Agreed the implementation of those skills makes zero sense. And I went NW first too by random luck. Well I tried to go SW first and I didn’t have the gear to do it.
I think the NPCs tell you to go NW. I was screwing around for days, but I finally decided to progress the story a bit so I followed their lead.
Still looking for that Korok guy. I found him once, then he said he was going east. Haven’t seen him since. I went east too!
Having down on the crosspad call your horse seems like a bad design, since I generally never have a horse near me that can be called.
Like, if you are gonna make that a primary, permanently mapped input, make it like it was back in OoT, and let you summon your horse from anywhere.
But I kind of know why they didn’t do that, because they want to encourage the other ways of getting around… but it does make the horses seem kind of pointless most of the time.
All of this is fairly minor in the grand scheme of things though, as the game is awesome overall.
Ya unless there’s a recall somewhere in the game like the previous one, the horse is largely pointless. I really don’t understand the point of being able to haul stuff with it either. Maybe it’s something later in the game. I took a bit of a break the last week.
They do hint that you should go NW first yes, but you’re free to ignore it.
Korok guy should be in lookout landing. Speaking of which, it’s silly how you’re supposed to pick up every damn rock to find koroks. I just have a map open on my iPad instead.
TOTK does supposedly have the teleport items, although I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’m not playing obsessively.
It’s pretty obvious when you should pick up the rock, imo. Like, wow, there’s a single rock in this hard to reach place, it’s probably a korok! Maybe I’m missing dozens of koroks by not lifting every rock I see, but so far my instincts have been pretty good.
It’s not, though. If you look it up, there are one thousand Koroks in the game. They put so many in because they assume players will miss the vast majority. This induces low-level gaming anxiety where every rock I pass is a missed opportunity. And yet when I pick them up I’m invariably disappointed. This is poor gameplay.
Now you could argue that the 200 seeds from “I need to find my friend” Koroks is plenty of inventory expansion so the needle in haystack ones don’t matter. And that is true-- but the game would actually be better off if those other ones were simply removed.
I can’t even find the korok king so I’m not sweating it. Koroks are abundant.
For me the Korok king just showed up one day in the original lookout town.
I blurred that as a spoiler, just in case, but I don’t really think it’s a spoiler.
I said that like 2 posts up so hopefully not!
I think you guys are sleeping on the Goron power. He’s great for breaking rocks/conserving bombs, and he’s great at knocking down dangerous enemies or one shotting annoying electro bats/chuchus.
My wife loves the exploration but hates the combat; in BOTW she’d find a safe place and chuck bombs until most of the enemies are dead; now she runs around and chucks Gorons whenever he’s off cooldown.
The temple with Goron is where I took a break. I was finding the track section to be tedious.
I have an infinite durability mod running so I just whack the rocks with my blunt weapon. I also use an infinite arrow mod.
But sure, without the mods I can see him being useful to save your weapon/bow/shield (with a cannon attached) durability, arrows, and bomb flowers.
Fun fact:
With decent stamina and the rewind skill, you can brute force through almost anything.
My girlfriend couldn’t find him either, and then she did! I’m sure it will happen to you, too. Sadly his music this time around is not as festive (Hestive?).
There was some discussion upthread about unique weapons and I didn’t see it mentioned how to recover them: the bargainer statues in the depths sell copies of the unique weapons that come from treasure chests once you’ve acquired them.
I couldn’t get into BOTW in two tries but TOTK has captured me. It’s so much better streamlined and free.
The world still seems pretty barren and colorless, but with the extra creation options and ability to create your own color, it feels more real.
Even as I shoot fireballs out of the mouth of my flying fire hydrant.
I’ve played through most of the main story so far and a decent amount of the side content. Recently, I listened to the latest Giant Bombcast podcast where they continued to heap praise on this game on a weekly basis since it was released. I can’t help but feel like the GB crew (and tbh a lot of games media) have focused so much on what the games does right while overlooking some key issues in its design.
For me, the combat system never really clicked, and it was frustrating how much damage enemies do. Even at the early parts of the game, some of those robots can basically one-shot you. I also ran into some inconsistent hit detection when blocking and dodging which resulted in frustrating deaths several times.
Though I enjoyed the construction mechanics and puzzles, I still don’t really like crafting food and upgrading weapons. Since strong weapons seem like a rare commodity, I always felt like I was wasting them if I used them against basic enemies. I also did not like how hitting items/switched also wears down weapons. As for food crafting, I just don’t like this kind of mechanic in any game, so of course I didn’t like it in this.
I thought the quests (and the characters) leading up to the temples also kind of felt same-y. I definitely think the side quest stuff is more interesting than much of the mainline stuff. The story is good, but it’s mainly shown through video vignettes instead of through the gameplay. The shrines were good for the most part, though I don’t like combat shrines at all.
Lastly, I really dislike the temperature mechanics. They are annoying and don’t add anything meaningful to the game.
TLDR: I think TotK is a flawed masterpiece. It is certainly the best Zelda game and maybe the best game released on Switch. Still, out of the other 10/10 games I’ve played this year (Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3, Persona 5), I think it comes up a bit short.