The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

[OCH]

Sigh...

 

I spent the better part of 20 minutes exploring a really funky bit of sky. I just kept going up and up and up. The pitfall of that being it got "unbearably cold". Luckily I accrued a few potions and recipes to offset that. I was rewarded for my efforts with a new area and the first bit of gated content/plot wall. There I was thinking, getting through the last temple by sheer ingenuity. That the four main open world objectives could be approached in a non-linear sequence. But clearly I was missing something here and for all my exploring, could not progress.

As @HandsomeDead mentioned, there is a preferred order to these objectives. Which just annoyed me, as I was pretty chuffed getting to that area in the first place. Still I suppose that is also the point of the shrines in this game, as waypoints. Decided to head south for the next session. Didn't even notice most of my exploration had taken place on the north of the map, so far. 

[Metroid66]

You know if you're talking about the plot point near 

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Rito village 

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then I don't think it's cut off from you. That's the first (and only, so far) temple I did.

[OCH]

I think the problem was that I haven't even seen that area. So I probably jumped the gun by not going there first.

[spatular]

^ yeah you need to go there first to get the quest, think i did similar in a different region.

 

theres so much game here and ive been so busy playing it not sure where to start. Ive been really enjoying it but at the same time agree with most complaints about it, and some of the bad points, like the stamina its worse at the start of the game, once youve upgraded a bit its not so bad.

 

i am finding the combat really hard, mainly because of how much damage some/a lot of enemies do, ive got 12 hearts but can oftenstill be killed in 2 hits. So avoiding combat mostly, then when i do fight its bomb arrows all the way. Ill come back to the combat later when i have enough batteries to try stuff like this

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the game definitely wants you to cook stuff but ive been keeping that to a minimum, only cooked a few times and just simple stuff like 5 apples in a pot.

 

this is where i want a guide to tell me what to cook, what to attach to arrows, what to combine swords with etc, theres so much stuff like that you can nearly combine anything with anything, not bothered about working out whats good myself.

 

but ive not been reading too much about it as i want to find out other stuff for myself, like i did a

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labrynth

last night and it was great.

 

also really enjoyed exploring underground

 

also a good tip i read was in caves 

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Ones with poles with some cloth on them usually have hidden clothes

also this sounds great need to try it

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Rocket shield

 

those koroks that want carrying around are sort of annoying, when you build them a vehicle it is pretty fun but its probably more time efficient to just carry them but thats boring.

 

did the duplicate glitch to get some money, wasnt sure if i should but just heard about it after getting a quest which would need a few 100r which i was saving for some heat resistant gear, so saves time on boring money quests but will try not to use it much.

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

My understanding with the cooking is different foods have different 'tiers' of effects. So an endurance carrot might be tier 1 for endurance (for instance), lets say then there's also a tier 2 endurance spinach, combining more than one carrot might get you to tier 2. Then the rest of the ingredients increase the effect of the original effect, or add hearts. I think seasoning strengthens the added effect, salt, acorns, cooking oils etc. Stuff like apples, meat, that adds hearts. I'm not sure though, this is largely just me guessing at how it works. So this might be extremely wrong

 

I think the enemy design is really underrated in this. They are dumb, but in a fun way. They have lots of cool unique reactions to shit.

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Throw some meat at a lizard and they will fall for the bait. Stick an octorok balloon to a dynamite barrel and the pigs will look at it and get distracted so you can surprise attack them. Set a trap which sets them on fire, they don't just hang around. They aren't that stupid, they move away from it. Try to trap them in a cage and they run away squealing. The big ones have a formation they do with the small ones, they throw rocks and even get into a kind of phalanx position, which is really cool.

 

You kind of have to take a 'play with your food' approach to the combat to see these unique things though. Rather than just mash buttons at stuff with the highest damaging weapon. A lot of people say the combat in these games is bad but I disagree, it's just a lot of it is hidden behind broad use of all the different tools and environment stuff.

[spatular]

Yeah i like the

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formations

They do, makes it easier to hit them all with a bomb at the same time. I agree the combat is good, well it was in botw, i think they may have just made it a bit too hard in this with how high damage the enemies do. Ill be back when im stronger to give it a better go.

[OCH]

The main thing that keeps getting me with combat is forgetting which Left shoulder button I should push to lock on, in the heat of the moment. Either switching to the map or whatever other power I'm using, just as an enemy charges at me. 🤦‍♂️

 

Today's session was Exploration!

All but one of the overground areas are now mapped out. I left the session there (at a reasonably close shrine). The other part of my session was taken up with ..the underground. That, to me, isn't as fun to explore. I burned through over 100 arrows and 220+ brightbloom seeds and to look at the mapped out regions, it barely looks like I've accomplished anything. The enemy effect in this area is also a little broken imo. I've since also run out of a few (vital) Zonai machines, like the cook pots. I need to re-stock ..as soon as I remember where that Guardian mining place was, from the beginning of the game?

[one-armed dwarf]

I spent a ton of time in the depths yesterday also. I don't know how I feel about the area. I like how the exploring is integrated with your progress elsewhere, you need to go to the depths for improvements to zonai. But you need to go caving in Hyrule to get bloom seeds, and you need to do shrines to be strong enough to fight the very difficult enemies down there. When you do the depths then you have better transport options for the overworld. It's interesting the impact it can have for your character's power levels, if they have more hearts/stamina or more battery, and how that informs your approach (eg, fighting tough enemies while you have low health but high tech, or vice versa)

 

But the depths themselves haven't had the surprises for me really that the overworld has. Actually neither have the sky islands, which sort of feel like they were over-represented in marketing for this game given their actual in-game presence. It's really about the interaction between Hyrule and the depths I think.I do like that there's a sense of danger tho, if you go too far and end up relying on small light sources

 

I think this game is so good. Even tho there's little things about it that can be complained about, it deserves the 10/10 scores I think. It's the most significant game release of the past couple years I think, or at least up there with Elden Ring.

[DisturbedSwan]

This has probably got worse for me over the weekend unfortunately.

 

I took the advice I got to carry on with the main quests before I do much more exploring but then got sidetracked multiple times on the way to the main quest and I'm just bored of it now really, I've done quite a few shrines, explored quite a few identikit caves, fought a few Stone Golems, massacred seemingly endless Bokoblins and whatever the bigger ones are called and I think I might've had enough already, there's just not enough there for me.

 

The world is too empty, the Shrines just not entertaining or fun enough, it simultaneously feels better than BotW and worse at the same time. The world just doesn't feel at all as fun to explore, there's not as much to catch the eye or environmental oddities to intrigue, it's all just a bit dull. I saw a bunch of Bokoblin's near a Stable last night following a Boss Bokoblin and it just reminded me a bit of Elden Ring, another game with a dull open world and identikit caves to explore.

 

All the enthusiasm and hype of the early hours, exploring the Sky Islands and getting to grips with the world there and all the little cool puzzles is gone and instead I feel stuck in Hyrule. I think the only highlight of my weekends play is getting to the neat settlement near Hyrule Castle, listening to the music and speaking to everyone there.

 

In two minds right now about whether to throw in the towel and sell, as I don't want another Elden Ring situation or go on for a bit longer as I'm still very early in and it might be a little silly to sack it off this early.

[one-armed dwarf]

I think blakey you seem to sort of prefer more curated open world stuff like RDRII and Ubisoft. With this one you kinda got to get in the playful and experimental mindset a bit, each camp fight can have very different outcomes. Even though the camp layout is the same, the weather might be different (rain and/or thunder, is it overcast, maybe a breeze), and nearby equipment/items/resources also influence your approach.

 

It's dynamic in this sense, if each camp is the same layout its parameters are always changing. Then it's up to the player to come up with a fun approach that's challenging and fun based on those parameters and understanding of how it works together, or the curiosity to see and experiment if you don't already know. There's a hidden versatility to a lot of the tools in this game, particularly WRT physics and how they interact with one another and your new powers. Both in combat and exploration, but it requires the player to look for it a bit. I'm still discovering things in these identikit caves and camps

 

That's the real reason behind the way weapons break in this, is to get players thinking about using other tools (to avoid breaking all the ones they have, or if they break them to find something else). Not necessarily speaking only about weapons, but environment and items as well

[HandsomeDead]

So I think I've realised how the difficulty scaling works.  I've done a third dungeon now and all the enemies seemed to have levelled up and they are harder versions.  I didn't notice before since I did the first two back to back and I thought I must have just been in harder areas.  The boss like enemies dotted around probably don't do this but general mobs do.

 

And in regards to the dungeons a lot was made of how they were more like traditional Zelda dungeons but I still think they're fairly close to how the devine beasts were in BotW.  I don't have a problem with it really because I thought the devine beasts were pretty cool in their own way but if there is any expectation that TotK is BotW with "real" dungeons I'd say that needs to be dialled back.

[DisturbedSwan]

20 hours ago, HandsomeDead said:

 but if there is any expectation that TotK is BotW with "real" dungeons I'd say that needs to be dialled back.

 

Fucks sake  

[spatular]

yeah the dungeons are pretty similar to botw in that theyre quite small compared to previous zelda games. For me thats fine, i like them. And the bosses have been quite easy so far, oddly as ive been finding the rest of the combat pretty hard. Yesterday went off to do the quests to unlock some more armour upgrades so hopefully will be able to withstand some more hits before dying now.

[mfnick]

Well, everyone’s complained about the slow opening to this… Not me though! I’ve bloody loved it! I’m shocked, honestly couldn’t put it down. 
 

It’s so stupid in the best possible way. 
 

 

Had a serious cut scene with Zelda with a massive boulder sticking out of my back. 
 

Already had far more enjoyment solving these few opening puzzles than I did throughout my entire time with BOTW. The abilities are far more fun and interesting. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I like the building too. This felt great to do. 
 

 

If I’m still just building bridges and stairs out of logs and wood after 10 hours I may feel different about that part though. We’ll see. 

 

Think I may have missed a chest somewhere though. Just reached Hyrule, got 2 pairs of trousers but still topless. Ah well. 
 

It’s made an excellent first impression. 
 

The controls still fucking suck a big, sweaty, hairy, cheesy arse though!! Why the hell can’t we remap them? Constantly pressing wrong thing! Even as a minimum just let me put run on the left stick so I don’t have to hold it in a claw position to move camera while running. God it’s so bad. 

[DisturbedSwan]

13 hours ago, mfnick said:

Well, everyone’s complained about the slow opening to this… Not me though! I’ve bloody loved it! I’m shocked, honestly couldn’t put it down. 

 

Have they? I absolutely loved the opening, exactly the same as you. It's only when I left that first area that things went downhill for me really, a lot of the old BotW feelings came back, I got super bewildered, got frustrating quite a bit and various elements, was butting heads with the game more and just wasn't having anywhere near as much fun with it.

 

Going back to my own playthrough of this, the magical 10 days is up which means I have discovered I've now put 20 hours into this, which is quite a bit for me over such a short space of time these days. After a few negative sessions over the weekend, In retrospect I might've been a bit too harsh on it and had a bit of an overly knee jerk reaction which brought back some bad memories from BotW.

 

Since those negative weekend sessions though I've been really enjoying it again. I've mainly been concentrating on the Central Hyrule section as that seems to be where you're meant to start out. I've pretty much done a complete circle of this area and ventured out into some of the areas just beyond it for about 6 or so Shrines that I could see encircling this area that I wanted to get to. On my way though l've got side tracked countless times, did a quest for a weird salesman with a balloon that got me a Bokoblin Mask, helped get a Chest from a Bog for a couple of Treasure Hunters only for them not to take it (their loss), got talking to a random NPC that told me about some other treasures spread across the map then set out to get one (and succeeded) nearby. So I've now got an upgraded mask and top to wear which should give me a little more protection. 

 

What I loved during my little mini-quest I set myself to do all these shrines though was discovering a hidden one in a Cave. I just stumbled across this Cave in-between the marked shrines, it had loads and loads of rock walls you could either smash through with a rock-based weapon or blow up if you had a bomb flowers available. Luckily I had a mix of both but this Cave was seemingly endless, with bloody loads of these rock walls to smash your way through, I wanted to smash everyone just to see what was down that particular path really. I must've been at it ages before discovering another path through rock walls which were almost like a barrier after barrier of walls, I thought to myself that there must be something down here with all these walls one after another and sure enough after blasting through about 10 in a row I found a Shrine buried deep in the heart of this Cave. Just thought that was really neat, I know there was a thing in BotW that let you detect Shrines (can't remember what it was called now or if it was an item or part of your main arsenal so to speak) but organically just finding this Shrine in a random Cave was really cool.

 

Some of the recent Shrines I've done have been great too and had me scratching my head in a good way. There was this one where you're provided a raft with 4 wheels to transport a ball across a pond of water with the water running towards you and no matter what I did I couldn't get the Raft to move at all. I tried attaching more wheels, making it bigger, all sorts. After awhile I discovered a rail that went from one side of the pond to the other, but it was too thin to walk across so I ended up putting the raft on there and hoping it would fly across but nope it didn't budge either. What I ended up doing is making a kind if makeshift platform from the side, getting the raft as far along the rail as I could lifting it with Ultrahand then getting a ladder up to a high platform, landing on the other side and then grabbing the raft with ball attached and carrying it into the slot through an opened door. Don't think that was the way I was meant to solve that at all and I don't understand why the wheels were so ineffective when I was seemingly doing not a lot wrong but it's so cool that you have that much wiggle room to achieve the objective exactly how you want to really, even if it's not the intended way at all.

 

So yeah, had a way better time with it this week during my last few sessions and didn't want to put it down again last night, so things may be looking up or it may just be one of those games where a few good sessions might follow one or two bad sessions depending on what and where you're exploring in those times. 

 

Pics:

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[mfnick]

18 minutes ago, DisturbedSwan said:

Have they? I absolutely loved the opening, exactly the same as you. It's only when I left that first area that things went downhill for me really, a lot of the old BotW feelings came back, I got super bewildered, got frustrating quite a bit and various elements, was butting heads with the game more and just wasn't having anywhere near as much fun with it.

Yea definitely. Heard it a lot in podcasts and I’m sure I’ve read it here.

 

I am a bit worried about returning to Hyrule to be honest. That beginning Island is such a well designed and condensed puzzle exploration area Im concerned when I return to the huge empty expanse of land that is Hyrule I’ll run into the same issues. I’m really dreading going to underground bit too. I hate parts in games where it’s overly dark. It just frustrates the Hell out of me. Hoping the new abilities help resolve that a bit though. The fact I’m (very surprisingly) enjoying the building aspect makes a big difference too. 
 

Good to hear you’re a bit more positive on it again though. Hopefully Ill continue to enjoy it. I can see this being a game you really have to be in mood for accepting a bit of bullshit to enjoy. 

[HandsomeDead]

Fourth dungeon done.

 

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Also have got the Master Sword.  It looks potentially easy enough to get pretty early if you concentrate on it.  I don't think I'm remembering wrong but didn't it shoot beams at full health like old school Zelda in BotW?  It doesn't here so that sucks.  But you can fuse it so maybe there are other things it does.

 

[one-armed dwarf]

I've only one dungeon done but I have 85 hours in the game. I don't know if that makes me the biggest noob in the world or not to be playing so slow.

 

re: water shrine, this is what I did

 

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[HandsomeDead]

I've only got proper stuck on one shrine.  

 

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It was early, and I just remember it was one near a stable to the north.  It was a pretty basic obstacle course but I couldn't figure out how to get a key.  I could see the chest through a grate but couldn't figure out how to get down.  After 30 mins of scouring every area I had to look it up.  Turns out the lasers I was consistently avoiding set off a trap door that takes you down to the key.  I was so mad.  You can't have it hidden behind something you're always encouraged to avoid.  Hated it.

 

[OCH]

^😄 Yeah, I was stumped on that one for ages.