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Zelda : Breath of the Wild. (WARNING! There will be Spoilers)
- Thread starter MRU
- Start date
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BTW, if people don't want *any* spoilers *at all*, do NOT read the tips during the loading screen! They really give some things away 
I have to say, I miss the old days of printed manuals. I remember the old SNES manuals, those were fantastic.
I have to say, I miss the old days of printed manuals. I remember the old SNES manuals, those were fantastic.
BTW, if people don't want *any* spoilers *at all*, do NOT read the tips during the loading screen! They really give some things away
I have to say, I miss the old days of printed manuals. I remember the old SNES manuals, those were fantastic.
Yeah, I was really disappointed they didn't include a printed manual and poster, there was just so much empty space in the box.
Off-topic: I feel like some Gaming manufactures are going away from providing manuals/literature inside the game case.
Both Resident Evil 7 Biohazard and No Mans Sky had no manuals in the game case. Part of the reason I believe is cost related and The game itself usually includes the controls in the pause menu. But it still be nice to have a hard copy in the game case.
Wow, just had another "This game is brilliant!" moment. The side quest "Great Bandit Misko" was fantastic!
By way of comparison, in Skyrim, when I got a quest for a tracking down a bandit cave (can't remember which one), I got a marker on my map in an area I had never even been in. Ok, so maybe in game lore, somebody gave me exact directions to this bandit...
In BotW, what I got was a riddle which was a description of a geographic area, but then I had to go and figure it out myself, and find the area.
By way of comparison, in Skyrim, when I got a quest for a tracking down a bandit cave (can't remember which one), I got a marker on my map in an area I had never even been in. Ok, so maybe in game lore, somebody gave me exact directions to this bandit...
In BotW, what I got was a riddle which was a description of a geographic area, but then I had to go and figure it out myself, and find the area.
Having now completed the main story quest, and the game as far as I'm concerned, with around 85% completion, I feel comfortable enough to weigh in on this game; bear in mind this is the Wii U version. This contains SPOILERS. Do NOT READ if you don't want spoiled.
My concise thoughts are, as much as it pains me to say so, that I agree substantively with Jim Sterling if not on a point by point basis. It falls around a 6.5 - 7.5/10 for me, depending on when you catch me and what's just gone on with the game. There's quite a bit of fun to be had, I don't deny that, but that fun is couched in so much busy work that my enjoyment of the game frequently got smothered.
The Good
There's loads going on for this title in terms of aesthetic potential which is, to my own taste, utterly squandered. In a world varied and nuanced as this, using the cell-shaded style they did feels like a complete waste and predicated entirely by the inability of Nintendo's hardware to push anything better. And, no, I'm not suggesting that it ought to look like Horizon, that game is set in our world and geared toward exaggerated realism, but having an evolution of Skyward Sword's style would have been a better preference for myself. I dream about what this title could have been visually if Nintendo had returned to a GCN philosophy and stood toe-to-toe with what will be the ninth-gen systems.
That said, character and item designs are phenomenal. The only real weakness to me were the Gerudo, which had very little variety even with their Champion; other than that, top-notch and gives everything else out there, including Horizon, a complete run for its money.
The mechanics that I loved most were the climbing and stealth mechanics. The first things that I did in my run, after leaving the Great Plateau, were to level my stamina, go after the climbing bandana and unlock whatever towers that I could reach without the need for resistance clothing, often relying on stealth and stamina to get me up into a tower. After several attempts to get the Woodland Tower and getting exploded into oblivion, I paraglided in quietly and no one in the military camp was the wiser. The single most tense and enjoyable time I had was with the Central tower, beset as it is on all sides with Guardians. I hadn't at the time mastered perfect guard (since then I've taken to using a boko shield against Guardians just for giggles) and the entire climb was a sequence of mad rushing jumps and crouching away from laser sights. Absolutely thrilling. Equally fun to me was mountain climbing, planning where the handholds would be best, where a slight outcrop would permit a stamina recharge. So much fun.
The Bad
To me, the present weapon durability mechanic is not only stupid, it has a chilling effect on the hack-n-slash element of the game, which, if you're trying to bring the feel of the original Zelda into the current generation, is not something that you want to do. A much better way to go about things, in my own opinion, would be a experience-based weapon fouling mechanic, so that when one starts out, every hit that connects weapon to enemy should have an experience-derived damage modifier, so as to replicate when one starts any sort of weapons training, one's proficiency at handling said weapon and delivering a blow in a manner that does not damage that weapon is much lower than after loads of practice. That means that game should keep track of how many enemies you have fought with a particular weapon, and use a defined algorithm to determine how much you've fought with that weapon, how many of that particular enemy type you have fought, and killed successfully, and assign a damage modifier per connection. As it is, whether one is a three-heart green player wearing the old shirt and trousers, or rocking thirty hearts and the Armour of the Wild, a bokoblin club lasts the same number of hits. That doesn't make sense. Moreover, it makes no sense for the Champion gear to have limited durability. Disregard that each culture clearly poured huge time and resources into making, for their respective Champions, weapons of superior quality, we must assume that there's some degree of magic which ties them to their respective places of forging and returns them should the Champion fall; each Champion died in battle in their Divine Beast, so we either assume that those weapons did return to their people, those people sent other, lesser warriors to retrieve them and they managed to survive (unlikely), or it's an Apollo 18-style plothole. In any case, whether just on account of their quality or a presumption of magic, the Champion weapons should not be able to be damaged. The enforcement of a Wow-style cooldown on the Master Sword is equally ridiculous, a pure restriction mechanic designed exclusively to temper the sword's OP nature against the lack of linearity preventing maintaining of enemy threat levels when one backtracks, and to keep the threat of the blood moon from becoming a non-issue.
Somewhat related to this is the need for blacksmiths to repair weapons and the dire need for storage chests. First, Souls games, which are series to which BotW has often been compared lately, has equipment repair mechanics and they're considered crushingly difficult by some. Even if you just do a tiered system of weapons, where tier one (monster weapons, traveller's varieties) cannot be repaired and just break, tier 2 (soldier weapons) can be repaired ten times, tier three (knight weapons) can be repaired thirty times, and legendary weapons (Master Sword, Hylian Shield, Champion weapons, exclusive amiibo weapon drops) are repairable indefinitely, it would be vastly superior then just never using them because you're afraid that they'll break. It would also be very helpful to have a place to store items outside of your inventory. God knows, I went to an extraordinary amount of effort getting the roughly 450 Korok seeds needed to fully expand my inventory, but that doesn't mean that I want to have to cycle through that much in the middle of a pitched battle. True, you can by mounts for your house in Haterno, but you're limited to three each for swords, bows and shields. There are, I believe, seven or eight amiibo custom sword drops alone. There just needs to be a place where you can keep your extra weapons and materials.
The Shrines. Oh, my God, the Shrines. Rather than the queer pseudo-monkish names, each one should've been called Aonuma's Revenge No. 1 - 120. Puzzles, puzzles everywhere and not a bit of enjoyment to be had. Were it not for the fact that they were necessary to increasing stamina and hearts, I question whether a great many people beyond completionists would do more than ten of them. This, I suppose, was to make up for there being ostensibly four dungeous (really just one repeated four times), and the Hyrule Castle battle.
Miscellaneous
Aside from the changes I've mentioned in The Bad (which I do not anticipate being fixed), Nintendo should nonetheless continue working on BotW, just as SE is continuing development on FFXV for the remainder of the year. In additional to the Expansion Pass quest content, it would be good to see some easter egg equipment drops beyond the amiibos; given the theme of flesh versus technology that's so prevalent, and with Monolithsoft's involvement in the title, I would love to see the Monado show up. Touching on Horizon again, which also has similar themes, it wouldn't go amiss to be able to have a weapon similar to Aloy's spear be available from Akkala, which allows you to hack a Guardian and restore it to its original state, like one does with the Divine beasts.
The Bottom Line
I liked BotW a fair bit, but then there was a quite a lot to like. It's a solid entry into the Zelda series, grossly over-hyped as they always tend to be (I still have not reconciled with Skyward Sword's 93 composite), but unlike past titles, it's one of the few that I almost certainly will not find myself playing again. The time investment to have a well-rounded, non-speed run experience was too high for what I ultimately got out of the game in the bargain.
My concise thoughts are, as much as it pains me to say so, that I agree substantively with Jim Sterling if not on a point by point basis. It falls around a 6.5 - 7.5/10 for me, depending on when you catch me and what's just gone on with the game. There's quite a bit of fun to be had, I don't deny that, but that fun is couched in so much busy work that my enjoyment of the game frequently got smothered.
The Good
There's loads going on for this title in terms of aesthetic potential which is, to my own taste, utterly squandered. In a world varied and nuanced as this, using the cell-shaded style they did feels like a complete waste and predicated entirely by the inability of Nintendo's hardware to push anything better. And, no, I'm not suggesting that it ought to look like Horizon, that game is set in our world and geared toward exaggerated realism, but having an evolution of Skyward Sword's style would have been a better preference for myself. I dream about what this title could have been visually if Nintendo had returned to a GCN philosophy and stood toe-to-toe with what will be the ninth-gen systems.
That said, character and item designs are phenomenal. The only real weakness to me were the Gerudo, which had very little variety even with their Champion; other than that, top-notch and gives everything else out there, including Horizon, a complete run for its money.
The mechanics that I loved most were the climbing and stealth mechanics. The first things that I did in my run, after leaving the Great Plateau, were to level my stamina, go after the climbing bandana and unlock whatever towers that I could reach without the need for resistance clothing, often relying on stealth and stamina to get me up into a tower. After several attempts to get the Woodland Tower and getting exploded into oblivion, I paraglided in quietly and no one in the military camp was the wiser. The single most tense and enjoyable time I had was with the Central tower, beset as it is on all sides with Guardians. I hadn't at the time mastered perfect guard (since then I've taken to using a boko shield against Guardians just for giggles) and the entire climb was a sequence of mad rushing jumps and crouching away from laser sights. Absolutely thrilling. Equally fun to me was mountain climbing, planning where the handholds would be best, where a slight outcrop would permit a stamina recharge. So much fun.
The Bad
To me, the present weapon durability mechanic is not only stupid, it has a chilling effect on the hack-n-slash element of the game, which, if you're trying to bring the feel of the original Zelda into the current generation, is not something that you want to do. A much better way to go about things, in my own opinion, would be a experience-based weapon fouling mechanic, so that when one starts out, every hit that connects weapon to enemy should have an experience-derived damage modifier, so as to replicate when one starts any sort of weapons training, one's proficiency at handling said weapon and delivering a blow in a manner that does not damage that weapon is much lower than after loads of practice. That means that game should keep track of how many enemies you have fought with a particular weapon, and use a defined algorithm to determine how much you've fought with that weapon, how many of that particular enemy type you have fought, and killed successfully, and assign a damage modifier per connection. As it is, whether one is a three-heart green player wearing the old shirt and trousers, or rocking thirty hearts and the Armour of the Wild, a bokoblin club lasts the same number of hits. That doesn't make sense. Moreover, it makes no sense for the Champion gear to have limited durability. Disregard that each culture clearly poured huge time and resources into making, for their respective Champions, weapons of superior quality, we must assume that there's some degree of magic which ties them to their respective places of forging and returns them should the Champion fall; each Champion died in battle in their Divine Beast, so we either assume that those weapons did return to their people, those people sent other, lesser warriors to retrieve them and they managed to survive (unlikely), or it's an Apollo 18-style plothole. In any case, whether just on account of their quality or a presumption of magic, the Champion weapons should not be able to be damaged. The enforcement of a Wow-style cooldown on the Master Sword is equally ridiculous, a pure restriction mechanic designed exclusively to temper the sword's OP nature against the lack of linearity preventing maintaining of enemy threat levels when one backtracks, and to keep the threat of the blood moon from becoming a non-issue.
Somewhat related to this is the need for blacksmiths to repair weapons and the dire need for storage chests. First, Souls games, which are series to which BotW has often been compared lately, has equipment repair mechanics and they're considered crushingly difficult by some. Even if you just do a tiered system of weapons, where tier one (monster weapons, traveller's varieties) cannot be repaired and just break, tier 2 (soldier weapons) can be repaired ten times, tier three (knight weapons) can be repaired thirty times, and legendary weapons (Master Sword, Hylian Shield, Champion weapons, exclusive amiibo weapon drops) are repairable indefinitely, it would be vastly superior then just never using them because you're afraid that they'll break. It would also be very helpful to have a place to store items outside of your inventory. God knows, I went to an extraordinary amount of effort getting the roughly 450 Korok seeds needed to fully expand my inventory, but that doesn't mean that I want to have to cycle through that much in the middle of a pitched battle. True, you can by mounts for your house in Haterno, but you're limited to three each for swords, bows and shields. There are, I believe, seven or eight amiibo custom sword drops alone. There just needs to be a place where you can keep your extra weapons and materials.
The Shrines. Oh, my God, the Shrines. Rather than the queer pseudo-monkish names, each one should've been called Aonuma's Revenge No. 1 - 120. Puzzles, puzzles everywhere and not a bit of enjoyment to be had. Were it not for the fact that they were necessary to increasing stamina and hearts, I question whether a great many people beyond completionists would do more than ten of them. This, I suppose, was to make up for there being ostensibly four dungeous (really just one repeated four times), and the Hyrule Castle battle.
Miscellaneous
Aside from the changes I've mentioned in The Bad (which I do not anticipate being fixed), Nintendo should nonetheless continue working on BotW, just as SE is continuing development on FFXV for the remainder of the year. In additional to the Expansion Pass quest content, it would be good to see some easter egg equipment drops beyond the amiibos; given the theme of flesh versus technology that's so prevalent, and with Monolithsoft's involvement in the title, I would love to see the Monado show up. Touching on Horizon again, which also has similar themes, it wouldn't go amiss to be able to have a weapon similar to Aloy's spear be available from Akkala, which allows you to hack a Guardian and restore it to its original state, like one does with the Divine beasts.
The Bottom Line
I liked BotW a fair bit, but then there was a quite a lot to like. It's a solid entry into the Zelda series, grossly over-hyped as they always tend to be (I still have not reconciled with Skyward Sword's 93 composite), but unlike past titles, it's one of the few that I almost certainly will not find myself playing again. The time investment to have a well-rounded, non-speed run experience was too high for what I ultimately got out of the game in the bargain.
They remove costs and other ways to trim the fat, yet games still cost $60
Gamers have to get over this arbitrary $60 ceiling for games. The cost of development has exploded to between five and ten times what a game cost to produce in mid-to-late nineties, yet the cost of games hasn't had a commensurate increase during that same period. Why do you think that devs and publishing companies have increasingly pushed DLC and episodic content? BotW costing $60 today is equivalent to OoT costing $40 the year it came out. So for 2/3 the purchase price you have probably fifty times the content.
Plus the fact that it's cartridge based which undoubtedly costs much more than pressing a disc. I actually love the cartridge format. No need to buy storage and wait for installation for one, plus games load pretty quickly.
Btw great write up above. Totally agree about the weapons durability issue and the total lack of traditional Zelda style dungeons. I actually do quite enjoy the shrines where there's puzzles involved.
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Not hugely, the difference is only around $1-2 difference (dependent on production volume) between fabrication of a physical cart and a blu-ray these days.
Indeed manufacturing makes a tiny proportion of the overall cost of a game.
The development of the title makes up a grunt share with some games costing multi-millions of dollars ($50-200) for a AAA budget title.
But why then do smaller development games often cost similar at retail ?
What happens then is essentially the publishers will spread the risk of development by essentially putting out a number of titles, some of which had far smaller development budgets and yet at retail cost the same. It's a form or 'risk equalisation'.
Then we come to the other aspect of games and that's retail / brick and mortar stores. A game has to offer large enough profit / return to fund those stores and keep those folks employed.
It's also the reason why the likes of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have rules that digital copies on their digital stores are to be priced similarly to their retail copy.
At the end of the day the likes of Gamestop are still very important to the overall industry even if digital purchases are becoming more popular. The manufacturers still need the goodwill of the retail stores to sell their hardware.
But do games really cost more now ?
Well in all honesty if we look back at NES, SNES, Genesis/Megadrive titles pricing and factor in inflation, then the answer is no.
Factor in inflation and games cost more then than they do now. Plus fabrication costs today are far smaller than they were back then by a Goliath margin.
Indeed considering the rise of gaming popularity since then, and the fact these games had nothing like the development budgets of today, we should be thankful we're not paying higher prices.
However .... in a way we are. Because of the rise in gaming costs, brick & mortar store protection, risk equalisation by publishers etc... we have paid DLC / Expansion Passes and artificial game walls hidden behind pay and play barriers, and this is inside our $60 game...
Oh and you Americans need to get over gaming pricing because as ever, you get away easy compared to the rest of the world. $60!!!!
Try €75 (= $80 US) here for new titles from Gamestop, or even $100 AUD as our antipodean neighbours have to pay.
I would think an additional $2 to produce a cartridge is a huge difference, vs pressing a disc for pennies, isn't it?
Oh I think $60 for a AAA title is reasonable here, in the USA I guess they can keep retail prices roughly at the same level as years ago because the install base is much larger than the SNES days. Plus they can now nickel and dime you through DLC, and don't forget Amiibos but at least these are fun to collect. I suppose if you throw in the much larger development costs on a AAA title now equalize somewhat.
In the end we all pay one way or another no matter where you are - the cost of a pill, a text book, or cellphone bill here in the USA.
Oh I think $60 for a AAA title is reasonable here, in the USA
I guess they can keep retail prices roughly at the same level as years ago because the install base is much larger than the SNES days. Plus they can now nickel and dime you through DLC, and don't forget Amiibos but at least these are fun to collect. I suppose if you throw in the much larger development costs on a AAA title now equalize somewhat. In the end we all pay one way or another no matter where you are - the cost of a pill, a text book, or cellphone bill here in the USA.
Not really, a BR is actually around $1 - $2 depending on production volume, so certainly not pennies.
Likewise as I already state of the overall cost the manufacturing is the least part of that overall cost.
Trust me I also live in a country where there are NO free school textbooks, mobile carriers charge more than they do in most other EU countries and Prescription / Pills all have to be paid for too (unless you have a medical card and it's extremely limited and hard to get one) ...
Yeah life is expensive and can suck
Yeah life is expensive and can suck
Tell me about it, I paid 80 rupees for the Warming Doublet, and then went back to the Great Plateau and found the old man had left it for me!
Tell me about it, I paid 80 rupees for the Warming Doublet, and then went back to the Great Plateau and found the old man had left it for me!
Hahahaha...
...80 rupees?! One thing I like (although I did enjoy it in LttP as a kid) is not having to play that lawnmower simulator to get hearts and rupees. But the downside is that I've only gathered like 21 rupees so far and can't even remember where I got them from. Saw those prices for a bed and was like: "Nope, I'd rather keep on running around 24/7"
I am seeing people with over 100+ hours and nowhere near the end of the game. This is not boding well for my dad gaming life and limited time availability as the game is just a monster.
It is a blast and I have BOTW ADD from the main plot as I find myself exploring and running in circles finding stuff all over the place versus heading to where I need to be going but thats the fun part.
It is a blast and I have BOTW ADD from the main plot as I find myself exploring and running in circles finding stuff all over the place versus heading to where I need to be going but thats the fun part.
Ok we can agree that the 99% work their entire lives for the 1% most anywhere in the worldTrust me I also live in a country where there are NO free school textbooks, mobile carriers charge more than they do in most other EU countries and Prescription / Pills all have to be paid for too (unless you have a medical card and it's extremely limited and hard to get one) ...
Yeah life is expensive and can suck
[doublepost=1489594697][/doublepost]
That's my problem with this game. I'm an OCD completionist, always exploring every possible nook and cranny which is quite impossible to do in BOTW. I usually can't move on until I get that OCD scratched, even after I move on I'd ask myself what did I miss..
Yes, I think that in order to complete the game as expeditiously as possible, you would have to just do the main quests, and ignore any side quests (and not climb and putter around like I do).
The reviewer for Ars Technica said he completed it in 35 hours, and he thought you could do a fairly complete game in 85 hours. I think if you raced through it (not like a speed runner, but ignored the side quests) the 35 hour figure is reasonable, give or take, but I probably already have 85 hours and I estimate I'm 3/8 of the way through just exploring. Shrine-wise, I'm at about 20%.
I'm taking 2 weeks off from work, and Zelda is going to be the focus of my efforts then!
Side Note: The Nintendo GameCube in its existence was flourishing due to its affordable gaming prices listed $20-$25.00 below the other competitors. Aside from it's exclusive titles, it was a huge success at first with the affordability factor, even it's accessories were listed below other gaming consoles. Unfortunately, the GameCube failed to expand and had very few title releases, which was ultimately consumed by next Gen consoles.
Gaming prices at $60.00 may appear cheaper to you in Ireland, but the fact is we all have the same outcome with the resale value of the game, which is abysmal. Especially sports titles. It's pathetic the decline in a used game for taking off the shrink wrap, which all my
Games have been sold in mint condition. I understand market saturation is a major reason to the reduction for trade in/resale. Nobody wins in the end, unless The game is a collectors item or a vintage title.
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So is anyone going to make use of that share button and post some cool screenshots?
I've been meaning too. It is very easy to post to Facebook or Twitter. To get on my computer and post directly here, I'd have to copy them over to the micro SD card and load them onto my laptop...which would be time wasted *not* playing Zelda, so prepare to wait a while
My strategy is: the first time in an area, I'll run all over the place on foot, climb stuff, explore, etc., but all on foot.
Then when I'm pretty much done with the exploration (or marking stuff to go to later), then I use the horse to get from point A to point B quickly in the already explored area (and run past all the annoying Bokoblins that I don't want to kill for the n-th time).
I only use fast travel to go from one tower to another tower.
GameCube games here and in the UK were not cheaper. They were the same price as the competition unfortunately.
I however imported most of my GameCube games as I had a Panasonic Q modified to play USA discs. But even importing them from Canada I was still paying around £50 Irish punt (as it was before the Euro) which equates to around €65 now.
So is anyone going to make use of that share button and post some cool screenshots?
Why the hell not!
Ive got to be sixty hours (nearly?) in, and only done two divine beasts by literally stumbling into them ha. I've got loads of map yet to unlock and have basically approached this as an explorer, checking out every nook and cranny of the areas I uncover.
I've not posted any thoughts here yet, but I can safely say this is one of the best (if not the best) game I've ever played.
It's also the greatest Zelda game I've ever played by a long long way.
I'm glad I bought a 128gb memory card to use as all I'm doing when playing is screenshotting
. Game is just beautiful.