I beat Ganon. Some thoughts:
-Overall, fantastic. The scale, the polish, the sense of history. Piecing together what happened 100 years ago was very fun. Felt Heaven’s Vault-y.
-I went pretty directly at the main quests. I snuck around a lot, so I didn’t get in many fights. Meaning I didn’t have much practice fighting, and not super OP gear. I upgraded one piece of armor, one time.
-A mechanical gripe: it feels like if you use one of the multi-charge abilities, you should “waste” the rest right away, so it starts recharging immediately. I wonder why they designed it like that.
-I went to the Zoras first, since the game steers you in that direction. After that, I tried to go to the lava beast, but didn’t have anything to keep me cool, so I bailed and went to the Gerudo beast.
Then I fought the lava and bird beasts. Mechanically and puzzle-ly, I enjoyed both, but they didn’t give the same vibe as the previous two. The Zoras and Gerudos really felt like there was a story between them and Link and Zelda.
-I know Zelda plots are pretty straightforward, but this felt like a slight letdown on the setting. They set up all these events 10,000 years ago, and the goddess, and the princess and the knight bound together through time, and the precursors. And it just turned out, Link beat Ganon! The end.
I was expecting… something. Maybe Ganon was a Sheikah that thought, “YOU AM PLAY GODS”. Maybe Link is actually the avatar of the goddess. What is the connection between the princess and the knight? More on that in a bit.
-What a horny game! As previously mentioned, the sharks. (“Oh yeah ride me Link while you battle the divine beast!”) Zelda sleeping in the Amazon’s arms. Everyone hitting on Link constantly. I think the silent protagonist does a lot of lifting here. Somebody says something, silent, meaningful look by Link. At any rate, you can read into it a lot.
Who is Link anyway? The amount people call him “boy” made me think the Hylians doth protest a bit too much.
Link dresses as a woman to get into the Gerudo village. And everyone is super interested in the Sheikah technology Link has. Sheik, aka Princess Zelda, disguised as a man. You’re always praying to the goddess. Zelda did put him in the shrine of resurrection.
I thought there was more to the story there. Could have been interesting if the princess was the knight.
Link thirst
The BOTW sequel release date has been moved from 2022 to Spring 2023. All I can say is “sure, take the time you need”
Fine with me. We are on our third playthrough, and we’re at the “okay, let’s collect all the korok seeds” stage.
I’m on my 2nd play through and I’m completing things at such lightning speed in comparison to the first play through.
Maybe I can get all 900 Koroks before #2 is released.
I only played it once, and didn’t do all those DLC. Maybe I’ll give it a redo after I finish Bowser’s Fury and Kirby.
So I’ve got a year to work through the DLC.
Set your calendars. BOTW2 5/13/23:
So I played Breath of the Wild like four years ago. I was itching to replay it for a while and so I started doing that on Friday in the wake of the official release date for the sequel being announced.
It is still an absolute delight. Even with half-remembering most of it (yeah, that’s a sentence) it is still just incredibly enjoyable. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game where just being in the world and experiencing as such is such a delight
You can spend hours just tracking across the world on foot and never get bored. It is actually kind of a problem with “oh, I should probably go to sleep, but I still really want to see what is up with that lone tree in the distance. Oh, and I still need to go to that shrine I marked earlier!”
I was just playing myself this week after the announcement.
I totally agree with you the sheikah tablet telescope view and map tools its like the ultimate expression of you see that mountain, you can go there from the Skyrim e3 video. The art style even enhances this because the pastels and shading make things at a distance truly obscured and mysterious.
I never actually finished it because I was playing during my sons first few months at night when I couldnt get back to sleep after he woke me up, but then he started sleeping more regularly and I got busy during the daytime/playing other games on PC.
I still haven’t played BotW. I really need to, but the time commitment is intimidating.
It takes as long as you like. The only strictly required time to “beat” the game is the time it takes you to get out of the starting area and the time it takes to get to and beat ganon. Everything else is optional.
If you stick to the main quest and resist the urge to do tiny side quests and korok seeds, the game takes a very reasonable amount of time.
And even if you DO go all in on side quests and korok seeds, the game is still going to take less time than one of those big JRPGs.
I do feel however if you are trying to engage with certain subsystems you get pulled into all of them even if not trying to be completionist. Like if you are trying to do shrines w/strength challenges to get more health/stamina you end up needing more weapons and you run into weapon inventory limitations so you’re doing koroks etc.
That said, its a game that lets you do really, really small goals explore x area, do 1 shrine, look for koroks in this area, run up that mountain to see if there are any shrines, etc. Theres usually a small self-driven task you can do in 15 minutes that is meaningful.