1641 replies to this topic

[Nicholas Steel]

That's pure evil.

[Eppy]

it has killed me a few times. I've also gone through a few shields trying to kill them.

[Deedee]

it has killed me a few times. I've also gone through a few shields trying to kill them.

Reflecting? Psssh.

Master Sword, cut off the legs, ancient arrow to the eye. The materials you get far outclass the cost of the arrows.

Or hell, just master sword it's life away too. That works.

[Eppy]

This applies to early game, no Master Sword, no Ancient arrows, nada. Pretty much where I'm at.

[HylianGlaceon]

I've just been ignoring the mini Guardians. They aren't worth wasting my time and weapons on.

 

I like the change they made with the regular Guardians, though it's still pretty rustling.

They were kinda in the middle of a puzzle so I had to kill them someway. At this point they should've called this mode the Coward Mode since you lack the ability to kill nearly anything for the longest time.

 

I started some of the quests to unlocking dungeons, but don't feel I have enough weapons nor hearts to actually clear any of them, so guess I'm Korok Seed and Shrine hunting for a while. Ignoring every enemy too since camps of all Blacks + Silvers is so fun to try to kill solely with bombs after all. Not to mention Silvers and probably Blacks can still OHKO me even with the 2 Star Armor I'm fairly sure.

[Anthus]

Just started playing the DLC, and I'm hunting down the new items. The hero's path is so helpful, it's not even funny. I love how it shows every death too. I'm surprised at how many somewhat large chunks of world I just completely missed. This should have been in the game from the start, imo, but I'm glad to have it at all. I have not really done the sword trials yet, and I dunno how I feel about hard Master Mode, since HP buffs kind of feel cheap to me,

[The Satellite]

I will admit, I don't feel like Hero's Path should be paid DLC. Everyone should get a chance to experience this and relive their original journey.

[Anthus]

Just tried the first sword trial, and wow, these do not mess around. I was able to get to the 10th floor before missing a dodge, and getting clouted to death by a grey Moblin. It's like Eventide Isle on steroids.

[The Satellite]

I wouldn't compare it to Eventide, honestly. Sure, on the surface, they seem similar, what with you being stripped of items and having to survive based on what you can gather... but while Eventide was a sprawling island you had to analyze and tackle your own way, Trial of the Sword is a linear gauntlet. It's great (and tough as hell), don't get me wrong, but they're not entirely the same concept. I honestly prefer Eventide, but this is fine.

[Nicholas Steel]

For Trial of the Sword keep this in mind (mild spoilers):

 

The Trial of the Sword consists of 3 sets of floors. You do not have to complete all sets in one single attempt... so you can complete a set, leave and come back to do the next set later if you like. The first set consists of 13 floors, the 2nd set consists of more than 13 floors and the final set consists of even more floors than the second set. Completing a set will upgrade the Master Sword to some degree.

Edited by Nicholas Steel, 06 July 2017 - 12:51 PM.

[Anthus]

For Trial of the Sword keep this in mind (mild spoilers):

 

The Trial of the Sword consists of 3 sets of floors. You do not have to complete all sets in one single attempt... so you can complete a set, leave and come back to do the next set later if you like. The first set consists of 13 floors, the 2nd set consists of more than 13 floors and the final set consists of even more floors than the second set. Completing a set will upgrade the Master Sword to some degree.

 

Man, I was really close then to the end of the first set. I was starting to wonder how long they are, but that does seem like a random number.

[The Satellite]

I died to the Hinox in the dumbest fashion. After I shot its eye and it was falling on its butt, I dashed forward ready to attack and apparently barely scraping its front was enough to one-shot me at around eight hearts. Needlessly to say I'm taking a break from the trial for a few days.

[Nicholas Steel]

How do you do inline spoilers on this forum? As in a tag that hides the text (highlight it to read) without placing it in a big clunky Spoiler box?

[Eddy]

So after a good 5 months or so with about a month break for exams and stuff, I FINALLY completed the entire game. Managed to get 100% with almost everything including Korok seeds, discovering areas on the map, all medals of honour, all shrines, fully upgraded armour etc and honestly it felt like a really amazing experience. I haven't enjoyed a Zelda game so much since Twilight Princess/Wind Waker, so this definitely makes it into the top 3 favourite Zeldas.

 

I'll probably give a more in-depth review kind of things below. Putting it in spoilers because of obvious reasons lol. Of course you can disagree with what I say, but these are just my opinions

Thoughts and Experiences - Spoilers Ahead!

So I must say, this was a really great experience for me. The open world idea they went for here really paid off IMO and the world was so diverse and awesome to play through. I was fearing the world would be way too empty with nothing much to do. And while some areas are a little empty, there generally was quite a bit to do with hidden chests, korok seeds, minibosses, enemy camps and other things all around the world, so I definitely enjoyed that. The korok seeds were a neat collectible sidequest, though the final prize after getting all 900 is total shit and kinda felt like a big "fuck you" to those who dedicated their time to collecting all 900 of them just to get something completely useless. I probably would've liked some kind of upgrade, like maybe a 2nd page of weapons, shields and bows.

 

Moving on from the overworld, the story was pretty nice in this game. It's pretty cool unfolding the backstory of what happened in Hyrule 100 years ago by seeking out memories located all over the land. I also really like how you can slowly see the personalities of the main characters progress as you go along, especially Zelda. The voice acting was a neat addition, though I'm neutral on it. I don't really care or mind if it comes back in future Zelda games or not honestly, but I will say that I think Zelda is probably my least favourite voice actor. She sounded quite annoying and obnoxious at times, and she seems to have a very awkward and fake British accent to me, though I guess you could say this is like a "hyrulean" accent or something but it still doesn't sound right to me.

 

Difficulty in this game is quite an interesting one and I can't really judge it too well because it seems to mostly depend on how you play the game. What I have noticed from my run though is that the early game was so much harder than late game. The majority of my deaths were from probably the first two Divine Beasts, and after that I pretty much just breezed through the game. Not really a complaint though, since I chose to go out of my way to find as much OP stuff as possible and clear as many shrines as I can to improve my health and stamina, so I guess that explains why things got so easy later on lol. I imagine if I decided to not to explore much or collect OP stuff, the game would be far more harder near the end and I would have a much harder time with Calamity Ganon. Also talking about difficulty and enemies and stuff, it does suck to see that there isn't too much of enemy variety in the world. Hyrule seems to have just been overrun by Bokoblins, Moblins and Lizalfos, with the occasional Keese and ChuChu here and there. Of course there are other enemies, but I definitely would've preferred a lot more enemies for each region. For example, you could have Dodongos in the Eldin region, Deku Scrubs or Deku Babas in the Faron region, and probably Lanmolas or Moldorms in the Gerudo region. I kinda feel like region-specific enemies would've been a really nice touch to have in the game. I know there are some region specific enemies already, but I kinda wanted more that weren't just Lizalfos, Keese, ChuChus or Wizzrobes where you can fight them elsewhere in the world.

 

Something I haven't mentioned yet though are the abilities you get after clearing each Divine Beast. They were all generally really cool, but I found Urbosa's Fury to be quite useless since I generally just charge into a horde of enemies and clear them just fine after a little while. Mipha's Grace was very useful early on since I died quite a lot from OP enemies and stuff lol. Revali's Gale is probably the most useful alongside Daruk's Protection since I could block stuff without my shield taking damage, and I can also get to higher places with Revali's Gale without wasting much stamina (also a good way to avoid climbing stuff in the rain).

 

Moving on, the shrines in the game generally were pretty nice. I definitely like the puzzles throughout some of them, while some are quite easy. There were a few shrines which really got me stuck and others with very clever solutions, but I found myself seeing far too many strength and blessing trials. I don't mind the blessing trials so much since most of the time, the area surrounding the shrine kinda acts like an outdoor trial which is quite neat, but the strength trials kinda felt a bit lazy after a while. I probably would've preferred like one of each trial and the rest of them be replaced with puzzles or something, just to make things have a bit more variety (preferably have more trials that make use of cryonis since I noticed that rune seems to be horribly underused in my run).

 

I think the one thing I'm most disappointed with in this game are the dungeons, they're probably the weakest 3D Zelda dungeons to me IMO (except for Hyrule Castle). I was honestly expecting some kind of huge temple to go through where the Divine Beast was the boss or something. Instead, we get to go inside the Divine Beasts as the dungeon. I guess it's pretty neat to go inside them and all, and they did have some nice puzzles, but I was definitely disappointed by them. They honestly just felt more like larger shrines to me and there just wasn't that balance of combat and puzzles like the previous Zeldas had. The difficulty kinda felt non-existent since I killed everything too quickly (even in the very first Divine Beast where I didn't get any good stuff yet) and nothing felt much like a challenge (excluding the bosses of course). My favourite Divine Beast is probably Naboris since that felt the most like a dungeon out of the 4, but even then it's still far off what I wanted or hoped for. I'm hoping this is probably a one-off thing and we'll get traditional Zelda dungeons back in future Zeldas. I guess it kinda worked for this game, but I wouldn't like to see this again honestly. However, Hyrule Castle was pretty awesome and that felt like the kind of dungeon I wanted to see. Probably add in small keys, a compass and a Boss Key, and then yeah that would be a fantastic traditional Zelda dungeon, but I'm happy enough with what we got.

 

One last thing is the soundtrack. From the songs I did hear in the game, they generally were very nice. Hyrule Castle is probably the best song in the game to me, and I'm also quite a big fan of the Dragon Roost remix (but I prefer the more upbeat original version from the Wind Waker). Despite not liking the Divine Beasts much, I do love how the music slowly gets more intense as you progress in them by activating terminals, that was a nice thing to add in. The other village songs were pretty nice (really love Hateno) and the battle themes are very intense. I don't think I've heard a standard enemy battle theme as intense as that when fighting enemies, so that was great. And then comes the overworld... I guess it's meh for me. At first I really hated the fact that we have ambient sounds rather than an actual overworld theme, but eventually I got used to it and I don't mind anymore and actually kinda liked it sometimes after a while, since I guess it did fit the game well. However, I will say that I probably would have still preferred an overworld theme in the game. Doesn't need to be all epic or whatever, I just would've liked to hear something other than piano sounds I guess lol. You can argue that the overworld theme would get repetitive after a while, but I feel like the ambience probably would be more reptitive, since I didn't hear much variety in the ambience from what I played (just seemed to be the same notes being played over and over). And there's the song that plays when you're in a snowy area, that was quite annoying to listen to after a while when I was exploring Hebra. I imagine it would be cool if you had an overworld song that kinda changed depending on where you went. Like you could have different versions of the same song or something that fit with different areas (kinda like how ALBW had the same dark world dungeon song, but had different remixes depending on what dungeon setting you're in). But yeah, like with dungeons, I think I would probably prefer to have some kind of overworld song next time, so I'm hoping this is kind of a one-off thing too, but once again, I don't mind it too much.

 

So yeah, I think that's everything I have to say about the game. There were a few minor issues I had which were already mentioned, but the positives insanely outweigh the negatives, and this is still quite an incredible game. I'm gonna have to pick up the DLC stuff later on and try Master Mode whenever I can, but I probably won't 100% this again since it seriously drained me after doing that lol. For a while I was considering where I would put this game on my top 3, but I think I'll put it on the 3rd place spot for now, just under Wind Waker at #1 and Twilight Princess at #2.

[Jared]

Playing Master Mode like...

 

*Hinox claps*

 

"Game Over"