The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

[Raptorpat]

Game comes out May 12, the release is sneaking up on us.

 

[Lasty]

How many Zelda games is this honestly a sequel to? All of them?

[naraku360]

BotW has been a perpetual bucket list further hindered by my limited interest in Zelda.

But I'm sure I'll play it some day. The world design is by Monolith Soft and that basically means I have to play it at some point.

[Raptorpat]

6 hours ago, Lasty said:

How many Zelda games is this honestly a sequel to? All of them?

Within the context of the lore, BOTW takes place so far after the rest of the series that it renders all the timeline garbage moot so the game has big and small references to everything. And then this is a direct sequel to that.

[Neubauten]

The Legend of the Four Zeldas: Object of the Preposition

[Lasty]

On 5/9/2023 at 3:18 PM, Raptorpat said:

Within the context of the lore, BOTW takes place so far after the rest of the series that it renders all the timeline garbage moot so the game has big and small references to everything. And then this is a direct sequel to that.

So, it's like a sequel to an omni-sequel...  To keep the series going at this point, they'll have to go into backstory from before the current beginning, or destroy the triforce permanently to end the cycle, or something... It feels sort of like the modern pinnacle of Zelda. Like, it'll decline in popularity if they keep making BOTW clones from now on.

[cyberbully]

I want to care but ive been out of hyrule for so long, im thinking i may just let it go.

Snd with FF16 coming out, i just feel like i dont care about any of my old franchises anymore. 

 

[discolé monade]

parents and cringe: videos for the midnight release and a really shitty band.

[rpgamer]

I was one of the few that kinda didn't really enjoy BotW all that much. Just didn't feel like what I expect from a Zelda game, having gutted the idea of dungeons and items and progression, etc. A fun open world game, I suppose. But lacking in what draws me to the franchise.

From what little I've seen of this one, seems like they've continued in that direction. Probably a fun game. But looks more like slapping a "Zelda" skin over something that could've been its own thing.

[stilgar]

It's ok at best. 

[rpgamer]

It finally hit me what all the clips remind me of.

This is The Legend of Zelda: Garry's Mod.

[GunStarHero]

Didn't care for Breath of the Wild, tbh. Felt like an empty open world I was supposed to use as a sandbox to make my own fun. That's all good and well but it just ended up being annoying. And god I hated the weapon durability. Been playing Tears of the Kingdom off and on and I enjoy it more but it still just reeks of an above average game with a couple gimmicks. That being said, I like the new powers better than the last ones and I like making Looney Tunes ass shit to zip around or Wile E. Coyote my enemies. Done two temples so far, and both bosses were absurdly easy to beat while the road to reaching them was more perilous or obnoxious than the final fights themselves. 

[MrD1718]

On 5/3/2023 at 10:34 PM, Raptorpat said:

Game comes out May 12, the release is sneaking up on us.

 

So I took release day off, and the week after.  I put in 95 hours and beat the story, now I'm going back and cleaning up on shrines and all the other things I didn't get.  Probably around 60-70% towards 100% completion and I probably won't ever get all the Koroks because F that.

[Distortedreasoning]

i got the game but have not been able to play for more than an hour total time. i gotta finish this asap since it feels like spoilers are all around.  

[Chapinator_X]

I just started it, but underestimated how long the first part would be. The moment I was able to fuse weapons was the moment I knew this was a major step up from BotW. 

[Top Gun]

I've been a massive Zelda fan for a large portion of my gaming life, and Breath of the Wild is my straight-up favorite game ever.

...I think this is going to top it.

[Master-Debater131]

On 6/10/2023 at 8:52 PM, Chapinator_X said:

I just started it, but underestimated how long the first part would be. The moment I was able to fuse weapons was the moment I knew this was a major step up from BotW. 

Once you start fusing stuff, and then building stuff, the game gets just WILD.

 

Some of the things people are building are absolutely insane. People are straight up building guided missile launchers at this point.

[Raptorpat]

Was avoiding this thread in case of ultra spoilers, but I finally played for the first time last night.

We've had the game since launch, but I spent the last month (playing one session a week because adulthood) finishing up the DLC and beating the final boss in BOTW because I hadn't ever finished the game and it's the rare direct sequel.

So I tied that off last weekend, and I had the house to myself last night so I played through the intro and the tutorial sky island.

[Raptorpat]

so I'm not too far into the actual game, did the lookout landing stuff and got the camera and the quests all branch out.

So i started farting around, exploring the lower interior Hyrule Castle area because an NPC mentioned looking for something there and I wanted to see how it's different from botw. And that began a long meandering through a couple game sessions, counterclockwise from the castle down to the great plateau which was another place I wanted to compare (given it's the botw tutorial area).

Spoiler

Both places are clearly end-game areas where I shouldn't be with only five hearts, and now my inventory is stocked with high-end shields and bows I feel like I shouldn't use, like the presumably only Hylian shield.

Having only seen a miniscule amount of the game, my absolute favorite thing so far is:

Spoiler

that you can uncork the stairs to the great plateau. It's such a dumb and simple thing to even care about, let alone by the favorite thing. But I remember vividly the moment in botw when I was questioning how unrealistic it was to have this completely inaccessible plateau surrounded by walls, and then I realized that pond was a flooded staircase and how the visual storytelling was intriguing but leaving me wanting more AND THEY CLOSED THE LOOP ON IT! So now you can experience it as an immersive area and not just a conceptual (former) tutorial zone.

Like 10/10 don't even need to play the rest of the game.

[Distortedreasoning]

finally getting around to playing this.

made it to my first dungeon, but i cant help to think there are some stuff im missing out on or skipped. been trying to focus more on the storyline. overall feeling good. 

[Raptorpat]

I think the game does a good job of trying to guide you through the early stuff before encouraging you to eff off on your own.

I didn't want to make the mistake I made the first go around in BOTW where I off-ramped too early from the opening quests (and then got the camera/upgrades after doing like half the game), but I still feel like I sidetracked too soon because I wracked up higher-end gear facing black-tier monsters and then go back to the main questline to like meet Impa to learn about the glyphs and it felt like I was back in tutorial land with one-hit-to-kill red-tier guys again and my pad isn't fully online yet.

It's a balance trying to not blast through the story first without totally overshooting the natural progression.

[Top Gun]

I had the exact same reaction to what you spoiled. Sooooo satisfying.

This game has refined the BotW experience in myriad ways, and one of them is enemy placement. BotW had that invisible "leveling-up" system that universally upgraded the colors of monsters depending on how many you'd killed or bosses you'd completed or however it works. It seems to be more regional in TotK, since even after dozens of hours I'm still seeing clusters of red enemies. Powerful enemies like Lynels and the mini-bosses seem to be fixed at a certain level too, which is handy when you're trying to get a specific picture for the Compendium. There were a few weapons in BotW you could level out of ever seeing, and a few more that had limited fixed spawns, but all of those seem easily renewable now, which is nice.

But yeah, I've been bingeing this off and on since the release weekend. I've finished three of the main regional quests, completed who knows how many side quests, done a ton of stuff in the sky, found at least some hidden treasures in the Depths, and there are still two whole overworld regions I haven't been in yet. Every play session I start off with a vague plan, but then I get distracted by finding something new that usually leads to a few other new things, and then I look up and I've been playing for 4 hours.

[Raptorpat]

The enemy placement thing is a good point. Even Purah was like "don't go to XXXX, there's a lot of monster activity there" (and I was like >.> 'now you tell me').

At this point I've done my first (Rito) regional quest, the kid wants to send me back to the depths (I think the last mission before Robbie goes to the lab), Impa wants me to visit the chasm, and the stable/newspaper quests are now all available. I definitely liked the dungeon experience and boss way more than the divine beefs, it just all felt way more Zelda-y with a classic-feeling Zelda MacGuffin etc. 

But what I really appreciate so far is that they took the same exact world and (a) removed calamity-related stuff, replacing it with upheaval stuff, and (b) changed the sequencing in which you interact with the regions. In BOTW, the hardest areas were Central Hyrule and like the mountains. In TOTK, you literally start the game in Central Hyrule outside the castle and explore on from there, and are encouraged to go to the mountains early. Practically, the upheaval debris makes climbing around the formerly endgame areas easier by giving you ledges etc., and psychologically it 100% changes my perspective on those locations and makes them actually feel like real locations irrespective of the game challenges that were/are present. The places I spent the least time in, be it because it was tedious as shit dealing with nannerpods or because I got to them after I started burning out on the BOTW exploration gameplay loop, are places I'm spending excessive time in now. And just finding locations of interest from a different orientation/perspective, like simply happening across a stable from the north instead of the south, does make it feel fresh in my mind's eye yet still recognize its the same place. Like in the same way everything feels a little bit older - people want to rebuild and grow because it's a real place. I have no idea if there's any payoff or not but seeing new foundations in the ruined castle town at the very beginning of the game got me giddy.

I burnt out on BOTW and didn't finish it off for five years. I think in part because, though the world itself was clearly a massive labor or love, it felt a mile wide but only an inch deep. I burnt out on the gameplay loop because nearly every named location you could discover was copy/paste ruins and every item you could discover was disposable/replaceable or korok seeds. After a while of binging through ti, the world just didn't really feel "lived-in" to me anymore and the calamity narrative felt like a retroactive justification for having not populated it. The number of enemy types felt disproportionally limited for the scale of the game and the combat got harder by just turning up the damage sponging. So to contrast, one of my go-to examples was that all the wells in BOTW were just copy/paste assets and they didn't even delete the ground inside the well to make it seem authentic. And those same wells are probably a perfect example of how they improved on the "inch deep" part.

I don't know where the story goes, but I feel like they could build at least another major game out of this same map without it getting stale. Sub out the upheaval stuff the way they subbed out the calamity stuff, and replace it with whatever the new thing is while continuing to make it all feel that much more organic and lived-in.

[SwimOdin]

I’m about to play it, on my…”switch”

[SwimOdin]

This game is gorgeous, love the opening title, and it’s running great on m..my sw-itch

[SwimOdin]

18 hours ago, SwimOdin said:

I’m about to play it, on my…”switch”

I’m sorry pat and Reggie

[Raptorpat]

I'd have to do some "Hero's Path" math, but I'm assuming at this point I have well over 100 hours into the game.

A lot of game sessions began with specific tasks in mind ("I'm going to explore X") where I play for hours but never actually get to them and the subsequent two sessions begin with the same original goal. But I feel like I'm into more of the "end game" phase, at least with regards to the surface.

I've got like 117/152 shrines, 400+ korok seeds, all the glyphs and sky-tablets, and the compendium is near full without buying any pictures, and my mindset I think has organically shifted towards exploring the spaces I've missed or returning to key landmarks I put off (akkala citadel, the labyrinths, coast/islands, things with gleeoks), and I'm trying to gauge how long to draw out remaining quests so I dont burn out on the rote exploring.

Spoiler

I got the four sages and did the really cool castle set piece, and then I got the Mineru mech which was a total unexpected wtf gameplay moment), and have now been redirected to find the entrance to the korok forest and the master sword. I also still have to go to the last khoga set piece under Rito Village, which technically isn't a main quest but I'll pretend it is.

 

[Top Gun]

I finally beat it this past week, and according to my Switch profile I was somewhere north of 220 hours. Maybe a bit of that was leaving the game paused, but still. I had pretty much everything I wanted to finish taken care of beforehand: all shrines, all lightroots, all main quests, pretty much every side quest I'd found, almost 500 Korok seeds, the gear I wanted fully 4-starred, you name it. The entire final sequence is the coolest thing I've ever seen in any Zelda game, full-on jaw-agape wonder. I may have shed a tear or two during the ending. What an absolutely stunning game.

The crazy part is that after the fact, when it shows you the percentage completion for the map and quest numbers, I learned that there was one single solitary side quest that I haven't found yet. And I have absolutely no idea where it could be.

[Raptorpat]

I lost everything I typed when the mobile text box had a brain fart so I'll try to restate my original post in brief.

I haven't really played much recently just due to life. I think I've finished all the main quests save diving into the final confrontation. I've got a bunch of minor side quests to close out and a few shrines left to track down. A lot of lightroots left and X marks to track down too. At this point I am a little over halfway into the "hero's path" bar, not sure how that translates into gameplay hours.

On 8/26/2023 at 2:45 PM, Top Gun said:

The crazy part is that after the fact, when it shows you the percentage completion for the map and quest numbers, I learned that there was one single solitary side quest that I haven't found yet. And I have absolutely no idea where it could be.

Spoiler

When I played the other night, I started playing right after you regain the master sword, and while farting around I accidentally ascended to the roof of the sky temple of time and found a construct with a quest (and a korok) up there. Not sure if I ever would have found that one intentionally.

 

[Raptorpat]

Wanted to share this famitsu interview, very interesting even though it's run through Google translate: https://s.famitsu.com/news/202309/06314767.html

The main headline point is that no DLC is currently in development and there are no plans to make another direct sequel in this same world (though one could materialize if there were a gameplay-based justification).

But there were a bunch of other tidbits that jumped out at me, maybe others that might jump out to you.

• It really seemed like a significant bulk of effort was focused primarily on the the ultrahand physics. I recall reading that this started out as a BOTW DLC concept that turned into a sequel due to the scope, so that kinda checks out for me.
• It seems that the depths were primarily auto-generated in a short timeframe, with some locations of interest dropped in. That kind of conforms with their priority as above by not focusing so much man hours on new locations. I don't quite want to call it an afterthought to pad out the came, but it also kind of makes sense as a player because the depths do feel very samey and unrewarding to explore after a short while. 
• Do not take a comprehensive franchise timeline seriously, they are very frank that they don't and you will never see a happy resolution beyond fan theories.
• phone being weird so I'm just gonna submit the post now

[Raptorpat]

I walked into the lynel coliseum the other night unprepared and did not realize I couldn't sneak out of view to cook gloom-heal foods, I killed my way through four of them but couldn't pick up the loot because I was so close to death because I couldn't ungloom my hearts (I was cheesing it pretty hard by the end, I really am not fond of this game and BOTW's difficulty spike revolving around damage soaking/outputting instead of like smarter enemies or new attack patterns etc.), and then the final lynel got a hit in and killed me. Respawn sets you right when his gate opens but all the lynel loot drops despawned.

I was so tilted I fought the guy a dozen+ times over and over again with only four hearts and a fairy until I beat him BUT IT DIDN'T MAKE ME FEEL BETTER

[Raptorpat]

I finally beat the game.

Switch profile says over 300 hours, but I'm pretty sure I'm only about three quarters of the way through the hero's path bar, so that's gotta factor in some pause or maybe even sleep time.

All shrines, lightroots, bubbulgems, wells, upgraded sages, and 100% the compendium (ok, I  bought the last three photos of pristine weapons indidnt want to cheese). Found 750 koroks even (I used the mask, but I didn't find it until after I had maxed out my inventory slots already). Was missing ten talus and nine hinox, but otherwise killed all the mini bosses and got the little rewards.

I definitely forgot to check my map percentage, but like Top Gun I am apparently missing one solitary side quest. Probably an NPC in a house somewhere who just needs ten apples to shove into their butthole or something.

Gonna let the experience sink in a bit before I try to articulate any thoughts beyond that I did it.