The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

[CrichStand]

What I’m doing is talking about and discussing BOTW and Zelda on the Zelda BOTW thread. What are you doing? 😂

[scottcr]

The trials is a mini game separate from the main game and has absolutely no bearing on it… changing your opinion on what TOTK might be because the trials piss you off is, well….. 

 

daft

[CrichStand]

I get what you’re saying. It seems like you’ve missed my point though.

 

Trials of the Sword is BOTW DLC. It’s shite. The ideas behind TotK started out as BOTW DLC. 
 

What I’m saying is BOTW is great because of it’s world and it’s exploration of that world. That’s why it was named BOTW in the first place! If TotK uses the same overworld then it’s not going to be as interesting to explore. I’ve already spent 250hrs wandering around that world. That was an amazing 250hrs because I was discovering new stuff, wondering what could be over the next hill, tracking down hidden Shrines, solving them etc. That’s why the DLC which stuck to the BOTW formula was so enjoyable. It contained everything that made the game fun. Exploration, discovery, puzzle solving etc. They were core parts of the original Zelda games. Like you were saying, you love the Divine Beast DLC, which I’d guess is more along the lines of the traditional dungeons.
 

The DLC which strayed away from that formula is fucking awful. It’s not I’m pissed off because it’s hard. I’m pissed off with it because it’s properly shit and I want to 100% the game. It’s not like Zelda and it’s not very Nintendo at all. It really is poorly designed and poorly balanced, which is not something I associate with Nintendo. The fact you’ve played for 200+hrs, praise the other DLC, but haven’t played/finished The Trial of the Sword speaks volumes! 😂
 

Based on all those things and stuff like the zooming around in buildable cars, seemingly bite size islands and stuff, I’m saying that MAYBE, just maybe TotK could be a disappointment. I’ve got sky high expectations though because well, it’s Zelda! At the moment it looks more like a repurposed BOTW world, with the focus on lots of little diversions, instead of the focus being on the world itself or on a more traditional Zelda game. I’m swinging between that and thinking - “nah, there has to be more to it”! I mean if the world is largely the same then they must have spent 6yrs on straight up awesome gameplay. Or maybe there are huge elements we’ve yet to see, like a parallel world or a massive interlocking dungeon underground, or the world changing shape and morphing, or playing as Zelda in a different location etc. But what if there aren’t? What if it is just a repurposed BOTW with some tarted up DLC ideas?

 

Ultimately, I don’t want Sky Islands with lots of daft ideas like shoddily made combat Trials, that take 2 hrs to complete and restart you from the beginning each time with no saves. I want proper deep exploration. Proper large scale dungeons. Fun traversal. Difficult, complex, multi-levelled puzzles. Well made, solid combat. A sense of adventure and mystery.  Blend OOT/MM with BOTW and it would be unbeatable. I think that might be more the Zelda after TotK though, if Nintendo ever do fully bring back the older style elements of the series.

[scottcr]

Tldr

they’ve been making this next game for 6 years

[CrichStand]

Fair enough. I thought you might have been into discussing stuff in a bit more depth, instead of just disregarding stuff but, each to their own and all that! 👍🏻
 

That’s what I was saying  about the 6yrs. Part of me thinks they will have just repurposed BOTW and it’s world around the DLC ideas, instead of reinventing the wheel. The Zelda on Switch 2 will be more likely do that and be Nintendo pushing the Series forward, all guns blazing. Personally I’m hoping for more out of TotK and whilst I’m really looking forward to it and excited to get my hands on it, I’m now trying to keep my expectations in check and more in line with what’s actually been shown so far. 

[scottcr]

I still think you’re treating the trials as an integral part of the game - it’s irrational 

[David Heath]

15 hours ago, CrichStand said:

It’s that bad it’s starting to make me wonder whether TotK might end up being a bit of a dud. It was supposed to have started out as BOTW DLC. The best thing about BOTW is the world itself and the exploration. The sense of adventure as you head out into the unknown, not knowing what you’ll discover. Seeing something on the horizon and setting your sights on it, the journey there, the sense of discovery when you arrive. If TotK ends up being the same world as BOTW but filled with nuggets of absolute balls like this then, it’ll be a crushing disappointment. 

 

[scottcr]

I found the post game monster hunt trying to find all the Talus' a bit of a pest and kinda pointless... 

 

as a result, I think ToTK is going to be awful.

[CrichStand]

And you’re a big fan of Nintendo, Zelda and BOTW,.........yet you haven’t bothered to play/finish the Trial of the Sword DLC! Almost as if it’s absolute shite or something! 😂

 

I can see why you knocked it on the head though......

 

Stage 9 - A 10min war of attrition with a Fire Igneus using just bombs? Quality!
Stage 10 - How about literally doing 10mins of inventory management just like on Stage 5. Wahooooo!!!

Stage 11 - That’s right! From now on you’re playing with your health constantly depleting in the snow. What a great idea!

Stage 12 - Ludicrously easy with no threat at all but it goes on for ages.

Stage 13 - Even easier than Stage 12  and goes on even longer too! Great!

Srage 14 - An Ice Igneus, with no recipes left to stop your health constantly dropping (as the other stages take so long), no arrows, no decent weapons etc. Not that it matters because if it hits you or touches you just once, it takes literally all of your health. All 20+ hearts. GAME OVER. Back to Stage 1. 

 

Imagine if Dark Souls had mindless 2hr runs back to a boss. If they made Elden Ring 2 and the combat was a load of bollocks and the design was unbalanced as all fuck. Some stuff is nails hard but later on stuff is pointlessly easy and just filling in time. Then after wasting your time they hit you over the head with an unbeatable enemy that instantly kills you. Well, that’s what Nintendo came up with for this DLC and it’s absolutely wank. One of the worst things I’ve ever played. I’ve 100% most other Zelda games. I won’t be 100% BOTW after playing for 250hrs. That’s how bad it is. If a new developer released this, they’d be laughed out of town! It’s almost like Nintendo genuinely don’t realise that the games systems aren’t even up to the task. Bizarre.
 

And as I’ve said - it’s this particular DLC that breaks away from Zelda tradition and breaks away from the BOTW format that’s so shite. I don’t want more of this kind of bollocks shoehorned into a Zelda game. And TotK is based on BOTW DLC that wasn’t used. They were  B Side ideas compared to this. 😲 And so far the trailers have shown those ideas off and the general consensus seems to be..........let’s hope there’s more to it than this. It’s not exactly rocket science!
 

 

 

 

[OneDvBmbr]

I think I did the middle trial and then found it frustrating so just left it. 
 

Certainly didn’t have the energy to keep banging my head against a wall with it. It is OK to just move on and not complete it, you know?

[ZOK]

Yeah, I played that a few times and gave it up, it’s not very good.

[David Kenny]

35 minutes ago, CrichStand said:

And you’re a big fan of Nintendo, Zelda and BOTW,.........yet you haven’t bothered to play/finish the Trial of the Sword DLC! Almost as if it’s absolute shite or something! 😂

 

I can see why you knocked it on the head though......

 

Stage 9 - A 10min war of attrition with a Fire Igneus using just bombs? Quality!
Stage 10 - How about literally doing 10mins of inventory management just like on Stage 5. Wahooooo!!!

Stage 11 - That’s right! From now on you’re playing with your health constantly depleting in the snow. What a great idea!

Stage 12 - Ludicrously easy with no threat at all but it goes on for ages.

Stage 13 - Even easier than Stage 12  and goes on even longer too! Great!

Srage 14 - An Ice Igneus, with no recipes left to stop your health constantly dropping (as the other stages take so long), no arrows, no decent weapons etc. Not that it matters because if it hits you or touches you just once, it takes literally all of your health. All 20+ hearts. GAME OVER. Back to Stage 1. 

 

Imagine if Dark Souls had mindless 2hr runs back to a boss. If they made Elden Ring 2 and the combat was a load of bollocks and the design was unbalanced as all fuck. Some stuff is nails hard but later on stuff is pointlessly easy and just filling in time. Then after wasting your time they hit you over the head with an unbeatable enemy that instantly kills you. Well, that’s what Nintendo came up with for this DLC and it’s absolutely wank. One of the worst things I’ve ever played. I’ve 100% most other Zelda games. I won’t be 100% BOTW after playing for 250hrs. That’s how bad it is. If a new developer released this, they’d be laughed out of town! It’s almost like Nintendo genuinely don’t realise that the games systems aren’t even up to the task. Bizarre.
 

And as I’ve said - it’s this particular DLC that breaks away from Zelda tradition and breaks away from the BOTW format that’s so shite. I don’t want more of this kind of bollocks shoehorned into a Zelda game. And TotK is based on BOTW DLC that wasn’t used. They were  B Side ideas compared to this. 😲 And so far the trailers have shown those ideas off and the general consensus seems to be..........let’s hope there’s more to it than this. It’s not exactly rocket science!
 

Even if the new game did grow out of an idea for DLC, I'm going to go out on a limb and say they've expanded on it somewhat in the intervening six years. You seem to be fixated on something that is most likely completely irrelevant.

[CrichStand]

Yeah, I’ve knocked it on the head. I’ve been playing Nintendo stuff since I was a kid and I’ve never played anything they’ve made that’s this bad. I can’t quite get my head around just how bad it actually is. How it ever became a thing in the first place and actually got made?!?!? Crackers!!! 
 

Like the dude mentioned earlier in the thread, it’s that bad it’s enough to spoil the game. Think if I spend any longer on it, it will do just that. Shame it’ll not get 100% like the others but, I’ll be fucked if I’m giving this shit any more time just because it’s Zelda.

[CrichStand]

1 minute ago, David Kenny said:

Even if the new game did grow out of an idea for DLC, I'm going to go out on a limb and say they've expanded on it somewhat in the intervening six years. You seem to be fixated on something that is most likely completely irrelevant.

Which is exactly what I’ve been saying?!?!?

 

If you’d read my posts I’ve said that I’m just trying to keep my expectations in check. BOTW is great for me, because of the world, it’s exploration and the sense of discovery. That’s what BOTW was designed around and how it got its name. 
 

Going on just the trailers for TotK and putting my expectations to one side, it looks good but there’s nothing screaming - traditional dungeons, amazing exploration, revolutionary gameplay, old school Zelda is back etc. So far it’s been more Skateboarding Link, buildable vehicles, bite sized islands etc. The same BOTW Hyrule repurposed around the unused BOTW DLC.
 

It seems a lot of people are basing their expectations on stuff that hasn’t been shown and might not even be in the game, more than on just the trailers themselves. That’s definitely what I’ve been doing too. 2 months out, after playing this travesty, it’s definitely time to lower expectations and hopefully get a nice surprise. Not hope for the moon on a stick and end up disappointed.

 

Bizarrely, when I was hoping for the best though, and talking how TotK could be incredible with huge advancements, same people were saying the opposite. Seems a lot of folk just come on here to take out their issues on others and argue about shit, instead of just discussing and talking about video games. Nowt as strange as folk! 😁

[KRP]

I’m approaching ToTK with a bit of trepidation as well tbh, although not as a result of some fevered DLC extrapolation.
 

BoTW is one of the GOATs, which inherently means any sequel will struggle to meet that same high bar. In addition I do also think several other games have pushed the genre forward in a number of ways that I don’t think Zelda can compete with, for example the world building in Elden Ring. 
 

On the positive side, despite BotWs greatness there was always room for improvement there and I am really hopeful that Nintendo can add to the existing template in some inventive ways. The variety and quality of gameplay in BotW, coupled with that expansive exploration is what really sets it apart for me. 

[CrichStand]

Yeah, I think it’s clear Nintendo based the entire concept of BOTW around its world, the exploration of that world, being overwhelmed by nature and adventuring in the wilds etc and that’s what makes the game so outstanding and why I love it so much. I mean, I’m now just sat with a cuppa, looking at the world map trying to figure out where the last Shrine is and that alone is about a million times better than the shitty DLC!

 

That’s all going to be lost in TotK unless they suddenly reveal there’s a whole other world to explore, or if something changes massively, which seems highly unlikely. I don’t know, maybe people enjoyed BOTW for other stuff but I’m not sure what, if that’s the case? Most people seemed to think the combat was a bit pants, the weapon degradation stuff was ropey and thought the dungeons were underwhelming.
 

It’s funny, only time the weapon stuff has bothered me has been in the shitty DLC. Same with the cooking, for 250hrs I’d not really bothered with it, as it wasn’t needed. When you do need to use it in the DLC, it’s the biggest ball ache ever, clunky as all fuck and the most fun sapping anti-game horseshit I’ve encountered. Basically stuff like Eventide Island was spot on in how it used the games concept and systems. Really enjoyed playing through that.

 

Only way I can see TotK being the business and providing the same kind of playtime as BOTW, is if they’ve gone back to proper full scale dungeons or there actually is a massive surprise in store regarding the world itself. But then that’s getting back into speculation and potentially leads to disappointment. People keep saying “but SIX YEARS”! Yeah, and a few of those were taken up with Covid.

 

1 Shrine and the DLC Divine Beast to go........then Ganon is getting it! 🥊

Edit - Fuck’s sake! Turned out the last shrine was already on my map but they don’t register until completed. It was one of the first I ever found. Remember my Mrs  “distracted” me and I must have never gone back and finished it. 🤣 

[Stanley]

You’re very up and down @CrichStand

 

I wouldn’t worry, Trial of The Sword was basically just something they chucked out to make people buy the season pass whilst they worked on the DLC proper. 

[CrichStand]

Well that big chunk of DLC is well shit but the rest of the game is proper immense, so yeah! Anyway, DLC Divine Beast now, which I’ve saved for last based on Head of Nintendo’s Fan Club  @scottcr recommendation.  He skipped the shitty Sword DLC gubbins too, so it should be pretty good! 

[scottcr]

3 hours ago, CrichStand said:

Yeah, I’ve knocked it on the head. I’ve been playing Nintendo stuff since I was a kid and I’ve never played anything they’ve made that’s this bad. I can’t quite get my head around just how bad it actually is. How it ever became a thing in the first place and actually got made?!?!? Crackers!!! 
 

Like the dude mentioned earlier in the thread, it’s that bad it’s enough to spoil the game. Think if I spend any longer on it, it will do just that. Shame it’ll not get 100% like the others but, I’ll be fucked if I’m giving this shit any more time just because it’s Zelda.

 

I think you're the only person in the Entire World who thinks the trials spoils BOTW.  It's an optional thing I tried, had a bit of fun with but thought was too hard and it was irrelevent - so didn't bother with it.  Like most people.  

 

I mean, did you do all the puzzle dungeon stuff in Links Awakening as well?  That wasn't that great either but - you know - it doesn't matter.

[Stanley]

28 minutes ago, CrichStand said:

Well that big chunk of DLC is well shit but the rest of the game is proper immense, so yeah! Anyway, DLC Divine Beast now, which I’ve saved for last based on Head of Nintendo’s Fan Club  @scottcr recommendation.  He skipped the shitty Sword DLC gubbins too, so it should be pretty good! 

The rest of the DLC is very good, Trial Of The Sword was just a placeholder. In the grand scheme of things it will count very little towards the direction of Tears Of The Kingdom. 

[Made of Ghosts]

I had a great time with the Trial. It was probably one of my favourite bits of the game in all honesty. 

[CrichStand]

1 hour ago, scottcr said:

 

I think you're the only person in the Entire World who thinks the trials spoils BOTW.  It's an optional thing I tried, had a bit of fun with but thought was too hard and it was irrelevent - so didn't bother with it.  Like most people.  

 

I mean, did you do all the puzzle dungeon stuff in Links Awakening as well?  That wasn't that great either but - you know - it doesn't matter.

There’s literally been a handful of people in the past few pages of this thread saying they think the Trials are shit. 😂 it was literally someone else that, literally said they stopped playing it, so it literally didn’t ruin the game for them. I agreed with them. It literally SAYS THAT IN MY POST you’ve quoted! Literally. Neither of us said it had actually ruined BOTW. You’re the one that’s said that! If you disregard and ignore what numerous people have actually said, and then create your own narrative, you probably miss the small details like that. 😁

 

Through all this you’re saying the Trials DLC is unbalanced and too hard. Yes it is! That’s what I was saying when you started disagreeing with what I was saying? The fuck is going on? 🤣 

 

Anyway, done the Divine Beast DLC. It was alright. Some nice ideas but too easy and very slight. It was all over within half an hour. I don’t think Nintendo understand what the word Labyrinth actually means though. Not sure why they think they need to talk up and warn you about the scale and scope of an area that’s about as sprawling and maze like as Clive from down the roads 5 berth Static Caravan.  
 

Again, this DLC points towards Zelda heading away from complex, traditional Zelda dungeons and towards a more user friendly, simplified, paired down approach. And again, it makes me question whether we will see all this traditional Zelda stuff in TotK that so many people are pinning their hopes on. It doesn’t look like it based on this.

 

Bizarrely, despite the dungeon being simplified and paired down, the Boss is all kinds of unbalanced wonky bullshit. 7 dudes all attacking me at once, some of them from behind and off screen. Top work Nintendo!  A camera that insists on spinning around and pointing away from where you want to actually point it. Half your health dropping off in a single hit. Weapons breaking left right and Center. Constant menu diving to heal and change stuff. No obvious clue as to how to take the boss down. It’s a mess. Returnal, Bayonetta, DMC this is most definitely not! It’s like trying to play a modern game with 1997 style controls. And as THAT OTHER DUDE SAID on this thread, Elden Ring has now advanced things forwards. I agree. The combat is ok when it’s kept simple and hack and slash straight forward. When it gets away from that it all goes horribly tits up.

[scottcr]

Wrong 

[Stanley]

16 minutes ago, CrichStand said:

Again, this DLC points towards Zelda heading away from complex, traditional Zelda dungeons and towards a more user friendly, simplified, paired down approach. And again, it makes me question whether we will see all this traditional Zelda stuff in TotK that so many people are pinning their hopes on. It doesn’t look like it based on this.

The whole of Breath of The Wild is like that, so it’s not pointing towards anything, it is more of what had already came before it, six years ago. 
 

We still know very little about dungeons, shrines, divine beasts etc. in Tears Of The Kingdom, but I wouldn’t rule out bigger dungeon type affairs just because they are not in BoTW, we just don’t know yet. 

[Fletch]

The Trials of the Sword and Master Mode were basically there for the people who find the combat too easy, the types that take down Calamity Ganon in their pants with a stick. I suck at the combat so I didn’t play that part of the DLC. 
 

I had enough fun with the Champions Ballad and the Heroes Path to make the DLC worth it to me. 

[CrichStand]

@scottcr 😂🤣😂🤣 Top discussion!
 

Not sure if you’re a bit scared or embarrassed to post something more backing that up or whether you just can’t be arsed but, it’s cool either way. We don’t agree on some stuff but it looks like on the whole, we both agree that BOTW is a great game. Not really any the wiser what you’d like to see TotK go for but, I’ve given my take it on it plenty now. Only time will tell how it pans out.

 

My fav Divine Beast was the Elephant, as I feel it was the closest to a traditional Zelda Dungeon and seemed slightly larger and more complex than the others. I genuinely can’t remember anything about those, which says a lot. I think on the whole, as much as I love BOTW, it sort of New Tomb Raiders the fuck out of the dungeons. It makes up for that with the world and the exploration, which I love and again, I’ve mentioned plenty now.

 

@Stanley It’s just how games in general are going on the whole and have been for years though. The only game that has really  stood outside of that for me has been Returnal, which was so much more right across the board. Like I say, I’m torn because if it’s just the BOTW world, they must have spent most of the time packing it with new content, so old school dungeons or one giant interlocking Underworld would make a lot of sense. On the other hand they could easily have taken a Mario Galaxy style approach and packed numerous ideas in. As I say, it’s the in depth exploration, complex puzzles and the maze like traditional dungeons I love Zelda for and with BOTW it’s the open world itself.

 

@Fletch Yeah, I’ve enjoyed the Champions Ballad stuff.  It stuck to what BOTW does best and was all the better for it. Like I said earlier in the thread I love hard games, grew up playing all the classic arcade machines, especially Sega Coin-Ops. Rinsed stuff like Returnal, the Soul’s games, Bayo, DMC etc. Which is why it’s easy to see how fucked that Trials DLC actually is and how clunky the combat is in BOTW in general when it pushes too far. It’s not that the DLC is hard per say, more that it’s just poorly designed, unbalanced and the games systems as they are, aren’t good enough to support that kind of game. It also feels like it’s trying to jump on the Souls bandwagon purely because it was popular......and gets it horribly wrong. 😂

[JPL]

I really enjoyed the trials. Funny to hear people saying they didn’t.

[Stanley]

Well I’d hardly call having no dungeons in Breath of The Wild symptomatic of the dumbing down of games generally. If anything it eschews modern gaming conventions entirely by allowing you all your powers right away, and if you want, to go straight to Ganon and do as you have been asked. There’s no real narrative or handholding, you just do what you want. 
 

There are obvious design decisions which need to be taken into consideration in that game though. Mainly the fact that because you can approach the game any way you want, the upgrade approach seen in every other Zelda wouldn’t work for this, and would need a radical rethink for such dungeons also, ergo the divine beasts and shrines.

[CrichStand]

Oh no.......here we go again! I haven’t said that! I’m saying that the Devine Beats are simplified versions of the old Dungeons, which is what they are. They’ve streamlined them. For example the DLC one is just 1 small room with 4 tiny adjoining rooms. Yet the game refers to them as “a dizzying Labyrinth, that is so complex, you will need a map to traverse and navigate it”. 🤣 Is it fuck as like!
 

That’s my point right there. Reminds me of the new Tomb Raider tombs compared to the old Tomb Raider tombs. It’s all been simplified and streamlined to appeal to a mass market. It would take monumental amounts of balls, for Nintendo to just drop huge complex dungeons into the follow up game, and tell the market they’ve built up playing BOTW to “just deal with it fuckers, this is what video games used to be like, before everyone started pandering to your Nan and waggling the fuck out of your Grandad”.

[Stanley]

I don’t think I’m putting words in your mouth there, what you are describing is commonly known as  ‘dumbing down’. 
 

But it’s anything but a dumbed down Zelda. Getting rid of the old structure entirely gave them, and the player, the freedom to do whatever they wanted. 
 

In order for the dungeons of old to work they relied on the use of specific upgrades and gating areas. Now you could get rid of that and just make essentially twelve massive shrines and let the player solve them however they like, but can you imagine the work involved there? Each ine with its own individual design and set of puzzles? And of top of that it’s something a sizeable portion of the audience may never even see.

 

The problem also with getting rid of the upgrade abilities means you’ve got nothing to reward the player with either apart from a heart or stamina notch, and the chance to weaken Ganon a tiny bit. So if you’re going to present them with a more sizeable challenge you need to dangle a bigger carrot. 
 

i think they got the balance about right, there’s still loads to explore and secrets to uncover, and the shrines of course. But when the whole premise of the game is giving the player the freedom to do exactly what they want from the outset, you can’t them funnel them through a load of dungeons and gate parts of the map off until they get the right ability.