The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - May 12th, 2023

[Emperoreddy]

Got all the glyphs and whoa the story got crazy.

Now to get the Master Sword

 

[Randy Butternubs]

Lol I'm hoping to simply finish my second temple tonight.

Turns out I did an unintentional sequence break. But it also turns out I have more main quest than I expected. MAYBE this weekend I'll complete the main story.

What else is there in the depths beside battery upgrades? I feel no inclination to explore the depths. I don't like not being able to tell what I'm walking towards. So I've spent probably 35 minutes total down there out of the 65-70 hours I've spent on the game.

I've also had no trouble getting around the sky islands without any battery upgrades.

Yeah, lots of good loot down there.

 

[ChaoticOrange]

Turns out I did an unintentional sequence break. But it also turns out I have more main quest than I expected. MAYBE this weekend I'll complete the main story.



Yeah, lots of good loot down there.

Lots of loot, lots of bomb flowers and muddle buds which are hard to come by anywhere else (also puffshrooms but I never seem to run out of those)

Plus some seriously tough fights.

 

[Randy Butternubs]

Wow holy f*** at that ending.

 

[x Tame Impala]

The fusion system for weapons is really growing on me. It’s a stroke of genius in terms of game design. I’m still selling all my blue-tiered parts but there’s incentive to kill tough enemies and build the best weapons now.

 

[Turin]

This is such a massive improvement on BOTW and I only just left the tutorial area

 

[Emperoreddy]

so two weeks later and i only just beat the Water Temple tonight. Also got the Master Sword.

Only Gerudo left. Im not sure if i should just bulldoze through the Gerudo temple or to pause and do some side quests. Everyone keeps talking how pirates down near Lurelin village.

Quickly getting to 100 hours.

I also need to find the pieces of the Barbarian and Climber's set that I'm missing at minimum.

I have to say the weapons menu is bugging me by saying I can't expand it anymore despite a full empty row just sitting there. Damn you Hestu

 

[Unholy Diver]

took a little break for 2-3 days, played some MLB the show to refresh as I felt a little like I had lost some direction and just found myself wandering and not really accomplishing anything

about 60 hours in, have done 3 of the temples, been doing a lot of side stuff, jumping back in tonight and for the foreseeable future

 

[Randy Butternubs]

I thought I was mostly going to be done with the game after completing the main story as I'm not much of a gamer anymore.

But the last few nights I've just been knocking out side quests. I also want to find all of the stables and do all of the newspaper quests. Right now I'm working on main Tarrey Town quest.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Finally made it to the Gerudo and now the whole map is revealed.

Think I will do the temple here and then do some sidequesting and armor enhancing

 

[Voodoo Child]

I picked it and a Switch up last night so I’m behind the curve and jacked about four hours into it last night. I just did the Rewind Shrine.

It was gonna be hard to replicate the sheer wonder of BOTW but this game is knocking on the door.

Loving the sky over world and music even if navigation is a bit of a chore. Not in love with the return of the Korok seeds and what I’ve seen from weapon durability.

The new mechanics are mostly solid. Ultra hand is kind of a weak link there because I feel it’s a little cumbersome but fuse, ascent and rewind are all great new additions.

Looking forward to being kept busy for 6-12 weeks with it.

 

[Jovavic]

Ultrahand does get a bit unwieldy when you attach a bunch of long pieces to make a bridge.

I've done the four temples and now I'm just wandering around looking for shrines, I'm up to 76, and trying to figure out how to get up to the castle.

 

[Turin]

Im a pretty big fan of weapon durability to be honest. Especially with fuse being a thing now. Keeps you on your toes and inspires you to get creative. It just simply doesn’t make sense to have weapons you can just use forever in this particular gameplay loop. However if I had one criticism it would be that Link has no recourse when his weapons break without you going to a menu and selecting a new one. At least have some sort of melee animation.

 

[Voodoo Child]

Im a pretty big fan of weapon durability to be honest. Especially with fuse being a thing now. Keeps you on your toes and inspires you to get creative. It just simply doesn’t make sense to have weapons you can just use forever in this particular gameplay loop. However if I had one criticism it would be that Link has no recourse when his weapons break without you going to a menu and selecting a new one. At least have some sort of melee animation.

My issue with the durability isn’t that it’s there - I completely get where you’re coming from, but that it’s more or less the exact same.

Why should a 4 wooden stick and a 25 sword break after the same amount of swings? There should be ways to repair or hold onto broken weapons.

And it leads to me doing basically exactly what I did in BOTW; ‘I’d better hold onto this 45 sword for when I need it…’, which I then break it and five other weapons against a Lynel.

It feels like they shoehorned in the weapon decay into the story so people would shut up about it.

I hear you on the switch out animation.

Those and the Koroks (who are even more tedious this time) are my only issues.

Music, enemy variety, exploration and shrines have all got a big bump. I’m enjoying the hell out of it so far.

 

[Soedy]

Just finished the main story in 35-40 hours according to my switch. Such a great game, on to the side quests. The ones I've done so far were interesting.

 

[Emperoreddy]

Ultrahand does get a bit unwieldy when you attach a bunch of long pieces to make a bridge.

I've done the four temples and now I'm just wandering around looking for shrines, I'm up to 76, and trying to figure out how to get up to the castle.

It's actually really simple to get up there.

 

[Emperoreddy]

I've noticed the game seems pretty generous in giving you durability bonuses on the better weapons you loot medium and late game, which I think balances things better

 

[Jovavic]

It's actually really simple to get up there.

Yea, I thought the lookout tower was further away for some reason. Just blasted my way up and glided over.

 

[Turin]

I just beat the 1st temple and I've already had more fun than all of BOTW, which I liked but wasn't entirely absorbed in - it took me until 2019 to beat Ganon despite having gotten the game day 1. The map is also completely unfamiliar to me in terms of on-the-ground exploration despite it being the same map. which is nice since that was my main concern heading into the game. Caves, wells, the depths and sky islands really keep the world engaging moment to moment.

Also there is something bizarrely satisfying about Ascend. I could Ascend all damn day.

 

[No Fun Shogun]

Close to 100 hours into this game, and it still feels like I'm only scratching the surface of what it has to offer.

Still intentionally not reading or watching anything about this game (including other posts here) to be as blind as possible to maximize my enjoyment. My take so far is that given BotW already felt like it was maxing out the Switch's capabilities, the fact that they were able to cram so much more in remains astonishing to me. I'd say that the narrative seems a bit lazy, especially with the mostly rehashed cutscenes after the main dungeons (I've done three of the four disturbances so far). I look forward to watching videos in a month or two only to discover that I've been completely missing a core gameplay mechanic or a major questline or the like.

But I put close to 300 hours into BotW over two different playthroughs, and they somehow amped up the world more than enough to still feel fresh. As someone that had been actively worrying about not being able to enjoy TotK as much as BotW due to the rehashed world even if they improved almost everything else, they kept the exploration fun while more or less improving just about everything from BotW.

This is honestly a monumental game and justifies my excitement with BotW being an amazing protoype for the future of the franchise. I can only hope we don't have as long as a wait for the next game, but I'll be an extremely happy man if Nintendo keeps this up with the 3D Zelda franchise. BotW was honestly my favorite game ever, and I'm using past tense as I'm thinking TotK has surpassed it.

I miss durians, though, even recognizing that they utterly broke cooking in BotW.

 

[Voodoo Child]

Close to 100 hours into this game, and it still feels like I'm only scratching the surface of what it has to offer.

Still intentionally not reading or watching anything about this game (including other posts here) to be as blind as possible to maximize my enjoyment. My take so far is that given BotW already felt like it was maxing out the Switch's capabilities, the fact that they were able to cram so much more in remains astonishing to me. I'd say that the narrative seems a bit lazy, especially with the mostly rehashed cutscenes after the main dungeons (I've done three of the four disturbances so far). I look forward to watching videos in a month or two only to discover that I've been completely missing a core gameplay mechanic or a major questline or the like.

But I put close to 300 hours into BotW over two different playthroughs, and they somehow amped up the world more than enough to still feel fresh. As someone that had been actively worrying about not being able to enjoy TotK as much as BotW due to the rehashed world even if they improved almost everything else, they kept the exploration fun while more or less improving just about everything from BotW.

This is honestly a monumental game and justifies my excitement with BotW being an amazing protoype for the future of the franchise. I can only hope we don't have as long as a wait for the next game, but I'll be an extremely happy man if Nintendo keeps this up with the 3D Zelda franchise. BotW was honestly my favorite game ever, and I'm using past tense as I'm thinking TotK has surpassed it.

I miss durians, though, even recognizing that they utterly broke cooking in BotW.

Yeah aside from a few tougher shrines I haven’t used YouTube much.

Just finished the Fire Temple, it was okay - great aesthetics and music and a very good boss but too much crafting and backtracking, that and Yunobo just annoys me.

Wind Temple was okay but had a great boss and the Water Temple was excellent but the boss was corny.

Finally at the point where I’m not getting one-shot by high level enemies (except Lynels naturally), Master Sword, all towers and regions, about 80 Korok seeds and 66 shrines. Full stamina, about 13 hearts, but I haven’t done a lot of stuff - I have only unlocked one fairy, have barely been to Kakariko and haven’t been to Gerudo and only found half the depths and a few shrines in the sky.

They managed to freshen it up with a great story but that six years? It should have taken three. About the only things I don’t like are: 1. The Sages sometimes mess up your visibility, 2. Durability is still schizophrenic and it does sometimes feel like recharging the MS takes an inordinate amount of time and 3. I have no problem with deciding to drop the endless bombs - but then you go make bomb flowers super rare.

I’m taking a vacation for a few days tomorrow and am looking forward to getting away a little.

 

[No Fun Shogun]

Beat it last night, took about 125 hours. Still probably have at least a few dozen hours of wandering left in me on this playthrough at least.

All in all, a phenomenal experience. My only real gripe is that the storytelling was pretty shoddy almost all over, but that being said story has always been the least interesting part of games to me even compared to background lore, so being only passable in that department isn’t a major strike in my book.

Hoping they either add some DLC or I find out that I‘ve been missing some major things, as I feel like Nintendo still left a lot off the table despite this game being an amazing technical achievement. If their Zelda formula going forward is to keep adding more to the BotW/TotK model, I’ll be very happy.

Lifting my embargo on reading and watching stuff about this as well.

Oh, and I really need to find efficient ways to make dough in this game. Not as easy mass-selling monster parts to make a fortune and you can spend on a lot more than in BotW.

 

[Turin]

Got the last ability and am finishing up the last temple I'm on (sand) and yea there is literally no reason to ever play BOTW again which is kind of weird to say about something considered an achievement in gaming. Despite being somewhat formulaic I am enjoying the temples a lot more than the divine beasts, which I didn't really enjoy at all. I wish there was more of them.

 

[Voodoo Child]

Got the last ability and am finishing up the last temple I'm on (sand) and yea there is literally no reason to ever play BOTW again which is kind of weird to say about something considered an achievement in gaming. Despite being somewhat formulaic I am enjoying the temples a lot more than the divine beasts, which I didn't really enjoy at all. I wish there was more of them.

You’ve still got one, ahem, ‘temple’ left after that - I suppose it is optional but it helps, but what a wasted opportunity it was - to not use its namesake’s iconic beast of a score.

Spoiler

This one

I suppose it is a ‘soft’ remix - too soft.

152 shrines - I’d have rather had 120 and bigger, badder dungeons even though they were a big jump from the divine beasts.


Almost done myself - the best game I’ve played in the last five years, not that I game super hard anymore or there’s much comp; yeah Ghost of Tsushima was rad and Elden Ring was pretty cool (for a min-maxing, vague sidequesting hit roll roll roll game with a compelling but empty open world). God of War was pretty cool too but not the same level and don’t even start me on Asscreed Odyssey or Valhalla.

Definitely better than BOTW by a margin but it doesn’t dethrone Witcher 3 in my book.

 

[Turin]

You’ve still got one, ahem, ‘temple’ left after that - I suppose it is optional but it helps, but what a wasted opportunity it was - to not use its namesake’s iconic beast of a score.

Spoiler

This one

I suppose it is a ‘soft’ remix - too soft.

152 shrines - I’d have rather had 120 and bigger, badder dungeons even though they were a big jump from the divine beasts.


Almost done myself - the best game I’ve played in the last five years, not that I game super hard anymore or there’s much comp; yeah Ghost of Tsushima was rad and Elden Ring was pretty cool (for a min-maxing, vague sidequesting hit roll roll roll game with a compelling but empty open world). God of War was pretty cool too but not the same level and don’t even start me on Asscreed Odyssey or Valhalla.

Definitely better than BOTW by a margin but it doesn’t dethrone Witcher 3 in my book.

Agreed. Persona 5 Royal and The Witcher 3 are the only games from the last decade (holy crap TW3 came out 8 years ago..) that I’ve really loved and now this one is included there.

Edit: Fire Emblem: Three Houses also.