Dominion Strategy Forum
Miscellaneous => Other Games => Topic started by: GendoIkari on May 12, 2023, 01:03:15 pm
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So who's started it? I took the morning off work so my wife and I could play while our son was at school. But now have to wait until tonight for more.
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I assumed you would start a new thread, given how engrossed you were with BotW :) Haven't had the time to get it yet, but I have a long weekend coming up next week, where I think I might be less productive than I should ;D
Been doing my best to avoid spoilers, but I am pretty sure I should avoid this thread until I've got at least 10h in or so. Hope you're enjoying it!
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I started Friday night and overall I'm having a lot of fun with it. However, I've had a few frustrations/confusions so far, including:
1. As far as I can tell, you can't really angle the camera up or down while using ultrahand? This is especially annoying when you need to carry something a long way, like with the Korok escort missions.
2. Save states do not remember where things were? So if you take something with you a long way, save, and then die, you will respawn there, but the thing you took with you will reset to where it was originally. I think maybe this and the above are less problematic if you use capsules which I have not tried to understand yet.
3. I found the organization of the Great Sky Island misleading and confusing, and seems like there might be semi-soft-lock potential (by which I mean, you aren't technically soft-locked, but it takes significantly more skill to exit an area than to get into it). You do the first shrine, and then Rauru says, go do 2 more shrines. Look around and then put a pin on the map wherever you see them, then use the pin on the map to find it. Unless I'm blind, only one of the two shrines is visible from where you're standing when he says that, so naturally you would go to that one first. But the "direct" path there, I'm pretty sure, is not meant to be accessible. But it really looks like it is, so I spent about an hour and a half running around the snowy mountain area trying to figure out how to climb the icy walls near the top. I was eventually able to do it, by putting together an awkward mess of logs and a raft and balancing it at a funny angle in a little crevice, and then climbing the logs instead of the icy walls. I did the shrine, then eventually found and completed the other shrine, and only then did I find what I think is the intended path to the snowy mountain shrine on my (admittedly very convoluted) way back to the temple of time. It seems to me like they intended for you to do what I ended up doing after having already done the snowy mountain shrine, which is make a big loop around the island and hit the snowy mountain shrine on the way back to the temple of time. But I'm not sure how you would ever know to do that?
4. Things snap to weird angles with ultrahand. I just finished a shrine where the entire difficulty was just getting something to attach at the angle I wanted. Like, it would look perfect, so I press A to attach it, and then it would snap up to a way steeper angle that I couldn't walk up anymore. Probably there's a different intended solution that I was missing, but it's frustrating when it feels like the UI is the difficult part of the puzzle.
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I had a somewhat similar frustration to your #3. Basically, the game doesn’t always make it clear if something is possible or not. You can waste a lot of time trying to do something that’s actually impossible (or impossible until later), but you get so close to succeeding that it seems like you could do it if you just do better.
With the ice wall, I saw someone else struggle with the same thing. Not sure if it’s the same place or not, but when I got to an ice wall near one of the intro shrines, I found a small non-ice path between ice on the wall which I could climb.
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Basically, the game doesn’t always make it clear if something is possible or not. You can waste a lot of time trying to do something that’s actually impossible (or impossible until later), but you get so close to succeeding that it seems like you could do it if you just do better.
Yeah, I think this is really the main problem I'm having. I just spent half an hour trying to find a clever way to avoid dying from fall damage in a particular shrine, only to give up and eventually discover that if I had continued the main plot, I would eventually get the paraglider making the problem trivially solvable. I doubt it's possible within reason to do the shrine I was trying to do without the paraglider, but it's not obvious that it's not possible, and it wasn't obvious to me that the paraglider would even be in the game at all, and the game had turned me loose so I thought it was time to go exploring.
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Basically, the game doesn’t always make it clear if something is possible or not. You can waste a lot of time trying to do something that’s actually impossible (or impossible until later), but you get so close to succeeding that it seems like you could do it if you just do better.
Yeah, I think this is really the main problem I'm having. I just spent half an hour trying to find a clever way to avoid dying from fall damage in a particular shrine, only to give up and eventually discover that if I had continued the main plot, I would eventually get the paraglider making the problem trivially solvable. I doubt it's possible within reason to do the shrine I was trying to do without the paraglider, but it's not obvious that it's not possible, and it wasn't obvious to me that the paraglider would even be in the game at all, and the game had turned me loose so I thought it was time to go exploring.
That's the specific thing I was talking about! Another friend of mine also spent a while trying to get through it before giving up. While I haven't gotten far enough to get the paraglider, it was already spoiled for me this morning that it existed in the game. It's an odd change from BOTW where you had everything you'd ever need (other than just getting stronger versions of the same stuff) when you finished the tutorial. I actually like that there's apparently more progression than in BOTW, but it should have made it very clear that you weren't yet equipped for that place.
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I’ve only just left the tutorial area. I love almost everything so far, except the gyro aiming. There’s something wrong with it. It drifts oddly, making fine aiming incredibly challenging. I thought maybe it was my controllers or the Switch, but it’s the game. I went back to Breath of the Wild and the gyro aiming is perfect there. I really hope they patch it, but I’m not optimistic.
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3. I found the organization of the Great Sky Island misleading and confusing, and seems like there might be semi-soft-lock potential (by which I mean, you aren't technically soft-locked, but it takes significantly more skill to exit an area than to get into it). You do the first shrine, and then Rauru says, go do 2 more shrines. Look around and then put a pin on the map wherever you see them, then use the pin on the map to find it. Unless I'm blind, only one of the two shrines is visible from where you're standing when he says that, so naturally you would go to that one first. But the "direct" path there, I'm pretty sure, is not meant to be accessible. But it really looks like it is, so I spent about an hour and a half running around the snowy mountain area trying to figure out how to climb the icy walls near the top. I was eventually able to do it, by putting together an awkward mess of logs and a raft and balancing it at a funny angle in a little crevice, and then climbing the logs instead of the icy walls. I did the shrine, then eventually found and completed the other shrine, and only then did I find what I think is the intended path to the snowy mountain shrine on my (admittedly very convoluted) way back to the temple of time. It seems to me like they intended for you to do what I ended up doing after having already done the snowy mountain shrine, which is make a big loop around the island and hit the snowy mountain shrine on the way back to the temple of time. But I'm not sure how you would ever know to do that?
I think you're blind :), both Shrines look quite visible.
https://www.youtube.com/live/HAo5KZwYPpI?feature=share&t=3633 (https://www.youtube.com/live/HAo5KZwYPpI?feature=share&t=3633)
The tutorial could be more streamlined, but it felt fair enough for an open-world game, let people start rambling around.
I agree with the general points about possibilities for awkwardness / frustrations in some of the systems. But I think some amount of that is unavoidable if you want to have flexible / powerful systems. For sure a controller (or at least this particular scheme) is an awkward interface for some of the construction.
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3. I found the organization of the Great Sky Island misleading and confusing, and seems like there might be semi-soft-lock potential (by which I mean, you aren't technically soft-locked, but it takes significantly more skill to exit an area than to get into it). You do the first shrine, and then Rauru says, go do 2 more shrines. Look around and then put a pin on the map wherever you see them, then use the pin on the map to find it. Unless I'm blind, only one of the two shrines is visible from where you're standing when he says that, so naturally you would go to that one first. But the "direct" path there, I'm pretty sure, is not meant to be accessible. But it really looks like it is, so I spent about an hour and a half running around the snowy mountain area trying to figure out how to climb the icy walls near the top. I was eventually able to do it, by putting together an awkward mess of logs and a raft and balancing it at a funny angle in a little crevice, and then climbing the logs instead of the icy walls. I did the shrine, then eventually found and completed the other shrine, and only then did I find what I think is the intended path to the snowy mountain shrine on my (admittedly very convoluted) way back to the temple of time. It seems to me like they intended for you to do what I ended up doing after having already done the snowy mountain shrine, which is make a big loop around the island and hit the snowy mountain shrine on the way back to the temple of time. But I'm not sure how you would ever know to do that?
I think you're blind :), both Shrines look quite visible.
Yes, you're right, I have no idea how I missed that. I looked all around many times and could only ever see the one...
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My initial biggest complaint is something that I think doesn't bother me as much now that I've gotten used to the idea. Very earliest game spoilers only:
When I found out that Shrines and Koroks existed still, in the same form, I was annoyed. I knew that assets and physics would be re-used from BOTW, but I had hoped the main structure of the game would differ more. I had fun hunting down all the koroks in BOTW, but that doesn't mean I want to go do that same thing again. It would have been easy to replace it with a different sort of collectable, which had different ways of obtaining them. And with Shrines, I thought there would be an entirely new way of doing those sorts of things. A different way of obtaining more hearts and stamina. Like I said it doesn't bug me as much now that I've had a couple days of playing with that knowledge, but it's still not quite what I was hoping for.
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My initial biggest complaint is something that I think doesn't bother me as much now that I've gotten used to the idea. Very earliest game spoilers only:
When I found out that Shrines and Koroks existed still, in the same form, I was annoyed. I knew that assets and physics would be re-used from BOTW, but I had hoped the main structure of the game would differ more. I had fun hunting down all the koroks in BOTW, but that doesn't mean I want to go do that same thing again. It would have been easy to replace it with a different sort of collectable, which had different ways of obtaining them. And with Shrines, I thought there would be an entirely new way of doing those sorts of things. A different way of obtaining more hearts and stamina. Like I said it doesn't bug me as much now that I've had a couple days of playing with that knowledge, but it's still not quite what I was hoping for.
I would have been fine with an alternative to shrines, but I'm glad there are still Koroks. At least there are a bunch of new kinds of Korok puzzles. And in my very limited playtime post-tutorial-area, there are enough interesting and surprising things added that the Koroks are somewhat grounding. Some old, some new.
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Oh man I just discovered The Depths. So yeah, insane. Mind boggling that that much map space / content can exist. I'm completely intimidated by the amount of time this is going to take.
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I’m playing! I am overwhelmed by the bigness of the world.
I was initially pretty annoyed to see Shrines return, but it does seem like the game is a little more linear—or at least has like more of a discernible plot to advance if you take a certain path—so now I’m less annoyed. Breath of the wild was vast but weirdly empty; this world is brimming with interesting stuff to do.
I mostly like the various abilities; I am not sold on Fuse, which is sort of unintuitive to me. You can’t fuse directly from your inventory, it seems? Except for arrows? Hmm.
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Finished the tutorial (which, as pointed earlier in this thread, doesn't quite end when you "descend", but when Purah tells you to go out and explore). Got a horse (you keep the ones from your BotW save!), and chose one of the many threads the "starting town" points you towards, though there is one that they insist on - kinda like BotW pointed you towards Dueling Peaks, then Kakariko, then Zora domain, even if technically you could go anywhere.
Really enjoying ultrahand, and the flexibility it gives you for puzzles. The "snapping" when glue-ing things together is a plus in my book, less fiddling about when the game only allows some angles. Bit annoying that one of the rotations is not allowed, so you have to twist things around quite a bit sometimes to do a simple turn. I haven't played around too much with Fuse hand, but I appreciate that it means you're never far from having a hammer/axe/fan, without having to constantly carry them around. And it can probably lead to silly moments, once I have enough resources to not fret about sticking them on a stick to see what happens (only death so far was against an enemy in the tutorial area that had a flamethrower on its sword, you probably know the one). No thoughts yet on how it affects "hoarding" good weapons.
Zonai devices seem interesting, but haven't used them too much yet. It looks like they might trivialize puzzles, if you're willing to spend them that way. Haven't figured out yet how to actually launch wings without a proper launchpad.
Shrines coming back in such a similar form was a bit eyebrow-raising, but to be fair they filled a very important role in BotW, which is hard to replace in any other way. And I am enjoying the new puzzles so far. I do hope it doesn't mean we're not getting proper dungeons in this one either, that would be a bummer.
Did a very quick trip to the Depths. It seemed a bit barren to me, but maybe it gets better later. The twist on semi-persistent heart damage might force me to actually learn how to fight, we will see.
Very strong start to the game so far. About the only snag for me is that I moved recently, so I don't have a proper TV/monitor to play on, and the game doesn't always look very crisp in handheld mode.
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11 days in, and we've almost played every day. I think 10 out of the 11 days. That's with a full-time job and a kid to take care of after work, so only playing starting 8:00 each night. Taking turns with my wife, playing together, as we do all such games.
Still barely scratched the surface of what we'll eventually do. 1 extra stamina wheel and 6 total hearts. Haven't been to the depths in the past several days, even. I was very excited about finding treasure maps, reminding me of the great times with Windwaker.
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One minor complaint... I really miss how BOTW had a very distinct color of light for undiscovered shrines. Now instead the top part of the light goes away when you discover/complete a shrine, but the door is still the same color. A few different times I thought I'd spotted a new shrine in the distance only to look closer and discover it was one I already had done. In BOTW, there was a great feeling of excitement whenever you'd catch a glimpse of that red glow for a new shrine.
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I've just finished the fourth temple, and I've still barely even touched the depths (only as much as I needed for the fire temple). My feeling is that they are weirdly different sizes, with the fire temple feeling gargantuan compared to the water temple, and the sky and lightning temples being somewhere in the middle. I haven't been a fan of the boss fights so far, though I don't think I like boss fights in games in general. The boss fight in the lightning temple is super chaotic until you figure out how to make it not so chaotic, at which point it's only super chaotic very briefly. The fight in the water temple felt very tedious, but I'm guessing I was doing something wrong, which brings me to the reason why I don't like the boss fights in general: you have to solve a puzzle while frantically trying not to die. The puzzles themselves are not necessarily bad, nor is the trying not to die, but I don't think those two things go well together.
The "snapping" when glue-ing things together is a plus in my book, less fiddling about when the game only allows some angles.
I actually agree in general, largely because most of the puzzles are designed so you don't need fine rotations, and I've also since learned that to make smaller rotations, you just rotate the camera. My complaint though is more that it doesn't display what it's going to do until after you commit to doing it, so then you have to go back and break it apart if it didn't do what you expected. This doesn't matter very often, but when it does, it's annoying.
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Didn't uncover spoilers past the first one for that post because I still haven't done a single dungeon/temple. We did go to the giant storm area in the sky and are now in the middle of the thing that you do there.
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Finished the main Rito questline, got back to Lookout Landing. There's what seems like a short quest there that will draw you into a definitely-not-short bit of exploring. Don't be like me and try to finish it just before going to bed. EDIT: for the sake of future readers, the name of the quest is "Who goes there".
In other news, I systematically forget about ascend being a thing.
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Finished the main Rito questline, got back to Lookout Landing. There's what seems like a short quest there that will draw you into a definitely-not-short bit of exploring. Don't be like me and try to finish it just before going to bed.
In other news, I systematically forget about ascend being a thing.
Just got to the start of the wind temple for the Rito questline; the first one we've gotten to. Should finish it tongiht.
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I've been playing heavily, and until I finished the main story yesterday have mostly been avoiding discussions online. I've completed all main story quests before finishing the game, and I definitely enjoyed the game a lot.
A couple of generally low/minimal spoiler thoughts:
I find it surprising just how much from BotW was reused. The only other time they've done that in a major Zelda release was Majora's Mask, which was produced in a very short timeframe (about 2 years) - and even that had a totally new world it was set in even if assets and mechanics were reused. Here, basically the entire core structure of the game has carried over from BotW. Combat is basically the same. Ground level map is broadly the same, the story structure is very similar (go to 4 main areas, which are the same four as in BotW, also find Zelda's memories through a picture based mechanic), there's still the same Shrine system and Koroks for upgrading etc. I guess we always knew the game would have a lot in common with BotW but I'm surprised just how much it is.
TotK definitely feels a lot harder than BotW to me! I think it's a combination of there being far more enemy variety and most returning enemies have more attacks, plus things like the Depths is especially tricky early on due to the temporary max health reduction. Also several more subtle things, such as Hearty food being much rarer (RIP Hearty Durian farms in Faron), armour being more expensive to upgrade - and buy, actually, since rupees are far tougher to get. With that in mind, I found myself wanting to upgrade max health far more often than I did in BotW. In BotW I'd often get max stamina before even taking a 4th heart - after all why bother when I can make a few +15 max heart meals and take minimal damage due to upgraded Hylian Armour? But here, a combination of the Depths making max health more valuable, plus stamina being less vital due to many other ways to gain height, plus less Hearty food, all make heart containers more important.
The dungeons in TotK are MUCH more fun than the BotW ones. Each has their own aesthetic, and several of them feel much more like classic Zelda dungeons with central gimmicks and a semi-linear intended path, which makes for a really enjoyable experience. I'm sure you can also just totally break the dungeons if you want, but hey, that's fun too. The bosses are also more interesting than just Xblight Ganon over and over again.
On the topic of bosses, the final boss fight is really well done. There were several things in that fight that caught me off guard in a good way. MAJOR spoilers I guess here:
1: Ganondorf literally destroying heart containers. Makes perfect sense as he already did that in the Prologue, but still when I realised I wasn't just having hearts gloomed
but literally removed it was like, oh crap, I can't stall this forever
2: That health bar. It's a bit cliche maybe but it worked.
3: He flurry rushes you and even dodges during your flurry rushes. Really just highlights how much of a badass he is.
4: I somehow didn't see the demon dragon transformation coming. Final phase was mostly just for show, but works as a climactic finish far more than Dark Beast Ganon did in BotW.
I'm so far not entirely sold on the Depths. I think it's a cool concept but I think two issues I've picked up are that 1: It feels unrewarding to explore (especially as it's the "hard" area to explore), and 2: it feels a bit too empty and devoid of content.
For point 1, generally I just feel like you can spend a whole lot of time there and not have much to show for it. I probably spent about 10 hours in there yesterday and today, and all I have from it is like 20 extra battery charges or so, plus a few schema stones and cosmetic items. Nice stuff, sure, but I feel like I could have gotten far more of value from the overworld or sky. As for point 2, I feel like you end up just running from key point to key point in the Depths, found from your map - or just fly across them where possible.
That said, I do like the idea. I've seen some people compare it to the ALttP Dark World, a vertically mirrored version of the BotW map (approximately) which is nastier to explore. I find that a cool concept, just I think it could have been a bit more enjoyable execution wise.
Overall though, really enjoying the game. There's a ton of stuff to do, and even though I beat the game yesterday I'm still completing Side Adventures, Quests and Shrines and expect that'll last me several more weeks yet.
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Looking forward to completing the main story and reading that spoiler! Though at the rate we're going, that could be a long time from now.
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Finished the main Rito questline, got back to Lookout Landing. There's what seems like a short quest there that will draw you into a definitely-not-short bit of exploring. Don't be like me and try to finish it just before going to bed.
Was it the Royal Secret Passage? If so, then we were indeed like you and now it's past 1:30 am and I have work in the morning. Like really, how long could a cave possibly take to explore?
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Finished the main Rito questline, got back to Lookout Landing. There's what seems like a short quest there that will draw you into a definitely-not-short bit of exploring. Don't be like me and try to finish it just before going to bed.
Was it the Royal Secret Passage? If so, then we were indeed like you and now it's past 1:30 am and I have work in the morning. Like really, how long could a cave possibly take to explore?
I tried to warn you!
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Related to the complaint multiple of us have had with how they didn't make it obvious when something needed more progression before being possible... a friend of mine just told me that last night he got to the Wind Temple, but hadn't yet talked to Tulin at all. Spend literally hours trying to complete it before finally giving up and looking up a guide, only to find out that it wasn't at all possible. Now has to spend a long time doing the very long path to get back there after finding Tulin.
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Related to the complaint multiple of us have had with how they didn't make it obvious when something needed more progression before being possible... a friend of mine just told me that last night he got to the Wind Temple, but hadn't yet talked to Tulin at all. Spend literally hours trying to complete it before finally giving up and looking up a guide, only to find out that it wasn't at all possible. Now has to spend a long time doing the very long path to get back there after finding Tulin.
I am assuming the teleport spot doesnt activate if you get there without Tulin, but even then, there is a shrine most of the way up there. Shouldn't be too bad.
But yes, it's part of the reason I am focusing on the main quest a lot.
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Related to the complaint multiple of us have had with how they didn't make it obvious when something needed more progression before being possible... a friend of mine just told me that last night he got to the Wind Temple, but hadn't yet talked to Tulin at all. Spend literally hours trying to complete it before finally giving up and looking up a guide, only to find out that it wasn't at all possible. Now has to spend a long time doing the very long path to get back there after finding Tulin.
I am assuming the teleport spot doesnt activate if you get there without Tulin, but even then, there is a shrine most of the way up there. Shouldn't be too bad.
But yes, it's part of the reason I am focusing on the main quest a lot.
You can activate the teleport spot, but it doesn't help because Tulin won't follow you when you teleport. Same is probably true for teleporting to the shrine.
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Related to the complaint multiple of us have had with how they didn't make it obvious when something needed more progression before being possible... a friend of mine just told me that last night he got to the Wind Temple, but hadn't yet talked to Tulin at all. Spend literally hours trying to complete it before finally giving up and looking up a guide, only to find out that it wasn't at all possible. Now has to spend a long time doing the very long path to get back there after finding Tulin.
I am assuming the teleport spot doesnt activate if you get there without Tulin, but even then, there is a shrine most of the way up there. Shouldn't be too bad.
But yes, it's part of the reason I am focusing on the main quest a lot.
You can activate the teleport spot, but it doesn't help because Tulin won't follow you when you teleport. Same is probably true for teleporting to the shrine.
WTF, ok that's terrible.
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Related to the complaint multiple of us have had with how they didn't make it obvious when something needed more progression before being possible... a friend of mine just told me that last night he got to the Wind Temple, but hadn't yet talked to Tulin at all. Spend literally hours trying to complete it before finally giving up and looking up a guide, only to find out that it wasn't at all possible. Now has to spend a long time doing the very long path to get back there after finding Tulin.
I am assuming the teleport spot doesnt activate if you get there without Tulin, but even then, there is a shrine most of the way up there. Shouldn't be too bad.
But yes, it's part of the reason I am focusing on the main quest a lot.
You can activate the teleport spot, but it doesn't help because Tulin won't follow you when you teleport. Same is probably true for teleporting to the shrine.
FWIW, I think when I did it I did go to the shrine first without Tulin, and then he teleported there with me. But I could be misremembering things.
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Can someone help me understand something about the story without spoilers? I have found all dragon tears, so I have basically the first 14 or so videos filled out (except I think for 1 that's missing between tear 8 and tear 9 or something). Spoilers for any story/videos that you get from that:
Ok in "A Show of Fealty", Ganondorf visits the Zonai throne room (peacefully) and talks to Rauru. After he leaves, Zelda says she doesn't trust him, and Rauru says he knows he has bad intentions, but wants to keep him close. I'm very confused by this for 2 reasons:
1) This is after "The Gerudo Assault", in which Ganondorf attempts to conquer Hyrule using Molduga. Did they not know that he was behind that attack? Although Rauru and Zelda suspect he has evil intentions, they aren't treating him or talking about him like someone who literally just attacked their kingdom.
2) Doesn't Zelda know exactly who Ganondorf is, having come from the future? Isn't this (for Zelda) shortly after after she spent 100 years fighting Ganon and holding him at bay? I've been assuming that Calamity Ganon from BOTW was Ganondorf; is that not accurate? Zelda sure isn't acting like the evil she just spent 100 years fighting against walked into the room. Even aside from her encounter with Calamity Ganon, she met Ganondorf / The Demon King under Hyrule before she time-traveled; and she confirms in another video shortly after that she knows the evil being under Hyrule was Ganondorf.
I was just really confused by that video.
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Can someone help me understand something about the story without spoilers? I have found all dragon tears, so I have basically the first 14 or so videos filled out (except I think for 1 that's missing between tear 8 and tear 9 or something). Spoilers for any story/videos that you get from that:
Ok in "A Show of Fealty", Ganondorf visits the Zonai throne room (peacefully) and talks to Rauru. After he leaves, Zelda says she doesn't trust him, and Rauru says he knows he has bad intentions, but wants to keep him close. I'm very confused by this for 2 reasons:
1) This is after "The Gerudo Assault", in which Ganondorf attempts to conquer Hyrule using Molduga. Did they not know that he was behind that attack? Although Rauru and Zelda suspect he has evil intentions, they aren't treating him or talking about him like someone who literally just attacked their kingdom.
We're sort of left to fill in the blanks here. Either yes, it's known that Ganondorf was behind the attack and his show of fealty here is essentially a way of making peace, or similar; or no, they didn't know for sure that Ganondorf was behind the attack but can sense the evil coming off of him regardless.
2) Doesn't Zelda know exactly who Ganondorf is, having come from the future? Isn't this (for Zelda) shortly after after she spent 100 years fighting Ganon and holding him at bay? I've been assuming that Calamity Ganon from BOTW was Ganondorf; is that not accurate? Zelda sure isn't acting like the evil she just spent 100 years fighting against walked into the room. Even aside from her encounter with Calamity Ganon, she met Ganondorf / The Demon King under Hyrule before she time-traveled; and she confirms in another video shortly after that she knows the evil being under Hyrule was Ganondorf.
It's shortly after she held back Ganon, and she even mentions about the name similarity, but she didn't necessarily know or realise at this point that the skeletal man they found under Hyrule Castle was Ganondorf. Bear in mind she only saw Ganondorf in the current day for like a minute before being whisked back in time several thousand years. She does eventually realise that it's definitely him, although I'm not certain she knew at that moment. Or perhaps, she did know but felt reticent to tell Rauru exactly what she knew.
As for the relationship between Ganondorf and Ganon, it's not exactly clear. They are part of the same entity, yes - but is Ganon a conscious manifestation of Ganondorf's will and attempts to escape? Is it just his malice raging uncontrollably against his shackles? That isn't really clarified.
Anyway I may not be 100% accurate. It's a Zelda game, the plot isn't usually its strong points.
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Well just ran into yet another frustration as a result of a poor game design... spent well over an hour doing a quest in the depths, only to eventually give up out of frustration and look it up. Turns out it's a place we just weren't supposed to be yet, and have to come back later after doing another side quest. Related to the "Mystery in the Depths" sidequest that you get after completing the first dungeon:
While exploring the depths, we randomly came across a statue of a woman, and noticed she was looking directly at another identical statue. We remembered Josha's sidequest which says that there are a series of statues, each looking at the next until the last one is looking at a special building/temple. So we followed from statue to statue, on and on. Found a couple lightroots along the way. Eventually got to a statue and could NOT find the statue it was looking at. Walked in a straight line to where it was looking a really long way. Went back to the statue a couple times to make sure we had the trajectory correct. Made sure the statue wasn't looking at any interesting building nearby... it was in a mine where there were some helpful constructs, but not looking at anything in particular. So it turns out that these statues are for another quest which is only unlocked after doing A Mystery in the Depths. The last statue we found really was the last one, and had we already unlocked this other sidequest, something interesting would have happened at the final location.
We did know (or at least my wife did), that these statues looked different than the ones in Josha's mural, and the one we had found originally as part of the getting the Camera quest. But still, they were a series of statues that clearly were supposed to be leading somewhere.
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Well just ran into yet another frustration as a result of a poor game design... spent well over an hour doing a quest in the depths, only to eventually give up out of frustration and look it up. Turns out it's a place we just weren't supposed to be yet, and have to come back later after doing another side quest. Related to the "Mystery in the Depths" sidequest that you get after completing the first dungeon:
While exploring the depths, we randomly came across a statue of a woman, and noticed she was looking directly at another identical statue. We remembered Josha's sidequest which says that there are a series of statues, each looking at the next until the last one is looking at a special building/temple. So we followed from statue to statue, on and on. Found a couple lightroots along the way. Eventually got to a statue and could NOT find the statue it was looking at. Walked in a straight line to where it was looking a really long way. Went back to the statue a couple times to make sure we had the trajectory correct. Made sure the statue wasn't looking at any interesting building nearby... it was in a mine where there were some helpful constructs, but not looking at anything in particular. So it turns out that these statues are for another quest which is only unlocked after doing A Mystery in the Depths. The last statue we found really was the last one, and had we already unlocked this other sidequest, something interesting would have happened at the final location.
We did know (or at least my wife did), that these statues looked different than the ones in Josha's mural, and the one we had found originally as part of the getting the Camera quest. But still, they were a series of statues that clearly were supposed to be leading somewhere.
I don't know if it's the same one, but I found a series of statues that eventually lead to a dead end, with a yiga clan member saying that the statues usually lead to an abandoned mine, but this one seemed to be buried somehow (then attacking you, of course). Got there before unlocking the Mystery in the Depths sidequest, but after a quick look around, decided I was missing some sort of ability to proceed - the game had already suggested it could hold things back from you, based on the paraglider *not* being compulsory.
There seem to be a handful of such trails, and I am currently doing them in the suggested order by Josha. Good to know you *have* to. It's funny because I started the Mystery in the Depths quest because Robbie implies he will give you the sensor "ability" afterwards, but turns out you unlock something arguably much more important first.
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Well just ran into yet another frustration as a result of a poor game design... spent well over an hour doing a quest in the depths, only to eventually give up out of frustration and look it up. Turns out it's a place we just weren't supposed to be yet, and have to come back later after doing another side quest. Related to the "Mystery in the Depths" sidequest that you get after completing the first dungeon:
While exploring the depths, we randomly came across a statue of a woman, and noticed she was looking directly at another identical statue. We remembered Josha's sidequest which says that there are a series of statues, each looking at the next until the last one is looking at a special building/temple. So we followed from statue to statue, on and on. Found a couple lightroots along the way. Eventually got to a statue and could NOT find the statue it was looking at. Walked in a straight line to where it was looking a really long way. Went back to the statue a couple times to make sure we had the trajectory correct. Made sure the statue wasn't looking at any interesting building nearby... it was in a mine where there were some helpful constructs, but not looking at anything in particular. So it turns out that these statues are for another quest which is only unlocked after doing A Mystery in the Depths. The last statue we found really was the last one, and had we already unlocked this other sidequest, something interesting would have happened at the final location.
We did know (or at least my wife did), that these statues looked different than the ones in Josha's mural, and the one we had found originally as part of the getting the Camera quest. But still, they were a series of statues that clearly were supposed to be leading somewhere.
I don't know if it's the same one, but I found a series of statues that eventually lead to a dead end, with a yiga clan member saying that the statues usually lead to an abandoned mine, but this one seemed to be buried somehow (then attacking you, of course). Got there before unlocking the Mystery in the Depths sidequest, but after a quick look around, decided I was missing some sort of ability to proceed - the game had already suggested it could hold things back from you, based on the paraglider *not* being compulsory.
There seem to be a handful of such trails, and I am currently doing them in the suggested order by Josha. Good to know you *have* to. It's funny because I started the Mystery in the Depths quest because Robbie implies he will give you the sensor "ability" afterwards, but turns out you unlock something arguably much more important first.
We just came across that exact spot randomly tonight. Not through following statues, but by finding the second-to-last and last statue in that line directly. We knew from that last info we'd gotten related to the other quest that it wasn't the statues we were looking for (yet). On a related note, I do really love the interactions with the Yiga Clan in this game. Much more interesting than how they were in BOTW; to the point where some of them will actually give you helpful information that would normally come from other random friendly characters, before turning on you and fighting.
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My playing of this game so far has been heavily influenced by my four-year-old, who gets to watch for 15 minutes before bed if she gets ready quickly enough. So I've done all of the towers and Dragon's tears since she loves those, but only the Wind Temple and not much of the Depths since it's too scary for her.
Overall I think it's great and a lot of fun, but I don't think it's touching BotW in terms of sheer awe-factor. I'm sure there are some people out there who are playing TotK without having played BotW and it would be really interesting to know how differently the game plays for them. But like, for the most part, I've been here before. It's just about seeing what's different this time around, so I feel motivated to check out the places where I expect a lot of new stuff happening (towns, stables, the sky islands, the depths), but I'm not feeling a real drive to scour every corner of the map to see what's there any more. I think the criticisms from before release that the game was going to be nothing more than $70 DLC are unfair, since there really is a ton going on in terms of story, side quests, etc., but it feels maybe more like BotW 1.5.
I don't play many video games outside the Zelda series--are there other examples of a sequel that's structured as a new story taking place in literally the same map as a previous entry in the series like this?
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On a related note, I do really love the interactions with the Yiga Clan in this game. Much more interesting than how they were in BOTW; to the point where some of them will actually give you helpful information that would normally come from other random friendly characters, before turning on you and fighting.
I love that those interactions aren't relegated to 99% getting "ambushed" by travelers. They have a more spread out influence in the overworld, some quests associated with them, and entirely new gameplay in the depths.
Overall I think it's great and a lot of fun, but I don't think it's touching BotW in terms of sheer awe-factor. I'm sure there are some people out there who are playing TotK without having played BotW and it would be really interesting to know how differently the game plays for them. But like, for the most part, I've been here before. It's just about seeing what's different this time around, so I feel motivated to check out the places where I expect a lot of new stuff happening (towns, stables, the sky islands, the depths), but I'm not feeling a real drive to scour every corner of the map to see what's there any more. I think the criticisms from before release that the game was going to be nothing more than $70 DLC are unfair, since there really is a ton going on in terms of story, side quests, etc., but it feels maybe more like BotW 1.5.
I don't play many video games outside the Zelda series--are there other examples of a sequel that's structured as a new story taking place in literally the same map as a previous entry in the series like this?
I agree with your point that knowing what and where the main landmarks are has influenced the way I play, where I fwoosh across the map at the sky island level as much as possible, jumping from stable to sky tower to town and so on. When I do bother with riding from point A to point B, I enjoy the new content around (minigames, caves, the Hudson construction dude, zonai device shenanigans)... but I've already seen the vistas, collected Korok seeds and hunted minibosses before, so exploration is not as motivating. The first dragon I saw in BotW, while I was crossing the Hylia bridge at night, is one of the most magical moments I've ever experienced in gaming. But you can only see it for the first time once.
That being said, TotK is still a marked improvement over BotW in so many ways. I'm withholding a definitive opinion until I finish it (will take a while), but so far it seems like it obsoletes its predecessor. They're both such long games, I would recommend a new player to only play TotK.
On your final question, I think the only time I had experienced this before was in Pokemon Silver/Gold, which "reuses" the map from Pokemon Red/Blue, but mixed up. It was only applicable for the second half of the game, and it was a cool surprise at the time. You're still breezing through it because it's paced like an extended postgame. From Zelda games, I understand a Link between Worlds reuses the map from A Link to the Past, but I haven't played it (and I played aLttP so long ago, I wouldn't even recognize the map anyway). Quick search online brings up the Yakuza games, which are always set in the same town district, and it's a big part of their identity. The Far Cry games reuse their maps for their different-setting DLC, but it's not actually meant to be the same place; this one seems to mostly have met with bad reception, unlike the previously mentioned cases.
There are also a ton of games that have you go through the entire map again, remixed, as part of their main quest, but that's not what is being discussed here. Or sequels that nominally happen in the same place but in practice use a new map, at most reusing only small areas that were too distinctive to change.
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My playing of this game so far has been heavily influenced by my four-year-old, who gets to watch for 15 minutes before bed if she gets ready quickly enough. So I've done all of the towers and Dragon's tears since she loves those, but only the Wind Temple and not much of the Depths since it's too scary for her.
Funny, our 4-year-old watched his first bit of us playing this today. My wife had taken some damage and he kept saying "mommy you're missing 2 hearts; you need 2 more hearts".
Overall I think it's great and a lot of fun, but I don't think it's touching BotW in terms of sheer awe-factor. I'm sure there are some people out there who are playing TotK without having played BotW and it would be really interesting to know how differently the game plays for them. But like, for the most part, I've been here before. It's just about seeing what's different this time around, so I feel motivated to check out the places where I expect a lot of new stuff happening (towns, stables, the sky islands, the depths), but I'm not feeling a real drive to scour every corner of the map to see what's there any more. I think the criticisms from before release that the game was going to be nothing more than $70 DLC are unfair, since there really is a ton going on in terms of story, side quests, etc., but it feels maybe more like BotW 1.5.
Yeah, despite this game probably being technically better than BOTW in almost every way, you nailed it with the phrase "awe-factor". I had never experienced anything close to BOTW in terms of gameplay, and TOTK never really had a chance to top that. It's still enough that I don't think we're going to be sick of it any time soon, and we'll still end up doing the full 100% thing that we did for BOTW.
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What exactly in the game draws people to do the Wind Temple first? We did it first, and so has everyone I’ve talked to and multiple mentions of it online as being “first”. With the order being technically open to players’ whims, did I not notice something that drew me that direction before the others?
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What exactly in the game draws people to do the Wind Temple first? We did it first, and so has everyone I’ve talked to and multiple mentions of it online as being “first”. With the order being technically open to players’ whims, did I not notice something that drew me that direction before the others?
Not really spoilers but just in case
Purah suggests you go to rito village to investigate zelda sightings early in the game.
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Well second (Zora) temple done, and man was I disappointed, compared to the Rito one. It felt extremely short and easy. Never had to stop and think about where to go next, or to figure out the layout of the rooms and whatnot. The boss was good, or at least ok.
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Completed my second temple too, the Goron one. Almost felt like a (shorter) proper Zelda dungeon, only less linear; I did end up brute forcing some parts because I couldn't figure out the solution, and I am ambivalent about that being an option. Boss was ok too, although also open to brute force solutions.
Overall I prefer it to the Rito one, whose focus was more on figuring out how to navigate it.
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Got the master sword! Don't consider that a spoiler, because you should have assumed you'd get it as some point in the game, even if you hadn't gotten to any of they story stuff telling you to get it.
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I like how Ocarina of Time really solidified the idea that Gerudo dungeons always come last even when it's not mandatory.
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The one major spoiler I had failed to avoid was the existence of Autobuild and I was stumbling around all over the place really thinking it would come in handy and wondering when it was gonna show up, but I just finally got it! Really seems like it's gonna change the feel of the gameplay from now on and differentiate it more from BotW.
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Yeah I had its existence spoiled for me also, but there were some details I didn't know about it that make it cooler than I knew. Also, once you know about the existence of that, this video is no longer a spoiler, and is the greatest thing imaginable:
https://www.reddit.com/r/tearsofthekingdom/comments/146vj3d/autobots_roll_out/.
Also, I don't think this is a spoiler, but apparently you can compose music with the right devices, and people have done some amazing stuff:
https://twitter.com/bran8bit/status/1667539615413334017
https://twitter.com/noteabletony/status/1668739561722200067
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I like how Ocarina of Time really solidified the idea that Gerudo dungeons always come last even when it's not mandatory.
To be fair, when the big bad is Ganondorf (unless there is a last minute twist I didn't reach yet), it makes sense to have his birth place be the last dungeon before the final one.
EDIT: the Gerudo are actually fairly rare in games! Only OoT/MM, Four Sword Adventures, and now BotW/TotK have Gerudo in them (excluding Ganondorf and Twinrova).
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Beat my first Gleeok miniboss. It was the one in Hebra, nominally blocking the way for a stable quest. I had put it off for a while, because it looked pretty intimidating, but I thought I was ready with level 2 armor and weapons in the high 30 damage stat. Boy was I wrong. First death since the early game that didn't involve my equipment being taken away. My weapons barely tickled it, and each attack took over half my health. I did eventually defeat it, but it really feels like Gleeoks are meant to be very late game enemies, unless there is some way to cheese them I am not aware of.
Also beat my first Gloom Hands. It was the one in the Lost Woods, and I had to look online how you actually beat them. I ran through all of my arrows because I didn't realize you have to kill all five of them at once, and they just kept respawning on me. Unfortunately in the process I also got spoiled that Gloom Hands have a uh second phase. It wasn't quite what I expected based on the name, pretty good at ramping the tension in a different way.
Got the Master Sword. I went to the Lost Woods and cleared the quest there, got the GPS tracker, and jumped on the dragon from a sky island. I did all this before completing all the memories, so I just thought it was the most metal way to get the Master Sword from any LoZ to date. Then I got some extra memories and realized it might actually be the saddest way.
Also completed one of the labyrinths. For how involved they are this time around, I certainly was disappointed by the reward.
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I tried for a few failed attempts to defeat a gleeok. Will try again soon, because I feel like I’m getting towards the upper end of how powerful I can get.
I also defeated the same Gloom hands / phantom Ganon to save the lost woods. Mostly I did so by using a freezing weapon that kept all the hands frozen while my party members did much of the damage necessary. I defeated a second one out in the world, which was easier without the confined space of the lost woods one. That one didn’t come with a phantom Ganon though. I wonder what makes him appear or not after the hands.
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They also despawn after a while, not sure what causes it. They drop dark clumps instead of spawning Phantom Ganon. That's what happened to me in all encounters before the Lost Woods one, but I've since also defeated them outside and spawned phantom Ganon too.
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Finished our third temple, Gerudo. Take that all those comments about doing Gerudo last. Anyway, it was excellent. A fun and unique quest leading up to it, and then the temple itself was closer to classic Zelda dungeons than the others. A great mix of puzzle and combat.
There was one puzzle in there that was frustrating due to an alternate solution being possible. The real solution is neat and seemed like it would have been fun, but we found the other “cheese” solution instead. And it worked, but was super finicky and annoying to do.
The 6th floor has 4 mirrors that you can slide on tracks, to ultimately aim at activating separate light switches on floors 2 and 6. We didn’t find out until after we’d competed the puzzle that floor 6 has a small room with its own light source that’s clearly intended to be used for this.
Instead, we went to the light we already had on floor 1; the light that pulses on and off due to the rotating doors. We spent way too long carefully aiming a mirror up at an angle from there so that it hit the mirrors on 6. It has to be a weird less-than-45 degree tilt. And because the light is pulsing, it takes several seconds between adjustments to find out if it works. Then multiple trips back up to 6 to slightly adjust the target mirror, then back to 1 to adjust that one. Super annoying. That light from floor 1 should have been done so that it could not reach 6 at all, so we’d have spent a little time finding the light on 6 instead.
That aside, great dungeon.
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Well second (Zora) temple done, and man was I disappointed, compared to the Rito one. It felt extremely short and easy. Never had to stop and think about where to go next, or to figure out the layout of the rooms and whatnot. The boss was good, or at least ok.
Just did this one and I totally agree on the temple, but hated the boss fight. Also I still do not really understand the power that Sidon gives you. You get a bubble of water around you, and I get that it can protect you from fire and heat, but it really doesn't make sense to me why you need to use it to activate the faucets in the temple, or why you need to use it to touch the boss, especially because it has no effect on the sludge that's on the ground...? In contrast to the powers from Tulin (useful occasionally) and Yunobo (extremely useful all the time) I don't really know what I'd ever use it for outside the temple.
Overall, I think the temples are disappointing. They all have the same basic premise, the looks are one-note, and they're still way less intricately laid out and complex to navigate than the dungeons in OoT, e.g., which came out 25 years ago (and which had twice as many of them). I don't even think they're really any improvement on the Divine Beasts, which was a pretty low bar to clear, but which at least had the interesting puzzle box mechanic.
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Also I still do not really understand the power that Sidon gives you. You get a bubble of water around you, and I get that it can protect you from fire and heat, but it really doesn't make sense to me why you need to use it to activate the faucets in the temple, or why you need to use it to touch the boss, especially because it has no effect on the sludge that's on the ground...?
Though I generally agree, it sounds like you may have missed one thing about Sidon's power during the boss fight:
While the bubble itself doesn't do anything to the sludge on the ground, swinging your sword while the bubble is on does clear out a bunch of sludge on the ground that's in front of you. That being said, I didn't find that all that helpful, because he would just create new sludge faster than I could clear it anyway. And just throwing splash fruits is quicker and easier.
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Overall, I think the temples are disappointing. They all have the same basic premise, the looks are one-note, and they're still way less intricately laid out and complex to navigate than the dungeons in OoT, e.g., which came out 25 years ago (and which had twice as many of them). I don't even think they're really any improvement on the Divine Beasts, which was a pretty low bar to clear, but which at least had the interesting puzzle box mechanic.
I agree with this. I've recently replayed Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, which both featured significantly more compelling dungeons in terms of layout, puzzle design, theme, fights, etc. I was really hoping Tears of the Kingdom would improve upon Breath of the Wild by reviving those sorts of dungeons, but no.
I'd say I like the Thunder Temple and the Fire Temple a little better than any of the Divine Beasts, the Wind Temple is about equal, and the Water Temple is worse. Overall, not great.
The Construct Factory hints at what a proper dungeon could have been like...
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Spoilers related to the number of shrines:
Well we’ve now completed more shrines in TOTK than there were in BOTW. That’s kind of nuts. We don’t know how many there are total, and we don’t want that info to be spoiled for us. But it’s definitely a fair bit more than 120. One guess I have is 150; perhaps 120 on the ground / 120 light roots, and the rest in the sky. But haven’t counted if perhaps we’ve already done more than 30 in the sky. We have 27 hearts and full stamina.. the same max that you could get in BOTW. And plenty more shrines to go, as well as at least a couple full heart containers. Don’t know yet the full list of ways those can be earned, but there’s certainly more of those than there were in BOTW also.
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Finished our third temple, Gerudo. Take that all those comments about doing Gerudo last. Anyway, it was excellent. A fun and unique quest leading up to it, and then the temple itself was closer to classic Zelda dungeons than the others. A great mix of puzzle and combat.
There was one puzzle in there that was frustrating due to an alternate solution being possible. The real solution is neat and seemed like it would have been fun, but we found the other “cheese” solution instead. And it worked, but was super finicky and annoying to do.
The 6th floor has 4 mirrors that you can slide on tracks, to ultimately aim at activating separate light switches on floors 2 and 6. We didn’t find out until after we’d competed the puzzle that floor 6 has a small room with its own light source that’s clearly intended to be used for this.
Instead, we went to the light we already had on floor 1; the light that pulses on and off due to the rotating doors. We spent way too long carefully aiming a mirror up at an angle from there so that it hit the mirrors on 6. It has to be a weird less-than-45 degree tilt. And because the light is pulsing, it takes several seconds between adjustments to find out if it works. Then multiple trips back up to 6 to slightly adjust the target mirror, then back to 1 to adjust that one. Super annoying. That light from floor 1 should have been done so that it could not reach 6 at all, so we’d have spent a little time finding the light on 6 instead.
That aside, great dungeon.
Just finished the Lightning Temple also, which I think is the best one but there’s a bonkers design flaw in which you can easily just ascend into the boss chamber from the fire room by just dragging a couple of the wall stones in and standing on them. This theoretically negates the entire premise of the dungeon but then the boss fight just doesn’t trigger until you go back and activate all four batteries and ride the elevator.
Edit: I guess this makes some amount of sense given that you need Riju to activate the fight and she can’t ascend with you. But it was still a little confusing since the companions usually are able to immediately join you wherever you are and then there’s no way to get out of that room other than just warping back to the entrance.
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Finished our third temple, Gerudo. Take that all those comments about doing Gerudo last. Anyway, it was excellent. A fun and unique quest leading up to it, and then the temple itself was closer to classic Zelda dungeons than the others. A great mix of puzzle and combat.
There was one puzzle in there that was frustrating due to an alternate solution being possible. The real solution is neat and seemed like it would have been fun, but we found the other “cheese” solution instead. And it worked, but was super finicky and annoying to do.
The 6th floor has 4 mirrors that you can slide on tracks, to ultimately aim at activating separate light switches on floors 2 and 6. We didn’t find out until after we’d competed the puzzle that floor 6 has a small room with its own light source that’s clearly intended to be used for this.
Instead, we went to the light we already had on floor 1; the light that pulses on and off due to the rotating doors. We spent way too long carefully aiming a mirror up at an angle from there so that it hit the mirrors on 6. It has to be a weird less-than-45 degree tilt. And because the light is pulsing, it takes several seconds between adjustments to find out if it works. Then multiple trips back up to 6 to slightly adjust the target mirror, then back to 1 to adjust that one. Super annoying. That light from floor 1 should have been done so that it could not reach 6 at all, so we’d have spent a little time finding the light on 6 instead.
That aside, great dungeon.
Just finished the Lightning Temple also, which I think is the best one but there’s a bonkers design flaw in which you can easily just ascend into the boss chamber from the fire room by just dragging a couple of the wall stones in and standing on them. This theoretically negates the entire premise of the dungeon but then the boss fight just doesn’t trigger until you go back and activate all four batteries and ride the elevator.
Edit: I guess this makes some amount of sense given that you need Riju to activate the fight and she can’t ascend with you. But it was still a little confusing since the companions usually are able to immediately join you wherever you are and then there’s no way to get out of that room other than just warping back to the entrance.
We did this also. I don't even think we had to move anything around to stand on, we just ascended from just the right place somewhere, and were kind of confused about where we ended up.
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I beat a King Gleeok! Unfortunately it had been spoiled for me that an enemy with that name existed in the game. But still, I had no idea where to find them or anything about them. Randomly ran into one while exploring. It was a fun battle. I beat it without dying, though I did use 2 fairies in doing so. I had never even yet fought a fire or thunder version yet.
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Overall, I think the temples are disappointing. They all have the same basic premise, the looks are one-note, and they're still way less intricately laid out and complex to navigate than the dungeons in OoT, e.g., which came out 25 years ago (and which had twice as many of them). I don't even think they're really any improvement on the Divine Beasts, which was a pretty low bar to clear, but which at least had the interesting puzzle box mechanic.
I agree with this. I've recently replayed Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, which both featured significantly more compelling dungeons in terms of layout, puzzle design, theme, fights, etc. I was really hoping Tears of the Kingdom would improve upon Breath of the Wild by reviving those sorts of dungeons, but no.
I'd say I like the Thunder Temple and the Fire Temple a little better than any of the Divine Beasts, the Wind Temple is about equal, and the Water Temple is worse. Overall, not great.
The Construct Factory hints at what a proper dungeon could have been like...
I think the problem is that Zelda games have always been based on the two pillars of exploration and puzzle solving, and there's inherent tension between these. To emphasize exploration you want freedom, openness, nonlinearity. Then with puzzle solving, there are two ways to do this: method one involves restriction and rigidity, where the player needs to find "the" solution to a problem (or maybe one of a discrete set of possible solutions). Then there are "squishier" puzzle games where there are a continuum of possible solutions--using the tools at your disposal, get through the stage any way you can.*
Classically, Zelda games gave you freedom and exploration in the overworld, and then mostly the first kind of puzzle within dungeons--you're trying to find the right path through the dungeon by collecting keys and items and flipping switches in the correct sequence (speedrunning shenanigans notwithstanding).
But with Breath of the Wild, the degree of freedom and exploration in the overworld was turned up so, so high, and was so clearly the primary theme of the game, that I think the developers must have thought it would be too jarring and incongruous to have such rigid-style navigation puzzles within all of the dungeons and shrines. For players who liked those kinds of puzzles, they were missed, but the game just wasn't about that--it was about having a stupefyingly massive world to explore, figuring out how to get where you wanted to go within it, and using your own creativity to get there.
I think with Tears of the Kingdom, they just kept that overall same philosophy, wanting the game to be about players exploring and having as much freedom as possible to meet objectives in different ways, except now it's less about exploring the overworld (since we've already done that in BotW) and more about exploring the possibilities afforded by Ultrahand and Fuse. Again, though, it seems like more rigid and intricately designed puzzles didn't mesh with what they were trying to do. I can understand this approach, but for me it's a bit of a bummer. I really like rigid and intricately-designed puzzles, and for me they had been a big part of what really constitutes a Zelda game.
*As I'm writing this, it feels a lot like the general division in mathematics between algebra and analysis--roughly speaking, algebra is rigid, blocky, and discrete, and analysis is flowy, squishy, and continuous.
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I just found this video. The title is clickbaity and the video is twice as long as it needs to be but I agree with a lot of the critiques (major story spoilers around 3/4 of the way through).
https://youtu.be/Vxy_Wi7bIcQ (https://youtu.be/Vxy_Wi7bIcQ)
I do love the game overall and it's a really impressive feat. I'll certainly put in a few dozen more hours finishing the main story, the rest of the shrines, and major sidequests/adventures (though I have no real desire to 100% the koroks and hudson signs and such).
But I don't think it's in my very top tier of Zelda games (which I think for me is just OoT and BotW). And I am pretty disappointed by the reports that Nintendo claims they are never going back to making a classic-style Zelda game with classic-style dungeons.
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(major story spoilers around 3/4 of the way through).
Do these spoilers include the ending? Or just stuff I should know by having found all tears/memories?
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(major story spoilers around 3/4 of the way through).
Do these spoilers include the ending? Or just stuff I should know by having found all tears/memories?
I think it does include the ending---I cut actually it off myself when that part began.
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Finally beat the final dungeon (Goron, in the order we chose). My rankings:
Gerudo > Goron > Rito > Zora. Goron was pretty good, though I think the main gimmick was a bit over-used.
I'm annoyed that we forgot to take a picture of Moragia; for the full compendium it's the only one that we'll be forced to purchase instead of taking ourselves. I don't like that there are any "missable" things in the game like this, but I guess purchasing compendium entries is the way that the game makes them not missable.
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A couple complaints about the temples as a whole I forgot to mention before.
1) The way the map immediately shows you the locations of all the locks you have to find. I believe BOTW was the same way. It just completely removes an aspect of exploration and puzzle solving that should be there in a dungeon. You can turn it off, but it's on by default. For this last dungeon, I literally shielded my eyes during the opening cutscene to avoid seeing the dots at all on the map before I could turn them off.
2) The fact that all 4 dungeons are the ultimately the same format/structure as all the dungeons in BOTW: Find the 5 terminals to activate them thus unlocking the final boss. Fun concept... for A dungeon to use. But for them to all use it; same exact thing every time? I think that was one complaint everyone had about BOTW, so I'm really surprised they just kept that same format. Is it really that hard to think of a different way of forcing dungeon exploration to ultimately unlock the boss room?
I'd say I like the Thunder Temple and the Fire Temple a little better than any of the Divine Beasts, the Wind Temple is about equal, and the Water Temple is worse. Overall, not great.
Exactly this on all 4 accounts.
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All shrines complete! The entire 5-hour play session tonight was simply finding and completing the final shrine. In the end, I did need a little help from the internet, because we just couldn't find it. I just looked at a map of where all shrines are in the sky to get its general location; no help beyond that. Turns out it's another one of those things where we did it the very hard way simply due to not knowing that it would get easier later. I mean, having completed all main story stuff except the final boss; we really didn't think that there would be anything else world-changing.
So it was the shrine on Thunderhead Island. We didn't even know that there was a Thunderhead Island. We'd completed Dragonhead Island, and thought that was all that was under that cloud cover. Was surprised back when we completed Dragonhead and it didn't clear up after we did that... now I know that you're supposed to make it clear before you even do that. Kinda nuts. Anyway, getting to the Shrine on Thunderhead Island, even after we knew where it was, was extremely difficult. Pretty hard to do even under good circumstances; and made much harder by having 0 visibility due to the storm. But we had no clue or indication that anything would ever clear the visibility and that we should wait to do it until after that.
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Well tonight we completed the "Crisis at Hyrule Castle" main quest, along with several other quests that we'd already completed, but only actually unlock after that. I'm now even more annoyed at the structure of the game being at war with itself in terms of having an expected order for you to do things, while being open world to the point that you can ignore that order.
We never would have gone to Hyrule Castle to face off against fake Zelda yet if we hadn't eventually given up on how to activate the whole Thunderhead Isles quest and just looked it up. Basically, even though we got every shrine before doing that, the game clearly wanted you to go to Hyrule Castle before finding every shrine. And not only that, but after doing Hyrule Castle, we learned that several of the things we'd already done are actually quests that actually "start" only after you do that. Or at least, the dialogue presents it that way.
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Finally finished all the Shrines AND all the light roots in the Depths. I'm also now an official Gleeok slayer. I eat Gleeoks for breakfast.
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We're 9 lightroots short of that same accomplishment.
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Well, having done all shrines, all lightroots, enough koroks for max inventory, way more than enough caves for all rewards, and close to all known side quests, we’re ready to beat the game. We won’t be done with it; will still be playing more to get 100%. But tonight, Ganondorf dies!
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280 hours over the past 3 months to complete all main quests and beat the game.
Now to do the rest! We're missing over 35 sidequests, which is a lot more than I expected. But no surprise missing side adventures (just the compendium; which is coming along nicely). And over 70% map completion, which is higher than we were expecting since we have just under 50% of korok seeds.
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Ok so time for my potentially long and rambling review of Tears of the Kingdom. No spoiler tags here because mostly the whole thing could be a spoiler; so don't read unless you're ok with spoilers.
As a whole, good game. I mean, I'd like to think I wouldn't spend 280 hours beating a game that I didn't think was good, with plans to spend lots more time in post-game. A few of my favorite positives:
- The cave exploration is probably my favorite new thing compared to BOTW. It's pretty much always exciting to find a new cave entrance.
- The general vertical mobility is so nice and freeing; moving around the sky whether on a vehicle or just gliding is great. Same with the Ascend ability, rockets, etc.
- The story is really cool. While still a fairly minimal story that doesn't progress with the game itself like how it was in BOTW, the basics that were there were just really neat.. the concept of Zelda being sent back in time, so that she could spend thousands of years helping the Master Sword become strong enough to defeat Ganondorf; that's great. Really makes it even more Zelda's story than BOTW was (which was also largely Zelda's story).
- The fuse system is great, at least for weapons. Aside from giving more reason/motivation to kill monsters, it allows for a lot of great experimentation.
Now for the bad. I'm writing this after all the specifics below, but put it above all since it's more important to an overall review. The game suffers from 2 really big problems in my opinion: Repetitiveness and general open-world structure.
- Repetitiveness - The dungeons are a good example, and especially the cutscenes you get after beating each dungeon. They take an idea that is interesting and cool the first time you see it.. and then just have you do it over, and over, and over. Same with the labyrinths. A labyrinth requiring you to handle all 3 of the different maps within one giant connected puzzle? Yes please! But then the next labyrinth was also that, and so was the 3rd. And not only in the overall structure of involving all 3 maps, but in the specifics of what you do on each of those maps. Why did the sky of all 3 have to be "fly around in low-gravity finding and activating the 4 terminals"? Why couldn't each be its own thing? I've spoken about dungeons before and do again briefly below, so no need here. But it's the same with sidequests like "bring peace to ____", and some of the types of sky islands.
- The structure of the whole open world thing - By far my biggest problem with the game. I've talked some about it before... but there were so many different examples where it kept coming up. Basically, the game was fighting with itself in wanting to be fully open world, but also wanting you to follow the path it laid out for you. You would get punished for exploring an area too early. And I don't mean punished as in running into enemies that were way to hard for you to fight yet... I remember that happening with finding Moblins at the very start of BOTW because I went the opposite way they suggested you do. That is simply a fun way to do open world. I mean punished by wasting your time. Either because you're trying to do something that isn't possible yet, but it's not obvious that it's not possible yet, or because you're doing something that is possible, but much more frustrating because you're supposed to do it later. And again I don't just mean fighting an enemy before you've become powerful enough to do it. A few examples:
- Not getting the paraglider right away. They let you explore the surface freely without it. Without giving you any hint about if there even is a paraglider in the game. Shrines that require the paraglider but not obviously so. No hint that you're missing something.
- Following the statues underground. They lead you to where Kohga is hiding. If you do them in the right order. If you instead follow the wrong set of statues because you notice what looks like an interesting thing that probably leads to something, well too bad, it leads to nothing at all.
- Dragonhead / Thunderhead Isles. You can go there while they're still shrouded in clouds. And nothing gives you a hint that you should wait until they clear up. Exploring a hard-to-see area is literally something the game makes you do in the depths and a few other places. It's somewhat hard and frustrating... but not nearly as frustrating as learning that if I'd just gone to beat Hyrule castle first (which I assumed would just be the end of the game!), then I would have been able to clear the skies and explore those islands with visibility. I can't say I really know what the solution would be... it doesn't fit within the open world concept if you went there and it just voided you out with some NPC telling you sorry, come back later. Then again, that's exactly what they do if you try to explore the ring ruins early! Which is a related example... we had no way of knowing if we were just supposed to do a better job sneaking over there, or finding the right angle to approach from; or if (as it was) that you have to wait until the story progresses further before you can go there.
- Allowing you to go all the way to a dungeon without your helper. This happened to a friend of mine; wasted so much time in the Wind Temple trying to figure out what to do because he had no idea he was supposed to have someone with him.
Notes on a few specific types of things:
Shrines: I was disappointed that shrines returned at all, and that their reward was exactly the same as BOTW. I guess I just wanted it to be more "new" in overall flow of the game. It's cool that there are more shrines this time around, and none of the shrines seemed stupid or bad. The combat shrines (proving grounds) were all much better than the Test of Strength shrines from BOTW.
But it didn't feel like any were as long as the 5 or so longest shrines from BOTW. I remember a handful of BOTW shrines which were very huge and involved; not just solving 1-3 quick puzzles but really exploring around the place. Also, there were way too many "blessing" shrines! I'm seeing 44 as the number online; not from an official or community-driven source yet. Of those, only 23 even required you to do something external to unlock the shrine. It's one thing when a "blessing" shrine is really just where the real shrine was the puzzles we solved along the way, but the other ones are just rewards for finding the shrine and nothing else.
Dungeons - Already talked about this in a previous post, but they weren't the return to Zelda form that we'd all been hoping for. By far the worst part was the repetition; where the core concept of all 4 dungeons was the same. The bosses were all good improvements over BOTW though. And the dungeons as a whole were improvements.
The helpers - A very neat idea, and implemented pretty terribly. I love the concept that Link is building up a party like Secret of Mana or other RPGs. Especially as a contrast to BOTW which was all about being alone in the world. The fact that they not only give you new abilities but fight with you is great! But... it's just mostly terrible. Just look at how many memes there are about Tulin ruining everything by activating when you don't want him to. They all work that way. They're both hard to activate when you want, and way too easy to activate when you don't want. And then even aside from using their abilities, they visually get in the way of just looking around. So many times I've had to just turn them all off because I can't see what's in front of me. The abilities themselves are hit and miss. Tulin in the sky; great. Tulin on the ground; terrible. Yunobo is cool, but you quickly realize that he's not nearly as good at breaking through rock walls as you'd assume. Really his power should have just been that if he hits a breakable wall, he keeps going until he hits a non-breakable wall. That wouldn't have been overpowered, and only useful in a handful of various places. But imagine just firing him at a tunnel blocked by many layers of rocks and he just keeps going all the way through, instead of breaking just the first layer. Sidon is cool in how many "non-obvious" uses he has, such as keeping cool against heat damage, and activating your Zora weapon bonus.
The sky - The sky was an awesome set-piece and was really great when you were doing stuff with it. But there wasn't enough to do with it. Way too much empty space with nothing even close to it. And again, repetition was an issue. While there were plenty of interesting and unique places up there, there were also places that were just exact copies of other places spread throughout... specifically the construct battles and the "airports".
The depths - Very cool. I was blown away when I found out that in addition to the already huge world, there was a second equally huge world to explore. The way it mirrored everything above was really neat, and having to make your own light to explore it was really neat. It would be nice if the landscape/terrain/scenery weren't pretty much identical throughout the whole thing. But I don't think it suffers from the repetition problem as much as the other things do. Like with the Yiga fortresses; each one is at least a bit unique in terms of the layout and the type of yiga vehicle you have to fight.
The abilities - Extremely impressive, and very open with how they can be used. All of them felt like they had more use than all the BOTW abilities. And I LOVE how you could combine them together... like if you need to get up higher; use ultra-hand to lift a platform over your head and hold it there for several seconds. Then use rewind to have it automatically stay up there without you holding it. Then use ascend to go up through it (or it could have picked you up when rewind sent it up; then ascend somewhere now within reach above you).
Building stuff - This was interesting and impressive, but sort of felt out of place. Like what does screwing around with building vehicles have to do with adventuring, exploring, and stopping the return of Ganondorf? Even when you build vehicles to help you explore, that feels at-odds with things like horses and climbing. It's not a complaint, exactly, because it doesn't harm anything to have it there. But if this same game released with everything else the same but no ability to construct vehicles (meaning it probably would have released a year sooner), would people not have thought it still just as great a game?
The final boss - The last phase managed to outdo the scale and epicness of the last phase of BOTW. But like the final phase of BOTW, it was beyond easy, like there was no real way to even take damage. The first 2 phases were generally tough; though didn't feel like they actually tested your skill as much as the first 2 phases of BOTW. That is to say, I felt like it was easy just because I had a huge amount of health and a very strong weapon (master sword with silver lynel saber horn on it). It was mostly hack and slash; didn't require me to skillfully deal with the boss.
Final thoughts: Very impressive game. Pretty much improves on BOTW in every way; and I really loved BOTW. But even as addicting as it has been and me looking forward to every night when I get to play again, the sense of wonder wore off quicker than it did in BOTW. All the things that were impressive and amazing were mostly only impressive and amazing the first few times I saw them. Now they're just mechanics that I do and don't think about how cool it is. BOTW really had a "WOW" factor from being so huge and open, and TOTK can't quite match that.
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On the topic of bosses, the final boss fight is really well done. There were several things in that fight that caught me off guard in a good way. MAJOR spoilers I guess here:
1: Ganondorf literally destroying heart containers. Makes perfect sense as he already did that in the Prologue, but still when I realised I wasn't just having hearts gloomed
but literally removed it was like, oh crap, I can't stall this forever
2: That health bar. It's a bit cliche maybe but it worked.
3: He flurry rushes you and even dodges during your flurry rushes. Really just highlights how much of a badass he is.
4: I somehow didn't see the demon dragon transformation coming. Final phase was mostly just for show, but works as a climactic finish far more than Dark Beast Ganon did in BotW.
Re: 1 - Wait, what? Maybe I just never noticed it... I thought it was normal gloom damage. Though none of it mattered for me since I was committed to not eating mid-battle anyway.
Re: 2 - LOVED that.
Re: 3 - That looked very cool, but I never took any damage from it at all. Not sure if it's just easy to dodge or what... every time he did it, I spammed jump back and nothing ever happened.
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More than halfway done with the koroks now!
Still missing 2 old maps; haven't been back to the sky in a while... there's basically nothing up there left except at least 2 missing chests.
Mostly spending time using hero's path and going to areas that we haven't been to; finding koroks and wells. But mixing that in with going monster hunting to get things like lynel guts for armor upgrades.
Also getting close on the compendium. All monsters done except 2 that we missed the only chance for, so have to go buy those. Missing several pristine weapons still.
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Reappearing to write a silly long post about TOTK.
-A quick reply to GendoIkari
Although I agree with your structural complaints on the paraglider and the partners, I disagree on the other two. At least if you follow the Gerudo statues first (I did), there is a construct who tells you that he wants to give you a gift, but you will need something from the Central mine first. It's still a bummer (I was bummed), but at least the game is clear that you should return after a specific conditional. I'm guessing something similar is true for the other mines. As for Thunderhead, I'll say more below.
-My Zelda background
I 'grew up' on the first three Zelda's. I like OoT, but don't love it. Love MM and think it is a work of art, but more for the concepts and storytelling than the gameplay itself. Stopped playing 1p games soon after that (college), so no real opinion on WW onwards. Until BOTW.
-BOTW quick opinions
BOTW was a revelation for me, and reminded me that I like 1p games. I never thought of it as upending Zelda tradition - I think of it as returning Zelda to what it originally was. In the spirit of Zelda's 1 and 2, it is an adventure in the wilderness, a self-guided (and lonely) journey through the wonder and dangers of the unknown. Like MM I think of it as a work of art, but this time the gameplay IS the storytelling, and I love it.
-TOTK quick opinions
I think TOTK is an amazing sequel and an amazing game, but I doubt I will ever love it as much as BOTW. It has many technical gameplay improvements, both large and small. It's huge, of course. Lots more below. For all of the positives though, the sense of joy and wonder that is seeped into BOTW is diluted here for me. I understand that this basically had to be the case, as a sequel. But it's slightly disappointing nevertheless.
-The key differences
For me, the key differences are summarized in the names. In BOTW, you are in the Wild. You are (usually) alone. The music is (usually) lonely.
There are vast spaces, and many points of interest are first seen from far, far away, beckoning a journey through the intervening terrain. The basic gameplay is about navigating the wild, understanding it, conquering it but on its terms. Meanwhile in TOTK, you are in the Kingdom. You're part of a team, not only story-wise, but eventually gameplay-wise as well. You can see many points of interest from far away, but from above, where the terrain between makes far less of an impression. The basic gameplay is less about the wild itself, and more about circumventing it.
Relatedly, BOTW is more focused on the joy of discovery through exploration. TOTK is a bit more focused on the joy of discovery through experimentation. As a negative, this can mean too much wandering in BOTW (with too few rewards for some folks), but in TOTK it can mean too much 'failed experimenting' (wasting time on bad builds, useless fuses, etc).
-What makes TOTK awesome?
--The general gameplay loop of exploring and finding various items/currencies, all of which feed back into further gameplay much better than in BOTW (especially thanks to Fuse).
--Ascend. Come on, this is just an awesome idea for an exploratory 3d game.
--Still some great moments of discovery and wonder. Depths of course. For me, going to Thunderhead early fits this bill. It felt like I "shouldn't" be there, but the game didn't stop me, and the resulting journey was epic and the most memorable portion of my playthrough. Finally making my way to the Dragonhead felt like such a discovery!
--The general combat and difficulty balance felt leagues better than BOTW (and other Zelda's I'm familiar with).
--Being a sequel allowed for returning characters, with some genuinely heartfelt moments sprinkled throughout.
--All of the "lead-ups" to the four "dungeons" were awesome. When people complain about the dungeons (which were repetitive in structure, to be fair), I'd ask them to remember how much interesting and varied gameplay there was in reaching them. That's where it seems the most effort was put in, and I approve of this approach in a game centered around openness and freedom.
--It's Nintendo, so we know the attention to detail will be great. The biggest highlight for me was finding Zelda's torch. But there are so many nice touches.
-What makes TOTK not so awesome?
--The opening is okay, but feels like a massive step backwards after BOTW's Great Plateau. Lots of talking. The worst is the runaround Lookout -> Castle -> There's Zelda! -> Oh wait, just go back to Lookout now please.
--A lot of things in the game feel slow, especially compared to BOTW. Koroks used to be nice quick puzzles and were more about noticing them. Now some are yelling out to you, needing you to build something which takes time. Ultrahand in general is great, but slow. Fusing is great, but requires a pause. Dialogue is generally longer and more dense (like this ridiculous post).
--The paraglider issue, which many folks have already expanded upon. I'll just add that, in BOTW, the one time that you are directed by "map marker alone" (Plateau Tower), Zelda specifically says to follow the marker, and this never felt inorganic to me. But in TOTK, when you are directed to Lookout, Zelda just says to "find her", and the fact that you are supposed to follow a map marker for this felt very awkward to me. Would be fine if not for still needing the paraglider there.
--In general you are "told" where things are much more often in TOTK. It's not bad compared to games in general, but it's worse than BOTW. Examples include the Great Faeries and the memories (my favorite gameplay in BOTW, now reduced to noticing giant glowing things in TOTK).
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Great review! I wonder what you'd think if you went back to give Windwaker and Twilight Princess a try at this point.
I'm guessing something similar is true for the other mines.
Hmm it's possible we just completely missed that construct, I do think it was Gerudo we followed first also. I remember that most of our wasted time was in trying to find the next statue that the last one was pointed at, because we didn't notice any indication that we had already found the final statue.
As for Dragonhead, I did enjoy exploring in the fog and finding Mineru's mask, so no complaint about that specifically. But I didn't know that Thunderhead existed at all above it, thought we had explored the entire under-the-storm island. Until eventually giving up on finding the final shrine and looking at a map. And getting the final shrine on Thunderhead in the fog was very tedious and annoying; compounded by discovering that you're "supposed" to clear up the fog before going there.
For me, the key differences are summarized in the names. In BOTW, you are in the Wild. You are (usually) alone. The music is (usually) lonely.
There are vast spaces, and many points of interest are first seen from far, far away, beckoning a journey through the intervening terrain. The basic gameplay is about navigating the wild, understanding it, conquering it but on its terms. Meanwhile in TOTK, you are in the Kingdom. You're part of a team, not only story-wise, but eventually gameplay-wise as well. You can see many points of interest from far away, but from above, where the terrain between makes far less of an impression. The basic gameplay is less about the wild itself, and more about circumventing it.
Relatedly, BOTW is more focused on the joy of discovery through exploration. TOTK is a bit more focused on the joy of discovery through experimentation. As a negative, this can mean too much wandering in BOTW (with too few rewards for some folks), but in TOTK it can mean too much 'failed experimenting' (wasting time on bad builds, useless fuses, etc).
Love this! Well-written, and really goes to the heart of the games.
The biggest highlight for me was finding Zelda's torch.
Oh we completely missed this! I think we found it, but hadn't realized the significance of it.
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Great review!
Thank you very much! I sure spent more time on it than I should have! I also loved your review, which basically inspired me to try to write this one. And I've enjoyed reading all of the comments throughout this thread really.
...getting the final shrine on Thunderhead...
Oh right, I see. Yeah I don't know, I'm not sure if there is a good solution here. If a shrine is not reasonably accessible from the get go, should it be clear that they can be made more reasonably accessible later? Not sure. I find this less troublesome than the similar paraglider issue, because at least the shrine in Thunderhead is pretty much impossible to see until you clear it up. One could argue that some of the frustration arose from outside information (location of the shrine) being only partial information, whereas the game counted on you having no information... I guess? It's an apologist's viewpoint for sure.
Let's see, what are some more specific points I missed earlier?
-TOTK shrines are better than BOTW ones on average, largely thanks to ditching combat copies for fun little mini-Eventides. It also feels like better pacing to have a cute little engineering puzzle in a shrine than to come across a korok while exploring who needs a car. I do miss the few larger ones from BOTW, as GendoIkari points out. I enjoyed most all of the crystal ones. Favorite, and wife's favorite, was whirlpool.
-Caves and wells are great. Searching for them specifically can feel a little tedious, but I don't hold this against the game at all. And coming across them naturally while exploring was wonderful.
-Labyrinths, yeah the first one was awesome but the repetition was a bit of a bummer, especially the identical bosses at the ends.
-I didn't talk about Recall before. A wonderful addition, feels like something a good indie game would build itself around completely. I wish it got used more, but it's still amazing the first time you realize your goofy airplane that crashed and rolled down the hill CAN in fact be rescued, and in the most awesome way possible. Adding the snapping of the fingers, what a touch.
-The sages' shadows, yeah I wasn't a huge fan. Works well thematically, but eh, I pretty much agree with everything GI already said here (and many others I'm guessing). I had them all off the majority of the time.
-The sages themselves, well they were okay. The AI is what we might call 'passable' when it's just the one of them, and the game does a reasonable job of keeping the focus on your own gameplay. But this comes at a steep immersion price, where the sages sometimes have teleportation powers, and other times can't follow you. I think I preferred sections where they were flat out honest and were like, "I can't follow you there." Or in Sidon's case, "Let's split up so the game doesn't have to fail to portray me goofing around with these floating water balls."
-The Depths was a great concept, but could've used some more set-pieces and visual variety to spice things up over the long haul. I think it'd be more fun to not be able to see the gloom in the dark, but I can understand why they wouldn't do this. Did anyone actually use the upgraded miner's clothes down here? What a neat idea! It's too bad I imagine most people have no need for it by the time they get it.
-Special shoutout to Muddlebuds, which are my wife's favorite things. In BOTW her favorite thing was to go to Retsam Forest and pick sunshrooms. I'm pretty sure it was literally her most visited spot on the map. In TOTK, her favorite thing is to wander in the Depths and pick Muddlebuds, and then use them on camps. We were joking that they should have programmed in an animation of Link pulling out a chair and a bag of popcorn while the enemies all kill each other.
-The finale was great. I loved the approach, I loved the fights, and I even loved the final phase which really sells the idea that you are working together with Zelda to pull off something neither of you could accomplish on your own. Also ties the gameplay back into all the skydiving you've been doing throughout the game, which is a nice touch. I like the ending too. I do wish the people in the present mattered more. I thought that Impa and/or Purah would play a part in helping to turn Zelda back. Not sure how to do it without having many multiple endings though, based upon how much of the story you did.
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One could argue that some of the frustration arose from outside information (location of the shrine) being only partial information, whereas the game counted on you having no information... I guess? It's an apologist's viewpoint for sure.
Actually, that relates to another issue… a lot of people, myself included, assumed that going to Hyrule castle to confront fake Zelda would lead straight to the end of the game. Had I known that wasn’t the case, then I wouldn’t have spent so much time trying to find shrine 152 right then. I would have gone and beat the castle, gotten the ring quest, cleared up thunderhead, and guessed right away that the missing shrine must be on this big sky island I had never been to. So I never would have used any external source to get all shrines.
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Got back to TotK after a summer break. I have two temples done, and all 12 tears, and seen most of the surface world other than the areas around Gerudo and Zora domains.
Did a quick trip to Hyrule castle, and explored the surface and floating areas, since a note from Zelda implies you should visit the throne room. It felt less epic than in BotW, but I assume because there is more left underground. Without spoilers, should I be leaving the underground part of the castle until the endgame, or is it fine to visit earlier?
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Got back to TotK after a summer break. I have two temples done, and all 12 tears, and seen most of the surface world other than the areas around Gerudo and Zora domains.
Did a quick trip to Hyrule castle, and explored the surface and floating areas, since a note from Zelda implies you should visit the throne room. It felt less epic than in BotW, but I assume because there is more left underground. Without spoilers, should I be leaving the underground part of the castle until the endgame, or is it fine to visit earlier?
You can easily get the light root under the castle without doing anything endgame, but there’s not a whole lot else to explore there until you want to beat the game.
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All wells found! We did just fully use a map for the last several. We got a companion app for the iPad which works really well. Basically going to an area we haven’t explored well, and using the app to mark off every korok as we find it. Only using map for koroks and wells so far. Because caves have more in-game ways of finding them, trying to see if we can get them all without a guide. Only 13 left!
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I'm toward the end of the main story, and am just really confused about something, based on having done some things out of order. I got Mineru's mask and did the construct factory before going to the castle, and so after doing the castle they try to prompt me on my big quest to find the fifth sage and then are just like "oh wow you already found her, ok I guess you can just go try to find Gannondorf now."
The weird thing then was I immediately go to talk to Purah again and she says again (paraphrasing) "Ok, now you need to go find Gannondorf." But it then showed the Link talking animation, and Purah says "Oh you found him already? He's in the Depths? Go tell Josha." I talk to Josha, and she's like "Oh wow, you found him! My work paid off, yay!"
What's confusing is that I have no idea what I did to trigger that interaction. I had never had any opportunity to talk to Josha about Gannondorf, and as far as I know I have not actually found him yet (in the game at least--it's no real surprise where he is). I have not been into the chasm under the castle, nor into the part of the Depths anywhere near there.
There's either something I did ages ago that I don't remember, or it triggered just based on getting close enough to the chasm for it to mark on the map, or it's a logic error in the game, but it's very bizarre.
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I had a couple guesses as to what quest would lead to that dialogue happening, and found this article (https://www.nintendolife.com/guides/zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-where-to-find-the-demon-king-final-dungeon-walkthrough.) that confirmed one of them was correct. Basically it's when you fight Kohga, he says "in the darkness below the castle, where the Demon King now dwells. Yes, where the end of all things will begin! In the deepest reaches of the Depths... Far beneath Hyrule Castle!" So technically speaking Purah didn't expect you to even find him or do that whole quest until after everything else.
The whole "intended" order is pretty weird, really. Clearly a lot of people are going to do a lot of things before Purah tells you to. Fun fact, you can even beat a regional phenomena without talking to Purah the first time to get the paraglider, and there's special dialogue for that too.
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Ah ok that makes sense. I had no memory of that dialog since I did all that ages ago, plus it’s weird to even treat the location of Gannondorf like a mystery if he’s gonna end up in the first place anyone would guess.
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Not only the first place anyone would guess, but also literally exactly where it shows you he is in the opening prologue. The game begins with Link and Zelda exploring the depths under Hyrule Castle and stumbling upon Ganondorf there. There's no suggestion that he's moved or left since then.
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Finished the sky last night. That is to say; we have all the old maps, sage's wills, and sky koroks. If anything else is up there, it's a couple random chests we missed somewhere with a random Zoanite Charge in it or whatever. No real way to know (not going to use the map/guide and specifically double-check every chest location... but we have had the chest sensor on almost the whole game and opened every one that was sensed). Theoretically there could still be an undefeated Flux Construct up there; but not likely at all.
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Ceave made a review! For those who don’t know, Ceave is a great YouTuber that used to do lots of very interesting mostly Mario-related videos, but he took a step away from being a full time YouTuber a year or two ago and rarely does new videos now.
Anyway, I’m only 6 minutes into this long video, but he already amazingly captured my exact biggest problem with the game, by pointing out yet another example where the game gives you frustration if you don’t do everything in the “correct” order. It’s something from the tutorial area that I had no idea was a possible issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4ldmt3eU2I (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4ldmt3eU2I)
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I've now watched a few different reviews from different YouTubers, and they all seem to say the same thing, which largely lines up with my opinion: Amazing game, 10 out of 10, deserves all the praise it gets, and filled with frustratingly bad gameplay decisions.
We have 3 caves left to find. Unfortunately it does look like we're on track to finish everything except armor upgrades well ahead of all armor upgrades; which will leave us with nothing to do but grind out lizalfos tails and gems.
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Lots of progress!
Found the last 3 caves, without any sort of guide or external hints. Actually found all 3 while not at all looking for them; just randomly stumbled upon them. Also finished the compendium. Did use a guide for that one; to learned what a few of our missing things were. All pictures found naturally other than the 2 monsters that were missed.
About 950 korok seeds, and doing pretty well on the armor. Mostly need Electric Lizalfos Tails and still plenty more topaz and sapphire, as well as a bunch of other random stuff still. But finished grinding out the Gleeok guts; which was fighting the King Gleeok in the depths about 12 times, ever time there was a blood moon. The other Gleeoks only have a small chance of giving guts.
Gleeoks are kind of stupidly easy now. I never see the final phase when they fly up really high. I always kill them as they're just starting that ascent.
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After only 445 hours playing since May 12, 2023, we have finished Tears of the Kingdom!
- Shrines: 152/152 (With all chests from all shrines)
- Lightroots: 120/120
- Towers: 15/15
- Memories: 18/18
- Korok Seeds: 1000/1000
- Map percentage: 100%
- Wells: 58/58
- Caves/Bubbul Gems: 147/147 (No guide used)
- Main Quests: 23/23 (Current save file only shows 21 because the fact that you completed the last 2 isn't one of the things that is remembered after beating the game)
- Side Adventures: 60/60
- Shrine Quests: 31/31
- Side Quests: 139/139 (Guide used for just the last 2)
- Miniboss Medals: 6/6 (defeating every Molduga, Talus, Hinox, Flux Construct, Gleeok, and Frox)
- Recipes: 228/228
- Compendium: 509/509 (2 permanently missed ones were bought; the rest were manually taken)
- Hudson Construction Signs: 81/81 (Guide needed for the final 8)
- Armor: 136/136; all upgraded to level 4 except the ones you can't upgrade
- Fabrics: 29/29 (not counting the many Amiibo-only ones)
- Horse Upgrades: 1 horse fully upgraded to max 5 stars on all stats
- Pony Points: Over 50 (where there are no more unique rewards)
- Schema Stones: 12/12
- Yiga Schematics: 34/34
- Old Maps: 31/31
- Energy Cells: 48/48
- Sage’s Wills: 20/20
- Horse Gear: 13/13
- Dungeon Boss Refights: 12/12
- Zonai Dispensers: 30/30 (All used so no more unknown devices listed)
- Treasure Chests: A pretty decent chance that we have 100%. Basically impossible to know for sure.
Did I miss anything? I know there's a lot of overlap listed there (like you have to get all wells to get 100% sidequests or 100% map completion). Also stuff I didn't list which is purely overlap (of course I unlocked all faeries if I got all armor to level 4).
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I am only about 100hrs in, been getting in and out of it over the past months. I admire your dedication though! Do you think you're done with TotK forever, or do you intend to replay it?
How do you track old maps? I think I have them all just based on my thorough exploration of the sky islands, but would be cool to know for sure.
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I am only about 100hrs in, been getting in and out of it over the past months. I admire your dedication though! Do you think you're done with TotK forever, or do you intend to replay it?
How do you track old maps? I think I have them all just based on my thorough exploration of the sky islands, but would be cool to know for sure.
Old maps show up in your special items inventory; whether the chest they point to has been opened yet or not. To know that I had them all, I just looked up how many total there were. Same with Yiga Schematics and Schema Stones.
I don't see myself replaying the game much; but I did just start a new playthrough for a very specific purpose... I want to get all compendium pictures manually. I plan to do the minimal amount necessary to make that as fast as possible. So I'll do some shrines just because the extra stamina and hearts will help with faster progression in general, but no idea how many. So far in just a couple hours, I've gotten off the great sky island, gotten the camera, and taken somewhere around 70 pictures. It's a fun challenge at the start because new stuff to add to the compendium is just everywhere. It will get more tedious when it comes to hunting down the remaining ones; especially pristine weapons. Doing this will require beating the game, to get the Ganondorf pictures.
One of the reasons I'm doing this is because there's a quest, "filling out the compendium", which is started when you first get the ability to purchase new compendium entries, and completed when you purchase your first entry. I want to see/know how it gets completed if you never purchase an entry. At the least there must be some different dialogue or something. No one on Reddit seemed to know the answer.
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Close to done with my "all pictures" run. A couple annoying snags... I have to do all the Hateno mayor sidequests stuff to get sun pumpkins to exist in the world. I knew about that from the start. But I just found out that it's impossible to get a picture of the Daybreaker shield without beating the Lightning Temple. I wasn't planning on doing any of the Gerudo mission stuff... All the other champion weapons can be gotten by finding the champion themselves, but Riju doesn't wield the shield.
A couple other weapons will require Amiibo, especially the Dusk Claymore which would otherwise require defeating all dungeons. I had planned on only doing the Wind Temple (you have to do 1 temple to get Robbie to go back to the tech lab, and it made sense to get Tulin for the movement). All the other main bosses should be able to be gotten in the final battle. I did have to do just enough Sidon and Yunobo stuff to get the pre-temple bosses that show up for those.
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Done! I had to save-scum the amiibo a few times to get them to drop the special weapons I needed. Same with the shadow statues for the last few pristine weapons. So the answer to that one side quest... basically after you get the fabric for getting all pictures (you have to interact with Robbie's compendium to trigger that), the "Filling out the Compendium" side adventure pops up as completed. Kind of what I expected; though it would have been nice if Robbie had some different dialogue for it or something.
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Forgot to mention the difficult challenge of the final boss when you aren't maxed out. Like in BOTW, you have to do a boss rush where you defeat all dungeon bosses you didn't defeat. You have to beat all those bosses without saving in between; though it does save after those and before Ganondorf. You're also fighting them without the helper that's specifically designed to help with that boss. Ghoma's not too bad; you just ascend up through him like you do a Talus. Seized Construct was quite difficult though. Then Ganondorf himself... no Master Sword, about 15 hearts, and only a total of 9 armor defense makes it quite a difficult fight. Took me 2 tries, and I used a lot of gloom healing and regular healing foods. The losing hearts thing actually felt like it mattered unlike when I went in with 38 hearts. I think by the end I was down to 9 to 10 hearts.
Then when the dragon part starts, you get a cutscene of pulling the master sword out of the light dragon, so you have it for the final phase. Interestingly, dragon ganondorf can be hurt without the master sword though. Regular weapons just do a very tiny amount of damage to him; so you clearly are supposed to use the master sword. Just for fun, I used a regular weapon for the final hits, though it auto switches to the master sword for the final "press A to end the game" thing.
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I'll break up Gendo's monologuing with some of my own.
I played through TotK almost as much as possible without acquiring the Paraglider. I was motivated to do this by how I originally played BotW: You're directed toward Impa in Kakariko by Rhoam at the start of the game, and I wanted to find out if her dialogue was different if you completed all of the Divine Beasts before speaking with her. (Spoiler: It is).
Thus, in TotK, where Purah takes the place of the 'main quest-giver', I decided I would complete as much of the main quest as possible without speaking with her to see unique dialogue at the end. This has the unfortunate side-effect of locking me out of the Paraglider, but I found this made the game an absolute joy to play.
All 152 shrines can be completed without making use of glitches (some require bombs or rockets brought in fused to a shield, but at no point are glitches required).
Fall damage becomes a real and persistent threat (until you get the Glide armor and upgrade it to negate fall damage), and navigating sky islands, especially the lead-ups to the Water and Wind temples, requires more use of Zonai devices. I did the Water Temple first, prior to knowing about the elegant simplicity of the game-breaking hoverbike, and climbing up the low-gravity section was quite challenging. Also, the game puts Link into the glider automatically when reaching the top of a waterfall. Without the glider, Link instead goes into a fall state. Then, annoyingly, the 'R' button is mapped to both 'throw weapon' and 'enter skydiving mode', meaning that I ended up throwing a number of weapons while just trying to land on the platform Link swam up to.
But in spite of that, the lack of paraglider means you approach everything differently. The Fire Temple is still cheese-able, but requires more effort than just ascending to a high point and gliding into your room of choice, thus making it easier to actually just do the minecart puzzles.
Navigating the Wind Temple at times is also a suitable challenge, and the Colgera fight without a glider (and especially without rockets in your inventory) makes for a distinct challenge.
The sheer amount of separate progression tracks in this game is insane:
Shrines unlock stamina and hearts.
Koroks unlock inventory space
Finding a withered weapon aboveground unlocks the pristine version in the depths
Doing things in the depths unlock battery charges
The depths also house autobuild plans
Caves unlock bubblefrog gems, which unlock prizes
There are an absurd amount of quests around the map, many of which unlock amiibo costumes (which don’t do much, but are still kind of fun)
There are quests to unlock the great fairies now in order to upgrade equipment
Lightroots to find and fill out the depths map
And Sage’s Vows to upgrade your sage abilities.
I suppose there are also the new towers for unlocking map points, but I didn’t interact with those.
Now, my real issues with this game begin with the seemingly arbitrary list of things you cannot access without talking to Purah:
All of the runes that Robbie can unlock (Camera, Hero’s Path, Sensor, Travel Medallion).
As such, all quests that require the camera (these especially annoy me)
The ‘Crisis at Hyrule Castle’ event vs. phantom Ganons
The Ring Ruins leadup to the Dragonhead islands, (and also the lighting armor from the Zonai ruins, but I did glitch through those, and was able to clear out the thundercloud from the archipelago, this does NOT allow you to take Mineru’s mask, I had hoped it would set the quest flag to that point).
Unlocking any part of the map on the surface, any part of the sky map except the Great Sky Island.
Launching yourself out of any tower for faster transportation, or using them as teleport points.
I say this list seems arbitrary because of the sheer amount of things you CAN do without the glider (and without glitches)
All four main dungeons
Buy and build a House
Most sidequests
The entire Lucky Clover Gazette quest with Penn
Unlock all lightroots and fully map the depths
Collect all the equipment in Hyrule Castle (a few people guard several entrances, but you can still make it inside via alternate routes)
Acquire a bunch of Paraglider fabrics
Clear the first difficulty at the flight training grounds (second difficultly seems impossible lol)
Complete the diving challenges for the Glide Suit
Complete ALL shrines (and it is an absolute joy to puzzle through a few of them).
Collect all Sage’s Vows (but four remain in your inventory without Mineru)
Complete the Great Sky Island Temple of Time fire lighting ceremony
Get Autobuild and all except one schematic
Save the Korok Forest/do all quests there.
Complete the Typhlo Ruins quest (for clearing all four Regional Phenomena) to get the Dusk Claymore.
Get the Master Sword
Crawl through the Hyrule Castle tunnel to make it all the way to the bunker under Lookout Landing (which itself stays closed lol).
Complete all of the Yiga-related quests (fighting Kohga multiple times, completing the Yiga outfit, and doing the blademaster quest)
Beat Ganon
The biggest offender is, of course, the Spirit Temple. It is accessible the moment you launch yourself out of any one Sheikah tower, then follow-up by talking to Purah. (Well, technically accessible, most players will also need 10 hearts, you can ascend into the room to bypass the door, but very few would try this on their own). Otherwise, you're told to come back later. I would think that just opening the 10-heart door, demonstrating that you've earned at least 6 heart containers since leaving the Great Sky Island, would be sufficient, but no. It is arbitrarily locked behind having the glider and doing one tower launch. I would even forgive this if it required the player to fight the phantom Ganons at Hyrule Castle and do the full Ring Ruins quest, but no, you can do the Spirit Temple first if you are motivated to do so.
The game is about 90% perfect on every front, but also on every front has something lacking, even merely compared with Breath of the Wild.
Why must Link's house be green?
Why are there Hudson house modules used to build homes in Tarry and Hateno that Link can't used for his own home?
BotW's DLC included Hero's Path, Travel Medallion, dungeon boss rematches, and a 5th dungeon, all of which TotK has from the start.
But TotK lacks a Hero Mode, Master Sword upgrade, (and Horse Teleportation bridle, but no one uses horses anymore).
Amiibo got short-sticked too. I believe the only new amiibo items are the glider fabrics. While they added the amusing Link's Awakening set, the Link's Awakening amiibo no longer drops fish like it did in BotW. Why remove that cute feature? Toon Link from WW still drops fish! And why doesn't Skyward Sword Zelda have even one cute unique item?
Also, the DLC items in BotW weren't upgradeable, presumably just because of being late additions. Why aren't the identical items in TotK given upgrades?
And this is all before mentioning the many and varied problems with the story.