Finished up the initial three shrines. Love that the end of shrine thing this time around is a romantic statue 
it makes me feel like each shrine heals the world a little more as opposed to BOTW with the mummies.
we’re back baby!!!! Loving it so far
I was so upset when this wouldn't work
@“connrrr”#p115877 oh man! 
Zanmik shrine (near Hateno):
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@"treefroggy"#p115900 this game has improved on Botw in so many ways, it's
~~Spoiler~~**hottie alert** for Kakariko village: I just saw Paya and met >!Tauro!< today. 🥵
@“connrrr”#p115877 >!Might be the specific wheel type or something. You build a cable car sorta like this in another shrine.!<
On the subject of cynicism in the background of this release:
Again, I will be interested in the perspective a year or more from now. Right now is too early for me to make judgements on either side, but I can guarantee it will fall somewhere in between the extremes.
It's not a perfect game, but it is weird in a way that I don't know how to feel about yet-- which is a good thing?... Most of my complaints are not new, and were a problem for me in botw too, like how ugly a lot of the weapons look on link's back.
It really is an extension on botw, it is feeling a lot like replaying botw but with more sandbox toys and music. There's also been more than a couple moments now where I thought they'd go a certain direction with something, and they didn't, and it was disappointing.
It sometimes feels less thoughtful than botw was, and in many ways more cluttered... So I think the minimalist beauty is something that will remain unique to botw.
Breath of the Wild felt like Nintendo doing good at a time where a lot was on the line, and then they did it again with mario, but it wasn't long before they were back to their old ways. In some ways this was a lazy job on their part, but in other ways it was kind of whacky and experimental. So I'm holding back on snap judgements, and just along for the ride.
The things they *did* do to give this game its own identity and tone, like the aesthetic of Zonai Sky Temples, the Underground, etc is wonderful, but I find traversing the Hyrule overworld to be a bummer by comparison! I think most people will, and aren't realizing it. The underworld is an extremely addicting crawl.
Also the Majora's Mask comparisons were apt at first but have become overstated to the point where I guess some people were taking it *really* literally, meanwhile missing details like the way Link wakes up in an area very similar to the underground transition between Hyrule and Termina's clock tower depths in Majora's Mask.
The Main thing about Zelda is that you were never supposed to think about it too hard-- it's always been an rpg for babies. It's not as bad or hand-holdey as SkySword or TwiPri, so we're doing OK at least.
Similar to SkySword, I could see this game, having been in development for six years, similarly having an identity crisis. They gave us plenty of mechanics and toys, but we still have yet to see emotionally and tonally what it will deliver as a cohesive whole work of art. I have a hunch that it will be less holistic than botw was, just by the fact that it's botw with more shit tacked on.
@“connrrr”#p115903 So true. When Link‘s new goth gf starting coming up with couples names for the two of them, I was like “yes!” >!Yes, I’m sure she is not romancable and only just named her carriage zunk but still, I ship these two.!<
[URL=https://i.imgur.com/xaiwhR6.jpg]
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/xaiwhR6.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
But also, I missed the whole paraglider thing, because I followed the waypoint to Impa and flew in her hot air balloon, and she just *assumed* I could paraglide down myself, but I don't have one, so I had to kill both of us:
[URL=https://i.imgur.com/Q54L2DU.jpg]
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/Q54L2DU.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
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@“treefroggy”#p115924 It sometimes feels less thoughtful than botw was, and in many ways more cluttered… So I think the minimalist beauty is something that will remain unique to botw.
I agree, I think Botw's elegance and subtlety has made it really timeless. Cluttered is a good word for this one... I don't know if it will hold up quite as well in comparison. I have already run into multiple President Hudson and tired korok tasks and they are considerably more tedious than just having the simple hidden korok puzzles.
But maybe if during the next 5 years everyone is squeezing crafting systems and sky zones into their open world games, we'll look back at this one and think of it as being relatively restrained.
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@“treefroggy”#p115924 The things they did do to give this game its own identity and tone, like the aesthetic of Zonai Sky Temples, the Underground, etc is wonderful, but I find traversing the Hyrule overworld to be a bummer by comparison! I think most people will, and aren’t realizing it. The underworld is an extremely addicting crawl.
During the good 5 hours or so in the sky area at the beginning, I think it was a bit daunting in a way. If the whole game was 60 hours of that, I don't think I would enjoy it. Like there was all this new geometry and it was hard to orient myself on the island. Coming back down to Hyrule was a little bit reassuring to have my feet on the ground and know the general layout of where stuff is.
The intense noise it makes whenever you enter the underground is awesome. While the underground is “the fun part” to 30-year-old me, can anyone imagine how utterly terrifying the underground would be to a child? Okay maybe less scary than “the bottom of the well” was to me at age 7, but probably about as scary as “Big Boos Haunt”
@"Tradegood"#510 Yeah, some people complain that botw had “no story” and “everything happened in a game we didn’t get to play”, but I think that is really dumb. And OMG I HATE JENSON or Henson so whatever the OSHA violating idiot apprentice’s name is. It was cute but slightly annoying the first time, then immediately became super annoying when I see him in places that are two minutes apart. It didn’t start being funny until like the 50th time, and it super feels like padding. Way to take THE BEST character in botw and turn it into something really obnoxious…. Everyone is gonna complain about it. If he were on my job site, I’d tell him to fetch me the Left Handed Screwdriver and he would fall for it every time. I’d tell him to catch my grinder sparks in a bucket.
Right now I’m having fun collecting treasure maps from the sky and using them to find treasure underground. Especially because it’s always rare clothing, and you probably already know how addicting collectible clothing is in any game. Dress up is 50% of the role play for me.
Edit: yeah this game is sloppy. I know hestu isn’t able to be seen by normies, but seeing him hanging in the main hub surrounded by hylians is just wrong. A lot of the character voices outside of cutscenes are more annoying and don’t seem up to the Nintendo Zelda standard of gibberish. Like hinson’s annoying quivering and a lot of unpleasant grunts from other characters. I get the inkling that this game had a lot more outsourcing than usual. I already learned today that Monolith Soft worked on the physics of the game. If homies were complaining botw “wasn’t a Zelda game”, this one REALLY isn’t, besides adding in new throwbacks in interesting ways.
In many ways they attempted to improve on perfection and it seems to just bog things down, **and the mushroom mania in hateno village is a bit so subtle, self-aware metaphor for that.** that quest, and most of the side stories, seem pretty ham fisted at times. Like the way everyone is learning their lesson and wrapping up in a neat little bow at the end… in the first game, dude just has to get 100 crickets for the girl as a joke and his questline ends lol.
So far I am enjoying the game quite a bit. BUT I AM WORRIED! In BOTW I decided to go look for the master sword as soon as I could and didn‘t find it all that rewarding to do so. I went on to enjoy that game. But in these huge open world games I’m always worried if I am playing them in the most fun manner. The addition to the game world of having this level of verticality is really making me anxious as to which direction to go in to have the most fun. So for now I did a little main quest and then heading in whatever direction catches my eye. But the nagging feeling I'm missing a fun path is there. I feel as big as game worlds get that also leads to more opportunity for a player to mainline and miss fun stuff. Weird I am.
@“Punchmaniacs”#p115945 I don’t think it’s your fault. I think you may not realize how well botw mitigated that anxiety by making it pretty darn clear and open. This game manages to have an overly long tutorial that keeps going past the great plateau equivalent, and then somehow also hits you with way too much at once by tutorializing the depths rather than just let it hit you naturally like in elden ring. That leaves you with a marked destination (hebra) and the knowledge that you now have three entire worlds to explore at once…
Does anyone remember the feeling of discovering the underground of elden ring? Does anyone remember how the first week it was like a big secret no one wanted to spoil?
Getting to the underground in elden ring felt way cooler than in totk, where it’s pointed at in the first 10 minutes in hyrule.
I feel like it’s a YouTube essay waiting to happen, pointing out the way that the game spoils one of the coolest surprises right off the bat, compared to Link to the Past waiting a long while to show you the Dark World.
my little bit of meta commentary on TOTK as a Game Release
This is the first time since I was too young to Post Online that I have basically been both cut off from discourse(stopped looking at twitter months ago) and have essentially not paid any attention to a game I've been looking forward to. I feel like I'm coming into TOTK unclouded and very calm. I don't even really have big expectations because I truly haven't been thinking about the game at all in the months leading up to the release. It feels really good to jump into a game like this with only my own bs clouding my judgement and not everyone else's LOL(FFXVI will be the next one along these lines)
The thing I like about BOTW that is still very much alive here is: I just like pressing the stick forward and moving. I like going places and being a digital tourist. I like look at the vistas. If I really try to drill down what I loved most about BOTW it's that and TOTK is delivering on that a lot. As a walking simulator type of thing these games feel basically perfect imo. I haven't seen the rest of what the game has to offer but I am getting a clearer picture of what is gonna be expected of me while playing around with the intro powers. I'm skeptical that I'll really enjoy the extra bits and bobs added here over BOTW's refreshingly simplicity but we'll see.
For me there's an interesting history of wanting to be more of a tourist in Zelda games and being much less interested in the nuts and bolts of the dungeons and gameplay. I feel like that about basically all of the 3D games. I'd love Wind Waker a lot more if it didn't have dungeons. I wish Majora's Mask had an Explorer Mode or something where you could just poke and prod at it. Then on the other hand I like the entirety of most of the top down Zelda games, I enjoy engaging with the dungeons as well as the tourism aspect. BOTW managed to gel those things together for me in a really beautiful way. Curious if TOTK will manage the same.
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@“treefroggy”#p115924 cynicism in the background of this release
This got me thinking, what's the ideal way to convey negativity? I know I'm risking deviating from the topic hard. But it's been years since I've felt that impulse of getting frustrated at people for liking something I don't. For the last 10 years or so, when I feel unable to join the enthusiasm on a hyped release it's more of a bummer, a kind of healthy envy, like "man, I really wish I was loving this as much as other people do". I'm feel more frustration with myself rather than the actual object. I don't want to ruin anyone else's fun and that makes me hold back my opinions even when I get asked by friends and prefer to use venues like this forum to express my thoughts, where I feel the chance to encounter like-minded people is higher.
With TotK is a more middle ground feeling because it's not that the game itself is bad, there's enough to be enjoyed here and BotW was a sufficiently casual and laid-back experience so it doesn't feel like they betrayed their creative principles or anything like that. But there's a feeling of disappointment there with how I can't shake the impression that they took the easiest and safest approach in just slightly sprinking stuff over their already successful game.
That could leave people thinking this makes for a better game overall with TotK, but imo BotW lived and died on that constant sense of mystery, exploration and discovery. All the systems and game balance worked towards you constantly finding new and enigmatic stuff. It was not only a new world, but also a new set of rules, systems and interactions that the player had to slowly unravel via experimentation and trial and error.
The fact that TotK brought over not only all of that map and the unique interactions it had (like the kologs, the shrines and even the dragons) but also the entirety of those sets of rules and systems severely wounds the game's capacity to produce that steady sense of wonder that came with BotW. The fact that all those systems work exactly the same means that every tiny discovery, every tactic and trick you learned in the other game you can execute without any changes in TotK, and that leaves you interfacing with every situation, enemy and problem using exactly the same language, the same toolkit you learned to use over dozens of hours in Breath of the Wild. It feels like Tears of the Kingdom has comparatively much less to offer to the player, at least in that regard.
God knows I have BIG issues with Elden Ring and I've been very vocal about them in these forums, but for all its faults that was a game that felt like it learned all the most important lessons BotW had to teach and built over that foundation in meaningful ways. A lot of its success came from simply translating that kind of exploration to the feeling and vibes of the Souls formula, but it was bold in how it trusted the player to happen upon its secrets and the most interesting bits it had to offer.
I agree with froggy that even the way TotK introduces its most significant bits, like the underground, feels hand-holdey and tutorialized in a way that already makes it lose a lot of it charm. With TotK I've been getting a lot the feeling of "yeah this is cool, but I wish it was better". The few new ideas and their execution land, but ultimately leave something more or something else to be desired.
it‘s hard to criticize zelda games too harshly without seeming like a jerk or a grinch because of how they lean into sentimentality in a way that - at least imo - is manipulative. Obviously if people want to purchase an entertainment product and marinate in nostalgia for a while who am I to judge. But when these dumb games get (imo) uncritically puffed up like they do FOR DECADES, it’s hard to be fully nice about it sometimes.
I think the nuance is there's a disconnect between the huge claims being made for various zeldas vs much of the audience being fully and happily satiated with what they provide. It's fine to enjoy your 50 hour or whatever buffet of easily digestible stuff, but confusing it with something other than that is where it goes wrong (imo). So maybe it is the GOAT from an audience-satiation perspective, but yeah it's hard to tell people they're "wrong" for feeling happy with that experience
The above refers to conversation outside this forum btw. Not saying anyone here is being dumb about zelda (other than me probably)
Something very satisfying I did last night was pluck a falling star fragment out of the sky, which is way more fun than having to mark it on the map only to have it despawn before you get to it in botw.
I'm skimming or skipping some posts that go into too much detail about the game to keep from spoiling myself or colouring my thoughts on the game.
I just reached the depths or underground (called ~~abîmes~~_profondeurs_, désolée, in the french loc, and translating between localizations is real treacherous if you're trying to avoid spoilers, let me just say!!) yesterday and had to pry myself away from them to push the story forward. Plumbing around in pitch blackness is a lot of fun on an OLED (I've been playing half docked half handheld).
EPD was already drawing heavily from the Ghibli aesthetic, now they're going full Nausicäa and Mononoke here.
@“connrrr”#p116017 it made me think of Made in Abyss immediately, the way the gloom mechanic works. Subterranean abyssal ecosystems that are lush & beautiful is probably my favorite fantasy trope.
@“treefroggy”#p116023 Made in the Abyss was the first thing I thought of too!
I spent the entirety of my weekend sinking my teeth into the game and it is managing to push a lot of satisfaction buttons in my worm brain. The Legend of Zelda: Fuck Around And Find Out / Bob The Builder / Lego Technics side of things is way more engaging than I was expecting and has largely been the biggest appeal to me, especially with the shrines. Over all the shrines have been a major improvement over BotW, the only major chore ones being any battle challenge/training ones. But figuring out how to cheat the shrine, or just even playing it straight for a lot of the building puzzles has been nothing short of complete satisfaction.
The verticality of the game has been nice, especially after a housemate pointed out something I didn't even think about, which was rewinding time on any blocks that fall out of the sky. Makes for a lot of easy travel, I've kind of abandoned my horse again. It's also especially nice when I reach a high enough altitude to find an island floating around that I can easily glide to. The depths were immediately satisfying to go through, and now hearing that there's clothing to be had in them has me more eager to explore into them further.
As Connrrr mentioned, it's furrier and hornier and better for it. Ghost boyfriend in the beginning is great. The person in Kakriko is also great. It's also been a minute since I played BotW, never completed the DLC despite getting it. But coming back to familiar locations like Hateno Village and Kakriko, there's a feeling of wanting to say, "I'm home!" after being gone for so long. It's been neat coming back and seeing what details have changed.
That being said, I do agree that there's a weird not quite as thought out cluttered feeling to it, not because we now have sky stuff and underground stuff, that's all been cool, but just Hyrule in general feels somehow smaller because of how much more is in it. The lost koroks are fun, but I do bump into them far too often, and is it me never noticing them as much in BotW, or are there way more forts than the first game?
Fighting is a bit of a slog so far, so I generally avoid it, especially since I'm feeling like glass more than I did in BotW. Rewinding blocks for altitude and gliding is nice, but there is something that feels more dangerous, but not in a fun frightening way like Elden (or BotW when you see a guardian), to just run around and take in everything on the ground level. This gets especially bad, say, when you're in a cave that might have a hideout in it, and once you successfully clear it, depleting all your resources to do so, you get hit with a blood moon that just brings everyone back. On the flip side of that, however, figuring out what to fuse to my shield and arrows is a blast. Spring shield rules.