The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild |OT2| It's 98 All Over Again

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I only have guranteed play time on Fridays. I played for 10 hours yesterday, give or take. "Okay, let's finally go to the second village/dungeon area."

I spent the whole day exploring on region on the way to the destination. I have 55+ hours logged in, only 1/4 of the map revealed. I've even skipped over some parts just to not move so slowly towards the end. THIS GAME DOESN'T END.
 
So I finished with all 4 beasts last night and
I feel like Rito and Goron beasts were extremely simple especially compared to Gerudo and Zoras. It was kind of disappointing to be honest as the first 2 I did were Zoras and Gerudo.

Only 31 shrines and 9 memories until I wrap up my playthrough. Game has seriously been a blast.
 
I hope someone can explain to me how the inventory order works and mostly for the armor. Because I just don't get the logic here. I press Y to sort the items and for example this Guardian armor gives me 19 defense. Yet all these other armors and clothing like Warm Doublet are placed first in the order, no matter how many times I press Y. But why? Warn doublet for example only provides 13 defense.

I don't get it.
 
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Flavi knows what's up.
 
Why are you embarrassed and insulted?

It's an insult to the devs who put years of their life into this, for someone to call it creatively bankrupt; I'm embarrassed to read it. You not liking a design decision doesn't degrade the time and effort put into the game. The dumbest part is that the post starts with a terrible assumption and extrapolates. First of all, no other Zelda game has anything like the shrines, so it's not like they were needed. They could'ver easily called it a day with the divine beasts. The world itself, as has been repeatedly said by the devs, is a dungeon. Just traversing it, finding it all the secrets of it is supposed to be part of the "Zelda" experience. This is also why the hardest enemies are found in the world, not in a dungeon. And aesthetics is such a subjective nitpick, it comers off as entitled, "Yes there's this incredibly crafted world with all kinds of secrets, full day-night cycle, and I can literally go to the horizon, but these 120 unique puzzles have the same music and textures, pure laziness." If something is "missing" from your Zelda experience, it's most definitely on purpose, because the effort put into this game is top class.

And to the folks talking about the bosses not being hard, what 3d boss is hard that isn't because of motion controls? And they're even easier because they give you the weapon to kill them with.
Can we talk about how great the upper left corner of the map is? I was shocked when I learned how big it was considering how close the watch tower is to the castle. It's great that it feels like you're exploring a place where no human was meant to go or would even want to go, and the whole thing has this quietly oppressive coziness that makes you feel like you're freezing to death. And for obvious reasons you have a good incentive to thoroughly explore even though it's an optional area. Some super fun side quests there too. Easily my favorite area in terms of raw exploration and discovery, and they could have made it a throwaway region like Lake Hylia pretty easily.

Right now discovering the
cave full of Leviathan bones
is a serious contender for absolute highlight of the game for me.

And I normally hate snowy areas! No real love for Phendrana or Cainhurst Castle for example.
Excited to read this, just unlocked this section.
 
But i mean, whats the harm?

I appreciate the moments of restraint where i'm wandering across a valley without much in the way of POI, I'm soaking in the environment, enjoying the exploration.

I don't really get the need for every open world title to be cluttered with waypoints and markers and collectibles and every last POI spelled out for you on a map - it's exhausting and frankly it makes worlds feel more artificial.

The occasional expanse lends itself to authenticity, to immersion
I feel similarly, but then again I guess I'm one of those "exploration for exploration's sake" kind of gamer. I like to take in the atmosphere, and it helps with pacing out the more gameplay intensive bits. Besides, a larger world allows for secrets to be better hidden, which enhances the feeling of satisfaction when you do stumble upon one.
I also like denser, more handcrafted games and I think there's enough room for both kinds of experiences.
 
This was basically my experience with BotW. My fondest memories of the game are at the beginning to about the middle of the game.
I really wish there were more late game challenges or something to do besides the things you've already been doing for 30+ hours. Like some mini, Yiga clan-esque dungeons, or some more involved sidequests. After I finished 3 out of 4 Divine Beasts, I lost a lot of the desire to explore, even though there was still a half of the map or more I hadn't even seen, because I knew generally where the last Divine Beast was going to be. There didn't feel like there was much meaningful reasons to go to some areas because I knew there was not going to be anything 'big' in them.

I thought I was in the same situation, but Hebra Mountains and East Necluda are fantastic areas to explore despite not having Divine Beasts. I think everything within
Rito Village
was underdeveloped compared to those areas, despite it being one of the four main focal points to the main quest.

The biggest problem with variety, I think, comes from there really only being 3 main enemies. Bokoblins, Lizalfos, and Moblins are 95% of the enemies in the game. You easily kill hundreds of those, and the rest: Keese, Lynels, Wizzrobes, and Guardians are sprinkled in by comparison. Each of the 4 areas should have three unique enemies, making each area feel distinctly different.
 
Divine beasts have definitely been a disappointment. They're moving mechanical marvels that you never really have to look for them since they basically stay in one area.

Relating back to what one poster said a lot of map space that doesn't have much to do with anything relating back to the main quest; while more dungeon would have been great, I feel like they could have fixed by simply having us hunt down the divine beasts across the world. Huge missed opportunity right there.
 
Can we talk about how great the upper left corner of the map is? I was shocked when I learned how big it was considering how close the watch tower is to the castle. It's great that it feels like you're exploring a place where no human was meant to go or would even want to go, and the whole thing has this quietly oppressive coziness that makes you feel like you're freezing to death. And for obvious reasons you have a good incentive to thoroughly explore even though it's an optional area. Some super fun side quests there too. Easily my favorite area in terms of raw exploration and discovery, and they could have made it a throwaway region like Lake Hylia pretty easily.

Right now discovering the
cave full of Leviathan bones
is a serious contender for absolute highlight of the game for me.

And I normally hate snowy areas! No real love for Phendrana or Cainhurst Castle for example.

Phendrana Drifts is love :(
 
What items are the best to sell?

Honestly if you plan to upgrade
armor
later then a lot of materials will be used depending on what you
choose to
upgrade.

Depending on how much you need then you can alternatively cook meals and sell them.

You can safely sell anything that you have more than 50 of if you want to be really safe.
 
I feel similarly, but then again I guess I'm one of those "exploration for exploration's sake" kind of gamer. I like to take in the atmosphere, and it helps with pacing out the more gameplay intensive bits. Besides, a larger world allows for secrets to be better hidden, which enhances the feeling of satisfaction when you do stumble upon one.

I also like denser, more handcrafted games and I think there's enough room for both kinds of experiences.

Agreed. There's plenty of room for both kinds of experiences for sure. People are just discussing which experience they enjoy more is all. And some only enjoy one or the other of course. And some Zelda fans who preferred the old style are of course going to be less enthused (as best) than the exploration for exploration' sake gamers like you.
 
I thought I was in the same situation, but Hebra Mountains and East Necluda are fantastic areas to explore despite not having Divine Beasts. I think everything within
Rito Village
was underdeveloped compared to those areas, despite it being one of the four main focal points to the main quest.

The biggest problem with variety, I think, comes from there really only being 3 main enemies. Bokoblins, Lizalfos, and Moblins are 95% of the enemies in the game. You easily kill hundreds of those, and the rest: Keese, Lynels, Wizzrobes, and Guardians are sprinkled in by comparison. Each of the 4 areas should have three unique enemies, making each area feel distinctly different.

Yeah, I think it would've gone a long way for me if there was a better variety of enemies, and it would've definitely aided in making me want to continue exploring. Zelda has some really cool enemies that would've been amazing to have in this game. Like,
Like Likes. Why are there no Like Likes??? They make so much sense in this game. Ugh.

The repetitiveness of the enemies really becomes clear once you've done more than a few of the test of strengths...who thought it was a good idea that they were always against one Guardian scout? Such a missed opportunity to have interesting combat scenarios.
 
So when should I fight calamity ganon?
I've read you should beat him and then go back and do other stuff and then you can fight another ganon? I really don't know

There is nothing after you kill ganon, just the credits. You can reload your latest save before the final boss fight
 
I don't think that was supposed to happen but I
managed to climb Hebra Tower without lighting a camp fire, I just kept jumping between two ice block with a slight angle,
Link started to get a grip on them but slipping instantly, I kept jumping and eventually Link jumped from the middle of the ice block without slipping giving me access to the tower.
 
Right. I really don't understand this obsession with "overworlds." I think people think back about the 2D games' overworlds and completely fail to realize how small and segmented they actually are. Like people complain about Skyward's overworld being an "empty sky" but what about Ocarina's Hyrule Field being a big empty circle or the various complaints I've seen leveled at Twilight Princess for having an "empty" overworld.

The Zelda overworlds are a means to connect points of interest. Always have been. It's simply the illusion it creates. I didn't complain about those other overworlds-- which are actually glorified hub areas-- because I was too busy actually playing and having fun with the game. I like the world in this game, I just find it needlessly large and I'm always having more fun when I'm in dungeons or villages or the maze-type areas.

The "points of interests" in those older games are just forced gameplay areas. You cannot proceed if you don't complete the dungeon. You can't proceed if you don't beat the mid boss. You can't proceed until you collect x items of y. And so on. Standard Mario platformer game design, basically.

BotW is about forming my own adventure. You basically focus on whatever task you want. Personally, I don't think this world is too large. I explore the part of the map where I am, that's always the point of interest, not a part of the game that has been pre-decided for me.
 
I feel similarly, but then again I guess I'm one of those "exploration for exploration's sake" kind of gamer. I like to take in the atmosphere, and it helps with pacing out the more gameplay intensive bits. Besides, a larger world allows for secrets to be better hidden, which enhances the feeling of satisfaction when you do stumble upon one.
I also like denser, more handcrafted games and I think there's enough room for both kinds of experiences.

It's weird. That's partially why I'm a bit disappointed with the large BotW world. I'm more of an exploration for explorations sort of gamer as well and don't actually mind the lack of good rewards in the game.

My issue really is that I find Point A really interesting to explore and wander around in (say, some ruins or a village) and Point B really interesting as well. But the journey from point A to point B just doesn't feel remotely as interesting as the destinations themselves.

I feel a slightly more condensed world would've made me enjoy the game much more.
 
You know, when I'm in the
various mazes and stuff like the labyrinths in the corners of the world where you get the Barbarian gear, the forest mazes
, things like that, I'm so much more into the actual moment to moment gameplay and exploration than just a big giant open world. That stuff felt more "Zelda" to me. I was into Skyward Sword's moment to moment gameplay more and preferred the "linearity" of the environments as I found them well designed and fun.

Some people dislike that. I guess I just prefer that kind of thing. I don't have a problem with the world in this game apart from the size and I wish it had more focused areas like above mentioned. Sounds like the last place will be my favorite part of the game.
Outdoor shrines are definitely a highlight of the game imo.

Is it solvable without the quest? Can I figure it out from environmental clues? Or does the game require the quest be initiated first?

Some of them are pretty obscure without a clue, a song, etc. So I'd imagine no, but technically you could. Often time of day and doing strange, specific things to the environment, just like the Kass ones.

I can see your point, that at least Kass's music makes it super obvious that you need to talk to him and where he is.

Exactly, the problem with Hyrule Castle is it has no puzzles whatsoever because you can simply skip anything it has to offer from a room to room basis. Either you give up Link's open-world traversal mechanics to make these integrated dungeons in the overworld happen or you make these a thing that exists outside of the overworld. And what direction you choose here becomes a complete matter of taste. Otherwise the mechanical beasts do feel like they are part of the overworld and that is great. Bosses do look the same and do not scale to your progress outside of the game which is the bigger issue but they are a step in the right direction. Bosses that can be defeated in multiple ways either with your runes or by simple combat is exactly how Zelda bosses should be.

I don't consider there being no enemies in the mechanical beasts as a negative as you have plenty of that outside of the game. In past games combat areans were always seperated by the puzzle rooms even in dungeons so that distinction is similar only structured differently. The combat is mostly in the overworld. What is a negative for me is the number of varied mini-bosses you usually see in Zelda games not being present in the overworld but that is a completely different matter.

They have the same rune and moving parts mechanic but in no way become they stale. Moving the parts in each dungeon has a different purpose and are part of a different puzzle. They feel more like a item you have than the same puzzle because they are exactly that. You can move parts of the dungeon and how that affects the dungeon is different in each of them.
If you should have all items from the start is a thing of debate since forever with Zelda games. In a perfect scenario that should be the standard for Zelda games so puzzle complexity can reach it's full potential instead of mostly one item only being used throughout each of one dungeon.

I already commented on the length and that I feel if you just made them bigger that would solve most of its "problems". The concept itself is brilliant, novel and generally very fitting to the open-world format.

That Ganon becomes easier as you do the dungeons doesn't really have to do anything with the dungeons themselves. That's simply something they put in as an additional reward for the player which they could have done without.

There is concern and then there is disregarding the divine beasts as something that is completely inferior to past Zelda dungeons which I cannot agree with. The quality and how it is executed is there in spade and I feel the only problem here is quantity.
Yeah, I don't agree. I do agree that quantity is a huge part of it; probably the largest. But I also think the things I posted are serious and legitimate concerns that I'd hope a BotW sequel would work to address.

I think BotW is at its best when it manages to marry Zelda and the overworld. I think that is in the "outdoor shrines" and in Hyrule castle. I just wish there was heavier, more expansive puzzle content in the world.

Now, as I've said, I played the games mostly for the shrines and I would like them to find a way to fold that content into the overworld gameplay or bring the overworld gameplay into balance with that content. The places above are where I think it does that best. Right now, the shrines are good, bite-sized puzzle rooms, disjoint from combat, disjoint from traversal, disjoint from the world, etc. I think the game is too disjoint and has too much of the reward structure in the shrines and not in the combat, quests, and exploration. The game is going for seemless in a lot of ways, but sometimes comes across as having two identities a bit and for the most part they work and feed into each other, but they could do so better.

I think combat especially gets left behind in the game.

Now also in the background is that I think the same-y aesthetic, same-y design conceits, same-y bosses are flaws and that I don't particularly care for the way the dungeons function in the game or in the story.

...

And yeah, you're right about Hyrule castle. It boldly let's you just ignore it entirely but there's good gameplay in it if you delve its depths and a variety of rewards to doing so. I think that speaks to a great difficulty going forward balancing Zelda with the BotW approach to open world traversal.
 
Some of them are pretty obscure without a clue, a song, etc. So I'd imagine no, but technically you could. Often time of day and doing strange, specific things to the environment, just like the Kass ones.
Thank you. Knowing this is better than beating my head into a wall trying to figure things out.
 
The "points of interests" in those older games are just forced gameplay areas. You cannot proceed if you don't complete the dungeon. You can't proceed if you don't beat the mid boss. You can't proceed until you collect x items of y. And so on. Standard Mario platformer game design, basically.

Yeah, this was pretty much the flowchart of those games and I do feel like they've successfully recreated it here in a sense that I am seeing new and interesting things as I make my way from shrine to shrine (puzzle to puzzle), which have my favorite reward in any 3D Zelda game: during my initial blind playthrough, my reward was something to make the game play more fun (stamina upgrades... you can beat the game with 3 hearts, so there was no need to upgrade that) and weapons (that last incredibly long assuming you're not playing like a complete idiot... I got so tired of being filled up with weapons at one point that I actually spent an hour mashing them against everything I could find, only to fill out my inventory after 10 minutes at 1-2 camps of playing the game with my normal playstyle and I used those exact weapons to go off and kill a Lynel that gave me a 58 weapon and I was essentially back to where I started... if people are wondering why I constantly put people on blast for thinking that weapons break too fast, this scenario is exactly why).

At the end of the day, the regular dungeon design in the old games was just a way to funnel you from one puzzle to the next. I feel like the illusion of having dungeon themes or whatever was recreated in this game considering the diversity of what I see and do whenever I was traveling from one puzzle to the next.
 
Question for Tarry Town:

The Gerudo is not located in Gerudo Town right? I looked all over there. Bumped into a few outside as well but none of them were named "...son"
 
I dont get the complaints about the shrines or the dungeons at all. Sure i wouldn't mind more of them but to call them lazy is really odd. The shrines are actual puzzles that you are rewarded with by exploring and unlike in the last 3D Zelda game where there is a annoying companion to literally telling you how to solve. and most of them could barely even qualify as puzzles. As for the dungeons themselves i admit i found the Zora one kind of okay at best. But the Gerudo one was excellent and much more complex than pretty much most of OOT and WW dungeons. Just because they happen to be shorter does not make them worse. The same goes for the bosses its refreshing to finally see bosses having multiple ways of being beaten than the tired old wait till it exposes it weak point trend of past Zelda games.
 
Yeah. To me it feels the shrines were implemented in order to beat deadlines, or because internally they just got sick of the formula (I suspect the former but still a cool solution to the problem). Like they had all these individual puzzles thought out and ready to be textured to match the themes of a traditional Zelda dungeon, but then saw the deadline approaching and came up with the shrine solution as a workaround.

Shrines are my favorite part of the game since the puzzles are great, but from an art direction perspective I would say it's the most creatively bankrupt part of the game.

I miss the memorable, lived-in dungeon environments of TP/SS as much as anyone, but the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the shrines have their staid, uniform "Portal chamber" look and feel not only due to resource constraints (undoubtedly a factor) but also as a design decision.

I allude to Portal chambers for a reason. For shrine puzzles with contained boundaries to work, you need a hard separation of climbable from non-climbable surfaces. OoT-to-SS 3D dungeons rest on an assumption of tightly constrained vertical movement permitted within specific circumstances, even in dungeons like TWW's Wind Temple or TP's City in the Sky where thinking along the vertical axis is essential to puzzle-solving.

You can't just drop classic-style 3D dungeons into BotW without thoroughly thinking about how to impose climbing restrictions when the whole schtick of BotW is "climb anywhere" (especially if you have a stash of stamina food). In fact, from all the complaints about BotW rain I think many players don't even realize that in the overworld, certain areas are under permanent rain conditions until a particular solution is triggered because the climbing restriction is a puzzle constraint, designed but disguised. A uniform shrine aesthetic, dull as it looks next to the rest of the game (and, in some ways, not abstract enough due to all the non-traversable pillars and arches that serve a purely aesthetic function), sends a clear and consistent message: here we have hard boundaries, unnatural obstacles like floating blocks and platforms, and unambiguously non-climable surfaces that are consistent from room to room. Otherwise, players have every reason to expect that the world in the dungeons operates by the same rules as the world outside.

One of the main criticisms of (the wonderful) Portal 2, remember, was that when it introduces you to vast "worldly" environments outside of the confines of the test chambers, it doesn't actually let you place portals on most of those surfaces, and by enforcing a hard visual separation between "portals go here" and "portals don't go here", the environment feels a lot less freely "breakable" than Portal 1.

If the next 3D Zelda game brings back some of that TP/SS dungeon magic, I believe that of all the mechanics introduced in BotW and likely to set the agenda for a generation to come, "climb anywhere" is likeliest to be thrown out as a compromise. Either that, or we'll need to see a wider repertoire of natural, "in-universe" excuses to block climbing for puzzle purposes.

Can classic, elegant, beautiful dungeon design with BotW mechanics work? I'm sure it can, but it's not trivial to get there, and we haven't been shown it yet. Maybe Nintendo has figured it out for the Holiday 2017 DLC.

(I haven't seen any of the Divine Beasts yet, but in my books, the definitive BotW dungeon is
Eventide Island
. But that's a unique experience, and if every dungeon worked that way I think we would tire of the concept.)
 
Is there a way to see the weather forecast with the Pro hud enabled? Not seeing it anywhere on the map/inventory screens. It's the one piece of information on the regular hud that's really useful.
 
Is there a way to see the weather forecast with the Pro hud enabled? Not seeing it anywhere on the map/inventory screens. It's the one piece of information on the regular hud that's really useful.

I think people would just tell you to watch the clouds, but I'm not sure how accurate that really is.
 
"climb anywhere" is likeliest to be thrown out as a compromise.

Please no.

I think I tolerated not being able to climb everything in shrines because I could get to the actual puzzle any way I wanted (flying, climbing, etc.). It was only after I had my fun that I was then confronted with a constraint, which, taken in small chunks, is not so bad.

Also, yes, some areas were indeed designed to not be accessed due to forced rain.

Didn't stop me from using ice pillars to climb up a waterfall to access a key area in the game :v
 
It may not be a solid complaint to you as you personally had no problem with it. That's fine. It was repetitive to me. Had there been other varied dungeons between these, and if these were kind of like "super" or challenging dungeons (
as doing them contributes to weakening Ganon, having the Blight Ganons be difficult superbosses would've been awesome
) that'd have been different. As the only offerings apart from shrines, it didn't completely satisfy me.
I thought the Divine Beasts other than Medoh were quite challenging because there are often different sollutions to the same puzzle. Maybe it's because I was slightly drunk, but in Rudania
I didn't think about the fact that I could light the arrow with blue fire while I draw the bow so I just crouched my way through the hole in the door lol
Naboris was even more challenging although alcohol certainly didn't help with the orientation.

As far as the bosses go, I still liked these more than the misplaced giant squid in Skyward Sword and I loved Skyward Sword.
 
Please no.

I think I tolerated not being able to climb everything in shrines because I could get to the actual puzzle any way I wanted (flying, climbing, etc.). It was only after I had my fun that I was then confronted with a constraint, which, taken in small chunks, is not so bad.

Also, yes, some areas were indeed designed to not be accessed due to forced rain.

Didn't stop me from using ice pillars to climb up a waterfall to access a key area in the game :v

I did the same with the ice. And yes, if we're all attached to the freedom of traversal in BotW, I think we have to accept that you can't simply drop the Ancient Cistern in the world and expect it to work the same way. The presence of SS-style design isn't in the shrines, it's in the overworld puzzles that unlock the shrines, some of which are huge and definitely climbable. But right now it looks as though they've only figured out how to make these "one-room" natural-looking dungeon puzzles in the overworld, and not a sequence of locks and keys that teach you the unique mechanics and internal logic of a conceptually unified environment, partly as you can drop in on them from any direction. And I hope they figure that out for the DLC.
 
It's an insult to the devs who put years of their life into this, for someone to call it creatively bankrupt; I'm embarrassed to read it. You not liking a design decision doesn't degrade the time and effort put into the game. The dumbest part is that the post starts with a terrible assumption and extrapolates. First of all, no other Zelda game has anything like the shrines, so it's not like they were needed. They could'ver easily called it a day with the divine beasts. The world itself, as has been repeatedly said by the devs, is a dungeon. Just traversing it, finding it all the secrets of it is supposed to be part of the "Zelda" experience. This is also why the hardest enemies are found in the world, not in a dungeon. And aesthetics is such a subjective nitpick, it comers off as entitled, "Yes there's this incredibly crafted world with all kinds of secrets, full day-night cycle, and I can literally go to the horizon, but these 120 unique puzzles have the same music and textures, pure laziness." If something is "missing" from your Zelda experience, it's most definitely on purpose, because the effort put into this game is top class.

I'm sorry, but do you go into every thread where there is a criticism about any AAA game? Because I promise you the developers of those games also devoted years of there life to their game.That doesn't excuse it from criticism. What an absurd notion. I love this game, it's definitely a 10/10, but to say that the shrines aren't all the same visually is just false. The puzzles are great, for the most part they are fun, but I was disappointed in how they all look the same as well. A little bit of visual variety wouldn't have hurt. Does it really detract from the game? Nah, not really, but if I had to point out somewhere where they could make improvements, visual variety of the shrines would be one of them.

Theres no need to be so insulting towards other people. Don't call people stupid and tell them you're embarrassed for them. The game has one of the highest critical ratings of all time. Somehow I think the develops feelings won't be hurt by minor criticisms from a random forum dweller.
 
Well gang, I've started to realize something about BOTW , once the main quest starts to wind down and you've found all the towers ... the sense of discovery diminishes and with it goes at least some of the joy of exploring the world.

It's not much of a drop mind you but , so far the most fun I've had with this game was right after completing one dungeon , just going around and seeing what was out there until I had the map nearly filled out. I wasn't even being very thorough with searching areas, just checking them out , doing whatever shrines were obvious. Finding korok seeds by accident.

Now , I'm at this weird place with the game where a good 30% of the map is left just sitting there for no real reason unless I , as a player, want to go do that stuff. It feels like they could have cut down the number of shrines by ... say half ? and put in 4 other dungeons instead to make sure people DID need to go everywhere.

I mean, it's a very small strange issue I'm having now because I've "seen" most of the game at this point but not really experienced all of it. There is most assuredly some burnout happening, over 50 hours into it at this point with at least 10 more by my estimate to finish the game off.

Basically... I wonder now , if 10 years in the future many people will look back on BOTW in the same way we all look at OOT, that is - "oh yeah that game was a masterpiece" but no one actually ever wants to play it again because half the fun of it was seeing and experiencing all of it for the first time.

I suppose my core issue is that I feel like, as great as this as all been so far , I wish it would have ended after 40 hours and the map was 60% smaller to accommodate that. The hidden subtext here is that I ACTUALLY wish the game was less addicting so I could have spent (some of the)95% of my spare time these past 2 weeks doing something other than playing this.

Odd complaint to have , I know. "this game is almost too good". But there it is.

Human beings are impossible to please
 
Well gang, I've started to realize something about BOTW , once the main quest starts to wind down and you've found all the towers ... the sense of discovery diminishes and with it goes at least some of the joy of exploring the world.

It's not much of a drop mind you but , so far the most fun I've had with this game was right after completing one dungeon , just going around and seeing what was out there until I had the map nearly filled out. I wasn't even being very thorough with searching areas, just checking them out , doing whatever shrines were obvious. Finding korok seeds by accident.

Now , I'm at this weird place with the game where a good 30% of the map is left just sitting there for no real reason unless I , as a player, want to go do that stuff. It feels like they could have cut down the number of shrines by ... say half ? and put in 4 other dungeons instead to make sure people DID need to go everywhere.

I mean, it's a very small strange issue I'm having now because I've "seen" most of the game at this point but not really experienced all of it. There is most assuredly some burnout happening, over 50 hours into it at this point with at least 10 more by my estimate to finish the game off.

Basically... I wonder now , if 10 years in the future many people will look back on BOTW in the same way we all look at OOT, that is - "oh yeah that game was a masterpiece" but no one actually ever wants to play it again because half the fun of it was seeing and experiencing all of it for the first time.

I suppose my core issue is that I feel like, as great as this as all been so far , I wish it would have ended after 40 hours and the map was 60% smaller to accommodate that. The hidden subtext here is that I ACTUALLY wish the game was less addicting so I could have spent (some of the)95% of my spare time these past 2 weeks doing something other than playing this.

Odd complaint to have , I know. "this game is almost too good". But there it is.

If you want the game to end after 40 hours and you've only completed like half of it, you can. That's what makes the game so impressive-- you can get only what you want out of it, and nothing more if you don't want to. Your time spent can be doing the content you want. Go fight the last boss! You can.
 
As far as the bosses go, I still liked these more than the misplaced giant squid in Skyward Sword and I loved Skyward Sword.

The best boss is actually the no main missions final boss. I'd go so far as to say that it's the best 3D Zelda boss I've experienced since it's the only one I can actively remember not doing on autopliot (not that the gimmicks they had in the old games weren't fun, but let's be real here) and actually having to try for a few hours (?) before getting the solution.

Interestingly, I do think that that boss is semi designed for a 3 hearts run since things out in the field hit harder.

If you want the game to end after 40 hours and you've only completed like half of it, you can. That's what makes the game so impressive-- you can get only what you want out of it, and nothing more if you don't want to. Your time spent can be doing the content you want. Go fight the last boss! You can.

I mean, you can end it by just running to the last boss after the tutorial.

But I had to learn how to play the game first lol
 
Amiibo question: I can keep reloading my save until I get the drop I want, correct? I'm trying to get the
Hero of Time
cap or trousers. Been at it for like 20 minutes and keep getting claymores and arrows. What the hell is the drop rate on these items lol?
 
I enjoy intricate dungeons with good puzzles and being stumped, but that one for me had a huge sense of wonder, you're up in a city in Hyrule's clouds, can't see the world below you're so high up, the music was weird and transportive. It just had this really dreamlike, mysterious and even historical sense of atmosphere. I loved it.

I felt that way about Sky Keep in Skyward, to a lesser extent. It felt super mysterious especially where it was
housing the Triforce
. The design of that was amazing as well, in fact there's shades of that in the Divine Beasts. I wonder if the geographic manipulation from that is where they got the concept.



With a bit more than 30 shrines left I think, I have two full stamina rings and 26 hearts. I've found that it's been enough stamina and I can still have a full heart set or close.

I'm up to I think 16 hearts. I haven't upgraded stamina once yet. I haven't felt a need for it. I've climbed all the towers, climbed every mountain I wanted to, beat the 4 Divine Beasts etc. I haven't even had to eat stamina boosting/refilling food all that often. I'd rather have the hearts to make bosses easy, though to be fair you can easily boost hearts with food too, so they're not that crucial either aside from needing at least 13 for the part you mention.

Sorry for double post, figured thread was moving fast enough to not bother with copy and pasting this into the above post from my ipad. :D

so your advice would be to stop investing in stamina (after already having 5x stamina upgrades, one additional wheel, so two total) and instead get extra hearts?
 
Amiibo question: I can keep reloading my save until I get the drop I want, correct? I'm trying to get the
Hero of Time
cap or trousers. Been at it for like 20 minutes and keep getting claymores and arrows. What the hell is the drop rate on these items lol?

Yep. Did that with my Smash Zelda amiibo for the Twilight Bow and it 100% works. Just keep trying.
 
Finished the game (with 16,95% lol). Wonderful finale although there are better finales in the Zelda series.

Final boss spoilers
Not sure how I feel about the whole epic main quest with the titans just resulting in Ganon losing half his health. Wished there was a bit more to it.
The final horseback section, while being pretty and epic, was also super easy. I don't think I ever got hit from Ganon in that fight.

The cutscenes were great and the music brought me shivers when reaching the ending credits.

Have a few other games on my plate right now, but will definitely come back to it before the DLC hits to at least get all the memory sequences and do a few more sidequests and shrines.
Overall very very happy about this game. It captured my attention these last two weeks like very few other games did before.
 
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