The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild GOTG

Really enjoying this but found my first shrine out of the starting area and its some shitty balance puzzle. It's bad. Like, really, really, really bad. Unfortunately I'm going to have to give up on it as the ball physics and gyroscope stuff is all over the place.

Will it be that much of an issue to miss out a few shrines?

Nope, but yeah the balance shrines are arse

Having just played Twilight Princess HD just over a month after completing this it's really striking just how bad the shrines, divine beasts and bosses are in comparison. Every single dungeon in Twilight Princess is meticulously designed, each one has its own personality and design and the bosses are brilliant. It's the one area where Breath of the Wild really falls short and its even more obvious to me now.

It's so much better than twilight princess, though.

I'm hoping the next Zelda game might keep most of the scale (even if the world is half as big it'll still be huge) but add more variety in dungeons and bosses. Having minibosses and puzzle sections in the overworld was a great fresh idea, but I did miss having proper temples as well.

Still the best Zelda game though.

Hime wrote:Really enjoying this but found my first shrine out of the starting area and its some shitty balance puzzle. It's bad. Like, really, really, really bad. Unfortunately I'm going to have to give up on it as the ball physics and gyroscope stuff is all over the place.

Will it be that much of an issue to miss out a few shrines?

There are a couple but not loads, they are all kinds of gooseberry fool though.

My girlfriend loved those shrines.

I just handed her the controller at that point and let her do them for me.

Karl wrote:Having minibosses and puzzle sections in the overworld was a great fresh idea

Which have been done before

Jamo3103 wrote:Having just played Twilight Princess HD just over a month after completing this it's really striking just how bad the shrines, divine beasts and bosses are in comparison. Every single dungeon in Twilight Princess is meticulously designed, each one has its own personality and design and the bosses are brilliant. It's the one area where Breath of the Wild really falls short and its even more obvious to me now.

The Twilight Princess dungeons are the best in the series...absolutely amazing.

AndyXL wrote:

Jamo3103 wrote:Having just played Twilight Princess HD just over a month after completing this it's really striking just how bad the shrines, divine beasts and bosses are in comparison. Every single dungeon in Twilight Princess is meticulously designed, each one has its own personality and design and the bosses are brilliant. It's the one area where Breath of the Wild really falls short and its even more obvious to me now.

The Twilight Princess dungeons are the best in the series...absolutely amazing.

Actually, whilst I might have thought that once, go watch Mark Brown's "Boss Keys" YouTube videos on dungeon design in the Zelda series. Made me realise that quite a lot of TP's dungeons are deceptively simple, and don't feature the complex spacial awareness puzzles that the very best in the series posses.

I haven't, to be great shame, done any of the Divine Beasts in BOTW yet (put it down when I went abroad and am waiting for some free time to pick it back up), but I definitely think that, bar one or two dungeons in Skyward Sword (the Cistern one, the very last dungeon to name two) the dungeons in the 3D games have lost something since the N64 dungeons. Not many of the newer ones require you to keep a mental map of the dungeon in your head, or require you to operate mechanics or gimmicks that mean you have to constantly revise that mental map and be aware of where you are, or what changes are happening elsewhere. Think of the Great Bay Temple or the Water Temple, and how they made you think about what the effects of the water would be elsewhere.

Dungeons in the newer games tend to be a lot of self-contained puzzle rooms arranged in a linear fashion. Very rarely do you need to backtrack much, alter the layout of the dungeon or are faced with a choice over what door or what key to use next.

To be fair, some of the OOT dungeons are quite linear too (Mark Brown berates the Shadow Temple for this). I definitely think, after watching his video series, that ALTTP and Link's Awakening have the most fiendish dungeon designs.

Parksey wrote:

AndyXL wrote:

Jamo3103 wrote:Having just played Twilight Princess HD just over a month after completing this it's really striking just how bad the shrines, divine beasts and bosses are in comparison. Every single dungeon in Twilight Princess is meticulously designed, each one has its own personality and design and the bosses are brilliant. It's the one area where Breath of the Wild really falls short and its even more obvious to me now.

The Twilight Princess dungeons are the best in the series...absolutely amazing.

go watch Mark Brown's "Boss Keys" YouTube videos on dungeon design in the Zelda series.

Personally SS just nips it for me.

Also I really like Mark Browns series as a breakdown and analysis but I'm sometimes less keen on his opinion and valuation. He pushes certain elements too much (such as the spacial awareness stuff) and often doesn't consider certain things. The Shadow Temple is a great example. He bemoans it as a simple linear layout. His observation isn't wrong. But he doesn't consider why it is. Perhaps Nintendo felt that the dungeon was already difficult enough with it tricksy invisible elements. Its traps and rooms of spinning blades. Putting these things in a giant complex maze might have been too much. Its telling that most of the individual rooms in the Water Temple are not that tricky. But he doesn't complain about that.

He never seems to take into account how backtracking in a Zelda dungeon can ruin it either. Great Bay (as is Snowhead) is the perfect example of how it makes actually navigating an absolute chore. Also think this is partly why the 3D ones became a little simpler in layout as just getting about in them is a slower process. I remember in ALTTP not really liking the Ice Palace one because it kept forcing me to go round in a huge loop just because some doors would arbitrarily and for no damn good reason lock behind me. Imagine that in 3D

Slight aside but his SS one bothers me to. He liked the way that Nintendo built puzzles that ramped in complexity (the spinning eye) but then disliked the repeated sections across the game whilst failing to notice that they to become more complex with each visit.

Parksey wrote:Made me realise that quite a lot of TP's dungeons are deceptively simple

Perhaps the fact that they manage to be deceptively simple is a testament to how damn good they actually are?

I was absolutely loving this game until I got to Zoras domain.

Firstly, I'm sent to get shock arrows and at no poimt does the game explain that you bypass the cut scene by sneaking into the area, the cut scene moves link to a specific location and its a reasonable assumption that this is what you're supposed to do. Secondly, the bit to get inside Rutu requires you to use normal arrows and degradable weapons in an area that they cannot be replenished. This is the type of abysmal game design that gets overlooked in the Souls series and apparently it has been here as well.

Isn't it bomb arrows?

Done all four beasts and 90 shrines. More than ready to take on Ganon but I can't bear to do it yet. Don't want it to end.

Denster wrote:Done all four beasts and 90 shrines. More than ready to take on Ganon but I can't bear to do it yet. Don't want it to end.

I've been putting it off as well, but I believe beating Ganon unlocks some stuff for completionists. I've cleared all the Shrines, maxed out all my armour and beaten all the side quests so I'm going to head over to the Castle smash Ganon's teeth in and then wait for DLC Pack #1.

Looking forward to the Korok mask.

Denster wrote:Done all four beasts and 90 shrines. More than ready to take on Ganon but I can't bear to do it yet. Don't want it to end.

That's exactly where I'm at! For me though, I feel like I've run out of things to do and just can't be arsed to go and beat Ganon. (I have taken him on once totally by accident whilst wandering around the castle exploring. Needless to say I was completely unprepared and promptly got slaughtered...)

Denster wrote:Isn't it bomb arrows?

The boss needs electric arrows bit you can use normal arrows for the ice.

Hime wrote:

Denster wrote:Isn't it bomb arrows?

The boss needs electric arrows bit you can use normal arrows for the ice.

You can use stasis on the ice.

Use Cryosis on the ice to shatter it.

Yeah cryosis is the way.