The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

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