Yeah, My honeymoon phase started to waver around the time I encountered the Spring of Wisdom's underwhelming reward and the first dungeon. Once I got finished the second dungeon I pretty much stopped enjoying myself outside of interacting with the NPCs. By that time the copy-pasted nature of the vast majority of the game was just too apparent.
I feel the same but for me thats not even a negative. If I get 40 hours or more out of a game these days im good man, and this game has long passed that, and I still have 2 beasts to go.
But I look at the map, which I fully uncovered, and I look at the shrines I have, mostly all the easy to spot ones and lots of quest ones (im at about...54 or something) and the thought of running around aimlessly looking for more is something that just doesnt register with me. More power to the people that do that (in any game really), but thats not my jam.
Having said that, I just did the 3 korok trials / shrines earlier because I stumbled upon them when going to upgrade my stuff, so im not opposed to playing more, if I find shit. Im just not in the mood to go out and explore that much anymore. But im planning on playing this mobile at work the next few days so I might do just that out of boredom there tho.
shrine quests (i.e. I missed a quest for one completed shrine)
-
59/76
side quests
- All memories recovered
- 303/385 compendium entries (missing 6 monsters (bosses) and 76 pieces of equipment)
-
59
unique articles of clothing, all fully upgraded, with no Amiibo scanned
- Highest weapon damage:
103 on a Savage Lynel Crusher, followed by 96 on a Savage Lynel Sword
- 3 bridles and 2 saddles collected
- 0
Lords of the Mountain
mounted
- 19
Ancient Arrows
obtained, with none used and none purchased
- 833 screenshots with the Capture button saved (including post-completion statistics)
- You don't want to know how many hours played
- Many adventures to come
*
Yesterday I posted that I was finally ready to see Ganon. But I wasn't ready to say goodbye to Hyrule, and I'm still not, though making it to the end credits is always a moment that demarcates two different levels of involvement with the experience, a clear before and after. So for my last session before I confronted the final boss, I thought I'd play the way some people here with better navigational skills than mine have sworn by: in the Pro interface, and with no resort to fast travel. It started with (unsuccessfully) combing the southwest for something I knew I was still missing (
sand boots, though as consolation for venturing all this way I killed an Electric Lizalfos with a Molduga
). Then I made my way over to where I left my horse by the
horse archery camp
, diverted several times along pathways in the world that, after all this time, I had never seen before. I rode:
rode under the sweep of a dragon on the Bridge of Hylia, rode home to Hateno Village to display the Gerudo souvenir scimitar and shield on the wall, rode all the way through Kakariko to pay one last visit to Impa and continue northeast to Tarrey Town for one restock of arrows.
Rode all the way to Hyrule Castle, past as many Guardians as I could, until I dismounted by the Castle Town walls for the safety of my horse and broke in through the front gate.
(I could have ported to the shrine by the docks, but what fun is that?)
It prolonged the session by hours. I stopped for photogenic screenshots everywhere and revealed over a dozen Koroks along the way. It was Breath of the Wild in its purest form.
I had already explored the lower levels of Hyrule Castle quite thoroughly before, so I zipped right to the final area (though not without
peeking into the the Second Gatehouse first, as I had strategically evaded its interior on previous occasions expecting it to be a trap—and of course the portcullis came down and trapped me with a Silver Lynel, which I didn't end up fighting as I had slaughtered so many of its kin before and needed nothing from it; that didn't stop it from raining Shock Arrows on me even after I left the building
). The ascent to its highest point was the real treat. Were it not for that, the trek to the final boss would have felt far too short, and I was stunned to find just how close I was to stumbling into it on previous visits, as I'd come as far as
Princess Zelda's Study and Room
twice before.
As with Majora's Mask, everything in BotW's main trunk comes off as abbreviated and straightforward as it is utterly swallowed by the rest of the game around it. (And the Majora fight may not be anything to write home about, but it was preceded by that absolutely transcendent scene on the grassy hill.) There was really no way for Ganon to compete as the pinnacle of the experience, especially right next door to something that does compete to be a highlight of BotW and the Zelda series as a whole, the traversal of Hyrule Castle.
On the final sequence: I can see why people found it underwhelming, almost like something you do on the side so you can get your map percentage to show up before you get back to the real game.
Calamity and Dark Beast Ganon desperately sought to recall the Twilight Princess encounter, but they wound up feeling like two out of four phases in TP without serving similarly as a capstone of the game that came before it.
For the record, while TWW's finale has the best atmosphere of any in the series, I think it was TP that nailed the ideal of how to structure a final boss. First phase, old-fashioned ping-pong deflection as a warm-up and a series throwback. Second phase, Beast Ganon: a counterpart/rival fight set up thematically as a foil to Wolf Link. Third phase, a test of a TP-specific mechanic, the horseback combat. Fourth phase, a sword fight, up close and personal, with the additional easter egg of the fishing pole. It has a rhythm of escalation that recapitulates the game before it and says, "This is what TP is about."
Likewise for TWW, where the cooperative positioning with Zelda resonates with the partner mechanics of the game as well as Tetra's active role as a character, and Ganondorf matches Link's dynamism as a swordsman and tests the player on the parry mechanic: the fight doesn't take advantage of TWW's unique item/weapon interactions, no, but it still captures a sense of what TWW is about; it's unmistakable which game you're in. Skyward Sword's fight with Demise is literally about pointing a skyward sword.
With Calamity Ganon,
I never got the message that "This is what BotW is about." I get that from Eventide Island; I get that from Hyrule Castle; I get that from the best boss in the game, Thunderblight Ganon, which draws on everything from the electricity mechanics to Magnesis usage to exploiting the layout of an unconventionally shaped room. I don't get it from Calamity Ganon, though I also got through the fight feeling like I didn't get a chance to properly learn any of its mechanics, partly as I was able to take a few hits. To its credit, it was here that I figured out how to shield-parry Guardian beams, which I had actually never done over the whole course of the game despite destroying dozens of Guardians in the field. But once I figured that out, the entire fight reduced to dodging, parrying the beam, and slashing with the Master Sword, with the sporadic aerial bow-shot just for style. Surely there is more to it than that? Where is the test of your game knowledge, the way that Lynels press you to learn your combat timings as well as your mastery of the elements? Did I just never learn the pattern?
Meanwhile, Dark Beast Ganon was more like a dessert than a final phase: you're back out in the world, like you are in TP's horseback phase, but the terrain is too open and blank for you to feel grounded in the same world that you've just spent weeks exploring, and again it's a straightforward test: dodge the beams, get some elevation, hit the targets with the Zelda's bow. About the only BotW-like thing you can do here, as far as I could tell, is create updrafts; and I suppose the game responds to your personal journey, like so many of its other scenarios do, by bringing in your favourite horse (unless everybody gets the royal white horse)—though I played the whole fight dismounted anyway. Maybe there is a range of openness to experimentation I wasn't seeing, but even so, the standard approach to this phase already felt singularly efficient.
I mean to revisit BotW with a straight-to-Ganon run someday: frankly, I would expect the finale to be a much better experience this way than in the standard course of doing everything you can to empower yourself and stack the desk in your favour first, which makes sense story-wise but throws off the progression of the game when the boss doesn't scale reactively in mechanics, AI, or damage output the way the
Silver Lynels
do. Perhaps it was too easy at my power level for me to appreciate its nuances.
*
I've written extensively on my experience here over the course of the month, and for my own convenient reference more than anything, I've indexed the more significant posts that serve as an informal play diary charting my course through the adventure, something that seems more valuable for BotW than for most games given the flexibility of how to proceed. Spoilers are generously tagged to permit reading at any stage of completion.
OT1 (by my estimate of hours played, not yet displayed on the system at the time):
- 12 hours — dawn of the second day
- 35-40 hours — exploring the west
- 50 hours — world map completed
- 75-80 hours —
unlocked
- 109 / 368 — what do you mean, I have to do the main quest?
- 109 / 377 — all Divine Beasts, with extensive remarks on dungeon design
- 117 / 396 — as far as I made it without looking anything up
- 120 / 402 — all shrines completed
I'm not ready yet to reflect on whether this was the best time I've ever had with a video game; that's too audacious a claim to make without the benefit of considerable distance. Ask me in a few years. (A top-two Zelda, let's say, right next to The Wind Waker—which BotW objectively expands upon and surpasses in many respects, though as we all know, what makes a game an all-time favourite can't be reduced to a checklist or a comparison chart.) It would be more accurate to say that Breath of the Wild was consistently great for the longest. It now accounts for the lengthiest single-player save file in my entire life of playing video games (surpassing the Xenoblade games combined, or any of my Animal Crossing towns)—yet I am less fatigued with it, less ready to put it away, than I am after most experiences of 20 to 30 hours in length. It is, in a word, inexhaustible.
I still have no intention of collecting every Korok seed. But it's good to know that hundreds of them await should I ever feel like booting up the game to go for a leisurely drive.
Got a Switch today, woohoo! And getting BotW tomorrow.
Sounds like weird, but starting chemotherapy treatment for cancer next week and BotW is going to be my "chemo game." Basically, when I have to sit for about three+ hours for a transfusion, and I'm feeling OK, I'm going to try to play.
Not sure if I'll develop some weird aversion to Zelda games in the future? Haha. But oddly excited..? Well at least I'll have something to pass the time.
Well that sucks. I used to have a lot of amiibos but I had to get rid of them when I got in a rough spot. Guess I'll start collecting again at some point...
I finally did it! I got the Master Sword! I've been on twelve hearts and have located the weapon for a few days now but as I was about to embark on the Gerudo beast main quest I wanted the heart container earned from defeating the boss to be my qualifying thirteenth. I even had spirit orbs to exchange but held off.
The Gerudo beast was more fun than my first and only other in Zora's Domain. I had some difficulty manoeuvring the body correctly to access everything but worked it out soon enough. Thunderblight was originally tough but I powered my way through him eventually.
I also stumbled upon the surprise at Satori Mountain, although for something so special there wasn't any long-lasting reward as
As for my next steps, I'm not sure whether to visit and unlock my last two unexplored regions (in the top left and below it), return to Death Mountain after a previous fleeting visit and follow the main quest or to explore Faron in greater depth after a very brief drop-in early in the game.
I'm thinking the latter, because everywhere I've been to on my map is marked with evidence of completed shrines and discovered Koroks except for Faron, where I pretty much went to the tower and immediately returned north. I'm intrigued by what I'll find down there.
I know that enemies has power and intelligence parity, but I was still surprised by the black bokoblins couching to ambush wild animals whereas the regular red ones are just standing and jumping up and down to find their preys.
60+ hours in and I still manage to find such amazing details. Awesome.
So guys, I've got 2 memories to go. I'm confident I can find the castle looking one (should be pretty obvious where that is), the only other one that eludes me is the foresty looking one in the bottom right. It seems to have no identifiable features, just looks like a forest path. KIND of looks like southern hyrule but I cant find it anywhere. I know I could go to google and get it listed out, but I dont want a map location, I just want a hint. A stable where the painter guy is for this memory...an area, a clue, something like that. I've managed to get this far without a guide, I'd like to be able to finish it
So guys, I've got 2 memories to go. I'm confident I can find the castle looking one (should be pretty obvious where that is), the only other one that eludes me is the foresty looking one in the bottom right. It seems to have no identifiable features, just looks like a forest path. KIND of looks like southern hyrule but I cant find it anywhere. I know I could go to google and get it listed out, but I dont want a map location, I just want a hint. A stable where the painter guy is for this memory...an area, a clue, something like that. I've managed to get this far without a guide, I'd like to be able to finish it
So far, I've spotted the following patterns when it comes to finding Korok seeds (spoiler-tagged just in case):
- Carry small stones to complete stone circles
- Place small metal boxes in a way that makes two small box structures standing next to each other symmetrical
- Make large boulders roll down hills and into conspicuous holes
- Throw small rocks into small rings of rocks in lakes and rivers
- Get close enough to glowy moving spots in the gound and interact with them
- Lift lone small rocks (mostly at dead-ends or the very top of mountains)
- Step on round wooden platforms with a leaf pattern on them and then make your way to a glowing circle before the time's up
- Stand next to those spinning wind toys and shoot down moving balloons with your bow and arrow
- Hit flying balloons like the ones from the previous example, only they're flying alone on their own
- Hit acorns jammed inside trees, rocks and other structures
- Walk next to a yellow flower, and then keep chasing new yellow flowers that pop up out of thin air. The final flower is always white
I really want to open my Zelda Amiibos I picked up to use them, especially for the Wolf Link but I keep stopping myself because they look nice in their boxes and are easy to stack that way.
So far, I've spotted the following patterns when it comes to finding Korok seeds (spoiler-tagged just in case):
- Carry small stones to complete stone circles
- Place small metal boxes in a way that makes two small box structures standing next to each other symmetrical
- Make large boulders roll down hills and into conspicuous holes
- Throw small rocks into small rings of rocks in lakes and rivers
- Get close enough to glowy moving spots in the gound and interact with them
- Lift lone small rocks (mostly at dead-ends or the very top of mountains)
- Step on round wooden platforms with a leaf pattern on them and then make your way to a glowing circle before the time's up
- Stand next to those spinning wind toys and shoot down moving balloons with your bow and arrow
- Hit flying balloons like the ones from the previous example, only they're flying alone on their own
- Hit acorns jammed inside trees, rocks and other structures
- Walk next to a yellow flower, and then keep chasing new yellow flowers that pop up out of thin air. The final flower is always white
There's at least two more Korok puzzles I can think of.
Flowers that are bunched in groups of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, all nearby each other. Touch them in the right sequence to activate.
Three conspicuously lined up trees, two with one piece of fruit and one with many. On the tree with a lot of fruit, remove all the fruit except for the one that matches with the location of the fruit on the other trees.
Just 10 hours in so far so still only scratching the surface but so far its been incredible. Something special about the way it all works so well together and its refinement throughout. Just entering the first dungeon but already explored some and done a number of shrines. Really enjoy those snippets of puzzles the shrine offer, if the over world ever gets a bit over daunting with how much you can do you just go to a shrine and that zelda puzzle gameplay is right there.
In some ways it feels like the developers have taken some aspects of all the games the series has inspired over the years, freshened them up in some instances and blended them into something brilliant.
My only gripes is the inventory which becomes irritating to continually adjust although i have expanded it and i'm now getting into the habit of not picking every weapon and shield up. The motion control like shrines are the main gripe, i'm just not a fan of motion controlled gameplay and even though it has only been small parts here and there i just find it irritating to compete with the game in those sections.
The blend of visual styles from previous entries is beautiful, the exploration is a lot of fun, i really like the use of the music and how it glides in to sections and the great gameplay the series has always been known for is right there. Really looking forward to playing more.
Three conspicuously lined up trees, two with one piece of fruit and one with many. On the tree with a lot of fruit, remove all the fruit except for the one that matches with the location of the fruit on the other trees. [/spoiler]
So far, I've spotted the following patterns when it comes to finding Korok seeds (spoiler-tagged just in case):
- Carry small stones to complete stone circles
- Place small metal boxes in a way that makes two small box structures standing next to each other symmetrical
- Make large boulders roll down hills and into conspicuous holes
- Throw small rocks into small rings of rocks in lakes and rivers
- Get close enough to glowy moving spots in the gound and interact with them
- Lift lone small rocks (mostly at dead-ends or the very top of mountains)
- Step on round wooden platforms with a leaf pattern on them and then make your way to a glowing circle before the time's up
- Stand next to those spinning wind toys and shoot down moving balloons with your bow and arrow
- Hit flying balloons like the ones from the previous example, only they're flying alone on their own
- Hit acorns jammed inside trees, rocks and other structures
- Walk next to a yellow flower, and then keep chasing new yellow flowers that pop up out of thin air. The final flower is always white
No. Bill Trinnen (or Nate Bildhorf) even stated in a interview how Zelda games are normally name after a special item or character. This time they went a different route and named it after the environment, which is the most striking element of the game.
I've managed to get this far without a guide, I'd like to be able to finish it 
