The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild

[Jay 37,267]

Yea I've been playing RPGs my entire live Mark - probably longer than you have?

 

And Zelda is not an RPG, its an action-adventure game.

[Wojo 2,453]

1 hour ago, king mark said:

Sounds to me like you really like RPG's and should have been playing more of them on the Ps4 (like me)

Are there a lot of Zelda RPGs on the PS4? 

[King Mark 3,624]

there's a lot of other good ones

 

 

[Wojo 2,453]

You want Jay to get a PS4 so you can play RPGs together? That's a great, friendly idea. 

[Jay 37,267]

I have a PS4 Wojo. 

[Wojo 2,453]

Finally. Now you can play all the same games as King Mark but not at the same time because he doesn't do multi-player games but for some reason gets off on other people having the same systems that he does. 

[mstrox 6,637]

Last night I figured I'd play Zelda for an hour or so, and then go to bed early, around 10:30 (tired from shoveling).  I beat a dungeon I had been stuck on the day before and then entered a new area.  After that, it became a game of "just one more" - oh, there's a stable.  oh, there's a shrine over there.  oh there's the tower.  oh, there's another shrine - etc. etc. until it was 2am. 

 

Still loving it.  I'm approaching the end-game (seems like I have one more dungeon and the big boss), but excited by the prospect of endless exploration (dozens of side quests I've activated but haven't touched, likely dozens of shrines I haven't found, etc).

[Jay 37,267]

Ha totally know how you feel!

 

I got a horse last night and really enjoyed how if you know you want to go somewhere that a road leads, you can just get him going on the road then idly look around while you're heading there.  Of course, often I jump off because I still something shining I want to investigate!

 

Along those lines, my only goal last night after finishing the cooking with Koko sidequest was attempt the sidequest about fighting the monsters on Hatena Beach.  Now, I hadn't climbed the tower for that region to fill in the map, so I figured I should find the tower first so I'd be sure where the beach was.  Well, after my horse and i followed the road out of the region I did have filled in, I wasn't sure where to go.  Eventually I found the tower in the distance and thought I could see how to get there but had to leave my horse behind.  Of course the tower ended up being on the other side of a river in a canyon, but  luckily I found a rock bridge that crossed the river.  Then once I got to the tower, it was covered in spikey thorns I couldn't destroy!  I tied a ton of times trying to climb up that damn tower.

Anyways once all that was done I made my way to the beach and tried killing all the monsters there but died a few times trying and had to go to bed for the night cause I was so exhausted.  I think I need better weapons before attempting this though; like maybe some of those bomb arrows I found for sale in Hateno village (speaking of that village, I had been there before but I guess hadn't explored it in the daylight; I talked to a bunch of character and even got a tour of the town).

 

Oh I just remembered, the real reason I wanted to fill in the map was find that gate by that misty mountain that the one guy who told me about the fairy fountain also told me about, the one in the picture on the tablet.  Now that I know where that is; Maybe I'll go there instead of trying the beach sidequest.

 

I wish I could find more shrines because I really want more hearth containers!  I didn't find a single one last night.

[Wojo 2,453]

How are the edges of the map handled? Impassable mountains, a wall, an ocean, etc.? 

[Jay 37,267]

I don't know yet, but I'd guess an ocean

[mstrox 6,637]

In the lower left portion of the map, the edge is sandstorm-y.  I did hit an invisible wall within that sandstorm, and if I recall correctly it said "you can not go this way" or something like that.  Since you couldn't see where you were going anyway, it wasn't too clunky/wall-ish.

 

(Sucked for me, because I was running away from a giant creature at that time. CHOMP)

[Jay 37,267]

I found a dye shop also and changed my Hylian outfit to blue.  Looks immensely better now!

[Quintus 5,399]

Some nice insight into Zelda's sandbox design: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-03-16-breath-of-the-wild-shows-nintendo-is-learning-from-pc-games

[mstrox 6,637]

Finally hit the (last?) tower and made it to the (last?) dungeon last night.  Still probably 3,000 more shrines, though!

[Jay 37,267]

I thought there was 120 shrines in the game?  What's that like, 10 per region or so?  I"m kind of surprised I haven't found more, if that's the case!  Actually, that's the one aspect of the game I either haven't figured out, or just doesn't work the way I want it to:  The shrine detector thingy you can do with the tablet.  I've been wandering around and had it go off, and I can somewhat figure out what direction it wants me to go by going a few different ways until one makes it beep more frequently... but then I never find a Shrine and eventually it stops beeping.  Am I doing something wrong?

 

 

Anyways, had another great evening of gameplay last night.  

 

I started my night by killing those monsters by Hateno beach.  Since there was so many of them, I couldn't just charge in and start stabbing them all like I've been doing with a lot of monster encounters; I stood up on the rocks above them and pondered different strategies.  I could roll bombs down, they'd go investigate and I'd blow the bomb up, but that doesn't seem to take off as much damage as you'd think (it blows up rock deposits, yet doesn't instakill these creatures?).   I ended up exploding one near two palm trees completely randomly though, and that knocked the palm trees down which crushed two of the bad guys!  That was awesome!  They're so dumb though, they didn't figure out where I was still.  I was able to draw the attention of only one at a time for a bit, so they'd run up and I'd get to fight them one on one.  Eventually I had to wander into their camp to take out the last few, but I got them all and finished the side quest!  My reward was 10 milk bottles, which I'm not sure what I'll do with.

 

Next I decided to find that gate pass with the unlocked memory, which was awesome!  On the way there, on that concrete walkway along the river, there was some metal boxes, and I had an epiphany that I can use Magnesis and lift them up and drop them on enemies!  That was great because it saves your weapons from being worn down (and is wicked fun).  I was even lifting boxes to drop on wooden crates, which broke both and then I could get all the loot.

 

The unlocked memory was awesome, another great cutscene (great animation and voice acting in those).  I realized as i was watching it, that it must have been difficult for the story team to write these memories in such a way that the player can unlock them in any order, so each one has to make sense on its own and tell part of the larger story.  Cool stuff! The weird part was, unless I did something different than the norm, the memory I found was the only one I got a clue about how to find (the fairy fountain guy in Kakariko village pointed me towards it), but it was actually unlocked memory #15.  Weird!  Maybe once I've found them all, I'll re-watch them all in order.

 

On my way back from that, I learned a new technique;  There was this big dude on the walkway, but facing the other way.  It was raining, and I went into sneak mode and slowly approached him.  When I got really close, it said I could do a sneak attack so I did, and I think that one attack almost killed him.  Really neat!

 

When I went back to Impa she gave me a champion's tunic, which was awesome because it shows the enemy's HP which is a really neat feature, but kinda funny because its blue and I just died my Hylian tunic blue the night before

 

So I warped back to the starting cave to grab some weapons I dropped there the other night and guess what?  They were gone   I guess that plan doesn't work. But on that note, I have the whole weapons system figured out much better now anyway.  Basically before, I was finding powerful weapons and just using those on everything.  But now I realize you should use the crappiest weapons as default against environment and the easiest enemies, and only equip the good stuff when facing tougher enemies.  I've had a great time using the weapons system now.  I found a few more korok seeds though, so want to upgrade my inventory but don't know how to find the Lost Woods that guy said he was going to.

On that note, I was looking at the map and saw a road heading south from the plateau region and I had stamped a tower location a little ways beyond it so I figured I'd snag that tower.  That ended up being maybe an hour or more of awesome adventuring;  Ran into some new (to me) lizard type enemies on the bridge over Lake Hylia, and holy cow, that flying dragon that flies overhead was gorgeous and magestic!  Beyond the bridge, I found the tower up the hill and had an awesome series of enemy fights to get there!  I love how they winded the path up the hill in such a way that you can tackle each little group of enemies one at a time.  It was here that I really mastered using hte right weapons for the right job.  I found a whole ton of new items and weapons clearing out all these baddies, and used magnesis to drop a treasure chest on this one new bad guy that had 240 hit points!  There was one lizard guy that could breath fire on me, that was intense (There must be a fire blocking shield at some point in the game).  Once I got the tower it showed a huge region on the map, lots of new places to explore.  Dunno if I want to explore that region or head back into the east to go north towards where that lab guy is supposed to do something to my slate or whatever.  Hmmm.

[mstrox 6,637]

13 minutes ago, Jay said:

I thought there was 120 shrines in the game?  What's that like, 10 per region or so?  I"m kind of surprised I haven't found more, if that's the case!  Actually, that's the one aspect of the game I either haven't figured out, or just doesn't work the way I want it to:  The shrine detector thingy you can do with the tablet.  I've been wandering around and had it go off, and I can somewhat figure out what direction it wants me to go by going a few different ways until one makes it beep more frequently... but then I never find a Shrine and eventually it stops beeping.  Am I doing something wrong?

 

Many/most of the shrines are out in the open.  Some are hidden, or require some action to get to them.  It could be as simple as using one of your four abilities, or it could be more complicated (these things pop up in your menu as "Shrine Quests")

[Jay 37,267]

The only shrine quest I have now is something about dark eyes.  I have no idea what it means, but I figure it will make sense to me eventually

 

I wish the game or console told me hour many hours I've played the game for.  I haven't even come close to starting, or even finding, or even knowing where to go for the four divine beasts and I'm I dunno... 20 hours into the game? 25?  15?  No idea now

[Quintus 5,399]

Are the shrines as good as the old traditional Zelda dungeons? 

[Jay 37,267]

There's only 4 of the traditional zelda dungeons in this game; The 120 shrines are smaller, like the size of 2 rooms of a classic dungeon kinda.  So overall there is more dungeon-ing than ever before, but its broken up in different ways.

[Quintus 5,399]

Hmm, I thought that's what I'd read elsewhere but I sort of hoped I'd misunderstood. 

 

In the new Tomb Raider games, I really hate how the 'tombs' themselves have been hugely shrunken down and are merely offered as optional side challenges within the main campaign. So the idea of really small dungeons (or shrines) in Zelda, is pretty discouraging. 

[Jay 37,267]

Well there's still 4 traditional dungeons, not a huge step down from the 7 in most Zelda games;  Add in the 120 shrines and that's the equivalent of like another 6 dungeons really - like I said, just broken up differently so you travel in main world from "room" to "room" instead of them being clustered together.

 

It's actually pretty impressive how Nintendo has mixed things up here;  After 30 years they threw a lot of Zelda conventions out the window and rebuilt a new world from scratch in a lot of ways, while still feeling utterly like a Zelda game through and through.  Its quite brilliant really.

 

IGN's written review (have't watched the video) actually perfectly describes the game IMO:

 

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/03/02/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-review

[Quintus 5,399]

I'll have a read, thanks. 

[Jay 37,267]

@Wojo this should answer your question about the map edge

 

https://www.zeldadungeon.net/breath-of-the-wild-interactive-map/

 

(Seems like a cool tool but I am not going to fiddle with it until after I've beaten the game)

[Jay 37,267]

Last night in Zelda I got a few more shrines, and two more towers.  One of the towards was guarded by this weird dude that floating around shooting lightning bolts at me!  I died a lot before I finally  beat him; I ended up shooting him with a shock arrow so he'd fall down, then smash him with my heaviest weapon until he got up in the air again, then repeated.  I got a lightning rod from him which seems awesome because it shoots out lightning balls;  My question is, does it "break" like other weapons if I never actually hit enemies with it directly?  Or does shooting each lightning ball degrade it?

 

Also bumped into that painter guy again who directed me towards another memory restore location which was great!  I hope he clues me in to all of them.  It was the one by a tree with two little statues, pretty neat.  I'm actually REALLY liking the backstory cutscenes in this game.  It dawned on me why they did it this way:  Because the player can play the game in any order, the "story" the game tells has to be something that happened in the past.  The actual story happening in the present day timeframe is quite slim, but the backstory in this game is so rich!  It's very well developed so far.  I love it.

 

BTW:  Is there a way to tell if you beat a Shrine or just activated it but didn't finish it?  Or am I supposed to track that myself with a stamp?  Also, is there a way to tell if you got all the chests within each shrine or not?

[mstrox 6,637]

4 minutes ago, Jay said:

BTW:  Is there a way to tell if you beat a Shrine or just activated it but didn't finish it?  Or am I supposed to track that myself with a stamp?

 

There are two ways.  1)  If you're *at* the shrine, the base turns orange when you activate it.  The top stays BLUE until you beat it.

2)  On your map, the shrine icon is slightly different for unbeaten shrines, than it is for beaten shrines.

 

A few night ago, I spent an hour going back and re-tackling the shrines I had abandoned.  Map was very helpful - just find the "unfinished" icon and quick travel.

 

4 minutes ago, Jay said:

Also, is there a way to tell if you got all the chests within each shrine or not?

 

Not that I'm aware of.

 

 

 

Last night, I beat the final dungeon.  My last mission is to beat Gannon, but I don't feel ready for that yet.  So I'm exploring, doing side quests that I had ignored, etc.  There were whole non-dungeon portions of the map where I had basically activated the tower and not looked around otherwise.

[Jay 37,267]

3 minutes ago, mstrox said:

 

There are two ways.  1)  If you're *at* the shrine, the base turns orange when you activate it.  The top stays BLUE until you beat it.

 

Ah!  Wait, you mean blue AFTER you beat it, right?

 

Quote

2)  On your map, the shrine icon is slightly different for unbeaten shrines, than it is for beaten shrines.

 

Oh really?  Great, I hadn't noticed!  That's perfect!

 

 

I also had fun figuring out how to get up to that tower once I killed the lightning dude;  Luckily I noticed there were giant stone slabs over these built square areas on the ground, and I quickly realized I could use octa balloons to lift them, and one of them had a nice updraft I used to get to the tower.  Bunch of prizes in the other ones.

At some point I wandered into this weird ruined village and had to use more octa balloons to lift more slabs and found a bunch of loot there.  Also foudn a shrine with a lady outside who was persnickity about her flowers she planted around it, that was hilarious!

[mstrox 6,637]

21 minutes ago, Jay said:

 

Ah!  Wait, you mean blue AFTER you beat it, right?

 

Ohhh yeah.  The base turns blue, but the pointy top stays orange until you beat it.

24 minutes ago, Jay said:

I also had fun figuring out how to get up to that tower once I killed the lightning dude;  Luckily I noticed there were giant stone slabs over these built square areas on the ground, and I quickly realized I could use octa balloons to lift them, and one of them had a nice updraft I used to get to the tower.  Bunch of prizes in the other ones

 

You know, I never once considered octa balloons!  I brute forced those plates off with stasis and a sledgehammer.

[Jay 37,267]

Oh, wow!  That's funny!  I actually haven't been able to stasis/sledgehammer anything since the first couple days of the game, because I accidentally dropped my sledgehammer into a bottomless pit, and I haven't come across a single other sledgehammer yet!  I have no idea where I can go to find one; Never seen an enemy with one or anything.

 

 

It's funny, that tower I used the balloons was actually right next to a small pond full of octarocks, so it was easy to keep farming for more balloons.  You can tie the balloons to TONS of things in the game and lift them up, and you can even stand on top of the things it lifts and get a free ride!

[mstrox 6,637]

You can wallop something in stasis with anything.  Might not go quite as far as with a sledgehammer, but a two-handed club or sword is pretty good too.  Won't last as long, though.

[Jay 37,267]

Hmmm really?  Won't that degrade the weapon really fast?  Well, I'll try it with some wooden clubs I get from bokoblins since those guys are everywhere.

 

Actually... come to think of it:  I didn't encounter a single bokoblin encampment in all my hours of exploration last night!  Just shows how big this world is.  Felt like I was encountering them regularly my first many nights of play; Shows how diverse the game world is

[mstrox 6,637]

It does degrade the weapon fast, but I like to burn through weapons.  I typically find myself with too many weapons (necessitating choices) rather than too few, so blasting through the more common weapons isn't too big a deal for me.  I like to wallop everything and everyone.

[Jay 37,267]

Yup that's been my modus operandi lately; Walk around with whatever my weakest weapon is, use that on objects and badguys first, work my way up to stronger weapons depending on how tough the enemy is.

[Jay 37,267]

Played a bunch of cool Shrines in Zelda tonight, one was really long with multiple puzzles and multiple enemies, it was really cool!

 

Also got a tower that was kinda nutso; It was guarded by some Guardians - not moving fully active ones (I saw one of those roaming around near it) but a buried one that came alive and started targeting me... I was somehow able to kill it?  I basically just ran up and repeatedly stabbed it; Went through one entire Guardian Sword and one entire Guardian Shield, then just wacked it with a reinforced club until it was dead.  I was surprised it was that easy!  Anyways once I killed that one, I just climbed up the side of the tower it was facing so the other one didn't see me.  That was that!

 

Ended the night be entering 2 Shrines I had to exit without beating (Modest test of strength and major test of strength, and they had miniguardians inside with wayyyyy too much HP and attacking power for me to tackle!) and then finally got a leaf and sailed to Eventide Island... you guys been there yet @Disco Stu and @mstrox?  I was unable to save there and I died   Was a cool situation there, though!

[Disco Stu 15,495]

I have been to Eventide...and promptly failed...twice. I'll come back to that later!

 

I have two more towers to get. Beaten 75 shrines and 3 divine beasts.  And I'm really enjoying collecting the memories!  They're good for fleshing out the story and my wife enjoys the cutscenes.

[Jay 37,267]

The cutscenes are great! 

 

I think I've done 15-20 shrines. I don't even know where to look for a divine Beast! 

 

Eventide was an awesome quest (and I love how it's the same regardless of when you arrive there), but yea I feel like I need to get better at combat before I try again. I'm not really good at dodging attacks. 

[Jay 37,267]

Woah just killed a mini guardian in a minor feat of strength Shrine and didn't even break any weapons doing so (used up a bunch of shock arrows though). The shield I got from him says it can block Guardian beams... Does that mean the ones from the outside big guardians too? 

 

I got a tower on my way there and met a bunch of Zoras who really want me to talk to their leader. I'm assuming a Divine Beast dungeon is in my future! 

[King Mark 3,624]

Hmm, you should make a specific Zelda thread since your posting your progress in the game for the last few pages

[Wojo 2,453]

Really? Too much Zelda diluting your Jrpg fanboi posts? 

[King Mark 3,624]

I rarely post about any of them anymore. If my JRPG's annoy you so  much I'll just stop posting altogether (which I sort of already did since nobody is interested).Quintus also makes snarky comments everytime I say anything about a game I played

 

The Zelda posts have spoilers and it a 2 way conversation between Jay and the other guy playing

[Quintus 5,399]

I'm just scrolling past them, it's no biggie. A big release like Zelda is bound to be chatted about for a while here, there's no great harm in it.  

[Faleel 5,326]

There already is a Zelda thread anyway so there would be no need to make another.

[King Mark 3,624]

I think there's room for several videogame threads if the need be

[Wojo 2,453]

Stef might object but who gives a flying what he thinks. 

[Faleel 5,326]

Video game subforum!

[King Mark 3,624]

actually, that's a great idea

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Great idea!

[Koray Savas 2,251]

10 hours ago, king mark said:

I rarely post about any of them anymore. If my JRPG's annoy you so  much I'll just stop posting altogether (which I sort of already did since nobody is interested).Quintus also makes snarky comments everytime I say anything about a game I played

 

The Zelda posts have spoilers and it a 2 way conversation between Jay and the other guy playing

Are you still on Tales Of Berseria? Let me know when you tackle Nioh. 

[Quintus 5,399]

See, KM. Koray cares! 

[King Mark 3,624]

On 2017-03-19 at 5:05 AM, Koray Savas said:

Are you still on Tales Of Berseria? Let me know when you tackle Nioh. 

 

I'm number 12 on the library reservation list...could be  a while. I have to wait to play it for free but I must have saved about 1000$ in games over the past year. Doesn't anyone here have a public library with the latest console game or it's a unique thing to the Montreal national archives library?

 

Playing Digimon Cybersleuth. Digimon is like Pokemon I think. At first I thought the game was stupid but it's getting addictive and the game's story is actually very good

[Jay 37,267]

Made my way into Zora's Domain last night, which was really cool.  Reminded me a bit of Lothlorien from LOTR films when I got there.  The journey there was really fun, lots of good battles with various monsters.  I had to leave so many weapons on the ground because I had no room to pick them up!  I need 8 korok seeds to hold another weapon and I think I have 6 or 7 right now.

 

After all the cutscenes when you learn the backstory of the beast and its pilot chick that was in love with you, I tried out a shrine in there but I couldn't figure it out; It was the one with a watery slant with a ball that comes out the top and you have to use cryonis to make it roll into a certain spot on the bottom... arg!  Hopefully I was just tired and will figure it out if I can play today.