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[Durden77]

So I'm a little confused about how the map works. Is there no way to make points show up on the mini map besides using pins? Are stamps more just for record keeping?

For instance when I want to get to a stable and I haven't been able to get up high enough to mark it with a pin, I just need to keep checking my map to make sure I'm going the right way? Am I missing something?

 

[HawthorneKitty]

Played for a few hours on the Wii U. Like a lot of things, don't like some. The weapon breaking this is definitely annoying.

But the worst part about this game is easily the framerate. I've never been one of those people that complains about stuff not being 60fps or whatever, but holy shit, in this game, the framerate gets terrible and it happens all the time. Just running around the forest or a village and it becomes a slideshow. I know it's pushing the hardware here, but geez.

I don't think you know what a slideshow is.

 

[CharminUltra]

I thought this was super amusing and fun to watch

There are spoilers

https://youtu.be/8vCB1eMBams

Using magnesis with the sword during a thunderstorm........ WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THIS

 

[Dalek]

Why don't these Hinox drop their guts? It's so inconsiderate.

 

[jorgejjvr]

Using magnesis with the sword during a thunderstorm........ WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THIS

Exactly my thought xD

 

[Speely]

My horse game: leave all my solid-color horses at the stables and jack bokoblin horses for tooling around. I've got a pretty solid stable of steeds, but I climb too much to justify bringing them out much.

 

[random25]

I thought this was super amusing and fun to watch

There are spoilers

https://youtu.be/8vCB1eMBams

Burning a lot of wood and creating multiple campfires to create a hot air to help you climb a mountain...now that's one thing I never thought of doing.

 

[Speely]

Lynel hunting is so damn fun. Very cool enemies. Much easier on grassy plains. The updraft makes stun shots a breeze.

 

[jepense]

Ugh, anyone thinking twists make a good story should go read some books that tell actually meaningful stories. Events to drive a story are one thing but twists often exists only for shock value and are used just to make meaningless fluff appear interesting.

Zelda has lore and world building, but the story of all Zelda games follows the archetypal rags-to-riches line of a boy's journey to become a hero. That is the plot, and the journey is the story. The game absolutely does not need any more scripted events. Yeah, sure, twists are entertaining, but it is not a weakness to not have them. The simple story of your journey, the people you meet, and the things you do is strong enough that there is no need to ruin it with the typical anime/comic/game dribble. Heck, the story of the two kids in Kakariko alone is more mature and more elegantly told than 99% of the mega epic twisty stories of typical video games.

And if you expected a heavily narrated story from a Zelda game, you were setting yourself up for a disappointment.

(Oh, I don't consider the memories to be the story of the game. They tell the prologue of the game, but all of that has happened ages ago and have no influence on the current events. I guess it's nice to have them, but I mostly feel they are there just to have some cutscenes. They could be cut from the game without much impact. In any case, I much prefer having Zelda talk about flowers and frogs instead of some stupid "Impa is Link's mother" BS.)

 

[Crayolan]

So I'm a little confused about how the map works. Is there no way to make points show up on the mini map besides using pins? Are stamps more just for record keeping?

For instance when I want to get to a stable and I haven't been able to get up high enough to mark it with a pin, I just need to keep checking my map to make sure I'm going the right way? Am I missing something?

I think you got it, but I'm wondering how you know where a stable is if you're so far away you can't even see it.

Edit: Wait you can place pins from the map screen

 

[BNGames]

I finally played the game today, I recorded the first 30 minutes without commentary

Video: https://youtu.be/dP4dY0C1BOk

 

[Malus]

I don't think you know what a slideshow is.

The amount of freezes I got beg to differ lol.

 

[AniHawk]

finished the story:

120 shrines
all memories
over 100 hours (joins team fortress 2, ssbm, xenoblade chronicles and xenoblade chronicles 2 in the 'over 100 hours club' for me).

my current impression of breath of the wild is that it's a pretty amazing thing. the amount of work that went into detail and making sure that shit wouldn't go hilariously wrong is impressive. i just saw the mass effect andromeda shit compilation from crowbcat and it really puts into perspective the discipline in the design.

breath of the wild is a reset for the series, and i'm really happy about it. the shrines are a fine replacement for dungeons - especially with so many puzzles taking place on the overworld proper. just traversing hyrule is a lot of fun and there's a lot of methods at your disposal to getting around. it kind of shames a lot of open world games that don't really let you do a lot with their playground - breath of the wild instead entices you with something just around the corner, urging you to explore. it's an action-adventure game and one of the purest examples of the genre.

in a big way, it reminded me of the first legend of zelda, which i beat as a 12 year old. i don't remember much of it, but it stuck with me for being difficult and required my wits to survive. while i definitely appreciate this from a game design perspective - removing lots of handholding, i felt like it might have gone a little too far. botw is a new template, and my big issue with it is that it felt like i was exploring that. if i was the designer, the amount of problems to be solved would have been focused squarely on the exploration aspects too, but certain elements did fall by the wayside. particularly, the storytelling is weak. i actually loved link's characterization of a somewhat cocky/straight-to-the-point knight and zelda as a science nerd and reluctant princess. beyond that, i had a hard time caring about the happenings within botw. townspeople are charming, but that's about it. there's no bigger theme at play or any larger message like in majora's mask or link's awakening. even the villain wasn't proper motivation. it wasn't dastardly or cunning - it was just a force of nature that had to be taken down. because it was evil.

i feel like the storytelling is the major failing of the design, and it's a fairly big one. the designers were right to make the cutscenes largely part of the exploration, but that's where they stopped. i felt it could have gone further and have link step into his memories - letting the player slip between cutscenes and actions from 100 years ago so there was a larger connection. or maybe the tutorial section was 100 years ago, and the game proper doesn't start until after you've visited some shrines and accompanied zelda to a couple springs. there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of consideration given to this aspect of the game, and the weak context for the game hurts it when the series has so often done a good job on that side.

i'm looking forward to the dlc, and interested about what in particular can happen next. mainly though, i'm excited for the game in the series. it has a pretty good template to work from.

 

[Neoleo2143]

Ugh, anyone thinking twists make a good story should go read some books that tell actually meaningful stories. Events to drive a story are one thing but twists often exists only for shock value and are used just to make meaningless fluff appear interesting.

Zelda has lore and world building, but the story of all Zelda games follows the archetypal rags-to-riches line of a boy's journey to become a hero. That is the plot, and the journey is the story. The game absolutely does not need any more scripted events. Yeah, sure, twists are entertaining, but it is not a weakness to not have them. The simple story of your journey, the people you meet, and the things you do is strong enough that there is no need to ruin it with the typical anime/comic/game dribble. Heck, the story of the two kids in Kakariko alone is more mature and more elegantly told than 99% of the mega epic twisty stories of typical video games.

And if you expected a heavily narrated story from a Zelda game, you were setting yourself up for a disappointment.

(Oh, I don't consider the memories to be the story of the game. They tell the prologue of the game, but all of that has happened ages ago and have no influence on the current events. I guess it's nice to have them, but I mostly feel they are there just to have some cutscenes. They could be cut from the game without much impact. In any case, I much prefer having Zelda talk about flowers and frogs instead of some stupid "Impa is Link's mother" BS.)

This is more or less my feeling on the matter. Though the memories do carry Zelda's character progression which the ending of the game in the present resolves.

If The Witcher is a fairy tale told with subversions and taken with some sense of realism, Zelda is a fairy tale told in earnest.

 

[psyfi]

Lynel hunting is so damn fun. Very cool enemies. Much easier on grassy plains. The updraft makes stun shots a breeze.

Yup, I pretty much only fight the ones in grassy areas for that exact reason, haha.

 

[daffy]

Anyone else dissapointed that the

Spoiler

tunic of the wild/OG link tunic with brown that you get after completing the shrines

wasn't featured more prominently in the game? Fits the style so well and really turns on the nostalgia like nothing else.

LOL didn't know that's what it took to unlock it... yeah how about no. Welp guess I'll just keep doing side quests and exploring cause there's no way I'm going to be able to complete that. Oh well

 

[Burny]

<snip>

I felt the 100 years of decay + hero with amnesia angle is so far executed very well by the story. The game is rather consistent in displaying Link as largely forgotten entity into a world where the kingdom has long fallen.

Just as the open world template makes walking through separately loaded level tubes fenced in by small artificial ridges and cuddling to the screen's corner to initiate a screen transition obsolete however, I feel that the old Zelda story template of "make up some asinine bs excuse to support the game's main gimmick" has worn out over the last 30 years.

After they've caught up to what modern games can do in terms of world building, they might catch up a bit in terms of story telling next. They've ways to go in terms of writing, voice acting and in general story telling.

 

[mrklaw]

Can I just cut down trees willy-nilly? I need quite a lot of wood for a side quest but not sure if I'm free to hack away. Also need to find more axes..

 

[Crazyorloco]

Sorry double post.

So this space won't be wasted: zelda williams played zelda botw for charity. Pretty cool

https://twitter.com/zeldawilliams/status/840042351011684353

 

[Crazyorloco]

Ok I just thought about something

first three shrines spoiler kinda:

Spoiler

Can we just use stasis on a boulder (hit it multiple times then climbing on it) to create enough inertia to get off the great plateau without the paraglider? I gotta try this lol

 

[random25]

Can I just cut down trees willy-nilly? I need quite a lot of wood for a side quest but not sure if I'm free to hack away. Also need to find more axes..

Just use bombs. Faster and more efficient.

 

[Maengun1]

I am 50 hours into the game and I just finally broke down and looked something up online for the first time lol.

I just happened to randomly discover the

Spoiler

climbing tunic

having never come across any of the other pieces, and I wanted to complete the set right away without taking another 50+ hours to likewise happen upon them by chance.

I feel kinnnda dirty about it, but whatever. Pandora's box is probably open now though whenever I get stuck.

 

[Rodney McKay]

I really need to just beat Ganon and get it over with.

I've found all the Shrines I think I'm going to find on my own (don't feel like doing a full sweep of the map), I'm happy with my storage space size and weapons I've collected, I've fully upgraded the Champion armor and mostly leveled up the Guardian, stealth, and climbing armor, and I've done all the dungeons. I've just been doing a few random side missions for the last 10 hours or so.

As with all Zelda games, actually beating the game (usually the final Castle and Ganon fight) is my least favorite part of them. But moreso than any other Zelda it gives you so much stuff to do at any time that I haven't wanted to finish it for a long, long time. But with Mass Effect out and that snake Tale game coming out this week I do want to finish this up and move on to something different.

I just happened to randomly discover the

Spoiler

climbing tunic

having never come across any of the other pieces, and I wanted to complete the set right away without taking another 50+ hours to likewise happen upon them by chance.

I literally did the exact same thing when I found the hat early on in the game. When I learned you can get bonuses for wearing a full set of clothes I looked up where to get the other two pieces immediately and had zero regrets.

Other than that and finding a few tough to unlock shrines, the solution for 1 annoying Shrine, and 1 terminal in one of the dungeons, I've kept myself pretty guide-free for the most part.

 

[Speely]

Just use bombs. Faster and more efficient.

This. The only time weapons make sense to use on resources is when on a mountainside and you risk losing precious ores by blowing up deposits. Bombs work for trees just fine.

 

[rockx4]

I was watching some easyallies - damiani Zelda videos while bored at work, and realized I brute forced my way through so many shrines using bombs and stasis golf lol. Seeing some of the "proper" ways of solving some shrines made me feel kind of an idiot not figuring them out.

The amount of times I used stasis to launch items hoping to get them into the proper areas was crazy. I do remember thinking "there's no way I'm doing this right".

 

[psyfi]

Can I just cut down trees willy-nilly? I need quite a lot of wood for a side quest but not sure if I'm free to hack away. Also need to find more axes..

Who's going to stop you?

I really need to just beat Ganon and get it over with.

I've found all the Shrines I think I'm going to find on my own (don't feel like doing a full sweep of the map), I'm happy with my storage space size and weapons I've collected, I've fully upgraded the Champion armor and mostly leveled up the Guardian, stealth, and climbing armor, and I've done all the dungeons. I've just been doing a few random side missions for the last 10 hours or so.

As with all Zelda games, actually beating the game (usually the final Castle and Ganon fight) is my least favorite part of them. But moreso than any other Zelda it gives you so much stuff to do at any time that I haven't wanted to finish it for a long, long time. But with Mass Effect out and that snake Tale game coming out this week I do want to finish this up and move on to something different.

I think I'll be where you're at in a week or two. I'll pick up the game from time to time to and keep notes on where I think any shrines I'm missing might be, but I'll consider myself done with the game overall.

 

[Vault Dweller 111]

I am 50 hours into the game and I just finally broke down and looked something up online for the first time lol.

I just happened to randomly discover the

Spoiler

climbing tunic

having never come across any of the other pieces, and I wanted to complete the set right away without taking another 50+ hours to likewise happen upon them by chance.

I feel kinnnda dirty about it, but whatever. Pandora's box is probably open now though whenever I get stuck.

Happened to me too. The first time I cheated on a shrine and now it feels like they've gotten much harder and every time I get stuck for a few minutes I am tempted by the internet.

 

[psyfi]

Happened to me too. The first time I cheated on a shrine and now it feels like they've gotten much harder and every time I get stuck for a few minutes I am tempted by the internet.

So far the only shrine to totally stump me is the one by the

Spoiler

garbage pit

in the SW. I tried for like thirty minutes and then gave up, but I'll be back.

 

[NEO0MJ]

I was shocked when

Spoiler

I found the horse fairy. Man that thing is is scary. Should have known something was off about the price since the last fairy I found cost 2k while this was 1k.

So, what happens if I kill a horse and come back?

 

[Otakumegane]

I want the Cave of Trials DLC to play similarly to Eventide Island, except that you are stripped of literally everything.

Every Floor has a spirit orb,120 floors total. Every 12 floors you encounter a goddess statue, and you heal every 4 floors. (Whistle is disabled)

You work your way deeper picking up weapons from enemies as you progressively get stronger. Runes and Champion Abilities can be unlocked after a set amount of floors, and you get to choose which out of a set everytime.

Armor pieces work in a similar way but progressing more floors without choosing a armor piece increases the value/level of the next set.

Food ingredients are given to you by completing floors, but better ingredients are given with less hearts/faster floor clears. (Which creates the much needed tradeoff between stamina for speed clears or hearts for safer clears)

You start from a single keese and work your way up to fighting a Silver Lynel concurrently with 2 guardian turrets with malice pools.

 

[zashga]

Hit 111 shrines on my own before I decided to use a guide to find the remaining ones. I'm around 90 hours in, and I'm still in love with this game. Just a few more things I want to do (mostly farming up materials for upgrading

Spoiler

the wild set

, plus another pass through Hyrule Castle to see if I missed anything the first two times) and I'll set it down to play some other stuff.

I know it's only March, but I think it's going to be tough for anything else to top BotW this year.

 

[QuixoticNeutral]

The Splatoon Testfire came at the perfect time for me. I went into the weekend just short of wrapping up all the shrines and was feeling a bit of an itch to finally see the endgame and put BotW away for a while.

After the Testfire weekend (which, among other things, persuaded me to turn up my BotW camera stick sensitivity), and after hitting 120 with a clear head thanks to my first real break from Zelda since launch, I've found myself rejuvenated. Once again, I don't want this game to be over, and I thought it might be fun to see if I could

Spoiler

fully upgrade the Wild clothing set (and indeed every clothing set, though the only other one remaining is Sheikah)

before facing the final boss. It went by rather quickly, actually, and I'm already quite close to being done.

Material spoilers:

Spoiler

I thought the rhino beetles would be a roadblock as I only collected one the whole game, and that one I bought off a travelling salesman. But I paid up to collect the entire creature section of the Compendium so I could put the rhino beetle on my tracker, and once I understood that they were nocturnal, I found them all over the place on tree trunks in the Akkala Highlands and completed that condition in no time. Meanwhile, I already had a solid farming strategy in place for the dragon parts thanks to the Barbarian set and the Champion's Tunic, which I had fully upgraded already. That left the Star Fragments for four stars, and I was only two short. Rather than depend on falling stars, the solution, obviously, was to farm the Silver Lynels. One dropped right away, but I still need one more, and two straight hours of Silver Lynel fights did not produce results. It's certainly training me to take less and less damage in the Lynel encounters, though, while replacing my weapons with more powerful ones at a steady clip; I'm finally seeing damage numbers over 100 (with 103 on a Savage Lynel Club the highest so far).

I want the Cave of Trials DLC to play similarly to Eventide Island, except that you are stripped of literally everything.

Every Floor has a spirit orb,120 floors total. Every 12 floors you encounter a goddess statue, and you heal every 4 floors. (Whistle is disabled)

You work your way deeper picking up weapons from enemies as you progressively get stronger. Runes and Champion Abilities can be unlocked after a set amount of floors, and you get to choose which out of a set everytime.

Armor pieces work in a similar way but progressing more floors without choosing a armor piece increases the value/level of the next set.

Food ingredients are given to you by completing floors, but better ingredients are given with less hearts/faster floor clears. (Which creates the much needed tradeoff between stamina for speed clears or hearts for safer clears)

You start from a single keese and work your way up to fighting a Silver Lynel concurrently with 2 guardian turrets with malice pools.

I like the way you think. This way you get a balanced, standardized challenge that tests what is specifically a BotW skill set, rewarding resource management and creativity.

 

[Black-Wind]

IDK how some of you all get soo much done in so lil time. Been playing every night since I got this game last week annnd I have 3 hearts, a full 2nd STM wheel and 2 horses to my name lol

I'm just chillin though, taking it slow and focusing on getting the map full and hitting up shrines. Saving the side quest for my weekend.

 

[QuixoticNeutral]

IDK how some of you all get soo much done in so lil time. Been playing every night since I got this game last week annnd I have 3 hearts, a full 2nd STM wheel and 2 horses to my name lol

I'm just chillin though, taking it slow and focusing on getting the map full and hitting up shrines. Saving the side quest for my weekend.

The pace of the game accelerates dramatically once you fill out the map and have a rough idea of where things are and how they are laid out, along with fast travel. You also develop an intuition for spotting hidden things as you learn the game's systems, so you start to notice far more content in the world for you to complete than you did early on. Then things slow down again once you reach the late-game saturation point where you are just mopping up, but a lot of people here seemed to speed through that by consulting a guide, if they were impatient to just get on with it and play something else for a change.

I'm definitely stunned by some of the low completion times, though. At the 100-hour mark I hadn't done a fraction of what most others here claim to have accomplished by that point. By the posts here, most people completed many of the same milestones in about half the time I did, but I didn't consult any outside information until I was down to my last two shrine locations, and I also proceeded through the game in an order not conducive to doing certain objectives in parallel, so I had to spend more time revisiting locations than most players did, I think.

Anyway, this is a game that should be absorbed at one's own pace, however slow, without feeling rushed by the public conversation or the zeitgeist.

 

[Chinbo37]

Is there a good way to line up stasis shots?

In one shrine I needed to get a pretty exact shot for a chest and I tried it for like 30 mins but couldnt get it.

 

[eltercero]

Is there a good way to line up stasis shots?

In one shrine I needed to get a pretty exact shot for a chest and I tried it for like 30 mins but couldnt get it.

Using spears felt easier for me.

 

[JonCha]

Thought the prelude to the Goron's dungeon was kinda lame;

Spoiler

there isn't anything fun about having to kill enemies in a crappy stealth sequence

. Actually I've only enjoyed the Zora's thus far, which genuinely wowed me. Hoping the Gerudo one makes up for this and then some.

 

[Amalthea]

Thought the prelude to the Goron's dungeon was kinda lame;

Spoiler

there isn't anything fun about having to kill enemies in a crappy stealth sequence

. Actually I've only enjoyed the Zora's thus far, which genuinely wowed me. Hoping the Gerudo one makes up for this and then some.

Yep,

Spoiler

Gerudo one was the most fun IMO, at least the drones at death mountain can be killed in one hit with metal crates.

 

[JonCha]

Yep,

Spoiler

Gerudo one was the most fun IMO, at least the drones at death mountain can be killed in one hit with metal crates.

That's good to hear. I'm not enjoying (or hating) the 'dungeons' really: they're pretty easy and once you get your head around the mechanic for them it's just a case of manipulating that mechanic until you can get to each area. Add to that the bosses being pathetically easy and I'm glad the shrines are around to offer much more variety.

 

[duckroll]

Is there a good way to line up stasis shots?

In one shrine I needed to get a pretty exact shot for a chest and I tried it for like 30 mins but couldnt get it.

Depends on what you're trying to line up. Is your problem direction or is it distance? For direction you just have to practice aligning yourself in front of the ball facing the right angle. It's not too hard. Usually the floor has lines and markers you use to adjust yourself. If the problem is distance, then keep you mind you can use a combination of different weapons when powering the shot. Don't be locked into the mentality that for a "big" shot you can only use a hammer, etc. You can use a few swings of a hammer, and then a small swing or two of a lesser weapon, it has a huge impact on the precision.

 

[Frodo]

I am 50 hours into the game and I just finally broke down and looked something up online for the first time lol.

I just happened to randomly discover the

Spoiler

climbing tunic

having never come across any of the other pieces, and I wanted to complete the set right away without taking another 50+ hours to likewise happen upon them by chance.

I feel kinnnda dirty about it, but whatever. Pandora's box is probably open now though whenever I get stuck.

I used to not look things up online, but nowadays with limited time for gaming I really couldn't care less. I still try to discover as much as I can possibly can by myself, but things liked locations of treasure and stuff I'll just look it up.

 

[daffy]

yeah I've been leaning on the Google Gods pretty extensively since I entered Hyrule Castle. I'm very impatient and have other games I want to get to before Mario Kart. Plus i would've straight up never found some of these apparel the pros in here have

 

[Why would you do that?]

I am 50 hours into the game and I just finally broke down and looked something up online for the first time lol.

I just happened to randomly discover the

Spoiler

climbing tunic

having never come across any of the other pieces, and I wanted to complete the set right away without taking another 50+ hours to likewise happen upon them by chance.

It was really weird, but I happened to discover them all almost back-to-back earlier today. I felt very accomplished, though I wish I had them earlier&#8203; lol.

I've looked up other things, though, mostly related to finding memory locations.

 

[HawthorneKitty]

Watching someone go through the Gerudo-story portion of the game

Spoiler

and I can now see how annoying the Yiga sneak mission could be annoying if you don't realize that you can kill everyone with backstab thingys, wonder why it dawned on me to do it when I entered the area myself.

 

[Link_enfant]

Does the Korok shrines quest actually makes the Master Sword easier to pull off?
They tell you so (or that's how I interpreted it), but I don't see any info about this. Seems like pulling it off always require

Spoiler

13 full hearts

in any case, but I'd like to make that clear.

 

[random25]

Does the Korok shrines quest actually makes the Master Sword easier to pull off?
They tell you so (or that's how I interpreted it), but I don't see any info about this. Seems like pulling it off always require

Spoiler

13 full hearts

in any case, but I'd like to make that clear.

They help in a sense that they give you 3 shrines that give 3 spirit orbs.

Spoiler

4 if you count the one near the Deku Tree.

That's basically 1 heart upgrade.

 

[theaffection]

Anyone know where to find the best Rule 34 for this game? Preferrably Gerudo

 

[8bit]

Anyone know where to find the best Rule 34 for this game? Preferrably Gerudo

I ship Gorons & Koroks.

 

[spock]

IDK how some of you all get soo much done in so lil time. Been playing every night since I got this game last week annnd I have 3 hearts, a full 2nd STM wheel and 2 horses to my name lol

I'm just chillin though, taking it slow and focusing on getting the map full and hitting up shrines. Saving the side quest for my weekend.

I'm in the same camp as you speed wise but I been making good progress. Though I set a goal last week to open up the full map and ignore stuff till that was done. Now I'm working on all memories and stables. I also have a couple quests I need to just revisit the npcs for. Pretty sure alot of the quick play throughs are folks using guide's. The game is awesome without looking stuff up but will take a long ass time. I did look up a shrine, though I knew the answer but couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong in executing it. Glad I checked though. In this game looking stuff up realy takes the magic out given the core aspects of the game. I'm fine letting the game be my jam for a good awhile.

The key to speed things up when you want to is not give into the distractions in route. I just use pins alot now for marking places to revisit, etc.

 

[Irminsul]

Honestly I don't care much about caves but I would love if we could just stumble upon dungeons Zelda 1 style. If a dungeon just so happened to be in a cave, cool.

I'd argue the (overworld features spoiler)

Spoiler

labyrinths and the dark forest north of Korok forest as well as Eventide Island count as dungeons you can stumble upon, but that's arguably in the eye of the beholder. But they definitely are designed as such, as they give you the "spooky message from somewhere".