Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Funny, but no, the final boss is player agency where you have to learn to fight separate from your ego. In doing so you finally end the cycle of reincarnation for Link, which was in fact not caused by Demise's curse but rather by players of Zelda games. This creates a chain reaction which normalizes ego in the real world and saves the human race from killing itself — dun nun nun naaaaah!

@G0dlike
The middle section I thought was no harder than the Beginning Trial, but maybe I was just rusty when I started out and everything started coming back by the time I got to the middle Trial.

That last trial though... man. The ancient arrows were a Godsend. I saved them for the final stages, and on the 22nd floor I missed two shots, and went searching for those arrows. Luckily, somehow, I found both! And those two arrows were needed exactly down to the last arrow for the final floor. What a rush though. Loved the trials. Best DLC I've played in some time.

I don't have the gall for master mode though. Maybe in a few years.

No but for real, why do ancient arrows not evaporate Talus' if you hit them in their weakspot? I nearly died in the final trials because I used up all of my ancient arrows before the Lynel, and one of them only did like a paltry 1/6th health bar of damage to the rock monster.

@Haru17 When you shoot a mineable node with an ancient arrow, does that get vaporized leaving nothing?

@Tsurii While Talus' are definitely natural creatures, all of this is obviously due to programming reasons. I guess shots to the body do nothing because the team couldn't figure out how to treat their climbable rock bodies as hitboxes too, despite the description of ancient arrows implying a level of power that would easily destroy rock (since they can damage guardian hulls).

I like how ancient arrows refund if they miss or hit the ground unlike other elemental ones, it's just bizarre that Talus' take like 6 ancient arrows to their week spot to kill. Both that shots to their weak spot burn an arrow and that those arrows do so little damage is puzzling. It wouldn't have taken much effort to ensure the ancient arrow damage on Talus ore veins is always fatal.

@meleebrawler It bounces off. I don't know why you're bringing that up though, as that reaction is completely inconsistent with how ancient arrows affect ore on a Talus' back.

@Haru17 Not exactly... the ore on a Talus may be modified to actually take damage from arrows of any kind, but otherwise follows similar rules. Things that smash ore nodes in one hit like Goron weapons or bomb arrows cause extra damage compared to other weapons.

@meleebrawler Not other weapons — the ancient arrows' reaction specifically.

Man, having the treasure chest tracker on really is the difference between winning and losing in the final trials. I only picked up the obvious three Ancient Arrows in the first playthrough (and then wasted one of them), and ended up getting slaughtered in the 23rd room as I'd pretty much broken most of my weapons by repeatedly smashing them against various Guardians. Ended up with 5 out of 9 AAs to spare on the second playthrough, though, which was a lot comfier.

I'm really glad it killed me though, as I don't feel I've have got much out of the trials if I'd just been able to swagger through them all on the first attempt. The main mantra that makes the early game so engaging and compelling (for most) is that of: 'Try, fail, rethink, repeat'. You kind of lose that when Link becomes a late-game super-tank, and I think the trials were really trying to reinstate that emphasis on tactics but for the experienced player.

The first and middle trials were fine enough; there were a few neat ideas that rephrased the game's combat system in relatively interesting ways, but I found it hard to shake a sense that I was just being shepherded between rooms of subtly restructured assets that I'd become all too familiar with over the course of my billion hour journey.

It was only after losing in the final room of the final trials that I got enough of a kick up the arse to make me really think about how I should be playing better. Admittedly, the main thing the guaranteed my later success way the simple act on turning the tracker on and finding triple the number of Ancient Arrows as a result, but I did also develop a lot of new tactics which I satisfyingly put into action on the second attempt.

One thing I made a lot of use of the second time around was wood. Rather than waste precious Fire Arrows, I'd light several fires around the snowy section with the Flame Spear and use them to ignite my normal arrows, which would OHKO the ice enemies, and cause significantly more damage even to standard ones (meaning less arrow consumption in total). It also proved a good way of powering up the wooden weapons from the first section in the later stages. Also, a single blast from the Blizzard Rod was enough to instantly take out all the horseback Bokoblins in the 23rd room, which is massively useful.

I'm still in two minds over the whole DLC thing though. I was pretty opposed in theory, being a Luddite at heart. And my current thinking doesn't really allow much room for the DLC to excuse itself either; I can be grumpy about most of the costumes, as they're effectively worse versions of existing ones and therefore have little use beyond aesthetics. But I feel also like criticising anything that does provide a meaningful impact for not being in the base game to begin with. I really think the Korok Mask and Medallion should have been unlocked through normal play (albeit late-game), as they're just so practical.

People have been saying the same thing about Master Mode, but for whatever reason, I actually think this and the trials feel justifiable as DLC. It seems a bit more than a generic difficulty slider, and Breath has so much inherent 'late-game' material anyway that the strategy of telling the player 'well done you win, now play the game again but harder' upon defeating the final boss doesn't seem like the correct way of extending the game's length.

Another thing I've changed my mind on is the pricing of all the DLC as a single bundle. Rather than the game allowing piecemeal additions to the base game, it's pretty much all or nothing. On the surface, that means fewer purchasing options for the consumer, and should therefore be not a good thing, but I find the opposite extreme of being able to purchase content on an 'item by item' or 'ability by ability' a million times more tacky (which is why I'm not a big fan on amiibo). That's basically just micro-transactions.

In only giving you one purchasing option, you're basically choosing between Zelda and Zelda+; a single macro-transaction. You can take it or leave it. I'm come to the unpopular opinion that I actually prefer this (I think), and It's quite nice knowing I have something to looks forward to without the weight of another purchasing decision to consider.

Given that it's meant to take place after Ganon's defeat, I'm as curious as anyone else to see what the upcoming challenge will be.

A couple of other Zelda art pieces made for Japan Expo 2017 just gone in Paris.

That just gave me an image of playing a real world Zelda game.I really hope that never becomes a thing.

On the back of swamping the thread with my last quagmire of thoughts, I thought I'd wade into Ancient Arrows debate, and why I don't see an argument for why they should have a OHKO effect on Taluses/Tali. For comparison, I've just tried taking out a Hinox with some Ancient Arrowss with similarly little effect; shots to both the body and eye work much the same as any arrow. Which... seems fair enough to be honest. I don't see how the game would be improved or made more consistent if it were otherwise.

I haven't tried on Molduga, but I'd be willing to bet a large amount of money that the results would be equally ineffective. As far as I can see, the game's creators don't want you to be able to simply OHKO your way through a fight with a sub-boss.

"Aah, but what about Lynels and Guardians!? Are they surely not sub-bosses too!?", I hear you hypothetically shriek whilst dangling upsidedown from ceiling. Well, no. Not under my definition, which can be described by either of the two equivalent statements; "Does the monster's health bar and title appear in the top-middle of the screen when engaged in overworld combat? If yes then sub-boss" and "Does Kilton give you a medal for defeating all monsters of this type in the overworld? If yes then sub-boss". If we fairly assume that the locations of actual boss fights and Tests of Strength are not the overworld, then I believe these statements are entirely equivalent.

Clearly, Hinoxes, Molduga and Tali (eugh plurals...) fall into this definition (and are not weak to Ancient Arrows), while Lynels and all forms of non-shrine Guardians do not (which are weak to Ancient Arrows). This puts the former three creatures in a very special class, and it's therefore reasonable to expect them to be treated differently. Lynels and Guardians - as tough as they are - are essentially in the same class as Moblins, Bokoblins, Lizalfos, Octorocks, and the rest of Gannon's common-or-garden minions. I suppose the fact that they get their own music makes them slightly special, but really they're more field hazards than any form of 'bosses' to hunted down as trophies.

Rather than it being beyond the developers' technical capacity to allow a Talus to be OHKOed by an Ancient Arrow (which seems a pretty absurd proposition, only justifiable by making some fairly contrived assumptions), it seems more reasonable to assume that designers consciously decided that fighting a sub-boss should be something of an 'occasion' (maybe even a challenge) and therefore deliberately didn't make them defeatable in a fraction of a second. Kilton's medals wouldn't have the same luster if all they rewarded was tracking down monsters only to evaporate them in the blink of an eye.

Personally I'm in favour of non-evaporatable Stone Goliaths, Sand Fish, Cyclopes. I'm really not sure what making the sub-bosses instantly defeatable would really add to the game. Or why there's much of an argument to be had about it. Keep the Rock Giants as they are, I say.

Anyway, I think I've probably written over half the words on this page, so I'll shut up now.

Am I the only one that thinks perfect dodges should cost stamina? They are broken once mastered, I would rather Just atack when the enemy ler his guard down. It's Wind Waker all over again...

@RaphaBoss I was initially surprised that flurry attacks didn't cost stamina. I don't think the dodge itself should cost anything though, unless they make rolls/ jumps cost stamina going forward.

@RaphaBoss @nf_2 If the flurry rush costed stamina, it'd be a real pain in the rear end to accidentally set it off while low on stamina, especially if you're a beginner and don't understand why you're setting it off.

@Nicolai You know what helps that? An in game tutorial somewhere.

I think people would get the idea if they saw that green circle start to drain away in the middle of that attack. The charged attacks drain stamina as well, and they're weaker and harder to pull off in general. I don't know, just floating the idea out there.

Eh. If you don't want to make the battle too easy just don't use the slowdown moments. I didn't even know it was a thing until late in the game and then forgot about it

Ew no, not regular attacks. That would take things to an unexplored new level of awful.

Can you imagine?

<Stabs a Lynel>
Oops I'm tired again, gotta eat more food.
Oops I ran out of food, gotta run away.
Oops I can't run because I'm tired.
<dies>

@nf_2 Even with a tutorial, I don't know about that. Even to this day I still sometimes accidentally activate flurry rush, just because that was when I decided to jump out of the way. For this to work, flurry rush would have to be activated by a different button combo, or something.

@Tsurii I'm not sure flurries are easy to use. I rarely got them to work at all in the game, and half the time when they did work it was by accident.