In games, I like to get some mileage out of my gear. On the occasion of the imminent release of Twilight Princess HD, I have just released an interactive, mobile-friendly equipment walkthrough for Twilight Princess (both HD, Wii and GC) that you can use as a quick reference to get all the items and equipment as early as possible. The descriptions are short, concise, and clear enough that you’ll actually spend your time playing, not reading. Similar guides are also coming for Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Skyward Sword, and Wind Waker HD.
For me, this is a big “finally!” Some of the guides I created years ago, some more recently, and all have been gathering dust as text documents on my computer ever since, only to be printed occasionally when I played through the games. I never quite felt that text documents were the best format for distributing these guides, so now I made them into mobile-friendly web pages where you can check off what you have collected, choose to show/hide some potentially unnecessary stuff, and for the Twilight Princess guide, even choose between the two mirrored versions of the game.
Why I made these guides in the first place
If these guides are of any interest to you, then you’re probably a bit like me: You like maxing out all your skills and equipment as you go, and you enjoy smashing your opponents to bits with the best gear possible at any point in the game. If you’re not like me and instead think that these kinds of guides ruin the whole experience, even for veteran players, well, whatever floats your boat – I’m not forcing this on anyone. :)
The thing is, in some games, I’m a “tourist”, yet at the core I’m kind of a completionist too. I like to enjoy the view and breathe the atmosphere of a thousand worlds, and some games, such as most Zelda games, I’ll happily revisit over and over again. But, you know, Life happens. Besides a host of other games to play there’s plenty of other stuff to do, and I have a hard time justifying (to myself and my needs) spending significant amounts of time hunting down those last six elusive Heart Pieces time and again before sentencing Ganondorf to yet another eternity in some void or another.
Not to mention the more tangible benefit of actually getting skills such as upgraded Spin Attacks and Quick Beetles and whatnot as early as possible, so that you can actually get some decent mileage out of them.
So I made some guides for the Zelda games, primarily for myself, to help solve this conundrum. They’re not walkthroughs per se, because they don’t tell you how to play the game, or solve puzzles. They don’t comment on game events or anything such. They are just carefully ordered and described checkboxes centered on the getting of equipment in an efficient order. That way you’ll get the equipment as early as possible, while still not ending up reading more than you’re playing. I mean come on, I want to play the game, not read it.
It’s all about having the most fun. And I have the most fun playing Zelda games if I get to show the glory of my Super Spin Attack to all the creatures of the world, not just Ganondorf.
Cover image by Sweetie187 on Flickr.
This is awesome. You might want to revise it a bit after the HD version is released, though, since there might be a few extra tidbits here and there.
Glad you like it! I’ll keep an eye out for new stuff while playing. I’ve added a quick note about the Ghost Lantern, which is the only new item I know of.
(I won’t add the stamps since AFAIK they don’t confer any gameplay benefits or changes. And if there are some new items available only to amiibo owners, my initial reaction is to refuse adding those out of philosophical reasons.)
There’s an entire new trial ground that can only be unlocked with the Wolf Link and Midna amiibo. As for the others, they only do stuff like replenish your hearts/arrows once a day or have you receive double amounts of damage (that’s the Ganondorf one, for the record).
Yep, I’ve heard about the Cave of Shadows. If you don’t get any gear there it’s not relevant for the guide. And if you do, well, I’m inclined to not mention in on grounds of it requiring additional purchases, which IMO makes it not part of the “core” game. But of course, I’m more pragmatic than idealistic, and although I’m primarily scratching my own itch with these guides, I might add a note about other stuff if it doesn’t require too much work. We’ll see. :)