TTYD HD Thoughts

Finished 100% earlier today. Overall pretty satisfied, I have some quibbles but I understand most of the dev time went to remaking the graphics from the ground up.

My main complaint is the 30fps difference ended up being a bigger deal than I thought. I am so used to the 60fps menus that I found myself losing inputs waiting for the menu to catch up to me, where it was VERY snappy in GCN. Now most of this is the Switch's fault, but it actively wants me to see this game get a Switch 2 patch, so hopefully that is in the cards.

Unskippable (can't be instantly loaded) first-time text is a really stupid downgrade.

Some music is definitely a miss, thank you for the retro music in there. But after some concerns from what we heard pre-release, overall it was a positive I think.

Some more spoilerly comments...

[spoiler=GENERAL FULL GAME SPOILERS BELOW, BUT NOT NEW CONTENT]

QOL

-The QOL pipes (and in chapter 5's case, a spring) were very good, but there could have been even more. There is one in chapter 8 skipping the whole dungeon, but apparently it only shows in postgame? Or maybe if you die once, I didn't test that.

-Trouble Center is still a slog with no changed rewards (although it seems a specific trouble is required for Prince Mush fight).

-Pianta Parlor is a fun diversion but still mostly useless. You will want tons of Cake Mix for recipes, but you don't really need anything else. Infinite HP / FP Pluses for flexibility is not something 99% of players will bother with, same with duplicates of move badges.

Battle

-No new badges, there were some fun ideas that wouldn't have changed any mechanics I think (in particular, the Allergic, Fast and Slow status effects are still completely underused, but would have opened up more advanced strategies. Maybe mods can help here - TTYD GCN has a big one going, Hero Mode, where at least Fast & Slow are explored).

-Only a couple of badges changed at all  - First Attack costs 0 BP, which is great (but Bump Attack is still 5...). Hammer Throw got a major nerf for no reason, not sure what they were thinking here...

- ... Leading to my next point - the Battle Toad is a mixed bag.

--HIs design & music are clearly more modernized Paper Mario than retro Paper Mario and that sticks out. He reveals "piercing" damage vs. non-piercing and that P-Down D-Up is the only way to reduce piercing damage, which is a nice tip that you had to figure out with experimentation only in GCN.

--He has some bizarre hints / recommendations about Hammer Throw and Tornado Jump, among other obscure badges. Tornado Jump is objectively a horrible badge and I'm not sure why the devs emphasized it. Hammer Throw was a fun badge for Hammerman challenge runs, but now it's turned into a worse Piercing Blow for some reason.

--His description about Soft / Shrink Stomp, or namely, the DEF-Down and ATK-Down statuses, is plain wrong. It is not setting those values to 0. Not sure how the heck this got here. A lot of the internals of the battle system were ported from GCN - some very very specific things such as Mushroom Broth only making you soft by 1 def instead of the usual 3 are still intact. The game has been decompiled. We know all these things, but the official text of the remake gets it wrong.

--Some comments about the different audience members, and of course practicing all moves and stylishes, are very appreciated (although it makes Timing Tutor kinda useless). (There is a bug right now I think where any move >5 FP can't be practiced, the game probably restes Mario's stats to level 1 or something in there. Fix that, Nintendo!)

[/spoiler]

[spoiler=NEW CONTENT, VERY ENDGAME-Y]

I think given it was only two new bosses, they chose the best two options - one people always wanted, and one that's a complete meme that many also wanted.

Unlock Method

-So you need to get emails to unlock these fights, in addition to some prerequisites (Mush: it is believed to do the first Jolene trouble, Whacka: beat the Pit and, of course, hit Whacka all the times you can at the Key).

-My understanding suffering through this when I couldn't get Whacka's to unlock, and going around other people's streams / playthroughs, is that the email trigger is random. Whenever the prerequisites are done and you enter a landing zone within Rogueport above ground, there's a small chance it will trigger.

-It might also just be an in-game timer after the prerequsities are done, but it's a non-trivial amount of time, maybe 20-30 minutes.

-Needless to say I don't like this unlock method at all - just give it to us as soon as the prerequisites are done, really.

-I even went to Wonky to see if there was a new hint, but besides updating the gold bar information with the new coin max of 9999 (which, by the way, makes gold bars functionally even more useless than they already were), there was nothing.

-At the end of the day, maybe I missed something, but I found the unlock method for these clumsy. I ran into

Prince Mush

-Mush's supercharged attack played very, very similarly to Paper Mario 64's Master Quest mod (Toad Master fight). To the point that I think Intelligent Systems might have seen the fight... but that would be a big legal issue. Yet, I can't shake the comparison out of my head.

-Figuring out what the two stances meant was great, as well as a defensive value of 6, made this fight the moment I'll remember most of my playthrough. This was an actual challenge that made me use Power Lift!

-Forced superguarding was also great, or else... you lose. It is one of the easier superguards, but the fact they lock you into having to do it at all is a milestone.

-96 HP felt a bit low, although he goes invincible except for superguards at 45 HP, which is pretty high for most players, so whatever.

Whacka

-This was a cute little fight, and I think it being bizarre and somewhat of a joke was the point.

-He can output truly unhandleable damage without superguards and mixes up his throwing pattern well, even though it's the only attack he has. And the damaging himself to essentially charge up his next turn! Perfect mechanics for an intended funny fight.

-The HP felt pretty  low to me at 108, when Bonetail has 200 - how about 300+? Or heal more often with the bumps.

-I think going back to the bottom of the Pit, which had nothing before, is great, and a Mover to get to level 50 was VERY needed... but arguably another Mover option to get to 80, or straight to 100, would have been even better. Bonetail gives 999 coins, it's not like 500+ coins at this point in the game would have been a big ask. Redoing even levels 51-99 of the Pit still turns into 45+ minutes of autopilot grindiness.
[/spoiler]



Hoping this game sells a ton and 2028 will be what we've been waiting for. I did my part by double dipping, and hoping this game shines in the streaming / Youtube era of games.