I have found you’ve always gotta give a game a fair go. Initially a lot of games are kinda meh…till you start getting your bearings and getting into the vibe.
Wind Waker was totally meh for me when I started. I hate toon shade as well. Reason why I didn’t play it right away when it came out. But it ended up being my fave Zelda game. Freakin ground breaking.
Another BIG example for me was this game called The Sphinx and the Mummy. That game is SHIT at the start. The art is pretty bad and the animations are not too good. BUT…at the time, we had bad weather, I had no games, so I played it. It was freakin amazing. Really cool puzzles, loads of fun. They just failed at the tutorial portion of the game.
Had kind of the same experience with Majora’s Mask. It wasn’t Wind Waker. So I was disappointed. After playing for a while…i found that game amazing.
So with that, I give every game I play a chance, till you get to the core gameplay part of the game before I make any judgement. Forget the look, nostalgia, comparing with other games…it’s all about mechanics and design. A good game is just a good game.
Yeah sometimes I’ll be on the land thinking hmm what’s an easy way to get back up and then bam, green rock.
I kinda wonder if they’ll go trilogy on this and do a 3rd one. Or if Nintendo have properly said goodbye to this format/look.
They’ve really created a solid cast of returning and new characters who are coming into their own.
I almost started to get a sense in the first area that one day, we might even get Zelda’s that say goodbye to Link as the main protagonist. Because important things were happening to other characters here in Totk, and not Link (yet).
I’m playing this (started today) in parallel with Ocarina of Time on my 3DS. No time to explain why this is happening at the moment, as I barely have time to play either one at all. My point though, is that it’s a very interesting contrast, and enjoyable.
Speaking of FromSoftware, doing Bloodborne (remastered). Never played Souls games…tried Demon’s Souls a little and found it too hard. But now am digging Bloodborne.
I feel like I’m still kinda out on spoilers, it’s weird. For the first part and dungeon I kinda checked in on some YouTubers after the fact to see how they rolled. But now I dunno, I feel like anyone could go anywhere, so I can’t really check content anymore without spoiling something else.
crop circle spoiler
I heard that actually with memories, it’s worth doing them in order, do what Impa says and go to the forgotten temple first, that way you can get a map of the order. Otherwise you wind up getting them all out of order which can be a bit naff given how good the cut scenes can be
I actually hot tailed it to the Great Plateau just to see what was up. Pretty much loads of one hit kill bokoblins is what was up. Got outta there.
But man this game is unrelenting. I feel SO weak. Breath of the Wild was a cinch in comparison. I’m sure it’ll open up at some point.
Also I’m noticing the auto save is a little less forgiving this time around. Like if u die you might be back a bit before where u died. Botw had a habit of regularly autosaving for you. Feel like I need to dial in a manual save now sometimes if I can’t be bothered doing that climb I just did or whatever.
Chatting Underground
Was digging the Depths a bit tonight. Found some great loot down there. That whole section really just blows my mind. It adds a whole other level - and I’m finding info in the sky ties to what you can find down below. I just found this gnarly mine with loads of Zonaite to plunder and this great depths jacket.
I’m also feeling like there’s a bit more depth to characters this time around. People seem to regularly update their lines or their tale, like checking in on
location
Lookout Landing
things definitely seem to change up and move along with different chats and whatnot
Yeah, at this point I’m only checking things online if I need to know information (like, there’s one shrine I just couldn’t figure out, and it’s because I didn’t have the item you get from Purah after doing the first story quest). I’ve seen some really funny builds and people cheesing the puzzles with capsules, but I’m frankly too lazy to do that sort of thing. Except for
spoiler for two of the towers
the tower that has a goblin camp around it and the one that’s on a huge rock in the middle of a lake. I built an absolutely massive bridge and just walked up to both of those.
Yeah it’s brutal. Everything one or two shots Link, and it’s very easy to stumble into an area full of enemies that do 5+ hearts of damage by accident. I’ve actually enjoyed getting bodied because it has been so surprising/ refreshing, but it’s signalling to me that it’s time to do some story content and some shrines.
I actually dislike this, especially when it’s vendors/ characters that give you things.
character/Inventory expansion spoiler
Hetsu. I was pretty sad when he just left after opening up two slots. I looked up all of his locations just so I can beeline to him when I need to.
There are a number of ways the three layers are connected. It’s little things like this that really distinguish the genius of these developers.
I had been saying I hope they’re feeling the heat from FS/ER and it seems they did because TotK has an edge to it no other Zelda game does. It’s as @mattleaf says, very unforgiving (relative to the Zelda franchise) and other elements make it feel very 21st century whereas BotW in a lot of ways was still very old school.
Got ultra hand after ascend and am now in the Shrine for Fuse. Gotta say ultra hand is pretty janky. I can’t seem to rotate stuff the way I want and often drop contraptions into the abyss when trying to place them somewhere. While I generally admire that controls and mechanics are almost not explained, there could have been an explanation how to detach stuff (grab and waggle with the right stick). It is a lot of fun though building huge garbage contraptions to cross chasms. Still wish I had a hangglider quite often.
