Incline The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for Wii U and Switch

[Zerth]

Until now, I didn't know who is him and this is the first time I visit his website Jimquisition. Hope this is also the last time I pay attention to his website or annoying demeanor.

 

[Keldryn]

Yep, looks suspiciously like a review crafted around being the sole dissenting voice and thus driving massive traffic to his site... Which is exactly what happened.

Conveniently he waits a week and a half after the first reviews come out so that he can choose an outlying score that isn't ridiculous. Trashing the game like all those 0 user reviews on Metacritic would be too obvious.

 

[J1M]

Jimquisition just gave a 7.0 to BOTW, making the average going to a shameful 97: http://www.thejimquisition.com/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-review/

The funniest part is that he gave 9.5 to Horizon.

These popamoles are the reasons why we cant have good things.

I have read the review, and the verdict is utterly biased towards his own complaints with the game rather than pointing out which are the clear design's flaws. Let's see:

- He complains about the stamina bar being a hindrance since almost every action consumes stamina while traveling (running,swimming etc.). Seems like He never uses shrines to teleport and navigate across the map or take advantages of heights with the paragliding, or create pillars of ice instead of swimming, etc.

- He complains that certain enemies can one-shot you and are capable to take quite a beating in order to be eventually defeated with crappy gear (Gothic style). And dismiss this as a cheap way to increase difficulty, unlike "Dark Souls" just as he was waiting that moment to mention it, dark fucking souls, a game where bosses usually unleash a furry of relentless hard hitting attacks and have very small windows of opening. It's just like there are not simple ways to deal with them, like, I don't know, blocking with a shield (which doesn't consume stamina by the way), perform timed dodges, use the environmental hazards and explosives to your advantage or just wait until you find some decent gear. Also, He forgot to mention enemies can be resourceful, dunkey's video clearly shows this is true for example.

- He complains about weapon's degradation, the favorite zelda botw detractors subject. I personally find this complain like whining about the legend of grimrock II hunger meter. Weapons are plentiful and you can make octoroks eat them to renew the weapons.

- He complains that the difficulty of the alternatives paths towards your main objective (which is ganon) is heavily influenced by how far you progress across the "predefined" path (which are the four guardians) and how many shrines you solve to get stronger. I don't really know what to say about this one, sounds like he expected that going straight to the tougher parts of the game with 3 hearts and meager stamina bar was going to be as easy as clearing the main quest of a Bethesda game with a low level character.

- He complains about the shrines as the only way to perma increase your health and stamina gauge. What exactly did he wanted in that case then? To find powerups like candy everywhere?.........

Wait a second, he gave Fallout 4 a 9,5/10?. Well, that does it. Zero credibility.

Clearly a moron since these 'complaints' you transcribed have made me more interested in the game than any of Nintendo's marketing.

 

[Keldryn]

There's another one up now, a 6/10 from Slant. Feels like the same story to me.

 

[Bigg Boss]

They waited to make it look like they played all of it.

 

[Talby]

Review is called "Open World, Closed Doors" yet he neglects to mention that most doors can be opened.

 

[RapineDel]

His review focuses on certain minor things and doesn't talk enough about the combat/bosses etc. so I'm certain there's plenty of bias around this given his hate of Nintendo. That said I'm pretty suspect on all of the 10/10 greatest game of all time reviews going around so I'm hoping some more honest feedback comes in. This probably isn't it but there seems to be plenty of problems with this game.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Not really. Performance issues aside...if you like the genre it is good. If you don't like the climbing and flying you might not like it. Durability isn't an issue if you aren't a retard.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1352017

 

[Keldryn]

Yeah I can't possibly see how anyone can consider a game the "greatest of all time" without having sufficient time to reflect upon it, in the context of playing other games. If the game really sticks with you and you're still comparing other games to it, despite not having played it for years, then maybe you have grounds for saying that.

However, "oh it's great; I'll tell you in five years if I think it's the greatest game of all time" is not the sort of review that gets people excited.

Breath of the wild is definitely a great game, and I would give it five stars (meaning excellent, a must-play, a shining example of the genre). I don't do fine-grained scores where full points means it's approaching perfection. Every game has flaws and annoyances and deducting x points because of y seems silly to me; it's not a mathematical equation.

 

[sullynathan]

I'm really dumb founded by the dislike and amount of hate that this game is getting because of weapon durability.



GameSpot posted this video and someone in the comment is butthurt that the game actually has weather effects that impact gameplay.

 

[Ash]

If the last decade of gamer/market observation has taught me anything it's that the masses don't want or understand the value in engaging gameplay. Not sure whether that applies to this scenario having not played the game yet, but most likely.

 

[sullynathan]

If the last decade of gamer/market observation has taught me anything it's that the masses don't want or understand the value in engaging gameplay. Not sure whether that applies to this scenario having not played the game yet, but most likely.

You'd be somewhat right. People in the comments were butthurt that the GameSpot guy dare say that breath of the wild is a better open world game than the likes of Witcher 3, GTA V and horizon.

The Witcher 3 defense is that it has a good story and characters, I mean how can someone not like that over gameplay?

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.pcgamer.com/what-open-wo...-from-the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/

What open-world games on PC need to learn from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Nintendo's take on open-world games is setting a standard the rest of the genre should live by.

At E3 last year, our own Wesley Fenlon waited in line for an hour at a Nintendo booth to confirm a suspicion he had that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was, in spirit, a PC game. What that demo couldn't have told him is that Nintendo, a company often lauded for being behind the times, was building more than a homage to the open-world genre. It was making a game that should set the standard for all others going forward. Breath of the Wild will never come to PC (not legally anyway), but I pray to Hylia that its DNA does.

With survival games choking up Steam Early Access and open-world games like Watch Dogs 2 releasing every few months, Breath of the Wild could have easily drawn from these games and relied on their well-trodden tropes. Instead it subverts them.

The first time I climbed a tower in Hyrule to reveal a chunk of the surrounding map, I braced myself for the inevitable wave of icons that would—like screaming babies—demand my time and attention. But then I reached the top, plugged my Shiekah Slate (think of it like an ancient iPhone) into the tower's console and watched the fog peel back to reveal the map. Not a single icon was there. Breath of the Wild's world isn't empty, but it doesn't give a damn whether I want to seek out its hidden treasures or not. Pay attention, Ubisoft.

The silent cartographer
As PC Gamer's resident MMO fanatic, I'm no stranger to the Curse of the Golden Exclamation Mark. First popularized in World of Warcraft, it's a symbol that has come to define an entire generation of games that want to make it explicitly clear that there's a thing that needs doing. Its lineage has cross-pollinated to almost every singleplayer open-world game, dotting their landscapes like acne in case, god forbid, I miss something. You can imagine how puzzled I was when the tower revealed the map and no icons told me where to go.

That subtle change is fascinating for a variety of reasons, not least being that Nintendo is often seen as a company geared towards casual gamers. Yet the irony here is that Breath of the Wild treats its audience with a respect that few open-world games ever do these days. If I can't figure out how to navigate and survive in post-apocalyptic Hyrule, well, too damn bad. Dark Souls fans rejoice, because Zelda demands I 'git gud' or die trying.

That isn't to say that Breath of the Wild is needlessly punishing. But it does rely on a far more nuanced visual language to communicate where to go. Early on, I learned that shrines, essentially mini-dungeons, could give me orbs to increase my health and stamina. Of all the things I can find in Hyrule, shrines are easily the most important, and Nintendo communicates that without slapping icons on a map to show where they are. Instead, shrines glow with vibrant red energy that can be spotted from nearly anywhere on the map.

Breath of the Wild treats its audience with a respect that few open-world games ever do these days.

Everything else, however, is up to me to discover—and only if I want to. While Far Cry 4's map often is an explosion of side activities each vying for my attention, Breath of the Wild builds a hierarchy of importance around its secrets, and that hierarchy is binary. Either it's useful for making Link stronger and therefore glows red or it doesn't matter all that much.

One wrinkle to that rule is when it comes to getting items to expand my inventory, and it's by far one of my favorite things about the Breath of the Wild. Forest sprites are hiding nearly everywhere in Hyrule and will give me special seeds I can trade in for more bag space. To find them, I must observe the environment in a way I haven't done before in open-world games. Is there a lone tree on a small island in the middle of a lake? There's a sprite there. Does an otherwise smooth cliff face have a small ledge protruding from it? Is there a circle of lilies floating in a pond? Sprites are likely waiting at each one.

Breath of the Wild does a wonderful job at tickling my spidey senses and consistently rewarding me for giving into my hunches that something's just not quite right about that tree.

Systems upon systems upon systems
There's more to Breath of the Wild than a refreshing take on exploration. Once I decided where to go, I needed to figure out how to get there. And that put me in direct conflict with not only the monsters along the way, but Hyrule itself. See, Breath of the Wild isn't just an open-world game, it's also a sandbox in the vein of STALKER, where dozens of interlocking systems create a Hyrule that feels more alive than ever.

There are few aspects of Breath of the Wild that don't interact with the gameplay in some meaningful way. Rainy weather doesn't just extinguish fires, it also makes rocky surfaces slippery and much more challenging to climb. And god help me if I'm ever caught out in a lightning storm with a metal shield on my back.

Breath of the Wild's game logic is so robust and whole that it makes the world feel believable and coherent.

Every videogame is bound by a set of rules called 'game logic' that defines how its various parts interact with one another. The simplest form of that game logic is that if I shoot a thing, it should die. Unfortunately, open-world games sometimes struggle to follow their own rules due to their immense size and freedom.

In The Division, for example, civilians are completely impervious to bullets—they pass right through them. It's not that I want to run around killing innocents, but there are many more interesting ways to include non-combatants than making them invincible. There could be some meaning to the interaction. Maybe they fire back in defense, maybe I'm punished for killing them in some way. In Zelda, I can't kill friendly NPCs either, but my sword doesn't just pass through them. They recoil in defense, yell at me, and will even hit back to get me to stop.

Breath of the Wild's game logic is so robust and whole that it makes the world feel believable and coherent. Not only is all of Hyrule governed by realistic physics, it uses various systems to prod those physics and create complex interactions. Wind spreads fire across fields of grass, but fire also creates upward gusts of wind that I can exploit with my paraglider.

When you compare that to the gold standard of open-world RPGs like The Witcher 3, you realize how light on complexity those games can be. Not to say that The Witcher 3 isn't amazing, but its sense of freedom comes from the scale of the world and the choices you make in the story—not the unfettered freedom of manipulating the environment to your advantage.

Those physics can have more immediate effects as well, like smacking a foe with a hammer so heavy that they fall over and drop their weapon. Normally I use this as an opportunity to pick up their own weapon to use against them, but one time it backfired spectacularly. During our fight, the enemy's club passed through a nearby campfire and burst into flames. After I disarmed him, the weapon fell into the grass and started a bushfire. I turned my attention to finishing off the foe without realizing the fire was spreading towards an explosive barrel just behind me. When the game over screen appeared, I wasn't even mad, I was just stunned. Layers of cause and effect like that are rare in most games, but Breath of the Wild is surprisingly capable at conjuring up these little stories.

While those moments are certainly special, what I'm more appreciative of is how few gaps there are in Breath of the Wild's game logic. Twenty hours in, and I've yet to discover a game design island—a feature that exists wholly separate from everything else.

Back in 2012, Watch Dogs touted the "dynamism" of its world, going at great lengths to simulate how wind travelled through downtown Chicago. But, as pretty as it looks, that wind is functionally useless and has zero impact on how I play the game. Yet in Breath of the Wild, I'm constantly feeling the effects of even the slightest breeze. That obsession with systemic interaction coupled with a refreshing take on exploration makes Zelda ambitious by far more than just Nintendo's standards.

That isn't to say Breath of the Wild is perfect. If it were to exist on PC exactly as-is, the glaring performance issues and complicated menus and control schemes would certainly be a sticking point. But I can now understand why Miyamoto was so hesitant to call it an open-world game. By its nature, the genre is so ambitious that it's easy to see why so many of its games rarely forge into new frontiers. The new Zelda isn't just content to be another face in a crowded genre, instead, it actively fixes some of its greatest flaws. In doing so, I hope that it carves the path that future open-world games will follow and, in turn, push further.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Still in the honeymoon phase with this game. Some of the puzzles are cryptic as fuck.

My only real complains are:

- Enemy variety is lacking. Mostly Moblins/Bokoblins/Lizalfos. There are other but they are less common.

- Frame rate dip and every rare once in awhile game freezes up for 1 second before resuming. Seems to happen when I hit a Moblin and it rolls off some awkwardly.

- Horses are not terribly useful compared to gliding/climbing.

 

[Kraszu]

Man, for a moment I thought you were in the desert and the breath vapor was visible because it's night, and I was super impressed by the attention to detail. Then I realized that's snow and not stars.

It does get cold in the desert during the night tho. There's breath vapor and cold defense is required.

That's fantastic.

Jimquisition just gave a 7.0 to BOTW, making the average going to a shameful 97: http://www.thejimquisition.com/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-review/

The funniest part is that he gave 9.5 to Horizon.

Of course he did, people call him a cuck for a reason.

I had seen part of his video where he complained about open world design, and his idea to fix it was to have story related parts easier to find, and making the games more linear, so it isn't surprising.

 

[Keldryn]

- Horses are not terribly useful compared to gliding/climbing.

I've had a few occasions where I used a horse to just run through an area packed with monsters. There was one road through a mountain pass in particular that I'm thinking of... can't remember exactly where it led to, but one section was just crammed full of Bokoblins, Moblins, and a couple of Wizrobes. No way could I have fought through them all.

Might have been able to climb up higher to avoid them, but climbing is slow and of course there's the whole rain issue.

If I'm exploring a new area around a stable, I'll often go on horseback just to cover more ground and then leave my horse behind if I spot a shrine or tower that I want to try to reach. I like that I can just go to a stable and tell them to board my horse no matter where that horse is located.

Just finished up on Eventide Island, and I have to say that was a very cool challenge:

Spoiler

For those who don't know but are reading the spoiler anyway: when you arrive on the island, all of your items are taken away other than your Sheika Slate and paraglider. You need to locate three orbs on the island and place them in their receptacles before you can leave. Once the challenge starts, both the manual save and auto-saving are disabled, so your game can't get screwed up if you are unable to complete it. This also means that if you die while on the island, the game will reload to the state just before you got there. So there is a real feeling of tension as you proceed with the challenge, as you don't want to fail and have to start over. And there are monsters all over the island, while you start with no armor or weapons. After I acquired a couple of weapons and gathered a few materials, the next thing I did was to search out a cooking pot so that I could start making a few necessary meals and elixirs. And of course, it's in the middle of a camp full of Bokoblins.

There is a Hinox guarding one of the orbs, which is a pretty tough foe when you're short on resources. It was sleeping so I snuck up and chopped down a nearby tree that looked like it might fall on him. Unfortunately the tree missed, so I started to run away. The Hinox then picked up the tree that I cut down and started chasing me with it.

That article from PC Gamer that Infinitron posted is right on the money. It couldn't be a more radical departure from Navi's incessant "Hey! Listen!" and that stupid owl that shows up every time you enter a new area. At various points in the game, you'll talk to someone or interact with something and a diagram of the controls and brief description of the action will appear on-screen. Some of these are in the "tutorial" area, but many of them are spread throughout the world. The game doesn't even mention that you can "shield surf" your way down a mountain until you talk to some guy out in the wilds; unless you happen to run across him, the only way you'll know how to do it is if you discover it via your own experimentation.

Spoiler

You have to reach Kakariko Village and enter its shrine before the game explains to you how to dodge in combat and how to time your dodges and shield parries such that you get an opening to launch a flurry of attacks.

There are no "meta" indicators that an NPC is important or has a quest to give you (i.e. a big glowing question mark above his head, a light shining on him, etc). When a quest is entered in your log, you can set a navigation marker on your map (which also shows on the minimap). But it doesn't reveal anything about the area unless you've already acquired the map for that region. It's only when you have revealed the map and you have visited a location that its name and an icon appear on your map. In many such games, I often find myself paying more attention to the minimap than the actual environment as I'm heading towards a quest location. That's never happened to me in BotW; I find that it simply works as a useful navigation aid while I'm traversing the world, which is how it should feel.

I loved most of the previous Zelda games, but damn it's going to be hard to go back and play many of them again after this.

As for the interlocking systems... the game is still surprising me from time to time with the interactions that are possible. Most open world games provide a convincing illusion of a living world... until you right straight into a (metaphorical) wall that destroys that suspension of disbelief and reminds you that you're playing a game. I haven't had too many of those moments in BotW. Wildlife that despawns right in front of you would definitely be one of those moments.

At some point, I need to get back to the main quest line, but I've been having too much fun just exploring and seeing what's out there. A few times now I've wandered quite far into uncharted territory and ended up in the situation where I don't want to teleport back until I activate a shrine or tower. To have come so far, but have no way of returning without repeating the same long journey... And twice, I finally found a tower only to discover that it was too well-guarded for me to survive the approach. However, both times I was able to take a more thoughtful approach and found a way to bypass the base of the tower by reaching a high enough location to glide from. The first of those probably took me 45 minutes of exploring and climbing (and a few minutes waiting for the rain to stop) before I was able to get to the top of the tower without getting killed by that stupid lightning-wielding Wizrobe (only had 5 hearts and had used up most of my food by the time I got there). The taste of that victory was very sweet.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Alright so I wanted to give the final boss a shot. I haven't done all of the "dungeons" yet (4 of them) and I've only done one.

I beat it but lets say that unless you're good at parrying you're gonna have issues trying to beat Ganon early. And I sure as hell don't know how speed runners are gonna manage it without breaking all of their weapons.

Ending sucked complete ass but I also didn't get all of the memories either.

 

[Ivan]

my copy arrives tomorrow

let's see if it scratches that Gothic itch

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Nintendo's documentary about BotW.

 

[DragoFireheart]

my copy arrives tomorrow

let's see if it scratches that Gothic itch

Speaking of scratches:

http://www.glixel.com/news/youre-going-to-want-a-screen-protector-for-your-nintendo-switch-w470245

I looked at my Nintendo Switch. Didn't see the dock being warped, but the bezels do have some smudges (likely from the rubber holders at the bottom).

Nothing terrible but I'm picky about keeping my screen clean. I suggest this for about $11:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N3ASPNV/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

On a different note there have been some problems with the Left-Joycon desyncing. The Switch has a 1 year warranty.

 

[DragoFireheart]

Oh, and anyone wondering about the final boss:

Spoilers obviously:

Spoiler

The boss is multi-phase. It has 6 phases: a Ganon beast for an element of wind, water, fire, and thunder. All three are sorta easy except Thunder: thunder is a pain in the ass with it's speedy dash strikes. After them it's Calamity Ganon and then finally his classical boar-beast form.

For each divine beast you beat, the corresponding Ganon beast is removed and Calamity Ganon's health is reduced by 1/8. Beat all four Divine Beats and you only fight Calamity at half health and the boar.

The boar may as well be a cinematic fight. You get a bow that doesn't break and never runs out of arrows.

So the real fight ends up being Calamity Ganon. It's basically a giant mecha-centipede with a fire axe, ice spear, and a laser canon.
wtf Nintendo?!

I fought him after one Divine Beast. Apparently one of the champions gives you an ability that can flip enemies over or something. If you lack that ability AND you run out of shields for his second phase when he puts an energy shield on... you can't beat him. You need a way to break his shielding and parrying his lasers is one of those methods. I almost ran out of shields trying to parry him.



The good news is I believe the Ancient Shield, which you can buy from a research station WAY northeast in Hyrule, can bounce them back.

So come prepared depending on how early you go to fight him.

 

[Zerth]

my copy arrives tomorrow

let's see if it scratches that Gothic itch

You'll find many things that made Gothic series great, like the handcrafted world and its lack of forgiveness to the foolish or unprepared . I guess you'll only miss the occasional NPC bullying and taking sides with a faction.

 

[Ivan]

1 more day :D

my experience with Zelda: my first Zelda was OOT, graduated to Majora's Mask and didn't buy a Nintendo product until the Wii U. I played Wind Waker but felt it was way too safe, to restrictive. I have high hopes for this one.

Not a fan of the 2d ones (only played LTTP)

 

[sullynathan]

How well does the combat compare to Dark Souls? I've seen comparisons between the two.


A not-so positive review about the game that seemed more balanced than the Jim Sterline one. His comparisons to Skyrim and The Witcher 3 are funny because he says all three share the same large expanse of world that sometimes feel empty but he prefers the latter 2 because they are more detailed and have better graphics.

https://translate.google.com/transl...of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/377909&edit-text=

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

I often find myself paying more attention to the minimap than the actual environment
as I'm heading towards a quest location. That's never happened to me in BotW; I find that it simply works as a useful navigation aid while I'm traversing the world, which is how it should feel.

This. This is the fucking key.

This is what made me enjoy the game exploration so much. Because minimap is not so useful like in other open world games (Twitcher 3...) and made me focus on the screen instead on it. Also, not related but this happens also in Horizon: Zero dawn, a game where there's not minimap. There's a compass you can turn off, and if you want to see the map you must open in with a button. Opening a map in an adventure game, what a little exploited mechanic on videogames.