bought and installed within the first minute of availability, which idk i will ever do for a game again, so feel free to take my autism with a grain of salt. but this is an exceedingly, endlessly lovable piece of art, one which reaffirms just about everything ive grown to believe about art in the first place. the source material , once uncomplicatedly loathed, has been slowly chipped away at by years of collective intimacy...sentences heard as groups of syllables, individual frames of animation immortalized, control quirks forced to be grappled with, npc requests and locations forced to be stored away in memory. this is to say nothing of the dedication it took to create an entire fan remaster, which leads directly into arzette via its lead developer. the result is a combination of nostalgic warmth, a grasp of what is compelling and memorable and striking about those games, and a melancholy stare at the parts that could have been better...a melancholy that could only be sated Through creation.
arzette will be described by many people as "the cdi zeldas but good." having enjoyed the remasters of those games, its more the final step in a process of escalation towards "the cdi zeldas, but there is less in the way of the good." the ultra-memorable quirk and expressiveness of the animation and voice acting are more widely acknowledged as boons now, but arzette also runs with the gorgeous background art, the lush and memorable music, and the miniature zelda experience via an interlocking spread of bite sized metroidvania maps. since its no longer on the cdi, individual screens are much meatier, which does make it slightly longer to recheck places (and rechecking places is what youre doing a Lot in all of these games, but especially this one with its more complex item progression), but it also allows for much more deliberate and satisfying level and encounter design. tricks from the cdi games have their most unpleasant edges sanded off, yet still retain their character. its by any measure an improvement on its inspirations, yet it never once feels judgemental or callous...instead it feels freed and joyus, the result of passion and time and effort and improved technology, chipping away at a dream created almost accidentally by people working with a bad console under tight time pressure.
and more then anything, even with some fun and dry meta jokes, i may not play a game more full of shamelessly earnest love this year. its close proximity with its source material allows it to share a bunch of discoveries its made that its so bubblingly excited about...yet its also an individual and distinctive piece of art carrying with it all the best sensibilities of contemporary metamodern media engagement, a plea to look closely at things that are dismissed and create beauty out of them. its most singular advancements are not its polishing up of rough gameplay ideas, but are in its disarmingly heartfelt and kind story and general tone. i know many people are cynical about pastiche, esp in a world where the same ideas are endlessly recycled over and over...but art should be about the free exchange of ideas, putting them out in the world for other people to respond to, feel about, and create on top of. it certainly cant be dismissed out of hand if it produces results like this even occasionally. hot moose man.
arzette will be described by many people as "the cdi zeldas but good." having enjoyed the remasters of those games, its more the final step in a process of escalation towards "the cdi zeldas, but there is less in the way of the good." the ultra-memorable quirk and expressiveness of the animation and voice acting are more widely acknowledged as boons now, but arzette also runs with the gorgeous background art, the lush and memorable music, and the miniature zelda experience via an interlocking spread of bite sized metroidvania maps. since its no longer on the cdi, individual screens are much meatier, which does make it slightly longer to recheck places (and rechecking places is what youre doing a Lot in all of these games, but especially this one with its more complex item progression), but it also allows for much more deliberate and satisfying level and encounter design. tricks from the cdi games have their most unpleasant edges sanded off, yet still retain their character. its by any measure an improvement on its inspirations, yet it never once feels judgemental or callous...instead it feels freed and joyus, the result of passion and time and effort and improved technology, chipping away at a dream created almost accidentally by people working with a bad console under tight time pressure.
and more then anything, even with some fun and dry meta jokes, i may not play a game more full of shamelessly earnest love this year. its close proximity with its source material allows it to share a bunch of discoveries its made that its so bubblingly excited about...yet its also an individual and distinctive piece of art carrying with it all the best sensibilities of contemporary metamodern media engagement, a plea to look closely at things that are dismissed and create beauty out of them. its most singular advancements are not its polishing up of rough gameplay ideas, but are in its disarmingly heartfelt and kind story and general tone. i know many people are cynical about pastiche, esp in a world where the same ideas are endlessly recycled over and over...but art should be about the free exchange of ideas, putting them out in the world for other people to respond to, feel about, and create on top of. it certainly cant be dismissed out of hand if it produces results like this even occasionally. hot moose man.