The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Memento Mori wrote:
Captain Kinopio wrote:
Memento Mori wrote:I did the beginners trial of the sword and strawberry float the rest of it, attempted medium and died on like level 4.

The beginners trial is actually the hardest (if I’m remembering correctly) as there’s one Lizalfos room, the one that’s basically just a long bridge, which is an absolute mother strawberry floater. I think it’s the only thing I’ve not done on Master Mode.

Oh lizalfos bridge room was an absolute bastard yes. They move so quickly and if you fall in the water you're basically strawberry floated.

It's pretty much the one infamous room in the entire thing. The Final set of stages I did first time as by that point you're sufficiently powered up and stealth is so effective when it's an option.

It's a great bit of DLC though. Would love to see it make a return.

Pray for me as I am only at level 3 so far (and then died) in Master Mode playing the Trails of the Sword for the first time, then. :lol:

2 sessions in and made it to Hateno. I've already run up against one of my prior gripes in that exploration doesn't seem to be rewarded very well. You see some ruins and poke about? You come out with a sword that you already have 3 of. Take out a moblin camp? Amber. I ended my session at the top of the Hateno tower, looking over another ruin and I already have little desire to rummage through it.

On the other hand, I've been trying to keep open minded about the equipment inventory system, and so far the durability isn't too annoying, but that's mainly because I have 4 more soldier's broadswords in my pocket to swap to when the first breaks. It might rear its head again later when I'm actually eating through weapons that are significantly better than what's lying around. The only minor gripes I have so far on it is having to pause to re-equip a weapon upon breakage instead of just pulling out the next in line (unless I'm missing something), and when you open a chest with a full inventory it slams the chest shut again instead of just opening your inventory itself. Minor time issues, but still something I'd QoL out given the chance.

I've been trying to think about why I like Elden Ring so much and bounced off this the first time and think it's because Elden Ring is very much "Big Dark Souls", but BotW isn't "Big Zelda". Nothing wrong with a series pivoting a bit, I just probably need to readjust my mindset. That said, expanding beyond just calling it "big dark souls", for the main exploration issue ER has a good comparison point.

Say I'm riding about on my horse and see some ruins. In both Elden Ring and Zelda I know there's probably a reward somewhere in there. The main difference is in ER a sword isn't just a sword: it's a new moveset. This one might have a dashing attack, or it might have a projectile. It might not even be a weapon: it could be a new spell, or a talisman with a unique effect, etc. I can't use most of what I find because it doesn't fit my build, but I'd rather have something interesting but not for me than the same thing I know I can use 15 times in a row.

I'll keep going. I see some spots on the map where I'd put something cool if I was doing it, and hopefully once I get past what is still the railroaded section I'll start finding more things. Either way I plan to at least do the 4 beasts and Ganon to prep for TotK if I hear some things have been addressed.

I imagine the Elden Ring comparisons will come up a lot. But I’m the complete opposite to you. I found the exploration and rewards in Elden Ring so tedious I hated the game by the end of it. You spend ages looking for something obtuse that someone you don’t know has hidden for a reason you don’t understand and then when you get to the bloody thing it doesn’t even work with your ‘build’. There’s so much inventory clogging gooseberry fool in that game, yeh I guess some of it comes with new move sets but I’m just mashing attack interspersed with dodge at the end of the day, the animations don’t add anything for me. BOTW makes the small things feel rewarding. Every time I opened a chest in that game and found arrows it was brilliant. While there are limited movesets with the weapons the durability system forces you to actually use the stuff you find and discover new ways to play. Also all the gear has purposes that you switch between depending on what’s going on and some of them are incredibly valuable and satisfying to find.

People will just prefer one over the other I guess but as a From Software fan I bounced hard off of Elden Ring whereas as a Zelda fan BOTW is my favourite game ever. I am much more of a Zelda than a From fan though.

I found the exploration better in BotW than in Elden Ring.

I liked Xenoblades system better than both of them, XP drops for discovering landmarks was satisfying. It was also good that the landmarks are worth discovering in that game cause they are genuinely interesting.

Completed the game, it's definitely my least favourite 3D Zelda.

The game world is too big with a lack of interesting things to do in it, the divine beast dungeons are not memorable or fun, crafting in video games has never been enjoyable, the physics can get quite janky in shrines making me wonder often if I'd solved a puzzle in the intended way because the solution felt unpolished, the controls are bad (how did sprint on B and jump on X get through playtesting?), but the art style is pretty.

If this is what Zelda is going to be now, it's not for me.

It's certainly an opinion.

I've done the Zora place and am currently working my way up to the Rito place. My initial play through stopped here, but this time I skipped over the Gerudo in order to have more fresh story beats.

I've gotten the master sword, and all towers on the eastern 2/3 of the map, along with about 40 shrines. I still think exploration could be better, but just breaking it down to like 5 minute goals has helped rather than trying for a more long term thing.

Combat still feels mostly pointless as all it really gives are the wooden clubs that only seem to be useful in thunderstorms. And speaking of, rain is just awful and completely breaks the flow of the game. You can't even light a fire to pass time through it.

And yeah, I share the gripe of sprint and jump buttons being just awful.

Overall I think I'm enjoying it more than I did the last time, but it's definitely my least favourite 3D Zelda.

Memento Mori wrote:the controls are bad (how did sprint on B and jump on X get through playtesting?)

Met wrote:And yeah, I share the gripe of sprint and jump buttons being just awful.

The B button is consistently the cancel button. When climbing you can press B to let go/drop and X is used to jump. It's then consistent to use X as the general jump button.

There is a specific option to swap it in TOTK FYI as I guess it was something a lot of people had problems with, but I don't think it should take long to adapt past the initial convention expectations.

IIRC it's only ever a problem when you're playing with an alternative controller. Playing with the joy cons is fine.

I'm not complaining about climbing controls, trying to do running jumps when sprint is B and jump is X is a nightmare. I was playing handheld.

Yeah, I'm playing on WiiU, so I'm not going to leverage unfair complaints about draw distance and the like that playing on the switch would have helped with. But the control scheme of having 2 important movement options on directly opposing buttons is pretty dumb.

Ah right, I thought you were complaining about them not being reversed (as that's been brought up in the TOTK thread with the config option for it).

There is a window after releasing B where you can still perform a sprint jump with X. I don't think it's too big of a deal as it isn't a required move (I'd argue the individual actions are important movement options, but the combination isn't).

OrangeRKN wrote:Ah right, I thought you were complaining about them not being reversed (as that's been brought up in the TOTK thread with the config option for it).

There is a window after releasing B where you can still perform a sprint jump with X. I don't think it's too big of a deal as it isn't a required move (I'd argue the individual actions are important movement options, but the combination isn't).

It's definitely a required move in the DLC shrine I was doing at the weekend.

I just completed the DLC shrines over the last few weeks and (finally finished the game this weekend) - which shrine needed the running jump as I've never used it in nearly 200 hours of gameplay.

Spike shrine repeatedly refused to let me jump on the last block unless I used sprint jump.

I used the glider for that after jumping off the block on the right with the spikes on its side.

I just think of x as "up" on the face buttons just like smash. When using the glider it also kind of feels like "keep me up there".

Considering this is the first zelda game in which there's a non item jump button and it's not even necessary as you can just run up to gooseberry fool to start climbing I don't really get hung up on it.

It's definitely not mario levels of control refinement but it is a very complex game. Not simple, not complicated, complex. Complexity is often an impossible balance.

I like X as jump as it's like the Ueda games

And it feels sort of upwards and reach-y or something?

Anyway I definitely regularly use the sprint jump but I use joy-cons so maybe it's easier.

Yeah the face buttons on joycon are together almost the size of the A button on a gamecube controller or wii remote :lol:

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

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