Is Breath of the Wild "Blah"?

I recently replayed Breath of the Wild with my partner in “Master Mode,” which is maybe a little overboard/underbaked with its combat difficulty increase vs. available resources, but I had a grand time with the game again. I like Tears of the Kingdom a lot. I like Breath of the Wild a lot. The game “holds up,” as the kids say, though I’m apparently in the minority on that. Which is okay! Whatever!

Over time and with familiarity, the patterns of the game world become clear and thus make it feel a little more restricted. I’m grateful I don’t have a completionist mindset, because I was happy to play and see exactly as much of the world as I wanted and then marched into the castle (great dungeon design, btw) and killed Ganon. Game’s beautiful. Some of the story stuff is a little goofily executed, but also some of it really hits for me. Great game. A+.

6 Likes

i feel like TotK probably does improve on BotW, but to be totally honest the physics-puzzle stuff and the building things aspect does nothing for me, and that seems like it would be a big hurdle to enjoying the game.

i imagine one day i might be in the mood for it, but every time i see video of the game, i feel empty

4 Likes

I’d say definitely try to hit Eventide Island on your BOTW playthrough, even if you’re rushing through the game. That was by far the most memorable and enjoyable setpiece in the game imo.

9 Likes

That was definetly one of the strongest moments in the game. I like how TotK has made shrine challenges of that but I need to go see if that island still exists in TotK and if it has a new twist.

3 Likes

Yeah. I appreciate that Nintendo usually has the good sense to stylize Zelda games, and it doesn’t bother me much. But BotW has a real, “So you thought you got away with it, huh?” thing going on, graphically.

4 Likes

Oh. Yeah, that sounds way more fun than actually following directions. I guess I just figured There would be Zelda-y natural barriers forcing me to go one region at a time until the halfway point or something. It was honestly annoying when I got to the cold places early on (it was, like, the first thing I did). Maybe that helped to sour me: just this immediate, “Well you can’t just explore ANYWHERE. Jump through some hoops first” moment.

I’ve been kind of avoiding saying it, because I haven’t even gone to the first village yet, but so far the open world doesn’t seem to be working for me. I think it’s because the themeing didn’t establish much mystery, things are a little too far apart, and enemies/weapons feel very cookie cutter.

Like exploring in Zelda 1 has was fun because it was relatively snappy. It’s a fairly small map that still feels big. With Shadow of the Colossus, the vibe is so solid you just have this feeling that you really might discover something. In Fallout 1, you might run into an interesting random event at any moment or discover a new town. In BotW I don’t really believe that there’s anything interesting out there. I have this feeling like following the story will progress the game, and in between is probably just kind of cutesy filler. And when I do want to explore it feels like it takes a little too long. But then again, I only recently got the glider, and I only have one stamina upgrade.

I feel kind of silly judging so hard after, like, three hours. But if I think back, most games I really love hooked me by this point or substantially earlier, so I dunno.

4 Likes

Come to think of it, a big part of why I like exploration in games in my oppositional/defiant streak. I like to feel like I’m breaking the game and to up the challenge. But sequence breaking take so long in this game. If I have a sequence break idea, it takes, like, an hour of running in a direction before I figure out that it’s just a hidden elf guy hiding spot.

It might have been nicer if they went full Shadow of the Colossus and explained almost nothing–just had the map designed in a way that funneled you to some early goals. Like, I think I’d prefer if the king of Hyrule just wasn’t there at the beginning, and instead I found a book that explained cooking at some point, since that was extremely not obvious to me (which would be fine, if you weren’t forced to do it so early).

3 Likes

Following the story won’t progress the game in the normal sense. You can just walk into Hyrule Castle and beat ganon right now. The entire world is optional after the tutorial plateau.

As for interesting things out there, aside from Eventide Island which multiple people have mentioned, some other surprises I thought were super cool are the Labyrinths, the Chinese dragons and the giant skeletons.

3 Likes

I escaped that by not owning a tv and playing in handheld mode, though that make the gyroscope puzzles terrible

3 Likes

I played it on the Wii U handheld

Remains the better version because the load times are faster

5 Likes

I’m not the biggest botw fan but stuff like the hot and cold DoT regions are some of my favorite parts of the early game. When you signal to the player that they might not be ready for an area yet with soft blockers like this, you’re really just inviting more experienced players to come solve your fun riddle. Maybe you can sprint through it to safety before the dot kills you by buffing your health, maybe you find a torch or fire weapon early to keep you partially warm and combine it with other stuff, maybe you find some early cooking ingredients. Its not like botw does much with this since you get armor to negate these effects pretty fast but letting you explore “ANYWHERE” is meaningless without at least some friction

11 Likes

I hear that some folks are playing the game at 1440p and 60fps and that the game looks “sick as all hell” :shuffle:

15 Likes

I played BOTW by just picking a direction and seeing what I ran into and it was a wonderful experience. It has a lot of hidden magic in there and thats what I suggest you go find and just ignore the game proper. Just do things because those things are fun and you’ll end up falling into adventures. I mostly subverted the game’s structures which I thought might be cheating myself but going back later and trying to do things in what felt like the right ways was not better.

I had the most fun when I was extremely under or over prepared. Fuck it scramble mode or geared up for maximum over kill.

6 Likes

playing totk has given me an itch to play botw master mode… a harrowing thought

4 Likes

The exploration is underwhelming because what you see is what you get. You’ll always find a trite little reward at the end of any exploration, whether a shrine, a korok puzzle, or a treasure chest with some shit you don’t need. This is the part that deflated the feel of exploring for me. But yeah, there’s no real gating beyond tutorial plateau outside of how the four divine beasts are linked to fairly linear, self-contained story sequences.

The sequel really is an improvement in all ways

3 Likes

I enjoyed BotW a ton, but I have a couple of online friends who just bounced off of it for similar reasons so no, it isn’t the magic game that everyone will love.

Funnily enough I have little interest in TotK as A) I don’t have a Switch, and B) literally (not literally) everything they’ve added looks like something I wouldn’t want to bother with. I don’t want to craft, I don’t want to build dumb vehicles, I just want a giant place to explore and they re-used the same place from last game. I guess when I get to it sometime around 2030 I’ll see if there is anything still in there for me.

3 Likes

I had the same reservations but I ain’t doing any of that cutesy artsy craftsy shit, I’m just playing it like the previous game, it’s very pleasant, having a nice time wearing a mushroom on my head and smashing mooks with my mallets, bet I’d be having an even better time if I was playing at 1440p at 60fps, as I hear is both possible and sick as hell

13 Likes

Yeah that’s my style too. There was a shrine in TotK that had some planks, wheels and fans in front of a fast conveyor belt pushing you backwards, and I just ran slowly across it

9 Likes

they made the overworld much more fruitful to explore because of the addition of caves (and sky islands which kind of have the feel of medium-sized dungeons, something that was wholly absent from botw)

3 Likes

Anyway you can glue a bee hive onto the end of a stick and then every time you swing that stick it summons bees, totk is the best zelda

18 Likes