Zelda Dungeon Talks: What Are Some Of The Aspects Of The Series That Have Always Bothered You The Most?
Posted on January 26 2016 by Josh Tasaico
While the Legend of Zelda series is an excellent series of games, these games are certainly not flawless. There is always something for one of us fans to complain about, no matter how small or how large the problem may be. Tedious dungeons, time wasting enemies, a lack of difficulty settings, each of these things are just a few of many flaws in the series. Now of course the good greatly outweighs the bad in the series, but it still has some issues.
In this week’s edition of Zelda Dungeon Talks, various staff members will share with us what annoys them most in the series and why. Feel free to leave your own response in the comments section.
Alexis Anderson – View Profile
There are few errors that I see occurring throughout the series as a whole, but one thing that always bothered me was the use of annoying little enemies in excess in certain temples. Initially you need to be introduced to the style of enemies and fighting, so weak enemies like Bokoblins and Keese are just fine, but later in the game they’re just annoyances that I don’t think need to be sprinkled around in dungeons– I’d rather tougher enemies in smaller amounts (but I guess you want to remain engaged in every room). One more thing, say you save and quit the game in the middle of a dungeon, I don’t like that enemies respawn in temple and dungeon rooms when next you play. I’m sure I’ve got other pet peeves, but those reallys stick out.
Thomas Jacobs – View Profile
Personally I consider it rather annoying when a Zelda game’s idea of a tougher enemy is a recolor of an existing one with more HP and a higher damage output. While I understand that not every enemy can be completely different, going this route is rather lazy. Many of the 2D Zelda games have this: the original, A Link to the Past, the Oracle games and A Link Between Worlds all employ recolored enemies to some degree. Having several different enemies come at you at the same time is rather sweet: you have to decide quickly which to get rid of first with which weapons and tactics so that either you destroy the most annoying enemies first or get rid of the smaller ones so you can focus on the big guy. However, when the toughest enemy of the group is just a recolor of the others with a different weapon with the same tactics and double the HP of the rest this effect is kind of lost: you’re effectively fighting two enemies in the body of one. While The Adventure of Link both plays this straight and manages to avert this at the same time. There are close to a dozen enemies of humanoid build with a color swapped equivalent, yet given the limitations of the system and the sidescrolling gameplay these enemies all act just a bit differently. Some use boomerangs, others rush you, others throw barrages of maces at you: they feel different, yet looking almost the same to one another. In the 3D games this is mostly lighter, but here and there the diversity amongst enemies is somewhat lacking and I hope to see a large variety of enemies in the upcoming Zelda Wii U.
Jon Lett – View Profile
Honestly, it is not my biggest grievance with the series, but man, I would sure love some more significant difficulty levels. These days, gamers (primarily North American gamers) have been all about choice – choices having effects, open worlds where you can explore all you want, and all kinds of customization. And one type of player option that seems more or less obvious in adventure games these days is multiple difficulties. Easy, Normal, Hard, and likely some kind of crazy hard mode. I fail to see why Zelda can’t also have this. I have participated in the three-heart challenge, as well as other minimalist challenges, and they have been loads of fun! I even plan to torture myself in Twilight Princess HD with 3-hearts, Hero Mode, and the new Ganondorf Amiibo blue heart effect. Beating that will feel SO satisfying. Still, imagine you didn’t have to actively try to make things more challenging for yourself. Not only would the simple selection of a harder difficulty ahead of time make it more accessible, but unlike the current Hero Mode system, there could be more rewards for beating harder difficulties. More endings, better weapons, unlockable development materials – any number of prizes should be there. Either way, there should be a number of legitimately challenging, rewarding difficulty levels.
Kira Koneko – View Profile
In all honesty, I’m not sure that this can truly count as an aspect of the series that has always bothered me, but I guess it’s really just that it is never truly enough. Let me explain, one of the things that keeps me coming back to Zelda over and over again aside from the gameplay itself is the amazing amount of depth and lore than exists within the world of Zelda, but there have been quite a few games within the main series that barely scratch the surface of that lore. There was even quite a bit of information that until the release of Hyrule Historia had previously been inaccessible to fans. I have said it before, I am a greedy gamer, and I want more! I want more detail, more history, more answers to all of those questions that sawn an insane amount of theories, more I say more!
