Current Events > Zelda BotW.. is just an ok game to me. (anyone else feel that way)

(+) Yeah! (+)

The first couple of hours felt absolutely amazing, but it quickly became boring as shit. And all the shit missing really added salt to the wound. However, it's the most time I've actually put in an open world game.

But nothing was worse than the breakable weapons. I get why it was there but they should have left the MS unbreakable, giving people looking for the traditional way an option. And if not that, at the very motherfucking least, they could have made the 100% restored MS unbreakable.

That was the biggest slap in the face because you fucking paid for the DLC and you mastered everything and wasted countless hours doing the trials and they still couldn't even give you that? It's like Nintendo just didn't want people playing an open world game how they wanted. They even broke the lore of the sword, the same fucking sword in every other Zelda, just for this shitty mechanic. That really came off as stubborn and disrespectful.

Like Hypnocash said, I just wanted to wreck havoc, and no matter how much people say it might not bother them, the interruption in the flow did greatly bother me and made it not fun at all.

The thing nowdays seems to be that when things are changed drastically (Zelda, Star Wars TLJ, DBS, DW etc), you're made to feel bad for having been a fan of the old way. I think things should be met in the middle, not at extremes.
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I thought it was incredible while playing it through, but I've no desire to go back (whereas I could already start Odyssey again and enjoy it).

It might be my favorite game of all time
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You can actually brute force the DLC second stealth mission thing, with Urbosa's Fury and some hard hitting weaponry. I did that. It was pretty apocalyptically cool.
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Questionmarktarius posted...

Every boss in LoZ can be violenced to death, except for dondongos, and Ganon, who does not have a "repeat two more times".

Every boss in AoL is violenced to death, except the wizard guy who dies to reflect. No "repeat two more times"

Every boss in LttP is violenced to death, apart from the proto-"tennis match" guys.

I was more commenting on the whole "wait for weak points to appear". LoZ has Gohma, IDK how she's (he?) violenced to death, and you mentioned Ganon.
AoL was a bit of a stretch I admit, as I was mainly thinking of the Darknut with the horse and his shield and stuff. Technically you have to wait for the weak point to appear on the dragon in dungeon six also, but I don't like to argue on technicalities, so I'll retract that.
For ALttP I was thinking mainly of the water boss thing where you had to hookshot away all those small things to get at the big thing, but maybe those were just two different phases? But you've conceded Aghanim :)
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I like the game because of how "simple" the game is. Theres no complex point systems, crafting, and such. And the game teaches you how to play from the experience alone without any hand holding.
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BigTee66 posted...

crafting

Didn't bother with apple arbitrage, huh?

Questionmarktarius posted...

BigTee66 posted...

crafting

Didn't bother with apple arbitrage, huh?

Are apples a financially commodity to some seller in the game? Or am I misunderstanding your statement completely?
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It was pretty good. Much more deserving of its praise than Odyssey.

thanosibe posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

BigTee66 posted...

crafting

Didn't bother with apple arbitrage, huh?

Are apples a financially commodity to some seller in the game? Or am I misunderstanding your statement completely?

"arbitrage" is alliteration, mostly.

Acquire apples
Cook apples
Sell simmered fruit

Then there's the 'baked apple girl'...

One of the best games Ive ever played
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Questionmarktarius posted...

thanosibe posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

BigTee66 posted...

crafting

Didn't bother with apple arbitrage, huh?

Are apples a financially commodity to some seller in the game? Or am I misunderstanding your statement completely?

"arbitrage" is alliteration, mostly.

Acquire apples
Cook apples
Sell simmered fruit

Then there's the 'baked apple girl'...

Oh ok. I get you. Yeah I'd never thoughy to sell stuff like that. Between a shit ton of ores, Talus being relativly easy, and a metric fuckton off different excess monster parts to sell, I never thought to make dishes to sell.
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Its a good game but gets old very fast.

Wish there was more enemies though.
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Ganon19 posted...

Its a good game but gets old very fast.

Wish there was more enemies though.

Yeah enemy variety would help tremendously.
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I think I have to agree, like it's definitely a good game but I don't think it was even my favorite open world game of last year
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CapnMuffin posted...

Yeah enemy variety would help tremendously.

Not as much as having actual dungeons and an actually populated world
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Having actual dungeons wouldn't objectively help. They went for a different focus, and by standing out with it that helps the whole genre really by giving it more variety. I think I actually prefer this focus. Mmmmaybe.

It's basically an inversion of the focus a Bethesda game would have. In a Bethesda game, while there's stuff to find and do outside, the world is largely about interiors. You find places to go inside, that are effectively dungeons in all but literal name. And there's a lot of them. It's a stark contrast to exploration out in the world. Where anything could be anywhere to your imagination and you're just wandering around. But then you find an interior to explore or that you need to go to, and everything suddenly becomes much more claustrophobic and focused.

This is also shown in quest design, as Bethesda games have many more quests, questlines, and they're more rigid, whereas comparatively BotW is a lot more freeform and open.

There's merit to both approaches, but I'd prefer the genre overall have more variety than less. Plopping more dungeons around would be making it more like old Zelda games, more like Bethesda games.


There's also the risk of being a linear game set in an open world game. When I first heard of what BotW was gonna be, I didn't expect what it turned out to be. I expected it to not be a true open world game, but merely be a traditional Zelda game, set in an open world, and there's a big difference there. The difference between being an open world sandbox game, and a more linear game merely set in an open world would be like comparing GTA5 to...Mafia 2 or something.

Both of those games take place in an open world, but Mafia 2 has basically nothing to do in it. It's just there to traverse to get from point A to point B. It's a backdrop, not a core of the game and gameplay. The GTA games, the Saints Row games, Just Cause games and so on, those actually are built around being an open world, they're designed as one.

So it's kind of like a slider between rigid and linear, and open and free. BotW could have just been a Zelda game, like Twilight Princess, with all the same beats and traditions and everything, but set in a token open world to make travel take longer and to say they have an open world game, but not much beyond that. But they actually made an open world sandbox game.

I do suspect the next Zelda game, if it's an open world game (and wow will it be horribly disappointing if it's not) will probably be more structured though. Because I actually have a suspicion that it's not this freeform completely by choice, but more due to work limitations. Making a world this big with all this stuff in it that works this well probably takes so long that there just wasn't enough energy left to make a ton of more curated and focused content too. But maybe not iunno. Just...with open world games that are serious about being open world games, there's always tradeoffs to be made. A game can't do it all, and an open world game tends to try to do more than linear games on top of that.
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I think I am addicted to this game. Like I said , I feel that is is kind of Meh. However I keep going back to so can do all the Shrines and I have no clue why . I am making stand at those seeds and not thinking about looking for all of those.
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cjsdowg posted...

I think I am addicted to this game. Like I said , I feel that is is kind of Meh. However I keep going back to so can do all the Shrines and I have no clue why . I am making stand at those seeds and not thinking about looking for all of those.

I was really surprised with the help of Majora's Mask DLC I rarely even had to seek out seeds and found most just while I was doing other things. It takes 451 or so to get all weapon slots maxed. But you need nowhere near a full page of shields. Hell I don't even need that many bows and it's not even a full page. Melee is really all that needs be maxed. Which is like 150 at the most.
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I blew through the game pretty fast (about 60 hours or so).

I really enjoyed it. I got a little fatigued by the end because I was playing for hours a day (took me like a week to get that much play time on a road trip), but I really enjoyed it.

That being said, I don't think there's anything mechanically that really does anything super interesting. I can definitely see how somebody would just kind of think it's boring.
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thanosibe posted...

(at least I've never successfully completed either mission without stealth).

I've done it. If you don't get hit, you can kill all the enemies and then the doors re-open.
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I liked it enough to get 100% (in the main game, not the DLC)

but as a zelda game i found it disappointing. Would have liked more dungeon stuff, and the shrines are too short to really make an impression. Nintendo is usually the master of escalating level design, but since they are all short and they have no idea which order people will play them, most of them consist of a tutorial puzzle to teach that shrine's gimmick followed by one bigger puzzle.

It did a lot of things right but it lost the things that I enjoy about Zelda, namely the intricate dungeons, cool items, and varying bosses
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I adore the game. The first thing that caught me off guard as someone who's been following all the footage and trailers is that it's immensely relaxing to grab a horse to go for a gallop or simply run through some grass or even get to the top of some mountain to fly down from. It's downright therapeutic. I like the shrines, but they're too bite-sized. Sometimes it takes more work to get to it than to do the shrine. And this is ignoring Shrine blessings since the puzzle is in the shrine quest.

If they could offer me a Zelda title with no enemies, no fighting, just BotW exploration tools and puzzles and dungeons akin to Hyrule Castle, I'd be elated. The battle design is fine, but I've already dumped hundreds of hours into Monster Hunter and their battle system is top notch. If I don't feel the weight in my attacks and the moves don't look cool yet somewhat realistic, I won't care for it. But on its own merits, it's pretty decent and shines its brightest upon player creativity. I suppose this is why I don't mind the limited enemy variety; the way I approach an enemy camp changes all the time depending on the weapons I have on me and environmental tools available.

The weapon durability seems more like a sloppy solution to the problem being able to access anything anywhere at anytime of the game. But I suspect we wouldn't have so many types of weapons without the durability system. Else you could go and frost and electrostab the enemies till sun rise with no setbacks. I suppose an alternative is to get materials to craft the weapons you want and then keep upgrading.

And @Tmk, you know for the stealth section, you could have brute-forced it and fought them all, right?
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@Sad_Face I agree with you about the therapudic exploration. It's why I'm still playing and have a feeling I will for a lot more. Even the most simplistic things are amazing.
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The groundwork and framework is there for a truly amazing as fuck sandbox Zelda.

My only complaints are that the beasts were short and only 4 of them. And the how they handled the master sword. I understand why it's the way it is.

I'd gladly take less shrines for more, actual, traditional dungeons.

Seamlessly going into Hyrule castle is something I'd love to see in the sequel with more dungeons.

The world was huge, it really didn't feel empty like or monotonous like, say, Skyrim.

The landscapes were beautiful. The music was epic.

I feel it's rated fairly on its own. It's a landmark for the series and Nintendo. It's not totally original but what it does do is incredibly well done.
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chrono625 posted...

The landscapes were beautiful. The music was epic.

It is funny to me I hated the music .. well lack there for. Most times there is no BGM. And I hated Kass. lol
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Sad_Face posted...

And @Tmk, you know for the stealth section, you could have brute-forced it and fought them all, right?

With enemies who don't react properly to being electrocuted, their attacks ignore armor and number of hearts and insta-kill you, and the insta-kill ignores fairies and Mipha's Grace.

Combat with them is as dumb as the forced stealth because again, it just arbitrarily ignores the design of the game to create this really contrived scenario that makes no sense in the context of the larger game.

That entire segment and boss fight is at a complete disharmony with the entirety of the rest of the game and it just has to completely ignore several game mechanics for the sake of instant death attacks. It's terrible design no matter how you swing it.
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I spent a few hundred hours doing everything in my first game, now I'm replaying (Master Mode) and it's again fucking up my sleep patterns causing me to stay up til 4am nightly. joy

I just ran into two black Hylians, for some reason I just find that cool
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The best part of the game is the DLC for the master sword go into it without any guide help
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El Mexicano Texano posted...

The best part of the game is the DLC for the master sword go into it without any guide help

i also thought Master Trials were fun as hell

El Mexicano Texano posted...

The best part of the game is the DLC for the master sword go into it without any guide help

I don't have the skills to do that one .
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marthsheretoo posted...

thanosibe posted...

(at least I've never successfully completed either mission without stealth).

I've done it. If you don't get hit, you can kill all the enemies and then the doors re-open.

Or shoot the sentries with Ancient Arrows and don't worry about getting caught in the first place.
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the vast majority of gamers do.
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El Mexicano Texano posted...

The best part of the game is the DLC for the master sword go into it without any guide help

This is one thing I have left. Got to the first "break" on normal. Got my ass handed to me trying it on master mode.
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El Mexicano Texano posted...

The best part of the game is the DLC for the master sword go into it without any guide help

I'd like that stuff more if the DLC didn't have so much that walled off some/most of your resources you've built up over playing to challenge you. It makes everything you've earned feel a bit useless when the hardest challenges in the game go "no that doesn't count"
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