The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

this is Nintendo's attempt at 'modernizing' Zelda into an open-world game; looks equally inspired by Elder Scrolls, Shadow of the Colossus, and maybe a bit of Minecraft, plus the puzzles are based on a physics engine which i think is also new territory for Nintendo. supposedly out sometime next year on Wii U and also as a launch title for their still-mysterious new console. it's a big enough departure for the series that i think it deserves a thread.

trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rPxiXXxftE
plus there's lots of gameplay demos from E3 on their youtube channel

i'm cautiously excited, Nintendo hasn't made a game of this style or scale before so there's a lot that could go wrong, but on the other hand, filling out the world with tons of little secrets to find has always been a strength of this series

Yeah, cautiously excited. I don't think open-world is necessarily a better game structure, but it's time for the series to do something different.

More important than just making it open world is telling the story in a different way - and I love how they talk about you unearthing the story in pieces - no backstory unload at the beginning - and in whatever order your journey around the world defines. Super curious what they'll do with NPCs and towns, which they said specifically were kept out of the demo area.

The visual style is perfect.

100s of mini dungeons litter the world, apparently. Big dungeons still in.

Of course 'modernizing' in this case means going back to the structure of the original Zelda.

One of the few games announced recently that I'm looking forward to.

My favourite Zelda was Ocarina, but I also loved all the 2D games on the handhelds. I'm hoping this is going to relight that love and joy I had playing those games.

this looks amazing

This was the only game that made me excited in E3 week.

this game does look incredible! at first i was kind of underwhelmed by the graphics. but i kept watching and have come to really like the art direction.

the gameplay changes all sound 100% up my alley. every 3D Zelda has been too hand-holdy for me.

i'm getting a strong Shadow of the Colossus or Souls vibe here. hoping it's for real. this looks like it will be worth the wait!

My son and I are at Zelda Symphony of the Goddesses tonight, my first video game concert

Oooo this looks good.

Of course 'modernizing' in this case means going back to the structure of the original Zelda.

― abcfsk, Saturday, June 18, 2016 8:17 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol yeah i was about to make this complaint

i would play this if it had some chill music and minimal voice acting

TBH thats the only thing thats ever mildly bugged me abt Zelda, is the no-dialogue and constant Link yelling.

another trailer out though not much to glean from it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDFZIUdo764

I gleaned that there is a doggie woof woof!

Am I the only one who saw that and thought maybe this one will finally let you play as Zelda?

They're really hitting the Ghibli vibe hard with that trailer music. It's Hisaishi as fuck.

imo, this game is good

not playing on the switch, the wiiu version is still pretty and i am really into the vibe of this. i am interested to see if new mechanics/interaction with the environment exist once you sail off the plateau. i still don't know why i keep picking up springs and screws. it took 3 hours before i got my first rupees and as of yet i haven't had the chance to use them. this is a very different zelda game but i think, at least just through the first hours, it is a good one.

It's still unavailable on Amazon (uk), which is probably just as well for me as I'm broke

Noticed this in a review over there, although I can't verify how accurate it is:

Differences Wii U version compared to Switch:

The core experience is the same just some technical issues that doesn't make it the definitive version of the game like:
-Slightly lower resolution
-Slower loading. Dying can result in 5-10second loading screen which is maybe half of that or less on the Switch version
-Lower Audio Quality
-Requires a mandatory 3gb install

Overall if you can deal with the loading times for the most part, you are essentially getting the same experience.

once you get the hang of the controls, which are unwieldy because your main weapon is actually a cell phone that you need to figure out how to use, it's really fun. be ready to die like 5,000 times.

i keep outlining big posts about this game that i end up retracting because i don't want to spoil things. i can't shut up about this. the mechanics in this game are some of the most interesting and well executed of anything i have played. interacting with the environment in combat, travel, or regular survival is deeply satisfying. the story is compelling and still pretty mysterious even 5-10 hours in. if you have a wiiu i think this game is worth every penny. it might actually end up being the best game on the platform, but for now i won't make that claim, though i kind of really want to.

im watching someone play this on youtube NO COMMENTARY (key search term) and it seems insanely good very soothing vibes and all the game play looks very intricate and thought out and makes sense, only kinda lol game standard off note is the guy chugging apples in the middle of a battle to regain heath, maybe a lil too much wandering around the woods then just fighting three pig monsters, also a lot of talking to villagers, but maybe that all works within the spacious flow of the game

here it is if u wld like a twitch free experience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE8PS7r3IGM

i was just about to bump this thread to post something similar: this guy does talk a little bit, but not much, and in korean so it doesn't distract much.

https://www.twitch.tv/kss7749

i like his style, too. he takes his sweet ass time wandering around, taking pictures of things, charging straight into battles, spending 3 minutes trying to climb a mountain for no reason.

maybe eventually twitch people talking constantly and giving shoutouts to new subscribers will become faux pas like instagram filters

the trick is to find ppl with smaller viewerbases who either dont have subscribers yet or just dont do the whole twitch memeing thing

the constant shoutouts are obvs intolerable, the narration + pip generally i can understand in context but it obvs it kills any sort of aesthetic or engrossing experience, like if u want a sitting around playing games w pals type session then fine but if youre looking to lose yrself in the beauty of hyrule or maybe take a nap while doing so its a non starter

like if u want a sitting around playing games w pals type session then fine

i want the sitting around with a very relaxed pal session. like maybe 20 minutes go by without a word, then they pick up a rock and underneath it is an item, and they say "...sapphire!" and then nothing again for the following 20 minutes

10 more mins pass "maybe try throwing an apple at it?"

i just got to hateno village. i've procured two horses, visited 14 shrines so far, and i've gotten fairly good at bow/arrow. i am enjoying this game immensely, but eight hours in it feel like i'm just bumbling the heck around. the game insists that i shouldn't be worried about melee weapons, but i break all of the good ones and i'm currently stuck with a rusty axe and whatever clubs fall from the moblins i occasionally explode.

Will be playing dis asap

I am feeling old because the idea of watching someone play a game you're going to play yourself is just so fucked up to me.

i just got to hateno village. i've procured two horses, visited 14 shrines so far, and i've gotten fairly good at bow/arrow. i am enjoying this game immensely, but eight hours in it feel like i'm just bumbling the heck around. the game insists that i shouldn't be worried about melee weapons, but i break all of the good ones and i'm currently stuck with a rusty axe and whatever clubs fall from the moblins i occasionally explode.

― kellyanne amway (remy bean), Sunday, March 5, 2017 3:46 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

gear impermanence is something that is hard to get used to, but eventually you embrace. wearing through a weapon is a great opportunity for a free critical hit when you throw it right in a monster's face because it's about to break.

i'm also speculating that unbreakable weapons will be attainable at some point, though i'm assuming only at a pretty advanced point in the game. i just got access to a weapon that i can have repaired after it breaks, though it requires a trip to a specific NPC, so some permanence does come along eventually.

I think the gear impermanence is bad design. I run away from fights because weapon rationing is so tedious, thus the entire game mechanic of fancy swordplay, which they spend a lot of time in-game training you on and encouraging... just never happens.

WANT THIS

need a job tho

I mean you can be a virtual opal miner

:)

Fujibayashi and his team built a prototype of Breath of the Wild. They put together a starting area with a small field and a handful of trees, then stuck rupees all across the world, hiding them in places that the development team thought Miyamoto and Aonuma might explore. Then Fujibayashi presented their demo to the two Nintendo elder statesmen.

“We put rupees at the top of the tree to let them know that this is something we’re taking into account, but I didn’t tell them,” Fujibayashi said. “All I did was say, ‘Here, play the game.’ So the first thing [Miyamoto] did was start climbing, and he climbed the tree, and once he was able to do that and see that he can go anywhere within this small field, he got how this game will play out and that’s how I presented it to him.”

Then they watched and waited. And watched. And waited.

“When we first presented this to Mr. Miyamoto, he spent about an hour just climbing trees,” Fujibayashi said. “We left little treats like rupees on the trees, but we also left other things in other places we thought he might go. But he just kept climbing trees. Up and down. And so we got to the point where we go, ‘Do you want to look at other stuff?’ But he just kept on going. Once [he] got out of the Shrine of Resurrection, he spent an hour just within a 25-50 meter radius outside of that cave just climbing trees.”

http://kotaku.com/when-miyamoto-first-played-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-h-1793017234

THIS GAME IS SO GOOD. SO GOOD. SO SO SO GOOD.

It really, really is. Just completed my first 'Divine Beast' dungeon, and really loving it. It's hard, but doesn't feel unfair. I planned on going to bed right after the divine beast bit last night, then ended up doing another shrine, then activating a tower, wandering a bit, another shrine... etc.

where are yall buying the switch from like did you preorder it or what

you pretty much had to preorder it or show up at the store early on release day. i havent been able to find one myself yet, most places dont seem to think they'll have many more until april.

the Wii release was like this too iirc, you couldn't reliably walk into a store and buy one until long after release

its not uncommon for popular electronic products ramping up the production of new stuff is difficult

oh yeah I remember the Wii for sure. was pretty into the whole deal back then, iirc mrs. aero was trying to order it from her workplace while I was doing the same thing at home, doing a bunch of "it looks like it's going through! fuck...no, price went up!" shit. now I'm old though one huge advantage of being old is like oh there's a new deal? cool I'll get one maybe. oh I can't get it for six months? cool who gives a fuck maybe I'll buy it in six months or maybe I won't care then, all the same really *takes nap*

i stumbled in my way into the zora domain. lizards keep zapping me with wands. i feel like i'm massively underleveled/underprepared for its challenges. hell, i feel massively underleveled/underprepared at all times. i am distracted by taking photos of mushrooms, exploding every rock i see, collecting monster parts to no particular purpose, and my progress in the main quest occurs in fits and starts. there are all these little hints of bigger sidequests (reuniting lovers? finding special bugs?) that i am missing because i am careening through hyrule like a damn loon. i am constantly busting into areas filled with super-strong bad guys that can one-hit kill me, or falling off slippery mountain peaks, or getting chopped up in shrines. and the blood moon mechanic is legit frightening. the whole experience is weird and excellent –– like, i am delighted to run around but i am in constant-fear of insta-death. also, i misunderstood the function of the amiibo, and i gave myself a horse while i was on top of a tower. poor epona, all alone and nothing to do but jump to deah. :(

if I had to sum up the game mega quickly in the most reductive way possible and that doesn't actually sum up how fantastic it is, i'd say this is basically Ni No Kuni goes Soulsbourne.
which is probably everything i've ever wanted from a game?

hahahaha, i'm so old, i've never heard of either of those games

the last zelda game i played was "adventure of link". so far i think "breath of the wild" is better, but if soda popinski starts laughing at me the next time i die i might reconsider.

hahahaha, i'm so old, i've never heard of either of those games

― increasingly bonkers (rushomancy), Thursday, 9 March 2017 13:48

The second one just meant Demon Souls/Dark Souls/Bloodborne

jamiesummerz may have just sold me a switch (once i get my financial/time life rebalanced)

i guess the souls comparison mainly comes from the fact that:

1. there's very little handholding, you're rewarded for curiosity, exploration and experimentation. i'm 15 hours in and only just worked out that sometimes money is hidden under rocks, that I can make a horse more friendly by patting its head, that i can parry projectiles. etc.
2. just like the second enemy i met in yarnham, i got wrecked to death by the second trash mob enemy i met in zelda
3. that GAME OVER red on black screen is very YOU DIED. and i've seen it a bunch.

fun article on Breath Of The Wild deaths at http://kotaku.com/legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-players-share-their-1793006745

also love the fact that after an hour or so, i could very quickly switch to play this with zero hud (other than seeing hearts on top left)... only time i need to know more than what the gameplay itself shows me (how much noise i'm making, how visible i am, link shivering shows me it's cold, etc) is when I need to check my map every now and then.

also, climbing a tower to reveal more of the map reveals noting other than topography. if you find somrthing and want to remember it, you tag that map yourself with an icon. no assassins creed jumble of side quest icons - you find that shit yourself through exploring.

aaaanyway, great game.

i kind of stayed away from dark souls because i heard it was "hard". maybe that's my fault, because when i think "hard" i think like battletoads or some shit. this game, i could get myself killed really easy but the game autosaves every two minutes and i can just spend all day cutting down grass and hunting for bugs if i want. and then i got the camera so i'm basically playing pokemon snap here.

dunkey vid makes it look like this owns. hard

It does. One of the monsters just picked up a smaller monster and threw it at me lol.

i ran into a couple archers on horses the other day and it was pretty tight

i've been dating a gamer for a few months and this is by far the best thing i've seen him play. it's really magical.

I fucked up the use of an amiibo today though.

There's a one time only bonus of a horse awarded for syncing an OG Link figure in game. Not knowing this, I used my amiibo in a dumb location. And my one-time-kickass-bonus horse spawned on top of a tower.

I gave it a Viking funeral because why the shit not.

so the real real question i have is if this game is worth the roughly $450 it would cost for me to buy the system, the spare joystick and zelda (when it's eventually available in wide release this summer) because i'm guessing there might be five or six more games I'll buy for this thing over the life of the system? so i kinda want to know that one of them will be among the very best games I've ever played.

This game looks great. I'll buy it on the WiiU when the price drops, and I might get a Switch when they bring out a Mario Kart that isn't just MK8 with 4 new coloured shyguys or whatever.

This game looks great. I'll buy it on the WiiU when the price drops, and I might get a Switch when they bring out a Mario Kart that isn't just MK8 with 4 new coloured shyguys or whatever.

― barbarian radge (NotEnough)

nintendo games are about the only games where i don't wait for the price drop. first because it doesn't come - if you're waiting for the price to drop you will be waiting a very long time - and second because unlike other companies' AAA games, nintendo games aren't completely buggy and broken on launch.

"so i kinda want to know that one of them will be among the very best games I've ever played.

― removed from the rain drops and drop tops of experience (ulysses)"

i haven't played the same games you have so i have no basis for making that claim. all i can say is that i play games very, very rarely. the last game i played regularly was civilization v. before that it was rock band. i'm playing the shit out of this game, which is kind of a problem because i really should be packing. (if you don't already have a wiiu they seem like they're going to just rerelease all the best wiiu games for the switch, so you should probably get some of those too.)

I suspect that the WiiU version is going to have a limited print run and prices are liable to stay the same or go up as they did for Twilight Princess on Gamecube.
Was playing this last night and marvelling how seamless everything is, then thinking about how buggy Bethesda etc games are. The verticality in the world is also really good, feels similar to XCX in that respect and I believe some of the staff on that game also worked on this.

played this on Switch yesterday for the first time. very impressive! the graphics are really nice, like really really really nice! best-looking grass in a videogame yet. really goes a long way to capturing the feel of running over a sunny hillside. the wind blows and the grass moves like it would in real life. someone was playing Horizon next to it and while that game is a graphical powerhouse, it was still a little obvious that the plants and stuff were just assets stuck to the world mesh. the Breath in the title of this game is v significant: this may be the first open world game where it felt like there was actually wind in the air.

To hell with you, Ziga clan. Eighty bajillion deaths at your katana-wielding paws.

Just got this for my birthday. Now to kick the bf off the TV so I can play it.

Yiga Clan ain't nuthing ta fuck wit

i haven't had much in the way of problems with the yiga clan yet. lynels, on the other hand... i'm pretty sure they use an aimbot.

you can actually mount lynels and whack them in the head a bunch before they attack back...

completed the first 'dungeon' today - the final battle was greeeeat

hahaha, the spouse and i were just speculating this morning on whether you could ride a lynel... though the spouse wanted to tame them. :)

i definitely am having nostalgia for the old-school lynels who shot swords out of their mouths book of revelation style

I love how the Northeast of the map looks like New Hampshire in early October. Also, I bought a house and a lot of furniture and...? There is no benefit except I can dump extra weapons in the middle of my room.

i named my horses Mr Horsu and Horseface. i loves them.

oh my god, the fucking Trial of Wood, i'm going to have a sore throat tomorrow from screaming at my television

Possibly a dumb question, but how much does your left hand have to press buttons in this game? I'm slightly paralysed in my left hand - so games where you only have to move the stick are fine, but games that rely on constant left-finger-buttoning can be difficult.

the left hand buttons are primarily used to quickly switch equipment which you do pretty often. but you can do it by going into yr inventory only using right hand though (is obviously a lot slower).

also left hand triggers are used fairly often as well for guarding and abilities.

Thanks! Do you use your thumb for all of that or 2nd/3rd fingers? (My thumb is the good one!)

no problem, thumb for weapon switching, 2nd/3rd finger on the back trigger and bumper (this is on wii u i should say, dont know if its much different on the switch)

Same on switch, use thumb to click on L stick to crouch/sneak, use thumb to press buttons to change weapons and skills quickly (handy tip: hold down ZR and you can cycle through arrows), use finger on L button to activate skills (most of the time during puzzle solving), use finger on ZL to lock on to enemies/raise shield. Depends on your play style I guess, I play without locking on/raising shield and game is perfectly playable this way.

So, I started this yesterday and it took me basically all day just to get off the fucking plateau. Comedy of errors really - when I realised I needed to get that Warm Doublet I was pissed off to realise I'd accidentally eaten the only raw meat I had on me. I then managed to kill a bird - but then promtly died 3 mins later and lost my save. I then spent TWO HOURS stalking/creeping in the forest trying to catch a fucking bird/squirrel/boar. &*$%^%^$%$!!

Rest of the level was a cakewalk in comparison lol.

Still I suppose I'm real good at hunting animals with a bow now, haw :(

The doublet was the only thing I got on the plateau before I took off with the paraglider btw - have I missed anything else? I take it you cant get back there?

didn't know you could get the doublet on the plateau, just cooked loads of spicy meat. you can always go back, stamina and extreme temperature the only things limiting you from going anywhere.

Yeah you make the spicy meat/ seafood fry for Old Man and he gives it to you.

my girl and i have made a pact that we are going to get a switch/zelda if we hit some specific money goals. this game is helping me budget!

i love this game, but it can definitely be frustrating. but frustration is used as a feedback tool in this game, i think? when i am frustrated it has come from the knowledge that i am doing something ineffectively, not that the game is holding back or setting up artificial difficulty barriers. so far i have been annoyed w/ the warm doublet quest (b/c there were a million ways to solve it, and i was looking for the "right" one, though i eventually switched tactics and solved it easily).

the lynel in the zora domain
getting zapped while hiking into the zoras uglyass domain
the one tower i *still* can't climb due to electro guys swimming nearby
another fucking lynel
a boring shrine quest where i had to kill three giants
a horse-taming quest
some bullshit in the lost woods
the goron quest
gathering wood to build my effing house

Apparently having metal items mean you get struck by lightning during rain? Fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXMlXSDwzU8

I'm already overwhelmed looking at how much map there is to cover. Its not just that its large - its that so much of it is only accesible in really gruelling ways like slowly climbing cliffs. I feel like I'll be playing this game for years at this rate.

cliff-climbing gets much easier by mid-game, once you gain some stamina and other stuff that makes you climb faster/longer.

One of my workmates recommended gunning for stamina over health in the early stages of loading up on upgrades, I wonder if thats a good idea? Ive just been gathering a lot of staminella shrooms and the fish that do stam and storing a ton of meals.

Oh and Ive already hit a snag - I'm trying to do the sheep rustling side quest on Hatero beach and those monsters are really hard to kill - and Ive only got piddlepuff weapons :( I need to find somwwhere that sells bows.

...aaaand apparently I now find out weapons cant be purchased. Gah! The breakability of weapons is the most frustrating part of the game.

You can buy some weapons, but I think it's only Guardian weapons and the like up at Akkala Ancient tech lab. Don't remember seeing any others for sale elsewhere.

None of the side quests proved to be super essential, and some were downright tough at low levels. I'd focus on uncovering the whole map, walking everywhere you can, and finding shrines over Official Questing during the first 20-30 hours. Sell ALL of EVERYTHING at first for new armor, and remember that after blood moons you can re-obtain armor from the shrines that have it.

Re-obtain good weapons at shrines. Also, silver hinox is super hard.

Cheers - yeah I'm aiming to get to all the towers - though that fucking central tower is brutal and I dont see how I'm possibly going to get to it with all the Guardians around it.

after blood moons you can re-obtain armor from the shrines that have it.

I didnt know this! Thats good to know. I've also of course discovered that my amiibo gives me weapons once a day (I have Archer Link) so theres that too.

stealth armor is worth the high price, it makes all sorts of tasks easier

https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/12/15223338/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-nintendo-amiibo-hacking-ethics

I would love to get my hands on the Guardian amiibo but it seems like that was rarer than hens teeth.

Whether that constitutes cheating in the true sense of the word is debatable

Lol this is the least true sentence on the internet.

Finally got up Central Tower because I managed to kill both the Guardians ! Using parry with a Guardian shield. Hard to do but I got there in the end. And blowing them up rather than avoiding them means extra robot loot like cores and springs.

only just started this and i'm sure someone has mentioned this itt already but the moment i realised that i could climb every single thing in the overworld was one of those 'holy shit' gaming feelings that will make it hard to look at other games the same way again

It really is brilliant. The game seems very cleverly paced/balanced too, and I dont quite know how they do it, given how sandboxy it is - but despite my going about things in quite a random manner (I'm barely approaching the main questline at this point, Zora village aside), the game somehow knows how much Ive done and the monsters are getting harder and more frequent accordingly.

PS fuck u wizzrobes you little giggling bastards.

PS fuck u wizzrobes you little giggling bastards.

― Stoop Crone (Trayce)

the only ones that bother me are the lightning wizzrobes, because i don't think lightning has a one-hit-kill elemental weakness. i nearly always have a fire weapon and an ice weapon, or at least arrows.

Ive tried ice arrow followed by bomb, but it doesnt always seem to work. Plus they move around so much!

Like how would one hit them with a weapon aside from an arrow anyway? Theyre kind of floating in the air.

put some solid hours into this yesterday and this is basically the best open world in videogaming history, right?

it's really throwing some harsh light on stuff in other games i should actively hate but i've grown wearily accustomed to - invisible barriers thrown up because designers can't work out a way to prevent players from poking at the edges of maps, massive worlds with huge buildings which are only very selectively interactive, hemmed-in missions where you absolutely have to complete it the way it's structured instead of the risky plan of your own devising you'd prefer to follow...

being able to explore anywhere in a world with a physics engine this robust and fun is incredible, and that nintendo are doing all this on a system which is considerably less conventionally powerful than ps4 or xbone is all the more impressive. honestly if i only play a handful of other games on the switch i kinda feel like it'll be worth it

What's on the edge of the Breath of the Wild map, if everything can be climbed? The ocean? A giant vertical wall? Can you just walk to new donk city?

Ocean, ravine, endless dusty desert, impassable glacial thing iirc

i will say i have flat out gotten a "you can't go any farther in this direction" message from botw, so the barriers aren't as totally mimetic as they appear.

well fuck, this switch is getting sledgehammered soon as i get home

Woulda been cool if instead they had implemented barriers via, like, you can only carry a finite amount of water into the desert.

They have something a bit like that in ElderScrolls online - if you swim too far out into an ocean area not "allowed", you get attacked and killed by razorfish.

they shd let u form a new civilization

would be a cool idea if an open world game started using procedurally generated terrain/AI and sparse random events as soon as you left the map bounds

but that's a probably tremendously expensive and time-consuming solution to a problem that can be solved with invisible barriers

at the edge of the earth their shd be a waterslide and u slide down to hell

would that be like a game over or would hell have to be fully designed and traversable

hell wld just like suck i guess it wld be bad its hell

i want to become the devil, will you let me do that

u can be the devil but itll come at a price, youre soul

http://25.media.tumblr.com/4108048e0fd1e4172973e742cb06236d/tumblr_mjrktrR5D71qe096po1_r2_500.gif

Re-obtain good weapons at shrines.

So I went back to a shrine and managed to wangle my way back to the chest in it, and it was open and empty!??

Hows this sposed to work then?

maybe the person who said that was talking about the ancient swords, etc? because the enemies that carry them do respawn.

This is going to be pretty tough on my "Carry every potion I ever saw into the final FF boss" ass, isn't it?

Rusho: so like, the weapons carried by the mini-guardians in the strength tests, then?

yeah, those things. they do some pretty serious damage to regular enemies as well, particularly when they start coming with awesome bonus modifiers.

Ah yes. I'm at the point where I can start making/buying those from Robbie as well, but theyre pricey and seem fairly breakable.

i find cooking in this game super-relaxing

it also regularly makes me hungry for meat on a stick

shame there's no way to make bokoblin haggis with the guts tho

what can you do with those? i find the cooking annoyingly opaque and time-consuming

lol at whoever said upthread 'there's no beginning exposition dump'

how many different people are going to tell me that in hyrule ganon shows up every so often and is always defeated by the same people?? at length?? over the same panning shot of the same tapestry??

this is information i knew before i purchased the game!! this is information i knew before i finished reading the game's title

like:

the legend of zel-

okay, i know the plot now

-

i do actually like this game a lot

this is a really incredible game. it looks amazing. some open world games look really bad at night, i love this approach this one takes. the grass turns blue from the moonlight. it's a fully colorful fantasy world.

the climbing is fantastic. mountains have always been a huge problem with open world games. the world looks so great through mountainside vistas, yet controls mean your character is constantly jumping/sliding against a polygon surface juuuust slightly too steep for you to step on and you end up breaking the game to get from point A to point B. this game gracefully fixes that and turns what used to be game breaking into an exciting and potentially deep new mechanic.

and the wind, dang, the titular wind in this game is amazing. you can watch trees and grass and foliage react to this wind dynamically. other open worlds are so sterile and cardboard and fake. the wind really helps give life to this world.

i havent played this game but i have consumed a lot of content about it and the most relevant criticisms are in my professional opinion: why make a moody zelda does everything have to be moody nowadays, weapons breaking is a tedious chore tho it does fill a need in the game but still, not enough underground stuff zelda needs dungeons and the shrines are kinda pointless and dum

the mood is ... interesting

like there's a maraca-shaking tree-fairy you meet periodically to refill your inventory, e.g.: i don't understand why this was not perceived as antithetical to the attempted self-seriousness that's the games baseline

obvs i would prefer more m.-s. t.-fs and less serious nonsense about prophecies or whatever but whatever

why make a moody zelda

what do you mean by this? how is this game moody and why is that bad? is it moodier than Majora's Mask or Wind Waker? i haven't played those entries so i wouldn't know what that means anyway.

weapons breaking hasn't interfered w me at all. on the contrary i am having to drop weapons i am getting so many. not really tedious, takes a minute or two per fight, and i end up with the best weapons i find.

LOL this game isnt moody, what the hell.

I just bit the bullet and decided I'd tackle my first dungeon boss (the water elephant thingo). So, the Lynel/shock arrows bit was easy to bypass - the trick is not bothering with it at all. If you've already found the Deku Tree, they sell them there.

Buuut... I cant work out how to get into the elephant. I swim round on Sidon's back, and I can do that part, but it seems he keeps flinging me towards the same 2 pink targets to shoot, and I never go round to the other side to do the other 2, am I doing something stupid wrong? I dont even know if I explained that well haha. I mean shooting the targets with the shock arrows is bog-easy but I only ever seem to get 2 done.

you gotta do a couple rounds of the shock arrow thingies. i think the first round has the ice projectiles coming from the front, and the second has them coming from behind, and then the third has them alternating. just keep shooting the targets with shock arrows until the zora guy tells you you've done good enough and you can move on to the next part - it'll be pretty obvious once you've pacified the elephant.

Yeah maybe I just didnt try long enough. It seemed like one time, because I drowned (stamina ran out when in the air), it made me start all over again?

THAT IS THE SORT OF SHIT ZELDA DOES THAT MAKES ME RAGEQUIT ARRRRGH

(I will never forgive u, Phantom Hourglass and your many, many, stupid boomerang dungeons)

i don't think it does that? like, i think i kept running out of stamina in the air because i could never figure out how to cancel "bullet time" and it didn't seem to make a difference. it's been a while though. you want some hints? because there are some things you can do to make it go easier.

Sure, I'm not averse to spoilers!

ok, then, you have to destroy vah ruta's projectiles before you can get into position to shoot the targets, but it's a total waste to use your shock arrows on them. remember that cryonis can be used to destroy ice structures - and this works even if you didn't create the ice structure yourself!

Oh, no I was already doing that, the ice isnt the problem. I'll see if I can explain it better lol:
- start off, smash all the ice as we go round and round using cryo, then Sidon heads towards the elephant
- I zip up and shoot target #1
- repeat above for target #2 (on the same side)... all good at this point
- on the 3rd go round, Sidon seems to throw me at the *same side* of the elephant Ive already done, and I dont seem to be able to control him to go round the other side.

(I am averse to spoilers)

fair point andrew, should've asked if erry one was ok

Nah to be honest I should unbookmark this and make the life changes* necessary to have enough spare time to a) get a Switch and b) play this game. It's not like I'm on the fence about it in any way.

* several of these changes are probably unbookmarking other threads, yeah I'm looking at you rolling Donald Trump.

Could probably do with a comma after the 'you' there.

trayce, i've just freed the first divine beast - all i did in this section was basically rely on sidon to do the work, swum up whichever waterfalls showed up in front of me, rinse and repeat

you'll know when you're making progress cuz the number of ice blocks and mines the beast shoots at you increases between your attacks

and if you think that was annoying wait until you get inside :(

trayce: after you shot the second target, the targets came back. don't worry about swimming around to the other side - just keep shooting the targets until there aren't any more to shoot. :)

actually what i said wasn't much of a spoiler because fish prince tells you it before the fight, i just apparently keep skipping important in-game instructions...

when it came to the divine beasts, i was able to do the fire beast and the air beast on my own, but the water and earth beasts were really difficult for me.

and the wind, dang, the titular wind in this game is amazing. you can watch trees and grass and foliage react to this wind dynamically. other open worlds are so sterile and cardboard and fake. the wind really helps give life to this world.

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, 10 May 2017 17:51 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, the attention to detail is really remarkable, and the flexibility to game the system for your own benefit feels incredibly generous compared to other games.

there's a couple of things i've done where i'm sure i've managed to solve a problem with an approach the designers didn't intend but it's not through something cheap like clipping through a wall or whatever - it's through looking at the environment and thinking 'i could probably knock down a tree to bridge that gap' and it works exactly the way i'd expect instead of running up against a restriction baked into the game

last night i got through a gate using entirely the wrong special power but it was still a legitimate use of the power and man it felt great

the gta games used to be good at this - i remember deliberately stopping trucks in the middle of the road before missions to foil getaways and stuff - but weirdly they seem to have got less and less permissive over time

^ lol yes i still remember my first session with GTAV. the cutscene ended and i was in a room in a bank in the middle of a heist. i walked the wrong way like 3 feet out of the invisible path i was supposed to walk and my character instantly died, the screen turned black and white, and he fell on the ground like a rag doll.

I got into the efferlant! And then was confronted with all the puzzles. Did 3 terminals, gave up and peaced out to wander in a field instead lol.

I do like that you can come and go from the major dungeons. It feels a bit cheaty but i like it.

there's a couple of things i've done where i'm sure i've managed to solve a problem with an approach the designers didn't intend

Given the stasis/magnesis tools, I suspect they intended this but I hear a lot of stories about people using all kinds of bizarre solutions to things.

i was pretty cheesed last night to find that a weapon i'd been promised was repairable turned out to be repairable only by forking over some pretty valuable items in return

if i'd known i had to pay i wouldn't have broken the thing fighting some low-level scrubs :(

Did the divine beast quest line with Sidon and the elephant on the plane earlier. I highly approve of this polished action RPG title for the new portable Nintendo hardware.

now if only they wouldn't talk so much

LOL yes the voice acting is terrible, especially Zelda, she sounds so wimpy and whining. I dont want to rescue her tbh!

most recent update added the option for Japanese voice acting w/ subtitles - it's worth trying!

thanks, think i will opt in that way from jump when i get this

that's cool to know, if i ever get back to it i will definitely turn on japanese voice acting. it's so weird to play a game that's so polished and top-tier and professional and then it's got some ps1-level voice acting in the cut scenes.

anyone else finish it yet

also does it record how long i spent playing it anywhere or not or even if i did is it better not to know

I finished it -- accidentally. I still can't find the monster man who sells cool clothing, though.

You can find out roughly how long you've played it from your profile on the main Switch menu.

The No Amiibo speedrun is wild

https://www.speedrun.com/run/ydqq63wm

Only just now got round to finishing dungeon #1 (vah rutah). Puzzles were more annoying than hard once inside.

Halfway thru the bird one, same thing is applying - feel like just cheating and looking it up cos ive been playing this for over 120hrs at thispoint and I suppose I should stop skipping thru the forests picking mushrooms and making curries at some point (lol who am I kidding)

it's taken me 20+ hours of running away from every fight to discover I can lock on to monsters. just about every monster I've killed has been by dropping bombs from a height. I think the lock may change the way I approach this game

yep you can only do most of the useful fight moves like parries, flurry etc if you lock on - i'm sure there's a tutorial popup during your first battle explaining that?

quite possibly! I have never played a game of this type before so it's all new to me. haven't managed to parry anything in the time since I have learned to lock on. I don't have quick fingers (too old) so for the most part I'm sneaking around clifftops. and loving it.

I played this game a lot and basically never cooked
Except when I needed rupees and then I'd do 5x Prime or 5x Gourmet
Screw cooking, even if the cooking music was super nice

The cooking music is the best! So jaunty. I cooked a lot to make stamina potions so I didnt have to waste any of my shrine upgrades on stamina, at least til I got the amount of hearts for [wont mention in case of spoiling]

BTW the parry/backflip tutorial is in one of the first shrines you encounter near kakariko vilage (or was it hateno?)

I never use them, I never seem to get the button mash combos right :(

fyi if you don't learn the useful fight moves you're going to have a fair bit of trouble at a certain point in the game :)

I forgot shield blocking was a thing and was surprised how many undodgable attacks bosses had. Oops.

CONTROVERSIAL OPINION: this game's balance sucks

what do you mean?

its pretty typical in action rpgs for character growth/upgrades to outpace game difficulty, meaning the early game is consistently challenging and the mid to late game is not except for selected boss battles/special challenges. i'm not very far into this game yet but i'd predict that that will happen from what i've seen so far.

Problem could be that one can play in any way, so I suppose you could over-level early on thus making most of the gameplay too easy?

Example: I beat the water ganon boss in 5 seconds flat cos I just pummeled him with ancient arrows. Didnt get hit once.

I disagree so strongly about the game balance. My bf is combat-brilliant and puzzle-averse and was playing one way, and my mom can't fight for shit and basically cleared all the shrines before beating any but the Zora blight, and me I was upgrading armour exclusively and finding lynels still a challenge, and my niece has a lot of time on her hands and got 120 shrines and my brother had to take her Switch away when she got to 300 Koroks, idk, it seems pretty multi-pronged in the way one can approach it.

My issues with the game are that the English voice-acting is bad, that I'd trade 60 of them shrines for 2 more dungeons, that ultimately if I had to pick between Gorons, Gerudo, Rito and Zoras I'd pick "none, thank you" and prefer to spend all my time scaling the Hebra or Gerudo mountains, that the highs are super high, that exploring Death Mountain was brilliant, the labyrinths were great, that Link basically starts naked so the people who play for "that reason" are in love with him from the get-go, Hyrule Castle was endlessly fun, the plot was terrific and the steampunk acclimatization was effective, the dragons were gorgeous, and the only thing that really made this game even slightly worse off than Skyrim is that there wasn't a giant underground city

I've held off going to the castle yet! I guess I wanted to save it til last though I'm not sure why.

I guess I dont want the game to end? I want to live on the beach in Lurelin village forever.

I disagree so strongly about the game balance. My bf is combat-brilliant and puzzle-averse and was playing one way, and my mom can't fight for shit and basically cleared all the shrines before beating any but the Zora blight, and me I was upgrading armour exclusively and finding lynels still a challenge, and my niece has a lot of time on her hands and got 120 shrines and my brother had to take her Switch away when she got to 300 Koroks, idk, it seems pretty multi-pronged in the way one can approach it.

yeahhh i think i just don't hold with this philosophy of game design -- i don't like this at all! i feel like if there are going to be x interlocking systems in the game then the player ought to have to get good at x things. (rondo of blood would not be a better game if it implimented more jumping-based paths for people who weren't interested in getting good at using the whip.)

and idk i thought my lack of interest in skyrim etc was because the things were poorly implemented -- like, nothing you can do feels tactilely fun or alive at all in any bethesda game -- but i think maybe actually i just dislike the playground as a genre, even when the exploration and combat feel as nice as they do here

any time you encounter a non-optimally fun patch of difficulty, you can mitigate it by going and doing something else non-optimally fun, so the real challenge is working out at any given moment of being presented with two or more kinds of non-optimal fun which kind of non-optimally fun is least non-optimal

yah back to tetris

and idk i thought my lack of interest in skyrim etc was because the things were poorly implemented -- like, nothing you can do feels tactilely fun or alive at all in any bethesda game

horses for courses I guess, cos this makes no sense to me at all.

(with a caveat, I do feel that way about ESO, but that a little different I suppose)

okay, finally found a system and snagged it with zelda. going in.

Enjoy! Try it with headphones too is my recommend - just standing in a field watching a sunset and listening to the wind and soundtrack is..... *mwah*.

FAVE SONGS IN GAME:
- the Riley-esque piano riffing in the Lost Woods
- the moody dischordant tune called "Ruins" that u hear in places like Hyrule castle town
- the tune played in Rito village, esp when I realised it was a slow version of one of the main windwaker songs. I'm NOT cutting onions.
- the nutty, really unZeldalike robotic tune played in Robbies Tech Lab

One of my first times just cruising around on a horse, I went down to the south Faron coast (beautiful) and the pointillistic piano part just kept escalating and escalating until a full repeal of ObamaCare was suddenly upon me

ha, yeah: this game is quite good at letting you know when you've overstepped your boundaries

U mean this one goontie?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_3iE7z3Few

(both the day and night one rule but this one has the OG theme hidden in it and is weirdly melancholy also)

I don't remember, but I only heard it that one time, I think it may have been a night version segueing into a day version or something?

breath of zelda...... language of the mad

have just sneaked my way up to lanryu tower (which shows you the extent of the progress I am making). sneakstrikes are so satisfying.

now hating every minute of trying to get to zoras domain. I don't like this being forced down a route / approach thing at all. hopefully there isn't much more of this.

Zora is not the worst part of the game, but it wasn't my favourite. It was more fun humping around the mountains above Zora avoiding guardians iirc

My five favourite experiences in this game were: exploring Hyrule Castle, ascending Mount Lanayru, getting emotional at Akkala Citadel/Fort Hateno because of how successful the designers created an atmosphere of devastation, everything relating to Gorons and Mount Death, faerie sex, the labyrinths.

The shrines are not a satisfying replacement for more dungeons and I hope the next game features ~many~ Hyrule Castle-style environments. Nothing more satisfying than exploring a castle imo

I just downloaded the DLC pass - the first bit of it is out now. Some kind of master sword challenge whereby it permanently switches up the sword? I'm ambivalent about doing this, because despite everyones sooking about the easily-damaged gear, I've got used to that now and having one sword that just Always Works would feel boring at this point.

I havent even gone into the castle yet either! A few people have said when they did, they accidentally triggered the final ganon boss and I'm scared of doing that I guess?

leaving the castle until last. all beasts done, 82 shrines done, all memories done except the castle one. just did the Rito song shrine quest - that one is great!

my favourite moment so far was giving that leaf dude some maracas

I havent even gone into the castle yet either! A few people have said when they did, they accidentally triggered the final ganon boss and I'm scared of doing that I guess?

i wandered in there accidentally a little while back, when i'd only liberated one beast, and i think i managed to almost defeat ganon - i wonder if it's possible to beat him by mistake early on?

It's definitely possible to beat Ganon early on. There was a charity event I watched on Twitch where a speed runner beat the game in a ridiculous time by going straight to Hyrule Castle after completing the mandatory section on the Plateau at the beginning of the game.

What happens once he's done with? Does it ruin any parts of the game one might not have got to yet (shrines/quests)?

not really. just puts a little star next to your name on the loading screen. you can still go back and replay from the moment before you defeated ganon.

okay, important question: Can you eventually make elixirs and cook meals in bulk? This is tedious.

No

I like the guy that looks like broccoli

what's up i'm playing this now it's terrifyingly huge

korok seeds are validating my completionist anxiety to look behind every single corner and it's gonna kill me

Theres like 250 of them so have fun!

i thought there was 900

Got to the 1st boss. I'm getting the timing wrong and getting impaled by his massive weapon instead of iframing out of the way. Super into this game, it really does feel like they took Skyrim and chucked out all the annoying bits and made the combat not terrible. I'll be interested to know when the fight goblin/pick up weapon/fight another goblin loop is gonna get old.

i've put like 80 hours in and it's not worn thin yet

shit yr right qualx bloody heck

Some of the new DLC additions are quite neat. Theres now a tool in the map function that shows you everywhere you've been on the map. I'm over 150 hours in now, so at this point this is *massively* useful to me to go back over areas I've missed, pick up koroks and shrines and etc.

The other is a pocket travelpoint. Can only use it in one spot at a time alas, but for eg at the moment I'm using it to jump to a spot up over Lanryu Promenade, which is a great spot to wait for the Ice dragon to come by in the morning so I can jump out and farm him for parts.

I might also set it at somewhere like the Southern Mine in the Goron area - there's no shrines anywhere near it so it's a pain to get to.

96 shrines down, and only found 110 korok seeds. its INSANE that there are 800 more to find. totally not going to easily find the last 24 shrines so gonna KILL THIS DARN BOSS.

OK now I think I get this game now. I've been spending my time wandering aimlessly across the place only, looking at things, catching horses (Gary, Max, Tracy, Jabroni), avoiding fighting and then allovasudden the fighting starts to make sense and a whole new world of the game has opened up for me. So much so that I finally lit the torches to the hateno tech lab and in the hour since have been strolling about blasting bokoblins hither and yon, giggling away like a loon. I am officially back in love with this game.

no way am I ever going to complete this game tho.

Yeah I avoided fighting the big bosses til I learned thats how you get the really good weapons.

Unforch, now that means I can kinda beat anything pretty easily :/

i would pay money to never have to do a horse (or chocobo) race again in my entire life

omg yes i have at least 3 horse- based quests i haven't done cos fighting on horseback is hard!

i didn't even know there was fighting stuff, i was just talking about the hurdle race

the prize is literally horse cosmetics but by the time i figured that out i had already pumped two hours into the goddamn thing and i wasn't going to lose

going to go ahead and say that game design that asks players to repeat difficult mechanics over and over again until they can do it in less than 75 seconds in inherently bad game design, obsessive repetition should never be encouraged

Obsessive repetition is the foundation of entire genres

those genres should be shot into the sun

I choose to go to the sun and play marble madness there

But I guess the constraints of game memory and the incentive to make arcade-friendly quarter-suckers is the reason that so many foundational games are based on mastery of repetition and memorization

I think qualx just hates video games

Like "obsessive repetition" is pretty foundational, did you have a Nintendo?

obsessive repetition is just another way of saying game

lol otm

Not to pile on qualx who I know likes video games just fine. Obsessive repetition is just one of the things I like most about video games!

no video games generally suck a lot

I did have a nintendo, and obsessive repetition was funner when you're 10 and you don't have anything else to do

but as it's been said that probably wouldn't have been a thing if it weren't for exploitative quarter-munching

you're never gonna convince me that adults repeating the same janky process over and over again for hours until they get it perfect is the result of good game design

make a game that's fun and offers steady progression I could be learning the trumpet or something

Oh the hurdle race! I'd forgot all about that, I did it ages ago. The trick is not to go toooo fast - you cant control the horse too well.

Oh also, make sure your horse is 100% tamed! He wont obey you otherwise.

finally playing this - i've managed to avoid most information about the game despite being late to the party. i'm surprised at how much it just feels like a zelda game despite the wider scope and new combat mechanics - it's just as much of a logical step forward from the previous zelda formula as ocarina was from the 2d zeldas.

so far i'm dumping all my upgrades into hearts since i'm still running into things that one-shot me - is there a point at which i'm going to regret not having extra stamina or can i get by without it until i'm in double digits of hearts?

More stamina lets you climb more and thus be a little more joyfully heedless while exploring, as you are incrementally less likely to run out of stamina while dragging yourself up a cliff.

@ cider press there is a good reason to press forward until you have 13 hearts, but I would probably upgrade to a second stamina wheel before making that plunge

You can also switch between the two

beat the game so i feel safe to finally post here. loved this.

fgti is correct, but stamina honestly makes the game much easier to get through vs. hearts since most fights can be avoided / healed through, while stamina is the only way to scale mountains. besides you will get those heart containers fast enough i assure you

you're never gonna convince me that adults repeating the same janky process over and over again for hours until they get it perfect is the result of good game design

― qualx, Sunday, August 13, 2017 1:59 PM (four weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*only examples i can think of were that initial journey to the Zora's domain, which is tough going without a lot of fights. also the lynel fights. even those can be tanked through with the right equipment - none of them are required, either!
**and that one shrine where you had to use stasis to golf a boulder across some water. that was a bit tedious

but yeah this game. best of generation. 100% worth buying a Switch for. so good. makes me want to play the Zeldas i have missed, though i know they won't be as good.

after i beat the game i found a freakin' stable i missed near the start of the game, because i went completely around it for 120 hours

This is why the Heros path mode in the DLC update has been a freaking boon. There are whole mountains i've missed!

what is that?

It shows you the last 200 hours of where you've been on the map!

eg:
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/5HiM5gFPY6zMCeDPOmbTbkKN6Gc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8718497/02_herospath.jpg

whoaaaa

It wasnt much extra to buy. Theres also a master sword quest, which makes the master sword permanent and unbreakable. I'm leaving that for after-finished game tho, its apparently quite hard.

The Master Sword quest is certifiably extremely difficult, and kind of showed me some holes in the standard combat, as I couldn't consistently kill hard Moblins despite "good technique"-- so I used a lot of archery

It really can't be stressed enough that upgrading your armour is a good move. I gave directions to the three other fairy fountains to a dude in my Uberpool last month

yeah I just got to Zora's domain and that sequence was the first time it felt like a 'normal' video game. I didn't have much trouble with it though, my only death was being struck by lightning, not to enemies

love the Zoras in this game. they want me to go fight a lynel now though so I'm gonna disappoint them and wander off to explore other parts instead

the npc dialogue is so good, i want to talk to every random nobody because they usually say something funny or weird

this game is insanely immersive. i live in an area with foggy mountains, and i felt that i existed within the game while on a walk this morning. like Trayce, I've become obsessed with cooking. I spent about an hour cooking yesterday, partially because my son's face lit up every time the cooking music played. wish it would give the minimal recipe required to make a thing after you successfully made it, though, as i may be wasting ingredients. all of these gear/screws/springs/gems are just crap to trade, no? i suppose it's more realistic than a world covered in loose money, but i'm scared that i'll miss out on something later if i sell them all. are there vendors that overvalue certain items, as there were in previous games?

the ancient gears/springs/screws have a use

i don't know how far you are but i found said use pretty early on via following the main questline

ok, thanks! I've just been to the second village. so I haven't done much, and I'm taking it slow.

even if you do need to sell them though its not a big deal since the game doesn't have scarcity - everything respawns given enough time

hope to pay a future zelda mortgage with bokoblin fangs

hope to pay a future zelda mortgage with bokoblin fangs

Guess what…

the ancient gears/springs/screws have a use

A big use! Dont sell them, especially the gears and spheres and ESPECIALLY never sell any giant spheres. They are needed for obtaining ancient armour and weapons and you willllll need that shit for fighting guardians.

...someone is now gonna come along and tell me they took down a big roaming guardian with 3 hearts and a shoe, I suppose.

I fought that first guardian for so long. the load screen kept giving me the ole "don't throw yourself at enemies..." tip, and it only enraged me further. It was a lesson well learned, though: this is not ocarina of time.

Haha yes, feel no shame in running away early and often :)

I avoided all the big bosses completely for a long time but as I think Ive said before, eventually you should have a crack at it cos most of them have great weapon drops.

I need to learn to fight better, I think. In OoT, the side jump and jump attacks were so unreasonably powerful. I could fight. It feels like each enemy is his own punchout boxer in this one, and I need to look for tells. I usually sneak up on them or strike from a distance. When I need to fight in close range, I'm usually outnumbered, and that seems to be a huge problem in this game. or maybe I'm just rusty from a 10 year gaming hiatus.

I spent the first day ignorant of the motion controls, thinking that there was some kind of realistic inaccuracy built into my arrow/rune/etc aiming because the crosshair kept jumping randomly.

Yeah I switched that off on my WiiU. Only time I use it is for those FUCKING ANNOYING TILT PUZZLES WHY DO THEY EXIST WHYYYY

coming into this from 60 hours of splatoon2 i'm a savant at the motion controls now so i've been using bow+arrow a lot to get through tough bits

lmao the first tilt puzzle i got i literally flipped the controller upsided down which flipped the maze over and it's flat on the back so it was trivial, i was amused that it let me do that. i guess that's part of the game's MO though

omg that never occurred to me to try hahaha

that's what i love about the game, how completely open it is to crazy alternate solutions. you can play the whole game like it's the fool's errand. (except for the plateau. you have to do the plateau, weirdly enough.) few things are more fun than watching a casual player putting together an elaborate abuse of the physics engine because they can't figure out the intended solution to a shrine.

nice, ciderpress. i figured out an angle that allowed me to skip half of the maze, but i didn't think to flip it entirely. it probably took me 10 tries to get that ball out of the maze. the hardest part was flipping the ball from the maze platform onto the ramp. it was a freak accident when i got it. i allowed the ball to pick up way too much speed and flung it wide left where it ended up a ways down the ramp. i wonder if it's possible to fling it all of the way to the basket.

lit so many torches, and then nothing happened. unless? unless there is another torch somewhere!?!

I still have a few shrines Ive found and not done - theyre mostly fiddly tilt based physics puzzles involving balls and/or wind and/or stasis. Theres no cheating some of em, it just takes timing. And Ive no patience.

shifting focus from the main quest to shrines and tower activation has really opened things up for me. there are so many magical moments in this game. That first view of Lake Hylia at night was very moving.

a bit sad that i am virtual ted nugent in this game, and i will kill that thing at some point

the zora prince is basically a disney character

i still love the writing in this game so much, it's got such a light touch compared to the elder scrolls and witchers of the world

Western or even just non-Nintendo developers refuse to do anything whimsical in their AAA games what's up with that

the zora prince is basically a disney character

Sidon? Hahah yes, he's so campy and flamboyant, I love him!

In a similar vein I love the flouncy gay builder in Hateno, Bolson. He's the best.
https://media0dk-a.akamaihd.net/12/19/d8fc6fa2b2f1a362fc47c5ecbc69f91a.jpg

ha!!!

my cynicism made be believe the zora prince guy was gonna turn heel. but nope, he's just super cheesy, which is great!

The best thing about this game is it is extremely horny

I just accidentally saw prince Sidon hentai fanart on my work PC ;_;

yeah don't image search for that guy

I've spent three weeks since I bought this just wandering around, climbing stuff, finding towers and doing shrines. It's amazing how even now, on a map this big, there's still a surprise around almost every corner.

A big use! Dont sell them, especially the gears and spheres and ESPECIALLY never sell any giant spheres. They are needed for obtaining ancient armour and weapons and you willllll need that shit for fighting guardians.

pro-tip: learning to parry the guardian's lasers with your shield will make life much easier

Yes absolutely. It takes practice but it's a vital skill.

well, you can also forget the shield parry exists and win the game because balancing

yeah, but it makes you feel like a real badass, which is the really important thing

I tried and failed to do the second ancient furnace quest about 10 times because of a guardian blocking my way and then I discovered the parry move

you just shield parry and it refelects the laser?

yeah! do it three or four times and the guardian will be dead

and you'll feel like a real badass

cannot wait to occupy new heights in my son's esteem after i shield parry this guardian

One parry is all it takes. Lock on using the L shoulder button (I forget which one), the guardian will target you and press A when the area around the eye flashes white, a fraction of a second before the laser fires.

definitely gonna go die a bunch trying to do that to the ones around the central Hyrule tower I haven't gotten yet

I didn't even deal with those guys. Just intermittently hid from their tracking beams and eventually made it past them and up the tower. I may have had the fast climbing bandana on, though. I've been dumping shrine orbs into extra stamina vessels, and I'm now very happy that I did so. New strategy is to use faster climbing and greater stamina to visit fairy ponds before big battles. fuck a heart container.

i did the first divine beast last night (the zora one), that was very cool. the boss was pretty easy though compared to a lot of normal enemies. does the difficulty ramp up on the other beasts or are they all about the same since there's no official order to them?

The first beast I did (and only one so far) was Vah Medoh and I was surprised at how easy it was so I guess they'll all be about the same. A few hits with bomb arrows and it was all over in about 2 minutes.

How critical is the stealth armor? I've been saving up for it, but it's pretty expensive! Also, any good strategies for getting rupees? I've just been hunting, cooking, and selling skewers. Is that about right?

Still having a tough time with fighting. Generally I start panicking as the camera swings around, end up in a crouch, and get my butt kicked. The only time I feel confident is when I eat a big defense crab stew. Just waiting for the controls to click and start feeling natural, I guess.

i need to get back into this; feeling like i lost patience way too early for no reason.

yeah i'm definitely not good at the combat still, having mostly opted out of the dark-souls-ification of gaming over the past decade. luckily the game is structured such that you don't ever really have to fight the hard stuff.

I keep getting sidetracked! Was going to one of the test of strength battles, decided to go harvest some crabs, ended up back in the village, didn't have enough for the stealth armor, went hunting, ended up in new area, found a few shrines, and now I'm off in some new place, and who knows when I'll get back to that test of strength. I don't even remember where it was at this point! And I keep finding seeds, and getting ridiculous little side quests. It's feeling more fun now, but it's still completely overwhelming.

Oh and I managed to climb and light the central tower without getting zapped, which felt pretty rad!

yeah i've got all the towers now except for the southwest and northeast areas. the ridgeland one that's in the middle of a pond full of electric enemies was harder than the central one. northeast one looks especially intimidating to get to.

I got the one with the electric enemies by just hiding in a spot and dropping bombs on them over and over...

The last tower for me was hard because I couldnt fucking FIND it. It was tucked under a cliff.

there's a good number of those lol

I did my final tower last night, Akkala in the north-east. I thought it looked really difficult so I'd been putting it off but it wasn't that bad. One or two average difficulty bokoblins but the flying guardians are easy to avoid if you don't want to fight them.

I was probably delighted the first time it rained, and I slipped while climbing. I am now entirely fed up with 8 hour rains that interrupt the middle of a journey up a giant mountainside. Or I was fed up. Then I did the whole zora's domain hero/lynel/weapon/dungeon thing, and the game is beautiful again.

I find the dungeons way more unsettling than past Zelda games despite not being as gloomy or encompassing

weirdly this game feels like it pulls more beats from twilight princess than any of the other 3d zeldas stylistically. I think city in the sky is the closest past dungeon in look and feel to the divine beasts, and same with palace of twilight for the shrines and sheikah tech

fighting with a giant club feels like battletoads

octoballoons are fun, i guess? i might have had some fun? or pain? it was definitely fun or pain.

aside from that one quest i had no idea what to do with those things

apparently you were 'supposed' to use them to get up the faron tower but i just climbed the mountain next to it and jumped over instead

Ive had no luck with those things. ON a raft it just tilts all over the place and then they pop after a few seconds anyway!

they are good but also bad

you can put one on a bomb and then use a leaf to blow it across a gap but i have no idea whether that ever becomes necessary in the game

neat thread about the game world design/dev

Got around to reading some of the BotW CEDEC articles. Interesting fact -
https://t.co/494TwAuYxi

— Matt Walker (@gypsyOtoko) October 3, 2017

thank u i enjoyed that thread, also the second one on the ui design

Thanks to @Nibellion and tonyh24613 from Gaf I've been alerted to articles based on the other BotW CEDEC talks - so how bout a new thread?

— Matt Walker (@gypsyOtoko) October 4, 2017

going to paint my kitchen "zelda white" so it's less startling to look up from my switch

very cool!

also need botw.css for ilx

from the world design thread: "after a marathon of herzog documentaries, designers decided that it should rain every time a player hoped to climb a tall mountain, fight a stone talus, capture sunset fireflies, etc. this would really drive home the uncaring chaos and brutality of nature."

there should be dlc narration

The WiiU lets you see how much time youve spent on a game. I have now clocked up over 300 hours on this thing :/ Prob at least 100 of those is me just aimlessly wandering around, because I find this thing so meditative.

i could wander around and collect virtual mushrooms or i could see what's happening on the internet... yeah i think virtual mushrooms win this one. am so, so glad that nintendo is still making great offline games.

ugh, trying to read that Matt Walker twitter thread is a total mess now with all the replies.
and his medium summaries have no images. bummer.

oh geez he deliberately deleted the original tweets "out of respect" to the original talkers. someone get him on twitter and tell him the images don't embed on medium

lol

man, this game, even the glitches are cool. spouse just ran across a dlc bug where a treasure chest falls out of the sky over and over again.

The other day I used one of my amiibos to do a treasure drop, and it dropped a chest and 2 wooden crates. Then there was a flash of lightning and one crate just blinked out of existence.

I also found and rode the King of the Mountain the other day! He was spooky.

Lord of the Mountain rather.

Oh man this game. I've pretty much ignored a whole bunch of mechanics - quests, mini bosses, riding horses, shrines, korok seeds - and I'm still clambering over new mountains and creeping along new valleys, just trying to find out what's around the next corner. This is after about 40 hours. I got the house, though - Bolson is a dude.

And now my kids are playing it and noticing things that I breezed right past, setting bomb traps for octoroks, catching horse after horse - they're approaching it. in such a different way to me, it's an education.

So I’ve got like 80 shrines, and all of the beasts. I’m kinda petering out. I guess I should go to the castle and finish this, but I don’t want to end the game. Once I go to the castle can I keep playing the game after, or is that it (spoilers, I guess)?

that's it, pretty much. you'll get a save with a * so you can keep trying to 100% after if you want

there's the DLC, some of which isn't out yet, no?

I've only done two beasts. I became obsessed with obtaining and upgrading armor for awhile when life got very busy. I've also been playing mario kart because I switched game cards to play with friends awhile back, and it's hard to justify not playing mario kart whenever I pick the thing up. Now the new mario is coming out, and I don't think I can juggle 3 masterpieces.

xp oh yeah that DLC- will definitely buy when it's complete

the nice thing about single player masterpieces, they'll always be waiting for you =D but zelda is so good, finish it

finishing games is overrated imo

I wandered around for like an hour last night trying to find more shrines and ended up with like 2 stupid korok seeds. Guess it's time to wrap it up. Or I could just talk to every goddamn NPC in Hyrule and do all the side quests (many of which reveal shrines, I guess).

the ones that open shrines go into a separate section in your quest log iirc so you know which they are

Good to know, thanks!

https://kotaku.com/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-is-getting-a-second-wind-thank-1819802965

using the magnet on a lizal boomerang is a great idea

a lot of those are fantastic

holy shit I'm riding a bear

take it to the gay thread buddy

yeah, quit with the gay stuff, we're trying to discuss our video game about the adventures of a fairy boy

otm

still riding him. he's way more biddable than I thought a bear would be

Ive only ridden one, but it was fun, plodding thru the snow.

Catching/riding a fuckn reindeer was way more impossible - and that one was a shrine quest. Took me forever to get one, they just heard me no matter wjat sneak shit I did. I ended up parachuting down onto one lol.

I didn't know that any of this was was possible

shut the fuck up, tree, and let me get this sword

a free bit got added to the DLC the other day. I finished it in 10 minutes. It was just to go to 3 places and stare in the right direction til you saw a red shooting star, to get some goodies.

New set of amiibos out a few weeks back, featuring the 4 champions. I snagged Daruk and Revali. Couldnt justify paying for all 4 this close to xmas :(

Anyone else collect the amiibos?

unless it's spoilery for some reason..

what IS the "breath" of the wild?

The wind/weather, I always assumed! It has such a vital presence in the game.

Horse farts is a better answer.

haha <3

The Legend of Zelda: Horse Farts

Now I'm picturing inventive battle strategies involving one Link, his horse, and a bunch of fire arrows....

oh shiiit new DLC is out. gotta pick it up

six hours into this (five hours of which has been walking from distant point to distant point, again and again and again) and i'm apparently having to make a recipe trial-and-error out of some random shit that's not explained. i'm tempted to cheat, not because i'm incapable but because this is so god damned boring.

the mystery ingredient is a fish. no way would i have stumbled upon that inside a year.

Walking distant point to distant point, trial and erroring spicy fish recipes is the gamd

Fuck did you just spoiler the DLC? :/

no i think AA is talking about the intro quest to get the glider. i relented and looked that one up too when i did it

yeah intro quest. i would never spoil brand new content (or anything important tbh).

this console reeeeeally needs some wii u ports btw. skyward sword would be pretty great too.

that's the quest for the warm doublet. there are at least two other ways to get it and there are ways to get by without it.

six hours into this (five hours of which has been walking from distant point to distant point, again and again and again) and i'm apparently having to make a recipe trial-and-error out of some random shit that's not explained. i'm tempted to cheat, not because i'm incapable but because this is so god damned boring.

― rove mcmanus island (Autumn Almanac), Saturday, 9 December 2017 00:09 (fifteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

u suck at videogames

harsh but fair tbh

although since i got the paraglider i've been progressing fine, so maybe i just suck at recipes and patience (rushomancy otm, i should have just tried something else)

also i know i'm super late to this game but holy shit it's enormous

First off it's called "the spicy meat and seafood fry" which suggests fish might be a likely ingredient? Also there's a cookbook at the old man's cabin that tells you what's needed.

problem exists between chair and joycon

Yeah early on in the game, read every book you come across. They will give important advice. Also make note of the tips in the loading screens. There is a ton of useful info in there!

Or fuckit and just look it up on Polygon like I have done a few times because fuck a physics puzzle.

that ball maze is fuck

somebody (ciderpress?) had an amazing idea for that one

They did yeah! I wish I'd thought of it. ctl-f upthread if you wanna spoiler :)

oh i saw that, it still sucks. even with doing that you have to flip it at the right angle, and hope it’s going to land in the right place, but i ain’t spendin’ any more time on it

Yeah I have a few shrines ive found and still havent solved, cos theres no way to cheat it really. Still got about 12 shrines to find, somehow!!

so many shrines, so many everything

so many mountain climbs spoiled by trolling rain

worst on that front - in mid-fight with a talus rockmonster then it starts raining. Cant get onto his back to hack at him cos its too slippery. Grr.

most people don't actually know that Hylians played the aliens in Signs

my favourite line of dialogue so far is “please enjoy this apology egg”

also, fuck horses

uh, Moore lost the election pal

...

horse collecting and riding are more of a mini game in this. the game is too huge to not have teleportation, and the large number of shrines gives good enough teleportation granularity, meaning that you'll rarely need to ride very far. If you do need to go far, you are likely climbing some mountains and you ditch the horse anyway. horses seem to be immune to the climate, so they are handy for squeezing the most out of a temporary heat/cold resistance. would welcome a jinglehorse dlc for christmas still.

ah thanks for explaining that. i did wonder how horses would be useful in a map full of teleports.

the one thing i haaated about ocarina was the bloody horse mechanics, and i’ve had a digital horse phobia ever since.

yeah, I plan on skipping all horse racing based "achievements" because the three speed carrot system is not very fun to use and the turning still feels like rotation about a central horse axis.

ugh really? god

that said, it is a good idea to run the roads on a horse at least once after you've unlocked the full map. I found stuff I would have likely missed otherwise.

and the running mount and dismount are awesome improvements

a horse you have max friendship with will follow roads without too much steering, it's fun to cruise past things, plus you can name your horses and decorate their manes

I never bothered using horses at all. I rode one once I think. I either too often would be climbing terrain or exploring details. After awhile you have all your warp points set, too.

I sort of feel bad about it? Like the poor horse NPCs were there for me to befriend and I ignored them.

thanks everyone for excellent tips. at least i know i don’t have to stress about horse mechanics for the time being.

by now i would have spent 15+ hours in this game and all i’ve done is go into new areas and stumble on a few power-ups/side-quests/special items. but it’s fine.

also it’s weird how successfully this game tells you it’s okay to relax. i’m starting to really need better armour though.

yeah the horses rule... 100% agreed that you will find stuff while riding that you missed on foot

yeah i really enjoy how little urgency there is in this game compared to other big fantasy games - you've already shown up 100 years late so why not take your time

lol exactly

I love riding horses around now! I didnt do as much before but now I'm more in the "holding off completing the game, covering as much ground as possible" part of the game its fun to just gallop around. Especially at night. The tune it plays is lovely.

BTW dont listen to me Ive been at this thing about 300 hours now and play it just to relax tbrh

The DLC dungeon crawl thing has super duper music too

i got a horse by running headlong at it like a mad bastard and grabbing its arse before it ran away

aka the best way (if you don't have sneaky juice)

which is the opposite of everything i found on the web, which said to creep up slowly

yeah. sneaking is another game mechanic that i didn't use much early on (outside of one-hitting sleeping monsters occasionally), but it becomes very useful later on when you need to collect 10 lightning bugs to upgrade your armor, etc.

hour #457

I had to let some early horses go coz you can only have like, 5? and I kept getting better ones like Epona from the amiibo drop, and [will not spoil the 2 other awesome horses u can get from quests]

heard about the amiibo drop, not sure i want to spend $17 on a horse though

probably not worth it... but i am sooo tempted to get the amiibos for the Wolf and various unique armors... also i think the Guardian machine amiibo looks sick

my experience with this game seems to be “this is shit <10 minutes later> wait no this is incredible”, again and again and again. somehow between yesterday and today i’ve gone horse crazy.

lol

an ilx poster might just have some pics for you

I gave no fuxx about amiibos but now I have a whole heap. Guardian is one of the few I am missing. Its hard to find outside of ebay now (little wonder - it gives the most useful drops)

Ma cru (sorry for hueg)
https://scontent-syd2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/24296611_10154743211657757_2580463527887018046_n.jpg?oh=f078adda8aad1bc6ae9b5a48c1180fb1&oe=5AC697EB

conserve those guardian arrows, link

haha cute xp

conserve those guardian arrows, link

i think you just solved a problem for me

BTW dont use guardian arrows on big enemies, cos they'll just pffft into nothingness, and then you wont get their awesome weapon and parts drops. I wish I'd learned that a lot earlier than I did.

I see Guardian amiibos all over the place locally! They're bigger and more expensive than standard amiibos

ooh ta trayce

fwiw shit-all zelda amiibos here, probably because of xmas (so bang goes that kringle idea)

I see Guardian amiibos all over the place locally!

Awww man, really? Thats the main one I want dammit.

Adam: JBs usually have a pile, the one in Barkly Square did a few weeks back anyways.

oh cool, because both the cbd ones i tried today only had smash bros or whatever

Its possible theyve since sold out... try less obvious places as well like Myers, you'd be suprised!

ahh too late, i got him an eshop card

not entirely on topic but

Adam: JBs usually have a pile, the one in Barkly Square did a few weeks back anyways.

just walked into a suburban jb which had the smo wedding box set. kringle sorted, and now i have a $60 eshop card oh well

I just completed Eventide Island finally! It wasnt so hard this time round, with more skill and more hearts.

i've just come back to this game after a couple of weeks on mario. as luck would have it i came back right at the point where you have to attack that cyber mechanoid elephant in the lake by freeze-shattering flying blocks and mines that launch at you while you're moving. which would be fine if the control in this game weren't absolute pants. i had to turn of motion controls just to keep the fucking thing still enough to hit the blocks (that's when cryonis mode wasn't randomly cancelling itself just as i was about to fire, which happened at least 20 times), and then trying to fire shock arrows into those pink things was basically trial and error, partly because there's like a million different and inconsistent buttons and things you have to do just to engage each weapon/rune and then make it fire (e.g. freezing stuff is a, firing arrows is r/zr/whatever, and it's way too easy to hit the wrong button at a crucial moment). and then i get inside the elephant and fall down a thousand times because the camera is fucking epileptic. not counting all the times i pressed the wrong button to do a simple thing because you have to execute borderline tekken combos just to scratch your arse. and then you pick up a weapon and it says your inventory is full without bothering to open the inventory. don't tell me to open the inventory, just open the fucking inventory. and then you suddenly lose a heap of life and it takes ~4 hours to navigate the menus just to find a food item that will restore two hearts (+ then l/r then right-stick right-stick right-stick right-stick right-stick then left-stick left-stick left-stick left-stick left-stick left-stick left-stick left-stick left-stick). really this should have been called zelda: button memory game.

and now somehow i've fallen off the entire elephant.

I was quite happy it let me jump off the elephant. It is a hallmark of good game design that if there is a dramatic precipice the player has the agency to jump off it and die.

Best implemented in Bastion, a game with a start to precipice interval (a key game design metric ) or less than a second, where the narrators first sentence about our hero awakening has just enough time to finish that it runs smoothly into ,"and then he fell off a cliff and died "

xp but then it repeatedly put me back on a ledge i couldn't leave without jumping off. the only way i could break this loop was to quit and reload.

pretty much the only thing well implemented in bastion. as far as i remember at this point that's the game's actual story. there was a guy he woke up he fell off a cliff and died

it sux that you're having a frustrating experience and I agree that on the whole the button layout is badly thought out (though not as much as fucking mario, wherein doing the fullest jump requires the player to play a kind of solo cats-cradle)

i do think this is the unfortunate side effect of choosing to put a game down right before the first point it asks the player to demonstrate mastery tho. (for me and i think others this was a memorable high point of the whole thing)

'xp but then it repeatedly put me back on a ledge i couldn't leave without jumping off. the only way i could break this loop was to quit and reload'

can't you fast travel back to the opening of the elephant? or do i misremember

yeah, i would have persisted just a few minutes longer if i'd known the zora kingdom was about to go crazy.

I agree that on the whole the button layout is badly thought out (though not as much as fucking mario, wherein doing the fullest jump requires the player to play a kind of solo cats-cradle)

my biggest gripe with switch zelda/mario (apart from camera ai apparently going backwards 15 years) is the inconsistency in controls. with zelda you dash while running with b, but dash while swimming with x. with mario you press the right stick to exit look-around mode, but you press zl to exit binoculars look-around mode. there's a load of these inconsistencies and it only gets in the way.

can't you fast travel back to the opening of the elephant? or do i misremember

when i was stood in a dead-end alcove on top of the elephant and i fell off, it took me back to the dead-end alcove.

alcoves. towers. Zelda In Bruges.

Wow I did NOT have an issue with controls (apart from never getting a hang of the slo-mo parry/dodge trick). I'm tempted to boot the game up just to try to understand exactly what you could possibly mean. "Menuing" was indeed annoying every time you're reminded your inventory was full though.

i swapped the jump and run buttons right away and never had any control issues after that

my main issue with the control is that it sometimes recommends that I press a button by letter, and my brain always wants to sort the button letters alphabetically left-to-right. so I am constantly mixing up X with Y and A with B.

also funny that they stuck to the original B/A confirm/cancel assignments which is the opposite of Playstation and Xbox

It’s not the opposite of Japanese PlayStations, which use O to confirm and X to cancel, I hasten to pedantically observe.

Anyway Nintendo has been using the same button layout this whole time, why would they change

oh man, it is definitely the xbox which has ruined me for switch controls.

i def struggled with the aiming controls at first. for the first week i had my switch i thought i had a defective right joycon. every time i tried to aim an arrow the camera would be jittery and shakey. eventually i realized it is setup to use not just motion control instead of analog stick controls but both at the same time.

ive somehow found a way to make it work. really think that having both options at once is an optimal setup even if its weird at default. you can aim by pointing at the screen and you can also swing the camera around w the stick if that isn't doing it for you.

yeah, I had no complaints with the combo mode after I realized what was happening

i swapped the jump and run buttons right away and never had any control issues after that

― ciderpress, Tuesday, 2 January 2018 03:41 (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fantastic! cheers, i will definitely do that.

i had a crack at water ganon and walked away because (a) i still only have five hearts (b) trying to aim an arrow while monitoring for various attacks is a nightmare (c) the. fucking. camera. pretty bloody hard to attack an enemy who appears behind you and pulls off a one-hit kill before you can even find the bastard.

one of the beautiful things about oot was the camera never ever getting in the way. not once. maybe i'm doing it wrong but the whole elephant dungeon feels like the buggiest part of morrowind.

You can switch that motion control off, you know.

oh i did that

i kinda love the motion control for precise aiming, but it feels natural on the handhold and weird on the big screen -- but yeah i've been playing the last of us this week and i keep trying to aim by tilting the ps4 pad

the first thing I played on my switch was 50 hours of Splatoon so now the motion controls are totally natural and I can't deal with any game that doesn't use them for aiming

I cant use it, my hands arent steady enough. Tho obviously its neccesary for the tilt puzzles in some of the shrines.

the first time i had one of those i was so annoyed that you can't really just glide over there and do it manually. i mean you can but it's even futzier than it is to just do the tilt puzzle.

just did the korok trials. they were extremely annoying, and I loved it. think I might try dragging out the main quest for a full year. don't want to disappoint the weapons connoisseur.

low note swell when you're swallowed by the lost woods fog is very twin peaksy

would welcome major briggs head shield dlc

I can read a thousand more of these "why Breath of the Wild is so great" gushing articles.
https://www.polygon.com/2018/1/10/16868292/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-best-games-2017-year-in-review

One of my hands doesn't work that great anymore - I can play Ocarina on the GameCube fine - but would you say Breath is stupidly difficult? I've always kinda hated complex-control games, right back to when Elite made me cry out of boredom.

i didn't find the controls complex so much as i found that they require lots of menuing, which to me is the opposite of complex because it doesn't require me to master complicated real-time fluid hand gestures - the fact that i can't quite remember how to shoot arrows a lot of the time and wound up trial-and-erroring it didn't really keep me from beating the game. i can see how having to spend 30 seconds scrolling through your inventory to find a healing item can break immersion, though.

it's more difficult than the other 3d zeldas - you can't just mash your way through fights like you can in much of Ocarina. you need to either use your tools and the environment in clever ways or get good at dodge/parry timing.

Love it, had it delivered today, accidentally played for six hours. It turns out the wee controls are perfect for somebody with slightly incapacitated movement.

awesome!

I am dying a lot. Don't save your game on top of a broken temple roof. Still amazing though!

the game autosaves pretty much any time you're about to encounter anything, i only ever manually save when i'm done playing

finally saved up 13 hearts and made it to the master sword. 2 divine beasts down but i think i will wander aimlessly, im in no hurry to finish this game ever.

yeah thats about as far as i ever got as well

been doing all side/shrine quests. Amazing how much you miss following the main quest.

I've been saving before I cook so I can experiment with different recipes

Not a sentence I was expecting to type after I bought Zelda, but part of the fun is knowing nothing in advance

yeah I have one beast to go (the desert one's internal puzzles are actually really confusing, so I'm not sure I can do it!) and Ive wandered a lot. Actually havent touched zelda in a few weeks tho - I got caught up playing civ V during my hols.

Tip also for anyone who didnt know: when you see the very start of a blood moon happen (you'll see a red moon rise, then eventually notice the misty smoke in the air), cook if you're near a cookfire! All recipes will get the bonus.

there's a blood moon cooking bonus??

yep! its a pretty small window but time seems to stop when you throw food in the pot so if you do that over and over in quick succession Ive found I can fit in at least 4 or 5 recipes if I time it right.

That said I never seem to be near a bloody pot when it happens.

The bonus appears to stop after the moon peak/cut scene, its worth noting.

that is really cool, first i've heard of this bonus!

im unlocking the various shrines in the lost woods. this game is magic

blood moon cooking bonus is news to me as well. finished up goron beast yesterday. felt like a stroll through tarry town square after gerudo beast. I can see by what you carry (about 40 loads of wood) that you come from tarry town.

this game

wow

I wasn’t sure at first. the world seemed so empty for stretches. but you really need that emptiness to make all the little discoveries so magical

<3

the dev presentation about the world design someone posted is fantastic if you can find the link

it was great, but got screwed up because the guy took down the pictures by request since they were from a private presentation

Damn. I would read a book about BotW design.

Had this for a month now and still loving it. I'm pretty inexperienced/slow - I just made it to hurricane windy Ganon, my first boss fight, and decided to run away again until I've got more hearts. That fucker's tricky - or is it just me? I hope it's just me.

Thunderblight was trickiest for me

the others seemed to have tricks to beating them

yeah the wind one is prob the easiest of the four tbh

still cant kill the camel one, been about 5 months since my first effort lol

its the second bit with metal shards where i just cant see him anywhere

I'm so excited, because I've been piddling around with a bunch of indies but have yet to start this or Odyssey. One of them will be my reward for finishing "Celeste."

I found the camel one the hardest by far

Josh it's AMAZING and you will be AMAZED

I've also held back on Odyssey as a reward - gonna buy it when I've finished some university coursework next week...

Thunderblight Ganon is the undisputed hardest boss ime

Oh I see, you gotta use the wind turrets, duh

only way to beat thunderblight (camel) is to take your licks along with shock resist or a ton of hearty heart heart meals

I wish I could get that far, I cant work out the camels innards!

i remember that taking me forever

camel's a xunt

The inside of that camel was the only part of the whole game that made me say fuck this shit, I had to leave it

btw I said it over there but it bears repeating: Odyssey is a disappointment

take that back

its actually so good,

The inside of that camel was the only part of the whole game that made me say fuck this shit, I had to leave it

LOL thats exactly why Ive stalled. I have to complete this to be able to complete a shrine quest (I'm only 3 shrines away from completion) and THEN I can go git Ganon. I mean fuck. I spose I could just go get him now. I dont need all 4 champions. Would I be able to try Vah Naboris after I did the main quest?

Just do it Trayce!

That is, the camel

I couldnt even do it cheating with a fecking YT walkthru ;_;

I have a real shit sense of direction and the spinning tubes confuse my stupid brain.

i never went back after the shitty water boss, just can’t be bothered

That boss was the easiest one!

And the bosses are totally worth doing for the champion boons they give you - Miphas extra life spell, and the Rito's airjump are especially useful.

I found wind and water easiest, and yeh the added abilities are super useful

fuck this electro dude