Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

@TheJGG
Yea, once you got off the Plateau it totally changes. I will give it another shot, maybe once we know more about BotW2.

@TheJGG I disagree, if anything BOTW has the least balanced difficulty curve of any zelda game. The very beginning is really hard because enemies can one-shot you, but as soon you get the first armour upgrade and can withstand more than one hit, you can cheese through every fight by spamming healing items in the pause screen. You are basically invincible most of the game. It baffles me that they didn't limit healing items like in prior Zelda games (e.g. in Zelda 1 and Links Awakening you could only heal once).

@chipia Yeah, I agree. If you go out and actively search for powerful gear, the game will be extremely easy. But the fact that it had one at all made me think; Zelda games don't have them at all, when it comes to combat. In the two previous 3D Zelda games; Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, even the harder enemies late-game take a great amount of mistakes to lose to. If you fight the final boss of TP with quadruple damage, it might feel like a better challenge.

That's how Hero/Master modes go for most Zeldas, though. It's always toughest at the beginning when you don't have a lot of hearts and gear, but once you get to a certain crest you're pretty much good to go. I've played Hero Mode in LA so many times that I can almost feel the moment when the power shifts and it's almost like you're playing normal mode again lol

Hah yeah in Link's Awakening, Hero mode is basically only hard during the first dungeon.

@Slowdive
I'm definitely with you on this. On my first play through I was enthralled by the game, but also often a bit disappointed. The memories and the Divine Beasts come to mind. I'm playing through the game for a second time now and I enjoyed most of the memories and most of the Divine Beasts (except Vah Naboris). It definitely has some room for improvements, but I became much more forgiving for its shortcomings. It is a groundbreaking game and I've never played a game like this before or after. Now I'm even more excited for the sequel!

I’m doing master mode without the champion abilities. So no divine beasts. I’m going to go to ganon after I build up my weapons and armor.

For me, the same distinction still applies: It's a great game, but not a great Zelda game. As in, if I have a hankering for a Zelda experience, there are numerous other Zelda games I boot up instead of this one. But it's still a great game.

@rallydefault I get what you're saying but I think I slightly disagree, the divine beast and shrines have very zeldaesque puzzles, and the people and lore are everywhere you go, it could be altered to not be a Zelda game fairly easily, but imo it is definitely a Zelda game. Also, the weapon breaking, gotta say it's def a hate/love relationship, it makes you think and increases the difficulty especially near the beginning, but at the end, you'll find a great weapon and be afraid to break it so it stays in your house or inventory forever.

I honestly never cared about the weapons breaking, since it got me to think about what weapons I need to use and made me switch my weapons during fights. However, I do have gripes with the dungeons and the story itself.

In terms of dungeons, I mostly miss the more natural themes like temples or caves, and I miss having to face off against a unique boss each dungeon instead of with the same boss reskinned.

For the story, I never got invested into it like with past games, mainly due to how the story had no stakes, and it was already over before it began. Hoping botw 2 fixes these gripes honestly.

@VoidofLight Yeah, they've said that Botw 2 will be more story-focused, and darker than MM. So that extra story content will be great, I also hope they make a return to some traditional dungeons as well, especially the nice big themed ones with 2d maps.

@FroZtedFlakerZz I always thought that scattering traditional dungeons seemed mire interesting, since they could hide them and you could stumble upon them as you explore the world itself.

@VoidofLight Yeah, especially if they added underwater, I can already picture a black cave under Zora's Domain, similar to TP

@FroZtedFlakerZz
That's fine, different strokes for different folks.

I also don't mind the weapon durability. The memories in BotW are fine, but I really miss the longer and more fleshed-out story cut scenes that take place during the action in most of the other Zelda games, especially in Ocarina and the other 3D Zeldas. I know a lot of people say Zelda games have never been good for story and blahblahblah, but dangit if I've always loved Zelda stories even for how simple they are lol

@rallydefault Part of me wants to let this slide, because this was Nintendo’s first true foray into the world of voice acting. Think about it, no other game from them had as much voice acted content as Breath of the Wild. They all add up to around the two hour mark, which for an action video game, is quite small.

All three Xenoblade games for instance, each have over ten hours of story cutscenes. And the really dialogue heavy ones like Fire Emblem and the Persona games can stretch into twenty and thirty hours of just cutscenes and voiced dialogue.

Seeing the voice acting and cutscenes expanded to about three hours in Age of Calamity was a good step up. Hopefully we’ll get a bigger, more complex story with excellent acting like in the original game.

@TheJGG I think it was less the voice acting, and moreso the way the world itself is built. They probably didn't want to have a linear story within a non-linear world, so they came up with the memories system. The only thing I wish they did differently was let you actively play said memories. Like if Link activated one, you played as past Link, maybe have a dungeon and a few more than just one scene per memory.

This game really did need weapon durability just to create the right balance of incentives for exploration and fighting enemy camps.

They could remove it, but they'd need to put something else in its place, or most players just wouldn't feel the same need to take on those enemy camps.

@Dezzy I actually hope they don't listen to the vocal minority and take out the durability.

This actually sounds awesome! Would have loved something like this!

@dionysos283 @VoidofLight My recent few hundred posts have the same references to games but here I go... Ghost of Tsushima has these kinds of playable flashback sequences. When you learn to stealth kill, for example, you flash back to when your uncle teaches you to look your enemy in the eye as you kill them. This message is thereby contradicted, and strengthens the idea of the stealth kill from a samurai's perspective. The whole "samurai fight with honour" thing is very exaggerated, it was more; "win by any means". Another flashback was when you remembered how to track, and you remember doing so with your uncle, again. And the lengthiest flashback I've encountered so far was when you pick up your samurai sword, and you then get a tutorial on combat in a flashback.