I just started playing this recently after winning the Switch Lottery – man, this game is fantastic. It’s pretty much exactly the modern Zelda that I’ve been wanting them to make and it’s more to do with the original Zelda than any game since (okay, maybe Adventures of Link, although my memories of that one are pretty hazy). It also takes post-Morrowind Bethesda out behind the woodshed in terms of having a huge overworld that is both coherent and interesting.
Plus, you really can’t go wrong with entertaining ragdoll deaths.
the northeasternmost area is pretty neat! v nice approach, good balance of majestic and weird
it’s funny how many of these enemy designs are from the NES. this game is very analogous to doom 2016! no one thought it’d be anywhere near this good and it turns out to be more playable and true to the first entry than anything else in 20 years.
I haven’t really done much in the west half of the map at all and from what I’ve heard I could just as well blow off the gerudo outright?
also, given how gentle they are about serving up the main quest, it should also be said that this game has unbelievably good pacing. I can’t imagine many other people’s first 10-15 (guessing) hours with it would’ve been too much different than mine given how it steers you, but that’s meted out extraordinarily well considering the amount of ground you cover and how much the environments change and so on.
Hmm, I don’t think I fully agree in that my household, there were three fairly divergent first 15 hours:
Me - Decided that the first thing to do after getting off Tutorial Plateau was to unlock every tower so that my map was complete. Did the vast majority of them with three hearts and a single stamina upgrade. There was a lot of sneaking, running away, and abusing the paraglider. After doing that, I’ve been slowly working my way through finding and completing shrines and collecting Korok seeds. Only at about 20 hours did I reach Zoratown. I think I still haven’t found all the stables though.
Wife - Went off towards Hateno instead of Kakariko. Spent a lot of time intensely exploring the southeast, uncovering shrines and putting all upgrades into stamina, then using climbing and swimming to go into pretty much every nook and cranny. She took a little less time to get to Zoratown, she’s got about the same amount of shrines completed though even though she’s only explored about 1/4th of the world compared to my character.
Son - Compulsive to a fault, he follows quest lines as if they are mandatory requirements. Made it to Zoratown in under 5 hours, which is not bad for a seven-year-old.
Also interesting is that our treatment of the weapon degradation system is pretty different:
Me - Keeps a couple “good” weapons (usually elemental of some kind) in reserve for tough fights, tries to keep the “tool” weapons (sledge, leaf, torch) in stock, uses the remaining slots to cycle through whatever weapons are available at the time.
Wife - Picks up everything with little regard for retaining tools, chews through current weapon, moves on to the next one. Runs out of weapons way more than I do, I suspect because I just straight run from 80% of encounters whereas she wishes death on everything. Side-effect of her running out of weapons is that she’s waaaaaay better at taking out enemies using runes.
Son - Freaks out as soon as a weapon reaches “badly damaged” status, starts using another one, winds up with inventory full of badly damaged weapons. I’ve tried to explain why this is not a good strategy to no avail.
I am likely nearing the end of my journey with this game, just finished the fourth divine beasts and my 107th!?! shrine (plus about 320ish korok seeds). God knows what my hours spent would look like. Spending that much time with the game certain limitations come up, mainly I think it could use a bit more kinds of common enemy types.
I think what is remarkable is not that I have spent that much time digging into its world (I tend to go deep with openworld-type games), nor that I keep finding neat little touches and secrets still, but that the game is set up so that as soon as you get tired of it you can head straight to the end-game. Technically you could head their immediately and likely die, but a much weaker version of me made it to what felt like a climactic area tons of hours back with much of the game unexplored and unresolved and while it was tricky it did not feel like I was that out gunned.
Felix estimated he was about 10-15 hours in, he’s likely not ready for a frontal assault on the castle but he’s not that far off from it either. Given that and how the only real bit of info the game gives you early on is the locations of the divine beasts, it sets the pacing up that if you want to speed things up it is well within your control to do so. Explore if you want to, here’s the big important points if you want to get things moving, hell feel free to skip things if you just want it over with. That’s often tricky to manage and BotW does a really good job of doing just that.
Also since it was mentioned, someone I know saw something to the west as soon as he left the intro area and spent the first several hours over there instead. Aside from wishing that he didn’t have the reward from one of the beasts over there this early on it went very well and the game held up.
Nah. While the main quest stuff over there is definitely the most “classic Zelda” that the game gets Gerudo Town itself is by far my favourite populated place in the game. A lot of real funny townsfolk dialogue and since the place is very busy even during the night I constantly seem to be finding new interactions around as I happen upon people in various stages of their routines. Nice armour sets too.
While the desert itself can be a bit annoying to traverse if you’re ill-equipped it does feature some unique gameplay mechanics that I really like (desert storms making you feel completely lost and sand sealing) as well as the coolest enemy encounter in the entire game (Moldugas are some real SotC-shit).
Do you mean the Rito flying power? Because yeah, that one really seemed to just destroy the design of many areas in the game (especially around the more difficult towers and some shrines) by allowing you to just bypass them completely. If the climbing really aggravates you though or you just like sequence-breaking stuff then I guess it would be a good power to get early on.
I followed the main quest line up to going to Hateno, then I started looking for shrines and towers. I’ve basically been aiming to get the minimum for the sword, which I just achieved. I’d guess that took me about 15 hours. My other goal was to get a feel for most of the landscapes and mechanics before completing any temples. I’ve only completed the Zora temple, and that was about 10 hours in. I’m starting to have a hard time finding shrines now, although I know there are way more! I’m not a very thorough person.
I did a run on Ganon with 5 hearts and got through three phases before I died, and that was only because I realized the trick to that phase too late. I’m fairly certain I could have taken Ganon at about 10 hearts and about 50 arrows without a problem, but what I really want to do is roll in with as much firepower as possible and totally steamroll him.
Right now I’m working on the Gerudo quest. Just got to the irritating stealth bit and I’m not sure what I’m going to do.
I really do love this game though. It feels like something I can pick up and play at my leisure and always make a little progress. I never feel like I’m retreading ground.
I didn’t even bother to check what the power did after I got it, but you don’t really need it for the towers anyway since I found I could just dump a bunch of wood and set it on fire to get the same effect. Worked that out by accident by trying to burn the ice at the base of one of the towers.
I beat this! I did in fact blow off the gerudo entirely. only had 24 defense, 13 hearts, and 2/5 of a new stamina bar when I finished it, but my weapons were basically as good as they were going to get. was a good time! may yet go after farther-flung shrines, idk. the northwesternmost map tile and all of the southern ones are still blank for me.
If you skip the divine beasts does that change anything if you try to do them after ganon? I assume the game continues on like all other sandboxy games
