The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (contains spoilers)

Well, I managed to beat Ganon.

For the first part I ended up only beating him because I used Urbosa's Fury and in the last part, Revali's Gale became important on the final blow.

The flames he tosses around create updrafts that will get you high enough to pop that last target as well.

(Me, I got lazy, and had an Ancient Shield for the auto-reflect [before I started practicing with the Perfect Parry mechanic], and a bunch of Ancient Arrows fired from an Ancient Bow for the first part of the fight. )

Is it easier playing BOTW after already playing it? I'm thinking of quitting my Wii U file and buying a Switch copy, but I'm a good 30+-50+ hours into the game. I don't know whether it'll be fun or not to do everything all over again. I presume it'll be quicker this time but the dungeons are such a pain in the butt even with tutorials.

I'm playing Master Mode, which is basically replaying it. It is easier the second time around IMO. It won't be any faster though! If you love this game, experiencing it again will be its own reward though.

Master Mode was tedious, not hard. You do a lot more sneaking in the early game, so you don't break your superfragile weapons. Then you get that Sheikah armor (and/or the Majora's Mask if you have that DLC) and nothing is a problem anymore. Alternatively, you get all three bits of the Barbarian Armor and start leveling it, and then literally nothing is a problem anymore, because it implies you've farmed Lynels for weapons and monster parts.

And a game getting easier after you play it the first time is normal. Once you learn the mechanics and enemies, now you can exploit things to your heart's content. It took a long time for me to git gud at ALTTP. Then I became a regular speedrunner.

BotW definitely gets easier with experience. Granted, I'm not a habitual gamer (BotW was the first game I completed in over a decade). But it's way easier for me now than it was when I started out. I'm still learning new strategies.

So one thing that really tickled me about the Trials of the Sword was that room where you get the Master Sword back. How there's a ring of glowing decorations on the walls that I suddenly realized was the horizon as seen from Central Hyrule, stylized. With the four Divine Beasts lurking in their regions.

Also, when the Sword is totally powered up and Link returns to the Korok Forest, Fi does her chime. Given the only other time in BotW that we hear Fi is in the memory of Fort Hateno, it's moving that she "speaks" at the end of the Trials.

The one thing I didn't like, was after 120 shrines, at the end of the game, you get this amazing set of Link standard armor and the requirements to upgrade it to 4 stars is.....GRINDY AF. Like...wow, so many dragon parts, star fragments and other crazy stuff. I've not upgraded that set to this day.

Ehhhh. There are better sets.

The only better set is the Ancient Armor, and even that’s only because of its set bonus.

I fully upgraded it when I got it so that way I could wear it and use the Master Sword and Hylian Shield when I fought Ganon.

For pure stats, comparing everything with their fully upgraded numbers the Ancient and Soldier armor sets match the defensive numbers of the classic outfit, and the set bonus for Master Sword beam range doesn't really mean that much (unlike other set bonuses, the beam up requires L4 upgrading).

The Soldier armor offers no set bonus and attracts lightning, making it the least useful set of the three. It also requires a lot of Lynel parts (four hooves, two guts per piece) for each piece's L4 upgrade. It does have the advantage of being relatively inexpensive to acquire, though, and even up to L3 doesn't take that much in the way of materials.

The Ancient set not only gives Ancient Proficiency (+80% damage to Guardian and Ancient weapons) set bonus, but is a little more resistant to Guardian lasers. The two Giant Ancient Cores needed for each piece to upgrade to L4 might be a bit problematic, though, given the rarity of GACs. Very expensive, in both rupees and required parts, and is unavailable until the Akkala Ancient Tech Lab has its furnace lit.

(Amiibo armor sets max out at 20 points/piece, so not an issue for stat-based analysis.)

Edited by Nohbody on Nov 6th 2018 at 5:23:20 AM

BOTW is fun but it doesn't seem like the type of game that's played repeatedly. It's not like OOT or TP, where I can play it probably yearly and not get bored. It's too open-world to play over and over. There are too many things to do and the world is too big.

I can see the appeal for speedrunners, but playing the game the normal way seems tedious even if you know what you're doing.

Edited by Pichu-kun on Nov 11th 2018 at 10:28:13 AM

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree. Games like The Witcher 3 or TES, or Fallout, etc., those are games that have endless replayability because of multiple endings, multiple playstyles, and other things to keep players coming back. Now, you can sort of constrain yourself to one particular playstyle in BOTW, but not in a way that's satisfying. And there aren't really multiple endings; just one ending that gets expanded on based on how many main quests you've done.

BOTW is a great game. But I haven't found motivation to play through it again after I did everything on Master Mode. BOTW felt like it was trying to be an RPG at times, but it fell short in a lot of ways.

Combat really isn't great though. Fighting more than one enemy at a time is a nightmare.

I actually like fighting multiple opponents. It was a frantic dash of trying to grab weapons that the monsters drop.

It's too sticky to disengage from one enemy to face another and putting up a shield requires TWO button presses if you have a two-hander weapon.

That's why I try to keep a Blizzard Rod on me at all times. Run away until the enemies are all in the same general direction, wave the rod once, then either start picking off the weaker monsters or whale on the strongest one until the rest unfreeze.

I suppose that's the moment where you get creative with your bombs, arrows, bomb arrows, and any mass hitting weapons you might have.

I'm also not too good at fighting multiple enemies to be honest.

Master Mode is kicking my ass. I've gone back to normal to do a few more Koroks.

Finish the Master Mode tutorial, paraglide off the plateau, get Majora's Mask, then do the rest of Master Mode.

I ended up having a vivid, semi-lucid dream about this game last night and what happened within it made me think; it'd be cool if we got a sequel in this style and they had a side-mode that let you do a create-a-character of the different races and gave them their own stories and abilities along what Link is doing in the main story.

it made me sit down and spend some time thinking of theoretical of that situation and I realized I could see them aligning with gameplay niches pretty well too; Link as the Jack of All Trades, Shiekah as the stealth experts, Gorons couldn't glide or use bows but take less fall damage, turn into missiles while falling, climb super fast and are really tanky, Rito are fragile but can glide for almost no stamina and gain height for using stamina, Zora can swim for no stamina and have significantly better dodges but hurt more with elemental damage, and Gerudo are similar to Link but better with combat and shield surfing but not as good with climbing, also only Gerudo and Shiekah can use horses. And if they keep the environmental system, 3 of the 5 would have in-built resistances to their natural climate.

Edited by NaraNumas on Nov 6th 2018 at 1:46:25 PM

So, a fusion of Breath of the Wild and the transformations from Majora’s Mask.

I’d play it.

Edit: I’d go a little further than just stamina-free swimming for the Zora, though. Like in MM, there would need to be underwater swimming with full maneuverability and lake-bottom running, with the environments and puzzles to match.

Edited by HeraldAlberich on Nov 6th 2018 at 1:36:47 PM

Thre is a balloon Korok under Hylia Bridge

I hate the developers so much

There's also a tree branch resting most of the way up against one of the pillars under it that you need to take for another Korok. In fact, Bridge Hylia has several Koroks.

Edited by TheHeroHartmut on Nov 7th 2018 at 10:06:56 AM

WHAT

That tree branch was ANOTHER one?!