Poll of the Day > Tears of the Kingdom Thread 2

(+) Yeah! (+)

Kill bosses and mini bosses and raid yiga strongholds in the depths, youll get more than enough items for upgrades without dipping into your zonaite.

What did Nintendo mean when they gave the goat man an exposed midriff and had every shot of him focus on it?

SilentSeph posted...

Yeah this is a pain. I honestly do most of my surface exploration on foot. Horses are annoying to track down when you start climbing/gliding and I don't want to abuse Autobuild because I'm saving up for battery upgrades instead

You wont use an zonaite as long as you have the parts out

You guys were so down on the water temple and I was right there with you... Until the low-grav part. I loved it, it felt like something right out of Mario Galaxy. It doesn't make any sense for the water temple, and everything leading up to it sucks, but still.

Also, mirror shields are busted during the day.

LinkPizza posted...

While I think it would have been better to get those shrines earlier, Nintendo probably also cant say what order youll do the shrines in

Actually, they could. The blessing shrines should be fixed for the sake of aligning them with instances where getting to the shrine is the real challenge, but there's generally nothing actually tying any one shrine to any one location (aside from a few that have location-appropriate decor). If they wanted, they could code it to have your 6th shrine be the sneaking tutorial, regardless of which one you entered. That could translate into all non-blessing shrines being randomized (aside from tutorials showing up at fixed points) and weighted so that there's a difficulty progression, or it could remain a matter of having all shrines be fixed in their locations aside from swapping the tutorial shrine with whichever one you enter at the appropriate intervals. They could also just dictate the exact order in which shrines show up, regardless of which location you enter, but that would make replays pretty miserable and I don't think that would be a good idea.

adjl posted...

Actually, they could. The blessing shrines should be fixed for the sake of aligning them with instances where getting to the shrine is the real challenge, but there's generally nothing actually tying any one shrine to any one location (aside from a few that have location-appropriate decor). If they wanted, they could code it to have your 6th shrine be the sneaking tutorial, regardless of which one you entered. That could translate into all non-blessing shrines being randomized (aside from tutorials showing up at fixed points) and weighted so that there's a difficulty progression, or it could remain a matter of having all shrines be fixed in their locations aside from swapping the tutorial shrine with whichever one you enter at the appropriate intervals. They could also just dictate the exact order in which shrines show up, regardless of which location you enter, but that would make replays pretty miserable and I don't think that would be a good idea.

Tbf, maybe its just me, but quite a few of them had themes that fit where they were. The low gravity areas had low gravity shrines, and I think I got more sand shrine in the Gerudo desert That said, I dont think they wanted to randomize shrines Which is why I mentioned they couldnt. I should have said they wouldnt, though Plus, if youre having trouble with a shrine, most people will skip it. It would suck to be forced to play one until you beat it

LinkPizza posted...

Plus, if youre having trouble with a shrine, most people will skip it. It would suck to be forced to play one until you beat it

Even if they were randomized, I'd expect that each new shrine would be attached to whatever location you found it in. It would absolutely not work to find a shrine somewhere, go inside, play around with it for a bit and decide you want to put it off, go find a different shrine, and find the exact same contents inside the new one. That would just plain suck. I'd expect it to be more along the lines of you find a shrine outside, as you enter the RNG chooses its contents, then that shrine will have those contents for the rest of the playthrough.

LinkPizza posted...

That said, I dont think they wanted to randomize shrines Which is why I mentioned they couldnt. I should have said they wouldnt, though

Well, yeah. Obviously they chose not to do it this way. It's still an option to fix the issue of tutorials not being appropriately front-loaded, though, especially if they went with the less random option (just swapping a tutorial shrine with one you'd otherwise have found at that location whenever you reach a given tutorial interval).

adjl posted...

Even if they were randomized, I'd expect that each new shrine would be attached to whatever location you found it in. It would absolutely not work to find a shrine somewhere, go inside, play around with it for a bit and decide you want to put it off, go find a different shrine, and find the exact same contents inside the new one. That would just plain suck. I'd expect it to be more along the lines of you find a shrine outside, as you enter the RNG chooses its contents, then that shrine will have those contents for the rest of the playthrough.

Well, yeah. Obviously they chose not to do it this way. It's still an option to fix the issue of tutorials not being appropriately front-loaded, though, especially if they went with the less random option (just swapping a tutorial shrine with one you'd otherwise have found at that location whenever you reach a given tutorial interval).

What would be better is if they made like a small dungeon that gave all these tutorials And maybe gave you multiple Blessing I would have said make like a bunch of tutorial shrines, but they used those for the new powers, so

In general, I like the idea of spacing tutorial content out a bit instead of just dumping it all at once. It makes it easier to remember, for those that need it, and for those that don't, it means you're wasting a few minutes every couple hours instead of having to slog through a longer continuous period of boredom.

Of course, even better is letting you skip tutorial content if desired. That, and it *really* needs to be possible to scroll through the text manually instead of waiting for the words to fade in and out so slowly.

Did a bunch of sky islands, a bunch of random quests here and there, did the final labyrinth, went around the depths farming minibosses for crystallized charges. I'm missing something like 12 shrines total, like 600 charges to finalize my battery wells. I think I'm going to finish my battery wells then finally move on with the story. At some point I want to go around and kill all the minibosses for the medals, but I might wait for postgame to do that. But in the mean time I'll keep getting a bunch of those in the depths out of the way.

Theres no way Im not duping these dragon items. So glad Im still in 1.1.0

collecting them is SO annoying. Id get only letting you have one of each every 10 minutes, but 4 separate items with a 10 minute cooldown? Really?

I'm basically in like "clean up" mode just going around doing quests and stuff I want to do before I go do the fifth Temple and go beat the game. I'm going to keep playing after I beat it, but it just feels like these certain questlines are things I should do before. Also I'm only missing 6 shrines!

Got the Master Sword

GanonsSpirit posted...

Got the Master Sword

Wasn't that cool

PK_Spam posted...

Theres no way Im not duping these dragon items. So glad Im still in 1.1.0

collecting them is SO annoying. Id get only letting you have one of each every 10 minutes, but 4 separate items with a 10 minute cooldown? Really?

Don't forget the Star Fragments, you need like 100+. Wish I remembered to turn auto-updates off :(

papercup posted...

Wasn't that cool

Yeah, and I'm glad I got the dragon tear about Zelda resolving to turn into a dragon so I knew what was happening.

there isn't really a reason you'd need star fragments unless you really wanted to upgrade all the amiibo armor for some reason

I like upgrading everything because I hate myself

GanonsSpirit posted...

Yeah, and I'm glad I got the dragon tear about Zelda resolving to turn into a dragon so I knew what was happening.

Yeah. I think the third or fourth one I got was her remembering what was said about turning into an immortal dragon, and assumed thats what happened even before the last tear

SilentSeph posted...

I like upgrading everything because I hate myself

Doing the same I mostly done except for a few sets

Finished after 75 hours. Last checklist things were finish my house and get level 4 armors before going to the finale. Overall I really enjoyed the last boss although the last dungeon could have been better.

Unfortunately that is where it all ends for me I think. There is not really anything else I want to do. Now, I am conflicted because I had such a good time for the most part. But my lasting impression is how shitty the incentives are for most side content and how many I left undone for that reason.

For example. I played today after a few days off to check out some things I missed. I died once to the Gleeok on the bridge and never went back there. So, I decided to get revenge. I went and killed it, which was still kind of a challenge with my "endgame" build. And yet, I didn't really feel like there was any reward. Just a couple monster parts, with pretty middling stats.

Next, I went to the plateau and I found a quest where I was supposed to throw some rocks into the chasms and do puzzles with them down there. It sounded fun, but unfortunately, I made the logical conclusion that I was supposed to throw all of them down first, and then do the puzzles later. That is not what I was supposed to do. I did most of one puzzle, walked away to grab a chest, and I came back to found my first rock had despawned. Worse yet, when I teleported back to check if my rock went back to its original location, I found that they had all reset. And I quit the game.

I think the problem with open ended games for me is that I never remember them for every awesome thing I did, it's that I remember how many boring things I had leftover. And then my lasting impression is just that the game is boring. BOTW, that was the game that had me glued to the TV in awe for days. but simultaneously was too boring to finish.

Anyway I loved this game but I'm just philosophizing.

That's always a tricky thing to balance with side content. Mario Odyssey and Kirby and the Forgotten Land were both profoundly enjoyable experiences, right up until the very end of my time with them when I still felt like I wanted to complete them 100%, at which point I had a couple hours of coin/rare stone grinding to trudge through. As far as grinds go, they really weren't that bad, but in both cases they were significantly more tedious than the rest of the games (which were both phenomenal experiences overall), and soured my final impression of the game.

In cases like BotW and TotK, I just kind of accept that I'm not meant to experience everything. I'm generally not one for 100% completion, simply because of how much I have to gamify the experience (that is, approach it specifically with the goal of "I'm going to find everything this game has to offer," instead of experiencing it more organically) to achieve that in many cases, and both BotW and TotK are quite good at delivering an organic-feeling adventure based simply on what I find while I wander through them. Sure, I'll miss out on some cool stuff if I don't methodically search every corner of the world, but that just means there's still new stuff to find on a replay, and I'm okay with that.

Of course, then there's Xenoblade 3, where I did scour the world for side quests (including going through a quest checklist) and do absolutely every piece of available content and still love every minute of it and still want more when it was all over, but that was just because it was such a compelling story and setting that I wanted to experience absolutely everything it had to offer. But not all games can be Xenoblade 3.

I liked Elden Ring where I feel that there were basically 3 tiers of things to do: story, then optional stuff, then extra optional stuff. I got all achievements before getting bored and so I felt like I had a good benchmark of where that line is.

Died to the last enemy alive in Lurelin Village. Then I turned the game off.

Okay so I did the quest to photograph all the lore stones, then I did the storm over the jungle, the construct factory, and the fifth temple. That whole section felt like it's supposed to be a dungeon. A linear combat section, followed by 4 big puzzles you can do in any order, followed by another linear combat section with a boss fight at the end. What I liked about this part: the construct factory. I thought all of these puzzles were really good, the best in the game. What I didn't like: riding the robot. It's slow. It's weak. And I didn't like the boss fight, it was too easy. It's really cool that you get a mech that you ride around wherever you want, and you can put whatever weapons you want on it. Too bad it's not that fun to use. Then I did the Korok Forest cus the Ya-Ha-Has kept telling me something funky is going down there. I wish this was a dungeon. This quest was too short and too easy. But then I completed my last four shrines which were in the forest, and I got the reward for completing every shrine. This thing is weird and cool, and I wasn't expecting anything like this.

Going to go beat the game tomorrow I think!

And yeah I do want to upgrade everything eventually for funsies. I think my post game goal is going to be 100% completing every single region one by one. Every quest completed, every cave checked off, every miniboss killed, every Korok found. Even if I take years to do this, playing off and on I'm going to do it. Next mainline 3D Zelda game probably isn't for like 6 or 7 years off at least anyway.

Do caves get marked on the map?

Yes when you enter a cave it gets marked on the map, and when you kill the bubbulfrog and take the gem that also gets marked on the map.

boobell

Sounds like there's a lot more content than BOTW.

Yes this game is very dense

I did the approach to the wind temple last night, and that was really cool. Great use of the music gradually intensifying with the climb to build tension. I called it a night before actually starting the temple beyond what was needed to be able to save, but I guess I'll see how it goes later.

Depths/Temple spoilers kinda

I encountered Colgera down in the depths and I nearly shit myself when I saw it's faint silhouette in the darkness from a distance, it felt like I was playing Subnautica.

I told myself I would go beat the game today

Instead I built and crashed semitrucks for 5 hours

Wind temple was okay. Definitely more thematically interesting than the Divine Beasts, but in terms of overall scale and structure it was definitely more comparable to them than to more traditional dungeons.

The wind temple boss, however, was fantastic. Not exactly the hardest fight in the world, given that I don't think I got hit even a single time, but that was just plain fun.

it was their take on astel

adjl posted...

Wind temple was okay. Definitely more thematically interesting than the Divine Beasts, but in terms of overall scale and structure it was definitely more comparable to them than to more traditional dungeons.

The wind temple boss, however, was fantastic. Not exactly the hardest fight in the world, given that I don't think I got hit even a single time, but that was just plain fun.

I generally agree. While the Divine Beasts didn't feel like temples, they had temple-like mechanics (i.e., tilt the giant bird mech to open new levels up, etc.). The Wind Temple, by contrast, had more of a look of a temple, but didn't really have a temple mechanic feel. But, I am a sucker for ship settings, and it reminded me of the cool sandship dungeon from Skyward Sword. The boss fight was indeed epic.

The lightning temple was equal parts cool and ass

I beat Tears of the Kingdom! That finale was incredible, even if those bosses were easy. So some thoughts on the game:
Combat is even more fun than it was in BotW. Sure it's the same weapon types, but fuse gives you so many more options to mess around with, mostly with putting different devices and objects on your shield for movement. Next time you raid a monster mining camp in the Depths, put a bunch of bombs on your shields, and go wild with bomb jumping. Also fusing monster parts to your weapons makes them way stronger and more durable. I'll be honest, I never minded weapons breaking in this game, since I was changing it up so often. My only wish is there were more enemy types. Yes there is more variety than in BotW, but it's still not enough. The new minibosses are fun to fight though. Flux Constructs are neat because they're designed around all of your main abilities. You can fight every Flux Construct in the game, and have completely different experiences with every single one. Froxes are terrifying to fight, but if you can shoot its eye and get into a good rhythm of keeping it stunned, it aint no thing. Gleeoks are just plain cool, though easier to take down than I'd like. Frost Gleeoks in particular are neat because you can climb onto the icicles it drops and recall them to get some airtime. Wish there were like 1 or 2 more miniboss types though for more variety.
Story. Okay I'll be honest, the story I think is good. It's just told poorly. Watching the geoglyph memories, even doing them in the correct order, it felt like a lot of scenes were missing from the story. They get the point across, but I wish there was more to it, and that it was more seamlessly woven into the adventure as you complete major objectives. There is also a major theme of sacrifice throughout the story, but I feel that it has poor payoff in the end, especially for Zelda, turning back into a human and forgetting what it was like to be a dragon. Just kind of makes the whole thing pointless for her character? Idk. I think she should have either not been returned to human, or if she has to forget, she should forget Link. But also that final boss fight, where Ganondorf turns into a dragon, and you ride noodle Zelda high above Hyrule. One, it's epic as all fuck, but also, the symbolism all throughout the marketing and trailers and the logo of 2 dragons chasing each other is what came to mind during this fight. Nintendo knew what they were doing.
Exploration: They did what I expected them to do when they announced all those years ago that they were using the same world map and made it feel unrecognizable. It helps that you start in Hyrule Field and go to the Castle early on, which are places in BotW you didn't want to go to until you were stronger/more skillful. So a lot of the early hours of the game feel like you're in places you've never seen, because often times you were chased by Guadians in these places, so you probably didn't take long to look at the scenery. And they put new things to do all over the place. New quests, new shrines and puzzles, Addison, caves, new enemies, new minigames, etc etc. The map is VERY dense with content, even more so than I was expecting. Just roaming around doing things in this game is fun, especially with the new abilities. Ultrahand is incredible, and the amount of different devices and objects they made to utilize it is way more than I was expecting. You can build some crazy contraptions in this game. The two fan hoverbike kind of breaks exploration, but that's the beauty of this kind of system is putting things together to see what you can do. And I use ascend all the time. While exploring out in the world, in shrines, even in combat. There are enemy encounters that were designed with ascend in mind, it's incredible. And the shrine puzzles are much more enjoyable this time around. There are some shrines in this game that I don't know what kind of black magic Nintendo is performing under the hood to make this run, and on the Switch of all hardware, but it's far beyond what anyone else is doing in terms of physics engine capabilities it's unbelievable. How is the Switch not melting while running this game I will never know.
But that's not all, there are two entire other plains of existence besides Hyrule. I was hoping there would be caves in this game. I didn't know there was going to be an entire massive cavern that spans the entirety of Hyrule. The depths are spooky, with scary armored Lynels, and Froxes, and gloomed monsters all over the place, and tons and tons of treasure to find. I just wish that there was more variety to the environments. Everything is grey, with the same trees and rocks everywhere. I remember going to Akkala early on and going into the depths and looking out and seeing massive lavafalls in the distance and realizing I was seeing the underside of Death Mountain. It filled my mind with possibilities of what could be under the desert or Hebra, or the jungle, and was disappointed when I want to those places and the scenery looked the same as anywhere else. That's my one big gripe with the Depths. Essentially though, I like to think of the Depths as the Dark World of this game, and I'm glad they managed to shove that kind of content in here.
The sky islands though, not as great as I was expecting. Lots and LOTS of copy and pasted islands here. There are some islands/archipelagos that are entirely unique, and have things that you won't see anywhere else in the game. There are fun, cool things to do up there. Just wish there was more of that. It is incredible leaping from a high sky island and diving down to the surface, or down into the depths and it's entirely seamless. They even thought to show you the curvature of the earth while you're so high up, it's a really nice touch.
And finally the dungeon content. Okay some of he theming of the dungeons is down right incredible. The Wind and Fire Temples come to mind. The stories surrounding the dungeons are just blegh to me except for the Gerudo story. The Rito are cold. The Gorons got addicted to crack rocks. The water is too gross for the Zora. Big whoop. :| The Gerudo are literally fighting off zombie hordes in the midst of a giant sandstorm. That's awesome. I do think the puzzles are generally better designed than most of the dungeons from BotW. It's just they're still overall not where they should be. I know that BotW/TotK are all about freedom and creativity. So why don't the dungeons feel more creative? The worst is the water dungeon. Wow is it bad. It's so short and the puzzles are so simple, and it's not fun or interesting to explore this dungeon. What happened? Then the Gerudo dungeon conversely almost feels like something you'd see in OoT, and the puzzles all use light and mirrors, which is good. The Construct Factory is great. The puzzles are real tests of your reasoning skills and knowledge of your abilities and how the physics engine works. Too bad the section after the Construct Factory when you ride Robo-Mineru to the Spirit Temple and fight the boss there is so blegh. Robo-Min is a cool idea on paper, but in practice she's so slow and weak and just gets in your way. And the boss Spirit Temple boss is too easy.
But GameFAQs is warning me my post is getting too long, so I'll leave it at this. I loved this game. I've put 125 hours into it and don't want to stop playing. I want to 100% complete this game. I want to keep building weird crazy contraptions. I hope they are taking the criticisms of the lack of enemy variety, and the poor dungeons and champion abilities(yeah did I mention the champion abilities? they're garbage except for the Wind one, and using them is annoying as all fuck) to heart and they can make the next Zelda game a perfect video game. Because other than those problems, they're already there.

the water temple is the dumbest one, where the journey is a much funner experience

Yeah so far I've only done the Wind Temple (which was weak) and the Water Temple (which was even weaker but the low-g effect was fun). I spent a lot of time in the Depths and have 10 full batteries which has made building and exploring a lot more fun

I just finished BOTW. I just have post game and any quests o missed left.

I may have waited a bit too long before doing the wind temple. Once I finished, I went back to Josah to follow up on her quest, and I had already completed the next couple follow up quests (finding the central mine, getting Autobuild, the first Kohga fight). Then Robbie went back to his lab, so I went to visit him, and I already had all of the pad upgrade quests completed because I'd explored so much already. So that was fun.

I cant believe I can dupe Fairies lmao

muscled through the Lynel gauntlet at that coliseum and learned to git gud with perfect dodges but they still cleaved right through me. Went through like 20 fairies before the end

I played a lot of Age of Calamity so I got REALLY good at flurry rushing Lynels, so that coliseum was no big thing for me lol

adjl posted...

I may have waited a bit too long before doing the wind temple. Once I finished, I went back to Josah to follow up on her quest, and I had already completed the next couple follow up quests (finding the central mine, getting Autobuild, the first Kohga fight). Then Robbie went back to his lab, so I went to visit him, and I already had all of the pad upgrade quests completed because I'd explored so much already. So that was fun.

Same thing for me I had done pretty much a bunch of quest, so it was mostly me telling them I finished the quest as soon as I got it

PK_Spam posted...

muscled through the Lynel gauntlet at that coliseum and learned to git gud with perfect dodges but they still cleaved right through me. Went through like 20 fairies before the end

Yeah. I forced my way through that battle I ended up running out of gloom-be-gone food, so I used things that have extra hearts

papercup posted...

I played a lot of Age of Calamity so I got REALLY good at flurry rushing Lynels, so that coliseum was no big thing for me lol

Im much better at parrying when it comes to Zelda, so I was perfect parrying a lot instead Haha

PK_Spam posted...

I cant believe I can dupe Fairies lmao

muscled through the Lynel gauntlet at that coliseum and learned to git gud with perfect dodges but they still cleaved right through me. Went through like 20 fairies before the end

I literally just finished that. I learned you can fast travel away and heal/restock in between battles

Also there are some stairs in that arena, but when I jump off of them to bullet time shoot the Lynels in the face, the stun sound effect plays but they don't actually get stunned. Maybe the devs didn't want us to cheese them that way

SilentSeph posted...

I literally just finished that. I learned you can fast travel away and heal/restock in between battles

Also there are some stairs in that arena, but when I jump off of them to bullet time shoot the Lynels in the face, the stun sound effect plays but they don't actually get stunned. Maybe the devs didn't want us to cheese them that way

I just used rocket shields to stun Same way I fight Gleeoks

Rocket shields are a lot of fun. You can also get instant bullet time when you shield surf on with a Zonai Wing attachment. Although the timing is a bit tricky in between starting the shield surf and drawing the bow - I get it right when I'm practicing and start screwing and getting myself killed during combat

I love putting bombs on my shield and shield surfing in the middle of a pack of monsters. Makes a big explosion and launches you in the air at the same time.