Haven't been ao addicted since childhood (Zelda)

Ok so I played the first few hours of Breath of the Wild about a week ago. Then I thought it was just overrated and it seemed just like an average game. Gave it a break then came back to it. After getting about 6 hours in I became so addicted!! This game is massive! The music just engulfs me and the scenery are weather are just amazing. I haven't experienced this level of joy in a game since I was a kid. Somehow this game is a complete breath of fresh air to me. Sooooo damn good. I'm happy and excited to play it every time and I have so much left to play and explore. I've seen some reviewers judge it after a few hours like i did but I urge u to keep going. One of the rare games that just keeps getting better and better the longer you play. Just had to make a post about this cuz i rarely post a new thread here but Zelda earned it. Best Zelda game ever no contest and The Wind Waker held the title for a long time with me. Play this game!

inb4blogitlock

Yeah, I was the same way. I wasn't too impressed with the first few hours. Wasn't bad, just didn't seem to be all that. But the next day it really sunk its teeth in and just kept getting better and better from there. It's nice when a game really oozes a sense of wonder the way it does. I haven't felt that way about a game since Demons Souls.

Still have to get this for the WiiU. Oh blog and all that crap.

I dont like games there weapons break, so i skipping this zelda.

@aroxx_ab: Yeah, i hate when it happens in real life too.

Agreed TC, the game is insanely addicting. I think ill be playing for awhile.

Just played through the first Divine Beast. Damn that was exciting!

Yeah the game does take a few hours to really hook you.

Though TBH I think I've gotten to the point where that hook is vanishing. I still might try to find all shrines but we'll see if I stick with that. I'm certainly as hell not going for 900 Korok seeds.

As great as BotW has been, I do hope they reign it on the scale and content for the next Zelda title. Not saying they have to drop it down back to OoT or TP levels (though I wouldn't be against that either TBH), just maybe not as stupidly huge as BotW...

...

its a game you know?

Yeah I feel the exact same. I want to discover every secret and experiment everything. I feel like I could keep playing this game for months.

I'm still in the first phase; guess I'll keep plugging away. Doesn't help that I just found my first motion-based shrine puzzle (f*cking kill me).

@aroxx_ab: lol, have fun not playing one of the best games ever for a shit reason.

having played for a while my biggest knock against the game is the lack of traditional, thematic dungeons. i thought shrines were a nice replacement at first but now i find them repetitive. the puzzles themselves are mostly great and some are pretty ingenious, but after a while it becomes grating seeing the same entrance/exit animations, hearing the same music, seeing the same visual layout... i would have preferred to see less shrines that were more well-hidden with better rewards and a return to the traditional large dungeon (8+) setup.

overall though the game is fantastic.

Would love to play this! Just would be nice if the Switch would offer some kind of achievement/trophy system. I'm always a sucker for those...lol

I'm glad you're enjoying it. :)

I'm loving it too! It's the first game to immerse me in its world in quite a while too.

It's a beautiful, joyful and addictive game alright. It gives me "classic Zelda feeling" that I got from Link to the Past, Ocarina, and Windwaker, but not so much from TP or SS on Wii.

Shhhhh, it took me 14 years of bitching to get a Zelda more open than Windwaker, don't make me go back to N64 design, please!

@locopatho: Wind Waker had a wonderful overworld. I wish the dungeons were as exciting otherwise it would be one of my favorite Zelda games to play. Still one of the best uses of visuals and music in the series.

I mean, I'm not saying they should completely ditch what they did with BotW. By all mean keep all the pyshics stuff and the survivability elements. By all means I like that there was greater weapon variety (albeit maybe they could find a way to encourage using the weapons without making them break? Maybe handle weapons in the next Zelda like they handled armor in BotW?). Nintendo has a great base to work with with BotW and would like to see a good amount of it's elements to return. I just found the size of the game + some of the less interesting/more chore-like quests + as princeofshapeir said how redundant the shrines are and how samey the divine beasts are to kind of wear on me a bit the more I played.

And that said the older Zelda formulas are perfectly fine as well and I don't exactly want to see Nintendo completely ditch what made Zelda gain the legacy it got in the first place. As great as BotW is, there is a certain "conciseness" or "flow" that older titles had that I did find myself missing while playing BotW. So yeah, I do feel the 3D Zelda formula is still fine, It's just a matter of not botching the pacing like they did with the last few 3D Zeldas before BotW.

@DJ-Lafleur: I think weapon durability encourages experimentation. There wouldn't be much point in having any other weapon except the strongest if they didn't break. I feel something special would be lost if the durability system wasn't there. I think for the next game, it could be revised by means of expanding on the durability system - maybe by introducing a means of repairing weapons but making those tools expensive or challenging to come by.

I also think it was a good idea moving on from the formula that has been a dominant foundation of most Zelda titles since Ocarina of Time. They have done it well multiple times now. I don't think it's necessary to continue doing it. Moving on to something else was something I felt Zelda really needed.

Yeah dungeons could have been better. But sailing around that gorgeous overworld just melts me, it's pure joy :D

@DJ-Lafleur: Yeah fair points. I adore open worlds so wouldn't want them to go back. But I can see your view.

@locopatho: It instills a wonderful sense of adventure. :) The music and aesthetics of that game just hit the nail on the head.

I always think of replaying it but then I remember that the play experience wasn't as fun as the visual and audio experience and I decide against it. :(

I didn't mind the open world necesarily. I just hope they add more in terms of main story/main dungeons and make more quests like the shrine quests, or make side quests more like they did in Majora's Mask or even Skyward Sword, and less of the "collect x amount of y" stuff. And maybe make the world somewhat smaller. Not asking for them to drastically shrink it or anything.

That I can agree in. As Nintendo's first open world game in a long time (Xeno is a different team or whatever, right?) I think they did a fantastic job, but they could certainly build on it and add to it for the next one.

For now though, for the first time in a very long time, I am just perfectly happy with Zelda :P Earn your rest Nintendo, I don't expect another one til the 2020s :P

I get that with weapon durability, I just wonder if they can;'find a way to give us that weapon variety and experimentation in another way. Like how clothing/armor was handled in BotW, make it so weapons/tools all have their advantages and disadvantages. Maybe lanes work better against certain enemies than other ones, Even if there wasn't a durability system I could have seen myself using the fire rod alot to use against ice enemies and vice versa. Maybe some enemies can only be defeated with larger weapons like axes or large swords, etc. Also like armor the weapons could be upgraded multiple levels (also similar to swords in AlttP and ALBW)

I'm okay with them moving onto something different with BotW, and while I'm being critical of the game now, I should say that I do like the game quite alot and did find it to hook me more than a good amount of other single player stuff I've played in recent times. I just don't think it's the most amazing game ever, or even my favorite Zelda (it's be high-ish up there though).

@DJ-Lafleur: There's also to consider the level of freedom the game offers. Imagine sneaking your way through the game and finding a very powerful weapon early on? A durability system means you get your reward for being creative but can't just plow through the early stages of the game with an overpowered weapon.

Other titles such as The Witcher 3 lock the player from using strong weapons behind the leveling system but then this takes away from the idea of getting a weapon as a reward, and limits the level of freedom.

I'd prefer the durability to be revised and introduce counter-measures rather than get rid of it entirely.

Gonna probably be my GOTY, unless Mario can beat it.

If it's the infamous motion controlled maze (in Hateno I guess?), just unplug your controllers and use the right one to flip the whole maze upside down, let the ball drop, get it to position and paddle awayy!

The game is amazing. As you and others said, it does take a bit to really get going, especially with the beginning "tutorial" ish area. Once you get passed the Great Plateau, shit gets great. Once you go explore the different areas of the map, it's beautiful. It's amazing how much they fit into this game, and how different the areas can be.

People try to hate on it for weapon durability too, but it's really a non-issue. In the beginning I hated it too, but as you progress, there are so many weapons available to you that breaking weapons doesn't matter. It really helps to force you to try different weapons too. I also feel like whenever I'm "saving" a weapon for a harder occasion, that it just sits in the inventory and I never use it. I end up saving it for nothing.

For the maze, you don't need to unplug your controller or anything. Just trigger the puzzle with the controllers upside down. Like, holding the controller upside down, then press A to start it, then just hold your controllers normally and it's easy peasy. I did that puzzle in one swing.

Not sure I'd agree that is necessarily a good thing. You could get a weapon that scales appropriately to your level. In some RPG's weapons can automatically scale upwards like the player, in most MMO's the player can transmute the skins of armor and weapons over to whatever they please.

Having shit break is just annoying, and giving the player a massively, massively overpowered weapon for any period of time is arguably bad. Jim Sterling was right. It was brave of him to voice out what ass-kissers weren't and the DDOS attacks on his site rather than attack his opinion, seemed to validate this.

Well yea, it was brave. He probably knew both the he would be hated that his site would get taken offline with the (frankly) embarrassing Zelda fanboys, and that it went against the grain of current reviewers conditioned of being told "This series is great" to have any modicum of objectivity, and most likely in Nintendo's pocket as they 100% needed a killer title to sell Switches, because the console itself is terrible.

A distanced, objective approach, treating it exactly as any other title, was exactly what was needed. And he was one of the only to provide it. While he's disliked now, retrospect will gradually adopt similar thinking as we move from unrealistic expectation coupled with narrow-minded validation to clear, concise objectivity.

The first few hours are not designed to impress but to provide you the tools and get you familiar with the game. What comes after, to me, has no equal in gaming. I'm 90h into the game and I feel like the game keeps incredibly fresh and every day it somehow surprises me. The feeling of discovery and adventure is almost magical.

At the end of a hard day at work it's a bless to be engulfed in that reality.

I like it. Liked in Far Cry 2 as well. You have to constantly refresh your arsenal and adapt to new circumstances. It's good fun, you can never just relax into using an uber weapon for 50 hours.

@uninspiredcup: I don't agree with him. I think giving the player a good reward for being creative their thinking but making sure that they use that reward appropriately and it doesn't break the game is a good thing.

I also don't find the weapon breaking all that annoying. People generally don't seem to like it for two things

1. Because it takes away a reward you already obtained

2. Because you have to swap to another weapon every time it happens.

Those are understandable complaints, but I am preferring it over sifting through all my equipment to find the best item, finding rewards that don't exceed my best weapon (making only half the rewards interesting) as well as not really utilizing the quantity of an inventory system. I disagree with Jim Sterling.

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I mean, I'm looking at other sources who have held the series in a critical light and despite this have still praised Breath of the Wild (like Mark Brown) or even from my perspective who disliked quite a heavy number of contemporary Zelda games but again, still liked Breath of the Wild. Personally, I feel Jim's critiques of the game were a little too shallow to be presentably thought provoking.

Another post that shows that Nintendo doesn't have anything but nostalgia

"Since I was a kid"

Once again the rose colored glasses come on

But usually in modern RPG's weapons are color tiered , automatically organized, automatically sold for better items or in certain cases scraped for crafting materials where the player can craft their own customized weapon. Even older RPG's added item bags to condense items.

In general, even if a weapon is vastly inferior junk, a well designed RPG will allow it to contribute in some manner towards something better.

In Zelda it just breaks. And then you use something else, and that breaks. Then the next thing breaks. Then more breaking.

@uninspiredcup: Exactly. So you spend a whole lot of time sifting through menus, bulk selling bad ones and then only keeping good ones. Constantly having to manage redundant items in favor of the minority of useful items and it can get quite hectic if you don't keep track of this. I'm playing Xenoblade Chronicles right now and the amount of useless stuff clogging up my inventory is overwhelming. They are ranked, you can sort them but you still have to tap 'A' repeatedly at a story to sell all this useless junk. Yes you can still use these as a means of getting currency or blending them to make a better weapon but it's still some elicits some micro management of menus.

There is a nice cycle in Breath of the Wild of using a weapon and replacing it during combat. It's fluid and keeps the number of items you have at a manageable, useful number. It's not as though you can't hold onto a weapon and sell it. You can but again this is a resource you manage on its health. I mean personally, I'm looking at Bethesda games and thinking that I really don't care what is in my inventory until it's full. Typically I only use 5 weapons that have ammo and then the other 15+ I have are just junk taking up space that I'll have to bother with later.

@Jaysonguy: The Zelda games when I was a kid (Link To The Past, Ocarina Of Time) were the best games ever made though. Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword never came close to their quality, yet this new one does.

Explain that?

But I'm not sifting, it has an organize button and colors. 5 seconds.

In Zelda, use weapon for 5 seconds. repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair. repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair. . repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair. repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair. repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair. repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair. . repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair. repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.repair, repair, repair, repair.

Or buy a new one, because it broke.

@uninspiredcup: I'm not sure because I've never repaired a weapon in BoTW. If it breaks, I replace it.

I spend an awful lot of time digging through items in Bethesda RPGs and the small amount of time I do it in BoTW is a slog through. Even with sorting functions, it's not fun gameplay.

This idea though that people cannot enjoy Breath of the Wild for what it is and must like it only because it's Zelda and Jim Sterling is the only honest person to review is completely unfair though. It's the very idea of gamers who can't understand that perspectives are different in video games and elements of games effect people in all kinds of ways. It's a total myth. I mean, he brings up some reasonable points that I understand people agreeing with (and some points in dire need of perspective and explanation).

That is factually false. You are forced to use weapons you don't want to use because the weapons you would prefer to use broke or will break. A game that encourages experimentation would reward gamers for trying different weapons. The latter sentence also does not have any validity because if a game has a strong combat mechanic and well designed enemies the concept of strongest weapon would not be present but best weapon for the job would be more prominent. The existing durability mechanic encourages weapon hording and limits weapon use because when the gamer gets a good weapon they don't want said weapon to break so they use the weapon less and not more. They are also less likely to experiment because of the same weapon durability.

It's an incredible, incredible game, and I have sunk almost 90 hours into it.

Glad you are enjoying it!

Bethesda's shuffling is primarily due to terrible UI design. Had they used a traditional grid system (which can be modded in) as opposed to a single list system, with 1/5 of the screen used on nothing, no sifting.

It's also up to the players discretion, since Bethesdas worlds are far, far more interactive and immersive than Zeldas, that anything almost anything can be picked up.

While Bethesda's game also have a problem with balance, it is much more flexible than Zelda when it comes to combat, rather than punishing the player, it will constantly reward them, once a tier is hit to mastery, they are free to take up and entirely new class from scratch.

It essenailly resets the game, mid game, to keep it fresh. all in all, quite ingenuous, promoting player curiosity, keeping them engaged for hundreds of hours rather than arbitrarily punishing them after reaching the crescendo.

This is very misleading to anyone who has not played the game. Its not fluid at all. It is factually breaks the pacing when your weapon breaks. The player is left with two options. They find a weapon on the floor mid combat or they scroll through their weapons to find the next weapon they can use. That is not fluid in the slightest. A fluid system that is design for weapon breakage would automatically switch to the next weapon instead. It would also have systems that would allow the player to use weapons based on certain criteria such as weakest to the strongest or strongest to the weakest etc.

Also BOTW inventory system is rather mediocre. You collect so many things and the navigation of the menu is far from stellar. Don't get me started on the terrible implementation of the cooking system. It is by far the most cumbersome cooking mechanic I have encountered in a game.

This is one of the many things that make Bethesda games so attractive regardless of the amount of hate it receives.

@Pedro: I don't agree with you.

If the weapons didn't break, there would be a complacency to just use the weapon with the highest stats. This is less an artifact of weapons not having durable and more an artifact of giving weapons a numeric value.

The game still scales, so the difference between your weapons stays consistent as you proceed through the game. You get a bunch of weapons in your inventory that you can manage for different situations. However, the game ensures that you don't abuse this advantage such that it is required that you experiment with different strategies in overcoming a problem.

Why would I solve a problem in any other way than using the best thing I have? Making it so that advantage is precious means that the player needs to think creatively in solving a problem. If you use a bad spear instead then you're going to have to think creatively in taking out a group of weaker enemies, such that you don't waste your stronger weapon on them.

"he latter sentence also does not have any validity because if a game has a strong combat mechanic and well designed enemies the concept of strongest weapon would not be present but best weapon for the job would be more prominent." Except that's how plenty of video games that aren't Breath of the Wild are designed. :P

Breath of the Wild, however does have weapons that are technically weaker than your strongest weapon but have a type advantage. (Fire rods kill ice enemies in one hit). Appropriating your weapons for different situations is important. More important because of the item's approach to ammunition. It's similar in the way there are different ammo types in Fallout better for some enemies. That ammo and that advantage is also a limited resource.

Lots of games give the player constant advantages that they just need to discover and exploit but BoTW (and Fallout games) put limitations on those advantages to ensure the player is being clever with the tools they have.

@uninspiredcup: I kind of like this about Bethesda games but I also feel, like you said that the games suffer huge balancing problems because you're not entirely correct. The classes do not reset. You still keep the rewards of the previous class, meaning you're not effectively roleplaying one thing but roleplaying everything. If I want to take a stealth approach, there are still no limitations on me of benefiting from the rewards of a soldier approach; meaning that I am just a God with all the benefits of every class and all it takes is extra time to achieve this. Best at alchemy, archery, stealth and everything to push the player into perpetual player empowerment. It's fun because people like rewards and people like to win. It's the equivalent of Call of Duty kill streaks but it isn't necessarily roleplaying. Fallout 4 did it better in putting perks down a list but Skyrim was a crazy system.

It gives you all the choices rather than designing problems around the player's choice.

@princeofshapeir: I admit I do miss the large unique dungeons. The Devine beast dungeons should have been more unique. Hopefully the next one will be better