Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Guess I just forgot then. After I got Ice ability it was probably a good 5+ hours before I used it again since I never really needed it.

You’re not broken. You’re absolutely normal (as are the people who think BotW is the best thing since sliced bread, mind you). While I think it’s a pretty good and entertaining game, it’s not the holy grail of gaming by any chance for me. Actually, for me, it’s not even the best game I’ve played this year. Top 5 yes, but not the best at all.

Are you looking for Koroks? Have you even found one yet? I’m going to guess not if you feel like things are so empty. Also, if you haven’t gone to Kakariko Village, you really should. While the game lets you go anywhere you want, Kakariko is a bit of a hub for the main quest. It’s worth an early visit.

Skyrim (IMO) is really just as spread out and bare at times as Zelda is but the combat in Zelda never gets old for me because many enemies are tough and do ramp up as the game goes on. There are places in the game that you could try to reach now but would get crushed. When you can come back later, it’s worth it. Stuff is hidden all over the place too. Keep a sharp eye.

I’m not actively looking for Koroks but noticing when I’ve come across them. I’ve got almost 20 Korok seeds atm. I have gone Kakarito village but even with talking with everyone I didn’t find much interesting to do there outside of buying/selling.

The difference for me is there’s more hubs and areas of interest in skyrim. Any small town or village is filled with NPCs with their own dialogue and at least a handful of side quests pointing me in the direction of other areas of interest (not counting the dynamic quest stuff either).

Stables and the various towns do that in Zelda too. I find that there is a lot less wasted dialogue in Zelda. Everyone cuts to the chase so I can get back to horseback riding, shield surfing and mountain climbing my way around the world.

Here’s the best tip I can give you. Put all your early Shrine rewards into stamina. You’ll be able to traverse the world much faster. Also, go dink around the castle. Climb the highest peaks. Use your Magnesis and Stasis often to look for things you can manipulate.

There are a number of small quests that lead to nice rewards in Kakariko. They don’t telegraph them to you like Skyrim though. Also, this game isn’t going to push you to go anywhere. Areas of interest are literally everywhere. Skyrim wants to hold your hand more.

You have 20 of 900 Korok Seeds. :)

Skyrim and BotW are filled with different things and, I think, scratch different exploration itches. Skyrim rewards exploration by letting you find lots of quests out in the wilderness. BotW is more about exploring because there’s a cool looking landscape feature over there. It’s full of koroks that reward that exploration instead of quest givers. I think it smartly varies the density of that stuff too. Sometimes you’ll come across several koroks within feet of each other, and other times you’ll be in a truly empty area.

I must be terrible at Koroks because I’ve mapped almost the entire world and don’t even have 80. You say there are 900? There must be signs I’m missing.

I’m not going to check this thread for an answer because I’m playing spoiler free. :)

I have 3 or 4 horses and I think I only ridden them long enough to get to a stable. Im just too busy exploring and using shrines for travel.

One of the upcoming DLC costume pieces includes a Korok sensor! It makes a noise when one is near. Is using that considered spoilerific?

Welcome to the club @KallDrexx. You’re not broken. I played a few more sessions after my last major post above but eventually ground to a halt and have now moved on.

I’ve got to say, I really loved ice blocks lifting things up. The game doesn’t require you use the ability a lot but I always got a kick out of it when it did. My favourite use was an anomaly early on on the Great Plateau when I saw a little whizzing cloud of leaves and sparks under a ramshackle jetty (along that icy river). I had no idea what it was and could not get near it without freezing to death in the water but, returning later, I realised that a log trapped on the water nearby could be dislodged with carefully raised ice blocks, causing it to float downstream and buttress up against the jetty allowing you to get a Korok seed. Very cool.

Despite this, I found most of the Korok seed activities repetitive and dull. Putting apples in containers, completing rock circles, diving through lily pad rings, popping balloons, zzz… the more unique ones, like the above example, were way more interesting because they actually required a bit of thought and were somewhat surprising. It’s just a shame that the ultimate ‘reward’ for Korok seeds is an extra inventory slot–pffft–and an annoying maraca jingle and dance.

The first DLC is out and I’m really happy with it. The Hero’s Path mode is a really cool way to revisit your adventure and find areas you missed, and the main meat of the DLC - Trial of the Sword - took me at least a solid 3 hours to complete. It’s like Eventide Island but on steroids. Fun, difficult, rewarding, and requires you to carefully approach some situations you’ve never seen before. I lucked out and completed it on my first attempt but could easily see this taking multiple tries for others.

Considering that the $20 includes this and something even larger this Winter, it’s well worth the money IMO.

I paid my $20 and all I’ve used is Hero’s Path. For all the hours put in, I’ve not even visited half the map…
Still worth it.

Yeah, I only messed around briefly in Trial of the Sword, but it’s tough. I’m using Hero’s Path to try to find the two Shrines I’m missing. I’ve found some really cool stuff along the way and beaten a Savage White Lynel while looking. :)

I picked up the teleport medallion but I really need to go dig up that Korok Mask as soon as the last two shrines are found. I’m at 302.

I got the DLC on Switch instead of Wii U - after playing the WiiU version for ~120 hours I sold it and got a Switch…now I’ve put 80 hours into this version.

Somehow in 80 hours my exploration has been pretty dang thorough!

I was shocked to see how much of the map I have not touched. Also trial of the sword is impossible and the furthest I’ve gone after multiple tries is floor 14. I gave up and now I’m running around hyrule in a tingle outfit to try and get better at combat. The lizals in particular are fucking me up. But I also was more or less unable to make a dent in level 14

I felt the same way about Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess. It kind of made me question my own judgement, you know? I kept playing, amazed at all these little flaws and annoyances that are smoothed out or gone in other games, and seeing a fairly mediocre product overall, and kept thinking “What am I missing? What am I doing wrong? What am I not seeing that everyone else sees that’s supposedly so amazing? I want to see that too! I’m so jealous!” It’s as if they bought a different game than I did, and I got stuck with some B-side because I put the disc or cartridge in the wrong way.

Yeah, as I said earlier on in the thread one person’s nitpick is another person’s fundamental! :-) One of the reasons I sunk 60 hours into Breath of the Wild before throwing the towel in was to make sure I gave it a fair shake before moving on.

Did you ever play The Wind Waker? I really enjoyed that Zelda by comparison. I also always wanted to check out Majora’s Mask which sounds really interesting and unusual for the series.

I did play the beginning of Wind Waker, when you lose your sister. But it was too much of a pain in the ass to setup the Wii with a Gamecube controller all that, so I got lazy and just it as a Wii most of the time, so I do own Wind Waker, I just didn’t play it. It did seem charming at the start. And yes, I agree that Majora’s Mask sounds intriguing. Though at the time, I was so confused at why everyone loved Ocarina of Time so much, that I gave Majora’s Mask a pass.

This is how I feel about many critical darlings. Pretty much any FPS, no matter how critically lauded, I find utterly dull. People love Bethesda games, but they are never more than ‘ok, I guess’ for me. Playing Skyrim sounds like pulling teeth for me.

Zelda is the absolute best at what it does. There are so many things Nintendo just nails that other games like it fail at. The atmosphere, art design, world building, music are all top notch. There isn’t another game in the genre that can reach the musical heights of the Gerudo Valley or Epona’s song. I could list a dozen songs, the series has really been one of the best. In fact I’d rank it, Metroid, and Final Fantasy as the top 3, and there is a significant gap after that.

And mechanics and puzzle design has been historically very tight. BotW excluded (as I haven’t played it yet), the series has used the mechanics and upgrades to clever effects throughout. Combining powers and tools in interesting ways, and requiring most tools to serve multiple purposes. They never get hard, like Talos Principle type games, but that’s also not the point.

It is clear that Nintendo spends a lot of time and effort considering the user experience, how they’ll play the game. How the design space is structured. The world designs are crafted to help guide the player experience. To set the atmosphere. To introduce new ways of playing, while staying true to the roots of the series and why people love it.

And it may not just be for you. If the music, art, animations, world design and gameplay of Kakiro village doesn’t draw you in, if you get hung up on how the combat doesn’t do XYZ, or something something loot? Then… it’s not your thing I guess.

That said I appreciate and respect how you approach it. Unlike some others who seem to have a hate boner for all things Nintendo…

The only thing missing from BotW is big ass dungeons. The Divine Beasts were fun, but the only one that was remotely challenging was the elephant (because one puzzle took me 2 sessions to figure out). The shrines were bite-sized dungeons, and some of the puzzles were fun, but they could do so much more if they had a bigger canvas to work with.

I imagine the next iteration of the series will add dungeons. They’re a staple of the Zelda series, after all. I want to climb Hebra Mountain, bomb a random ass rock I noticed, and uncover a sprawling tomb filled with death traps and sleeping guardians.