If there's anything the longtime fan community can agree on (what a novel concept), it's that Zelda games have been getting easier on the whole. What used to be a series known for its length and hardcore difficulty is now widely regarded as--dare I say it--casual. Should we be afraid? Maybe. Is there a way to truly find a happy medium between novice and expert play? I think so, and it's nothing Nintendo hasn't toyed with before.I wouldn't say the drop in difficulty has been due to the puzzles--going back and playing the older games I find they're really no more difficult in this arena--nor that we can blame the more linear story structure--we've been told, either directly or indirectly, where to go next in basically every game since A Link to the Past. No, the lapse in difficulty is much more fundamental than that. It has everything to do with the amount of damage Link takes, as well as what he can dish out compared to his enemies.
Remember those bosses from the NES and SNES games that took away three or more of your hearts? There hasn't been one since the jump to GameCube, and most enemies we face nowadays chip at mere fractions of your life energy. Remember when obstacles and enemies fired at you nonstop as long as you had the audacity to remain in the same room? Now they fire at a much slower rate, and only when you get particularly close. Remember when large groups of enemies kept you on your toes? With any of the moves in your extensive repertoire, you can now dispatch them all at once with no problem (usually before any of them even raise their clubs).
Above: The Game Over screen is a thing of the past for many Zelda vets.Seeing a pattern here? While enemies have been losing power and efficiency over time, Link has been gaining all kinds of skills. We now have an unbalanced series where Link can carve through anything in his path, but enemies either can't touch him or leave him with only a few minor cuts and bruises. Sure, novice players might not enjoy having to worry about dying every five seconds, but the trade-off has given experienced players a wound deeper than anything Link ever received even in the difficult days. We keep hearing that the trend will change, but time has shown us that these are false hopes, and the critics are saying now that Spirit Tracks doesn't fall far from the tree.
Never fear, Nintendo--there is a way to make the best of things! A simple difficulty system would remedy the disparities. Have the casual gamers play the "easier" game, where enemies take off quarter-hearts and ignore you until you have a sword in their backs, and give us hardcore players the three-unit damage ratios and our relentless onslaughts we crave. We've seen the likes of this before in games from all genres, all the way down to one of your own: the Metroid Prime series. And we loved it. Bring difficulty levels into Zelda, and you'll bring the hardcore begging.
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Awesome article and totally right. Also you'd feel alot more epic after surviving a massive brawl by the skin of your teeth, rather than walking through it with ease when it looks like an epic fight, Like hyrule castle in WW
People have been suggesting a difficulty setting for quite a long while by now.... This article is, in my humble opinion, nothing new.
I totally agree! There should be a difficuly system, like having easy, medium and hard modes. Or, just call it a master quest, and increese the difficulty of all things in general!
True. I'd like to see much smarter enemies. Remember the knights from Zelda I and II? Zelda II enemies would come at you non-stop yet there were patterns to beating which took some skill to pull-off. They would fire at you non-stop.
Increase difficulty and bring back a leveling system along with the tunic upgrades. Make sure that the enemies get more difficult as the game goes on but that early enemies won't phase you as much toward the end of the game as early in the game.
This is just one area that needs attention though, this alone won't advance the game-play.
Yo! Link, Im gonna let you finish, but Megaman 9 is one of the most dificult games of all time!!
Yep, I sure do agree with this, Zelda simply needs to add much more challenge. I was honestly surprised to find Wind Waker a little more challenging than TP, due to a bigger range of enemies and weapons (Moblins with spears, etc).
One thing I'd like to see is a system with many, many more enemies featured on screen. (Think the Goron Mines battle just before the boss door with 5+ Bulblins).
I found myself often going to the biggest area of Hyrule Field in TP, just so the Bulblins would appear to rage a battle with Link, since the Pit of Trials was the only other option for challenging fighting.
As I was saying in one of my recent articles, the enemies in the game should progressively get harder based upon your skills. In fallout 3 the enemies reflect your level. I think zelda should implement a system like that. If you have 8 heart pieces why do the enemies on the field only do half a hearts worth of damage?
I disagree with adding a difficulty selection to Zelda pretty strongly. I won't get into why, but I think a system that gauges how you play would make a LOT more sense. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories does exactly that. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to implement and wouldn't interfere with the game or require an intense amount of coding. Also, Miyamoto and Aonuma have been pretty concrete about their views on difficulty levels in Zelda.
PS: I had this window open for a while before I read it (about an hour), so I didn't see Legend of Zelda's comment. XD
I agree that a difficulty selector is not the way to go. I honestly have never enjoyed that except for in games like call of duty where there is a definitive difficulty change
For maximum sales Nintendo should release 2 versions of the same game. One for casuals and another for us. It'd be the ultimate gimmick!
However Zelda isn't considered a big action game, most of the difficulty comes from puzzles/adventuring.
TP had something interesting. There were parts in the game where the player was faced with instant death scenarios. And if they couldn't think/solve a problem fast enough, Link would automatically die. They should expand on that.
At least all of the games don't cost 599 US life points.
ZeldaBlue: I truly, truly hope most of that post was sarcasm. Truly.
lets get real ppl Nintendo is the last company thats gonna use feed back from fans to develop games. they have there own vision of what we want and for the past 3-7 years its been way off the mark. This is it for me. If this Zelda game isnt a step in the right direction i wont be buying a Nin system again and iv had all of them to date. ima keep my dingers crossed.
^over-reacting much? I've heard the "If...isn't good, then I won't buy a Nintendo system again" a thousand times over. If Zelda Wii isn't the best game ever, so what? It's a Zelda game, and it will be good no matter what. I'm so sick of hearing that people will stop buying Nintendo consoles if they don't like the games.
You know what? A Zelda game will be a Zelda game. There is no changing that. I just want the game when it comes, good or bad. No matter what it will be, it'll still be what us gamers grew up with: ∴The Legend of Zelda™∴
The fact that everyone agrees with this article is a sign that this is a sure-fire way to appease a ton of people. I've never understood Japanese games' aversion to difficulty levels. I can't really think of many Japanese games that have them with the exception of MGS.
That being said, I think it sucks when people miss out on things between difficulties. I think this should just be the 'modifier' type of difficulty changes. IE. Make enemies take off more hearts and attack more frequently.
The collective opinions of random idiots does not equate to a good business move.
Difficulty levels have a habit of discouraging mediocre gamers. Let's say I've always LOVED LoZ, but never been very good (my sister is a brilliant example of this). If there were difficulty levels, I know I would feel kind of silly being forced to play on easy. You may say "I wouldn't feel silly," but your individual opinion is useless.
We are extreme Zelda fans here, so of course that wouldn't bug us (most of us would be on expert either way). Nintendo has to anything and everything they can to prevent the alienation of the "casual" user-base while trying to appeal to the clearly finicky "hardcore" Wii owners.
A progressive difficult as used in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and Fallout 3 would make the most sense from a technical, business, and fan appeal aspect. And, as I said in my earlier post, Miyamoto has made his stance on difficulty levels in his games quite clear (as in, it won't happen).
*sigh*
Nintendo doesn't like putting "Easy", "Normal", "Hard", "Novice", "Expirienced" modes into games. Miyamoto I belive doesn't want to seperate the fanbase with diffuculty modes.
Sure, you are right, your standard boss doesn't hits as hard as they used to, but that is nothing to complain about. Some monsters make up for it by a change in ways you gotta attck them. Some chew at your hearts by swarming. Others have armor you have to knock off. Others block and parry your attacks.
But when you expirience a series long enough, you find similarities. I start to see a pattern. Then you can easily figure out how to dispach a horde or a boss or clear a dungeon/temple in record time. Other times people might just look online before they get to a part so they already know what to do when they get there.
Sad thing is guys, its like a toy we played with for hours as kids. When we get older, the fun starts to die away. BUT! A new generation could still find joy in it. Just because things have become to simple for us, doesn't mean Nintendo needs to do something drastically different.
I for one am glad I don't have to deal with a gaint eyeball that deals 3 hearts of damage anymore. I hated that boss in A Link to The Past.
YES! THIS! I've been thinking about this for months, Zelda would be great with a difficulty setting, I haven't had a gameover in Zelda for ages, except when it's on purpose, sometimes I'll just go around with 3 hearts to make it more difficult :\ It took me like a year to beat Majora's Mask, as for TP, it took me a week, it's sad.
@SIAARN;
1: You probably played TP basically nonstop cause you coulkdn't wait to get you mits on it and see all it had to offer.
2: You had more expireince of the "Zelda Formula" when you got TP then you did when you got MM.
3: MM did something no other Zelda title has given you, a doomsday clock. If you didn't pay attention to the clock and/or didn't play the special version of the song of time in time, you'd die. The clock made you actually focus and plan your run throughs a bit if you wanted special stuff.
Agreed. I finally found an article I agreed with completely (not counting annoucments and news).