Cheesing a main quest line boss with a powerful weapon is hugely satisfying, especially after I basically refused to engage with any of the dungeon’s puzzles and skipped them with my traversal abilities.
Meanwhile the Gleeoks are fucking me up. I’ve been killed by the frost Gleeok up in the snowy northwest area like, 11 times. That ice beam is nasty.
Also my favorite pass time is abusing Koroks. Oh your friend is over there? I’m going to roll you down this hill, or maybe strap you to a rocket, you lazy little shit.
I have too many meals and elixirs, I can’t hold any more! That’s kinda bullshit! I mean not really but still annoying. So many easy to make meals give you temporary hearts that I am probably going to invest mostly in stamina upgrades.
My stamina is fully upgraded, and I killed the frost Gleeok. It almost immediately respawned because of the Blood Moon bullshit, which I’ve had happen with some other mini bosses and is kinda hilarious.
There’s so much going on in this game that I rarely feel like I’m going to burn out. I can switch gears from clearing shrines to exploring the depths or white-knuckling my way between sky islands. Last time I played I spent the whole time fixing a village. You’d think I’ve never played an open world sandbox before but somehow this really does feel so much better than others of its ilk. I barely care about the main story or the Zelda trappings
Pernicious completionism has crept into my interactions with this game. There’s certain stuff I’m pretty positive I’m not going to mess with (trying to track down all the Korok seeds – though I do like it when I stumble upon them organically).
But I can’t resist the urge to teleport around and knock out side quests, sometimes.
Well I officially have enough weather resistant clothing to forego really needing food for temperature regulation, which is nice. I can concentrate on pure health and combat buffs now.
And I think I can say the same for the fact that I am now fully burned out on it and decided to just read a synopsis of the ending. I had a great time with this, but I’ve had my fill and I’m impatient to play something else.
There’s a lot I liked about it! Relatively open ended, very accommodating of the player in as much as you can approach many situations in whatever way occurs to you. The game rewards creativity. You’ve got three very different vibes in exploring the sky islands, the depths and the ground level.
It is absolutely stuffed with shit to do so it is a great dopamine drip feed. I could see it being someone’s One Game for like a year. It almost was for me.
I also barely gave a shit about any of the game’s main objectives. The voice acting is jarring. Zelda in particular is awful at least in the English dub. The game maybe doesn’t respect my time and expects me to have more enthusiasm for McGuffin hunting than I did.
So I dunno, I guess I’d say it falls short of true greatness (whatever that is) but it’s a nice place to get lost in for a hundred hours or so.
I truly enjoyed it. Loved it even more than BotW because of its approach to verticality and improvisation. I played with Spanish voices so the dub didn’t bother me.
I play these games by rushing through main paths and only diverging when something seems truly interesting or I feel underpowered. It helps increase the likelihood that I actually finish the thing and can mentally put it at rest.
It’s main problem is it exists at the same time as BotW. The feat they managed with crafting mechanics is insane but retreading that world was very mixed. Cool to see some areas changed and the depths was neat at first but the endgame felt more fatiguing than normal, and I’ve been to Kamurocho in like 9 separate games.