The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (not the United one a different one)

I got lost in the Great Sky Island and had to look at a walkthrough before I’d got to the second shrine. Actual Tears.

I’m maybe about five/six hours in and have found my way to the surface and completed a few shrines. It’s unquestionably fiddly to control but it’s so worthwhile, I massively admire the versatility of all the new abilities. I made a thread recently about moments in gaming that bring genuine joy and there’s already been a few of them in my short time with Tears of the Kingdom.

It’s quite fresh to me as well. I put more than sixty hours into Breath of the Wild but that was over five years ago. Somehow, I’d managed to forget so much of what made Breath of the Wild so unforgettable.

I've played a fair bit of this and am allowing myself to read some of this thread again at last.
So far, I adore it. I think, based on the opening area and the times I've gone especially far afield since, the game has much more of a distinct difficulty curve and therefore an order in which things should be done, albeit a vgaue one. I don't actually mind that; repeating BotW too much wouldn't have made sense.

I couldn't possibly tell you how I'll end up ranking the two games in 150 hours' time, but I think it'll be a moot point. This game feels like a sequel, that makes sense especially because of how it follows on from, builds on and contrasts with the previous game.

JayMoyles wrote:

The_Jaster wrote:

(It's also maybe like 3 or 4 years off )

I think that's a stretch - it'll probably use a lot of the same assets and engine as BotW, so I'd expect a similar turnaround to OoT and MM. Like, I honestly wouldn't be stunned if this was the big winter game for Nintendo in 2020.

Jimbob wrote:

Anyone who's speculating about what's in / not in the game: with BoTW there was so much that hadn't be revealed before launch day; don't worry about analysing frames of demo videos to start working out your review scores early. You're allowed to be disappointed once you've played it, but calm the fuck down before-hand*.

Always knew I liked that Jim.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

It’s unquestionably fiddly to control but it’s so worthwhile, I massively admire the versatility of all the new abilities

It was massively fiddly for me initially; but then jas and jay told me the buttons for rotating objects so I was able to stop throwing them around and trying to bounce them off things to make them land the way I want them. Now it's fine.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

I made a thread recently about moments in gaming that bring genuine joy and there’s already been a few of them in my short time with Tears of the Kingdom.

I was thinking this the other day!  I don't want to swamp the new thread with those, but - yes, already had a good few.  

Balladeer wrote:

The big spicy take here is that at least to start with, I didn't like the Ultrahand ability much.  I think it has some fun uses, and you see those later on - but it's finicky and slow to begin with, and only a bit less finicky and slow going forward.  I would spend around three minutes making one of those gondola things, and then another two minutes trying to make it actually go forwards.

And a lot of those moments have been around the Ultrahand.  I do think it gets a lot less slow and finicky, like Cappa and Buska have touched on.  I still don't think it's ever going to be the MVP of this game, but it may well have the most joyful moments associated with it.

I've beaten the first of the four main plot objectives now.  At least based on that, the claim that 'proper Zelda dungeons are coming back' is overblown - this was another Divine Beast.  In fact mechanically it was less interesting than the Divine Beasts, but I think I prefer it overall based on aesthetics and that.  And the boss was a corker.  Although...

Hebra dungeon boss:

The best moments, though, are still when you're on your way to do something and on the way there you get distracted by maybe five other things.  I had one of those yesterday.  Then I took a brief detour back to the Hub Town to stock up, and now I'm doing something completely different, the five other things forgotten.  There's so much to do here, the world feels more densely packed with stuff than BotW's did, and almost all of it's fun rather than box-ticking.  (The graffiti inspections?  They're box-ticking.)

Balla posted that in a hurry!

If you mean, 'Balla Korocked up the link', then - yes. Yes he did.

You also left a random [/quote] lying around, too.

That was all part of the great Cocking-Up of the Link 16th May 2023.

Balladeer wrote:

Cocking-Up of the Link

You're lucky I can't find that drawing I did of you right now . . .

Now and at all other times.

TCK wrote:

It’s unquestionably fiddly to control but it’s so worthwhile, I massively admire the versatility of all the new abilities.

The one thing I do still is mix up the button for items and the abilities.

Balla wrote:

And the boss was a corker.

Only done one story related boss & during it couldn't help but think that I really love how they have just dropped the rule of three design you normally see in Nintendo boss battles. While rule of three isn't necessarily bad how they are doing it in TotK makes them way more interesting/engaging.

The_Jaster wrote:

TCK wrote:

It’s unquestionably fiddly to control but it’s so worthwhile, I massively admire the versatility of all the new abilities.

The one thing I do still is mix up the button for items and the abilities.

Yep! Always pressing L when I want to switch my weapon.

In the same way that they made a full game out of the Captain Toad Adventures from Super Mario 3D World, I want Nintendo to put all their funds and resources into making a full game out of helping the guy repair his Hudson Construction signs.

100% on board with that idea. Also it might give Nintendo a boot up their arse for releasing eShop only style games similar to stuff like NES remix & Pullblox.

The_Jaster wrote:

The one thing I do still is mix up the button for items and the abilities.

Balladeer wrote:

Yep!  Always pressing L when I want to switch my weapon.

I was trying to use the d-pad and my pal Rob pointed out that was the button in BotW. Mad that the muscle memory is so deep; haven't played that game in literal years.

I don't actually like the sign-supporting stuff as much as some. It's better than the Koroks though.

I've just been back to the Great Plateau for the first time and, darn...

Great Plateau in TotK spoilers:

I like the sign supporting and the Koroks well enough. Neither is, like, why I'm playing.

After a heavy first weekend I was kinda ill last week, but this past weekend I had another big session and I've been back on it heavy. Did my first temple, explored a bunch, got hearts. . .
This is a bloody good videogame, innit?

It's bloody good right enough. It's been a long time since any game has grabbed me like Tears of the Kingdom has. Any spare time I've had at all over the last fortnight has gone straight into it. It's one of those rare games that I wake up, go to work and come home looking forward to playing.

~

There was a patch released over Thursday night that’s removed the duplication glitches. Were any of youse using these glitches? Personally I don’t find Tears of the Kingdom’s fun to come from farming rupees, capsules and minerals at a monumentally slow pace. Especially with the rupees – pre-cheating I must have played for fifteen hours but only amassed about 150 of them, and they’re quite necessary to buy things for the two temples I’ve played too. As soon as I found out about the duplication glitch that uses the paraglider I was in amongst it.

I get that there’s a convincing argument about playing the game in the purest way that it was intended, but in another more accurate way, baws to that. Any thoughts?

Oh no, I ain't touching any of that.
I am interested in some of the wild glitches that came up later for Breath of the Wild but the game is so solid and feels so good, i have no desire to break that at all.

Aye, it's not for me either & I've never felt the need to farm because I'm always swimming in all sorts of materials.

Yep, I'm absolutely fine for money. I haven't been able to afford everything, but I've been able to afford enough naturally by being curious and mining gems.

I've now done the Goron and Rito temples. The Goron temple is... pretty bad, to tell the truth. I've also stumbled into and completed a late-game quest with a stupid reward that I greatly enjoyed, even if it isn't quite as useful (at this stage anyway) as it appears at first. That said, imagine playing for only fifteen hours before you do two temples! I've put away at least fifty of those bad boys.

The Ultrahand crafting in the overworld gets a lot better when you get those control sticks. All of a sudden, what was a clunky bastard of a car or boat becomes the world's most fun form of travel. (Although I do also have two special horses in my bank.)

It's quite hard to summarise these experiences, isn't it? Fun though.

Balla wrote:

It's quite hard to summarise these experiences, isn't it? Fun though.

Yuuuup! You can get up to so much shenanigans during the exploration side of things that I find it all get's a bit jumbled up in my brain. Also speaking of fun we haven't spoken about that approach to Rito temple have we? Then that moment when the temple reveals itself is easily one of the most spectacular/memorable moments in gaming ever! Had a big smile on my face the entire time.

What Rito was the first of the two temples I did and was just mediocre platforming.

aaaaand Mas is muted for a little while

I think I’m at roughly the same stage as Balladeer, I’ve beaten the Goron and Rito temples in between completing shrines and getting extra hearts and more stamina. I only recently found out about the control sticks for your crafts, and they’re a proper game-changer right enough. The part of Tears of the Kingdom I disliked the most was having to slowly walk those tired Koroks over to their friends while hovering them overhead with the Ultrahand. I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t think of attaching them to the back of a wooden Bentley Continental.

Buskalilly wrote:

aaaaand Mas is muted for a little while

I went and played Super Mario 3D World Bowser's Fury instead, that's a good game.