Yeah, I do wonder if just the tap of a shoulder button calling up a new weapon would be less tedious?
Anyway, it’s not enough to put me off the game yet, but I definitely dislike it as a design choice.
Main reason I stopped playing 6 or so hours in was the weapon breaking. In a game where being in the world can be so much fun, constantly taking you out of it, and reminding you you are playing a video game is a huge mistake, at least for me. It doesn’t help matters that the inventory system would be embarrassing in 1998, much less in current gaming.
Being constantly pulled out of the world, and back into my inventory absolutely killed this game for me. I keep meaning to go back to it, but every time I do I quickly put it down for the same reason. One of these days I’ll force myself to stick with it, as I would like to see the entire game.
So I’ve been trying to ignore the constant weapon breaking and playing this more. The world is great and so fun to explore but it feels like I’m mostly tracking down shrines and doing annoying puzzles in them. Is there more to this game than that? What I wouldn’t give for durable weapons and some good old fashioned XP in this game. I think the combat and exploration are so fun here, but the shrine puzzles and broken weapons are just drudgery.
I’m beginning to suspect that this might be the first Zelda game I’ve played that I rather dislike. I’m not sure where all the love this game got comes from at this point, unless lots of people really like solving all those shrine puzzles?
To be fair, the shrines are like isolated puzzles that you might have had clustered in a dungeon in a previous game. I’ll admit I didn’t mind them, but that I might take exception to doing again if I replayed the game, given how spread out they are and how important they are to ‘levelling up’.
Stop trying to run around with the same weapon the entire time. Use different things. It’s really not a big deal.
As for the shrines, yes, many people enjoy those, myself included. They’re bite sized Zelda-style dungeons.
As for the love, it’s because it’s just a massive open world of fun where you tackle things in whatever order you feel like, or don’t… and just run straight to Ganon, or you explore every little side quest you can find. Maybe you help some people build an entirely new town? There’s all sorts of things you can do that aren’t the main quest. It’s just plain fun to play.
I did enjoy most of the shrines, and there are enough you can skip the annoying ones if you’re not a completionist. And really the “exploration” shrines weren’t about the shrines themselves, those are the ones where the shrine just holds the reward for some exploration or mystery you solve in the over-world.
The weapons never bugged me much, though that’s easier to say from the other side. In the total time I spent with the game, the time spent scrounging for effective weapons and feeling limited by what’s available and what I can hold was relatively short. But that time is all at the beginning, so yeah, I get that frustration.
I would encourage anyone to stick with it despite frustrations with the weapon systems. If you’re really not feeling the shrines though, that may be something you don’t come around on, I don’t know.
The shrines varied between neat little puzzles and bullshit tilt control (thankfully few but I genuinely hated most of them). If you are playing handheld mode, the tilt ones sucked hard.
While somewhat true, I vastly preferred the actual dungeons of Zelda of yore. Why some of the best parts were the Divine Beasts, this is basically what they were.
Genuinely a net negative for me. But that’s because I dislike the Bethesda/ Elder Scrolls style game world. A lot of people love them, and commercially they are a good bet, I just dislike that direction.
Still I did put 140 hours into the game this year.
I picked this back up a few days ago. And I’m having to ignore the terrible idea of weapons lasting a fight or two. So my great hero is carrying around a mop, and shit spear, and a couple of awesome swords that I dare not use more than a swing (one does like 22 damage so a single swing is all that is needed) due to me not wanting to break them. I started using bows since I can somewhat easily buy new arrows and the bows seem to last much longer than melee weapons. But the real issue is trying to mine stuff that gives you a few chunks of whatever and goes thru a couple of weapons. Not sure the economic hit I’m taking by breaking so many weapons is worth it. But we’ll see.
All that said, I’m enjoying myself. I don’t recall seeing the little red ! above side quest givers so if that is a change, it’s a welcome one. I’m only sort of trying to follow the main patch. I think I’ve only opened two areas outside of the beginning one. But I finally broke down and used my guide to figure out which area I should hit next. It was one I had to do a little backtracking on so I’m glad I finally checked the guide. And the world is more full than I remember (think I’ve only hit two actual towns, but still).
Really want to be able to get past the weapon thing, but it’s still always there when I’m trying to decide to attack a group or not. I’m hoping that I’ll push thru and get to a point where I don’t notice it so much.
Weapons and shields are so abundant do not worry about breaking them. Super awesome items respawn after every blood moon. If you like that fire sword or lynel bow, you can get it again.
I’m thinking of replaying this on hard mode. I remember that being annoying. Especially the master sword trials, some of those would be impossible with healing enemies
If you’re talking about goblin clubs and the bone arms then yes. Those are everywhere. But those break so quickly I spend more time picking them up than the fight itself. I’m trying to remember where there were some early ruins that seemed to have a ton of old swords and stuff. Not great, but better than the trash drops of the goblin things. Also, the new area will have some better stuff too I hope.
And it’s not just that the weapons break frequently–it’s having to fumble with navigating the inventory multiple times mid-fight that I find really frustrating.
There are definitely spots where rare weapons spawn. Usually there is a shrine nearby. Mark them on your map, recollect them when they break. Once you get a few shrines unlocked and have progressed in the game some, you should always have a way to restock your supplies. Also mark where enemies that drop good weapons are, like the wizards that drop wands. I distinctly remember a big tree stump that had a lightning sword or fire sword in the middle, I’d get that one every blood moon. The only one I remember being really hard to get was the Hylian Shield in the palace, you gotta work for that one.
Bombs. Bombs and hammers. Never use weapons on rocks unless it is the drill shaft or a hammer.
As you progress in the game the clubs and basic weapons get phased out. By mid/ end game you are routinely getting high tier weapons (that 22 damage sword is a filler weapon by the end, 35 becomes baseline) and those last longer and do more damage. By the time the Royal Claymore and Gerudo scimitar become your every fight weapons, they last long enough you won’t be cycling very often.
You should go farm some lizalfos. Their boomerangs are metal, so durable, and hit quite hard. The tri fork lizalfo boomerang was my go to weapon for the middle half of the game.
Really I think they overtuned the beginning and undertuned the end game weapons. It is super annoying at the beginning of the game, trivial and relatively toothless at the end of the game. Plus each of the divine beast quests gives you a high end weapon of a different type, and these can be reforged infinitely at the village you get them for a small resource cost. Only the Zora spear one doesn’t hold up as an end game weapon really. But by end game the Rito bow, Gerudo scimitar, Goron hammer, and Master Sword become your primary armament, with Royal Claymores, elemental great swords, spears, etc. forming the rest of your inventory.
You’ll quickly stop even finding those weaker weapons - enemies fairly early in the game start dropping soldier gear.
Awesome! I actually thought about that last night after I’d broken a couple of weapons mining a few nodes. But that was the last thing I did before shutting down so I didn’t get to test it. Glad it works.
And thanks for all the advice about gear. Like I said, I’m still early on. I kind of got stuck at one end of an area with the surrounding areas being much to lethal for me. Now that I know the next area to go to on the main quest line I’m assuming it’s going to be a bit more forgiving. It just took some backtracking and looking at the guide to realize I’d missed a road.
Yeah. There are a few things that work better for some activities than others. And it’s pretty intuitive. An axe can cut down trees faster and take less damage than a sword. (a bomb works better still) A hammer basically one shots nodes and takes minimal damage. (so does a bomb) Torches last longer when on fire than a stick or wooden spear.
One reccomendation is, when you find an environmental weapon, is mark it on your map. They respawn, and so if you find the royal claymore on top of the kokiri tower you can put a weapon marker on your map, so that you remember that location and can fast travel to collect it when you need to resupply.
I also marked locations where Hinox and Lynels spawn. They are a great source of high tier weapons. Farming them is a great strategy. Once you get to the end game they become a primary source, and part of why you don’t need to worry about breakage much.
So, this has a randomizer now, apparently.
I would probably replay the game with a randomizer that maintains the overall structure just for some variety, but a wacky total randomizer seems a bit much.
Now that everyone attention is on Elden Ring, I decided to play this!
It will be my first Legend of Zelda, btw. These last years I played for the first time at Mario games and liked them, so I thought, hey time to try another Nintendo game!
So as I’m coming 5 years late to the party, I shouldn’t expect my comments to have any kind of feedback.
As I understand, this game adopted for the first time a bit of the western open world template (vast open land, towers, enemy camps, gathering ingredients) but the difference is all the cool and interactive systemic mechanics they put. From free climbing to temperature, to elements like fire, shock, frost, etc, to freedom to use your powers to improvise solutions. That apart from the Nintendo magic ™.
I finished the tutorial area, and I got a tower and 3 shrines done in the first area of the real open world, on my way to my first goal, reaching a village. It appears to me a great game, but you know, again, I’m a bit late to the party with the comment, at this point the game has been enshrined already as a classic.
One striking thing I saw is how much Sable had stol… err got inspired by it. I knew the free climbing mechanic with the circle as stamina indicator (which can be upgraded) was taken from Zelda BOTW, but I also have seen in a shrine a piston that pushes stuff in a diagonal direction that is -exactly- the same as in Sable.
Something I liked is that isn’t very hand holding. Being my first Nintendo RPG I didn’t know how it was going to be. I liked how still in the tutorial area you have to discover where the 4 shrines are, how to get there, and how to protect you from the cold to reach two of them. The game tries to gently help you (there are spicy berries just before reaching the cold area, on the main road to it) but that’s it.
Once I got outside the first area, I’m noticing the first shrines at least, serve still as tutorials, teaching you gameplay concepts (water can have currents, you can use air drafts with the paraglide, etc).
To an extent. I think the game reimagines the Western open world template into something more organic.
The towers are there, but that’s about it in terms of structural similarities. Enemy camps respawn and are “consumable” in a way. Same with weapons and everything else. There’s an absurd lack of icons in the map, that places a very different emphasis in exploration and open-worldness that is very un-Western (or at least un-AAA)…
It’s basically taking the idea of what open world is, but developing it in a very different direction. Which is perhaps why I loved the game while I generally dislike open-worlds.
My biggest issue with it is the lack of bespoke dungeons (just a few, and pretty small) and them being substituted by samey shrines. I get the production imperatives that led to those decisions, but I have great hopes the sequel (with an engine and a design philosophy already in place) can actually produce the extra content the game was missing. Still one of my favorite games of the last 10 years or so. Tryly groundbreaking imho.