eRonin

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: open your eyes and die a lot

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26 minutes ago, Vulpes Absurda said:

I don't know that I dislike the game I just don't think it's descended from on high to rescue open world games. I'd say it's an 8 out of 10 not an 11.

 

Fair enough! So what does anyone here like about this game? So far there's 'enemies can bounce bombs off shields'...

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I saw a gif of an enemy kicking a bomb back onto Link. So there's that as well! :tup:

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For me, several hours in, it's simply open world without the jank. Open world with Zelda polish. No need to forgive shitty things because of the scale/scope.

 

I just rode through a trio of wild horses and they started galloping with me.

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I have many opinions on this game, overall I love it. I've sunk nearly 30 hours into it over the weekend, haven't done that in a long time. I'm also maybe a quarter of the way through it as far as getting to the final boss goes, so it's a hefty game as well. What I love is the exploration and the sense of wonder and awe it evokes. The closest comparison I can think of is classic WoW, you see something in the distance or hear about a far off town and you make your way there and discover so many things along the way. The quest details are sketchy enough on the details and general enough with quest markers that it's not a follow the trail point to point type of thing. Compounding this is that regions only get filled out with details of what's there when you scale the tower located in it which is often something that you will get to having completed half the content in that area, so there's a lot of going around somewhat blind and it's just wonderful, I haven't enjoyed exploring a game world this much since WoW over 10 years ago. Another thing I love is that there's no XP or levels, so you're OK with avoiding enemies, you're not thinking damn I'm missing out on XP. Upgrades come in the form of buying better armour and upgrading it, using potions you craft to boost stats or looting weapons. This takes us to something that I hate in the game, the weapon system.

 

Weapon durability has been a known system for a while, but the speed at which weapons degrade shocked me. There's times when I get about 7 hits from a weapon before it breaks, the same goes for your bows as well so it can be really rather annoying that you're constantly swapping weapons and relying on whatever loot you get. I've so far found one place selling weapons and it's not easy to get to and it's not cheap to buy them. It's just a very frustrating system because you can just fall on bad luck and be left with no good weapons for what you have to do. At one point there was a battle that required a few bows(hello harsh weapon degradation) so I was left wandering the game world grinding for bows. This is one of 3 cool interesting systems that I think ultimately just aren't fun and drag down the game. The other is thunderstorms not letting you wear metal armour and wet weather stopping you from climbing rocks. Again, systems that because of plain bad luck screw you over, just not fun.

 

They're not enough to stop me playing, nor is the at times atrocious performance which can make the controls a bit iffy as well. The vast interesting world, lack of guidance and sense of discovery(even in the cooking and how things in the World work) and wonder have me glued to the screen. I've so many anecdotes of the places I've visited and the things I've had to figure out or the weird strategies I used to get past places but they're probably not that interesting when reading about them, but when you're playing they're just incredible.

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Enemy encounter I had (you really should experience this first hand as it was incredible)



I had a larger enemy pick up a smaller enemy and throw him at me. It's was lols.

 

First horse's name was Buster (Because Seabiscuit was 1 character too long) who I quickly drop as he was ugly. Then i caught a black house with white feet which had 4 stamina thingies 👍🏻 I called him Bojack

 

The world is awe inspiringly massive. And clutter free! No question marks on the mini map, you just go exploring and it's the best.

 

although the game has just added something I don't really like

Camera, and a compendium of all the animals/weapons/items/enemy's which you have to photograph to add. Which is annoying because instead of attack enemy, grab weapon, grab item, have fun, move on. I'm like, oh better photography it first 💩 It's not too bad, as you can pay to fill the compendium, and after the initial common stuff is logged, photographing should happen less often with the more rare items.



 

I just finished throwing all my weapons on the floor so I could photograph them. Bad times.

 

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My first and only horse so far is Peter, because Peter Nincompoop was too long. :(

 

I haven't really been that bothered with horses as I'm often climbing up mountains and what not.

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My first horse was named Epona because I don't like horses and wasn't going to waste time naming one. She was also my last horse due to the horse controls being SO BAD.

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My first horse was Named Reggie, and my second is NickBrckn. Reggie passed away in a fight with horse riding bokoblins, :'( but I picked up one of the horses that carried a bokoblin that seemed to be instantly maximum bonded, which I named C. Hitman.

 

My fourth horse, I named Ganondors, for....reasons.

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:tup::tup::tup:

 

Sounds like the horse name character allowance is long enough to have "Shadowfax"!

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3 minutes ago, Ben X said:

:tup::tup::tup:

 

Sounds like the horse name character allowance is long enough to have "Shadowfax"!

 

The maximum is 9 characters so if I find a white horse you can bet I'm calling it Shadowfax!

 

Anyway since you asked what I liked about the game...

-The game's quest system mostly comprises paying attention to an NPC as they describe a location or direction; and sometimes even something cryptic, which gives you enough context to finish it without ever relying on a quest marker

-The combat keeps you on your toes at all times because even the weakest enemy can use their environment to their advantage to pin you down/surround you/hit you with an explosive barrel or even your own bombs, as you've seen

-horses are actually good, heck that noise

-the world constantly rewards you for poking around in every nook and cranny 

-navigating the world relies on you identifying the topology of the land rather than most other games letting you simply take a straight line to your next destination

-even the basic NPCs have interesting things to say that often give you more context into something you may have been pondering about the world

-the shrine trials are amazing and the freedom you have with your rune abilities means you can often cheese them in hilarious ways

-your rune abilities, especially stasis and magnesis, just own in general

-sneaking up on enemy camps and stealing all their weapons without them waking up is 10/10

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7 hours ago, Mington said:

also, how do you do the shield slide, or is that a skill you learn later

I just did it by accident and a tip popped up to tell me how. Jump with a shield readied and press A in midair.

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Nice

 

thanks. I guess that's an Easter egg. Unless it'll be some challenge in the goron zone.

 

theres 3 greyed out control tips in the options. One them will no doubt be this shield slide. I wonder what the other two will be....

 

actual I did a sneak attack by accident on someone earlier and got a control tip pop up. That could be one.

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Surprisingly my wife woke up this morning, turned on the switch and sunk 3 hours into the game and absolutely lived it. 

 

My wife actively dislikes video games. 

 

I tried prying into why this had caught her attention and she said it was relaxing, it was pretty and she liked exploring the nook and crannies as there seems to be stuff hidden around every corner.

 

She still hasn't mastered the controls, she is constantly going into a crouch when she panics but it's really cool seeing a person find video games for the first time. 

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The game has very unforgiving combat but also gives you the tools you need to avoid combat when necessary, which is great because the hard combat could definitely turn people away from it, kinda like Dark Souls does for some people.

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3 hours ago, eRonin said:

The game has very unforgiving combat but also gives you the tools you need to avoid combat when necessary, which is great because the hard combat could definitely turn people away from it, kinda like Dark Souls does for some people.

 

Yeah, the combat is the only thing I'm worried about - this is one of her first dual analog stick games as well so I'm sure getting used to movement and camera control is hard for someone who didn't grow up playing games! 

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http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/03/02/why-zelda-breath-of-the-wildas-touchscreen-features-were-cut

 

I still feel that the Wii U version was gimped just so it would not be different from Switch version and that the Wii U version would not look more enhanced.

 

The map/inventory handling in gamepad was the best part of the HD re-releases of Wind Wanker and Twilight Princess.

 

I just got my first horses in BotW! Not that difficult to control and the ones that I stole from Bogoblins were easy to tame at least. Now to find a stable where to put these. My first one was a brown horse that had "white pants", funny.

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There's zero reason they shouldn't patch in touch for menu screens on Wii U or Switch portable mode. It would make crafting and weapon selection (and dropping) much quicker. There would still be parity. Everyone wins. I don't get the reasoning. Touch works on Switch for the console menus without them mentioning it - what's the difference with Zelda?

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I swam out into the ocean to reach a rocky outcropping in the sea because the birdman with bedroom eyes was out there.  It was too far out for me to swim on my standard endurance gauge, so I kept eating stamina-boosting consumables as I swam. I reached the birdman and he gave me a side quest, but I had consumed all my endurance consumables and could not swim back to shore without drowning -- and then respawning on the rocks.  I had to fast travel to leave, and my nearest fast travel point was miles away. Whoops.

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If you run into that situation again, you can pass most bodies of water without having to swim.

 

Just use your Cryo power to create blocks you can use to jump on top of.  You get to have 3 blocks at a time, which means you can stand on one block while creating the next.  Just make sure to keep creating them in jump range.

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My switch arrived a day before Canada Post predicted! Played up to leaving the plateau tonight. Not a lot to say other than the obligatory holy shit. This game is a very good game. I wandered around just a little bit and have now hit my second post-plateau shrine before calling it a night. So much that I love about this. Gonna play that second shrine in bed and then sleep. I think...

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I love how there's so many clever ways to use your abilities, crossing water with ice blocks never crossed my mind before!

 

Couple of spoilers here for some amazing things in this game:

Lake Akkala

I had visited here and there was nothing but a place to upgrade my hearts/stamina and left it at that. Hours later after I've done some other quests, I'm passing by and there's a building there. I thought I was going mad, I was certain I'd been here and there was nothing there. So I glide over and talk to the guy there and he's founded a town and I can help him build it up. That was so cool.

Big mountain in the south east

So someone told me there was a shrine here so I go looking around for it and can see some glowing rocks in the distance. They must be valuable so I go over to them, turns out it's a freakin' huge dragon that's corrupted by Gannon and I have to cleanse him of the curse or something. Slowly climbing that mountain as I see bits and pieces of the beast, an eye here and there, then the final reveal when I reach the peak was something else.

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Guy called ChipCheezum has done a stream of himself playing this, from about 20 hours in I think. I usually don't at all enjoy watching unedited streaming, but this game is so much fun to watch. I do reckon that always having to ditch your metal gear ™ during a lightning storm would become a drag, but it depends on how frequent those storms are.

 

Either way, game looks totally amazing

 

Edit: if anyone wants to watch it

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lwfSMhxrdw

 

 

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