Nintendo Getting into Zelda

[turkey]

One my friends loaned me Breath of the Wild when he got ToTK. Outside of smash bros and a little bit of Ocarina I never got into Zelda but man this game is a lot of fun. I’m only on my second Divine Beast but I spent a lot of time shrine hunting and messing around.

Better late than never to the party. I’m willing to take any tips but easy on the spoilers!

 

[Raine]

My only tip would just be the standard "climb the towers to make the map visible" thing typical of open world games. Otherwise, highly recommend continuing to just do things at your own pace and in your own style without worrying too much. Maybe grab a map from the internet showing the locations of all of the Shrines at most, just so you can glance at it every now and again if you haven't stumbled upon one for a while. The puzzles in there are more akin to what I would typically want in these games, but aren't always the easiest thing to find even with the in-game locator.

Spent two solid weeks in a hotel room with the game, and didn't scratch the surface of what all it has beyond the critical story path. When you feel like your time with the game is coming to an end, I think the internet is generally in agreement to then look up how to find the Tarrey Town questline if you haven't already by then. That's what I did; it was a nice enough send-off.

 

[Spiner202]

I spent a lot of time shrine hunting and messing around.

This is the best way to play BOTW. Even in an era where I'm racing to complete games because there are so many out there, no game has instilled such a sense of exploration and wonder as BOTW (and Tears of the Kingdom).

There really are no rules in this game, so just do whatever you want until you get bored or stuck, and then go back to the main quest line.

That said, I beat TOTK tonight and learned something new that I missed in the game. It's a bit tricky to look things up without spoilers, but I think these games throw a lot of mechanics/information at you, and you will definitely miss some of it. I don't have a solution, but more of a heads-up that there's no shame in looking something up.

 

[turkey]

There really are no rules in this game, so just do whatever you want until you get bored or stuck, and then go back to the main quest line.

I actually stumbled back into the main line by mistake. Accidentally found Sidon and got dragged into the divine beast.

 

[Tirith]

I'll be 100% honest with ya'll. My switch has 250+ hours of playtime on TotK (and I literally just beat the game finally), but only 80 on BotW... Keep in mind though, I initially got BotW on WiiU.

 

[Quagmire]

Better late than never to the party. I’m willing to take any tips but easy on the spoilers!

Given it's Zelda, there arent much ,most follow very similar story beats other than Majora's Mask and Link's Awakening

 

[Raposuh]

Do NOT try to find all the koroks. There's a reason there's hundreds of them, and it's so you can find enough to upgrade your stuff without having to hunt every single one down.

Also if you cook in the 30 minutes before or after a blood moon your meal gets a bonus to either the time of its effect or how many hearts it restores.

 

[turkey]

Do NOT try to find all the koroks. There's a reason there's hundreds of them, and it's so you can find enough to upgrade your stuff without having to hunt every single one down.

Also if you cook in the 30 minutes before or after a blood moon your meal gets a bonus to either the time of its effect or how many hearts it restores.

I’ve been running into those, found like 30. One of my friends told me I can upgrade inventory and stuff when I find a guy or something to do that.

Definitely gonna do that next blood moon.

 

[Raposuh]

Oh, there's also lots of important quests along the main roads of the game. I know it's open world and the inclination is to just fuck off and claim every mountain, but you'll find lots of neat stuff just letting your horse follow the roads around.

 

[turkey]

Oh, there's also lots of important quests along the main roads of the game. I know it's open world and the inclination is to just fuck off and claim every mountain, but you'll find lots of neat stuff just letting your horse follow the roads around.

…I spent like 30 minutes fucking around on mountains yesterday.

 

[Raine]

I'll be 100% honest with ya'll. My switch has 250+ hours of playtime on TotK (and I literally just beat the game finally), but only 80 on BotW... Keep in mind though, I initially got BotW on WiiU.

I think I ended up around 80-90 hours on BotW myself, including letting the game idle to replenish the Master Sword's energy because I goddamn cannot stand weapon degradation mechanics in games, and doing roaming and questing and such within reason. I think I got most, or maybe even all, of the armor sets just for giggles as well.

I'm not super into exploration for the sake of exploration, so if you've got that inclination I can see it being (much) higher, but yeah. General ballpark.

 

[Tirith]

Do NOT try to find all the koroks. There's a reason there's hundreds of them, and it's so you can find enough to upgrade your stuff without having to hunt every single one down.

Also if you cook in the 30 minutes before or after a blood moon your meal gets a bonus to either the time of its effect or how many hearts it restores.

Same effect as using a golden apple in cooking. Hint hint

Totk, I couldnt put down for a while, but I had to beat it before FF16 arrived

 

[Jawneh]

I'll be 100% honest with ya'll. My switch has 250+ hours of playtime on TotK (and I literally just beat the game finally), but only 80 on BotW... Keep in mind though, I initially got BotW on WiiU.

Same. Granted, I did also watch plenty of streams of people playing BotW so that maybe ruined a bit of it for me, or the very least lead to boredom way faster. Idk how many hours I'm into TotK, but somewhere around 200 for sure to less than 100 for BotW. It just feels and plays better too.

 

[Squall_Lionheart]

i absiolutely adored BOTW and poured over 100 hours into it. this was 6 years ago, and i had been eagerly awaiting TOTK

my first 30 hours of TOTK were great! i was having a great time and i much prefer the new mechanics to BOTW. however, for some reason, i have hit a wall. my desire to continue playing disappeared, and all of the fatigue i felt towards the end of BOTW came rushing back.

i got bored of exploring the same places i had in BOTW. i got bored of crafting things. i got bored of exploring the sky/underground areas. i also got bored of walking around trying to find out what to do. TOTK feels a lot less focused and more "sandbox" than BOTW - and the lack of direction seems to have really got to me. not to mention the storyline, which i feel is lacking in general.

in all rights, i should be loving this game. but every time i pick it back up, i suddently feel exhausted, like playing it is a chore.

can anyone relate?

 

[Raine]

in all rights, i should be loving this game. but every time i pick it back up, i suddently feel exhausted, like playing it is a chore.

can anyone relate?

This happens to me a lot as well. I think it's a subcategory of Option Paralysis - you have complete freedom to do whatever the hell you want, but you're unable to specifically choose something and instead get frustrated and/or opt to do nothing. I simply don't think I am compatible with the Immersive Sim genre for this reason, and I can only force my way through most Open World games if they have system-level achievements or a literal checklist I can just poke at. The asset reuse probably just speeds up the process.

As an alternative way of thinking about it, Metal Gear Solid 2's tanker mission is preferable to me than Grand Theft Auto 3's Liberty City. Or the somewhat more modern take I used for a different thread, give me Arkham Asylum and I'll pass on Arkham City.

 

[Jawneh]

can anyone relate?

A little, although I got a lot further into TotK than you did. I think it's the fact that you can just heck off for a few hundred hours of the game to do anything but the main story but also at the same time be frustrated thanks to having all these things to do but not much structure to it. Maybe better said by Warp up there (I had half of this drafted this morning on my phone before I hecked off to make my coffee lol).

I think the whole map also plays partially into it too. Even though everything is very nicely build, detailed, and polished with only some areas looking completely bare and boring, other than random shrines, hidden koroks, and a stray lynel, there really is not much to do in a lot of the places. When you get enough good weapons and monster parts, you start avoiding most enemies since there's no point in ruining your nice lynel horn weapons. When you realize how great the hoverbike is you just make that and zoom everywhere. Boss monster hunting is also a slight grind and those tend to occupy a decent area of the map. The only real neat places are towns, areas around stables for quests, special shrines, all the temple things, maybe half of sky islands, and maybe wells. Depths exploration was actually fun IMO when you had to go around in the dark, but there's not much to do there either other than more boss monsters and lightroots. :/ But it's also a problem they can't fix easily as TotK and BotW are very different open world lite RPG adventure games. They'd have to spend another year or two making special content for A LOT of areas, which is worse since the explorable map size went up over 100% for TotK.

So it's a weird problem of somewhat useful and meaningful content void in a wonderfully crafted open world. And unless there's a completionist itch you really want to keep on scratching, you might not get much out of the optional stuff. Which then bleeds into boredom if you also do no feel like heading towards the main quest route.

 

[Raine]

When you realize how great the hoverbike is you just make that and zoom everywhere.

Well, there goes even more interest in playing TotK this decade.

Final Fantasy XI has one of the best exploration-oriented experiences I have ever had. The simple addition - "Quality of Life Improvement" - of being able to get on and off of a mount at your leisure completely destroyed every aspect of it.

 

[Jawneh]

Well, there goes even more interest in playing TotK this decade.

To be honest, I knew it existed fairly early on, like within week 1 of launch, but ignored it for a long time until ended up feeling frustrated about climbing up things using other zonai things that were put there to use. Just easier and more convenient to use the bike. Poor horses though. :/ Especially with more fancy ones now.

 

[Squall_Lionheart]

This happens to me a lot as well. I think it's a subcategory of Option Paralysis - you have complete freedom to do whatever the hell you want, but you're unable to specifically choose something and instead get frustrated and/or opt to do nothing. I simply don't think I am compatible with the Immersive Sim genre for this reason, and I can only force my way through most Open World games if they have system-level achievements or a literal checklist I can just poke at. The asset reuse probably just speeds up the process.

As an alternative way of thinking about it, Metal Gear Solid 2's tanker mission is preferable to me than Grand Theft Auto 3's Liberty City. Or the somewhat more modern take I used for a different thread, give me Arkham Asylum and I'll pass on Arkham City.

yeah, and this is especially a problem when i've just finished work, am tired, and just want to play a game where i feel like i can achieve something in an hour or so. with TOTK, i could play for an hour, feel i've achieved nothing, and it kind of feels like i wasted my time

but i never felt that with Elden Ring. in fact, Elden Ring was one of the best game i've ever played, and that was open world. hm

 

[Tirith]

While I understand everyone has their own opinions, I fail to understand the hype over Elden Ring.

 

[Raine]

I'm quite interested in trying Elden Ring - after, uh, y'know, playing a (all of the) SoulsBorne first - but I could see the danger element being a big factor. That's part of why I loved exploring in FF11. It was great to go out and look around and whatnot, sure, but also: If you made a wrong turn, you were monster chow. It's pretty rare to have both a large explorable space/world and a lot of danger, usually it's one or the other.

Like I don't know about TotK, but in BotW standard enemies weren't dangerous. Just annoying. And the bigger things that were dangerous you usually had to go out of your way to engage.

 

[Tirith]

Only newer enemies in TotK are Gleeoks and Gloom Hands. Gleeoks are 3 headed dragons that once you figure out are cake, and gloom hands always suck.

 

[Squall_Lionheart]

I'm quite interested in trying Elden Ring - after, uh, y'know, playing a (all of the) SoulsBorne first - but I could see the danger element being a big factor. That's part of why I loved exploring in FF11. It was great to go out and look around and whatnot, sure, but also: If you made a wrong turn, you were monster chow. It's pretty rare to have both a large explorable space/world and a lot of danger, usually it's one or the other.

Like I don't know about TotK, but in BotW standard enemies weren't dangerous. Just annoying. And the bigger things that were dangerous you usually had to go out of your way to engage.

elden ring - and other souls games - are hard but fair. there are ways to approach each enemy and you have to be prepared. exploring is always fraught with danger and you never know what will be around the next corner. however, the enemies in TOTK are kind of boring. the combat isn't great, either. it's just stabby stabby slashy slashy, trying not to degrade my best weapons. exploring is sometimes fun but, as we talked about before, the world feels kind of empty, with copy paste enemies which aren't fun to kill. plus, there is a point to kill enemies in elden ring - you can level up. in zelda, the loot you get is mostly useless and you don't level up, of course

and yes, those gloom hands are just plain annoying

 

[Raine]

however, the enemies in TOTK are kind of boring. the combat isn't great, either. it's just stabby stabby slashy slashy, trying not to degrade my best weapons.

I mean I wasn't going to bring it up, but yes. Combat in 3D Zelda games is... not great, indeed. Possible exception for Skyward Sword with the Wiimote, maybe. Never actually got around to playing that. Lots of great things about the games - up to and including puzzles within combat - but the actual fighting? Nah.

I'm not sure if weapon degradation, lack of reward or boredom caused me to avoid enemies more in BotW. Ostensibly the only benefit to better weapons is that trash mobs die faster, so using trash weapons to fight trash mobs (that drop trash weapons) is slower but not really an issue. Still, I really just couldn't be bothered honestly. Kinda fun in its own way figuring out how to avoid enemies in tighter pathways, or the handful of times you can actually use things like burning grass to dispose of them instead.

 

[Squall_Lionheart]

i don't mind the weapon degradation actually. it adds something different. but it is, admittedly, a bit boring constantly making new weapons. same with cooking. i wish there was an "auto" feature for that. but yeah, you're right, it just comes down to "i can't be bothered". exploring, fighting, crafting, doing side quests. i just can't be bothered

 

[Tirith]

Possible exception for Skyward Sword with the Wiimote, maybe.

I literally just found my wii/wii u games, and hooked up the wii u to start this one again. Tried to play HD switch version on my steam deck, but it's not the same