The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Ruta, Rudania, Medoh, the other one.

I'm going counter-clockwise, leaving the middle territory for last.

I do appreciate that the abilities you get are just simply slightly better or more convenient versions of things you can already do, so they feel like nice little bonuses that come in handy but you don't need to pay much attention to.
 
Finished all the shrines. The bite-sized puzzles were sometimes easy. The "Test of Strength" trials were fun.

And now, a game of "Hide and Seek: Korok Edition".
 
I'll get this game very soon, I'm so hyped. And yet, I haven't looked anything on the internet so when I first play the game, I will be playing blind.
 
I just beat the final boss and figured I should probably say how I feel about the game as a whole.

It has been since 2004 that I last experienced a new Zelda game that I could enjoy; Minish Cap was the last good one for me. Everything after that completely put me off, be it because of mindless chores forced on me, mind-boggling internal inconsistencies and fuck-ups, an overwhelming amount of unlikable characters, ill-thought-out plots that trip over themselves, or outright broken gameplay mechanics. And it is to my great surprise and... unexpected delight, that Breath of the Wild has managed to break this pattern.

I did enjoy this game. It is a good Zelda game, and a good game in general. The game is not without its share of flaws, but the core experience is strong enough to shine in spite of them, and even when it annoyed the crap out of me, I didn't hate the game. That is a feeling I have not associated with this series in a long time. Anything I can say would fail to convey how big a deal an experience like this is for me.

I'll go into detail momentarily.



Let's get the negatives out of the way first:

Weather exists solely to annoy you:

The game has a weather system, and it is out for your blood. It rains frequently, and whenever it does, cliffs become much more annoying to climb. Especially annoying if you're in the middle of climbing a mountain and it starts raining. ESPECIALLY especially annoying if there's no place to take shelter either, as that means you won't be able to light a campfire to advance time.

Even worse are thunder storms, which have the aforementioned rain problem, but combine it with a chance to be hit by lightning if you're holding a weapon, bow, or shield made of metal. It arbitrarily restricts you from using certain weapons, which is the opposite of fun.


The stamina meter is lame

You have a limited amount of stamina. This exists to limit your climbing and swimming capabilities and thus make mountains and lakes more daunting obstacles, which I can understand. What I don't understand is why it also applies to running. The main purpose of running is to traverse flat ground faster. Flat ground offers no terrain challenge, contrary to mountains or lakes. There's no reason to stop players from being able to go from A to B faster.


Voice acting could be better

I don't know who's responsible, the voice actors or whoever directed them, but a lot of the English voices in the game sound amateurish. I heard a lot of people complain about Zelda's voice, but I found that one ok. Personally, I didn't really like Mipha's voice, as it sounded kind of dull.


Weapons are made of glass

It is no wonder that Ganon managed to steamroll Hyrule so easily. Their weapons, even military-grade ones, have the durability of a wet tissue. Every hylian blacksmith should be goddamn ashamed of themselves. If it's not end-game tier equipment, expect whatever you're holding to break after a few dozen hits, if it even gets that far.

I've seen people argue that this is a genius move, as your weapons breaking all the time "encourages" you to try many different weapons, thus resulting in fun gameplay with lots of variety, and you appreciating all the different weapon types. For me personally, it had the opposite effect. I could not develop a meaningful connection to any weapon, because the thought of "this piece of shit is going to break soon anyway" hung over my head at all times and prevented me from giving a shit about what I was using.

There's no way of fixing weapons before they break either (outside of a few named ones which certain NPCs will reforge for you if they break). This is honestly the worst durability system I have ever experienced.

That is not even the best part. The best part of this is:

The Master Sword...

...blade of evil's bane...

...sacred weapon said to have been forged by the gods themselves...

...breaks.

It regenerates after 10 minutes of being broken and useless, but it still turns this holy artifact into kind of a joke.



With all of this out of the way, let's go into what I thought makes this game good.

There is very little annoying bullshit that you are forced to go along with

The game does a pretty good job at giving you free reign. As soon as you complete the tutorial area (which in itself is surprisingly free-form as well), you can pretty much do whatever you want, and your ability to explore the world is dictated solely by your ability to stay alive in it. At no point are you locked out of progressing the story until you rescue an annoying cat which you can't pick up even though you can pick up every other cat in the game, or until you give your wooden sword to an annoying brat, or until you have proven your worth as the hero of legends for the fifteenth time even though you are the only one actively working to prevent evil from succeding.

In fact, the game is so free-form that, if any of these situations I just mentioned were to pop up in this game, you could probably just circumvent them by climbing over whoever is blocking your way, or leaving whatever obstinate NPCs who refuse to cooperate to whatever imminent doom is about to befall them without your help.

At no point in the game did I think "This is stupid and annoying, why do I have to do this? It shouldn't be that way!", which is absolutely great.


No intrusive helper character hijacking your adventure

There is no character who constantly interrupts you, or outright blocks you from accessing certain areas because you haven't doused for annoying woodland critters yet. Game advice is given via loading screen messages or optional NPC dialogue.


Motion controls did not return

While Ganon is still very much running rampant, luckily Hyrule did manage to seal away the other, arguably much bigger evil: Annoying motion controls. No longer are you forced to waggle a plastic stick around to make Link hold his sword up at goofy angles, or swipe left only for the game to swipe right instead. Your attacks are once more mapped to a convenient button, and all is well.

There are still SOME motion controls, namely the return of gyroscope aiming, but that's actually convenient and not intrusive, so hooray. I guess there's also some motion control puzzles, which are rather gimmicky, but they're all self-contained and manageable.


I am now ready for Ravioli's Gale

I love this ability.


Hero of Time was yesterday, introducing the Hero of Fashion

You're not restricted to a green tunic in this game. Some people cite this as a negative, but I think it's great. There's many different types of gear for you to choose from, and this time they aren't just recolors either. I went through most of the game wearing a set of Hyrule soldier armor, because I thought it was thematically fitting with Link's role in this game. And I probably won't stop doing that even when I get the green tunic, because why wear the same thing you have to wear in every other Zelda game?


Link and Zelda

Over the course of the game, I grew rather fond of this incarnation of Link and Zelda. I like how the game goes into the knight<->liege dynamic between the two. I also like how both of them are actual relatable characters, and how Zelda's struggles, fears, and feelings of inadequacy are explored. It gave me an actual connection to the character, and made me want to save her, instead of the game just telling me I have to.


An amazing attention to detail

There are a lot of little details in the game, so many that I can't possibly list them all. Amazingly inconsequential things like, I dropped an apple in front of a goat and it ate it. This post-apocalyptic version of Hyrule is somehow the one that feels the most lived-in. People walk around and do stuff. Even the monsters do things independently from you. They ride around on horseback and hunt boars for meat. One time I snuck up on a Lizalfos while it was catching flies with its tongue. The world is very expressive and enjoyable.

In fact, the game even rewards you for being attentive and spotting details. Whenever you come across something strange in the landscape, like an indent in the ground, a lone rock, or a suspicious puddle of water, it's a good idea to try and mess around with it. Most of the time you'll get an item for it.


The bestest, most amazingest ultimate thing in the entire game

Q2FsrYf.png

Sand seals are so cute, oh my fucking goddess!

There's probably even more beyond what I can remember right now.



So yeah, Breath of the Wild is an enjoyable experience, recommendable even if you've grown jaded and disillusioned with the franchise as a whole. After having been burned twice before, I've been cautious and expected this to be a huge disappointment, despite how promising it looked on paper. Needless to say I was completely and utterly wrong. And I couldn't be happier about it.

Good game. Give it a chance if you haven't already.
 
For anyone who hates rain, if the cliff you're climbing isn't super flat you can jump, press b, then repeat this to avoid slipping down. You can climb up until the point you slipped last time before jumping again to actually make progress while you climb but you'll need more stamina and/or the climbing gear set bonus (or stamina meals, those work well too). Otherwise you'll just have to fall back on the bird jump, if you don't have it then you're fucked.

I don't particularly agree with the durability thing but I understand what you're saying. I've gotten plenty attached to the Royal Broadswords and Tri-Boomerangs, they're my favourite weapons to use and they're very common after a certain point. The Royal variety weapons at end-game in particular (except halberds for whatever reason) are all over the place and I almost always find another 2 before I even break 1. They usually come with Attack Up or Durability Up as well.

Things break a lot but I never once found myself out of good weapons (for the point I was at in the game) to use throughout the entire game even when I had a smaller inventory. This might just be the side-effect of killing every enemy camp I see because more often than not at least one enemy in the pack you kill will have weapons worth fighting for, not including the treasure chests you might find that occasionally hold good weapons. Also I don't know the damage multiplier on a sneakstrike but it's very powerful and OHKO's a lot of enemies so that's also a good tool for saving time/durability, as well as just using bombs on low-grade enemies like chu's and skeleton guys.

The Master Sword is also perfect for breaking rocks, cutting trees or killing animals because you never have to worry about it breaking and it's also just a worse Royal Broadsword so it's not a big deal, it cuts down the amount of weapons you would actually lose by half as long as you switch back to it every time it recharges, which is a really short time considering how useful it is and how much it invalidates the whole durability system.

Also wearing your barbarian armour for silver enemies or HP tank enemies will increase your weapon durability significantly and also decrease the amount of time you spend dealing with them. Lynel's in particular make it easy for you by letting you get free damage that doesn't effect durability when you mount them, so swap to your most powerful weapon before you do that and watch their health bar drop.

Basically what I'm saying is if you break more than one weapon fighting a lynel at end-game (or if you break an unused 40+ sword) then you're not doing it very efficiently, the barbarian armour is effectively a durability increasing armour. The same applies to cooking 5 razorshrooms, or 5 of any Mighty ingredient. Swapping your armour set is the simplest way to give yourself an advantage in nearly every area of the game, which is why I can't agree with the kind of players that only stick to one armour set or refuse to buy and upgrade other types. The defense rating of an armour is irrelevant if you don't get hit, what matters is the bonus it gives you.

I also just want to say I appreciate that they placed 900 Korok Seeds in the world and only made 441 of them required for all the upgrades, they're really just a little puzzle to pass the time between areas so you don't quickly realise how empty and unnecessary most of the map is, and it works well as long as they actually put korok seeds in those empty areas. I can't say I particularly agree with the reward for finding all of them but I prefer it to locking something incredibly useful behind it.

Although I still enjoyed A Link Between Worlds more, this is a good second place. I don't actually find myself enjoying most Zelda games I play but I enjoyed this one.
 
Altera said:
For anyone who hates rain, if the cliff you're climbing isn't super flat you can jump, press b, then repeat this to avoid slipping down. You can climb up until the point you slipped last time before jumping again to actually make progress while you climb but you'll need more stamina and/or the climbing gear set bonus (or stamina meals, those work well too). Otherwise you'll just have to fall back on the bird jump, if you don't have it then you're fucked.
Click to expand...

If all fails, a good rhythm I found is to grab onto the wall, wait for Link to slide down, start climbing, and after Link reached up four times, make an upwards leap. Link will slide down again after the leap, but you will have gained more height than you lose. If you've got enough stamina (or are willing to burn through stamina food), you can scale smaller cliffs that way even in rain.

Altera said:
I don't particularly agree with the durability thing but I understand what you're saying. I've gotten plenty attached to the Royal Broadswords and Tri-Boomerangs, they're my favourite weapons to use and they're very common after a certain point. The Royal variety weapons at end-game in particular (except halberds for whatever reason) are all over the place and I almost always find another 2 before I even break 1. They usually come with Attack Up or Durability Up as well.

Things break a lot but I never once found myself out of good weapons (for the point I was at in the game) to use throughout the entire game even when I had a smaller inventory. This might just be the side-effect of killing every enemy camp I see because more often than not at least one enemy in the pack you kill will have weapons worth fighting for, not including the treasure chests you might find that occasionally hold good weapons. Also I don't know the damage multiplier on a sneakstrike but it's very powerful and OHKO's a lot of enemies so that's also a good tool for saving time/durability, as well as just using bombs on low-grade enemies like chu's and skeleton guys.

The Master Sword is also perfect for breaking rocks, cutting trees or killing animals because you never have to worry about it breaking and it's also just a worse Royal Broadsword so it's not a big deal, it cuts down the amount of weapons you would actually lose by half as long as you switch back to it every time it recharges, which is a really short time considering how useful it is and how much it invalidates the whole durability system.

Also wearing your barbarian armour for silver enemies or HP tank enemies will increase your weapon durability significantly and also decrease the amount of time you spend dealing with them. Lynel's in particular make it easy for you by letting you get free damage that doesn't effect durability when you mount them, so swap to your most powerful weapon before you do that and watch their health bar drop.

Basically what I'm saying is if you break more than one weapon fighting a lynel at end-game (or if you break an unused 40+ sword) then you're not doing it very efficiently, the barbarian armour is effectively a durability increasing armour. The same applies to cooking 5 razorshrooms, or 5 of any Mighty ingredient. Swapping your armour set is the simplest way to give yourself an advantage in nearly every area of the game, which is why I can't agree with the kind of players that only stick to one armour set or refuse to buy and upgrade other types. The defense rating of an armour is irrelevant if you don't get hit, what matters is the bonus it gives you.
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Here's my response to this, but please don't take this as me disagreeing with you specifically. It's great that you found a style that works for you. I'm just ranting at the game in general:

The royal gear may not be made of tinfoil and spiderwebs like most of the other weapons, but they're end-game material. Meaning unless you know exactly where to look in advance, you will have to deal with crap weapons for a good chunk of the game before you start finding the good ones. Since the path to the few good weapons is paved with trash, by the time I got to them the game had already conditioned me to think of my weapons as disposable garbage. By the time I got my first royal weapon, the damage was already done. I could not retrain my mind to suddenly care.

Also, and I realize this is a personal issue that doesn't apply to everyone: The durability system breaks my immersion. Whenever I have a military-grade weapon break on me, I cannot turn off the part of my brain that goes "this makes no sense". Metallurgy is a big deal, and it changed the face of warfare when it became widespread. A properly forged metal sword would never just break after hitting something a dozen times. Even a comparatively crappy bronze sword from the time the first swords were invented would not be this fragile. It is really expensive to make a sword. If swords would break this easily, they would be a liability instead of an asset. They would not have become widely used because the cost of making them would severely outweigh the benefits.

And people may think: "Whoa, you're thinking into this way too hard, it's a video game, dude". And that's fair enough. Zelda's never been super realistic. But I get the impression that they really tried to make a coherent, believable world this time around. So the fact that such a glaring contradiction of logic exists in the game despite believability being an apparent focus makes this a valid criticism to me. It just sticks out among everything they did well.

I eventually mitigated the problem with the durability system by religiously expanding my weapon inventory and nothing else. It's still an issue though, and I feel it could be easily fixed by increasing the durability of weapons (unless they're makeshift weapons like tree branches or hoes) and giving players the ability to repair weapons they like.

Altera said:
Basically what I'm saying is if you break more than one weapon fighting a lynel at end-game (or if you break an unused 40+ sword) then you're not doing it very efficiently, the barbarian armour is effectively a durability increasing armour. The same applies to cooking 5 razorshrooms, or 5 of any Mighty ingredient. Swapping your armour set is the simplest way to give yourself an advantage in nearly every area of the game, which is why I can't agree with the kind of players that only stick to one armour set or refuse to buy and upgrade other types. The defense rating of an armour is irrelevant if you don't get hit, what matters is the bonus it gives you.
Click to expand...

I understand your point in that it's possible to work around the durability issue, but in the same vein I disagree with the "If you don't do (x), you're doing it wrong" angle. This is an open world game, and thus, by definition, you have a choice in how to approach things. I might not like using the barbarian armor. I might prefer having a defense-focussed build. And beyond the immediate and logical consequences (like missing out on damage bonuses, or resistance to a certain element), the game should not punish me for my choice.
 
I actually stopped having a problem with the durability system after I got the Master sword
mostly cause I was non stop fighting lynels.
 
Speaking of the Master Sword: I've heard people claim that, whenever it glows, it becomes temporarily unbreakable. But I swear I've had that thing break on me while I was in the middle of fighting Guardians.

Is this claim just nonsense then?
 
Mr. Edo said:
If all fails, a good rhythm I found is to grab onto the wall, wait for Link to slide down, start climbing, and after Link reached up four times, make an upwards leap. Link will slide down again after the leap, but you will have gained more height than you lose. If you've got enough stamina (or are willing to burn through stamina food), you can scale smaller cliffs that way even in rain.
Click to expand...

Oh, that's pretty much the exact thing I meant by climb back to where you slipped before jumping. I guess I forgot to write that it was seperate from the thing I usually do on slanted hills. Your explanation is clearer though.

Mr. Edo said:
Here's my response to this, but please don't take this as me disagreeing with you specifically. It's great that you found a style that works for you. I'm just ranting at the game in general:
Click to expand...

I think I just view it far more basic/simpler in that there are only three weapons in this game; swords, axes and spears. There are many varieties of each but aside from specific attributes (elemental/guardian/size) they all fit into a category and if I have 5 'sword-types' in my inventory, even when one of them broke I would just switch to another 'sword-type' and by the time that broke I'd have found another one to replace to the previously broken one. I get attached to Royal and Tri-Boomerangs because they were common and had a higher number next to their picture, even when I break 4 of them I'll have picked up another 4 to take their place.

I guess it's just down to how different people perceive it. I can respect wanting it to be less immersion-breaking though, I never really thought about that side of it before.

Mr. Edo said:
I understand your point in that it's possible to work around the durability issue, but in the same vein I disagree with the "If you don't do (x), you're doing it wrong" angle. This is an open world game, and thus, by definition, you have a choice in how to approach things. I might not like using the barbarian armor. I might prefer having a defense-focussed build. And beyond the immediate and logical consequences (like missing out on damage bonuses, or resistance to a certain element), the game should not punish me for my choice.
Click to expand...

I do understand wanting to play a game the way you prefer, however I do still think even if you decide to play defensively or just not offensively; I can't agree with not at minimum cooking up some Attack boosting meals for the higher HP enemies as an alternative. It's fine to want to play in your own way but irregardless of that there are still good and bad ways to handle certain situations as well as a respectable amount of options and approaches available to you to allow you to give yourself more of an advantage even if you don't play 'efficiently'.

In the case of durability; the barbarian armour, backstabbing, headshots with arrows, attack boosting meals, bombs, using dropped weapons momentarily etc. I'd actually say cooking attack boosting meals is the best way to go even if you do have the full barbarian armour set; it costs more resources and requires preparation but allows you a greater advantage than the barbarian armour by letting you wear any other armour that might have higher defense or a set bonus that's more useful for the situation. There are a lot of ways to minimise how much durability you waste with each encounter and you can choose whichever one you want, but if you choose none of them then that's your own problem.

I mean, I prefer taking a stealthier route to enemy camps, wearing the shiekah outfit and backstabbing everything so I don't have to deal with them running around, but if some enemies are grouped together and can't be backstabbed I can't get mad that the game isn't allowing me to play the way I want or is making it difficult for me, I just need to change my approach or think of a good solution. If I just stubbornly try to backstab them as they are I'll be spotted and I'll just have to handle the resulting problem that I caused which wouldn't be a result of my stealthy build being inherently worse than an alternative one, it would be a result of my shitty decision making.

tl;dr: The game shouldn't punish you for a preferred playstyle but it can and should punish you for making poor decisions.

Even this game is incredibly lenient on its punishments since there's constant auto-saves, a super-fairy that recharges itself rather quickly given how good it is (as well as normal fairies in fixed locations) and the ability to eat any cooked meal at any point.
 
I agree with the preparatory cooking and changing up your approach depending on your situation. I just didn't like the initial implication that there is one correct armor choice to tackle end-game enemies. Now that you've clarified I can see that that's probably not what you meant though.
 
Mr. Edo said:
Speaking of the Master Sword: I've heard people claim that, whenever it glows, it becomes temporarily unbreakable. But I swear I've had that thing break on me while I was in the middle of fighting Guardians.

Is this claim just nonsense then?
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For some reason I feel like it depends on the guardian
 
Yeah I probably wasn't quite as clear in my initial post on what point I was trying to make so I tried to make it as clear as possible on the second go around. Even then I still think I was a bit vague and all over the place on what I was trying to say.

The amount of options the game gives you to tackle everything is probably my favourite thing about it though. It's fun to experiment and see what works.
 
Blue Bowser said:
Mr. Edo said:
Speaking of the Master Sword: I've heard people claim that, whenever it glows, it becomes temporarily unbreakable. But I swear I've had that thing break on me while I was in the middle of fighting Guardians.

Is this claim just nonsense then?
Click to expand...
For some reason I feel like it depends on the guardian
Click to expand...

To clarify: I'm referring to Guardian Stalkers and Turrets found in and around Hyrule Castle/Field. Not the small ones that are in some of the shrines.
 
I don't think it was ever mentioned to be unbreakable (unless I'm missing something), it just gets a lot more durable around Calamity Ganon's strawberry jam.
 
I was able to find all the Koroks and notable locations last night, which in return means that I've 100% completed the whole entire map.

I will say though, that the game did have its notable flaws. The difficulty becomes exaggerated once you know what you're doing. In fact, the most difficult part of the game is just finding all 900 Koroks, as you do not have any way to find them, often requiring you to go on wild goose chases.

But what really seems odd is how the Master Sword was handled. If it were up to me, I would've raised its default attack value to 50, and the attack value would double to 100 (the highest possible attack value for the Savage Lynel Sword) whenever you're near Ganon, the Blight Ganons, or anything that's infected with Malice.
 
late, but regarding eventide island

i just repeatedly jammed some boxes into the hinox. it was surprisingly effective
 
In reply to the last post:
I used upgraded bombs to kill the hinox. In fact, that's what I always use to kill them since I don't want to waste weapons. (I do use arrows on them, though.)
 
people get so concerned about wasting weapons and meanwhile i have a problem in that i have too many great weapons and they don't break fast enough

i keep finding better weapons and i have to decide between throwing shit away or just coming back later
 
Hmm that's a good point. I do end up throwing weapons away sometimes. But I'm afraid I'll break my good weapons and only find lame weapons as replacements.
 
Nabber said:
people get so concerned about wasting weapons and meanwhile i have a problem in that i have too many great weapons and they don't break fast enough

i keep finding better weapons and i have to decide between throwing *bleep* away or just coming back later
Click to expand...

Just don't rely on the Royal Guard weapons for if you want anything that's heavy-hitting, as they have poor durability.
 
I wouldn't really say having too many good weapons is a problem, it's fine to throw out a good weapon in exchange for a great one. It's just a fortunate side effect of killing enemies later in the game since they drop stuff with Attack Up or Durability Up more often. Once you're at that point you never have to worry about running out of good weapons or being in a situation where you need to go find one.
 
I find it's generally a good idea to discard any personal attachment to whatever weapons you're carrying. Train yourself to think of everything as disposable trash, no matter how fancy it is. That way you won't feel bad about leaving anything behind.

The way I manage my inventory is generally: I have one fire-elemental weapon so I can light something without wasting fire arrows or going into the menu for flint, one torch for puzzles, one hammer-type weapon for breaking stones, and when I'm planning to use rafts one korok leaf. The rest is expendable and if a new useful/strong weapon is thrown in, the least useful weapon gets thrown out, regardless of what it is or how cool it would be in a different game.

The first time I went there, I was very ill-equipped regarding hearts and stamina upgrades. I whittled down the Hinox with bombs, which took so long and was so monotonous that my attention eventually slipped and I accidentally blew myself up. So that was fun.

The second time, I was better prepared and was committed to pull this off with cunning and precision. Then I realized that you can very easily cheese the entire quest with Urbosa's Fury. So that was anticlimactic.

Also, it seems like I am missing the last 15 shrines. Apparently there's also 9 more shrine quests I'm missing. I feel like I've talked to everyone in all the settlements/stables. Maybe they're time sensitive.
 
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