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

cruel

Cipher
Joined
Sep 17, 2014
Messages
876
Finished the game yesterday, 115 hours. Couldn't bother doing all the shrines, stopped at 104 out of 120. The game is cool, worth playing, better than open-world Ubi-shit by a mile, but all those 10/10 scores are a little bit too much - no more than 8/10. It gets super repetitive quickly, enemy variety is a disaster, way to easy, and combination of weapon durability + broken economy encourages the player to avoid combat at some point.

Note: if anyone is complaining about 'boring open world' in Elden Ring, you should try Zelda. You will feel the true emptiness and boredom. But still, worth experiencing, many unique ideas, creativity and love put into the game.
 

jaekl

Educated
Patron
Joined
May 1, 2023
Messages
951
Location
Canada
I played breath of the wild recently, it was one of the worst experiences I can remember having in the last 25 years or so with a video game that wasn’t duct taped together in eastern Europe. I defeated 1 giant stone animal before quitting forever. To describe how I usually felt while playing the game - imagine if you were reading the morning newspaper while a small Asian man was behind you, always slightly out of reach, driving needles into the back of your head.

Open worlds and crafting are really becoming a pestilence for video games. The crafting part is the worst though, by a lot. There is very little more infuriating to me than being expected to pick up every single trash object in the entire world, that I must then combine in a menu to make the item that I should have picked up in the first place, instead of the trash. I cannot figure out what is wrong with these maniac game developers. They add all this annoying shit in the game to make the world feel more authentic, they make tiny little user interfaces at the very edge of the screen that you can hardly see, presumably so that you are pulled into the game more… but then you’re trapped in stupid ass menus combining toenail clippings and mushrooms for 60% of the game. Too hot? Open a menu. Too cold? Open the menu. Low health? Open the menu. No more food? Open the menu 800 times to painstakingly cook each dish with individual ingredients. Enough with the menus!! I *loathe* menus.

The game has yet another large pretty open world with miles of fields to trudge through while earth’s retards are staring in awe at what is basically a painting of a landscape. In order to encourage you to do a million children’s puzzles and spend as much time as possible in menus instead of the game, they’ve made you walk as slow as possible with what feels like a 5% speed boost when you sprint, which only lasts for a millisecond before your stamina bar completely empties. Climbing is also tied to the stamina bar and even more slow than the running is. Moving around in this game is so painstaking, I sometimes would begin to physically cringe.

Lots of dumb guys will parrot the weapons breaking as the fatal flaw here, then other dumb guys will parrot that it’s important to encourage you to “Experiment with blah blah blah”. Both wrong, every weapon is functionally identical, all that matters is their number. You will never run out after you move beyond sticks. All you need to know is the game has a matrix dodge and a parry which deflects robot lasers, and they use dark souls 1 timing. With those combined with general open world AI retardation and rocket launcher bows, you’ll lay waste to hordes of enemies and never be in danger. Not that it really matters, it only cuts down on the number of times you’ll have to open the menu to cram steaks into your health bar.

Beyond the kinds of puzzles that you’d expect to find in a cell phone app, you have all these quests designed by complete cunts. Making me light torches in an area where it rains for half an hour every 5 minutes was so funny the first time! It was even funnier the second time! Too bad the *AMAZING* fire physics don’t work on the only thing I want to set on fire – the homes of all these dickheads who hand out quests.

“Maybe I’ll upgrade the old armor so I don’t have to open the menu as much… Ahh keese eyes, I’ve killed like 1000 of those, no problem… wait… 40 keese wings, 12 fire keese wings, 8 electric… no eyes? NO EYES AT ALL?!”

It's like EverQuest (1999), where a guy would tell you to grab him 8 spider legs and you’d go perform a total spider genocide, but only 3 of them would have legs. In a single player action game (2017). What is even the point of all these rupees? JUST LET ME BUY EVERYTHING I NEED WITH CURRENCY! PLEASE!!

These Japanese have no respect for your time, and it shows throughout. Look how slow every single repetitive action is. Their brains must be 80% tumors by now after all the nuclear incidents they’ve been through. The one saving grace is that there is no skill tree. If there was a skill tree, I would have dropped the third nuke personally.
 

Perkel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
15,879
I mean yeah, BOTW is nintendo first open world. And that's pretty much all you need to know of what it will be.
I played it for 5 hours and quickly got bored with exact same things i hated in ubishit games.
 
Joined
Dec 5, 2010
Messages
1,611
I mean yeah, BOTW is nintendo first open world.
The first open world Zelda would be The Wind Waker. There the only concessions made to players who don't actually care for open worlds were the seamless and optional barrel-jumping rupee collecting you could do while crossing the open world distances on a boat. A far cry from the ubisoftesque design of BOTW and it's a shame that WW was still left half-cooked when they had the opportunity to "remaster" it.

I am really not a fan of either of the 3DS remakes. Sure the graphics were 'improved' but they fucked up the ambience on many of the scenes completely
And the "improved" graphics technically just look like something out of a N64Pro while the dual screen thing makes them a pain to emulate. No need for the sidemakes now that there are 60fps pc versions of the originals. Odd that they didn't even try to have people double dip the remakes with WiiU ports with the pad acting as the DS/3DS' second screen.
 
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Neuromancer

Augur
Joined
Jun 10, 2018
Messages
1,238
I mean yeah, BOTW is nintendo first open world.
The first open world Zelda would be The Wind Waker. There the only concessions made to players who don't actually care for open worlds were the seamless and optional barrel-jumping rupee collecting you could do while crossing the open world distances on a boat. A far cry from the ubisoftesque design of BOTW and it's a shame that WW was still left half-cooked when they had the opportunity to "remaster" it.
Wind Waker was not Open World - it was Empty World. ;)
There was almost nothing to see or find on the big ocean. In this way, it was very similar to the sky area in Skyward Sword.

Both games still followed more or less the traditional 3D-Zelda formula, though. Only the navigation between the different game areas was a little different.
But this doesn't make them Open World IMHO.
 

Neuromancer

Augur
Joined
Jun 10, 2018
Messages
1,238
I guess, that depends, how you define Open World.

All Zeldas have some collectibles lying around the game world, that's true.
But the main point of the games is still going from Dungeon 1 to 2 to 3 etc. and then to the final dungeon to beat the final boss. The collectibles are just some extras, which might or might not help you with the main game.

The difference with the two newest Zeldas is, that this additional stuff strewn about the game world becomes the major part of game play instead of just being extra stuff.
That is the reason, why some people can spend hours in the game searching for these "extras" while others can finish the game in roughly half an hour.
 
Joined
Dec 5, 2010
Messages
1,611
The first open world Zelda would be The Wind Waker.
How aren't they all open world? Except 2 since it has an overworld.
Open world as opposed to a connected world where the main play area is composed of smaller disjoint/discrete locations connected through "gates".

Sure, but 25 years ago that was open world. Obviously shit is going to get expanded over time.
It may have been marketed as such to the nintendo audience. But even just 25 years ago you had Daggerfall, which was hardly the first...
 
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HeatEXTEND

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Feb 12, 2017
Messages
3,995
Location
Nedderlent
The first open world Zelda would be The Wind Waker.
How aren't they all open world? Except 2 since it has an overworld.
Open world as opposed to a connected world where the main play area is composed of smaller disjoint/discrete locations connected through "gates".

Sure, but 25 years ago that was open world. Obviously shit is going to get expanded over time.
It may have been marketed as such to the nintendo audience. But even just 25 years ago you had Daggerfall, which was hardly the first...
Daggerfall wasn't on a 8-bit home console tho.
 

Caim

Arcane
Joined
Aug 1, 2013
Messages
15,717
Location
Dutchland
Finished the first temple over at the Rito.

It was... marginally better than what the Divine Beast was like.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
5,894
I think you posted on the wrong thread. I also just cleared the Wind temple, however I thought it was significantly better than the Divine Beasts. The fact that it had a proper boss also contributes to that feeling, even if it's way too easy.
 

Caim

Arcane
Joined
Aug 1, 2013
Messages
15,717
Location
Dutchland
I think you posted on the wrong thread. I also just cleared the Wind temple, however I thought it was significantly better than the Divine Beasts. The fact that it had a proper boss also contributes to that feeling, even if it's way too easy.
Yes I did. Hurrrr.
 

JDR13

Arcane
Joined
Nov 2, 2006
Messages
3,933
Location
The Swamp
For those of you playing on PC, what's a good gamepad for BotW and TotK? Would a DualShock 4 work well with these games?
 
Joined
Dec 5, 2010
Messages
1,611
^Dual Shock 4 (and maybe DS5) is probably ideal because of BOTW's motion/gyro puzzles.

Though it now sounds like you might be better off skipping BOTW altogether and going straight to TOTK.
 

HeatEXTEND

Prophet
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Joined
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Messages
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Nedderlent
^Dual Shock 4 (and maybe DS5) is probably ideal because of BOTW's motion/gyro puzzles.
I always forget that the DualShock 4 has gyro. I've had it for years and have never played a game that used that feature.
Don't play BotW. Skip straight to playing TotK. Same exact fucking game but better.
No, there's a Fallout1/2 dynamic going on. TotK expands on just about everything but the """vibe""" is very different. I'd in all earnesty recommend playing BotW first, wait at least a year, then play TotK. Not that anyone will though.
 
Joined
Dec 19, 2012
Messages
1,644
I will admit I have two complaints about this game.

1) I really do not care for Ganondorf's (english) voice actor. I'm pretty sure it's Liquid Snake but after all these years of non-voice acted Zelda games, they finally have an opportunity to choose a VA for Dorf Goes Fishin and he just doesn't sound like he has hair on the chest.

Nothing's ever going to top OoT chad ganondorf:


Although I will admit he looks pretty cool in cutscenes.

2) Link's probably more overpowered here than he's ever been- it's like playing the most absurd F/M/T without really doing anything special. Easy Zelda games are kind of on-brand at this point- I remember the final boss in Twilight Princess doing 1/2 of a heart's worth of damage to me while I had like 18-- in order to burn through all my fairies the dude would have had to stand there whacking me for like 10 minutes straight.

My most harrowing fight was with the Ice Gleeok that I attacked before I was ready-- I had a dwindling amount of arrows, he was doing nearly my entire lifebar's worth of damage and my weapons weren't good enough to do much damage when he was stunned. I scraped by and it was the most fun I've had in this game, since I attempted him pretty early and it was the first big boss I fought.

But once your start accumulating enough resources everything just gets steamrolled with the occasional huge damage spike from random monsters that might kill you outright but probably not if you've marked a fairy fountain or two on your map. The 'victory lap' seems to start very, very early. In earlier games there were limits to what Link could carry-- bomb bags, bigger quivers or bottles kept you in check at least theoretically. It's been said but once you can carry hundreds of arrows, a ton of bombs and elemental fruits your average mooks just can't do anything to you anymore. Getting ice arrows or fire arrows was kind of a bigger deal in the older games but in this one you just need to pick up a piece of fruit and you can stunlock anything but the boss monsters. If you can tank a single hit you can pause the game and heal yourself back to full.

This is hardly a revelation, not even the first game I've played that's guilty of this type of stuff (Amalur had the same 'pause game and heal back to full' problems, as well.) But it is too bad this game is on the Switch and any mods we see for emulation will probably just be cosmetic. I really love the underlying engine and the game feels great to play. But it could use some kind of JSawyer mod, some kind of leash on Link's power-- carry weight, a magic bar for bow-fusion, a limit on specific items, only certain healing items being useable in-combat, an 'imbibing' animation during combat, anything. I've been trying to think of ways to handicap myself during the playthrough but honestly it's tough.

Don't get me wrong I'm still having a blast, but I occasionally need to take a break and play a fighting game or something that will push back while playing this.
 

HeatEXTEND

Prophet
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Joined
Feb 12, 2017
Messages
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Nedderlent
No, there's a Fallout1/2 dynamic going on. TotK expands on just about everything but the """vibe""" is very different.
You're not the first person I've seen say this and I have no idea what it's supposed to mean. By "different vibe" do you mean BotW feels more dull and empty?
I think BotW had a distinct post-apocalyptic feel while drenched in LoZ history, not the easiest combination to get right, very cool. The supposed emptiness in BotW never bothered me, it enhanced the entire experience; It elevated the 'memberberries making them a reward on their own, like a LoZ museum.
I guess that's a decent analogy, if BotW is a museum TotK is a themepark. Both can be fun and rewarding but they are not the same experience obviously.
 

musouking

Novice
Patron
Joined
Jul 30, 2023
Messages
58
Location
China
I suggest anyone who give it up for disliking boring open world just like I did (Not including guys didn't even get out of Great Plateau) ride a horse with 10 apples feed for max bonding so that it runs along the main road automatically, just to finish the main quests instead of wandering around exploring for so-called open world freedom. The map is way too big filled with repetitive and empty content: same enemies but colors, similar chests, yahaha, 20/120 shrines test of strength, several main villages etc makes exploring bored.
BotW has a good story telling if all memories get collected before Master Sword pulled. Nintendo has already ranked memories by timeline

Edit: Due to my rusty English, writing long reviews frustrates me. Let me know if I make it confusing. Thanks.
 
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Taurist

Scholar
Joined
Dec 8, 2017
Messages
108
I was gripped for the first ten hours. Absolutely gripped. But im really struggling to play any more. The main quest is so shit and boring. I honestly think BotW main quest was better.
So much of this game is great, but its really unforgivable.
 

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