The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

[OCH]

The variety to the combat very much comes down to you. Your imagination etc There is a parry, dodge to flurry attack thing etc But I rarely used those. Shield and Rod fusions in particular can completely change how you approach a battle. Especially as the latter can exploit elemental weaknesses.

 

Also, Fusion pro-tip:

 

Spoiler

Bokoblin/Moblin arms have a subtle enhancement to them. Equip the bone arm, then fuse a weapon to it. The fusion is stronger with a unique animation.

 

[one-armed dwarf]

The fact you really got into this game but hated BOTW is so weird to me.

 

I guess there's something in TOTK which just delivers its ideas way better.

[mfnick]

As someone else who wasn’t bothered about BOTW I think this is a vast improvement. I’ve still fallen off it quite hard later on but I got far more enjoyment out of this one and played it far longer. Hard to pinpoint why, I suppose it’s just more gamey with less just wandering about exploring just for the sake of it. As I’ve said before I much prefer the abilities and the building is well done too - was very thankful to get that last ability saying that though. 

The divine beasts are much more interesting than the temples in this one though IMO. 

[OCH]

15 minutes ago, mfnick said:

much more interesting than the temples in this one though

I think the thing that hindered the temples was the open world non-linearity itself. 'Do the thing five times' is fine in the first or second instance.  Not five times. You can't be as creative if you have to set them all to a uniform format. A Stone Tower Temple, for example, wouldn't be possible in this game.

[radiofloyd]

Played as far as getting the parasail and the first map area filled in. Now the adventure starts properly!

[radiofloyd]

I’ve been running around the central Hyrule area, talking to characters, completing challenges and shrines and in general fighting and exploring a lot. It’s interesting playing the game in Japanese and seeing how they inject character into the game by varying how people talk. For example, one character uses English a lot. I wonder how they translated that into the English version. I’ve been having a blast with the game so far.

 

Currently have about 25 Korok seeds.

[radiofloyd]

25 hours in now. Done eight shrines since returning to Hyrule so I’ve increased my health by two hearts. The shrine where you hit the ball like a baseball was a good one. I’ve done a cursory once over of the opening area so I’m going to head off to the west next.

 

I feel like Sable captured a lot of the things that are cool about this game too. Playing TotK is reminding me to go back and finish that.

[radiofloyd]

Pretty much following the road wherever it takes me, right now it’s taken me to the snowy north-west and I seem to be heading in the direction of the Rito Village. I’ve been using the map marker system regularly, dropping pins at various points of interest to come back to later.

 

I wonder how similar or different Breath of the Wild would feel if I went back and played it now. It does feel like this has become its own separate series, branched off from the other Zelda games.

[Maryokutai]

They did talk about this game during GDC, here's a short write-up of what was said: https://www.ign.com/articles/nintendo-reveals-tears-of-the-kingdoms-single-biggest-problem-and-how-it-was-solved

 

The point about how certain sounds weren't recorded but are simply manufactured in real-time by how certain physical bodies interact with each other (so basically like in real-life) sounds like some coding wizardry I find hard to wrap my head around. And I imagine someone who actually understands how the backend of these games works is probably even more in awe.

 

I still don't know whether I find it more impressive how this game got made in the first place or that they managed to pull it off on the Switch.