Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

polypusher wrote:

Just tagging into the thread. I'm preloaded, ready to run around hitting things with a stick so I don't break something more precious (and probably accidentally throwing the precious thing)

You should be able to play already. It unlocked at midnight ET / 9PM PT.

I just got 45 minutes in before I head off to bed. It's a very "anime" opening sequence. Interested to see where it goes from here.

Wow that opening. The moment the Title finally showed up haha.

I can't believe Link

Spoiler:

jumped with no glider!

Pretty awesome.

I got through a lot of intro, first shrine, and then made it to a second shrine and had to collapse for the night.

Beat the first shrine but now time to put youngest to bed, so oldest is getting a chance to play a bit before bed. I should get a bit more time tonight. Hopefully finish off the tutorial area.

So far, it’s very BotW, which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned.

This game melts time.

Two shrines down, on my way to the third. I'm in my happy place.

Also onto the third shrine. Really digging the new mechanics but otherwise it seems more like a BotW DLC than an actual sequel. Maybe the formula drastically changes once you get out of the starter area but so far it’s literally just BoTW with slightly more complex special abilities.

Been playing an hour this morning and still haven't got to the third shrine. I see it, but there's a group of enemies and a chest over here or there, and a korok here, and I just keep doing random side stuff and building, and cooking, and... I'll get there eventually.

Finally went back and beat Gannon in Breath of the Wild, using a guide for help. Waiting for Tears of the Kingdom to arrive, I can't wait to build crazy stuff in it.

I have died to poorly designed (by me) bridges in this game more than I have to bosses in Jedi Survivor, and I've only been playing for two hours.

I'm 2 shrines in and heading in the general direction of the third... I think. It's hard to tell from where I am now. The new powers are interesting, and the second one made me actually laugh out loud when I saw how ridiculous it was.

Just an FYI for anyone considering trying the emulation route to get a better experience here.

I've made it pretty clear in other Switch related threads that I absolutely love the games Nintendo publishes, and am forever aggressively annoyed that I don't get to play them on better hardware. So, I figured maybe I'd check out my options for this, the mother of all games that deserves better. (I happily paid for the game the moment Nintendo made it available on the eShop, so I have zero qualms about experimenting.)

Anyway, the short version is that while 60 fps and higher resolution is spectacular, overall the experience is not ready for prime time. There are lots of noticeable graphics issues, unpredictable performance hitches, pre-rendered cutscenes play at double speed if you're running a 60 fps mod, and maybe also audio isn't quite right (at least during pre-rendered cutscenes). So after playing through the opening sequence both on the Switch and on emulation at both 60 fps and 30 fps, it's a pretty easy call for me that I'll be playing on the Switch moving forward.

I do definitely look forward to getting to bask in this game at high resolutions and with good framerates at some point in the future, but for now I'll just be playing the game the normal way, and I can say with decent confidence that other people wondering about the same thing can save themselves the time getting it set up for now -- if your desire is to just have the best possible experience with the game, right now that's still going to be on your Switch.

3rd shrine power is wicked.

I'm sure it's limited to certain materials, because otherwise it would be game breaking.

Copy #1 arrived in time for an early lunch.

It’s On like Zelda Kong.

-BEP

Stele wrote:

3rd shrine power is wicked.

I'm sure it's limited to certain materials, because otherwise it would be game breaking.

All 4 powers I've seen have game breaking tendencies, aggressively so. It seems like they leaned hard into the "if you figure out how to break the game you should feel good about it and be rewarded" mentality.

I think the 3rd shrine power is more about the geometry above it than the material, the few places I found that it didn't work.

zeroKFE wrote:

Anyway, the short version is that while 60 fps and higher resolution is spectacular, overall the experience is not ready for prime time. There are lots of noticeable graphics issues, unpredictable performance hitches, pre-rendered cutscenes play at double speed if you're running a 60 fps mod, and maybe also audio isn't quite right (at least during pre-rendered cutscenes). So after playing through the opening sequence both on the Switch and on emulation at both 60 fps and 30 fps, it's a pretty easy call for me that I'll be playing on the Switch moving forward.

I've toggled off the 60fps mod for now, but IMO rendering the game at 4K is so beautiful that I can't imagine picking up the Switch.

For people that want the smoothest experience, though, the ticket will probably be in a few days when people have played through the full game and make available a complete shader cache that can be downloaded. Performance hitches are typically when the emulator is compiling shaders on-demand.

I haven’t played yet. I purposely went to bed before midnight so I didn’t stay up all night. But I’m looking forward to the game making me feel super smart and then super dumb. I’m sure I’ll find some cool clever ways to do things in the game then I’ll go online and see crazy creations by gamers much smarter than me

Someone already has a 94 minute speed run of TOTK

IUMogg wrote:

Someone already has a 94 minute speed run of TOTK

I chugged the whole bottle of wine in 30 seconds!
vs.
I enjoyed a glass or two a night with a fine dinner.

They both consumed the wine but I have a strong preference of what I prefer.

For speedrunners though, speedrunning IS the game.

That 94 minutes isn’t the conclusion to the game, it’s just the beginning.

2 shrines in. Can’t wait to get some more time.

I was so excited to play this last night! But the world was so peaceful and nice... which then made me so sleepy...

So I slept through my first play session LOL. At least I got to the second shrine. Really enjoyable so far! Even if it isn't as much of a departure compared to the last one.

I'm around 7 shrines so far, and I have to say one thing about this game: It does a really good job (so far) of making me feel like a goddamn genius. I've had a few occasions where I wonder if the game would let me do a particular thing that I've never done before - and not only will it let me do the thing, but it works in EXACTLY the way that I expected it to work.

Spoiler:

Except for sorting of items in the menu. That sucks.

Agreed, merph. Same, 7 shrines. And the freedom is really crazy. I'm sure there are a dozen ways to solve everything so far.

I didn't even understand the first time I saw a fan/motor, it was shaped kind of like a wheel. So trying to build that didn't work. Then when I found some parts that you can store in your inventory, and they were labeled, I was like ooooh. And then I made some moving things and felt a lot smarter.

So far so good. Atmospheric opening! Cleared the first shrine last night. Cooked some spicy food to protect Link against the cold, and called it a night.

Still trying to get the hang of the new ability:

Spoiler:

I built a cable car to cross a chasm! Then it slid away by itself, without Link on board. Now it’s on the wrong side of the chasm and I don’t have enough parts to build a second one. Oops.

Compared to BOTW, I feel much more confident / aggressive in combat. Maybe 100+ hours of Elden Ring have toughened me up?

I blew the first two korok seeds. I couldn't figure out how to get the one to move. But I just googled it and I am dumb. Should have just tried my abilities...

Spoiler for the curious:

Spoiler:

You can pick them up by the backpack and put in whatever vehicle you make to reunite them with the other korok

You can also literally pick them up with Ultrahand and just carry them

Yeah I was just like, that's a living creature, surely I can't grab it. Should have checked. I'm going to have to warp back up there and redo those bits.

You can also just fuse the Korok to things and not have to try to balance anything. That's what I wound up doing. It was hard enough getting the hook on the lines.

I made a bit of progress today (lots of other things going on, unfortunately). I got the second ability so far, which I saw used in trailers and demos, but it's still really dumb that I can just stick a boulder on the end of a pike.

Later I'd love to know what the music bits at the beginning sequence and in the shrines when you get the orbs of light in are. I think it's clearly playing something backwards which the series has done before (I think the ballad of the goddess from Skyward Sword was just Zelda's Lullaby backwards or something; it's been awhile), but I don't quite recognize it. Maybe the Item Get jingle backwards?

I was stuck in the cold part of the tutorial island for an hour with no warming food trying to figure out what to do.

Advice, make at least 10mins of warming food when you can.

polypusher wrote:

I was stuck in the cold part of the tutorial island for an hour with no warming food trying to figure out what to do.

Advice, make at least 10mins of warming food when you can.

Yeah there was a cook robot warning me about cold temps, and some firefly fruit or something right there beside the cookpot. It was like a neon sign saying cook some warming food.

I guess if you went a different route it's possible to miss. There was also a cook pot or fire before/after both caves. So I and ran over to cook some more just in case. While near the fire you're protected too.

Kiddo played through the whole tutorial island while I was watching and cheering and its just wonderful. Such an incredible game and what an achievement. I cant even imagine all the work to get everything working properly, then naming every fused item. But what I think struck me most is that everything just works the way you intuitively think it should work. There was absolutely zero friction between what he wanted to do and what the game said how things worked.

Fantastic stuff and I cant wait to see whats next. He just landed in Hyrule main after finishing the first skyisland.