The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild Catch All

I've been there too. I keep trying to convince myself to jump back in. I really would love to, but I find the whole game so damn intimidating.

Blind_Evil wrote:

I felt the shrines were too hard to find without a guide

Did you turn off the audible radar ping and forget to try turning it back on? That's what I used when it became more difficult to find 'em. When the game gives you that radar it's so early that it's pinging constantly.

ccesarano wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

I felt the shrines were too hard to find without a guide

Did you turn off the audible radar ping and forget to try turning it back on? That's what I used when it became more difficult to find 'em. When the game gives you that radar it's so early that it's pinging constantly.

No, it’s on. The world is just so huge, it’s easy enough to “waste” an hour wandering around trying to find one and never doing so. Especially when you’ve already done 2/3 or so.

You know, the more I look back and consider it, the more I come to the conclusion that, while BOTW was interesting and had a lot of mystique going for it, it was ultimately not as enjoyable a Zelda as those before it. It took me a couple of years to beat it after almost finishing it back when it released... I just stalled and I know quite a few people who had a similar experience.

I hope they make quite a few changes for the second one, especially with the lack of dedicated dungeons and a better weapon degradation system - one that doesn't make it so I don't use my powerful stuff because it's as brittle as sugar glass.

brokenclavicle wrote:

You know, the more I look back and consider it, the more I come to the conclusion that, while BOTW was interesting and had a lot of mystique going for it, it was ultimately not as enjoyable a Zelda as those before it. It took me a couple of years to beat it after almost finishing it back when it released... I just stalled and I know quite a few people who had a similar experience.

Yeah, this.

While I can recognize the insane level of quality that spans across the entire game, the unfocused nature of the minute-to-minute gameplay lends itself to stalling out. Because there's swathes of the game where you're ultimately wandering around aimlessly, meandering to whatever bit of the map you think might be interesting. So there's nothing pulling your forward, no "next checkpoint" to get to. It makes it very easy to put aside.

I never did finish it - shocking I know - but I got to the point where I felt I got my money's worth out of it. And I started playing again a week or two ago and still love it.

The only thing I would ask for in future installments is a more varied cast. I feel like there were not a lot of people that had interesting stories.

Jonman wrote:

Because there's swathes of the game where you're ultimately wandering around aimlessly, meandering to whatever bit of the map you think might be interesting. So there's nothing pulling your forward, no "next checkpoint" to get to. It makes it very easy to put aside.

I may be in the minority here, but I would prefer my Zelda games stay as far away as possible from Call of Duty checkpoints. I agree the game can be daunting, but I never really felt like there wasn’t a push to keep moving forward. I always had the main quest in the log pointing me where to go next, but sometimes I just went and did other things anyway. It’s also the reason I still haven’t finished Assassin’s Creed : Odyssey, despite having it since launch and putting in over 60 hours. I can definitely see how these games burn some people out.

Jonman wrote:
brokenclavicle wrote:

You know, the more I look back and consider it, the more I come to the conclusion that, while BOTW was interesting and had a lot of mystique going for it, it was ultimately not as enjoyable a Zelda as those before it. It took me a couple of years to beat it after almost finishing it back when it released... I just stalled and I know quite a few people who had a similar experience.

Yeah, this.

While I can recognize the insane level of quality that spans across the entire game, the unfocused nature of the minute-to-minute gameplay lends itself to stalling out. Because there's swathes of the game where you're ultimately wandering around aimlessly, meandering to whatever bit of the map you think might be interesting. So there's nothing pulling your forward, no "next checkpoint" to get to. It makes it very easy to put aside.

I'm revisiting it in Master Mode, and I'm finding I enjoy it even more. I was definitely a person who wanted complex dungeons in the game like Twilight Princess, but that's really the only thing I can fault on the game. I'm impressed with how fresh everything is on the replay.

There's a middle ground between the linear CoD-style checkpointed corridor and the directionless wandering of BotW, though/

Glycerine wrote:

I may be in the minority here, but I would prefer my Zelda games stay as far away as possible from Call of Duty checkpoints. I agree the game can be daunting, but I never really felt like there wasn’t a push to keep moving forward. I always had the main quest in the log pointing me where to go next, but sometimes I just went and did other things anyway. It’s also the reason I still haven’t finished Assassin’s Creed : Odyssey, despite having it since launch and putting in over 60 hours. I can definitely see how these games burn some people out.

I don't see how previous Zeldas would have COD-like checkpoints - they never have as far as I can tell. I may, however, be missing some point.

BOTW was definitely fun for a while, but in the company of all the other games in the series, it seems unfocused in narrative, and the gameplay seems to suffer a little because of it. Mechanically, it's really fun, but as a Zelda game, it pales where others before it shone.

Jonman wrote:

So there's nothing pulling your forward, no "next checkpoint" to get to.

On the flip side of that, that's precisely what I found so compelling. Without checkpoints to hit or icons to collect, I was pulled around the map by sheer curiosity. What's at the top of that mountain? What's at the bottom of that ravine? Is there anything on top of that weird-ass rock formation? With ubiquitous checkpoints and icons, I know the answers to those questions already by glancing at a map. (Not to mention that the free climbing and gliding in Breath of the Wild means that I can actually reach most of those places. In other games, unless the designers specifically built a path up to something, all that stuff is just scenery.)

Every other open world game I've played since Breath of the Wild has felt on some level to be very shallow. No matter how large the map is or how many things there are to "discover", I'm ultimately only going where I'm told to go and finding what's been put there for me to find. It's not exploration; it's a scavenger hunt with the locations of everything marked up for you. No other game has been able to make me feel like I was finding things for myself.

Honestly Breath of the Wild is a big enough departure that I consider it a different beast altogether from the prior games. Technically I still prefer smaller experiences like the prior games, but at the same time what Breath of the Wild does, it does with that same excellence you'd expect from a Zelda.

And perhaps that sort of exploration will help Nintendo with future iterations of the franchise. It's clear that, after Wind Waker, they were focused on trying to come up with something that could please everyone that wanted Ocarina of Time again (Twilight Princess), but also continue to innovate and not just be Ocarina of Time again (Skyward Sword? I guess?). Breath of the Wild feels like, by stepping away from the formula, they've been able to figure out what Zelda is beyond Ocarina of Time.

Oh totes, it's entirely a matter of taste and what works for you in particular.

I find it hard to sustain interest in games that aren't actively pulling me forward. It's why the open builder type games (e.g. Minecraft) go entirely over my head. And BotW felt like it fell foul of the same broken bit of my brain.

I've finally been playing Horizon Zero Dawn now that it's out on PC. It's a great game, but it has definitely made me appreciate BotW's openness a lot more. H0D is open, mechanically, but there's just enough urgency in the story that it feels selfish and wasteful to indulge in that. Sure, I can fart around taking potshots at graboids from across the river... and then when I get where the quest says to go I get there just in time for the macguffin NPC to die dramatically. On the one hand I know that's just how video games tend to work, but BotW did a good job of not highlighting that for me. It gave me permission to experience the world on my own terms, and I think that's more important than I first realized.

As a counter-example to the stalling out stories... When I got to the point where I was done I headed for the castle and finished. There's a lot that I haven't done still. There are tons of shrines out there. I haven't started Tarry Town. I haven't touched the DLC. But I did go beat Calamity Ganon. The game didn't stop me and I had the resources to do it.

I think weapon breakage ended up kind of like XCOM 2's turn timers. It's necessary to keep the game moving, but it's tuned too tightly and feels bad. If BotW supported mods I'd want to try a thing that doubled the durability across the board. And I'd make the heroes' weapons either work like the Master Sword or let you use diamonds to repair them in the field.

ccesarano wrote:

Honestly Breath of the Wild is a big enough departure that I consider it a different beast altogether from the prior games. Technically I still prefer smaller experiences like the prior games, but at the same time what Breath of the Wild does, it does with that same excellence you'd expect from a Zelda.

Definitely. This is not a traditional Zelda game, which I assume was a problem for long-time series fans. BotW is just the third Zelda game I've ever beaten, after The Legend of Zelda and Adventures of Link. I played but tired of: Link to the Past, Wind Waker, and Link Between Worlds, despite those being comparatively shorter games. My final time on my first play through was something like 120 hours and I've now ~20 hours into a Master Mode game. Even that 20 hours is longer than I've been able to make it in previous installments.

Jonman wrote:

I find it hard to sustain interest in games that aren't actively pulling me forward. It's why the open builder type games (e.g. Minecraft) go entirely over my head. And BotW felt like it fell foul of the same broken bit of my brain.

Honestly, I'm the same. Minecraft, Terraria, Astroneer, etc... I bounced off all those games because I eventually got to a point where I thought ok... now what do I do?. That never happened for me with BotW, or rather, when it did it was because I'd completed all the shrines and cleared my sidequest list and so I just went and finished the game. I suspect that the sense of discovery that Clock describes up above, combined with the small puzzles provided by the shrines was enough to keep me coming back, night after night for a solid six months.

Vargen wrote:

I think weapon breakage ended up kind of like XCOM 2's turn timers. It's necessary to keep the game moving, but it's tuned too tightly and feels bad. If BotW supported mods I'd want to try a thing that doubled the durability across the board. And I'd make the heroes' weapons either work like the Master Sword or let you use diamonds to repair them in the field.

Funny -- both of those systems really worked for me. I hate weapon degradation systems (Bethesda games come to mind) because it's just added busy work where you're encouraged to find a weapon you like and keep using it, but you have to constantly hop into the inventory to repair it. BotW gets around that by making the weapons completely disposable. You don't waste time repairing weapons. Instead, you throw your nearly broken weapon at an enemy for a critical hit and then pick up the one that the enemy dropped or pop up the weapon select quick-bar and choose what you want to move on to. As for the turn timers: they were perfectly tuned for how I played the game, and I think a good solution to the overwatch problem from XCOM. I never failed one of those missions (normal and commander play-throughs), but it seemed like I finished all of them with just one or two turns left, so it always felt tense and like there was a chance I was going to fail, but somehow never did.

billt721 wrote:

Honestly, I'm the same. Minecraft, Terraria, Astroneer, etc... I bounced off all those games because I eventually got to a point where I thought ok... now what do I do?.

Not to get off track, but have you tried modded Minecraft, with a modpack that features a guided questbook to help you progress along? I also have trouble focusing on (vanilla and non-quest-driven modded) Minecraft, for exactly this reason.

merphle wrote:
billt721 wrote:

Honestly, I'm the same. Minecraft, Terraria, Astroneer, etc... I bounced off all those games because I eventually got to a point where I thought ok... now what do I do?.

Not to get off track, but have you tried modded Minecraft, with a modpack that features a guided questbook to help you progress along? I also have trouble focusing on (vanilla and non-quest-driven modded) Minecraft, for exactly this reason.

I haven't, but honestly, I'm fine with it not being for me. I don't have the time to play all the game I DO want to play without worrying about playing the ones I don't.

Jonman wrote:
merphle wrote:
billt721 wrote:

Honestly, I'm the same. Minecraft, Terraria, Astroneer, etc... I bounced off all those games because I eventually got to a point where I thought ok... now what do I do?.

Not to get off track, but have you tried modded Minecraft, with a modpack that features a guided questbook to help you progress along? I also have trouble focusing on (vanilla and non-quest-driven modded) Minecraft, for exactly this reason.

I haven't, but honestly, I'm fine with it not being for me. I don't have the time to play all the game I DO want to play without worrying about playing the ones I don't.

Totally fair. I'm certainly not here to proselytize for the cult of Minecraft (despite my sig). I was more wondering how well-known this type of modpack is in the public consciousness.

I loved it. This game gave me LttP feelings.

Yeah I've played and beat every Zelda game except the GB/GBC ones. Some like LoZ, LttP, and OoT more than once (or 3 or 4 times). Still love BotW. It's a great game and it's still a Zelda game.

Don't think you can generalize fans of the series.

maverickz wrote:

I loved it. This game gave me LttP feelings.

I loved it. It did not give me LttP feelings.

Jonman wrote:
merphle wrote:
billt721 wrote:

Honestly, I'm the same. Minecraft, Terraria, Astroneer, etc... I bounced off all those games because I eventually got to a point where I thought ok... now what do I do?.

Not to get off track, but have you tried modded Minecraft, with a modpack that features a guided questbook to help you progress along? I also have trouble focusing on (vanilla and non-quest-driven modded) Minecraft, for exactly this reason.

I haven't, but honestly, I'm fine with it not being for me. I don't have the time to play all the game I DO want to play without worrying about playing the ones I don't.

I didn't get into Minecraft at all until the pandemic hit. I've always found it way too aimless. But my daughter, who has gotten super into Minecraft streamers, wanted to play it together over the summer when we couldn't leave the house. With her as a passionate and enthusiastic tour guide in co-op, I finally found the fun in the game. I don't think I ever would have on my own.

Apparently my sweet spot for open worlds lies somewhere between the total openness of Minecraft and the go-here-do-this formula of modern AAA gaming.

I've posited in the past that people drawn to building their own stuff out of LEGO Bricks are the sorts to be drawn to Minecraft. I specify "build their own stuff" because it occurs to me a lot of people buy specific LEGO kits, build the kit, and then leave it as a model. This fits the "guided" aspect, where they have instruction to follow and can look at the finished work as something to have around the house. But the person that builds their own stuff out of LEGO just has the bricks and no instruction, which seems to be the appeal of Minecraft.

I wonder if this proves true. I've never been a big LEGO kid, and when I was a child I played with my toys like a continuous, serialized story-line (and because I was a dweeb I even made "save game" noises like in Final Fantasy when I was done playing). As such, Minecraft has no appeal to me. Does this hold true for others that dislike Minecraft?

But more on topic, I suppose that's why I still enjoyed Breath of the Wild. I enjoy exploration in games, certainly, but Breath of the Wild avoids it feeling like a checklist. I don't have the same completionist tendencies as I get when a game has the max number just laid out, or has a Platinum trophy available for getting all the things. Breath of the Wild not having trophies/achievements is probably one of the best things for me, actually. It's a game world that has a lot of things to do, but while there's freedom of choice, it's not a "find your own fun". I'm finding the game's fun. The fun is right there. It's a puzzle in the guise of a shrine. It's a collection of rocks arranged so as to hint a Korok Seed in the vicinity, so long as I roll the rocks down the hill and into that pit. It's a Moblin encampment ready for me to sneak into and snag whatever is in the chest. So on and so forth.

So it's not really like Minecraft to me at all, since Minecraft just expects you to start making your own fun.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
maverickz wrote:

I loved it. This game gave me LttP feelings.

I loved it. It did not give me LttP feelings. ;)

It is a mirror of our selves. Our souls. What we each get from it is a little peek at who we truly are inside. This is why I now have a little golden poo in it that serves absolutely no purpose.

ALTTP and BotW are my two favorite Zelda games, and they could not feel more opposite each other to me.

So my daughter asked me if we have a bunch of old Zelda games, and when i said yes, she asked if I would take a day off work to show them all to her.

Do I go chronological?

I've got a surprising number to work from. The Switch gives me all the NES and SNES originals, I've got a GameCube compilation of the N64 ones that's playable on Wii (3 generations in one go!), Wind Waker and Twilight Princess on Wii. And BotW obvs.

Start with BotW, end with LttP. Best to worst.

I'd start with BotW or Windwaker!

I might start with the original if only because it might be hard to go back from games that look as good as WW or BotW. Once my daughter had played the updated Castle of Illusion, she had no interest in going back to the original, which is what she had started on.

But if that's not a concern, I'd also say WW or BotW.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Start with BotW, end with LttP. Best to worst.

That's just mean.

Zelda II is consensus bad.

Stele wrote:

Zelda II is consensus bad.

Second Best Zelda™