The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild GOTG

Spoilers twa

Got two memories left to find, one of which I know is right by hyrule castle, the other I know is in hyrule field but I'm damned if I can find it.

Found a few more shrines tonight, getting near 100 now. Also got a full set of guardian armour now, upgraded to 2 stars for the set perk (which I can't work out what it actually does yet).

Sorry.

Ad7 wrote:Spoilers twa

Got two memories left to find, one of which I know is right by hyrule castle, the other I know is in hyrule field but I'm damned if I can find it.

Found a few more shrines tonight, getting near 100 now. Also got a full set of guardian armour now, upgraded to 2 stars for the set perk (which I can't work out what it actually does yet).

Have you chatted with the lovely artist chap at the stables? He can usually help. I've not even bought that armour yet.

Oh and oh myyyyyy

I have, in fact I'm trying to find him again so he'll point me in the general direction but he doesn't seem to be anywhere.

Ad7 wrote:Found a few more shrines tonight, getting near 100 now. Also got a full set of guardian armour now, upgraded to 2 stars for the set perk (which I can't work out what it actually does yet).

It does this: You do more damage with ancient & guardian weaponry.

Karl wrote:

Ad7 wrote:Found a few more shrines tonight, getting near 100 now. Also got a full set of guardian armour now, upgraded to 2 stars for the set perk (which I can't work out what it actually does yet).

It does this: You do more damage with ancient & guardian weaponry.

And I went and got the set and upgraded just to help him.

All shrines spoiler so I got my Wild Tunic and then went about upgrading it. Farming Dragon parts again. Now I need beetles. Wish I'd never given any to Beedle now Think they might have gone too far with the RPG stuff tbh

From Tuesday afternoon till Thursday morning - I'm hammering this. My daughter stayed two nights with me this week for the first time in about three years. She did about twelve hours on this.

I completed this last week, clocking in at 60 hours played with 60 shrines, all memories, master sword and all divine beasts done. My final completion rate was a measly 18.11%

Overall I've thoroughly enjoyed it, it's a long time since I've put so many hours into a game without getting bored of it and I'd say it's comfortably amongst the best games I've ever played. I've become pretty fatigued with open world style games and had my concerns about this prior to playing Breath of the Wild but Nintendo did a fantastic job.

I loved the attention to detail, all the little things such as the way weather affected play, or NPC's reacted to different events and it made the game feel like a living, breathing and believable world. Very few open world games that I've played have managed that and are often full of immersion breaking moments but that never happened in this. All too often other open world games promise that you can 'go anywhere and do anything' but it's rarely true, again here I felt like I could explore anywhere I wanted without being cut-off by invisible walls, or approach any problem in a way I wanted. There were a fair few occasions where I felt like I fudged a solution to a problem, or approached an area in anything but the ideal way but was always able to reach my end goal. Again, it makes for a truly immersive game. I read before playing that both Terraria and Minecraft were both big influences and it's easy to see why, although mechanically very different they all manage to create a world where it feels like a toy box or play set where you're only limited by yourself. Despite my 60 hours played I feel like I've only scratched the surface of what the game has to offer.

Some of the mechanics that I've seen come in for criticism, the weapon degradation and stamina wheel are actually two of my favourite aspects of the game. The stamina wheel brings strategy to the climbing which is lost in other games with big climbing elements, like Assassins Creed or Uncharted and it allows the climbing mechanic to be a brilliant vehicle for exploration. Without the stamina wheel it'd almost feel like cheating being able to climb anywhere. The weapon degradation was never an issue for me, there's always an abundance of weapons to be found and I'd always save my best ones for tougher bad guys, keeping some of the weaker weapons for fighting moblins etc. It encouraged me to try every weapon I picked up in the game and have fun using them. In most open world games I tend to get a good weapon and stick with it but that was never the case here. It almost reminded me of GTA, where weapons are almost disposable between missions and I'd frequently just pick up and use what was at hand and it makes for a much more enjoyable play through.

Zelda games have been too easy for a while now, I played through Wind Waker HD without dying once whilst Link Between Worlds I only died 2 or 3 times in the whole game. Early on this is pretty brutal and I found myself dying quite frequently but I loved how the game really encourages you to take risks for rewards and try different strategies to beat enemies. I felt it really helped the sense of progression too when later on in the game you were powerful enough to go and take on some of the toughest enemies, yet you can still always feel vulnerable if ganged up on by a large group of enemies (or if facing the likes of a Lynel).

The locations in the game are all unique, beautiful and I really enjoyed exploring them, Rito village was a particular favourite (particularly with the music ) and some of the characters and side quests were Zelda at their best too, particularly the Tarrey town quest, and will all stick in the memory for sure.

Unfortunately I didn't love everything...

First minor gripe was the voice acting, I found most of that, particularly Princess Zelda, to be pretty awful. I hope that if they persist with voice acting that they find some new actors next time around, I also found it a bit jarring how most of the dialogue in the game was still just text but then it would switch to spoken bits. I'd rather they go down the route of having everyone fully voice acted or nobody. A lot of that might just be my personal preference though.

I enjoyed the shrines and thought it was an interesting approach to Zelda but unfortunately as stand alone puzzles they never had the opportunity to build on the same idea and add complexity, as you would often find throughout traditional Zelda dungeons. This meant that, of all the shrines I've come across, they were generally far too easy and often finding them was the hardest part. Now I still have half the shrines to complete but I'm not expecting them to be any different in that respect.

The divine beasts were again enjoyable and I really liked the mechanic of being able to move the dungeons, however once again they were far too easy and I found myself longing for the complexity of a more traditional Zelda dungeon.

The overworld bosses are interesting but the actual bosses in the divine beasts (and the final boss) were all too easy and simplistic, they also had absolutely nothing memorable about their designs either and it felt like a bit of a backwards step compared to bosses in older games.

The main story was also lacking and I never felt a great sense of urgency that the world was at threat from Ganon nor did I feel like the game was driven much by the main story. Skyward Sword comes in for a lot of criticism (often deservedly so) but I really felt like I was on a grand quest but that was never really the case here. I don't think that's necessarily a criticism of just this game though, I feel open world games on the whole always struggle to tell a coherent story and it's the trade off you get for having such great freedom.

Despite the gripes it's still one of the best games I've played but for the next one I'd definitely like to see the return of some of the conventions of the Zelda series such as sprawling dungeons, items (or abilities) specific to that dungeon (something which they could have done in this game by tweaking the abilities you get from the Champions and making them parts of the Divine Beast puzzles) and memorable bosses and sub bosses.

Although I've still got a hell of a lot of content to play I'm going to have a break from it for the time being as I still have plenty of other games to play but I'll definitely revisit it the game to get the rest of the shrines at some point further down the line.

Jamo3103 wrote:without being cut-off by invisible walls

I'll probably finish this tonight. Got my Master Sword, Hylian Shield and proper green tunic so it feels right. I've passed 650 Koroks which feels like a nice number I can come back to later on.

Piss off farming for beetles you boring crap.

Brerlappin wrote:I've only played a few hours of this, done the first couple of tutorial shrines and am now tasked with doing 3 more shrines. Honestly so far I just don't get it. Having to scrounge food, watch temperature gauges, having weapons breaking every two seconds, barely any story (the entire introduction is literally "link...open your eyes... here's an iPad now strawberry float off"). Damn I'd take Wind Waker or even LTTP over this any day. Ubisoft towers, crafting, and half assed survival mechanics, it's just more 'whats hip in gaming in 2017' shoved into a Zelda game.

That has to be the worst first impressions of this game I've seen to date.

Its literally like you played a completely different game. The fact you've only played a few hours of the game is almost a criminal offense.

Yeah you've got at least another 90 hours of that to look for and to first.

Brerlappin wrote:

Im sick of open world games, hate crafting, hate survival mechanics, hate collect-a-thons, and slapping them on a Zelda title doesn't make them any more palatable to me sadly.

Definitely not for you then. There are worse tragedies.

You could go for the ultimate challenge run and not do any crafting or collecting and just go straight to the castle after the tutorial section with four hearts and hardly any armour and try to beat the game. Would be almost impossible to do, but who knows? Maybe you'll have fun playing the game like that. Last resort kind of thing to see if you can find enjoyment in the game.

Brerlappin wrote:

Ad7 wrote:Yeah you've got at least another 90 hours of that to look for and to first.

Im sick of open world games, hate crafting, hate survival mechanics, hate collect-a-thons, and slapping them on a Zelda title doesn't make them any more palatable to me sadly.

Honestly, I've struggled to finish most open world games as I tend to get bored, but this I'm thoroughly enjoying.

The Watching Artist wrote:

Jamo3103 wrote:without being cut-off by invisible walls

I guess they had to be in there but it speaks volumes (to me anyway) that after playing 60 hours and doing a fair amount of exploring I haven't come across one!

Brerlappin wrote:

OldSoulCyborg wrote:

Brerlappin wrote:

Im sick of open world games, hate crafting, hate survival mechanics, hate collect-a-thons, and slapping them on a Zelda title doesn't make them any more palatable to me sadly.

Definitely not for you then. There are worse tragedies.

You could go for the ultimate challenge run and not do any crafting or collecting and just go straight to the castle after the tutorial section with four hearts and hardly any armour and try to beat the game. Would be almost impossible to do, but who knows? Maybe you'll have fun playing the game like that. Last resort kind of thing to see if you can find enjoyment in the game.

I'm gonna keep at it for a bit, but yeah I'd prefer linear over open world any day, it's just not a genre I'm into anymore

Make a point of going straight to the 4 Divine Beasts and ignore as much of the rest as you can? Unless anything grabs you along the way that is. Wouldn't bother with the memories main quest. Thats about as close as to a linear Zelda you'll get from this. You might end up missing the best shrines though. Can get where your coming from though. You are going to have to put a lot of time into this and you might not always feel like its giving back.

Jamo3103 wrote:

The Watching Artist wrote:

Jamo3103 wrote:without being cut-off by invisible walls

I guess they had to be in there but it speaks volumes (to me anyway) that after playing 60 hours and doing a fair amount of exploring I haven't come across one!

In fairness thats one of the world edges. But in this instance its remarkable lazy and an odd choice. Its almost like they left it in just to remind people of what the crap design solution was.

Just found the giant horse

Had my first double rainbow sighting earlier too, looked lovely.

Just found that using guardian weapons against guardians strawberry floats them right up. Chopping legs off in one hit and tipping the bastards over

The Watching Artist wrote:In fairness thats one of the world edges. But in this instance its remarkable lazy and an odd choice. Its almost like they left it in just to remind people of what the crap design solution was.

I suppose as you can climb everything and people have found ways to have near enough infinite stamina/paragliding time they would have always had to have a point where something like that was implemented, unless they had the world loop back around on itself perhaps.

The Watching Artist wrote:Wouldn't bother with the memories main quest.

I don't really agree, I thought the memories were good. Badly voice acted, for sure, but I really liked the story they tell, and I enjoyed searching for them too. They're worth getting IMO.

The voice acting is variable, feels unfair to just slap it down as bad.


Regarding invisible walls, I can't wait to see someone make it to the land beyond Hyrule. It looks pretty well realised from some points. I wonder if you glitched your way over there you could actually walk on it.

Jamo3103 wrote:

The Watching Artist wrote:In fairness thats one of the world edges. But in this instance its remarkable lazy and an odd choice. Its almost like they left it in just to remind people of what the crap design solution was.

I suppose as you can climb everything and people have found ways to have near enough infinite stamina/paragliding time they would have always had to have a point where something like that was implemented, unless they had the world loop back around on itself perhaps.

Yeah. Had lots of options to disguise it better. Make it all a sea with currents to strong. Winds that blow you back. Fog you get lost it. Would rather have a wall you cant climb then have that pop up.

Ad7 wrote:Just found that using guardian weapons against guardians strawberry floats them right up. Chopping legs off in one hit and tipping the bastards over

The most dangerous thing about fighting them now is when they fall back over on top of me.

Karl wrote:

The Watching Artist wrote:Wouldn't bother with the memories main quest.

I don't really agree, I thought the memories were good. Badly voice acted, for sure, but I really liked the story they tell, and I enjoyed searching for them too. They're worth getting IMO.

Was thinking more for Brer. I like the idea and enjoyed hunting them down. Was a bit like the treasure charts in WW or the maps in RDR. But I was less keen on the story tbh. The gist of it was ok. Not keen on this version of Zelda. So even though I liked the quest I never really felt it was worth the effort. Hoping that collecting them all has meant the end will be worth it....... soon.