Been too preoccupied to comment lately, but summarizing my thoughts on the past few days' topics:
- I don't really
have a good answer to the difficulty question. The mainline games have always been easy outside of a few isolated incidents, and most of the latter (Your rival in RBY ambushing you at the ends of dungeons, Cynthia's team in DP being way higher leveled than the first E4 member, etc.) are
difficult for the wrong reasons. Sure, we all struggled getting through the games as kids, but that was because we had no idea what we were doing and no idea how to build a well-rounded party. Everyone had a playthrough where we reached the League with a Level 70 starter backed by a team of randoms in their 30s.
And the thing is, I haven't seen a good example yet of a fangame that succeeds at being challenging without tapping into that same Fake Difficulty. One big issue I had with Blaze Black and Volt White is how so much of its difficulty curve comes from stacking the deck in favor of major boss fights, usually by giving gym leaders and the like full teams at points where you'd struggle to get them yourself, with
moves more powerful than you can get yourself at that point, at levels so high up that you're forced to grind.
- It'll be a few days before I can delve into the Crown Tundra, but reception so far seems pretty positive. Its design is very dynamic and varied and a step up from even the Isle of Armor, and it really shows how much the dev team has learned how to create open sections of a linear game. A Xenoblade-like approach is better for an RPG than a BotW-like structure, anyway.
Also, how did none of us think of
that being Calyrex's gimmick? It makes so much
sense considering he's supposed to be this legendary king-like figure.
- Far as I'm concerned, disliking a game shouldn't invalidate the potential its characters could have as playable fighters. Especially if there's something they could do that no one else is capable of! But even though Sakurai has emphasized that exact thing so much, speculation tends to gloss over it.
Shows how much more focused the Smash community is on "representation" and interpreting the roster as a who's-who of all stars. Why
do so many people care more about wanting a character in Smash just so they can say they're present (or say they aren't)? Why has DLC speculation been treating the actual game as an afterthought to its cast? Perhaps figuring out why would help us counteract it.