I’m surprised her chat didn’t tell her all these things 80 hours ago.
Oh wait, she said no backseat gaming. So much for that.
QT3 Help me! :)
I’ve tried this game twice now and both times I’ve bounced off it. It’s received amazing reviews and general opinion is that it’s great so help me to see what I’m missing (or if it’s literally just not the game for me).
I’ve been through the tutorial area, collected the hand glider and made it to the first village. Thoughts so far…
I hate the combat, I hit mobs approx 4 times and my weapon breaks and then I have to select a new one. It’s cumbersome, my inventory fills up with trash (weapons) and I die a lot.
The world is bland and there is no interesting loot to find (so far).
The crafting is completely monotonous. Is it mandatory or can I get away with crafting the absolute bare minimum or not at all?
I’m willing to put in a few more hours to see if it gets any better. What should I do?
Follow the main quest line or pick a random direction and explore (ala Skyrim)
Any tips would be welcome.
Wandering around aimlessly and exploring was my favorite part of the game, but if you think the world is bland and dislike the combat, it just might not be a game you’re going to like. There are lots of different environments and locations though, so you might stumble upon something you think is cool. Maybe find a high place and look to the horizon, find something that catches your eye, and head toward it. If it still doesn’t click after that, maybe it’s time to move on. I disliked how frequent the combat was but didn’t dislike the actual mechanics of it. It’s certainly better to play it like Skyrim than a linear, story-centric RPG though. The main plot is serviceable, but nothing especially memorable. Some of the shrines have interesting puzzles, so you can seek out them if you like puzzles.
One thing which may help you is a simple mindset change - don’t consider weapons to be the end you’re trying to reach. Weapons are just the ammo you’re collecting to attack enemies with.
A quick way to frustrate yourself with Breath of the Wild is to treat weapons as priceless artifacts which you must preserve at all costs.
On the contrary - weapons are everywhere. You’ll get much better weapons throughout the entire game - weapons which do different things, have different characteristics, and last longer. And when you find those better weapons, they won’t be rare or things you need to hang onto or save for the “right” moment - you’ll find others just like them hanging around too.
You start the game with a limited amount of ammo reserves. Use it and don’t sweat it. Finding korok seeds will let you expand that inventory eventually, and in the meantime you’ll easily find what you need, when you need it.
If you’re not feeling inspired to explore on your own, there’s no harm in following the direct quest lines the game gives you to visit the first couple of towns and eventually your first Divine Beast.
I bet you’re one of those maniacs that actually uses healing items in JRPGs.
Telling me to treat it as a consumable doesn’t help with hoarding psychosis.
Just have to post this hilarious video review:
I bounced off it the first time, after 25 hours. I went back to it 6 months later and completed the game and now can safely say it’s my favorite game. I think where my first attempt went wrong was that I was too focused on following the main quest. I don’t think the game actually is made to work well if you try to just power through the main quest line. It rewards players for turning over every rock, exploring every nook and cranny of the map, etc.
The tutorial plateau is boring until you open the expansion content about 1/2 through the game (if you have the expansion). I recommend following the quest until you get to Kakariko Village and do the combat tutorial in the shrine there (in the tweet from above). From there, pick a direction and go. Personally, I went from Kakariko to Hateno, along the quest, and then went south and explored Lurelin Village, etc… I didn’t pick up the main quest again for another 15 hours of gameplay probably.
If you’re playing it like you really want to get to the end, then you probably won’t have fun. If you can lose yourself in the exploration, I think you’ll come to enjoy it a lot.
Yea I followed the main quest until the first Divine beast. Then I just took my time and explored everything.
The weapon system is annoying at first because the early crap weapons break in like 4 hits. They become more durable the better they get. From that point you also realize how common even the most badass weapons are and you just live your life as a wandering murder machine. One thing to note that will make you less concerned about using weapons is that there is an obvious in game sequence that repeatedly sets the world back to a default state. Basically anything that is not a chest gets reset. So if you find a cool weapon out in the wild, or a monster with a cool weapon, even in a shrine, mark the location on the map and whenever that sequence happens you can farm up more of your favorites. That also works for ore veins, rich fish areas, plants pretty much everything. Pretty much anything that isn’t a chest. Marking down ore veins is how I got rich in the game.
Also, you don’t really need a weapon for most of the fights. This game is at its best when you use your skills and the environment to take out monsters. There is something so satisfying about monster bowling with a boulder down a hill, or smacking monsters around with a giant metal box.
I wish I had these skills!
Arise, thread, arise!
We’ve been playing this since Christmas and it’s terrific, of course. My 8 year old loves physical game guides/books, but my initial searching for one for this game finds them to be more expensive than the game itself? I guess the days of the bradygames guides are over.
This book is phenomenal. It’s not a guide, but it’s a lovely book that your kid will really enjoy. My 8 yr old daughter got it for Xmas and spends at least 30/day looking through it.
I have this guide:
It’s yours if you’ll cover shipping. I played through this game twice now from start to finish and it’s just one of my favorite games of all time, but I haven’t touched the guide in ages, and if someone will get some use out of it I’m happy to pass it along, but I don’t want to pay for shipping. :)
EDIT: I do see that Piggyback (who made this guide) made an expanded one (it covers the DLC and such as well) and it’s a reasonably $27 on Amazon (MSRP $39.99).
Thanks sirs for the suggestions (and Scott, the offer!) – I’ll check those links out
I started up a new game in Master Mode and… Hoo boy. Walk outside, get straight up murdered by the first enemy. I don’t think I even dealt damage to it. The game doesn’t fuck around. After recalibrating myself a little bit, I’m having a blast.
I’m on a Zelda playing marathon in the last few years, playing the original NES ones, Zelda: Link to the past, Minish Cap (my favorite 2d one), dabbled in the Gameboy Color ones but moved on, skipping the DS titles for now, played WindWaker, then Skyward Sword, and now Breath of the Wild. (TP looked a bit too grimdark for me, the N64 titles a bit too crude).
Without boring you all about my oberservations, the thing I’m really liking about it is how the puzzle aspect of it seems better disguised into the gameworld logic now. Whereas in 2D, everything is a bit more abstract and I don’t care that puzzle castles are a thing, but when it goes to 3D and you’re living in the space, you really start to wonder who the hell were these architects that built unusable habitation spaces that center around puzzle solving.
But in BotW, the puzzle dungeons are trials placed to train up the hero who has been diminished by injury, and in that context it really works. In the outside world, you get around just as you’d expect, no set paths or roadblocks beyond your own limitations. Very nice. I’ve only done one Divine Beast (the elephant) but that too felt more like a machine to be navigated, than a puzzle to be solved for no reason other than to challenge the player. Nice!
Man, do not sleep on the N64 games. I hear what you’re saying about graphics, but as great as Breath of the Wild is, Ocarina of Time is right there with it, and Majora’s Mask is so different from all the others I think everyone should play it. Twilight Princess has some excellent moments too, but you could save that for later.
Really though… if you have a 3DS, you can play Ocarina and Majora’s there remastered. They are absolutely amazing games. I played through all of Ocarina of Time with my kids watching and me reading and it was one of the best gaming experiences of my life.
Ocarina blew my mind when it was released.
I figure this is as good a place to put this as any.
The CRPG addict, who has a Desslockian fondness for Western CRPGs (e.g. the Ultima/Wizardry lineages) and dislike for anything magical-mushroomy, decides to give the original Legend of Zelda a whack, with the up-front understanding that it’s not really an RPG. Apparently his readers were begging him to play it, so he caved, and also felt he should probably be more aware of such a landmark game.
It’s an interesting read, as is the comments thread. Mr. Addict kinda leans into his grumpy-gamer attitude here, with predicable results in the responses. Anyway, sort of interesting in a ‘worlds collide’ kind of way. Obviously it’s possible to love both Zelda games and western CRPGs as I assume many here do. And obviously Zeldas and Western RPGs and JRPGs have all been cross pollinating for decades.
I’m a PC gamer, so I never got into JRPGs. Only one I really played was FF7. I played a bit of BOTW on an emulator as a project, and while I appreciated its craftsmanship, really didn’t get sucked in.
I particularly emphasized with his feelings on cutesyness.
If you ever do get around to playing Ocarina just make sure you name Link correctly.