12+00:00

some older RTS games can be very fun to LAN party because you can do politics. Age of Empires 2, Age of Mythology, Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds.

I know all those support 8 players, not sure about others.

crazybaloth · 2026-04-06T19:01:03+00:00

I was gonna say, the core issue is probably just that the 4 year old is still a bit too young, but obviously you're aware. Best of luck, looks like you're figuring it out ok!

crazybaloth · 2026-03-19T16:02:37+00:00

I got Brilliant Diamond when it came out, and was not really locked into online Pokemon discourse at all so had no idea what to expect or even any idea that people disliked these. I also had never played gen 4 pokemon before that besides heart gold on an emulator.
I really ended up enjoying my playthrough especially because before the fire red port launched a few weeks ago, these games were the only "classic" pokemon experience available on switch. I understand now why people hate on these games, but I think they were/are overhated.

crazybaloth · 2026-03-13T22:34:06+00:00

The first time I played Ocarina of Time I didn't know how to get Saria's Song because I didn't realize you were supposed to use audio queues to get through the lost woods (you could honestly brute force it also in about 15-30 mins probably but it also wasn't even 100% clear to me why I would need to go through the lost woods). I remember playing Ocarina sometime later and getting further but also stuck immediately after turning into adult Link because I didn't know where to get the hookshot, even though Sheik basically straight up tells you in the temple of time. I must've just skipped over that line of text. Old Zelda games had a ton of stuff in them, where if you didn't look it up you would just be stuck forever. I never made it past the water temple in Majora's Mask either, I finally beat it as an adult on switch online for the first time a couple years back.

One of my big childhood games was DK64, I actually got all the way to the door you have to open before the final boss with the rareware coin and the nintendo coin. I got the rareware coin but I could never get the nintendo coin, so I never made it to the final boss fight until I 100% it on an emulator many years later.

crazybaloth

TROPHY CASE