Quick Look: Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King

Do I get an achievement?

@eccentrix: I praise you with barks cuz I am a dog! ∪･ω･∪

2018 quick looks. Here. We. Go.

Oh thank god I was so thirsty.

A nice quick look to start the year, thank you Dan & Vinny, have a great day.

Not that I'm complaining, but I wonder what prompted a quick look of a game that came out last March.

@melonpan: It just dropped on Switch last week.

Ohh, gotcha.

Saw this on eShop a few days ago and randomly decided to get it since it looked like a 2D Zelda. It's exactly that but the key point here is that it's not only a Zelda clone it's a GOOD Zelda clone. At $15 it's worth it for everyone who likes that type of a game.

edit: Also, same as Dan, I did not realize this game has been out so long on Steam. Never heard of it before, probably just got overlooked since Steam has so many releases it's utterly impossible to keep up with all of them

"We even know how much this game costs!"

This truly is a new era for Giant Bomb.

Is it just me or does Vinnys audio sound a bit low?

Where my Skywad Sword Zelda fans at? WOo WOoo!

Every game that tries to emulate the visuals of A Link to the Past gets the perspective wrong in the interiors. Look at the amount of vanishing points in just that initial room.

Blossom Tales is fun, yet, considering Dan's love of all things Zelda, I'm surprised that he seemingly has never played Stories of Bethem nor any games made in Zelda Classic.

EVERYTHING'S POSSIBLE!

this game is really pretty

I'm so fucking tired of all these remasters and sequels. Where's the originality? GIVE US SOMETHING NEW GOD DAMN IT!

Wait what's this... A Zelda clone? JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THAT'S.... AWESOME! I FUCKING LOVE ZELDA!!

When I heard that I was like

Then I realized this is probably one of those new year resolutions that will only last like a week. ?

"I don't know why I'm special." - Dan Ryckert, 2018

awesome I love Beny Caravela and Dude Record quick looks

"we found this game from kotaku"

Why shouldn't I just got to kotaku instead and just cut out the middleman?

Oh man this looks really good. Picking it up tonight!

I guess this explains why I never played a zelda game before BOTW.

@lonelyspacepanda: calm down, Bubb Rubb

I don't understand, why wouldn't I just play Link to the Past if I wanted to play Link to the Past? It'd be one thing if this was an homage with even a few new mechanical (or hell, even story) twists, but this seems too close to clone/rip-off for comfort.

Liked the QL though guys, thanks. Link Between Worlds is a fantastic game.

Lifting the aesthetic is fine, lifting mechanics is fine, but doing both with this wholesale replication is kind of gross.

Everyone's throwing around the name "Link to the Past", but this looks and sounds far more like the Oracles games to me, maybe with a little Minish Cap in there.

@delitist: if you want something new instead of playing the same game over again?

Sorry posted quickly and had a negative tone will reword later.

I keep on waiting to find out what the ___ is in the "It's like Link to the Past but with ____".

visions of Deadly Premonition with those block moving puzzles. Glad I'm able to get in on the ground floor of GB's 2018 "Bold New Direction"!! Hoping to pick up some pro strats for my Shenmue 2 game

@drachmalius: Maybe it's because I'm likely a bit older, or the 2D-ness of the puzzles, but the block puzzles reminded me more of Boxxle/Sokoban/"Shove It! The Warehouse Game."

That dungeon has too much red in it, and of course I agree with Vinny and Dan that the boss needed a lifebar or some better visual feedback that you're hitting him.

But yeah, I think this game looks pretty cool and I'm going to buy it on Switch at some point.

There is always about 2 or 3 games in development at any one time that seem to be built to taunt Nintendo's legal team.

Boy, Homage is a fine line..

@jpope: because of the delightful personalities of the Giant Bomb staff. Why comment at all if you are gonna be a dick?

@falconboom: If I wanted something new, I'd play a game that wasn't such a blatantly direct clone of another game, with barely anything different to offer. Which is exactly what I like in my games, and there's plenty out there that offers that and differentiates itself. That's the whole point, there's a huge difference between homages that have something unique to offer and clones.

For example, Axiom Verge is clearly an homage to Super Metroid, but it also has a bunch of new surprises and cool twists on that formula. This game, on the other hand, stinks of being barely more than reskin in too many ways. And yeah, I'm aware that Dan mentioned that there were some new ideas, but I didn't glean that impression very strongly from this video, and I wonder what the actual points of difference are there. Are they actually interesting and surprising new ideas, or is it just new weapons and new enemy types or something? Like I said, really doesn't make me want to run out and play this despite loving Link to the Past.

@wollywoo said:

I feel like Nintendo wouldn't allow a game like this on their platform unless they weren't desperate for games.

@zemavieira said:

The perspective is way off in alltp in those ways too though isnt it? It at least has always looked wrong to me.

Looks like they are just replicating how wrong alttp looked to me haha.

@lestephan: You're right, but it feels like a bad attempt at replicating how wrong alttp looked (if that makes any sense). In the original it felt like a deliberate art style choice. It was never egregiously wrong like in the case of that stained glass hall in the first scene of this quick look.

It's no Zelda, but Blossom Tales.

. . .That joke doesn't work with this title. 0/10

This makes me want to track down a copy of 3d Dot Game Heroes again. I fucking LOVE voxels.

Boy, it wasnt until I heard this one that I appreciate how crisp GBE sounds. I miss the Quick Look room.

I started playing this, finished the 1st Dungeon and then had the same thought. ALTTP is one of it not my all time favorite game and this was fun but it just made me go play ALTTP and stop playing it altogether.

Breath of the Wild is the only good Zelda game as far as I'm concerned.

Neat, a game that looks, sounds, and seems to play worse than the 27 year old game it's trying to be. I'll pass on this one. Forever.

I don't really get Dan's obsession with defining games as "main line" or not. It's okay not to like a game that's part of the main story/series of games. It's also silly to dismiss something like Super Mario 3D Land as "not main line" just because the gameplay differed from the games before and after it. Unless a game has a clearly defined linear story (which Mario and Zelda games clearly do not), it's a completely arbitrary designation.

I like how after 15 years Dan is still so mad at the 20 people who complained for a week about Wind Waker's graphics

@anarchovelo: When Wind Waker was announced, the internet was FLOODED by comments raging about the artstyle, and when the recent HD remake was launched recently, you had people still complaining on these very forums on how it was "too cartoony".

So no, it wasn't "20 people", and it wasn't "complaining for just a week".

@dasakamov: Yes I was being hyperbolic but still, seems like an inconsequential and odd thing to be hung up on for a decade and a half, but I guess Dan's not the only one