What do you consider to be a cardinal sin in game design?

One such instance would be if, following a combat, you are unable to return to the area where the loot was dropped and instead are taken to a cutscene. I am not referring to commercial strategies, claims made by businesses, or the incorporation of actual-world problems into video games.

9 Likes

Being unable to hit UP and drop to the bottom of a lengthy list right away.

8 Likes

The same goes for horizontal scrolling.

7 Likes

Same for diagonal scrolling.

6 Likes

Same for elder scrolling.

5 Likes

Or include paging. Octopath had issues with this.

4 Likes

Tears of the Kingdom was really problematic in this regard as well. The menus are terrible in that game you have to scroll endlessly to find the right item to fuse to your arrows, with hundreds of items arranged in a horizontal list.

3 Likes

If you felt that was awful, you should read Echoes of Wisdom. It makes use of the same horrible user interface (UI) for the main feature, which is choosing Echoes. The game becomes a scrolling marathon, which lessens the fun.

In TotK, at least, you could typically ignore inventory-related fuzzing.

2 Likes

No way, EoW is much better. You can simply press + to access the fully auto-sorted grid, which makes it quick less than 2 seconds to find what you need.

Zelda games still struggle with inventory management and frequently having to open menus to swap items. While the new ones have their issues, EoW at least made some improvements over TotK.

1 Like

Really, damn it? That was one of the most common criticisms of Totk that I have heard expressed by users. I am glad to know they are paying attention. That slightly dampens my enthusiasm to play it.