Picola-Wicola

Took a self-enforced break from Tears to both prolong it, and clear some backlog. Started Blasphemous, and whilst it took a while to click with me, I am absolutely loving it. Perfect timing with the sequel releasing in a month, which is already a day one purchase.

@Sonicka This. Everything you said is what makes this game ‘an absolute masterpiece in game design’. Tell you what though, I only noticed after 235 hours in TOTK last week what really elevates it from BOTW: I realised that I have never had to look up a solution to any puzzle or shrine in Tears, and never once got stuck on where to go/what to do next. Until I came across the first puzzle that stumped me (a Misko side quest that involves lining up some shadows of some columns in Thunder ruins). That is the first time in 235 hours that I couldn’t figure out what to do, but rather than feel frustrated and wanting to look up the solution online, I simply decided to take my first break from the game since it released and come back later with hopefully a fresh perspective. Contrast this with BOTW: whilst I loved Breath more than any other game at that point, I sometimes found myself not knowing where to go or what to do. Progression was sometimes too obtuse. For example, the memories in that game were too often ridiculously difficult to pinpoint. Even when you looked up the exact spot online, it would take a frustrating amount of fiddling to stand in the tiny spot to unlock the memory. And those motion controlled shrines were almost impossible to complete in handheld, requiring you to twist and turn the switch in unnatural positions so you could not see what the heck was going on on the screen in your hands. Without handholding, they nailed the rate of progression and intuitiveness of how to play in Tears, improving on everything from Breath.

@mlt I cannot recommend the two DLCs enough. They are both amazing, and Blood and Wine is so full of content and takes place in a completely different area of the map that it is a sort of quasi-sequel to Witcher 3.

@Rhaoulos Oh, thank you so much, that’s really helpful! I didn’t want to get lost in all the guides, just some general tips on starting. I will finally boot it up this week now.

Stardew Valley is still in my backlog of games to start, but I am kinda overwhelmed at the prospect. Does anyone have any beginner’s tips on how to approach it for the first time?

This looks great, will certainly be picking it up when it releases.

@Sputnik_Corner Good question! And I didn’t see it as a criticism at all. I know it’s practically cliche now, but every time I set out to do something in this game, I get distracted by a dozen other things. I have been deliberately taking my time to be honest, because I don’t want it to finish. Having said that, I don’t know how people can get so much done in this game without putting 200+ hours into it. Maxed out my weapon stash (but not shields… I never find myself needing them as they don’t break that often). Done tons of side quests, and the grind for armour upgrades has taken me a LOT of time without dupe glitching. Lynel guts and fire/ice lizalfos tails and horns take forever to farm.

I’m at 235 hours on TOTK, got all sages and 124 shrines, but largely ignored the Depths (only 29 lightroots) so that needs fully exploring before taking on Ganondorf. I should really take a break and start on my backlog, but which do I start first: Bayonetta 3, Blasphemous, TMNT Shredder’s Revenge, Stardew Valley or resume Advance Wars, which I completely stopped halfway through after Zelda dropped?

This is excellent. Really makes me want TP and WW on switch though.

So the FTC won’t let me be
Or let me be me so let me see
They tried to shut me down on Call of Duty
I just settled all my lawsuits, F* you Sony!

Metroid Prime Remastered is both a masterpiece of game design, and a masterpiece of a remaster.

Just unlocked the main quest for the final sage and so finishing off some side quests/side adventures before starting that. And thought I had beaten the final boss on The Messenger (that annoyingly tough, fast red devil guy) but it seems I’ve opened up a whole new adventure!

@Sisilly_G Exactly. I thought this would be a cool addition… until a crappy broadsword and a mushroom dropped on me! Absolutely useless.

10/15 and I’m 210 hours in. I haven’t come across any part of that miner’s armour yet at all, I stupidly put 13 for tears even though I knew there were 12, and that altitude question… I wouldn’t have got that even if I put 1000 hours into the game (why would you even pay attention to coordinates like that!?).

@BoyfriendOfDeath I forgot all about Kass! You’re right, where is he!?

@Purgatorium it can be grindy, especially for Lynel guts and dragon parts to upgrade gear. And at the start, rupees are hard to come by to buy the specialised sets of armour. I used the duplication glitch to get 31 diamonds just for the rupees, then realised I wasn’t playing the game as it was intended so updated the patch that fixed that particular glitch.

Does anyone have any idea at all when we will be getting the Zelda oracle games on NSO? I want them before anything else, and although confirmed I cannot find any hint of when they will drop.

Still mainly TOTK. 190 hours in, and I am deliberately not progressing with the story after completing all 4 regional phenomena and all dragon’s tears. I don’t want it to end is all. I completed the first half of The Messenger (that temple of time was gruelling) so I will start the second half with the splendidly explained jump up in graphics from 8 to 16bit.

@Kiz3000 I bought the purple/orange set on Monday. And they look amazing on the OLED. Couldn’t agree more, they are the best colours yet.

Tears. I have not even loaded a single other game since 12 May; I cannot get enough. Just got the Master Sword this morning, and just wow. Wasn’t expecting it to be there! I did download Retro City Rampage DX and Downwell for dirt cheap after reading NLife’s recommendations of 9/10 games on sale, so if I can tear myself away from Zelda, I will give those a go.

That’s great, thank you! Just been back there where I first fought him and upgraded my battery now. I’m trying to do everything without Googling. The only thing I had to search was Hestu, because exploring is a real pain without the extra weapon slots and he’s so easy to miss!

@Knirau11 ah ok, that makes sense. I still haven’t been to Tarrey Town but will go soon and keep an eye out for that little Goron!

@StuTwo 120 hours in, and I still haven’t found a Zonai charge shop. Do I really need to go back to the Sky island starting area to convert more before upgrading my battery?

Can I ask, what exactly does everyone mean by ‘unfuse’? Do you mean the destroy fused material option? Or is there a way of unfusing without destroying the material!?

120 hours in and what the heck is this ZL thing!? Going to try it out right now

Just checked, and 45 hours so far, without doing any regional phenomenon. Now, do I use that glitch that was posted about earlier and effectively cheat to buy the outfits I want? Quite the conundrum…

@Rambler That is SOOOO how it went! Made me smile.

I have just been wandering around Hyrule, and every 2 minutes I discover something marvellous. BOTW now feels like a warm up to the true open world of Tears. And I am loving every second of it.

Taking a wild horse to the first stable, and discovering that your horses from BOTW are all there, waiting for you to use again! That was such a lovely, unexpected surprise.

@larryisaman oh no, that is a shame! As well as being a lovely surprise, it’s really useful having those 3 extra horses with all their stats and alterations from BOTW.

This is great. What blew my mind, however, was getting to my first stable, and realising my horses from BOTW were there, ready and waiting to be used!!!

TOTK. I’m still on the first sky island, and there are so many great little secrets in what is essentially a tutorial area, that I can only imagine how good the rest of Hyrule is going to feel to explore.

Currently been playing for over an hour. This is going to be just epic

That is some impressive advertising. Just over 13 hours to go!

@Hajilee Oh come on now. It’s a new Zelda game launching. These articles are building up the hype wonderfully. Less than 24 hours!

Witcher 3 has recently replaced BOTW as my all time favourite game. Super Mario 3 is still the GOAT though.

It took 3 days to download the 16.2gb preorder file size. Hope it’s just a quick, tiny update come midnight Thursday. Cannot hardly wait.

Zelda is currently 29% downloaded… thank goodness it has started downloading early, or at this rate I wouldn’t be playing it until May 15th! Will be playing Advance Wars until Thursday night.

@Grumblevolcano That makes so much more sense to me now, thank you. I preordered Zelda when I had one voucher left, but then it kept telling me I had a voucher to purchase another game. So if I used that, I would effectively lose my preorder come 5th May, right?

@AmplifyMJ That’s great news, thank you! I want to start playing as close to launch as possible.

Question then: I have preordered it on the eshop, and I’ve never done that before a game releases. Does it actually start downloading some of the file size from 05 May? Because I will be wanting to play this as soon as possible on launch day, but I downloaded Advance Wars yesterday and it took 13 hours to download 6.6gb!

So I have a dilemma this weekend… I have finished off all massive games in preparation for Zelda. Got the two game vouchers, one is being used to preorder Zelda, and I need a game to tide me over for the next two weeks. I am considering Advance Wars, but whatever game I get will be dropped from 12 May. So I don’t want anything that would require a massive time investment. Any recommendations greatly appreciated!

@Maxz I don’t reply to comments often, I just take it all in… but this made me chuckle. And I’m still smiling.

That Flame Gleeok, with name and health bar, means there’ll be proper bosses, right? Right!?

Finishing off the epic Witcher 3 Blood and Wine quest. Got a warning to turn back if there were any side quests left to do as I was apparently at a point of no return in the story. So went back and cleared up every single “?” on the map, and now it’s the home stretch, because I won’t be going back to Toussaint once TOTK drops.

I used to think seeing a successful Mario movie was just a pipe dream…

I have to finish off Witcher 3 before Zelda drops. I know from May 12th I will only be playing one game for the foreseeable future. Finished the main campaign and Hearts of Stone, and halfway through Blood and Wine. I cannot believe B&W is DLC - it is so huge, it feels like a whole new game, a sort of sequel to Witcher 3 it’s that big. This is how DLC should be done.

I saw it on Tuesday, and damn the critics, I was smiling the whole way through!

@LastFootnote Exactly the same happened to me… I went through most of the entire game not realising you could one-shot a Lynel in the face with an ancient arrow until the very end of the trials.

I can finally read these articles now, having just got back from the movie! Honestly, I was just smiling half the time. Eff to the bad reviews: it was exactly what I expected. Don’t go into it expecting Citizen Kane. It was just joyful. And he did seem younger at that dinner table with his family than I have ever thought of him since the 80s.