Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

@Octane And I love that the game lets you pass the shrine anyway. Many games might force specific events to be triggered first. Awesome!

That doesn't surprise me. Aonuma said ages ago that he wanted players to be able to go anywhere and do anything in multiple ways. Probably didn't want too many things getting in the way of that.

Why the crap am I still playing this game?

I beat it on Wii U all 120 shrines all memories

Then I beat it on master mode on Switch, annoyed trial of the sword is basically impossible in this mode

Then I beat it on regular mode on Switch getting all the shrines with out divine beasts

I still play my Wii U save sometimes along with my switch save.

Hey where the heck is da korok mask? Can't find it in the proper tree in the haunted forest. Also the last piece of the Royal guard uniform on "2nd floor" of Hyrule castle is giving me problems too. The DLC this is.

@SMEXIZELDAMAN no shame in needing help , I need guides a few times in this game , for those 2 items in particular , you will find video guides on YouTube that will be much better than it explained in text on here

Korak Mask

Royal Guardian Gear

Thx man, I found them! I was really close on my own to both of those locations so I don't feel so bad. I am still salty that I could not find the mask on my own. Looked very hard!

@SMEXIZELDAMAN np I was running around in the lost forrest for hours without the guide

All I had to do was register the treasure chests to the radar and follow the beeping, it didn't take too long at all. Though if I hadn't been using the function to upgrade my armor sets, it would've probably never have occured to me in the first place.

Ok, so I am wondering what happens when you have done all 120 shrines and have not beaten all the divine beasts?

I have maximum heart containers, will Gannon drop a stamina vessel?

I mean when you defeat the blight Ganons in the divine beasts they normally drop a heart container.

I know you can't max out both hearts and stamina right, and normally I would be able to choose one through the statues.

But I already have maximum hearts and have to beat water and fire blight ganons. I am wondering if I need to trade 2 in for stamina vessels or risk losing the heart containers. If a heart container drops like normal I don't think I will be able to pick it up.

Edit:
I looked up a video where it still drops the heart container you just can't pick it up if you have max hearts. I guess if you left the divine beast permanently without picking up the heart container you would forever lose access to it......

Edit2: I actually tried it and when I left the divine beast the heart container left with me. It is now sitting on top of the mountain next to Ruto until I go trade in a heart container in order to pick it up.

I've done about 95% of shrines now on my second playthrough. Needed a bit of online help to find them all though.

Also, finally got round to the DLC and I have to say this is incredibly disappointing for Nintendo. I was really hoping for DLC that really adds something to the game. And it's literally just 16 new shrines and 4 new memories. That's literally what it is.

I have to be honest, the master sword trials DLC was actually better. That was at least a new type of challenge (ignoring the island challenge)

So disappointing. There are so many cool things they could've done with this. I hope it's because most of their team was busy working on the next Zelda game.

Getting the Korok mask was the best/worst idea. On one hand, now I won't awkwardly walk right past koroks. On the other hand, I'll waste even more of my time on them.

@kkslider5552000

I genuinely hadn't paid attention to that at all. Only realised what it did when you just mentioned it.

@SMEXIZELDAMAN Glad to see you finally got the DLC!

How the heck did you know? @bezerker99

Because you said earlier in this thread that you were having trouble finding the Korok Mask. That is part of the Master Trials DLC and so I deducted you had finally purchased it.

Finally completed my second playthrough, so wanted to just leave my final thoughts about the game (it'll probably be a few years before I play it again, at which point this thread will be dead).

My opinion of the game has risen the more I've played it. On my first playthrough I was a bit disappointed with it, mostly because I'm a fan of strong stories in games, and I was hoping this would fulfill that desire (and the 2nd big trailer for the game really gave the impression it was a story-heavy game). So the fact that it's one the most story-light of all the 3D Zelda games did slightly ruin my first playthrough, and I ended up with a fairly short playthrough that time (something like 40 hours),

My second playthrough was more enjoyable because I no longer had that expectation for a strong story. I knew it was more of a gameplay-focused experience and I just got more into that side of it, and also did a lot more of the character-based sidequests, which do a bit of a job in filling the space that was left by the absent story.
I think part of what impressed me so much on this second playthrough is that I basically did an entire different set of shrines for the main game (up to the point of getting the master sword and doing the divine beasts). So in other words, I did 60 shrines on my first playthrough and then I did the other 60 on my second playthrough. Effectively meaning that I played 2 entirely different games (adding the DLC to the 2nd playthrough adding further to this sense).

So now that I appreciate how much I simply didn't see on my first playthrough, the game seems so much more impressive. I had no idea there was a golf game in a canyon. No idea there was a bowling game in the snowy tundra, no idea there was sandseal racing, no idea how big hyrule castle actually was. The list of new discoveries was endless and it cumulatively added to my respect for the game and my sense that this really felt like a genuine world that might exist (an achievement that's usually only possible with Skyrim levels of lore and background story)

In conclusion, Breath of the Wild is my 2nd favourite Zelda game. Ocarina will probably never be knocked off that top spot because of it's importance in the history of gaming, but this definitely outshines the rest of the series.

My main criticism remains though. If this had had a better story, on the scale you find in games like Witcher 3 or Xenoblade Chronicles, this would probably be my favourite game of all time.

I just picked up BoTW on Wii U (not impressed with the current state of the Switch hardware and software) and have a few initial impressions. Too bad Nintendo doesn't have an official forum where we can give our feedback, so hopefully someone from Nintendo checks the more popular fan forums from time to time.

Anyways, I'm still pretty early in the game (just got to Hateno Village) but I'm already finding some pretty annoying friction points. I know that I'm late to the party and that these have likely been discussed to death already, but they're still annoying enough that I want to at least say something about them.

First off, the game is almost too open right from the start. Maybe I'm just still in the old-school Zelda mindset, but part of why I like Zelda is getting all the cool items and seeing what kinds of new areas each item will unlock. I'm not necessarily advocating going straight back to the old linear Zelda games, but it seems like a bit more item-based progression would help a lot for overall game progression and storytelling, and would enable a lot more open-world puzzles (instead of just heading in a more or less straight line climbing over everything).

Second, I found the combat difficulty to be ridiculous right off the bat. Maybe I'm just not particularly good at combat in this game, but it's not fun getting killed in one or two hits all the time and having to watch loading screens. I know I can sneak past enemies (which I take advantage of whenever possible), but half the time enemies still see me and I end up dying. At least the saves (usually) are just before combat, but there's been a few instances where I got put a long ways back. Seems like there should be a more gradual progression in combat difficulty.

Third, item durability needs to die in a fire. It's most definitely not fun to have weapons breaking left and right. Whoever made this decision needs a reality check. I can understand having some consumable items (like the deku sticks from Ocarina of Time) and maybe even some breakable special weapons that can be looted from enemies that give you a temporary boost in combat, but we should always have a proper indestructible backup weapon to revert back to. That said, I do like the variety of melee weapons (especially the spear) but we should be able to get indestructible versions of these items.

Overall, it's a neat open world game and is mostly fun in spite of its issues, but it definitely has some pretty major flaws from my first-impressions perspective. We'll see how things go over the rest of the game.

@gamer1000k funny to see that most of your early game frustrations were probably shared with a lot of us, but turned into something highly satisfactory for most of us. Hope that happens for you too!