Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

@Owl1
Pretty much what I’m imagining will happen. It’s the only logical conclusion.

@JaxonH
It’s kinda close to the tower by Kakariko. It’s the island in the top right of the photo.

So can you have all the avatars activated at one time? I’ve got two so far and I feel like I have a small army.

They're really good at picking off the weak enemies, allowing you to save the durability of your best weapons for the ones that really deserve it.

I'm missing remote bombs a whole lot less now.

It can get a bit annoying having multiple around though, specially when you keep activating them accidentally and suddenly the Mighty Bananas you wanted to pick up are now burning or got flung away by wind.

I just love how Nintendo decided that the dungeon abilities would just be a posse for link.

@blindsquarel I got the full hero set... It's not great but I'm maining it cuz the boots look cool.

@Owl1
The hero of the wild set? If so, nice!! I need to explore the depths some more.

I think the Hero set is the green tunic based on the classic 8bit Link. Aka the one without pants.

Of these tunic sets, I prefer the set of the Wild. Just because it can be recolored 😅

@Eel
Oh that one, they both kinda blend together for me.

@Eel
Ya, it's just bad design. Call a spade a spade. A simple remedy would be requiring the player to hold A for half a second to activate, as that would eliminate accidental activation by quick pressing A. Overall not a huge deal, but certainly something they could have (and should have) done better with.

I beat the game the other day, and I'm really impressed by the ending. The final boss was actually pretty challenging for a Zelda game, and I feel like it's probably sitting up there with Twilight Princess as my favorite ending to a Zelda game period.

On the downside though, Nintendo of America effectively botched the localization, and apparently cut out a good bit of Ganondorf's motivation. I wish they'd have better quality control with their localization process, since BotW suffered the same thing, albeit to a lesser extent. Making a side quest that was meant to be wholesome into something super creepy, and then making a pretty massive translation error on one of the biggest moments of the game. It bums me out that every other version of the game gets an explanation as to why Ganondorf is the way he is, but the english version just has vague allusions that barely paint a picture.

Interesting. TotK has weapon and enemy scaling. That's why I'm suddenly getting bows dropping with 30-40 damage and fighting silver bokoblins all the time

@VoidofLight
The localization screw up sucks, but Zelda YouTubers must be frothing at the mouth to make videos about it. Nintendo just gave them some free content.

@blindsquarel Yeah. It just sucks though that in order to really get important context that makes the game even better, you have to be able to speak other languages, since NoA is failing their audience.

@JaxonH Oh yeah, similar to how BotW did it. I noticed how weapons I've been getting are higher quality the more I've played, and it makes more sense given they want you to actually do the enemy camps.

@VoidofLight
Are the translation issues in the English dub or are they in the subtitles?

I'm now ~30 hours or so in and, I must say, this is the first time in a while that I've felt like I'm playing a landmark title in gaming history.

BotW was fantastic, and showed not only what Nintendo could do with the Zelda series, but with the open world genre.

But TotK...something about it is just sublime. So far into the game I'm still astounded by Links abilities and the creative ways they can be used. In isolation each ability is already fantastic - but combined they just bring puzzles to a whole other level. I especially love how solutions to puzzles often feel unintentional — like I'm sure my solution wasn't the "intended" way to solve a problem, yet it still makes sense within the general world and physics system of the game.

It's just amazing how Nintendo have made a world seemingly so limitless yet still so intricately designed.

Nothing against BotW, but I think when looking back at the Switch era, TotK is what I will consider the "Game of the Generation".

It really makes me wonder how they can top this next.

I bet every single shrine can be "broken" - The developers have gone on record as saying please cheat our game !

PS I love my air bike

@Buizel
I said it before- Tears of the Kingdom is the best game I've played. I felt the same way about Breath of the Wild in 2017, but TotK is so much better than BotW it makes me wonder how I could ever go back to it.

I think you said it- it's the synergy of abilities that really elevate it to a whole other plane of existence. I've never played a game like this before. I've never experienced so much control, freedom and power these abilities provide.

How many weapons and shields are there? 100 different ones probably? And how many items? 225 different items? And you can fuse any weapon or shield with any weapon or shield or item... that's 100 different ways of fusing 325 different things. That's like 30,000+ different combinations. Maybe only a few hundred unique, important ones but still. It's a LOT. The fact every arrow you shoot can have 225 different things attached to it blows my mind.

It's a level of interactivity you just don't see in other games. Climb literally any surface- how many games let you do that? Cut down any tree, pick up any rock, an entire sky full of floating islands to explore, an entire subterranean map as big as the overworld to explore. Fuse any items, build any structure, craft any device... there's just no other game that even remotely comes close to this. BotW is the only game that somewhat resembles it, but even that feels like the demo build for TotK now (and I say that with all respect for BotW- on its own merits it's still one of the best games ever made, but comparatively speaking, not so much).

I especially like the power of Ultrahand combined with recall. Even individually, Ultrahand is extremely powerful. It's Magnesis god-mode, essentially. And recall on its own is also extremely powerful. Can't tell you how many times I landed my hoverbike on a small platform and it fell off the edge so far down below I couldn't even see it anymore, and yet was able to utilize recall to send it back up to me. Combine the two and you have one of the most powerful ability combinations gaming has ever seen. Throw ascend in for good measure and it's like the Vince McMahan meme falling backwards in the chair. It's something I take for granted, but I know if I went back to BotW I'd be like, where's my ascend? Where's ultrahand? I don't wanna climb this- where's my autobuild? Why can't I recall that?

This really is the game that Switch will be remembered for. And I suspect if they release a quality expansion pass for it when Switch 2 drops next year, TotK will help define that system as well.

@JaxonH On a technical level I'd probably say it's the best game I've ever played as well. Nothing's really compared in terms of innovation and scope while maintaining a level of familiarity and congruency. It really feels like they've come close to perfecting the BotW formula and I can certainly see now how this game took them 6 years.

As for my favourite? Probably not, but I'm confident it will break the top 5 on Switch. Unfortunately I highly value replayability and, as great as BotW and TotK are, I generally find I get my fill for a couple of months and then am too intimidated to come back.