Tetris 99 has been available to play for over 5 years now. Nevertheless, the game continues to receive a lot of support. When there isn’t any updates, the game is receiving themes that fans can get from Maximus Cups. Most of the new themes involve a first-party game that recently released on the Nintendo Switch.
This is no exception. The 44th Tetris 99 Maximus has been officially announced by Nintendo tonight. This time, it will feature a theme based on The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. The Maximus Cup will be taking place in just a few days from now, beginning on December 19th. You can see Nintendo of America’s announcement tweet about the matter down below.
The #Tetris99 44th MAXIMUS CUP event will run from 12/19 at 11:00pm PT to 12/23 at 10:59pm PT!
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) December 17, 2024
Accumulate a total of 100 event points to unlock a new theme, featuring art, music, and Tetrimino designs inspired by The Legend of #Zelda: #EchoesofWisdom! @Tetris_Official pic.twitter.com/Dqu9cNDCyE
ANOTHER BANGER TETRIS 99 THEME FOR THE COLLECTION LET’S GOOOOO
This game was criticized way too much by the fans if you ask me. It’s true it grants too much freedom to do things, however regardless of that, it’s really important to explore the whole zones without “cheating” your exploration, because if you do so without exploring well the maps at least once, you risk to miss out important places that contain Echoes of Pieces of Heart. You can cheat your exploration but it’s not convenient to do so. Also I heavely disagree on the matter of the combat, you can find several creative solutions for it and have more fun, instead of just spam and random enemy and wait until it does all the job. The only criticism I agree with is the Echoes handling system, it was pretty messy, and in the end I preferred selecting them from the main compendium, since there their position was fixed. Other than that I had a really great time with Echoes of Wisdom, and I feel it was way too overcriticized by fans (much like I feel Mario & Luigi Brothership is too overhated but this is a story for another time).
I think it’s a matter of taste honestly and mainly the fact that it came out after breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom. Those games give you so much freedom to that point that in breath of the wild you can straight up go directly to the main boss after the introduction, people were looking for a more traditional Zelda in a top down game so the fact that even there they gave you freedom to play it however you want left a bitter taste to every traditional Zelda fan.
I’ll be honest about it: I really don’t care about linearity or freedom, as long as the game I play is fun. I have fun in playing BOTW, TOTK and EOW as much I have fun in playing OOT, WW and TP, it doesn’t matter how different they are. In general, unless it’s a game that is focused SOLELY on the story, if it doesn’t have a good gameplay, if I don’t have fun with it, I just don’t enjoy it. To say: I’m not a fan of Fire Emblem Three Houses, at all because in terms of gameplay and map design that game is really weak (and I’m not a fan of the story either, but that’s more for a matter of personal taste). On the opposite, I loved Fire Emblem Engage a lot, because despite the forgettable story (althought I enjoyed the characters’ supports) in terms of gameplay and map design it was really fun in my eyes. It’s one of the few games in the series I finished twice (alongside Blazing Sword, Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance).
Long story short: I think in the end what should matter to people is being less narrow minded and think more how fun a game can be for what it is, instead of thinking of how non-fun can be for what it isn’t.