Warning: spoilers
The first time I played Twilight Princess I thought it was incredible. Every time I've replayed it I haven't enjoyed it quite as much. Now I think that while still a very good game, it has room for improvement.
The easiest aspect to point out is the dated visuals. Fire effects from the lantern and torches look fine but in some cutscenes like the burning bridge and escaping from the burning building in the desert it looks ugly. Foliage density is low. Hair on most characters is a static texture and looks especially stiff in certain a cutscene where a child is laying horizontally in Link's arms but his hair doesn't drop.
The difficulty is too easy and Hero Mode doesn't help. The bosses all look epic but actually fighting them feels so unsatisfying because they take such little effort to take down. Hero Mode makes the early game more frustrating but not more exciting. A few mistakes will get you killed and it's a hassle heading back to the shops to buy milk. Getting killed is only a minor setback because the game lets you continue from a generously placed checkpoint. In the mid-late game where you have more hearts and bottles, taking double damage doesn't make the game any harder. Hero Mode does at least incentivise the player to seek out heart pieces and bottles thereby experiencing more that the game has to offer. Tougher enemy AI, a wider enemy variety and refined combat mechanics is the best solution, but also the most expensive and time consuming to implement.
The game is disruptive. It's not nearly as bad as Skyward Sword on the Wii though. Midna doesn't let you transform or teleport around people and being someone who cares about realism in video games I'm tempted to call this a good thing, but in practice it just wastes your time forcing you to walk away from NPCs to complete the next step in whatever you're doing. The postman chasing after you and forcing you to stop for a minute gets annoying by the end of the game.
The Poe Souls collection quest is a missed opportunity. The game already has a bug catching collection quest and the Poe Souls could have been far more interesting. With the exception of the four Poes in the Arbiter's Grounds, all the Poes are identical enemies which take two hits with Wolf Link to take out. It would have been better to make it a quest which tells a story exploring selling one's soul out of greed. I personally would have put less Poes in the game, given them each a unique location to hide in like a cave or haunted building, given them each a unique sprite and given them a backstory you see hints of as you explore their hideout and more directly in a cutscene which plays when you consume their soul. I'm talking about a unique and interesting backstory, not repeating the same shit over and over again like Tears of the Kingdom does with the fucking Imprisoning War. Once again, this would have been expensive and time consuming to implement.
Collecting the Tears of Light as Wolf Link is something I'm not sure how to improve. Skyward Sword's Silent Realms are a much more enjoyable evolution of the same task but the Silent Realm is a late game challenge rather than an early game exploration task.
Or maybe Twilight Princess just isn't the right game for me and I should play The Witcher 3 or Elden Ring instead.
The first time I played Twilight Princess I thought it was incredible. Every time I've replayed it I haven't enjoyed it quite as much. Now I think that while still a very good game, it has room for improvement.
The easiest aspect to point out is the dated visuals. Fire effects from the lantern and torches look fine but in some cutscenes like the burning bridge and escaping from the burning building in the desert it looks ugly. Foliage density is low. Hair on most characters is a static texture and looks especially stiff in certain a cutscene where a child is laying horizontally in Link's arms but his hair doesn't drop.
The difficulty is too easy and Hero Mode doesn't help. The bosses all look epic but actually fighting them feels so unsatisfying because they take such little effort to take down. Hero Mode makes the early game more frustrating but not more exciting. A few mistakes will get you killed and it's a hassle heading back to the shops to buy milk. Getting killed is only a minor setback because the game lets you continue from a generously placed checkpoint. In the mid-late game where you have more hearts and bottles, taking double damage doesn't make the game any harder. Hero Mode does at least incentivise the player to seek out heart pieces and bottles thereby experiencing more that the game has to offer. Tougher enemy AI, a wider enemy variety and refined combat mechanics is the best solution, but also the most expensive and time consuming to implement.
The game is disruptive. It's not nearly as bad as Skyward Sword on the Wii though. Midna doesn't let you transform or teleport around people and being someone who cares about realism in video games I'm tempted to call this a good thing, but in practice it just wastes your time forcing you to walk away from NPCs to complete the next step in whatever you're doing. The postman chasing after you and forcing you to stop for a minute gets annoying by the end of the game.
The Poe Souls collection quest is a missed opportunity. The game already has a bug catching collection quest and the Poe Souls could have been far more interesting. With the exception of the four Poes in the Arbiter's Grounds, all the Poes are identical enemies which take two hits with Wolf Link to take out. It would have been better to make it a quest which tells a story exploring selling one's soul out of greed. I personally would have put less Poes in the game, given them each a unique location to hide in like a cave or haunted building, given them each a unique sprite and given them a backstory you see hints of as you explore their hideout and more directly in a cutscene which plays when you consume their soul. I'm talking about a unique and interesting backstory, not repeating the same shit over and over again like Tears of the Kingdom does with the fucking Imprisoning War. Once again, this would have been expensive and time consuming to implement.
Collecting the Tears of Light as Wolf Link is something I'm not sure how to improve. Skyward Sword's Silent Realms are a much more enjoyable evolution of the same task but the Silent Realm is a late game challenge rather than an early game exploration task.
Or maybe Twilight Princess just isn't the right game for me and I should play The Witcher 3 or Elden Ring instead.
