can we stop trying to remember all of the great games for a console off the dome, failing and then concluding the console had no good games
Before I start this post, know that my eyes eventually glaze over anywhere from 30 minutes to 5 hours of open world sandbox chore-fest design (even the āgoodā ones) where I put the game down forever with every intention of coming back to it, and that has not even come close to happening with this game. When Iām at work Iām thinking about it.
I think part of what makes it such a good game are the kinetic exchanges that constitute most of the gameās combat and action. I balked at first when I saw how quickly most weapons degrade, because my first thought was that it would make rounding up weapons and shields a chore. But now I think it was probably one of the best decisions they could have made.
It forces you to constantly think ahead to the bigger picture when making short term decisions about who to target and which resource youāre going to burn to do it. Which in turn makes things like stealth meaningful (any hits you land during stealth do critical damage, conserving your weapon for a bit longer) and makes the fact that you can use environmental features and level design to kill enemies also matter (since that too conserves resources and makes you feel clever).
Endurance is a finite resource that you use to traverse the world, so you have to actually plan how youāre going to get from point A to Bāand improvise/recover when you eventually underestimate the distance. But since endurance is also a resource you can use in combat (charge attacks, running out of the way of a huge thing, hovering over a thing so you can shoot it, etc.) that also means that traversal and combat frequently overlap in satisfying ways instead of being discrete considerations. An example would be getting ambushed by an enemy when you burned through most of your endurance trying to climb somewhere, or being forced to be aware of the nature of the terrain when an enemy has forced you to fight near a cliff or hazard. The more ambitious/ridiculous you get with your plan to tackle something, the better it feels when you succeed, though failing is equally amusing.
I know plenty of people have already talked about the scale of the world and being able to see landmarks from everywhere and so on and so on, but on that point thereās already been a couple of times where I either reached a vista and had to stop to appreciate how great it looked. There was a moment where I was inching my way up a huge mountain only to reach a ridge and see it stretch up impossibly from what I assumed I was climbing, more than once. The visual design is not really as consistent as something like Bloodborne or an Ueda game (some of the visual elements do feel like shoehorned in Zelda-isms) but itās still leagues above what I was expecting.
Iām still kind of shocked Nintendo had this in them, I honestly donāt know if they can top it now that Iām something like 15-18 hours in.
This, so much. Iām still early on in the game (last āstory noteā I hit was leaving the initial plateau area) and I decided to poke around a bit rather than head in the direction I was supposed to. In doing so I think I went to one of the shrines I wasnāt supposed to just yet and ended up in possession of a sword with the number 50 next to it, which is probably at least three times as powerful as anything else Iāve come across. Itās almost a negative as it takes up a spot and yet I almost never want to use it for anything, I was actually thinking Iād just leave it there until I hit a boss-type creature assuming there is some of those around.
Of course, it is now in a near broken state (hoping there is a way to repair things) as I stumbled upon a second of those massive rock creatures that I accidentally wasted all my bomb arrows defeating the first of, and this sword was the only thing that was doing respectable damage against it. Now my precious sword is near broken but I believe said creature dropped a diamond and OMG they sell for 1000 rupees.
Playing S&P2 with the wiimote is quite nice though
Watched a neat 1 hour speedrun of this
My god these guys bit SotC so hard they need dentures now
I still canāt believe it. it took almost 12 years, but nintendo turned around with a response to Ueda.
@diplo I just did a quest that both involved other light sources and a boss similar to a Dragonās Dogma enemy. Found a video on YouTube if you want to check it out.
iāve been thinking since previews of this game starting going around that it sounded like Nintendo was taking notes off of decade-old āeverything that is wrong with Zelda nowā insert credit posts
this makes me sad
Oh. Uh. That sucks. A lot.
edit: not that i expected better from nintendo really :\
i uh, guess itās kinda nice that she rejects your characterization of her, but if the game itself doesnāt play along itās moot.
more than ever am going to wear the gerudo gear for the entire game from the moment i get it. Fuck your transphobia, zelda team
Wow
It sure does
MASSIVE DERAIL but does anyone sympathize and can explicate this statement from the article:
the same open world scale that felt impenetrable in The Witcher 3 presented itself here with a calm, unassuming grin
with regards to the Witcher 3?
I took it to mean that itās like Witcher 3 starts out in a big open area and then after a few quests sends you to an even more huge open area with like ten times as many map icons and who knows how many quests and side quests and stuff to be discovered and whatnot. Zelda takes that but instead of being intimidating itās more like hereās the tools for interacting with the world go and have fun with them?
I just played through a shrine and realized that the rune powers are Nintendoās āWhat if there was an app for that?ā response to criticisms about block puzzles.
the sheer variety of creatively weird shit you can do in this game, golly
iām actually getting Morrowind vibes from some o dis. augh my tax return canāt come sooner!!!
I found the lost woods and it was the best lost woods experience ever.