Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[GendoIkari]

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.

[pacovf]

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

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!

[scott_pilgrim]

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.

[GendoIkari]

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.

[scott_pilgrim]

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.

[GendoIkari]

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.

[LastFootnote]

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.

[Mic Qsenoch]

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

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.

[scott_pilgrim]

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...

[GendoIkari]

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.

[LastFootnote]

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.

[GendoIkari]

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.

[Robz888]

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.

[pacovf]

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.

[GendoIkari]

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.

[GendoIkari]

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.

[scott_pilgrim]

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.

[GendoIkari]

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.

[pacovf]

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.

[GendoIkari]

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.

[Tables]

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.

[GendoIkari]

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.

[GendoIkari]

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?

[pacovf]

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!

[GendoIkari]

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.