The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

It really, really is. Just completed my first 'Divine Beast' dungeon, and really loving it. It's hard, but doesn't feel unfair. I planned on going to bed right after the divine beast bit last night, then ended up doing another shrine, then activating a tower, wandering a bit, another shrine... etc.

where are yall buying the switch from like did you preorder it or what

you pretty much had to preorder it or show up at the store early on release day. i havent been able to find one myself yet, most places dont seem to think they'll have many more until april.

the Wii release was like this too iirc, you couldn't reliably walk into a store and buy one until long after release

its not uncommon for popular electronic products ramping up the production of new stuff is difficult

oh yeah I remember the Wii for sure. was pretty into the whole deal back then, iirc mrs. aero was trying to order it from her workplace while I was doing the same thing at home, doing a bunch of "it looks like it's going through! fuck...no, price went up!" shit. now I'm old though one huge advantage of being old is like oh there's a new deal? cool I'll get one maybe. oh I can't get it for six months? cool who gives a fuck maybe I'll buy it in six months or maybe I won't care then, all the same really *takes nap*

i stumbled in my way into the zora domain. lizards keep zapping me with wands. i feel like i'm massively underleveled/underprepared for its challenges. hell, i feel massively underleveled/underprepared at all times. i am distracted by taking photos of mushrooms, exploding every rock i see, collecting monster parts to no particular purpose, and my progress in the main quest occurs in fits and starts. there are all these little hints of bigger sidequests (reuniting lovers? finding special bugs?) that i am missing because i am careening through hyrule like a damn loon. i am constantly busting into areas filled with super-strong bad guys that can one-hit kill me, or falling off slippery mountain peaks, or getting chopped up in shrines. and the blood moon mechanic is legit frightening. the whole experience is weird and excellent –– like, i am delighted to run around but i am in constant-fear of insta-death. also, i misunderstood the function of the amiibo, and i gave myself a horse while i was on top of a tower. poor epona, all alone and nothing to do but jump to deah. :(

if I had to sum up the game mega quickly in the most reductive way possible and that doesn't actually sum up how fantastic it is, i'd say this is basically Ni No Kuni goes Soulsbourne.
which is probably everything i've ever wanted from a game?

hahahaha, i'm so old, i've never heard of either of those games

the last zelda game i played was "adventure of link". so far i think "breath of the wild" is better, but if soda popinski starts laughing at me the next time i die i might reconsider.

hahahaha, i'm so old, i've never heard of either of those games

― increasingly bonkers (rushomancy), Thursday, 9 March 2017 13:48

The second one just meant Demon Souls/Dark Souls/Bloodborne

jamiesummerz may have just sold me a switch (once i get my financial/time life rebalanced)

i guess the souls comparison mainly comes from the fact that:

1. there's very little handholding, you're rewarded for curiosity, exploration and experimentation. i'm 15 hours in and only just worked out that sometimes money is hidden under rocks, that I can make a horse more friendly by patting its head, that i can parry projectiles. etc.
2. just like the second enemy i met in yarnham, i got wrecked to death by the second trash mob enemy i met in zelda
3. that GAME OVER red on black screen is very YOU DIED. and i've seen it a bunch.

fun article on Breath Of The Wild deaths at http://kotaku.com/legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-players-share-their-1793006745

also love the fact that after an hour or so, i could very quickly switch to play this with zero hud (other than seeing hearts on top left)... only time i need to know more than what the gameplay itself shows me (how much noise i'm making, how visible i am, link shivering shows me it's cold, etc) is when I need to check my map every now and then.

also, climbing a tower to reveal more of the map reveals noting other than topography. if you find somrthing and want to remember it, you tag that map yourself with an icon. no assassins creed jumble of side quest icons - you find that shit yourself through exploring.

aaaanyway, great game.

i kind of stayed away from dark souls because i heard it was "hard". maybe that's my fault, because when i think "hard" i think like battletoads or some shit. this game, i could get myself killed really easy but the game autosaves every two minutes and i can just spend all day cutting down grass and hunting for bugs if i want. and then i got the camera so i'm basically playing pokemon snap here.

dunkey vid makes it look like this owns. hard

It does. One of the monsters just picked up a smaller monster and threw it at me lol.

i ran into a couple archers on horses the other day and it was pretty tight

i've been dating a gamer for a few months and this is by far the best thing i've seen him play. it's really magical.

I fucked up the use of an amiibo today though.

There's a one time only bonus of a horse awarded for syncing an OG Link figure in game. Not knowing this, I used my amiibo in a dumb location. And my one-time-kickass-bonus horse spawned on top of a tower.

I gave it a Viking funeral because why the shit not.

so the real real question i have is if this game is worth the roughly $450 it would cost for me to buy the system, the spare joystick and zelda (when it's eventually available in wide release this summer) because i'm guessing there might be five or six more games I'll buy for this thing over the life of the system? so i kinda want to know that one of them will be among the very best games I've ever played.

This game looks great. I'll buy it on the WiiU when the price drops, and I might get a Switch when they bring out a Mario Kart that isn't just MK8 with 4 new coloured shyguys or whatever.

This game looks great. I'll buy it on the WiiU when the price drops, and I might get a Switch when they bring out a Mario Kart that isn't just MK8 with 4 new coloured shyguys or whatever.

― barbarian radge (NotEnough)

nintendo games are about the only games where i don't wait for the price drop. first because it doesn't come - if you're waiting for the price to drop you will be waiting a very long time - and second because unlike other companies' AAA games, nintendo games aren't completely buggy and broken on launch.

"so i kinda want to know that one of them will be among the very best games I've ever played.

― removed from the rain drops and drop tops of experience (ulysses)"

i haven't played the same games you have so i have no basis for making that claim. all i can say is that i play games very, very rarely. the last game i played regularly was civilization v. before that it was rock band. i'm playing the shit out of this game, which is kind of a problem because i really should be packing. (if you don't already have a wiiu they seem like they're going to just rerelease all the best wiiu games for the switch, so you should probably get some of those too.)

I suspect that the WiiU version is going to have a limited print run and prices are liable to stay the same or go up as they did for Twilight Princess on Gamecube.
Was playing this last night and marvelling how seamless everything is, then thinking about how buggy Bethesda etc games are. The verticality in the world is also really good, feels similar to XCX in that respect and I believe some of the staff on that game also worked on this.

played this on Switch yesterday for the first time. very impressive! the graphics are really nice, like really really really nice! best-looking grass in a videogame yet. really goes a long way to capturing the feel of running over a sunny hillside. the wind blows and the grass moves like it would in real life. someone was playing Horizon next to it and while that game is a graphical powerhouse, it was still a little obvious that the plants and stuff were just assets stuck to the world mesh. the Breath in the title of this game is v significant: this may be the first open world game where it felt like there was actually wind in the air.

To hell with you, Ziga clan. Eighty bajillion deaths at your katana-wielding paws.

Just got this for my birthday. Now to kick the bf off the TV so I can play it.

Yiga Clan ain't nuthing ta fuck wit

i haven't had much in the way of problems with the yiga clan yet. lynels, on the other hand... i'm pretty sure they use an aimbot.

you can actually mount lynels and whack them in the head a bunch before they attack back...

completed the first 'dungeon' today - the final battle was greeeeat

hahaha, the spouse and i were just speculating this morning on whether you could ride a lynel... though the spouse wanted to tame them. :)

i definitely am having nostalgia for the old-school lynels who shot swords out of their mouths book of revelation style

I love how the Northeast of the map looks like New Hampshire in early October. Also, I bought a house and a lot of furniture and...? There is no benefit except I can dump extra weapons in the middle of my room.

i named my horses Mr Horsu and Horseface. i loves them.

oh my god, the fucking Trial of Wood, i'm going to have a sore throat tomorrow from screaming at my television

Possibly a dumb question, but how much does your left hand have to press buttons in this game? I'm slightly paralysed in my left hand - so games where you only have to move the stick are fine, but games that rely on constant left-finger-buttoning can be difficult.

the left hand buttons are primarily used to quickly switch equipment which you do pretty often. but you can do it by going into yr inventory only using right hand though (is obviously a lot slower).

also left hand triggers are used fairly often as well for guarding and abilities.

Thanks! Do you use your thumb for all of that or 2nd/3rd fingers? (My thumb is the good one!)

no problem, thumb for weapon switching, 2nd/3rd finger on the back trigger and bumper (this is on wii u i should say, dont know if its much different on the switch)

Same on switch, use thumb to click on L stick to crouch/sneak, use thumb to press buttons to change weapons and skills quickly (handy tip: hold down ZR and you can cycle through arrows), use finger on L button to activate skills (most of the time during puzzle solving), use finger on ZL to lock on to enemies/raise shield. Depends on your play style I guess, I play without locking on/raising shield and game is perfectly playable this way.

So, I started this yesterday and it took me basically all day just to get off the fucking plateau. Comedy of errors really - when I realised I needed to get that Warm Doublet I was pissed off to realise I'd accidentally eaten the only raw meat I had on me. I then managed to kill a bird - but then promtly died 3 mins later and lost my save. I then spent TWO HOURS stalking/creeping in the forest trying to catch a fucking bird/squirrel/boar. &*$%^%^$%$!!

Rest of the level was a cakewalk in comparison lol.

Still I suppose I'm real good at hunting animals with a bow now, haw :(

The doublet was the only thing I got on the plateau before I took off with the paraglider btw - have I missed anything else? I take it you cant get back there?

didn't know you could get the doublet on the plateau, just cooked loads of spicy meat. you can always go back, stamina and extreme temperature the only things limiting you from going anywhere.

Yeah you make the spicy meat/ seafood fry for Old Man and he gives it to you.

my girl and i have made a pact that we are going to get a switch/zelda if we hit some specific money goals. this game is helping me budget!

i love this game, but it can definitely be frustrating. but frustration is used as a feedback tool in this game, i think? when i am frustrated it has come from the knowledge that i am doing something ineffectively, not that the game is holding back or setting up artificial difficulty barriers. so far i have been annoyed w/ the warm doublet quest (b/c there were a million ways to solve it, and i was looking for the "right" one, though i eventually switched tactics and solved it easily).

the lynel in the zora domain
getting zapped while hiking into the zoras uglyass domain
the one tower i *still* can't climb due to electro guys swimming nearby
another fucking lynel
a boring shrine quest where i had to kill three giants
a horse-taming quest
some bullshit in the lost woods
the goron quest
gathering wood to build my effing house

Apparently having metal items mean you get struck by lightning during rain? Fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXMlXSDwzU8

I'm already overwhelmed looking at how much map there is to cover. Its not just that its large - its that so much of it is only accesible in really gruelling ways like slowly climbing cliffs. I feel like I'll be playing this game for years at this rate.

i dont like sandbox games either but i still enjoyed the exploring and puzzles and atmosphere

yeah if you dont like finding out whats on top of the mountain then it might not be for you, the new one might have more reasons to do things tho, well find out soon

As I've said before my biggest concern with the new game is that it seems to deemphasize climbing

yeah my concern was that the new fuse ability looks like a push further into making physics sandbox goofing around the main attraction, i dont think i want to have to be building contraptions constantly to explore the map

reviews are out with a 96 on metacritic, looks like Aonuma has done it again

Pure Magic

I recently just started this. Only given it about an hour's play so far, so really not far in

This sez YES TOTK for people like me: https://www.gamegrin.com/articles/should-you-play-tears-of-the-kingdom-if-you-hated-breath-of-the-wild/

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

there is a thread for the game fyi The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

my bad - i've been following that thread but just clicked on this one by accident bc it was higher up

i will say that i went back to BOTW a bit in anticipation of TOTK and i somehow have 32 shrines i still haven't found??? i've been like everywhere on the map, i do not understand how that many could still be hiding from me

have you done all the side quests a lot of those make a shrine pop out of the ground when you solve them like the riddle type ones

also some behind bombable walls etc that are hard to find unless you put the radar thing on