The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild GOTG

I don't have a problem with the experimental nature of cooking, or the semi-randomised outcomes it produces - I negotiated discovering this stuff for myself or, as you say, finding recipes in the world.

The issue is with the actual input/control mechanism used for the cooking process itself. It is incredibly tedious to open the menu, go into holding mode, go through multiple screens to select all the objects you want, leave the menu, throw it in a pot, watch an animation play out, and then close the result screen that pops up every single time you want to cook something. For a game that puts a fair amount of focus on this it is just a poor implementation.

Green Gecko wrote:Also, I liked figuring out the cooking mechanics for myself and sometimes writing recipes down. A wiki or guide or virtually any mag/web article on the subject will have you sorted, so why make this just another thing to read about within the game?

I played the vast majority of the game in handheld mode. Having a notepad or a wiki or a guide to hand is not a reasonable demand for portable gaming.

But also like you say, I liked discovering the recipes and experimenting with cooking myself. What I disliked was being expected to remember all of these recipes and, as Jenuall says, having to tediously select all the ingredients every single time.

The cooking didn't bother me that much but it's mental that you can't save recipes to save you picking each item.

I agree with Gecko's post with the exception that the game doesn't communicate how important upgrading armour is. It is essential for getting better weapons.

I haven't tired of the cooking mechanics one bit.. maybe I don't play enough games.

Or use this easy strategy:

Don't bother with attack buffs because they have the same net result as a defence buff, and they won't help you if you have low armour.

Armour fish/crab/whatever + salt = 3x defence for 5-10 minutes every time. You barely need to cook anything else in the game. So farm rock salt. It's more common that flint in my experience, so it's hardly tough to come across if you just make a habit of blowing up multiple rocks with bombs.

Perhaps I like these aspects of the game because I was big Dark Souls fan. Except that game tells you almost nothing whatseover.

Nah, I just don’t see it.

I disagree about the Dark Souks comment too, I’ve done them all and Bloodborne and they’re some of my favourite games.

It’s a fun game, but it’s not the most fantastic game in the world and, and certainly not GOTG/GOAT or whatever. It has flaws, if others see past them- great, but they are hampering my enjoyment.

Long posts about the games intent, or design being around those flaws just read like apologist talk to me to be honest.

Games like the Witcher 3 have proven you can have a complex open world, with great story, with complex mechanics and with a real, non artificial, difficulty curve.

I respect others for loving it, and can kind of see what they’re saying, but would this game have as much praise if it wasn’t by Nintendo or called Zelda? That’s the question for the ages I guess!

I ended up just cooking single hearty radishes with nothing else pretty much every time.

Ok I hope you can enjoy the game with some further strategies of your own mate. Nothing worse than not feeling something 50 odd quid down.

Tell Karl his brother is dead wrote:They should have made the weapons even more fragile-but-plentiful IMO.

Please no. The last thing the game needs is to have to pause it even more to swap weapons with its stupid menu.

MrKirov wrote:Difficultly seems a little odd, like some areas are harder than others, but no way to know until you get bummed. A Xenoblade style system of telling me an enemies level or whatever would help- that could easily be done via the sheikah slate view so to not be intrusive.

You can kind of do this with the blue tunic that displays the HP of enemies. It's also pretty clearly shown via the enemy colour coding, at least for the main bulk of monsters. Personally I'm glad they stayed away from more RPG things like levels. Already took it too far for me.

I get quite a lot of what you are saying by the way. Genuinely think a lot of the issues I have ultimately come down to making the world bigger then it needs to be. It says a lot that for me its best sections are the self contained bits. The GP and Eventide. The world is amazing to just be in and play about with though.

Was also quite amazed by the talk of how difficult it was. Sure you encounter some enemies that do A LOT of damage early on but its also an extremely cheesable game. As long as you've spent time cooking all you have to do is pause and eat stuff forever.

The Watching Artist wrote:

Tell Karl his brother is dead wrote:They should have made the weapons even more fragile-but-plentiful IMO.

Please no. The last thing the game needs is to have to pause it even more to swap weapons with its stupid menu.

I like the quick swap menus. Maybe a wheel would have been better but it's fine.

I didn't regularly pause in combat to eat. I guess I just preferred to run away if an encounter got too hard.

You talk later about combat being 'cheesable' and I wonder if the reason I enjoyed the game so much is that I just didn't think about it in those terms. On some level I was aware I could beat enemies by slowly rolling bombs to them over and over but at no point did I want to so I just didn't...? I'm not having a go, it's just the difference in mindset is kind of interesting.

Yeah if I couldn't defeat an enemy I just used a cheesy strategy eg lynels early on or walked away. I didn't get sad about some enemies being hard and went somewhere else.. And there's literally everywhere else to go and try stuff.

I don't think it's apologist to seemingly overcome and excuse these issue either.. I just like the game a lot. If others think it's seriously sullied by the issues discussed then that's ok, but I simply haven't had these problems. Each to their own, I still consider it a 10/10 game as much as I would a game like Wind Waker for example, in fact it's probably my favourite since then.

Tell Karl his brother is dead wrote:

The Watching Artist wrote:

Tell Karl his brother is dead wrote:They should have made the weapons even more fragile-but-plentiful IMO.

Please no. The last thing the game needs is to have to pause it even more to swap weapons with its stupid menu.

I like the quick swap menus. Maybe a wheel would have been better but it's fine.

I didn't regularly pause in combat to eat. I guess I just preferred to run away if an encounter got too hard.

You talk later about combat being 'cheesable' and I wonder if the reason I enjoyed the game so much is that I just didn't think about it in those terms. On some level I was aware I could beat enemies by slowly rolling bombs to them over and over but at no point did I want to so I just didn't...? I'm not having a go, it's just the difference in mindset is kind of interesting.

It should have been a wheel. Or a full grid. Its madness to me that we went from SS in which you could access all 8 main items by pressing 1 button to BotW scrollathon.

Oh I took plenty of risks had epic moments but its just very easy to take the path of least resistance. When I floated off the GP I speared the first moblin I saw with a drop attack. I landed in the world smashing it in the face with a spear. But you can deal with just about any enemy base in a skull by standing on the skull and dropping bombs through the eyes. This way you don't wear out your weapons. Dont use your food or ammo. There is no encouragement or punishment to not do these things. You could argue that the weapons breaking even more would just encourage people to not fight. Something I often felt as it was. Not helped by the limited enemy types. And the fact half the time I hit a moblin it ran at about 5fps.

Its not just combat though. I said way back that I was rather let down with the world because of the lack of proper obstacles. Once off the GP very little feels like a hurdle because you can just climb and glide over it. Or walk around. Or use the freeze blocks if its a river. Its so cool the way in the GP you are forced to get creative. But I very rarely ever had to create bridges or the like after that because there was always an easier option. I remember completely skipping the labyrinth in the north east by simply climbing up and running over the top. An entire challenge that could of been interesting (it was a labyrinth so it probably wasn't anyway) I skipped over not by some exploit. Just using the very basic abilities I had.

Flower Rage

I've been holding on to all the sapphires and rubies I've collected. Should I be selling them or will they eventually be needed for crafting?

Will be useful but I tend to sell over 30 of 50 of anything depending what it is.

And I forgot, I figure Nintendo's patent for scrolling shoulder button/wheels was totally intended for zelda's item selection. But I tried it again today objectively and I really don't see the problem. You have to change weapons maybe every 30 seconds at absolute worse against enemies with a lot of HP and as soon as you defeat one you can pick up their gooseberry fool or use bombs or stasis. At least half the weapons in my inventory have durability up + that makes them last much longer.

The moblin slowdown thing was awful but I think it's been mostly patched out, haven't experienced that in a long while.

So what are we talking after these reflections, 7/10 game?

13 hours in and really enjoying it. The attention to detail is fantastic especially things like the horses refusal to go down mountains, lightning hit you when you’re holding metal, slipping when climbing and my favourite, when clouds pass over and it slightly darkens just as it would in real life. I actually stopped in amazement at this.

I agree with the cooking and not saving recipes issue and personally I dislike the weapons breaking especially mid combat although I does throw enough weapons at you.

Also as a PS4 user I would have liked the ability to button map as I have pressed the wrong button countless of times.

Also why isn’t there no fast travel to the temple of time FFS

Green Gecko wrote:So what are we talking after these reflections, 7/10 game?

Nah its an 8 minimum. I'd give it a 9. 7 is the sort of thing you give a rushed, cheaply padded Zelda. Like WW.

Rubix wrote:Also why isn’t there no fast travel to the temple of time FFS

Its not a place you really need to return to and the tower is right on top of it.

SugarDave wrote:I've been holding on to all the sapphires and rubies I've collected. Should I be selling them or will they eventually be needed for crafting?

There are definitely some items in the game that need sapphires (or rubies or so forth) for crafting. But you no way need to hold on to every gem you find. I always sold roughly half of all the gems I found and never felt like that was a bad decision.

The Watching Artist wrote:

Green Gecko wrote:So what are we talking after these reflections, 7/10 game?

Nah its an 8 minimum. I'd give it a 9. 7 is the sort of thing you give a rushed, cheaply padded Zelda. Like WW.

Rubix wrote:Also why isn’t there no fast travel to the temple of time FFS

Its not a place you really need to return to and the tower is right on top of it.

It’s how you get extra hearts isn’t it?

Cheers, I'll probably get rid of all but one or two when I'm playing next then. Like GG, I tend to sell a good chunk of items if I'm carrying 50 or more. Red Chuchu jellies are a decent way of making a quick buck I've found.

Rubix wrote:It’s how you get extra hearts isn’t it?

There are other statues to pray and offer spirit orbs to, there was one in Kakariko Village opposite Impa's place so I'm just guessing each town probably has one.

Green Gecko wrote:Don't bother with attack buffs because they have the same net result as a defence buff, and they won't help you if you have low armour.

How do they have the same net result? I never really needed the attack buff so didn't use them much at all, so I did use defence foods more (against some Lynels specifically). But I don't see how they have the same net result, they do different things.

The Watching Artist wrote:But you can deal with just about any enemy base in a skull by standing on the skull and dropping bombs through the eyes. This way you don't wear out your weapons. Dont use your food or ammo. There is no encouragement or punishment to not do these things.

There is a clear punishment for choosing to always cheese enemies by throwing bombs from a window, and it's the most fundamental one in gaming - it's not that fun. Why would you complain about it then choose to do it?