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

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I've completed 58 shrines and 1 of the dungeons so far.

Have to say, have been quite underwhelmed with both so far. There have been maybe 8 shrines which have been really good. The 'blessing' and the 'test' shrines are just filler BS. Others look like they have some sort of amazing elaborate complex setup, but end up being ridiculously simple puzzles.

Shrines have been all the more annoying because they all look the same, and it takes foreeeeeeeever to get into and out of one. After the first few shrines, does anyone really care what the name of the shrine is? Or what the old man at the end has to say?

The elephant dungeon was basically 4-shrines-in-one with a shitty boss you could kill by spamming bomb arrows.

i've been having a lot more fun collecting korok seeds, because you end up with them naturally as a result of exploring the open world. and I absolutely love the open world in this game.
 
I hate the shrines you go into only to walk up and collect a chest. I know the "trial" already occurred, but I love these places. I want more puzzles.
 
Altairax15 said:
The champions had some great designs, but damn they culminate as
pressing the laser button and then stare at you from a distance in the credits
Similar deal with Zeldas only gameplay relevance being
spawn the light bow in front of you and shoot the targets

their abilities were cool ideas, but never really used them.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I generally agree. I feel like Nintendo missed an opportunity to flesh out these new characters and have a bombastic finale.
 
sazzy said:
I've completed 58 shrines and 1 of the dungeons so far.

Have to say, have been quite underwhelmed with both so far. There have been, maybe, 8 shrines which have been really good. The 'blessing' and the 'test' shrines are just filler BS. others look like they have some sort of amazing elaborate complex setup, but end up being ridiculously simple puzzles.

shrines have been all the more annoying because they all look the same, and it takes foreeeeeeeever to get into and out of one. after the first few shrines, does anyone really care what the name of the shrine is? or what the old man at the end has to say?

i've been having a lot more fun collecting korok seeds, because you end up with them naturally as a result of exploring the open world. and i absolutely love the open world in this game.
Click to expand...

I enjoyed solving the riddles for various blessing shrines, though some are quite simple.
 
SCULLIBUNDO said:
Blu Chu jelly can be turned into orange or yellow Chu jelly.

Put a blue jelly into a fire or hit it with fire and it will turn orange. You can strike an orange Chu jelly to have it explode in fire. Very handy substitute for flint. I will often unloaded like 30 blu jellya next to a campfire every once in a while to stock up on orange fire-starters.

Yellow can be made by adding electricity. They explode in sparks and shock nearby enemies. But now that I think about it, can probably be used on certain shrine puzzles lol.
Click to expand...

Oooohhh coool! I tried cooking jt because of the element thing it says in the description, but gotcha.

While I'm at it, I don't really get the significance of camp fires. Without the pot you can't cook right? So are they just for waiting out time?

And thanks for the other responses too, it kinda clicked with me amber had to be an armor upgrade thing.
 
Durden77 said:
Oooohhh coool! I tried cooking jt because of the element thing it says in the description, but gotcha.

While I'm at it, I don't really get the significance of camp fires. Without the pot you can't cook right? So are they just for waiting out time?
Click to expand...

Waiting time out, keep you warm , melting ice ,lighting torches or wooden weapons and you can cook meat by just dropping it on the fire and waiting, but you can't mix ingredients like cooking pots.
 
Malus said:
I enjoyed solving the riddles for various blessing shrines, though some are quite simple.
Click to expand...

I think I'm unhappy with the shrines mainly because I was simply activating the shrines along the way without solving them. After the first few shrines, I found having to pause exploring the open world to solve a shrine quite unsatisfactory.

So now that I've activated all the towers, I'm completing shrines in sets of 4. And at least once I've had all 4 shrines be the 'blessing' shrines that I went through in a few minutes (most of which were probably the loading times).

I figured the reward for some of the cool environmental puzzles was finding the shrine, and the reward for solving that shrine would be a spirit orb. Nintendo just half-assed that and rolled the whole thing into one.
 
I hate blessing shrines cause I always want more puzzles. I can see why they didn't force you to do two puzzles to get a shrine, but fuck that, I dont think I've ever got tired of a puzzle.

Well motion controls aside....
 
sazzy said:
I've completed 58 shrines and 1 of the dungeons so far.
Shrines have been all the more annoying because they all look the same, and it takes foreeeeeeeever to get into and out of one. After the first few shrines, does anyone really care what the name of the shrine is? Or what the old man at the end has to say?
Click to expand...

You can press X to skip those cutscenes.
 
vareon said:
I like how the mechanics in this game are all about promoting adventure, exploration, and discovery, even though some comes at the expense of player convenience. Take fast traveling, for instance. You often don't fast travel right in front of your destination, but there's a fair distance you have to run or glide before you get to where you want, allowing you to go where you wanted. Towers don't litter your map with icons, quest destinations are just vague hints of location, not markers. There's a clear sign when monsters do respawn, so you don't need to speculate whether an area is clear or not.

Weapon degradation is part of it, too. You can't sell or buy weapons, so you need to go out your way to find weapons (though they gave you a lot of freebies in fixed locations). You can't even store them, so you just have to use them. This makes enemy camp a question: should I risk fight enemies for whatever loot is inside? Is it worth it? Or should I bypass them?

Other games have conditioned us that gameplay=combat, so a disincentive for combat feels like avoiding gameplay. But BoTW is first and foremost an adventure game, so if Link has to avoid combat, he will.

I think I have more fun playing the game when Link was a scruffy guy in a shirt, afraid to even face two monsters at once, rather than where my Link now is (the champion who had these fancy armors and weapons with a lot of heart and stamina). But the sense of discovering something without hint is so satisfying.
Click to expand...
So then play the game that way? What am I missing here? Pretty sure you can manipulate your hearts and stamina. And you can wear any clothes.
 
Just finished the game. Final boss was kinda easy, but I wasn't expecting anything big from it anyways. I was just looking to wrap things up when I headed to Ganon. On a side note, I barely needed anything for the Ganon fight. Used up 5 bomb arrows just to feel like saving them actually made a difference, lol. Master sword and a shield was enough to do the job. Anyways, this game was about the journey, and what a journey it was! This is definitely going into my top 10 list!

Final stats are 151.5 hours playtime, and I can honestly say I enjoyed every single minute of it. I did 84 shrines and 113 korok seeds, which seems pretty low considering my playtime, lol, but whatever.
 
En-ou said:
So then play the game that way? What am I missing here? Pretty sure you can manipulate your hearts and stamina. And you can wear any clothes.
Click to expand...

The weapon and armour variety is a fundamental appeal of the game. Its largely what they reward you with for opening chests and crafting+exploring etc. Using bad weapons intentionally, theyre just going to break, and do little damage to tougher enemies which sounds repetitive.
I dont know if there is a real solution if you want to play that way, other than waiting for the Hard Mode DLC?

ckaneo said:
Hmmm....I want proper item gating back actually. Fuck this any order stuff.
Click to expand...

I agree, the unique items provided new kinds of puzzles every dungeon, and often tied into the context/story. I started rolling my eyes the 20th time I saw a gate with water under it.... gee I wonder what the solution is.
There wasnt really any time I thought of going back somewhere later with new tools, other than like, the temperature stuff.

Never really camped at a fire either, since stalfos were kind of super easy to just ignore.
 
Altairax15 said:
The champions had some great designs, but damn they culminate as
pressing the laser button and then stare at you from a distance in the credits
Similar deal with Zeldas only gameplay relevance being
spawn the light bow in front of you and shoot the targets
Click to expand...
Yeah, I just finished the game a few hours ago and had similar thoughts on the ending.
I was really expecting to find Zelda up there in the castle, and have her assist you in the fight, just like you have companions for all the beast battles. Then when you get the light arrows she is still nowhere to be seen. Why isn't she riding alongside you or something similar. Same thing with the champions, I did expect a big laser blast but also was hoping for a little more. Like them all joining you in spirit and using their abilities... Or actually piloting the beasts closer to the castle. How insane would the Beast Ganon location been if it was surrounded by the 4 beasts, assisting you. Might not make sense technically lol, but after a whole game building relationships and recapturing memories, I wasn't expecting the final fight to feel so lonesome. I thought that if I rushed to Ganon at the very start it'd be like that, but if I completed all the beasts then the final fight would be this big teamwork takedown. I think they were going for that but fell short.

Also, the credits,
where's my panning shots of all the towns are everyone rejoicing?? :P Even the credits music wasn't as epic as usual. Instead of a big composed medley, it was just different songs played in succession. Odd that the game has so much attention to detail, but they couldn't make a nice credits scene.
I loved the soundtrack otherwise though so it's like the only part where it let me down.

Small marks on an outstanding game obviously, these things didn't sour my experience :) The game made true and went beyond many other fantasies.
 
SCULLIBUNDO said:
No sir, I don't like it.

Can I also just say how happy I am that the hookshot is not in this game?
Click to expand...

They repeated the same puzzles in shrines and dungeons many times. This is what happens when you have the same few physics based tools right from the start to finish.

Mistle said:
Yeah, I just finished the game a few hours ago and had similar thoughts on the ending.
I was really expecting to find Zelda up there in the castle, and have her assist you in the fight, just like you have companions for all the beast battles. Then when you get the light arrows she is still nowhere to be seen. Why isn't she riding alongside you or something similar. Same thing with the champions, I did expect a big laser blast but also was hoping for a little more. Like them all joining you in spirit and using their abilities... Or actually piloting the beasts closer to the castle. How insane would the Beast Ganon location been if it was surrounded by the 4 beasts, assisting you. Might not make sense technically lol, but after a whole game building relationships and recapturing memories, I wasn't expecting the final fight to feel so lonesome. I thought that if I rushed to Ganon at the very start it'd be like that, but if I completed all the beasts then the final fight would be this big teamwork takedown. I think they were going for that but fell short.

Also, the credits,
where's my panning shots of all the towns are everyone rejoicing?? :P Even the credits music wasn't as epic as usual. Instead of a big composed medley, it was just different songs played in succession. Odd that the game has so much attention to detail, but they couldn't make a nice credits scene.
I loved the soundtrack otherwise though so it's like the only part where it let me down.

Small marks on an outstanding game obviously, these things didn't sour my experience :) The game made true and went beyond many other fantasies.
Click to expand...

Lonesome is this game in a nutshell. My only companions were the wild animals who ran off cliffs to commit meat explosion sepukku.
 
I wouldn't say no to traditional dungeons, but my ideal/dream Zelda game would have several Eventide/Typhlo Ruins/Trial of Thunder-type events instead. Three of my most memorable gaming experience ever.
 
Altairax15 said:
I agree, the unique items provided new kinds of puzzles every dungeon, and often tied into the context/story. I started rolling my eyes the 20th time I saw a gate with water under it.... gee I wonder what the solution is.
There wasnt really any time I thought of going back somewhere later with new tools, other than like, the temperature stuff.

Never really camped at a fire either, since stalfos were kind of super easy to just ignore.
Click to expand...

Holy shit, are there really like 20 times that puzzle gets used? I've beaten the game and done 112 shrines so far and I can only remember that happening maybe 3 times.
 
At this point, the next convention they need to break is the story and lore. It's getting really boring telling the same premise over and over again.
 
ckaneo said:
I hate blessing shrines cause I always want more puzzles. I can see why they didn't force you to do two puzzles to get a shrine, but fuck that, I dont think I've ever got tired of a puzzle.

Well motion controls aside....
Click to expand...

Well it's not even true that they don't want you to do two puzzles to get a shrine. I can think of a bunch of shrines which have puzzles from a quest leading to the shrine and the shrine still having a puzzle. So it's not a hard and fast rule. I don't mind blessing shrines when I solve a substantial overworld puzzle like the 7 heroine statues or the labyrinths though. What disappoints me is when I feel the puzzle wasn't that challenging. The one where you follow the champion statues in the desert was a bit too simple. And I -just- chanced upon a blessing shrine today which wasn't connected to a shrine quest (maybe I didn't get it yet?), just from exploring and then bombing a suspicious area on a cliff. Would have definitely preferred a puzzle there.
 
ridley182 said:
I wouldn't say no to traditional dungeons, but my ideal/dream Zelda game would have several Eventide/Typhlo Ruins/Trial of Thunder-type events instead. Three of my most memorable gaming experience ever.
Click to expand...

Any thoughts on spirit of wisdom? I do this with eventide island and both are super amazing
 
duckroll said:
Well it's not even true that they don't want you to do two puzzles to get a shrine. I can think of a bunch of shrines which have puzzles from a quest leading to the shrine and the shrine still having a puzzle. So it's not a hard and fast rule. I don't mind blessing shrines when I solve a substantial overworld puzzle like the 7 heroine statues or the labyrinths though. What disappoints me is when I feel the puzzle wasn't that challenging. The one where you follow the champion statues in the desert was a bit too simple. And I -just- chanced upon a blessing shrine today which wasn't connected to a shrine quest (maybe I didn't get it yet?), just from exploring and then bombing a suspicious area on a cliff. Would have definitely preferred a puzzle there.
Click to expand...

I know the one you mean, and there is a quest for that one. FYI
 
Giever said:
I do remember one at Hyrule castle. If there's two, then there's those, one at a dungeon (I think), and at least one in a shrine. So that's 4?
Click to expand...

it was pretty clearly hyperbole. im recalling basic puzzles being used the entire game. Something like the iron boots in Ocarina for example, doubled as both a means to travel underwater, and to put extra weight on so you can push through strong winds.
Generally introducing new mechanics all the time, which to me, was a huge part of the magic of Zelda.

Actually, there wasn't really diving and swimming underwater at all, mostly climbing cliffs.
 
I'm all for them shaking up the story big time.

I'd actually like them to abandon Gerudo/Goron/Zora/Rito and Korok races and give us some new races. This shit is played out.
 
SCULLIBUNDO said:
I'm all for them shaking up the story big time.

I'd actually like them to abandon Gerudo/Goron/Zora/Rito and Korok races and give us some new races. This shit is played out.
Click to expand...

werent the rito just in Wind Waker? I thought they were an evolved Zora in that world, so BOTW is a bit confusing

Crayolan said:
wut

There's like 4 or 5 of these in the entire game.
Click to expand...

read the previous post. Its similar to using the bridge shaped object to make a bridge with magnesis, or opening the giant door with magnesis being done multiple times.
For every unique shrine puzzle there were a bunch that were super uninspired.
 
I'm looking forward to finding the remaining shrines. I've found 58 through normal exploring, activating towers, doing quests, and general dicking around. There's about 10 or so 'obvious' points where I think shrines should be, but that still leaves quite a few I gotta find.

Exploring the overworld really is the best part of the game.
 
I feel that BotW makes a very strong argument for having a fixed toolset you unlock early in the game. It's something I wasn't totally comfortable with, and I felt was poorly handled in ALBW because the rental system was neither here nor there. But the way BotW does it works really well. The tools you have in the game are all about manipulating the world around you, so there are a bunch of things they come up with throughout the game which use the same tool or a mixture of tools, but in original ways. This is something Zelda was somewhat handicapped by because of how specific the tools in the past were.

I'm actually okay with never seeing a return to gated items again, but I would love to see larger themed dungeons return using this style. For example, you could build an entire dungeon around puzzles that involve levers and pulleys, and you could build another dungeon around a pinball mechanic. These are ideas which shrines use in BotW, but an entire dungeon that has increasingly complicated sets of puzzles themed around such ideas would be great. A dungeon doesn't need a unique new tool to have unique themed puzzles.
 
Altairax15 said:
werent the rito just in Wind Waker? I thought they were an evolved Zora in that world, so BOTW is a bit confusing



read the previous post. Its similar to using the bridge shaped object to make a bridge with magnesis, or opening the giant door with magnesis being done multiple times.
For every unique shrine puzzle there were a bunch that were super uninspired.
Click to expand...

If you're counting things which are only used a few times then how is this a criticism against BotW? Every Zelda game does this, only it's even worse in previous Zelda games where the "use this item here!" cues were even more obvious, there were rarely alternate solutions, and lots of items often had no practical use outside of solving an extremely specific problem, unlike the runes which are all multifaceted.
 
Altairax15 said:
werent the rito just in Wind Waker? I thought they were an evolved Zora in that world, so BOTW is a bit confusing
Click to expand...

Correct on both accounts. And Wind Waker says this in no uncertain terms - the Zora Laruto is literally Medli's ancestor. You can explain it away though by saying the Rito were an evolutionary offshoot of the Zora, as opposed to the relationship between the Kokiri and the Korok (and potentially the Kikwi), who are each the Forest Spirits across different points in time.

MAtgS said:
If Ritos evolved from Zora's, then why do we still have Zora's?

Checkmate, Hylia deniers.
Click to expand...

lol, this
 
Altairax15 said:
it was pretty clearly hyperbole. im recalling basic puzzles being used the entire game. Something like the iron boots in Ocarina for example, doubled as both a means to travel underwater, and to put extra weight on so you can push through strong winds.
Generally introducing new mechanics all the time, which to me, was a huge part of the magic of Zelda.

Actually, there wasn't really diving and swimming underwater at all, mostly climbing cliffs.
Click to expand...

That's some pretty severe hyperbole. So it was used at least 4 times throughout a gigantic game, and that's a problem? I wonder how many times you had to shoot arrows into eye switches, or light torches on fire, or hookshot to specific looking surfaces, etc. in OoT or other Zelda games?

The iron boots having two distinct uses is still fairly weak compared to how many uses the runes have. Pretty much all of the mechanics in this game have had multiple uses in my experience.

Cryonis
lifting things out of water, allowing you to walk across water, allowing you to climb waterfalls, breaking ice blocks that are tossed at you, lifting gates and such, blocking yourself from enemies, stopping & guiding rolling balls, being used to stop flowing water.

Stasis
freezing any number of things to get at them, cross them, etc., building up hits to send things flying or out of the way, freezing things that are hitting switches periodically to make windows for yourself, freezing lasers to get past, stopping enemies, freezing switches after stepping on them as a replacement for placing something heavy on them.

Magnesis
being used to retrieve items under water or objects high up out of sight, being used to make bridges or open doors, being used to attack enemies or knock them over, being used to push objects out of the way with other big objects, being used to grab keys that are behind bars and bring them over to you, being used to move metal objects near enemies in a thunderstorm.

Obviously that's not even everything, and I didn't feel like including all of the remote bomb uses, but it's still a heck of a lot. The main problem is probably that the game is so open-ended that there are multiple solutions for most puzzles, so you can usually rely on some main-stays and don't really have to experiment, but there are plenty of options afforded by the way the runes work and what they can do.
 
Altairax15 said:
read the previous post. Its similar to using the bridge shaped object to make a bridge with magnesis, or opening the giant door with magnesis being done multiple times.
For every unique shrine puzzle there were a bunch that were super uninspired.
Click to expand...

Then Twilight Princess must have been incredibly aggravating for you. Every "puzzle" involving the Spinner, Ball & Chain and Double Clawshots was the exact same thing every time, and it was always obvious from the start.

Don't worry, it aggravated me too.
 
I mean we also got other ablilties then the shrine tools. We can now climb, jump, glide, create updrafts, use items etc.

It's better to have a set of tools use often then have a spinner situation.
 
Lilo_D said:
Any thoughts on spirit of wisdom? I do this with eventide island and both are super amazing
Click to expand...
Oh that's right, add that to the list. I think I did that one way before the three I mentioned, so it wasn't as fresh in my mind.
Gliding down the mountain after Naydra
was fucking great. Heck, following the road to
Lanayru from Kakariko and then climbing it
was incredibly atmospheric.

So many great moments in this game.
 
For the story I was really hoping for something along the lines of Link uniting 4 races of people against Gabon.

Each race would have its own mega city; taken over by Moblins etc with the citizens living under the Moblins' rule. And then Link would go and liberate the city, defeat the divine beasts, and gain their trust again.

And for the final battle, you'd see all 4 races battling it out with Ganon's minions on the fields of Hyrule as Link defeats Ganon once again in Hyrule Castle.
 
ridley182 said:
Oh that's right, add that to the list. I think I did that one way before the three I mentioned, so it wasn't as fresh in my mind.
Gliding down the mountain after Naydra
was fucking great. Heck, following the road to
Lanayru from Hateno and then climbing it
was incredibly atmospheric.

So many great moments in this game.
Click to expand...

Hell I clear eventide and this quest pretty early with only 5 hearts
I pretty much used all my ice resistance food on my path to the mountain and
when I see that dragon my mind is blown
 
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