| Dulfite said:
1) The amount of side quests and things you can do in X compared to Zelda is insane. There are probably thousands of quests in x, where as there aren't probably even a dozen in most Zelda games. By this logic, Zelda is a far more linear game than X. I could spend a month just doing side quests everyday in X without even touching the main storyline. I could spend maybe 20 minutes doing the same thing in a Zelda game without having to advance the main story. 2) I think you are complaining about something that no one else cares about. The game is fun and a lot of people are buying it. I don't view it as a poor decision and, based on sales and most people's opinions of the game, I many else care. 3) I'm not on Chapter 11 yet, but no quest I've done so far feels pointless in the main storyline. Also, Zelda forces you to do some pretty dumb things things in many games, especially early on. And Zelda offers virtually nothing for you to do unless you enjoy doing meaningless fishing things or getting chests of 50 ruppees even though you have max wallet space or 1/4 heart pieces which you don't even need to beat the game (you could easily beat zelda games with just the main heart ups after bosses). We also don't even know how much the % goes down each day, since it only updates after each chapter, so it could literally be months or even longer in game time. Yes, there is pressure to get it done, but they don't, as far as I'm aware, suggest that they need the lifehold to be found in a certain amount of time, indicating that we really don't know the rate it drops per day. Your assuming it's dropping quickly because you probably went through the chapters quickly, but you could be incorrect. |
1) The amount of side quests in a game does not determine linearity. If you want to claim that X has more sidequests than Zelda, then I'll grant you that. But referencing sidequests as an example of non-linearity simply doesn't work.
2) I'm certainly not the only one complaining about it. Here's a couple quotes from various website reviews of X that reference similar complaints.
"(Story) progression sometimes slows to a halt because you're required to complete a seemingly unimportant mission" -Gamespot
"Story pacing itself is also skewed due to each in-game chapter requiring prerequisites to initiate. These can be anything from completing a certain side quest, to raising your completion rating in a specific area. While playing the game normally can generally complete these prerequisites without you realizing it, some of the more demanding ones can halt your game progression completely, potentially for hours if you weren’t properly prepared." -Brash Games
"Unfortunately, the game often demands that you exhaustively analyze swaths of the planet before progressing to the next story mission, leading to the first of many barriers to a natural narrative flow. It doesn't matter if you want to progress the plot; you could be spending hours grinding to meet the arbitrary requirements to keep the narrative rolling." -Game Informer
And these are just a couple examples I found while scrolling through the Metacritic critic review section. I know of a couple of friends who are playing through the game now and have had similar complaints, and I'd bet money I could easily find another 5-10 reviews that mention these same complaints if I went and did any sort of thorough check.
All that to say; this isn't a complaint that only I am voicing. Plenty of reviewers are, and X's not terrible but not great sales might be communicating that this type of game isn't something that tons of people want, if we're using the pretty arbitrary measure of sales as a yardstick for whether a game mechanic is flawed or not.
3) I agree, Zelda often does (particularly in Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword), and I've called out those games for doing that as well. Just because someone else does something dumb, though, doesn't mean others get a pass for it.
And yes, I'm aware that the game clock doesn't actually drop in relation to actual passage of time, or anything but how often you complete story missions. My point is that if you want to get engaged in the story, it's hard to do that in any way besides playing how you would if you were a character there. And X's story makes it so that that's impossible.
