Challenge: Zelda 2005 Needs This

Most people found Wind Waker to be way too easy. As well, I found that the last Zelda game to give me a decent challenge was A Link to the Past. None of the 3D Zelda games have given me any trouble during the main quest. The challenge in puzzles were okay in the 3D games, but combat has always been ridiculously easy in 3D. As well, Wind Waker was cut shorter than originally intended, quite possibly to appeal to rookie gamers.

Not only do I want Zelda 2005 to provide a good challenge, but I have a theory that it actually will be more difficult and possibly longer. Wind Waker had a feeling throughout the game that everything was fresh and new. The events of Ocarina of Time were nothing but a legend, Link starts out on a pleasant island full of life and colour, and he begins a journey on an uncharted sea. This whole feeling of "new" leads me to believe that the whole game was designed to allow rookies a chance at completing the game without exceeding trouble.

However, now that people have had a chance to become acquainted with the Zelda series on Gamecube, I think that Zelda 2005's designers want to challenge those who they drew in with Wind Waker, since Link looks to be experienced and more mature. I'm guessing that this idea of maturity and experience may be passed onto the player, who will be expected to play through a longer and more challenging game.

As for what I want from challenge, I think the puzzles in the game should be about as difficult as in Wind Waker and Ocarina of Time, and the enemies should be larger in number and deal more damage with each attack. Later in the game, enemies should deal two or three hearts worth of damage per attack, like in A Link to the Past.

Anyway, do you all think that Zelda 2005 will be more difficult? How much more challenge do you want in the game?

I would like plenty more challenge to it...I liked it in LoZ where you got hurt a ton even before the first dungeon and hearts were few and far between. I also like AoL in that I stink so bad at fighting games that I have still not passed the 1st temple. So, I hope that this LoZ-2005 has plenty of fighting, and if there are puzzles, they should be extremely well thought out and hard. After all, is it not for the challenge that we buy games?

I doubt it just because Nintendo seems to be making all of their games easier so that they can appeal to more people and regain some of their popularity(ie: Super Mario Sunshine). What I can't understand is, if they want to lose the image of being a 'kid's game system,' then why do they keep releasing games for rookies?

I think that there is a good chance that this game will be harder then tWW< but that's really not saying much.

Despite impressions givenby the trailors, I think is is folly to asusme that this game will be amazingly serious or "mature"... I doubt this game will be any harder then OoT.

To adjust to the experienced and unexperienced crowds, just add possibility to choose difficulty level.

Yeah, difficulty level, becuase Link could adjust the difficulty of his enemies if he wanted to also :rolleyes:

The best way to have a scaleable dificulty would be to have more advanced actions that don't need to be used to complete the game while at the same time having the simpler style that will just let you through the game's surface level.

Challenge is soemhtign any game should have and this game will need it more considering the brevity and easy completion of TWW, that was my sole gripe against the game.

Originally Posted by William Zelda4ever

To adjust to the experienced and unexperienced crowds, just add possibility to choose difficulty level.

Originally Posted by ZeldaFreak++

Yeah, difficulty level, becuase Link could adjust the difficulty of his enemies if he wanted to also :rolleyes:

The best way to have a scaleable dificulty would be to have more advanced actions that don't need to be used to complete the game while at the same time having the simpler style that will just let you through the game's surface level.

Indeed. I've been talking about a new kind of difficulty adjusting for many times. (elsewhere though) What I think would be a good way is like this: For new players and those who think some games are too hard, the game should be playeble by finishing less dungeons. That is the main point. And in harder difficulty you NEED to finish more HARDER dungeons before you can continue in some parts of the games. While in easier difficulty finishing those dungeons wouldn't be necessary, but you still could play those in every difficulty. This idea could be used in something else too than just dungeons. Maybe in the actual game world you'd need to go to some harder place or so.

Then there could also be these classical more damage dealing enemies with more health and so on. I think these all should be adjustable, as a bonus. Not straight away.

Edit:
I got to say something about that how we feel games getting easier and so on. Maybe a bit off-topic but IMHO this is a good topic to say this in.
I myself had heard about the Zeldas in about 1993.. but my first Zelda I actually played was OoT while it came in the end of 1998. Back then, I must admit that OoT was quite hard for me. Though I was like ~12 years old and I hadn't been playing so many games yet.. But now I could take every part of OoT with ease, and TWW in example I felt was very easy too. (and short, but still a nice game)
What I'm trying to say? Just that that maybe it's us gamers getting more experienced and we feel games being too easy because of that... Not totally so, I know the old 2D Zeldas are much harder and so, tried all of them. But while those were out, gaming wasn't SO big like it's nowadays, and the bigger amount of people playing out there.. So unluckily for the experienced players, games are done to fit newcomers too...
Well this wasn't pretty useful thinking. I just hope they'll get that kind of difficulty adjusting I told of or better to be used after some games. The sooner the better of course. =) So there won't be this much of problem with making the game to be too hard for new players or too easy for experienced...

Originally Posted by BobaMa

Indeed. I've been talking about a new kind of difficulty adjusting for many times. (elsewhere though) What I think would be a good way is like this: For new players and those who think some games are too hard, the game should be playeble by finishing less dungeons. That is the main point. And in harder difficulty you NEED to finish more HARDER dungeons before you can continue in some parts of the games. While in easier difficulty finishing those dungeons wouldn't be necessary, but you still could play those in every difficulty.

That's not a bad idea, but think about it. Something like that would be very complicated when it comes to making the game. As for the enemies dealing greater damage, that can be easily done.

It's not the enemies need to deal more damage, they need to be smarter. The possibility that I'll even be hit by a moblin is slim.

I think your right, WindWaker was much to easy. I really hope that the new one will be much harder and much more challenge in puzzles and combat. One if the reasons Wind Waker might seem so easy is that when most of us started playing, we started with OOT or LOZ, so that one was our first one. That would make it seem harder. If Wind Waker was our first one it would probably not be so easy. But since it was, I hope the new one is geared toward veteran Zelda fans.

Despite impressions givenby the trailors, I think is is folly to asusme that this game will be amazingly serious or "mature"...

I think so too. In fact, even upon my first glance of the trailer, I figured that Zelda 2005 would still have about the same type of target audience as Wind Waker and Ocarina of Time, and the game itself would be about as serious as the other games. My point is that Link has grown up (naturally this time around), and the idea of growth and maturity may be passed to the player as well.

Watching the trailers kind of makes me think that the game will still be somewhat easy though, since they show Link getting hit only once. The rest of the fighting looks to be as easy as in Wind Waker. I just hope that the later dungeons feature more enemies, and they should deal more damage with their weapons.

A simple and logical solution to the problem of lack of challenge would be to make a Second Quest that's... you know... harder! I was psyched when I discovered the Second Quest in Wind Waker, then I found out that its only purpose was for the colour pictograph box at the game's beginning and a simple graphical rehaul of Link. That was unacceptable to me, but hopefully the next game will have a harder Second Quest.

I hope Zelda 2005 is as hard as FSA is when you get farther into it.. I always get stuck somewhere for awile and Tingle comes in and steals my stuff.

Hmm...challenges...

Maybe the enemies themselves don't need to be HARDER, there just needs to be MORE of them. Any minor enemy I've seen in Zelda games would realistically die in one or two hits, so the goons (like moblins and lizalfos and stuff) don't need to be harder, there just needs to be more of them. Bosses, on the other hand, have been getting easier from game to game. I mean, Ganon in WW was a joke (at least i thought he was) and so were most of the bosses in MM (not enough health). And Dark Link should definitely be a major boss.

Yeah, difficulty level, becuase Link could adjust the difficulty of his enemies if he wanted to also :rolleyes:

Neither can Samus Aran, but we still see the option for different difficulty levels in Metroid Prime, don't we?

Here's my explanation to my very simple idea, shouldn't be so hard to figure out what I'm talking about.

If you choose the Easy difficulty...

...enemies will go down easier
...you will go down harder
...enemies won't react too fast on your attacks, and they won't be using smart attacks too often.

As for Normal, just take the parts from Easy/Hard and balance it all - not too hard - not too easy.

If you choose the Hard difficulty...

...enemies are harder to take down
...you are easier to take down
...enemies react faster to your attacks, and use more smart attacks.

BobaMa, your idea is creative, but I'm afraid some people might just skip dungeons and then find out that there are dungeons they never played when they were beating the game. Trust me, some people want to experience the whole game while beating it, others just blaze through the game, missing all the side-quests and funny - but yet important - factors that play a pretty good role in the Zelda games.

I don't think there should be an 'easy' difficulty. My reasoning for this is that easy difficulty often distort the gaming experience. By making a game too easy, there's no sense of accomplishment. Then, even if there's a harder difficulty, the storyline's already been ruined, its just the same thing, a bit harder. I think that if a game is hard initially it gives you a sort of glimspe for how frustrated or excited the character must be feeling, rather than losing that intensity with an easy first play-through.

I mean Master Quest was good fun, but if the original OoT were that difficult, I would have gotten a lot more out of the games.

I Like Your Theory Mystic.. Hope It Turns Out To Be True Lol.

I want it to be pretty hard, like Master Quest, because that will motivate me to play my best and pay attenion to all the details of the game.

As i mentioned in another thread (i forgot where), i hope that they make it on two disks with more harder challenges, more dungeons (hopefully harder than Wind Waker) and harder enemies and bosses.

This is in responce to Mystic's original post in this thread, as I haven't bothered to read all the replies

Yes, I do believe you might be on to something here. What I would definately like to see in this game, are some kick ass fighting sequences, where you have to fight off really, really hard enemies, instead of just a few hundred simple ones that can be vanquished by a simple slash with the sword. The closes we came to this in TWW, was when fighting the Dark Nuts, but they weren't all that hard. All in all, I want to see more Dark Nutty enemies, only harder, with stronger attacks, and they are allowed to attack you more than one at a time. Heck, I want a game which I can't play through with just three hearts, like I did with TWW.

As for the puzzles, I would definately like to see some new twists and turns that would force us to really squeeze everything out of our logical capacities, although it might result in a few broken controllers for me, since I get easily frustrated when I don't get something And a plea to Nintendo, make PUZZLES, not everlasting boat-trips across the sea, where you have to do the same thing eight times after eachother.

The best would be Ocarina of Time difficulty, and then a second quest that's much harder. Maybe they could use a "smart" difficulty system where the difficulty would crank up if you proved to be skillful in combat.