Stop Complaining About the Tadstones

[Wolf Sage]

Well, I don't let it bother me. There's always going to someone who doesn't like "fetch-quests" in the Zelda series. That said, I guess I can see how someone might find the tadtone quest to be a bit tedious.

I, personally, like the tadtone quest. I mean, sure, there were times when collecting them was a tad (no pun intended) frustrating, but it never drove me to rage-quit, or curse Nintendo to oblivion. I simply looked at the entire thing as an extra challenge, rather than a tedious task, and all it took was a bit of patience. Also, I found the dramatic change in the forest area to be quite interesting; I didn't find the swimming to be excessive in the slightest, and the controls worked just fine. I thought the reward for having completed it was worth it as well, especially the song at the end. All in all, the entire thing was creatively implemented into the game, in my opinion, and it reminded me of collecting the Zora eggs in Majora's Mask, only a lot more fun. Hmm... I wonder if I am the only one who actually liked Faron [the dragon]. [noparse][/noparse]

 

[Night Owl]

I Liked it. It was a nice break from the action. I had no problems with swimming as I figured them out elsewhere.
Sure the last few were annoying but Dowsing made the task easy. I liked the Water dragon because It was nice to see a skeptic of Link being the hero.

 

[womangale]

the tadtone quest was fun... till i found out that you had to find the WHOLE FREAKIN SCORE. i wouldn't have mind too much if that water dragon wasn't such a ******bag. you saved her *** and then all of a sudden she doesn't believe you're worthy of her song. ugh.

 

[Triforce82]

I thought the tadtones were actually kind of cool I was able to find all of them on my first try, with using the dowsing on the lily pads. There really wasn't too much swimming so this was a nice little addition to the game. Even though at first I did not like it, the second playthrough was a lot more fun to me.

 

[Ronin]

I distinctly remember being in a dilemma when I reached the Tadtone quest: Saving.

You see, I'd been playing for a while and lost track of time. By the time I got to the Tadtone search, I'd already set my mind to gathering them for Faron. So I spent a good bit of time on the hunt and actually uncovered quite a few. But that's not the problem. I'd forgotten that I had to be somewhere at a certain time, and only when I looked at the clock did I remember the event, with, say, ten minutes to spare. I immediately switched over from seeking out those musical buggers to finding a Save Statue instead. Part of me wondered if they even put a statue in this area. Anyhow, I maneuvered Link through the water so fast that I lost all sense of direction in the game, and kept coming up with these clusters of Tadtones that were cleverly hidden. Naturally I collected them and moved on. Eventually I did find the Statue and saved there, having just enough time to get ready and zip out the door.

My take on this section in the game? It wasn't so bad as I'd originally figured. But I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I hadn't needed to rush. And frankly, when I got back to it, I recall the second half or so being more relaxing. I took my time and it ended up slowing my hectic mind down. The Tadtones weren't the best part of the game, but nor are they anywhere near the worst. Heck, they're tons better than tracking down the last few Light Tears with Guardians running right behind you.

 

[TrueChaos]

DOING it is OK, it's WHY you have to do it that bugs me

 

[ZeldaPlayer]

They even let you dowse for them, it wasn't hard or tedious. It was cool seeing the woods all flooded from a different perspective. The swimming controls weren't bad if you are a competent player.

 

[LegendOfUmbreon]

I thought it was awesome having Faron Woods underwater

 

[Zelda-Rocks]

i liked the tadstones. thery were annoying, but still. Zelda IS a puzzle/fighting game. so here is the puzzle part.

 

[ZeldaPokemon25]

People don't know wtf is a fetch quest these days. They think that just because somebody tells you to collect some items it automatically becomes a fetch quest with the entire negative connotation of the word, and this is just not true. A proper horrible fetch quest has you going to previous areas where there is nothing new to see to collect a meaningless item, the purpose of which is only to lengthen the gameplay time. "Fetch quests" in Skyward Sword have you exploring areas, fighting new enemies, encountering new situations, and solving new puzzles.

Exactly and its hilarious how SS gets slammed for "fetch quests" when Xenoblade (hailed as the RPG of this gen) has almost 500 of them. So by this logic they created is Xenoblade trash compared to SS? Didn't think so. No way do I think that about SS and Xenoblade because I think both are fantastic and like you said the purpose of side quests is to lengthen the game play time. That's exactly what I felt I was doing when completing these side quests (the proper wording for them) in SS and it was exploring new areas, fighting new enemies, solving new puzzles, and other things.

 

[link'sneighbor]

i actually enjoyed that part i didn't have any complaint about it

 

[Sir Duke]

I actually really liked the tadtones.

 

[Random Person]

It had nothing to do with the swimming controls. Those worked fine. It was the fact you already had fetch quests (like the silent realms) advancing the story forward. This late in the game, the last thing you wanted to do was go swimming to collect a bunch of notes. And it wouldn't have been so bad, but the other "dragon's" had puzzles and whatnot that made sense. This was just an example of poor execution by the designers.

- Dave

I agree with this. I do realize that this part of the game was relaxing and was trying to add more variety to the game, which obviously some people enjoyed, but for people like me it really didn't make sense. The thing that urks me the most is the execution. It is the dragon's job to give the chose hero their part of the song. Why does the water Dragon feel she is mightier than her boss and think that I should go through some challenge? It really doesn't make sense except to give the creators an excuse to throw in a fetch quest. Like Dave here said, the other dragon's challenges made sense. The challenge wasn't "proving" yourself, it was making it so the dragon could give you the song.

All in all, I think this would've been fine as a mini-game or if it was put in earlier in the game, but as the game goes on, the sense of urgency builds up and this really seemed out of place.

 

[Arunakarato]

i dont get why so many people are complaining about the tadtone's i thought it was pretty fun, sure it was sort of challenging but i liked how there wasnt that many monsters

 

[endtoendhockey]

They really made a smart decision by allowing us to dowse for the last few tadtones. Covering so much area without any guidance would have been brutal.

I loved the swimming mechanic, it worked incredibly well for me.