Gaming Zelda Fans Come Hither...

Well, that was.... Unexpected.

Wind Waker link is indeed a little bastard, the camera can be a git, the game seems to go out of its way to bugger about, but... That Dragon Roost Cavern really is a very nice bit of design work, it looked good 15 years ago and looks better on the remaster:


So, ended up going back, re-doing all the stuff I lost due to the previous rage quit. Yes, I forgot to save, O-K? Then got past the bit that triggered said rage quit, decked the boss and set sail for Forest Haven. On the way, went through a storm at sunset and that looked far better than it ever did on the Cube, very atmospheric and scary - I didn't hang around.


Swore I wasn't going to go any further, before I know it I'm working my way through the Forbidden Woods, getting the boomerang, using the various gadgets to both navigate and fight and then finished off by decking the boss there too.

At this point I decided to save and quit while I'm ahead as there was another, much more recent game to boot up.

Namely The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild...

So, these are very, very cursory impressions so far, but only on five minutes.

First, one thing none of the video reviews managed to indicate is the sheer graphical accomplishment - this is an older system now, but the imagery here manages to give its younger, bigger rivals quite a bit of competition. The world you move around in is always moving - trees, grass, plants, it really is very smart.

I've duffed up a few Goblins, plus ChuChus, gone through about five weapons too and they do handle differently.

All I've done is go from the start to activating the Sheikh Tower, but it's quite the piece of work so far.

It also looks to be one of those games that will become easier as you gain resources, so it'll be hardest now as you start off with bugger all.

It also set up far quicker than expected, that 3GB install file took a few minutes to install but nowhere near as long as I thought, ditto for the Day 1 patch.

For anyone considering the Season Pass, the DLC won't be out until Dec 2017 so there's time for that.

 

So, good news, bad news on Zelda....

• Managed to navigate the frozen hell part of the Great Plateau, do find the atmospheric hazard element to not be that great. Still, did have a Goblin fight where I killed two, then with the other one hanging back shooting arrows, I threw a bomb near an explosive and detonated. Cue mini-holocaust and one very dead Goblin.
• Did the other two trials, got the back story, got the paraglider, which is damn cool.... That's the good.

The bad? Once you get off the Great Plateau the game decides, without telling you, its open season on you! The travel directions you get from the King? Utter *****. If that guy weren't dead, I'd be killing his arse - turns out all the new areas are Zones of Total Death:

• Death 1: Get ambushed by skeletons, walk on slope, find slope is super-sllippy, unlike all the others you've been on to date, get dumped into fast-flowing river, drown.
• Death 2: While fighting Mounted Goblin, get targeted by Bastard Guardian's Laser of Super-Instant-Death. Barbecued. (Oh yeah and all the enemies have the Trump eyesight, it's incredible, you've never seen enemies who can see so far.)

Also, just for the hell of it, between death 1 and 2 it threw in this massive boss that came out of nowhere - I deployed the Rincewind Strategy!

So, went old-school: Very frequent saves, very frequent use of map, eventually made it Karakaiko Village and went and quit while I'm ahead.

Difficulty spike? ****, yes. Rewards from completing the Great Plateau? 1 heart, 1 ****ing heart, cheap ****in' Goddess. I'll take it sure, but it was 4 Spirit Orbs for 1 Heart!

Despite all of that, it does look amazing. In a way navigating to the village was very much akin to a much more lethal version of Xenoblade's wide-open spaces, and yes, some tricks from there were also used.

 

Yeah, when they say this is probably the toughest Zelda game, they are not joking, at all. Its possibly too tough, but that's part of the fun too. At least the quick travel system between shrines and towers makes up for it a little bit, but still, its crazy.

Though my favorite part is probably just running around Hyrule, during the day or the night, watching the wind blow across the grass, shadows from passing clouds, the moon moving across the night sky, seeing the guards change places at different hours of the day, etc. Of course the problem is night is much more dangerous, but still beautiful.

Not to mention climbing lots of places. This is really hard, and I'm probably going to have to consult a guide soon, I'm almost out of ideas on how to progress further. I know what the goals are, but the enemies are the problem. I've run away from a lot, but I can't keep it up. I spent a day or two just trying to find every shrine or tower I could see and finding way to reach them. Makes traveling around Hyrule easier.

The weapon durability system is really annoying, as is the small inventory space.

 

A mixed day, but overall, still very good.

Made the mistake of trying to climb Central Tower, which has at least 3 Guardians, yea, they of the Instant Death Laser, guarding it. Got killed 3 times, gave up.

Did find a host of shrines, which I've activated as fast travel points, but not done yet. In the course of getting to one of those shrines I was starting to view the game as a sadistic bastard, due to it throwing enemies in my path that did one-hit kills. Then, after finding the shrine, doing a flowers mini-quest (can I kill Magda? No? Why not?) bumped into a merchant and found I could flog a lot of the monster loot, cue Loaded Link! More importantly, I could get better clothes, which means better armour. OK, that changed quite a bit.

Found I could take out the big Moblins with a two-handed weaponry, it's still hit them first and keep hitting until dead, but it's a neat touch that they shrug off the one-handed hits. Doing the shrine outside Karakaiko gave me a set of new techniques but I'm still doing more of the run to enemy and hit strategy. Found a pair of Lizalfos quite tough, until I started using a Moblin club on them, they didn't last long after that.

Managed to get the Haetano Tower active, so that's another map chunk got - that also involved duffing up a few enemies with farming implements this time. Turns out a Farming Hoe is a pretty good weapon. Did a sidequest where I blew up 2 of 3 goblins off a mountain, so they died, the other one I had to descend and kill because he avoided drowning, as reward, there's the option to expand inventory if I find Korok Seeds. O-K...

At the Haetano Lab there was this pain in the arse quest of getting a torch, lighting it with a blue flame and getting it back to the lab. If it decides to rain? Sucks to be you. Worse was that I got it all the way back, so saved in case of rain or error extinguishing it, which happened, re-loaded, the save did not save that I had the torch out and lit! Git. So did another run, it didn't rain, got the upgrades, which was mostly camera-related, so not all that after all.

Looks like I can get better clothing at Haetano too. Have gotten better at cooking as well, which is quite clever.

What makes the game stand out are all the little details - I got a guide around Haetano, but it was raining, so still did it but the guy's running around with a and over his head as an impromptu brolly. Some of the sunset / rise effects are fantastic and it's the only game where rain feels unpleasant (also buggers up your climbing ability) while looking amazing. (No thunderstorms yet.)

 

One big plus point I forgot earlier: Many are the game maps for a big open world game that fail to factor in three dimensions - Witcher 3 is notorious for placing ? mark locations underground!

How does Zelda improve on this? Its maps include relief information, so you have a far more detailed view of the world than ever. It is very smart and a huge step forward for game maps.

 

I played an irresponsible amount of Breath of the Wild yesterday, it's one of the best games I've ever experienced. The open world stimulates my imagination and makes me want to explore every inch!

Without spoiling anything, I've encountered the first of the Divine Beasts.

 

Well, that was quite the run-through, I now have:

• 6 hearts
• Upgraded Champion's Shirt and other upgraded armour
• Expanded weapon inventory - only 1 more slot mind, but it'll be useful.
• Managed to deck a Yiga Clan, with only 4 hearts and no shirt upgrade. Very satisfying after one of those bastards killed me a couple of days ago with their ambush.

The Champion Shirt showing HP count of enemies is very good - now I know why those red-eyed blue Bokoblins have been murder, they have 240HP, the regular eyed variant is a mere 72HP, the Moblins 144HP, then I walked out of Lanaryu Gate East to see this Centaur, who turns out to have 2000HP! Time to leg it....

Also have gotten better at enemy tactics, well sometimes. When it's good? Take out the lookout with arrows, throw bomb at Bokoblins, then finish off. Had one skull hideout, with an enemy not coming out, so rolled a bomb in and blew the explosive barrels!

On that one I'd just killed the lookout when the Blood Moon hit, so killed him again, then did all his friends. Have also done a couple of dodges and Flurry Hits which is very cool.

 

This is what happens when you've played the new Zelda for too long:

• I take out the lookout with arrows and get up onto his perch, roll a bomb to the group and blow it out, that takes probably 2 of them or renders them so weak as to be one hit kills, get spoils and open the chest.
• See, I'm now looking at those skull Bokoblin hide-outs figuring that I just need to sneak climb up onto one of them, drop a bomb, get to cover and then detonate. It's good odds there's an explosive barrel or two, only need one to go up to set off the others.... It's not even fighting them, it's total explosive extermination and then I just walk in and grab all the stuff!

• Shrines vary from being irritating to ingeniously clever, generally more the latter than the former - a shrine was surrounded by spikes, so I iced a pillar and jumped over them, then instead was a water based puzzle that I did with a combination of ice/bombs.
• Oh yeah, the new Great Fairy? It's fair to say Link got an eyeful!

The audio-visual aspects remain very impressive, it's one thing to have a massive game world, quite another to have a massive _and_ **well-designed** one. The 'getting distracted by the so very pretty scenery' factor comes into play a lot, even in driving rain.

 

Kings of Hyrule:

Spoiler

Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule - Wind Waker
Rhoam Bosphoramus Hyrule - Breath of the Wild

Please copy, paste, and add names as these are the only two that I know have been named specifically. I don't want to google search and accidentally spoil anything from BOTW and I put these names in spoiler tags just in case for those who haven't play BOTW yet.

 

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that people would go mental over Jim Sterling giving it a 7/10 but geeeeeeeeeeeez

 

JediBen By the way, for Hateno, did you use the lanterns or just run with the torch? I'm just curious if the lanterns stayed lit in the rain. Though its easy to skip rain by just camping out at fire, but even the rain looks so beautiful. When I was climbing the mountains around Kakariko, once I reach the top, I was tempted to just stay there and watch the dawn and then the sunset and then, well, you get the idea.

Spoiler

Not to mention the occasional Blood Moon. That's creepy looking. Not quite as creepy as Majora's Mask moon, but still, having the sky turn red and dark magic everywhere, oh boy. As well as respawning all the enemies, but that just means more enemies to loot from.

 

Oh, I could use a lantern? Well bollocks.

Today's lesson - This game has the scariest thunderstorms you will ever see in a game, they are goddamn scary - a masterpiece of graphics and sound in every respect.

 

Today's Zelda accomplishments:

• I killed my first Guardian! Yeah, yeah, of course it was a fixed position one, with a wall between me and it and I pot-shotted it to death by arrows, but a win is a win where those bastards are concerned.
• Ah, but why try and take it out at all? To climb Central Tower! I got 3/4 of the way, gone thruogh a stamina boost, avoided two other Guardian lasers and it started raining, Link just made it to the top!
• Did a Shrine of Total Arse - 75% was logical and smart, the other 25% involved a GamePad motion control that was rubbish because its physics simply didn't work and the other puzzle required using Stasis, but in a way it had never been indicated to operate so previously. So yeah, that was irritating.
• Then did some random fights, saved some travelers from monster attacks and it sounds like I'm getting a reputation for doing this, got some free food!

 

Spoiler

 

The Shadow Emperor, I knew that was coming.

Concerning BOTW, the two beasts that I've done so far have been more difficult than fun. There are some very rewarding Shrines when accomplished, but I'd say the most joy are the side quests and I'm normally not a huge side quest guy, but the rewards for completing them are worth it to help completing the main quest.

I will say that when I'm in the middle of nowhere after hours of exploring and climbing, I'm OVERJOYED to find a shrine so I can wrap back to that area later for more exploration.

 

The Making of BOTW (from Nintendo)

The Beginning:


Open-Air Concept:


Story and Characters:

 

When I first saw this thread I though it said "Hitler" instead of "Hither" and then I was thinking, what is this crazy thread about it?!! So, I had to take a look. LOL!

 

Decided to pick this up for the Wii U since my spring break is almost over and all I've done is work and study. I hope my Wii U works.

 

Another fun session - I'm playing this far too much:

• Got another tower, the map is now looking quite something.
• Did another shrine, so now up to 7 hearts.
• Been using enemies for dodge technique practice, still not quite got the hang of targeting due to it having to be maintained manually
• Yoga Clan are good practice but rely too much on camera feckery and breaking any target lock.
• New enemies - walking rocks that are immune to most weapons, running, placing a remote bomb and detonating when close is very effective.
• Took out my first Wizzrobe, got an Ice Rod.
• Also decked quite a few Lizalfos.
• Game remains quite beautiful at times.
• Met Prince Sidon, got the quest to Zora's Domain.

 

Commie Calamity Ganon hate Bourgeois Link.

Bourgeois Link is now homeowner, Ganon hates that.

 

How do you rate the soundtrack compared to other Zeldas?

 

I'm probably not the best person to ask, but it's a lot more subtle compared to say the older games like Link to the Past.

Some very well-timed music to suit the mood, particularly on the day / night cycle. I haven't done any of the big set pieces as yet so can't say how it works there yet.