The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

are people enjoying the tutorial island

who came up with this fs

initial island was a bit of a slog and quite confusing to navigate but finally into hyrule now - this game must be massive

OK so I watched a pro tips video on youtube and there are so many things you can do with the powers that are not intuitive but would make your life so much easier on the tutorial island if you knew them

Xp Yeah given the level of praise these games have received for how well-designed the world is, that opening island was a real chore.

Spent ages fooling around trying to get to where I needed to be and wondering what I was missing before realising eventually that I would have to retrace my steps and go round the other way, which was in itself a bit of a nightmare. Felt like it had been designed for you to travel in one direction with no thought given to how you could get back.

the world itself once you’re let loose is a real joy to climb / ride / glide / sail / surf / drive / fly / bounce / jetpack / time travel around though so I’m prepared to overlook it

Also even while that opening island was testing my patience I was still so happy to be back in this world, which is by some margin my fav video game space

I kinda liked the opening island! There are lots of hidden routes in there which make aimless exploring quite fun. I was well stocked with food and weapon add-ons by the time I hit Hyrule

I keep forgetting I don’t have a glider when I jump! Love the clattering ceramic sounds of the constructs.

this game is insane

spreading the good word #TearsOfTheKingdom #Zelda #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/ufWrqwboZN

— Kam (@YoungerPriince) May 13, 2023

more like tiers of the kingdom

My MAGNUM OPUS: Korok BBQ V3 @GetGianni pic.twitter.com/yUd6eIBUbC

— Oyff (@Oyffie) May 14, 2023

OMG THE UNDERWORLD

💔

I wasnt too bothered with how anoying the starting island is bcs I remember the great plateau being the same.

(BTW, I wonder if the great plateau is still there. Guess I'll find out soon enough)

I'm back into that "this kind of game needs hours of your time but argh I have housework to do and meals to cook" angst.

The Great Plateau is still there, and I recommend you pay it a visit, there are some wild surprises in and around and beneath that area

I like how this game repurposes and reconfigures BOTW's map. It's akin to when you dream about a familiar place but things are all mixed up.

It really is

Ha yeah it is confusing me! I just got to Kakariko and its like.. wah where is the shrine oh yes different shrines WTF are those big things hey whered this hole come from .

this game is like 50 breath of the wilds

Oh my heart when I got to Rito. The music. It broke me.

i didn't have any issues with the opening island, wonder where the disconnect is there.

i imagine this will keep me occupied throughout the summer. it's a loooot.

I glanced at a couple of streamers playing it, and the first thing that came to mind was "Doom" vs. "Doom Eternal," in the sense that the first one was an inspired reinvention of a beloved old series, and the new one took that as a starting point, refined and tweaked the gameplay and then added a bunch more to it, for better or for worse. Which is to say, this new game looks like a lot! Or, yeah, a loooot! There was a story on I think Kotaku about how long people are taking just to move on from the tutorial area.

I thoroughly recommend pairing this with the new James Holden record: sky arpeggios for sky archipelagos! Continuous Revolution is the PERFECT soundtrack to floating over beatific islands 10,000 feet up.

I couldn’t start this until today but I had the day off work so I got up as far as opening the first observation tower.

I miss infinite bomb power and infinite hand is pretty clunky but I honestly appreciate that they’re changing up stuff like the powers when they could have left them all the same.

It’s so weird to go back to only having three hearts and no stamina. I keep dying!

I really need to work out where Hestu is. I assume he will still be how we expandapandabanda our pockets.

I found him by accident. He does though. He was near some scary trees.

muddlebuds and puffshrooms are cheat codes

Damn those scary trees btw. Fuck u, Birnam Wood.

mad that the performance is so stable - frame rate tanks a bit on ultra hand sometimes but been otherwise solid for me so far

some of the shrines are an absolute treat - could make a fully fledged game consisting of their puzzles alone and you wouldn’t feel short changed

THE DEPTHS !!

this game is like botw... on acid lol so much loony stuff going on

It's only been, what, a week? This shit is already nuts:

https://kotaku.com/zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-zonai-tank-bomb-totk-zonai-1850437597

Muddlebuds are great. Not tried a puffshroom yet.

so what strategy did you all follow after finishing the tutorial stuff? follow the storyline? explore a concentrated area? head off into the distance?

i'm generally going from shrine to shrine to up my hearts. if i see something interesting i let myself get very distracted.

also i'm playing with a 5 year old so i am beholden to her whims. so there's a lot of cooking and korok finding ("ya-ha-ha guys")

Heading out from all four directions from lookout landing is a nice start xp

Only about 4 hours in, after the tutorial I'm doing basically the same as I did it BOTW - spying towers and marking them on my map, heading straight for them and doing any shrines I find along the way. Might do a couple of mini missions but the main story can wait for a while.

went to lookout landing, got the paraglider, then went looking for hateno village to see if my house from botw was still standing. stumbled upon the zora world instead! went and said hi to prince sidon and got the zora armor. but i'll try to fill out the map and up my hearts & stamina before diving too deep into the story.

im more or less doing the main quest did the rito part almost done with the gorans but stopping and checking things out along the way, love visiting all the towns to see whats going on say hi to old friends, everyones doing goofy shit its pretty absurd lol, its maybe more interesting than getting a totally new map, which is a good job nintendo couldve easily been too familiar

I’m all about getting the surface and sky maps right now. I collect shrines as I go as travel points but have only done a few thus far.

I started with looking for shrines near the Lookout, then Rito village by way of meandering through the west/northwest non-canyon parts of the map to stock up on shrine stuff and check out some caves and find rupees to buy the Snowquill hat (I think like 80% of that purchase was funded by helping Sign Guy). I did the first gloom/underworld quest, which blew my mind for managing to be both beautiful and sinister. I'm not sure I've encountered anything like it in any game. I'm on my way to Goron City now, then might see if there's anything going on in the Lost Woods. I'll leave the Gerudos til last if I can.

It's been a long time since my BOTW playthrough, but this game seems to give a bit more direction in the early phases..? like, it clearly wants you to go to Rito village first, and then lots of people you encounter talk about or are going to Woodland Stable/Goron City as a hint of your next stop. Nothing wrong with it given how expansive and frankly overwhelming this game is (god there is so much stuff, and so much stuff to do), or maybe I've just forgotten and BOTW had some early-on signposting too.

Fun/useful tip if you haven't stumbled upon it already: if you see block fall from the sky near you, climb on top of it and use rewind on it and it'll take you back up. It's handy for surveying the landscape or accessing floating sky stuff or falling/gliding to parts of the map that might be tedious to traverse on foot.

I never think about using rewind.

the game really doesn't let you loose as soon as you get to the surface because you don't have the paraglider and if you've seen a commercial you know there's a paraglider

so i did lookout landing, and then robbie tells you to go to hateno for purah pad stuff, i don't know what's in store there but if there are ability upgrades like in BOTW i want to get them asap. so i started heading in that direction but wanted to stop in kakariko first, and then i went into the great fairy chasm because i felt very confident that the way to access the 5th ring was to ascend past the barrier from the underground (turns out that was wrong), and i just ended up spending a ton of time underground. that's where i am now.

in both of the big underground areas so far, i find it really hard to stop. they're just massive, the darkness is really good at piquing my curiosity and there's always a fast travel flower in the distance to walk towards, and there's no natural stopping point because it's all the same biome. it just keeps going and going, there's no point where i think "oh this area is slightly different, i'll come back here later." i can see myself getting really burnt out on it.

Muddlebuds are great. Not tried a puffshroom yet.

― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Tuesday, May 16, 2023 11:46 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

puffshrooms are a tasty treat you can take out of your pocket to basically reset combat. if you're surrounded by multiple enemies they just grind things to a halt. it's a really strong effect and it lasts a long time.

I wandered for a while not realising that I had to do at least the start of the main quest because thats how you get the parglide. Felt silly when I realised.

Since then I've also been wandering trying to hit shrines and towers, ocasionally pop back up to Great Sky Island and grab goodies there (those vending-machine bubble tool packs are v useful!).

The side quest I'm doing that I think will be useful is the newspaper one because it drives you to hit up all the stables, so you cover lot of map and find things on the way.

I spent 30 minutes last night trying to rescue that fucking horn player out of the hole and gave up. I think I was doing it right, it just didnt want to work! I feel like a bad engineer.

BTW am I the only one who

lucked out on the starting island and explored a few nooks and bits after the 4th shrine, thus stumbling on a cave with a chest containing the warm pants that meant I could do Rito without warm food?

haven't got to rito yet but got them yep

climb on top of it and use rewind on it and it'll take you back up

Yes this has proved to be v handy, just as a booster. It sucks not having revalis gale but in a way this is better, well between this and pine cones.

just had my first adventure below, so good!

So I havent properly tried puffshrooms are they like chucking a smoke bomb at the enemy so you can do a runner?

I spent 30 minutes last night trying to rescue that fucking horn player out of the hole and gave up. I think I was doing it right, it just didnt want to work! I feel like a bad engineer.

I eventually did it by sticking the balloon onto the wagon, standing above the crater at its edge, and ultrahanding the balloon + wagon + guy out.