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

DalekFlay

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I thought the weapon breaking would be super annoying but it really isn't. If I were to attack the mechanic I'd more just say it's pointless. Every fight your weapons break but you get new roughly equivalent ones in exchange, so it's more just busy work than anything. It's not like "OMG NO WEAPONZ" ever happens, even once. Once you get super sword it all becomes even more pointless, because you only need weapons for brief intervals while it's recharging and a lot of those intervals won't be filled with combat. In the second half of my play experience I mostly ignored dropped weapons.

A lot of the "Western RPG" influences in the game amount to not much at all really. The large open world is mostly empty of interesting and unique content, the cooking can be done on a very basic level (meat plus fruit, rinse and repeat). The armor upgrade hunting is about the most in-depth thing I messed with, and once you have level 3 or higher armor you're pretty much invincible. Honestly I think the game is probably better the more classic Zelda you try and play it, focusing on quests and treating the shrines as heart pieces and beating the game in 40 hours instead of 200.
 

HeatEXTEND

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Agree with everything there, game is far for from perfect and it does lose a lot of it's shine along the way, but on the whole it's probably the best 'member berrie I ever had.
 

covr

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It is one on the best games ever made and I cannot wait for the next part of the series. Also waiting for the remake of the first part, but Botw 2 is what I really need.
 

DalekFlay

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It is one on the best games ever made and I cannot wait for the next part of the series. Also waiting for the remake of the first part, but Botw 2 is what I really need.

The co-developer gearing up for another game tells me it'll likely be a somewhat quick similar one to this, which sounds good really. Save the "next big change" for the next console.
 
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The large open world is mostly empty of interesting and unique content, ...

What are you talking about? The open world has a ton of interesting stuff to find, from 120 shrines dispersed everywhere to all kinds of unique NPCs (did you find the horse archery post in the wild that gives you quests and a horse archery contest? how about the guy with the golf game at the bottom of the canyon? or the guy selling monster equipment? or the shield surfing champion in the log cabin who gives you that contest? or the island where you are stripped of all equipment?) to out-of-the-way towns (there was a summer town/village I didn't even find until seeing it on the wiki) to rare sights/monsters (the flying dragons of different types, different lynels, hinnoxes, undead hinnoxes, that sand fish monster, etc), to rare treasure (hell, the best pieces of equipment in the game have to be found by exporing the world) to memories, to just cool places where you can interact with the world in novel ways.
 

Perkel

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I guess you are the type of player who fires up his Animal Crossing daily picks up 5 apples, hunt 4 fish and talks 2 times to some npc and considers it "good game".
 

cosmicray

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There's plenty to discover, but it's not around every corner. And with climbing mechanic it's not boring and engaging enough. Melancholic, as someone described here, is a perfect description of the world. More shit to do and people to meet would have made it less so.
 
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It's like that Baldur's Gate 1 vs Baldur's Gate 2 argument. Some people, like you, need epic shit every 2 steps to keep them entertained. But guess what, a lot of people don't. In fact, I find game-worlds with too much epic shit annoying and fake.
 

Perkel

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It's like that Baldur's Gate 1 vs Baldur's Gate 2 argument. Some people, like you, need epic shit every 2 steps to keep them entertained. But guess what, a lot of people don't. In fact, I find game-worlds with too much epic shit annoying and fake.

On other hand there are people who take 5 apples from tree and consider it highlight of their day.

I played first time OoT just 1 year ago on 3DS and it was actually great game, despite its dated graphics etc. And i always hated zelda games but OoT kind of proved me wrong so it is not like i want into hype mode or something.

I played BoTW after it and surprise surprise game was effectively empty. It felt like Ubisoft made this game. 120 absolutely useless shrines, scale up towers like in some far cry, fight mind numbing easy fights left and right, play with half life 2 physics in 2019, look for seeds !.

I agree that running around, scaling etc is interesting but without good cause there is no point of doing that. So you get barely any interesting stuff between long rides/walks of nothing of value.
 

Cromwell

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... and surprise surprise game was effectively empty. It felt like Ubisoft made this game. 120 absolutely useless shrines, scale up towers like in some far cry, fight mind numbing easy fights left and right, play with half life 2 physics in 2019, look for seeds !.

I agree that running around, scaling etc is interesting but without good cause there is no point of doing that. So you get barely any interesting stuff between long rides/walks of nothing of value.

Keep your witcher 3 shit out of the zelda thread.
 
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Except it's not pointless at all.

First of all, I don't get the pick 5 apples vs shrines. Shrines are fun. They are like mini-puzzles where you get to use your head, and the game's physics to solve problems. Some of them are quite complex and the solutions are brilliant.

Second, you are missing the point. BotW is a true sandbox in the sense that you are free to do whatever the hell you want, but everything is connected by your overarching goal. Ultimately, you have to defeat Gannon and save the world, and everything that you do in the world is related to that because it alllows you to become stronger and makes it easier to achieve that goal. Every shrine you complete allows you to increase your health and stamina, for example. Finding lost memories allows you to understand what happened before, which in turn gives context to your current mission. Fighting various enemies allows you to hone your fighting skills, which you will need later (for Gannon and his guardians in the castle).

Maybe you just don't like exploration, so then BotW is not for you. But for people who do, it's an amazing game.
 

DalekFlay

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What are you talking about? The open world has a ton of interesting stuff to find, from 120 shrines dispersed everywhere to all kinds of unique NPCs (did you find the horse archery post in the wild that gives you quests and a horse archery contest? how about the guy with the golf game at the bottom of the canyon? or the guy selling monster equipment? or the shield surfing champion in the log cabin who gives you that contest? or the island where you are stripped of all equipment?) to out-of-the-way towns (there was a summer town/village I didn't even find until seeing it on the wiki) to rare sights/monsters (the flying dragons of different types, different lynels, hinnoxes, undead hinnoxes, that sand fish monster, etc), to rare treasure (hell, the best pieces of equipment in the game have to be found by exporing the world) to memories, to just cool places where you can interact with the world in novel ways.

The exploration is solid, but a lot of it is palette-swapped similar content. Even the big cities are mostly the same shops and quests, just with different polygons presenting them. I liked the game a lot, if you read my posts you'll see that, but I don't think it has unique enough content to justify exploring for 200 hours. The shrines in the end are very similar as well, and you don't need anywhere near 30 hearts to be a god in the game.
 

DalekFlay

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Don't want to make a new thread for it so I'll just say here that Twilight Princess sucks ass and I don't think I can finish it. I just got the spinner thing (which is retarded). The game is just super linear, the areas are poorly designed hallways pretending to be open, and the art design is boring shit. Talk about a plunge in quality after Wind Waker (which wasn't super amazing either).

I thought about playing Ocarina but it's 20fps and makes me nauseous.
 
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If I had to venture a guess, after the commercial and critical success of BotW, all the future Zeldas will be very different from the ones before BotW.
 

Tigranes

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If I imagine there are 3 kinds of content - (1) rote, mundane, routine stuff, (2) well crafted stuff, (3) such imaginative / charming stuff that just pops out at you and makes you exclaim in awe...

BOTW doesn't have a lot of (2). There's plenty of (1), which can get boring. But it also has a ridiculously high proportion of (3) compared to most games that don't have any of it.

The little forest where you get the sword, everything from the little dialogues to the laughing korok creatures as you walk around to the big fat ass tree, etc., is remarkable, like a good Ghibli moment where you marvel at how they expressed the themes and visuals. Then you remember all the other times like it when you first find the faeries bursting out of the giant flowerbuds, landing in your first big monster maze thing, the flying dragon sequence, etc. There's a ton of these spectacular 'one-offs' that don't translate into a lasting gameplay mechanic.

I would think that if you don't find some of the above moments remarkable, then the game just feels like a neverending wasteland of (1)s - super easy combat, etc. I guess it'd be like watching Totoro and being utterly uninterested in the art style, character designs, atmosphere that they have to offer, in which case you're sitting there thinking this is a shit ass boring movie with no real story or action.
 
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I don't think the combat is super easy at all. The combat has a "choose your own difficulty level" vibe to it. If you exploit the AI or cheese the game or constantly use bows/arrows/environmental aides/runes in combat, or get the very best armor, then maybe it's easy, but if you for example stick to parrying, as I did, it has a very Dark Souls feel, and is quite challenging.

I would also argue that other repeating gameplay mechanics feel very well crafted, things like climbing and solving the puzzles in shrines or using exploration and your head to solve some quests.
 

DalekFlay

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IMO WW is worse than Twilight. Some dungeons in TP are not bad and the game has more memorable moments.
But yeah the game is a bit derivative.

Wind Waker is a nice open world almost from the start, and has a lovely art style. I'm very sensitive to linearity and Twilight Princess is just too much of a corridor for me.
 
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I guess I like the plot of Twilight, so the linearity doesn't bother me. It's weird go me that people love non-linearity so much. Just about all the good moments in games happen in a linear fashion. Choosing when you encounter disparate elements of a game is fine, but BotW just felt insanely bloated. There wasn't nearly enough story and way too much climbing and repetitive mini tasks like korok seeds and shrines. Yeah, there are things to collect and Link can improve his parameters, but... It doesn't matter.

At least in Twilight Link and Midna grow in power and capability. You could say in BotW the player is the one who grows, and that's fine but it doesn't satisfy me.
 
Repressed Homosexual
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Nothing will ever top Link to the Past. Every single thing in that game was perfect. Music, pacing, environments, dungeons, bosses, puzzles, story progression... the best game Nintendo ever made.
 

DalekFlay

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I guess I like the plot of Twilight, so the linearity doesn't bother me. It's weird go me that people love non-linearity so much. Just about all the good moments in games happen in a linear fashion. Choosing when you encounter disparate elements of a game is fine, but BotW just felt insanely bloated. There wasn't nearly enough story and way too much climbing and repetitive mini tasks like korok seeds and shrines. Yeah, there are things to collect and Link can improve his parameters, but... It doesn't matter.

At least in Twilight Link and Midna grow in power and capability. You could say in BotW the player is the one who grows, and that's fine but it doesn't satisfy me.

People are just into different things. You sound very narrative focused and whatnot, but I am VERY much not. To me Twilight Princess was 10 hours of railroaded cutscenes and running in a straight line and that's just not at all what I play games for, except for maybe some FPS games. Link to the Past, Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild are much more open world and free.
 

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