The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Ha yes thats true. Unfortunately Ive purchase "50 AWESOME RETRO SEGA GENESIS GAMES WOOO" for the Switch and it came with bupkiss.

xpost I mean, and I'm going to once again use Dark Souls as an example, that in that game you can more or less finish the game with the first weapon you pick, which you can upgrade any number of fun ways (and repair as necessary). There are cool rare weapons, easy to find weapons, all sorts of weapons, most you never use and many you end up with piles of. Some have advantages, some don't, but few (iirc) just break and force you to fight with something else. I really enjoyed having two or three favored and upgraded weapons. But here so far I can't get attached to anything, since they break or degrade, even the seemingly cool stuff, and while finding new or replacement weapons isn't impossible or even necessarily difficult, it feels like wheel spinning. Likewise the (so far?) limited arrows, which are in relatively sort supplies at stores. Now, in Dark Souls, iirc, you could buy tons of arrows at various prices, but you could generally stock up for a long stretch. But here no such luck. I run out of arrows all the time, which is, yes, annoying, because there are things you absolutely *need* arrows for, not just to make things easier but literally *need.* Now it's easy enough to teleport back to some place that sells them, but there is no guarantee they'll be in stock, which just adds, yes, time. I liked finding shit in Dark Souls, because it often came as a surprise or a challenge. I find it less fun here because it seems like a chore, especially given the very limited inventory, vs. the unlimited inventory of DS.

Dark Souls is for n00bs

That's me!

Tips for arrows:
- there are stores at every town (Gerudo, hateno, kakariko, goron, rito, and the shop inside forbidden woods) as well as at tarrey town**.
- At every stable, accost Beedle, cos he always has at least 15arrows on him.
- let moblins attack you, while defending with a wood shield or pot lid. The arrows will hit and stick and when you put the shield away you get a free arrow
- blow up metal crates, boxes and barrels, sometimes they have arrows.

** once you build it anyway)

josh i don't get you man

Brought to you by "how the fuck does Sonic the Hedgehog work exactly I feel old"

― Stoop Crone (Trayce)

the first sonic the hedgehog game has one button, you use it to jump

there's a stupid and counterintuitive part in sonic 3 casino night zone that i never did figure out how to get past but aside from that it's pretty straightforward?

lol

i don't either tbh, with games at least, but i do take a strange fascination in watching you grow to understand the medium. i kinda regret pushing you so hard to try BotW (i swear i only did it because i was certain it would be a net benefit in your life!), but now i think maybe it would be useful for you to play 5 or 6 short games (10 hours or so) rather than 1 long one. you use dark souls and celeste a lot as your reference points, which i understand, but most games are very different from those two. it would be like if your only reference points for movies were Platoon and When Harry Met Sally. it'd probably be good to just hop into a series of shorter games? i dunno

xp

josh I feel like we're growing apart

a few xps

in that game you can more or less finish the game with the first weapon you pick, which you can upgrade any number of fun ways (and repair as necessary). There are cool rare weapons, easy to find weapons, all sorts of weapons, most you never use

I think this is precisely why the devs made the BOTW weapons break. They wanted you to try everything.

But yeah, that doesn't necessarily make the game more fun for you.

what game should we bully josh into playing next

I vote QWOP

I'm a fan of any game where you can retrieve your arrows from the body of your victim (or over by a bush because I completely missed my target) and reuse them. That's value!

i vote civilization

marvel puzzle quest

just so we can get him addicted and then he can complain about how botw doesn't have a tech tree and he wanted to research the trebuchet

maybe we are the game that josh is playing

because i feel like a goddamned fool right now

woah

some people were open to this idea but the majority didn't want to hear it

Are we living in a simulation?

morpheus in chicago

I'll take the korok pill pls

Josh, play Xenoblade Chronicles 2

xenoblade chronicles 2 looks decent but i wish the characters would repeatedly yell out whatever they're doing more frequently in battle

someone start a caucus josh thread so can put our arguments to the country chicago

we*

Josh should play the Sims and see if he gets fed up with having to go to the toilet/eat/sleep over and over, sinking into a morass of existential crises.

...maybe thats just how I play it.

I fucking hate The Sims. My kids both play that, it's like a stupid doll house.

And I know how to get arrows in Breath of the Wild, that's not the point. The point is that I have to get them! They might as well have made it a requirement in this game, like Sims, to make Link have to go to the bathroom every couple of hours.

Josh ffs you can take game actions or you can decline to take game actions just do it or don’t

really? you mean this game is optional?

I don’t even understand anymore. Why do you have to make lines in Tetris? Why do you have to shoot the enemy in goldeneye? Why do you have to hand over the ball when you go out of bounds in basketball? Why is bunting allowed? Why does white move first? Theres reasons for all these things but if you’re playing the game in the first place the reasons do not fucking matter!

Like my dude there’s no fucking logic to it you can click or you can cease clicking, all games are just about making small numbers get bigger until the credits roll, if you don’t want to do it you can stop and it doesn’t MEAN anything

some click to remember. some click to forget.

And I know how to get arrows in Breath of the Wild, that's not the point. The point is that I have to get them!

The inverse of this if I understand you is basically an unlimited supply/weapon stash. Now to me, thats kinda unchallenging, but again it depends on the game. This game is all about the go-and-get/explore/work out/find.

I don’t know anything about Dark Souls because I’m not a n00b but one thing about a lot of Japanese rpg-types is a simulacrum of “real life” and the social interactions that compose it and arrows in botw are part of that.

I found the botw weapon system odd at first but I grew to really like it, the challenge of working out where all the awesome gear is hidden, working out what to keep in your inventory and what to toss (should I keep a few wood bows and swords for thunderstorms? Do I really need 3 frost Greatblades? Boomerang vs throwing spear - what do?).

I would like to have been able to store more than 3 of each thing at my house, but eh.

botw is essentially a survival game which is why all your resources are limited. its not a rpg

Good point. Thats particularly driven home in both the Eventide Island bit and trial of the sword dlc.

a survival game where climbing a 46-degree* slope in a drizzle is the most lethal predator

*I don't know that it's 46-degrees, but you know the cut-off is this arbitrary

Calculating angles is probably overboard. Whether or not the cathedral ruins inherit from the SlipperyGuy class may have been at the designer's discretion.

I *think* I'm back on board. It was really a matter of finding the right rhythm, recognizing when it's cool to simply teleport in and out of somewhere and when it's better to just wander and discover. Still haven't taken on a divine beast, but had a streak of very satisfying shrines and towers (a couple of which the challenge was simply getting there - thinking of a shrine near the castle surrounded by guardians, or ... or a tower surrounded by guardians). Had also been frustrated because the first couple of times I was asked to get naked for that mad scientist for some reason I couldn't drop trou, but I was eventually able to doff my armor and parade for the dude, so now got some ancient arrows. Not many, granted, and they seem hard to come by, and also hard to use. Appeared to do little to no damage to a guardian in the wild? Anyway, def. getting a bit more momentum going again.

Have to say it's a huge help that there really is no bad side to dying, afaict. Just a small hiccup or setback, like being struck by lighting. If I lost equipment or rubies or souls or something it would be a lot more frustrating. In this game it's more a gentle (right down to the music cue) "it's ok, try again."

i still struggle against the guardians. i haven't shelled out for much of the ancient technology and can't seem to get the timing of the shield reflection of their lasers right

Finally being able to kill guardians without resorting to ancient arrows was when I first felt like I’d “gotten good”

Josh: ancient arrows'll become easier once you get the hang of killing guardians so in the meantime, gather up every cog and spring the shrine versions drop, cos you'll need em for the arrows.

Also: dont kill big bad guys (Lynels etc) with ancient arrows, they will blink out of existence and you will miss out on their weapon drop. Guardians excluded here - kill them using ancient arrows, 2 or 3 of those in the eye and itll drop like a fly.

xp haha Ive never killed guardians without either anc arrows or an anc sheild parry. I'm the worst lazyLink.

it should only take one ancient arrow in the eye? or maybe it's a bow power issue. speaking of bows, the ones with arrow multipliers (3x, 5x, etc) shoot that many arrows per shot. however, they only consume one inventory arrow per shot. I needlessly stayed away from them for a long time because I thought they'd waste arrows.

I needlessly stayed away from them for a long time because I thought they'd waste arrows.

lol, whooooops! same here. so wait, is there any reason to use a 1x bow over a 5x bow, if they both only use 1 arrow per shot but the latter is 5 times more powerful?

I think there could be a trade-off in range between bows that isn't very transparent. but the 5x bow will do 5x the damage at the same cost in arrows if all the effective arrows land.