We’d been to the castle a few times already. Once for the memory quest and again to find the shrine inside the basement.
It turns out that we now wish we hadn’t been as completionist before going to kill Ganon. The castle wasn’t very dramatic because we’re just too high level to be dangerous.
We have full level four soldier armour, so full attacks by Lynels hardly knock off a full heart, and we’d stocked up on super weapons and five-banana-dinners, and I’m pretty good at Lynel hunting… so with all that I was god-level carving through all the monster enemies through the entire castle.
Juliane isn’t good in a sword fight, so finishes all enemies with a bow and arrow. We’d stocked up on something like 50 ancient arrows, 100 bomb arrows, and 200 shock arrows. She took out the guardians super easily.
Ganon himself was a challenge, but there was never a moment we thought we would die. It was just a matter of working out the boss fight puzzles, like when and where you had to hit, and the attack animations and how to avoid them.
So now I wish I’d gone to fight Ganon after only about 70 or 80 shrines. That way it would have felt like a real accomplishment. With fewer hearts, less powerful armour, and only the weapons we found in the castle itself, we’d have at least died a few times before the end, rather than killing all the Lynels and Guardians with a total loss of about 10 hearts, and Ganon would have felt actually dangerous.
Final thoughts on the entire game: Epic! One of the best games I’ve ever played! It’s pretty much the only reason we asked for a Switch as a moving-in present, and I’ve no regrets about the hours I’ve put into it.
Loved the exploration, loved the climbing, loved how the story worked into the gameplay and environment.
The shrines are all bite-sized dungeons, which is nice. I’d save them up so they didn’t continually interrupt the exploration, and then do batches of 4 or 8 at a time. That way it felt more like the longer Ocarina of Time dungeons. Deciding how much puzzling to do in any play session worked great for me.
Hated the camera most of the time, but learned how to avoid it fucking me up during fights. Often it felt like I was fighting the camera more than the enemies.
Just checked: 155 hours of Zelda over the last two months.
