Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I dunno how much of Hyrule Castle you explored during your first playthrough, but it's definitely worth going through the entire area, and you can (and should) do that way before actually confronting Ganon. There's lots of cool stuff there, such as lore items (Zelda's and Rhoam's diaries being the most obvious ones) and locations, minibosses, Koroks, weapons, the best shield in the game, and even a hidden shrine. Once you've found the shrine you can go on to do whatever you want to do elsewhere in Hyrule, and then just teleport back there when you're done with the rest of the game and ready to face Ganon.

I finally finished up my playthrough of BotW last night. I did all the quests recommended on here. The Stolen Heirloom in Kakariko was a good one, and I never would have known about it if it wasn't mentioned on here, so thanks! I don't remember the exact number, but I found around 105 shrines on my own, and then just looked up where the last 15 or so were. Awesome reward for doing them all, so it was worth it! I still prefer TotK, but I understand those who prefer BotW.

@Xyphon22 What was the reward for completing all 120 shrines? I don't remember.

@WoomyNNYes the reward you get is The Hero of the Wild outfit.

@WoomyNNYes Yeah, I'm not entirely sure why it's called that, but as someone whose favorite game of all time is the original Zelda, it's pretty cool to have that outfit. Too bad it's only after I'm already done with the game. I guess if I ever decide to go back to do the last quests I haven't done it'll be there for me.

I started a new game of BOTW. I've played to kakariko village, hateno village, satori mountain, unlocked 3-4 towers so far. I've been noticing the game seems to possibly have more rich cinematic effects than TOTK in some ways. BOTW's morning and night sun/moon lighting effects reflecting on the grass, also more pronounced morning fog mist effects.

And there's something about BOTW's simplicity, in contrast to TOTK, that gives BOTW an impressively pure classic game experience. Coming from playing 200 hours of TOTK, the de-cluttered world of BOTW is a nice change of pace. (de-cluttered = no zonai devices, no fusing/building, no great distances between the sky islands, ground level, and the depths.) Oh, and having infinite upgraded bombs, man that's nice.

@WoomyNNYes that's the main reason I want to play botw again. It's such a nice calming experience. I haven't played it since totk so it'll be interesting going back to it. There's not much this year for me on switch, so I've been going back and playing zelda since it's my gaming comfort food. Right now I'm on skyward sword and I almost chose botw over it. But since TTYD is next month, I didn't want anything overly long leading up to it.

I haven’t been back to Breath of the Wild in ages. I will give it a go, I appreciate the comments above about calming experience.
Although I will probably miss fusing weapons and attaching items to arrows

Whilst I certainly appreciate that 'objectively' it could be considered that TOTK is an absolute masterpiece, it really fell short for me in comparison to BOTW. An an overall concise single experience, BOTW truly was a phenomenal one-off.

For the next installment, I'd love to see Nintendo go back to a more linear approach.... but with branching pathways perhaps? (Similar to something like Sekiro, the game 'opens up' in the latter half and you have more agency regarding exploration and/or the way you choose to tackle things)

Oh, crap! You can take out korok balloons with bombs!🤣👌 I'm on my new playthrough of BOTW, desperate for weapon slots, but also low on arrows. Every time I see one of those orange korok pinwheels (the korok balloon shooting challenge), I kept thinking, "I'm not wasting my damn arrows on those balloons, you stupid korok!" Well, bombs work too, it seems. Korok seed attained, arrows saved!🌈