Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I also liked the final fight. I think my gripe is that you keep doing all of these side quests to get stronger for a fight that never actually occurs. Lynel and some of the tougher guardian bots are as tough as they come. Or you find all of those seeds (or clear all of the temples) to get abilities or gear that you've just made irrelevant. IMO a solution would be some sort of NG+ where you start with all of your gear at the beginning and the game is extra extra hard. The open nature of the game would actually work just fine with that setup, too.
 
I stopped at just under 50 temples and 50 seeds. I mainly allocated my seeds toward weapons and bows since shields matter so little. With the temples I had 14 hearts (4 coming from the Divine Beasts) and about 80% of a second stamina bar. Seemed like plenty to me. Anything more is just being a completionist. I'm notorious for doing all of the side stuff in games like Far Cry and the Witcher, but this one didn't really motivate me thanks to the difficulty not coming from battles.

I'm guessing that I will complete all of the shrines, just because that's how I play Zelda games, and I'll collect a healthy amount of seeds. However, I also won't be collecting all of them. I've learned to temper my collecting OCD when it comes to the more minor things like this. I probably wouldn't be happy though if I didn't complete all the shrines.
 
Funny enough, I think one other reason I don't really care to do all the extra stuff is the lack of trophies/achievements/badges/etc.
Normally if I'm kinda close to doing all of something, I'll just go ahead and do it for the achievement. I know they don't mean anything, but at least it's something to give me a tiny bit more motivation.
Since there are none and there's no NG+ (I completed Resident Evil 4 a half-dozen times thanks to NG+ items), I just don't care.
 
Keep in mind they are releasing DLC for this as well.

I am quickly starting to consider getting a Switch...actually finding one is going to be the fun part, though.
 
Keep in mind they are releasing DLC for this as well.

I am quickly starting to consider getting a Switch...actually finding one is going to be the fun part, though.

With all the issues I am seeing I would rather wait for Switch 2.0 which I assume they will release an updated model near the Holidays that should fix any of the bricking/warping issues.
 
I've stopped trying to play the waiting game. It always feels like something better is around the corner, even when it isn't. The exception would be the early announcements of the PS4 Pro and Project Scorpio of course.
 
I've stopped trying to play the waiting game. It always feels like something better is around the corner, even when it isn't. The exception would be the early announcements of the PS4 Pro and Project Scorpio of course.

Good thing for me is I already had a Wii U so I was able to enjoy BOTW just fine on that while I wait on the Switch.
 
Good thing for me is I already had a Wii U so I was able to enjoy BOTW just fine on that while I wait on the Switch.

Indeed. You have access to mostly the same version of Mario Kart 8, too. If anything the 2-powerup thing might make the game even more of a dice roll.
 
Indeed. You have access to mostly the same version of Mario Kart 8, too. If anything the 2-powerup thing might make the game even more of a dice roll.

Not a Mario Kart fan, at least not anymore. I've probably played 5 games in total on my Wii U. Smash, BOTW, Mario Maker, Super Mario Bros U and Hyrule Warriors(the lag on this one was atrocious) Which is probably why I hesitated getting a Switch at launch. I'm very excited for the new Mario but that's coming out for the holidays so no rush.
 
I've completed 3 divine beasts and got the Master Sword. I have to say I was pretty unimpressed with the Rito quest and Vah Medoh. It had so much potential and really let me thinking they could have done a lot more. I liked Vah Ruta and Vah Neboris. They had a sense of scale and the dungeons actually made me sit back and think if even a little bit. I blazed right through Rito and I didn't care enough for the characters to engage in the side quests. Maybe I'm getting burned out a bit (which doesn't seem the case as I'll explain below), but it just seemed like an afterthought after how much went into the other two.

I'm currently going to Akkala so I can hit up the second Ancient Tech Lab, and going through (well, ok, mostly around) the Death Mountain area really piqued my interest again. And I even did the Thyphlo Ruins Ketoh Wawai Shrine side quest, so I'm not against extra stuff either. So I don't think I'm getting burned out. Just the Rito section was... boring. And small. Not unique. I feel let down :(
 
Last edited:
I felt Vah Noboris was probably the most challenging area in the game. From the terrain, to boarding it, to the puzzles inside, to the boss. That area and the entire large quest centered around the Zora were very elaborate and well done. Vah Medoh was a breeze (no pun intended) and I don't even think I took any damage from that version of Ganon. Death Mountain was more annoying (fire damage and an escort mission) than challenging.
 
Had my first case of frame rate slowing to about 1fps or outright freezing for several seconds while attacking some bokoblins in the Death Mountain area yesterday. I can handle a reduced framerate in towns, but that was utter crap. I was ready to get up and reset my console because I thought the game froze.
 
For me, the final hit in killing a Moblin (the big dudes) makes the game bog down to a borderline halt after the first patch from a few weeks ago. The Lost Woods no longer drops my FPS by half, though.
 
I love this game...didn't love Ganon though. Thought it was a case of all hype and no bite. Does that make sense?
 
I love this game...didn't love Ganon though. Thought it was a case of all hype and no bite. Does that make sense?
Did you have all 4 beasts and a bunch of end-game gear? Try killing him fresh off the Great Plateau, Mr. Badass.
 
Finished all 4 divine beasts. A couple things:

1) I was worried about being aimless after finishing this major part of the story, not really knowing what to do before fighting Ganon. Not the case. It's been fun looking around for memories, shrines, expanding the map, side quests, upgrading gear, etc. thumbs up.
2) All the divine beast quests were really cool except the Rito quest was so lame. Such an afterthought. thumbs down.
 
I am on the hunt for a Switch, but I've been messing around with this in CEMU. So far pretty fun, though the weapon durability is just as shitty as everyone said. Weapons (albeit shit ones) are plentiful, though you have to constantly manage your weapon inventory.

The cooking is kind of annoying and fiddly...wish it wasn't several steps just to throw some items in a pot.

Seems like a lot of inventory management in this game which kind of kills the pacing sometimes.

Game is running pretty good for me with a 4K texture pack (and looks amazing), though I get random stutter/slowdowns and eventually the game will crash after about 45 minutes or so.

Looking forward to playing it on the Switch.
 
Agreed on most fronts. I'm towards the end of my playthrough and all of my weapon slots are filled with good weapons. I still try to avoid common mobs though so I don't waste them, even though I don't really have any major things to use them on besides Ganon at this point.

I didn't like cooking at first. Now that I know the system, I think it's a decent implementation. It would be nice if they had some kind of recipe system though where you just click on a recipe you want and it automatically puts the items you need for that dish in your hands. That would be nice.
 
I didn't like cooking at first. Now that I know the system, I think it's a decent implementation. It would be nice if they had some kind of recipe system though where you just click on a recipe you want and it automatically puts the items you need for that dish in your hands. That would be nice.

Yeah, that's what I was expecting when I saw recipe books and people were mentioning different recipes throughout the game. I was hoping for some sort of system that stored them and took the tedium out of it.

Overall, I think tedium is probably my biggest gripe with the game (disregarding FPS drops, graphics, etc.). It feels like too many constant tasks take about 2x too long. I still wish they made jumping up a cliff cover the same distance and use the same amount of stamina as slowly climbing.
 
Decided to just beat the game already and went and beat Ganon last night. Overall a pretty epic ending, but the story was a bit lacking. More in the spoiler tag below. All in all, I really enjoyed this game.

So I really liked the final boss fight - well, the first part of it anyway. Calamity Ganon was pretty easy for the most part. I had all 4 divine beasts that took out half of his health. That was pretty cool. I kind of wish their implementation was a little more epic than a one-and-done kind of thing, like they affected Ganon's abilities instead of just taking half his health. If I had known that, I can see it being a lot more feasible now to just get 13 heart containers, pulling the master sword, and whooping up on Ganon without any of the Divine beasts. It was cool, but I just felt they could have been used a bit more. Although, I guess I can see that being tough because of the free-world nature of the game they kind of had to make the implementation of the divine beasts sort of "modular" so to speak.

Dark Beast Ganon was totally BA. Until you have to start fighting him. I didn't use horses at all in the game, except for the one you pick up at the stable by Kakariko village as part of the tutorial. It was a pretty weak horse and looked dumb with polka-dots all over it, so I named it Kevin. Lo and behold, here I was fighting the pure incarnation of evil itself riding Kevin. LOL. It was cool, but had I known that I would have looked for a better horse prior to the fight. Also, they just give you the frickin' light bow. What the heck? That really cheapened the fight. For something so legendary, it would have been cool to do another quest in the main story to go and find this amazingly powerful weapon somewhere in a dungeon or in the far reaches of the mountains or something. While the beast was pretty cool, it was a pretty weaksauce fight with no real way to get hurt. I loved that it took place on Hyrule field - epic - but the fact it could be taken down so easily with like 6 arrows, you're just given this ultimate weapon, and I'm riding my derpy horse Kevin, it was just kind of a letdown.

The story was pretty weaksauce too. They just leave you with Link and Zelda staring at the castle. I mean it was cool, but they could have done a bit more to elaborate on the missing pieces of the story. I felt like it needed a bit more embellishment of what the world has been through the last 100 years, how Ganon had wreaked havoc on the entire land, and now it was over. Instead they just kind of say, "Big gulps, eh? Whelp, see ya later!" I don't mind a cliffhanger or a leader into another game/story, but it needed a bit more of a closing after everything you've been through so far.

Liked:
I liked Calamity Ganon and Dark Beast Ganon
Calamity Ganon needed a "creative" solution to win (perfect guard his blasts)
Both fights were pretty epic
The castle leading up to the fights was well done
Music was great
Final blow with a slo-mo arrow to the eye was pretty cool

Disliked:
Both fights were easy
Dark Beast Ganon was pretty easy and the fight was cheapened by just giving you a special weapon for it
Dark Beast Ganon needed too few hits to win
Story was cut way short
Needed more embellishment at the very end to highlight the great cost of the 100 year war
Link seemed more a tool for an end than the epic hero of time

Total play time was ~70 hours, and I still have a lot of shrines left, tons of side quests, and a s*** ton of korok seeds to find. Overall great game.
 
You are totally right about that bow. There was no backstory to it, no teasers, forshadowing, etc. It's like as a last minute thought, here you go Link! You needed light arrows in Ocarina of Time, but you knew that before hand, and had to find them. You couldn't find the Bow of Light in a dungeon though, as this game really does not have dungeons, which is it's biggest weakness.
 
Is it just me, or does the map feel fairly empty in this game? It is huge for sure, but most of it seems to be fields, maybe some ruins with little to no explorable content, but not a lot to actually do. Does that change outside of the central area?
 
Well yeah you're in a big rolling Meadow. I never really felt that way, actually quite the opposite. I was pretty impressed that you could explore with intent and no matter where you chose to go, you were rewarded with something interesting.
 
Is it just me, or does the map feel fairly empty in this game? It is huge for sure, but most of it seems to be fields, maybe some ruins with little to no explorable content, but not a lot to actually do. Does that change outside of the central area?

Kinda like the real world.


Ever been in a cow pasture... pretty boring places really.
 
Kinda like the real world.


Ever been in a cow pasture... pretty boring places really.

No one ever accused Zelda games of being realistic. :p

I know it's sort of par for the course with open-world games, but I hoped with all the hype and praise for Zelda it might be different.
 
No one ever accused Zelda games of being realistic. :p

I know it's sort of par for the course with open-world games, but I hoped with all the hype and praise for Zelda it might be different.

Yea, needed a bigger dev team and better hardware.
 
The mini golf shrine has got to be the most infuriating thing I've ever seen in a game.
Ok maybe that's an exaggeration, but I spent nearly an hour trying to sink the second shot for the chest, to no avail. Broke both of my sledgehammers in the process.
The one time I actually managed to line up the shot I hit the ball too many times and it went too far. :(
There better be a damn good reward in that chest!
 
I looked up the solution on YouTube after an hour of trying and failing. The solution I found was a total facepalm moment.

Pro-tip: You can pick up the ball and move it.
 
The mini golf shrine has got to be the most infuriating thing I've ever seen in a game.
Ok maybe that's an exaggeration, but I spent nearly an hour trying to sink the second shot for the chest, to no avail. Broke both of my sledgehammers in the process.
The one time I actually managed to line up the shot I hit the ball too many times and it went too far. :(
There better be a damn good reward in that chest!

If I recall, the reward is crap.
 
I liked that shrine, I thought it was creative and fun. It was a little frustrating, but I managed to beat it in about 20 minutes or so. Generally I hate the motion controls but I don't think they're egregious in this game.
 
No one ever accused Zelda games of being realistic. :p

I know it's sort of par for the course with open-world games, but I hoped with all the hype and praise for Zelda it might be different.

I'm still not extraordinarily far into the game (lack of time) but I've been to Zora's Domain, Death Mountain, etc. Haven't really done any of the important tasks yet, divine beasts etc. So maybe I just haven't run across this yet, but what I really feel like the game could use is some big underground structures. Dungeons. They don't have to have quite the significance that they did in previous Zelda games, but just to have them there as an alternative type of area to explore would really add some variety to the game. The shrines are cool enough in this game, but they kind of lack that real dungeon feel that the previous games had. I really don't have any big complaints with how the game is, and it is a nice change of pace from the older ones, but I'd love to see some "darker" places.
 
I'm still not extraordinarily far into the game (lack of time) but I've been to Zora's Domain, Death Mountain, etc. Haven't really done any of the important tasks yet, divine beasts etc. So maybe I just haven't run across this yet, but what I really feel like the game could use is some big underground structures. Dungeons. They don't have to have quite the significance that they did in previous Zelda games, but just to have them there as an alternative type of area to explore would really add some variety to the game. The shrines are cool enough in this game, but they kind of lack that real dungeon feel that the previous games had. I really don't have any big complaints with how the game is, and it is a nice change of pace from the older ones, but I'd love to see some "darker" places.

The "dungeons" are the divine beasts. I wish i would have explored a bit more before doing them. Firstly, because the first one i tried i got my ass kicked over and freaking over.
 
I'm still not extraordinarily far into the game (lack of time) but I've been to Zora's Domain, Death Mountain, etc. Haven't really done any of the important tasks yet, divine beasts etc. So maybe I just haven't run across this yet, but what I really feel like the game could use is some big underground structures. Dungeons. They don't have to have quite the significance that they did in previous Zelda games, but just to have them there as an alternative type of area to explore would really add some variety to the game. The shrines are cool enough in this game, but they kind of lack that real dungeon feel that the previous games had. I really don't have any big complaints with how the game is, and it is a nice change of pace from the older ones, but I'd love to see some "darker" places.

Go to Vah Rudania on Death Mountain.
 
I also liked the final fight. I think my gripe is that you keep doing all of these side quests to get stronger for a fight that never actually occurs. Lynel and some of the tougher guardian bots are as tough as they come. Or you find all of those seeds (or clear all of the temples) to get abilities or gear that you've just made irrelevant. IMO a solution would be some sort of NG+ where you start with all of your gear at the beginning and the game is extra extra hard. The open nature of the game would actually work just fine with that setup, too.

The first expansion is adding hard mode I believe?
 
Expansion 1 DLC details.

http://zelda.com/breath-of-the-wild/news/expansion-pass-dlc-pack-1-detailed/

Expansion Pass DLC Pack 1 Detailed
Whether you have completed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or you are playing it for the first time, the Expansion Pass adds fresh content to your adventure. The first DLC pack of the Expansion Pass will be available this summer. Here's a peek at what will be included.

01_trialofthesword.jpg

Trial of the Sword
When you get to a certain sacred location, you can take on the new "Trial of the Sword" challenge. Face an onslaught of enemies, one wave after another. Link starts the challenge without any equipment or weapons. When all the enemies in a room are defeated, Link proceeds to the next. Clear all the trials (about 45 rooms in total), and the true power of the Master Sword will be awakened, and it will always be in its glowing powered-up state while usable.


Hero's Path Mode
This new map feature shows the path Link has walked through Hyrule from the last 200 hours of gameplay. Use the time tracker bar to see where you've spent the most time and where you have yet to explore. There's bound to be more adventures and maybe a shrine or two on the road less traveled.

03_hardmode.jpg

Hard Mode
In Hard Mode, enemies gradually regain health, so take them out as quickly as possible. All enemies are also powered up by one level. For example, Red Bokoblins in Normal mode are now Blue Bokoblins. Enemies can also have higher maximum levels than they would in Normal mode. Look up, and you may also find enemies and treasure chests in the sky!

04_travelmedallion.jpg

Travel Medallion
Somewhere in the world, there is a chest with a Travel Medallion inside. When you use this, you can register your current location as a fast travel point on the map. You can only register one location using the Travel Medallion.

05_majorasmask.jpg

05_midnashelmet.jpg

05_phantomarmor.jpg

05_tinglesoutfit.jpg

More Armor
There are 8 treasure chests placed around Hyrule containing armor themed after previous The Legend of Zelda titles. Watch for tips as to the whereabouts of these chests as you travel around Hyrule.

06_korokmask.jpg

Korok Mask
The Korok Mask is also hidden in a treasure chest somewhere in the world. While wearing this mask, it shakes whenever Link is near a hidden Korok location. There are 900 Koroks hiding in Hyrule, so this should help you discover quite a few of them.

DLC Pack 1 is just a taste of the content included in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Expansion Pass. For more information about additional features, price, and how to purchase, visit the Expansion Pass page.
 
Verge and Jamsomito - That makes sense, and I sort of gleaned that from this thread a bit, but wasn't entirely sure. I've been trying not to read much game-content related material while still reading and commenting on the game itself. Cool. Yeah, I'm still not done doing my wandering thing yet, but good to know there's some big stuff to do, and something a bit more like the classic dungeon/underworld type things.
 
Back
Top