Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

@erv Hmm, how far are you into the game, did you say?

@Eric258 Well, that's one way to look at it. Your words are also massively ignorant of all of the Zelda enemies and bosses that have come before, many with their own unique puzzle-like tricky to defeating them, or defeating them easier.

But about Breath of the Wild, I was impressed with some of the attack animations and the non-combatant NPC pathfinding. I am much less enthused by fighting bokoblins, lizalfos, and moblins through the majority of the entire game. There are no area-unique enemies that added diversity to past games, and late game devolves into stun-locking enemies with arrows to deplete their grindy health pools. And while certain moblin, mini guardian, and other mini boss attack animations are impressive, they cannot make up the huge gap in diversity that lies between Breath and past titles.

And I would question the quality of lizalfos (probably a third of the enemies in the game, and, if you aren't convinced, add in keese and chus which don't have much going on and would together constitute more than a third of the enemies encountered in Breath of the Wild). They move so quickly, just wave-dashing levels of quickly. It makes those fights less tactical than Z-targeting lizalfos and guardian their blade attacks or side-stepping their breath attacks. Instead, the new fights are a contest of whether Link gets knocked back by their speed-of-cheese charge-in attack, his animations interrupted by their spit attack, or whether he can hit ragdoll them to stop their abrupt movements and stun lock them and just hit them over and over again until their health pool is depleted. And that's even before getting into the prospect of having a enemy that fights in water in a game where Link is essentially helpless while swimming.

@Eric258 How is enemy variety meaningless? After I was done with two of the four areas, I was seriously disappointed to see another repeat of the Bokoblin, Lizalfos and Moblin in every region. There are the occasional Keese, Octorock and Chuchu, but they're all elemental varieties, and that's about it. I was expecting fighting some Deku Baba in Faron Woods, Wolfos around Hebra, or Peahats on Hyrule Field or near the Rito Village, but alas. I think that the game could've used some region-specific enemies, just to prevent the different regions from becoming too samey. It would also add some more variety to the combat and the way you defeat certain enemies.

@Haru17 Could you maybe describe some of these enemies with their puzzle-like defeating tactics. My memory isn't the best (which is pretty bad considering I'm only 18 XD) but I genuinely don't remember these puzzle tactics. Note that I've only played TP, ALBW, MM and a little bit of OOT.

And yes you could just stun arrow enemies and then continually attack them to deplete their health. But there are other alternatives can also do. Lure enemies away using food and take them on one by one, create a trap by dropping some elemental chuchu jelly and shooting it when they get close, use other creatures such as guardians to help get rid of enemies, stealth it and kill each enemy one by one (as stealth kills inflict more damage), use animals to perform attacks & gain maneuverability and most helpful, use all your runes. Use cryonis to create barriers and to lock enemies into a corner. Use magnesis on metal objects to drop on them, to steal their weapons or get rid of them and use magnesis during a lightning storm to heavily damage the enemy by moving metal objects near them. Use stasis on objects so that you can launch them at foes, freeze enemies themselves and interrupt their attacks. Use bombs to push enemies a certain way (into water or over a cliff), drop trees onto the enemy by destroying trees with bombs or attach some octo balloons to a bomb, blow it a certain way with the use of a korok leaf and damage enemies from a large distance away. And there's also heaps of weapon variety that both the player and the enemy can use that can change battle entirely.

There are many ways the player can tackle the situation. It really is up to the player which one they take. Sorry that it's poorly structured and it may be difficult to read. Also you can attack in the water by using the zora armour

@Octane I'm not saying enemy variety is meaningless and I would gladly welcome it. It would help with variety and distinguishing different areas from each other. I'm just simply saying I rather a good AI with little enemy variety compared to a huge variety with disappointing AI which barely functions any different from previous enemies.

@Haru17 got three beast, the entire map, master sword, lots of shrines... lots of hours but need to check. It's all I've played in the month of march

@Eric258 Yeah, but I don't think the enemy AI is that much different from previous games. There's more freedom in the way you approach battles, but I don't think the AI is that much different at all.

Is there a way of predicting when the Blood Moon ( think that's what it's called lol ) will happen please?? I spent ages killing all but one monsters at the beach only for the Moon to rise & all the monsters reappeared & killed me again lol. Thanks

@Eric258 Obviously there is the zora helm, but that attack is weak and ineffectual. I said 'essentially helpless.'

I'll remind you of the rest tomorrow, when I'm awake again.

@Jen10 From my experience, the more enemies you kill, the more likely a blood moon will rise. Then again it just be random. XD

@Haru17 K, have a good night!

@Eric258 Thanks, i think i may have spent too long trying to bomb the blighters as i was low on weapons lol, will try & kill them a bit quicker next time i try & see if i can avoid the Moon lol

Having discovered how to find out my playtime and doing so I have realised I may need to change my official address to number 1 Hyrule High Street 'cos that is apparently where i'm living now.

I wonder if the game actually has a memory counter, and automatically triggers the blood moon when the game's memory gets too full from remembering too many enemies. That would be a pretty airtight system, and it would seem random to the player.

That explains why chugging through enemies as fast as possible makes it come faster. It makes more sense than it being completely random, because you'd think the game would struggle at the tail end of an abnormally long blood moon phase. Such is the nature of true randomness.

So I caved and finally looked at a map to see what Shrines I was missing. Turns out I had completely missed about four and the rest were shrine quests I knew about but had skipped over. So what I have left now is one in the north west behind a door, one in the south west that requires specific timing, one in the south east that's requires some searching and it's one of those "talk to a bunch of people" ones....

Once I've done those? I'll probably beat Ganon again and sit the game down until the DLC comes out I guess.

@Haru17 I don't think that messes with the timeline as you are playing as the same Link they are talking about and there was a 10000 year gap since the last time the Hero was needed. Plus it sounds like the world went through a dark ages period during most of that after the Sheikah were betrayed and they abandoned their tech. The busting them down from being almost Sci-Fi tech level back to swords and shields plus the 10100 gap means you could reasonably place the game almost anywhere... Just say the shrines and everything else gets buried again at some point. Granted, I'm nowhere near the end of the game and the ending could torpedo much of what I just said. With Link having very little memory aside from random snip-its I can see why they sort of let the familiarity with Link float ambiguously. It is a missed opportunity for side quests though, I agree.

The update is for both Wii U and Switch so that's cool. Shows Nintendo's determination to not screw over Wii U owners just like the decision to still release Wii U VC.

@Tsurii Apparently some of the frame rate issues. Though not in all areas. The Great Plateau runs a lot better now, but the crowded places haven't really changed.

@Tsurii Weird thing after my set bonus question yesterday. I changed armors then changed back into my fireproof set and boom, magically I had the bonus. Then put on snowquill and had the bonus. So it seems there was some sort of bug or something that I wasn't getting my set bonuses immediately after upgrading everything no matter how many times I put them on, but then the next day (didn't restart the game, just left it in sleep all day) and suddenly the bonuses were working. Weird.

@Ryu_Niyama I'm thinking the obsession with the Gerudo is an attempt at storytelling assuming players might now nothing about the oddness of the Gerudo as a female-only race. It bashed you over the head with it, but since they don't know what order anyone will do anything in this game, odd race-specific details need to be explained, especially since it plays into a primary quest for the area. Plus, I imagine a tribe of 8.5-foot tall WWE women would have a little trouble finding mates in a Hyrule where the Hylians are like half their size and comparatively fragile, and the others are coated in feathers, scales, or eat rocks, yet voe seem more alien and inexplicable to them than the feathers and rock eaters do (and nobody including us can tell which Goron are male or female?!), and the only opposite gender of your actual race for the past few centuries is.....Ganon... They might get a little impatient on what's likely a lifetime quest doomed to failure more times than not, yeah It's kind of a contrast. Fighting massive desert monsters with nothing but a spear and silk pants is hum-drum mundane, but the idea of having to breed sends them into neurosis.

Though given the writing in this game that's probably massively overthinking it. It's likely just making sure noobs understand what the Gerudo are in context for the quest no matter who they talk to in what order.