Zelda BotW

[Reincarnate]

Re: Zelda BotW

So I got the Switch + game today and finally had a chance to play it.

Thoughts on the Switch:

-The little handheld controls by themselves suck. My hands hurt after only using them for a few minutes. I don't know if this is because of my past wrist strain or just having generally larger hands, but these things were awkward. There is a little controller mold thing you can slide the controllers into so you can basically Megazord your way to a functional controller, but I think at some point I'm just going to get the Pro controller or whatever it's called. I feel like these little handhelds are just full of buttons everywhere, and I don't really understand how you're supposed to slide them in and out without hitting other buttons given such limited surface area for grabbing. You're supposed to press these little nub-buttons in the back as you're doing this, but I can barely feel them click in, and at this point my hands are already in an awkward position and I have a tough time grabbing the rest of the controller to actually do the sliding. Maybe I just suck. But whatever, all this tells me is that I need to keep the damn things on the Switch and spring for a better controller.

-There are two wrist-strap things you can connect to the controllers as well. I couldn't get them off. Figuring I was an idiot, I Googled online instructions and followed them exactly... and the attachments still didn't come off. Turns out I had attached them backwards or in reverse or something, and it's apparently a common issue. I didn't even see the plus and minus symbols. You can very easily attach these things the wrong way and they don't give much more resistance than when you attach them correctly. The only way to get them off at that point is to tear them away with an uncomfortable amount of force and hope you don't break anything.

-Setup was easy, UI was pretty, all good there.

Thoughts on BOTW:

Haven't put much time into it yet, but man do I feel like a grumpy old guy or something.

-I don't like that there are audible voices. This really, really, really bothers me for some reason. I loved OoT because everyone was silent (outside of occasional laughs, grunts, shrieks, yells, etc) and there was a major focus on things like ambience and music as a result. So far the only voice I've heard is from whoever is guiding you out of that initial cave or whatever, but I am hoping that's the end of that.

-The weapon system is balls. With any luck, it'll get easier with time. Constantly needing to re-equip weapons because they break really interrupts the flow of combat.

-However I like that there's a huge-ass world, as it's certainly going to be chock-full of secrets. Secret-finding is one of my favorite things to do in games, because it forces me to really explore a game for all it has to offer.

That's all I'm really willing to say at the moment because I haven't played much to get a fully fleshed-out opinion, but so far there have been a number of minuses right out of the gate. Hopefully these things either become easier to handle or less pronounced as I play more.

[Ristyy]

Re: Zelda BotW

on BoTW I have a few things to say. I've beaten the game, gotten full stamina bar and maybe like 20ish hearts. What I have to say may be spoilers so I'm going to put it in spoilers.

Cooking- This is hit or miss with a lot of people I see, to me I like it. Hunting ingredients (or rather just picking up tons of stuff everywhere) gives you something to do on your way to wherever you go, and it feels nice to find radishes/durians, and whatever else is super strong for cooking. (this is reoccuring to me for finding weapons) It's not something that's so out of the way that I feel it's interrupting my experience exploring the map, or doing other stuff. As for the recipee's, after I caught on to how cooking worked it made perfect sense, but at first it was kind of weird just fiddling around with throwing whatever 5 items into a pot. The food I made early on wasn't that helpful since I had 3 hearts for a pretty damn near 10-20 hours. (This is because I was unlocking towers first before doing shrines or dungeons) Which means I died a lot and didn't have the chance to really use any cooked food. However the first dungeon I went to where I was faced with a Lynel for the first time, I eventually ate food that gave me +18 hearts, and +3 defense and he was super push over, and at that moment I learned how damned good that +3 defense buff is. The bonuses they give you are massive and I love it! It lets you have a somewhat difficulty control on the game. Overall it's best to learn what makes you the strongest buff food and how to make it last longest then just keep whatever is strongest (same with weapons)

Exploring/shrines- This is what the game is most about. From the moment I started out on the great plateau I was having fun exploring all sorts of stuff. They packed this game with so much beauty you'd be hard pressed to ever find a bad sight. Learning the hot/cold temperature thing was a thing and how to get by it was an interesting experience, I kind of like the fact they just throw you in the game and say goodluck, you're on your own. It places a nice amount of trust in the player and I felt really good everytime I learned something new on my own. After the Great Plateau there was only ever like 1 waypoint to find Impa and then you're on your own to do your own adventure. In addition to the game looking magnificent, finding shrines is always rewarding, you never know what is going to be in their chests, and there's always a reward of upgrading your hearts/stamina. Some of the shrines too are very challenging like the survival island shrine, making not just finding them rewarding for your exploration, but also rewarding for your skill if you make it through. Of course there's also the fact some of them can be tricky to figure out how to get to or to complete in general. Also shrines being waypoints is a very big deal/reward.

Dungeons- I have a big issue with the dungeons here. The first one I went to (zora) was incredible, and I felt badass shooting arrows at the targets, and riding on my allies back, blowing up ice blocks, swimming up waterfalls, it felt like a mission, and it was an incredible memorable experience for me. Everything from getting to zoras domain, (btw zoras domain looks absolutely stunning!) to fighting the Lynel (I actually killed him!) to getting into the dungeon was awesome! And then figuring out how the dungeon worked, and unlocking the 5ish pedestal things was a challenging first time experience. I was very happy with it. But then the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th dungeons all followed a very similar formula. Get to the area, do a small quest to get into the dungeon, shoot 4 targets, and then every dungeon had the same mechanics and aesthetics. After the first 1 also I felt like I was just doing giga-shrines instead of a dungeon. They were small, and very pushover since I wasn't doing anything different from what I had done before. It really gave the dungeons kind of a boring feel to them. But I can see how any first dungeon would be cool as your first dungeon. They do not stand together to create a unique experience which is unfortunate. The rewards at the end of each dungeon however are so powerful that completing them is still nice in the end, but damn it really sucks that they're not as much fun after the 1st one.

Weapons- I know a lot of people have a great issue with how weapons are handled in this game, but I actually like that they break frequently. It forces you to think more strategically about what you want to use at what time. Should you be using that +50 Attack Edge of Duality to kill 1 hp keese? Nah just switch to whatever is kind of weaker and use the strong weapon on something like a Hinox, or Lynel. Once your strong weapon breaks you're still set to kill pretty much any other enemy with ~20 attack power weapons. Finding, or fighting for strong weapons will mean that your +50 weapons will always be a rewarding treat to collect. Imagine getting a weapon early on and having it never break. You're stuck with something that you take for granted for the next 200 hours you're playing, and never even considered the fact that it's rare/consumable. Additionally if weapons just lasted twice as long as they do now, you will still run into the whole weapons breaking situation, and you'd still be in the same boat upset that they don't last long enough. If you have the option to repair your weapons you will run into a whole different set of issues. If you were able to repair weapons, your inventory would be cluttered with very strong weapons on the verge of breaking, and you'd be upset that you have to run back to a blacksmith after every fight to repair your stuff.
Another thing, if you were to collect a very strong weapon that lasted a very long time, it wouldn't force you to not use other weapons, but you'd be more likely to just use whatever is strongest instead of experimenting with the cool things you can do with like a korok leaf, or how good a spear or 1 handed sword can be in combat. (because 2handed swords tend to be the highest attack rating) And then it would also suck because you can just go get an OP weapon and make the game that much easier to just murder stuff.
The game actually gives you the option to buy Ancient weapons from a robot if you want, they'll eventually break but you can technically just think of him as a blacksmith and get a same copy of that weapon back, do that for a while and you'll find that you're actually having more fun collecting weapons out in the world i'm sure. Different strokes for different folks, but my main point here is their decision to have weapons work their current way is actually very good!

Story-

There is really not any substance to the story here. Ganon is being bad, go do 4 dungeons, and learn about your past. This method of revealing story to you through memories and dungeons (and 1 diary in the castle that the king wrote) is actually a very nice way to present the story to a player in my opinion. But the substance of the story itself is something that was like 2/10 meh to me. Zelda can't unlock her sealing power while her dad pushes her every day to go pray at shrines, Link is Link, and there's 4 other guys link knew and they are like comrades. Here's the problem though, Zelda is made out to be this wimpy character that I really didn't care for in BoTW she can't defend herself and always needs link, she kind of seems like she doesn't like Link for a good majority of the cutscense she's in, leading to awkward scenes of them together, and overall the whole failure to yourself/dad/hyrule gambit they played on her didn't get me excited for Zelda as a character. Link and his connection to Zelda and the other 4 divine beast pilots/champions lacks any kind of character development, and the scenes they have together feel thrown in to the game as an afterthought.

The only character I cared for really was Mipha (and actually Sidon) in the whole game, because it's like they shared memorable experiences together. Mipha could actually fight for herself and looked badass as a statue in zora's domain (Whereas zelda is a pushover princess). Mipha also being a nursing kind of character for Link in the past made me kind of wish I knew more about Mipha and Links experiences together not just in afterbattle situations like ok you're healed bye, but at least I wanted to learn more about Mipha. Mipha is actually a better Zelda character than Zelda imo.
The other 3 champions, 1 was just a smug asshole (the bird) that liked showing off his skill in flying/archery and rubbed it in links face, 1 just kind of reasserted links mission to defeat ganon and didn't have much of any connection or even an action scene to help support his badass voice/attitude (the goron) I feel like I could have completed the game without knowing this character existed and possibly have a better experience because of it, and the other champion (the gerudo) was almost acceptable as a character but lacked story with link and character development as well, she could have been acceptable if she had her own story actually and more fleshed out how she came to be or things she's done to deserve to be a champion.

This game seriously lacks a story that sticks to your bones, after I saw it all I was not impressed.

Calamity Ganon- I really liked the buildup to seeing/fighting this character for the first time. They did an excellent job setting your goal early on to fight ganon, and you could walk up to him and fight him sure but it would be hard as hell with all the guardians and the whole ganons castle thing, so you really feel that you need to become more powerful to beat him. The first time I saw ganon too I was pretty damned impressed at his design, not at all what I was expecting and his first phase fight was challenging and fun as hell to take him down. I would have been happy if that was the end of the game, but they had to throw in a 2nd form that had actually 0 threat to you as a player. He's just there to be big and give zelda a reason to still be relevant (to give you the light bow so you can defeat ganon) That weapon is badass and i wish i could keep it after the fight ;_; but yeah 2nd phase could have used a lot of work. In fact it felt like I was just fighting another Divine Beast, but without actually having any kind of skill required to do so. Which is almost made worse because by comparison 1st Phase Ganon is one of the hardest fights in the game.

Horses/transportation- Along with the whole game, figuring out how to get horses was rewarding, especially in that it's an option and it's up to you to figure out that you can even do it in the first place. It helps out with traveling places early on especially if that's when you get your first horse.
Overall transportation in this game is so fast that once you have towers/shrines unlocked no place is ever going to be too far away, especially in combination with a haste+3 potion/food. Shines are seriously huge in this game, their rewards for hearts/stamina/waypoints/random items make them a very big deal, and something to work for. Paragliding from highpoints is also a pretty good option for traveling, and it makes climbing stuff feel a lot more rewarding.

Quests- I haven't done very many other than the main quests, I'm not going to give my opinion on this until later.

Rain- Wait for the rain to go away is a stupid mechanic/waste of time. Lightning too, except in this case you have the option to do a quest that makes it so you can be struck by lightning and not die. Rain is the worst thing mechanically in this game not letting you climb stuff.

Controls- Can be awkward at first but I find having my right index on the right joystick for camera control (pretty much at all time) is the only weird thing I had to do for this game. Everything else is smooth and feels good to use.

Game Mechanics- It's fun to use the 1 and 2 handed weapons, and spears. Parrying and perfect dodging attacks is so hard to do that it feels super nice when you finally get the timing for it down. Game mechanics work similar to OoT/MM with targeting, but the enemies can easily kick your ass in this game, so there's a fair bit of strategy involved in tackling a lot of situations. One last thing is the slowtime for shooting arrows in the air is one of my favorite mechanics, I actually make a great deal of use of this in fighting lots of enemies. There's a lot of ways to get into the air too making this a solid mechanic.

Overall game- 7.5/10
Game mechanics, exploration, cooking, shrines, horses, weapons, rewards, and controls for this game make this game what is fun for me. I've had a lot of fun on the adventure and plan to play this game for many more hours to come! 10/10
Story, champions/zelda, dungeon repetition, and ganon 2nd phase are negative points for me, and I actually feel the game would be better without them. 1/10

edit: don't know where to throw this, but i really don't like the way they had zelda's voice done. Sounds goddy, and entitled and completely does not match her character.

[hi19hi19]

Re: Zelda BotW

I don't like that there are audible voices. [...] So far the only voice I've heard is from whoever is guiding you out of that initial cave or whatever, but I am hoping that's the end of that.

Hey man, uh...
Might want to hit mute for the memory cutscenes.

It's bad.

[hi19hi19]

Re: Zelda BotW

The weapons breaking does get way better later in the game as you get more weapon slots and more durable weapons. It's definitely at its worst right at the start, which is unfortunate.

However I will note, playstyle has a lot to do with weapons. If you are swinging wildly, your shit will break.
Being more careful with openings in attacks, going for high-damage combos instead of a million chip damage hits against their shields, and most importantly using stealth strikes which seemingly do not take off any durability is really important.

[Snapps]

Re: Zelda BotW

I felt like a kid again exploring so definitely good game

[Charu]

Re: Zelda BotW

The weapons breaking does get way better later in the game as you get more weapon slots and more durable weapons. It's definitely at its worst right at the start, which is unfortunate.

However I will note, playstyle has a lot to do with weapons. If you are swinging wildly, your shit will break.
Being more careful with openings in attacks, going for high-damage combos instead of a million chip damage hits against their shields, and most importantly using stealth strikes which seemingly do not take off any durability is really important.

Stealth attacks do like... 8x damage or something. It's ridiculously strong, lmao.