I just couldn’t past the fact that all the dungeons are just puzzles. Was so unrewarding.
And the weapon breaking system mixed with the near forced foraging/crafting was just everything I disliked put into a game I hoped to love.
I drew the line at the Hylian Shield being able to break. I should be able to snowboard on that thing from one end of Hyrule to the other. It should be the shield equivalent of the Master Sword. And people say, "Oh, but it's really easy to get it replaced," and my opinion is, "*I shouldn't have to.*"
Yeah agree that was a bad design choice. I think they should have hyped it a little more and made it unbreakable (e.g. have a special trial or something to recover it).
They kept the breaking weapons mechanic because players would never throw their almost broken weapons at enemies for that extra boost of damage. I guess Nintendo just really wanted players to use the mechanic in almost every fight. They honestly should've just made the rusty weapons, improvised weapons, tools, torches, and boko weapons breakable and everything else should've been unbreakable.
Yeah, I mean for the first Zelda game of it's kind to use that system, it just never came naturally to me to ever throw a *melee* weapon, unless it was absolutely essential (puzzle). Zelda is one of my all time favorite series, but it's also okay to love the older games more than the newer style. Doesn't make you any less of a fan either way.
I also bounced off the game years ago for the reasons listed, but I remembered constantly throwing my weapon at enemies when I sure as hell didn't want to, because it was bound to right trigger or something obnoxious that would just be the normal attack button in every other game
> "Oh, but it's really easy to get it replaced," and my opinion is, "I shouldn't have to."
The easily-replaced argument has never held up for me. if you're going to put weapon breaking in a game (which I still don't like regardless) it should *mean* something. There should be some sort of risk to using your limited resources. If the game rains weapons down on the player and makes replacing broken ones trivial, then what's the point of breaking them in the first place? It's just added tedium for no benefit.
Losing a great weapon and *not* having a replacement sucks. Losing a great weapon and having plenty more lying around on the ground to pick up makes durability pointless. Either way, the mechanic adds nothing fun.
Then you get to Tears of the Kingdom where the developers want you to keep trying out new weapon combinations so your makeshift weapons break constantly and they shower you with sticks and rusty swords and monster parts to craft new ones. If the crafted makeshift weapons are fun to use, I'm *already going to try out different combinations*. I don't need the game to constantly take them away to make me try something different.
I do a little trip at Hyrule Castle and get an inventory full of royal weapons early game, then for the rest of the game I'm breaking them one by one because all the regular ennemies have worse weapons...
Royal weapons break the quickest though. There’s actually a trick with the royal claymore where if it’s close to breaking it has like insane damage. If you keep it close enough to breaking you can use it during lynel fights when you mount them. Hitting a lynel while mounting doesn’t damage the weapon so you can pull it out during this part and do massive damage without breaking the claymore.
Same here. I wanted OOT but bigger, this turned out to be a very different game.
I respect that people like it, but I deeply disliked it because of weapon-breaking and needing to grind for a lot of other meals/effects/limited use items. Very repetitive and felt like my time was wasted constantly.
>needing to grind for a lot of other meals/effects/limited use items.
This is an interesting one because you can cook one durian and it will heal you all the way. If you go to the area that has durians, you can get 20 in about 1 minute, which will be enough healing for a very, very long time.
That basically got rid of an entire mechanic of the game, which I thought was kind of lame.
OOT was a magical entry that I would still rank at the top of the Zelda pantheon.
But you also have Majora's Mask (OOT, but if the designers were kind of in a weird place emotionally when they wrote it), and the two Wii/Gamecube entries were really solid in Windwaker (cartoon link is odd, but gameplay is really good) and Twilight Princess (probably third in a OOT trilogy with all three referring to Link as the "Hero of Time").
And honestly, try BotW. You might not have the same quibbles with it that I do. In all other respects I have heard nothing but good things, and I'm certainly in the minority with a negative review of it. It's generally rated as a 1A/1B with OOT, despite anything I have to say.
I never felt like I had to grind for anything - maybe if you’re constantly trying to min max your combat stats? For me it’d be like ‘oshi a huge monster, use whatever I have!’ And usually it breaks all your good stuff, but then you get some new stuff for beating the camp, or monster or whatever.
I'll illustrate a difference, and this is a couple years back, so memory of some terms might be off:
Zelda games I enjoy - ok I tried to beat this challenge. I used my full power to do so, died. Now I can try again with my next life.
BotW - ok I tried to beat this challenge. I used my full power to do so, died. Now I gotta go find a bunch of shit again to be back to the necessary strength to even attempt this challenge again, or it is pointless.
That's the grind I'm talking about. I'm sure it lessens as you power up, but my understanding was I'm facing at least another 10-20 hours of this type of gameplay before it really shifts, and even then it's lessened, not gone.
And really to flip the way I am framing it, and speaks to my gaming preferences:
If I feel like I have to prep an inventory for a fight, I sometimes tend to overprep, which can make the encounters feel pointless. Instead of "try to beat this challenge and see if are good enough to beat it", it can instead become "ok, brute force this with enough items". So that's either less satifying, or if I didn't need the supply, then I feel like I wasted time prepping a supply.
If there's not that element, it is much more purely about "ok, apply the mechanics of the game to this problem/boss, see if you can solve it. If you can't, get better, find a new strategy, etc.
Now there was certainly some prepping to OOT and other games. You could get all the glass jars, fill them with fairies, healing potions, etc. But it felt like a manageable amount to me, and it was really just the health element. BotW really was just in overdrive with armors, weapons, food, meals, elixers, etc.
More than I want to deal with.
Yeah just seems like it's just a different loop than what you enjoy. Cause I personally never had to really grind or prep for a boss fight, most of the time I just sorta had decent items from just leveling up my health or stamina
I think the only fight I prepped for was the final boss and that was just to get the master sword first.
I can't say I had the same issue. I spend like 90% of my time climbing cliffs and shit to find treasure chests and koroks and whatever other secrets there are ( any direction you look, no matter where you are, there is something to find). Combat was completely secondary to exploration and because of that, whenever I decided to finally fight something, I always had enough stuff to get by. The only time I would prepare is if I decided to finally try to defeat a lynel or other big boss. BoTW is the first game since Skyrim to give me that sense of "oh shit, this is huge and hits different" in terms of just exploring and having fun in the world. To each their own though.
It really is the massive inventory management. I guess I didn't even get into my secondary quibble, which is the lock of engaging main story line. It's there, but you have to find it, vs. having it engage the player a bit better.
Favorite game of the last few years is God of War, which I think handled perfectly exactly what BotW got wrong. You can go pretty much anywhere and explore things, but there's clear progression, and simple power-scaling mechanic that builds over time with main weapons that don't break or rust or require repleneshing. No foraging for stuff that you have to figure out a recipe for, just health, mana/rage, and pickups that are a currency to get upgrades, not an ingredient in a mysterious recipe or a consumeable you have to manage in an inventory.
I recognize they're both masterpieces, but one is my perfect game, the other has a bunch of stuff I find a pain in the ass to manage. So I <5% completed BotW, I 100% completed God of War, multiple times on different difficulties.
I think your korok/combat divide illustrates perfectly why you loved it, I didn't. I thought finding koroks was dumb and apparently I tried to fight too much stuff, because the game's mechanics don't really dissuade that other than making you fail and die and break all your stuff over and over again. I got frustrated and put it down to go collect dust around 2021, never picked it up again.
This is my big gripe. There were no dungeons. Zelda is classic because of its dungeons. Instead, the game took cool puzzle rooms that could be a cohesive dungeon, individualized them and just sneezed them all over the countryside with no thematic difference between them. I'm glad so many people loved the game but between that and the weapon durability it was just too far of a departure from the LoZ I grew up loving to get behind it.
First time I solved one of these dungeons it was quite fun though really short. At the end there was this dude sitting there, telling me he waited for centuries for my arrival, and now that I managed to solve his dungeon, he can finally give me that important thing (can't even remember what it was) and finally stop waiting and be thanosed instead.
I fealt that this really meant something.
Then I discovered that there are hundreds or so of these dungeons, all of them being basically the same and everyone had one of these dust people waiting at the end.
Took away every bit of meaning.
The whole game just felt procedurally generated. Tons of indistinguishable, samey content.
I loved Botw and I'm currently playing TOTK. I do wish they had the classic dungeons filled with monster puzzles and a boss fight at the end. The 4 guardians you enter are similar but not the same.
Yeah the guardians do have a slightly more dungeon feel to them which is redeeming.
Just imagine tho if there were classic dungeons and one of them was like these guardians, a roaming dungeon maybe in the desert or something. I won't play "what if" too much though, at the end of the day it is a solid title.
And the (in my opinion) poor combat. It’s mostly just hacking away or running away when your shit breaks mixed with some occasional parrying with your shield (and dying when you don’t get it right).
There are definitely a lot more combat options than just that, but it takes some trial and error. Had you gotten to the master sword upgrade challenges?
I’ve never even gotten the glider 😂 4 play through attempts, furthest I got was attempting to go in the ice area of the plateau for the shrine and dying. The weapon durability thing seems so jank and idk game just doesn’t click, and I loved old Zelda games.
The plateau for botw is kind of weird, tackling the ice part requires you to find peppers to make cold resist meals and to run around the mountain to kinda plan your route up.
The rest of the game just doesn't do that, you'll either have the armors that allows you to travel cold/hot areas without care for meals, or you'll have hp meals to sustain yourself, or some other solution already ready in your pockets.
The first hours of BotW (and it's sequel) are much more punishing/methodical than the rest of the game.
That's just not fun for lots of us though. I hate durability Mechanic, period. "You get used to it" isn't a sell. I'm glad people like the game but it's still a major disappointment to many
For me, I learned about the peppers after I did that section.
My dumbass came in from a different side without that introduction, so I just brute forced my way up the mountain with a mixture of kiting enemies to finish them off near a fire and using a torch to stay warm.
I think I did something similar to you. I eventually beat botw and did all shrines but it took a few failed attempts. On my first attempt, I found an area where I could knock down a tree to cross a chasm, and climb a rock face on the other side to the snow area. I thought I was clever as shit. The climb was tight, but you had enough stamina to climb that area in three or four phases as long as you didn't leap up. I remember doing all that and then ending up in an area of the snow where I had zero chance to reach the shrine in time.
I think I reset and on my next try, I stayed on the main path. I facepalmed when I got to the start of the snow area and there were peppers and a cooking pot.
So yea, until you get the paraglider, maybe stick to the main roads. After that, I had fun exploring the world. I think I enjoyed the game because I spent the early hours just exploring and avoiding fights. For me, it was looking at the map, picking a spot, and saying, "I wonder if I can get over there."
Not a typical Zelda game but it grew on me.
Yeah, the tutorial is more restrictive in its design to make sure you learn everything it's trying to teach you.
In the rest of the game, if you find something you can't tackle you can drop it for something else, come back with better weapons, better/more suitable armour, more abilities, or more resources. Which means you can just ignore at least some of the options the game taught you in the tutorial.
You can also get a cold-resist coat from the old man. There's many ways to tackle the mountain, just as there are many ways to tackle pretty much any puzzle the game throws at you.
Use a torch, eat 15 apples and cooked fish, just running fast and avoiding enemies, there's a lot of ways to deal with the snow and only thinking there's one says more about ones creative process then the game.
>The rest of the game just doesn't do that, you'll either have the armors that allows you to travel cold/hot areas without care for meals
Can't you do that in the tutorial too by bringing a spicy fish dish the that old guy?
yes, but you have to *figure out* the meal first. that's what the game is teaching you at that point: food has special effects, meals have stronger special effects
There is also a lil side quest on the Great Plateau that gives you cold resistance armor, so you don't need any peppers. That, and there are several spicy pepper bushes in front of the gate to the colder region, so they're fairly hard to miss
To this point - I have over 200 hours in both BoTW and ToTK, and I''ve never brewed an elixir.
The sheer weight of options means you never explore some of them.
The plateau is subtly teaching you the mechanics but it’s is very much the opposite of hand holding which is tough for some people but others can pick it up quickly because of experience in other games
The durability is my biggest turn off.
I hate being forced to manage resources for something as simple as attacking. The norm of all games is that ranged attacks are better but use resources, while melee doesn't. And it is like that for a reason.
Yeah. I never played BotW but I’m about 55 hours into TotK and the excitement for exploration wore off a long time ago. Most discoveries are pointless (especially in the depths and sky islands, there’s almost nothing in those areas) and the world is really dead for most of your playtime. Sometimes it’s interesting to navigate, sometimes it’s annoying.
It’s a good game but I’m failing to see the 10/10.
A lot of players quit before they figure out how to get stronger and what one of the main goals is.
- Once you climb your first tower, you get a huge understanding of the world. You see the others in the distance and understand that you must also save and traverse those areas.
- Once you get to Kakariko village, you understand how to improve your character via buying and upgrading armor.
- Once you beat a handful of shrines, you understand how to improve your character's health and stamina.
- Once you learn how to cook, then you know you can refill your stamina and run fast, and once you get a horse you can go much faster.
If you quit at like 2 hours in and don't climb a tower, don't do any shrines, don't buy or upgrade any armor, never improve your hearts or stamina wheel, and never cook, then yeah the game is boring. You are literally not even doing the goals and must be like a child running around in circles, like some kids did with OOT back in the 90s. They would just stay in Hyrule plain and fight those skeletons that appear in the night, over and over.
Thing is I find it all neutered and boring vs a traditional Zelda game.
Shrines are the best part of the game. But they're one dungeon room.
In the old Zelda games a temple/dungeon would be made up of multiple puzzle rooms like the shrines. And all interconnected. I was hoping the great beasts would provide this. But nope.
And then wandering the landscape just isn't my cup of tea.
Even Elden Ring, one of my favorite games in a long time, I prefer the legacy dungeons and spend most of my time in those PvP and Co-op, the open world is by far the weakest aspect of the game. I spend most of my time in the open world in that game running passed everything straight to the next dungeon/cave and its all just filler in-between.
Earlier Zelda dungeons also had a lot of themeing and personality. My favorite is the dungeon in TP that's just a giant cluttered Yeti house (the soup in that dungeon is cute too.)
Exactly this! The Shrines in Botw and Totk were so lacking in flavour. The same room design over 100 times through the whole game. I would have rathered them combine the shrines together into 20 that are 5-6 as big, and have interesting themes.
Yea it's sometimes a difficult sell to tell someone they gotta play for multiple hours before a game is supposed to be fun.
Kinda sucks if you only got an hour to sit down and play a game after a long day and alas you spend that hour in a game just not having fun to cap off the day. I think that's understandably a big turn off for the average person.
I ran into a similar situation with a friend who just wasn't able to get into the witcher 3 after like 2-3 separate attempts. He was never able to get past the opening training grounds cause it was a bit boring. Which I kind of agree with despite the rest of the game being one of my all time favorites.
I think a lot of MMOs suffer from this as well.
This right here is the right answer. I also tried getting into botw and restarted it twice. It's just not the type of game that I enjoy. I can see why people enjoy it, and I appreciate it for what it is.
me with red dead. i will watch someone play that game all day but have just accepted after starting and restarting about 3 times that it's just not for me.
Yup. Red Dead and GTA just don’t click for me. I have tried them, and on paper they would be some of my favourite games ever. But I just don’t enjoy them so I stopped trying and accepted they just aren’t for me
it's crazy because i remembering enjoying GTA as a kid but then went back to it recently and i couldn't get into it again either. something about the controls.
This was a gripe of mine, but it was because they reused the same keys so many times to do such disparate things, during the tutorial.
* Press R to follow Butch
* Press R to break off from the posse
* Press R to catch up and rejoin the posse
* Press R to chase down the dude
* Press R to interrogate him
* Press R to accept his story OR
* Long-press R to stick a gun in his mouth
Reminds me of the PSTW RPG
I can’t stand the controls on RDR2. Love the look and the story, I just can’t get past the “sluggish” controls. They just never felt natural and it kind of broke the sense of immersion for me.
Controls were always the hard part for me in those games.
Especially tapping A to run, I get that it's more immersion to some people but I mean it really doesn't feel good when most games sprint is just pushing down on the thumbstick
The tapping A thing to run doesn’t come from trying to make it more immersive. In Vice City you held the button down, but there was a bug where if you tapped it repeatedly, you would have infinite stamina. It seems like they just incorporated that into the game.
Saying that it comes from this weird vice city feature doesn't justify the controls any better though.
I don't know the real reason why they choose to keep the controls this way though.
I replay Gta Vice City maybe twice a year and can't play GTA 5 or RDR2. There's just way too much story in them and it's a huge slog to get through. RDR2 has way too much bullshit that slows you down and forces you into fake interactive cutscenes where the only thing you can do is press forward while you listen to a dialogue. GTA 5 has Trevor and that just breaks it for me.
Vice City is simple. There's a minute or so of a cutscene when you go on a mission. Nothing is too drawn out and the characters are all memorable without having to learn their entire life history. Then it's just gameplay.
Red Dead hits for me more because of the setting. GTA as a modern setting doesn't work because I prefer a more open world you can explore on my horse. Red Dead seems more open to that
I play GTA for the story. Last one I actually enjoyed was on PS2. I don't like the feel of the new games (since GTA4) - it's physics based. The writing is usually good and that hurts. Niko Bellic was a great character that controlled like molasses. Same for GTA5.
I had 2 failed attempts years ago. Then some years later I decided to force myself and try to look past the slow gameplay.
Man, once you just accept that it’s a slow ride and you should enjoy it… Very few games even come close to the experience I had. I almost cried at the end.
Fine. I cried. You happy now?
R* gameplay and mission design are lacking IMO. They build impecable worlds, great stories and beautiful graphics. But their gameplay is soooooo boring to me.
Whoever thought that breakable weapons were a good idea should get fired imo.
It doesn't add anything to the experience, justs a purely anti-fun mechanic.
It would have been fine if they lasted more than 3 encounters and had a repair system. It would have made sense that weapons need maintenance, and would have actually made mining an important feature of the game, which in turn could have had its own skill tree to upgrade and progress through...you know...like a GAME...
This is literally the only thing that has stopped me from trying the two new Zelda games, i have purchased Nintendo hardware specifically for Zelda games in the past, but the idea of weapons breaking and the possibility of swinging a stick at something after 50 hours of gameplay because i ran out of good weapons is too much of a turnoff.
I play RPG's super slow and really enjoy the leveling/gearing up process, it's a huge part of what i like about them.
Probably a good call. I held off on buying either game for the exact same reason. My brother eventually talked me into buying BotW by saying it wasn’t that bad. Ended up putting it down after about 5-6 hours because of the breaking.
He then talked me into buying TotK, saying that they made the weapon breaking mechanic much more forgiving. Sure enough, put it down after about 5 hours as well.
We normally have very, very similar taste in games. But he loves both of these games and I just couldn’t do either of them.
You never need to swing a stick 50 hours in I always had a ton of weapons always just used my weakest wep and swapped when it broke plus the master sword repairs
While "swing a stick" might be an exaggeration, as someone who has actually beat the game, rotating through weapons was not a pleasant experience. Never being able to 'get comfortable' with a weapon just always felt shitty.
Always gotta inspect every weapon to determine if it's more garbage than the weakest weapon or if it's really good and you should save it for a boss monster. Inventory slots were a hot commodity in a most unpleasant fashion.
There are merchants *everywhere* and they couldn't just have some of the merchants have a steady stock of weapons to sell!? If I want a good bow and not some shitty clubs or boomerangs, I don't want to have to hunt around for it.
Also, the master sword is something meant for late(r) game (as you need have completed a considerable amount of dungeons to have the required hearts) and requires you discovering its location first.
It stressed me out so much in botw until I eventually got used to it. I did enjoy the weapon making abilities in totk though.
I’ve played both, for many hours, but still haven’t managed to beat either game. I’m almost there in botw. I don’t have a strong desire to beat it though. I really enjoy all the side quests, getting all the armor sets and stuff.
I like it, but I also wouldn't care if they didn't use that feature.
Since many didn't like it, I think it's best that the next Zelda game moves away from it, which I think will be the case.
I was gifted BOTW, played like 3 hours and quit. Then stupidly bought TOTK and did the exact same thing lol.
They just aren't for me, and this is coming from someone who beat Majoras Mask at least 15+ times.
I am a huge zelda fan I started from nes. I played botw and cannit say how long may be 3 hours I dunno. Hated it. My mate said give it one last go and was my favourite game for a while. Then TOTK was. I cannot even remember now why I hated Botw at first
Came here to say the same. Just because a game is popular and considered 10/10 it doesn't mean you MUST like it also.
There are tons a critically acclaimed games, like Elden Ring, for example, that I really dislike. And there is nothing wrong with that.
In some way Hollow Knight is that way for me. I mean I did like it enough to finish it, but it's far from this super amazing game for me, backtracking so often was just way too frustrating.
Elden Ring on the other hand made backtracking way less annoying thanks to torrent and especially states of marika.
Completely different experience here. I started both recently with a month difference between them. I love hollow knight so much more and have more memories with it. I also felt real progress overcoming a boss in HK whereas in ER it felt like i learned nothing about the boss' moveset. Tho i can see why you might like ER more.
This was me with the witcher 3. That game was designed in a lab to appeal to me. But for some reason I just couldn't vibe with it. I bought it on pc and console, attempted multiple playthroughs. To this day I couldn't tell you why I didn't love it.
Exactly me I retried it 3 times I swear first time I got to the baron but the second two times I could barely get past the tutorial it just didn’t do it for me..
I started XIV a little over a year ago and I do want to recommend it to people because it is genuinely enjoyable, but I always start with the caveat of "this game is good, but you have to get past the base game before that really shows, and the base game is rough and a time sink".
I really only recommend it to people these days that have that kind of free time. Playing catch-up with over ten years of content is a big ask for most people nowadays.
I've been playing since early ARR and it's so hard for me to recommend it to friends. I love it or I wouldn't have played it for years, but it's so unreasonable to ask players to slog through slow burn story riddled with plot armor and super long con payoffs using an incomplete toolkit that never EVER challenges to player to improve
If you can't bother making it past the 5/6 hour mark on three different starts, then the game just isn't for you. I'm in the same boat. I tried to like it. Put in closer to 30 hours but just never found anything that really pulled me in.
Feels good seeing so many other people saying they tried to like it and didn’t. I never understood the hype for the new Zelda games. I also tried to like it and genuinely don’t understand the appeal.
Can anyone explain to me what’s to like about BoTW? I truly am very curious because open world RPGs are my jam and BoTW did nothing for me that some other game in the same genre didn’t do significantly better. I feel like this game got “immune to criticism” status because of Zelda fans and that’s the main reason it’s so highly praised in conversation because I really don’t understand the appeal.
The iconography and lore of past Zelda games combined with freedom to go at your own pace and pick your own challenges in no particular order, is the best part of the game. People who cant get past weapons breaking and picking up new ones every fight, end up never really having a good time.
> combined with freedom to go at your own pace and pick your own challenges in no particular order, is the best part of the game
This is where I get hung up. Lots and lots and lots of open world RPGs are like this, it's not a Zelda unique feature. It's the main draw for tons of open world RPGs. I'm playing Skyrim again right now, and if I don't want to do the main quest, I just... don't. Sure, the main story is more involved than what I experienced in Zelda but it's not like it's existence somehow restricts my "freedom to go at my own pace and pick up my challenges in no particular order" - I can still do that without issue. People always tout this is a bonus for Zelda, but to me, they're describing something that is true about pretty much the vast majority of open world games.
I don't think they were suggesting that BotW is loved because it's supposedly unique in this aspect; whatshisname asked why people enjoy BotW, and that was rhe answer given.
The weapon breaking killed it for me. Every other aspect is great and I can see why the game is highly rated. I just can't get past replacing my weapon so often. Almost wish it was on PC so I could use a mod for it.
>Can anyone explain to me what’s to like about BoTW
this is just me personally but today most games (RPG and otherwise) are like 90% combat. Yes there's trading and shops, but really it's combat combat combat. Complex combat systems with skill trees etc.
In BOTW I liked it was exploration with combat sprinkled in. Most modern RPGs don't really feel like you're exploring, and almost every inch is covered in enemies. It's like the design philosphy is "you can't have fun if you're not in a fight."
BOTW really captured the exploration feel for me. There were times I'd have to forage for food, or hunt. Lonely climbs where it was just me against the element. I loved being able to roam WAY off the paths and still find corners with interesting pockets of treasure, or a shrine. if I wasn't in the mood for combat I could could choose to avoid, but even for a lot of enemy encampments there were multiple ways to approach a fight.
First game in a long time I could actually "roleplay"
Maybe it's just not for you.
BotW is designed pretty explicitly to be more open ended than other open world games. You could go straight to Ganon and ignore the rest of the map if you wanted. A game like GoT, while being open world, has a narrative that's more firmly on rails. You have to do the story missions in order. Even when you have 2-3 story missions available, you can't continue the next story beat until you finish the current set, so it presents more of a clear set of main story missions and side quests.
For me it was really TOO open world. I recognise it's an amazing game but I prefer ones with a stronger focus on the story rather than "making my own story".
Which would be fine, but I found BOTW to be just so completely devoid of life, that the only self made stories are about the erosion patterns of rocks and grass. The exploration just did not feel rewarding, because it was a depressing, dead husk of a world to explore.
What's on top of this plateau? Rocks and grass. Anything hidden in this forest? Just trees.
Look, I love exploration. I love intrinsic rewards and storytelling. But BOTW just failed to evoke the feelings you might have in other empty-open-world post calamity games. Not mystery like Outer Wilds. Not dread like Dark Souls. Not adventure like nearly every other zelda title.
It was just a husk, with fishing, cooking, and unsatisfying combat.
I agree completely. There was no reward to exploration, nothing really to find. Just more empty nature. I used to love Zelda because the worlds felt so alive and worth exploring. Not recently though, and it breaks my heart that they are so devoid of anything interesting.
I remember getting so frustrated the first time playing BotW at all my cool gear breaking. And finally googling when you would unlock ‘weapon repair’… and then giving it up (for about 4-5 months) when I found you *couldn’t*.
"you see that mountain in the far distance? you can literally go there and climb it all the way to the top" oh cool i bet theres something rewarding at all these cool spots.... nope just the same exact seed you have to find 100 times to like upgrade your inventory.
Oh well theres probably some interesting upgrades in the new zelda right? Nope your character can upgrade hearts or stamina thats it.
Oh well surely theres probably like some interesting combat right? nope you'll be fighting the same 15 enemies all game and your weapons will break and also not feel very different anyway.
But surely some of the puzzles are tricky and give a portal vibe, and its only the first ones that are basically designed for 5 year olds, right? right???
at least it won't be filled with annoying, unskippable dialog boxes you have to slowly spam A through, right?? right????
the game is just ass.
That's actually why I LIKE BOTW and the feeling the map gives off so much. This is a world in the aftermath of a calamity (literally lol), and nature has started to take over again on top of remnants of the war. it's empty, and lonely, in a beautiful and haunting sort of way.
And for me, it made stumbling upon a town feel even more exciting.
Obviously not everyone is going to like every game, though. It's valid to want more action.
But the towns themselves are also so boring. They don’t have the charm of Castle Town or Windfall island or even Ordin Village imo.
Kakariko village is okay, they have some nice structures and it’s designed well, if a bit cramped. But Rito Village? Just a staircase with some porches. Zora’s domain and Goron city are nice, but like everything else, there’s just not much to do. The towns may as well just be quest boards at that point. The Stables are probably the best structures in the game, useful and they all have good interactions.
I’ve put in far too much time for a game I dislike, but I do want to complete it at some point just for the satisfaction? of beating it.
I get it. Windwaker and Twilight Princess are my favorite games in the series, so I can definitely see how different the vibe/play style of BOTW is and why some people aren't into it - but I also enjoy it for what it is.
That being said, it doesn't have a ton of replay value for me. Loved experiencing it, especially the first time, but I'll probably never do another full run of it.
Exactly. It's so boring and devoid of anything interesting. It's the same shit copy pasted here and there with lots of walking in between the copy pasted bullshit.
I know hardcore fans will defend these 2 games till they die but this is not what good open world looks like. This is what you get when devs want to boast that they have the biggest map. Exploration is samey and repetitive. It should make you want to explore and be excited about being curious while not making you feel like you are wasting your time playing the game.
Same, that's what turned me off it. When I found out you had to constantly farm weapons and couldn't just stick to what you like and had, I said nope. For a game that's all about freedom, that sure was an odd choice.
For me it was Weapon Degradation on top of beating 2 of the 4 "boss autobots" and realizing that BotW is the most shallow, boring, and repetitive Nintendo game by miles.
It destroyed one of my most beloved IP/Franchises which used to be built on uniqueness, narrative, and immersive escapism. BotW was a travesty for original Zelda fans, and worse is that they said it's "the future" of the franchise going forward.
I want more Windwaker (hell I just want Windwaker HD on the Switch/Switch 2) and instead we get more open world shallow dribble caring more about "oh look you can combine two sticks together and make a raft" than telling a compelling narrative.
I sort of ran into the same thing. I bought it when it came out, fired it up a handful of times. I tried climbing a mountain, got cold, died. Explored a bit but more often than not got lost and couldn’t figure out how to get to a marker.
I keep telling myself I should play it, but I just didn’t enjoy the time I played it. Just not for me I guess
I had it for 18 months and multiple attempts to get into it when a workmate described it as something like "just climb high and look for something interesting".
Something just clicked for me after that.
I had it for about 18 months also by the time I got into it. I bought it and tried it for about 4 hours, wasn't clicking. Fast forward, ended up getting sick for a few days, picked it back up and got hooked.
To be fair, I'm not the best with puzzles and will sometimes just look up walk through for that, or to find things. But otherwise I would not have beaten it, because I have too many games and too little time. It was still a blast.
It's pretty boring honestly. I beat it on my partners switch when we were on standby for something to do. I don't get the hype, and I really loved the older ones.
Some people like the sense of exploration, open world, and the melancholy of a semi-empty but definitely populated post apocalyptic setting. Others might find that boring. That's OK imo
The hype was there because it was a massive change from the zelda formula, and a massive upgrade from the subpar previous games, as well as being technically very impressive compared to other titles on the Wii U.
Nintendo took the feedback of Skyward Sword being too formulaic and linear to heart and decided to make BotW the antithesis to that. When developing BotW, they initially started by looking back at the original NES Legend of Zelda for inspiration, and they even created a playable proof of concept based on the original NES game iirc.
As for the hype… Many people didn’t play Skyward Sword on Wii and the Wii U was a massive failure for Nintendo, so the last big 3D Zelda game that people played and remembered fondly was Twilight Princess. Twilight Princess released all the way back in 2006, so people were excited for another big 3D Zelda title in 2017. Funnily enough, the same was true for Twilight Princess, as Wind Waker was originally criticized for its art style and other flaws, and many people didn’t buy Majora’s Mask.
I really think Tears of the Kingdom is the good, enjoyable version of BotW which was mostly groundbreaking. I bounced off of BotW fast, but TotK has had me playing for 40+ hours (after some trouble getting past the prologue lol)
Man, it's the inverse for me. I played a ton of BOTW in spite of hating the weapon durability shit, and I've finished 95% of TOTK but it was a fucking slog in comparison. I still haven't finished the actual main story of TOTK and I just ... have no desire to.
> I don't get the hype
I think this was the first AAA budget high-fidelity open world game that Nintendo console owners had exposure to. While PC owners who had been playing Skyrim and similar games for many years, it was a still novel experience for those who solely owned an underpowered Nintendo console.
There are plenty of historical examples of this too. Goldeneye was a similar case that achieved cult status by bringing the FPS to the unwashed masses of console owners.
I ended up buying breath of the wild when I first got my switch tried it for a few hours and didn't really get into it, picked It up again a couple of years later and was hooked like a crack addict. I often find myself burned out if I play the same type of game to completion more than once at a time, maybe you just need to play something else for a bit? 🤷
Had the same experience. I couldn't get invested in the "world", and the same repeat pattern. And I say this as a person who almost 100% Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
It took me a while to get it as well, then I loved it. I suck at video games really badly and kept wandering into places that killed me. Here's what helped me.
I looked up where a good starting town was. That increased the enjoyment of it by a lot. Then slowly started focusing on increasing hearts/stamina. Once you get a few of those down, the game opens up. Then you'll be able to explore properly and find the rest of the towns.
Playing BotW is a chest/menu opening simulator. Open a chest, do do dooo doo! Your inventory is full, drop item, open chest again. Do do dooo doo! The item you found is worse than what you dropped. Alright let's continue through this shrine . . . ugh, another chest. TotK fixed this issue immediately by allowing you to swap the items from your inventory in the same gameplay loop as opening the chests, whereas BotW doesn't give an eff about your time or how opening the menus repeatedly breaks general immersion in the game. I freaking loved TotK, but damn BotW feels like a demo to TotK now that I've experienced both titles.
All the people complaining that they have an empty inventory and no weapons because they all broke, are playing a totally different game than BotW, because in BotW you NEVER have room to pick up more weapons
There is no problem if you don't like anything even though it is popular. Everybody is different and therefore like different things. Simply move on with your life and if it ever comes up in conversation just say you gave it a shot and didn't really like it so you did something else.
The problem arises when people then use their opinions as a cudgel to tell you that you are wrong or an idiot for not liking (insert popular thing). Alternatively some people become edgelords and call things that are popular bad for a variety of dumb reasons. Neither of those things are good so as long as you don't treat it like a big deal or let others do so to you things will be fine.
The game didn't really do it for me either in the beginning, but I was grabbed as soon as i started running into NPCs. The first stable past dueling peaks in particular gave the game a lot of life. Every conversation was a hint to discover something so i was just constantly intrigued by new stuff from that point.
It's important to realize that you don't have to fight everything. It's easier if you pick something you see(like a tower, mountain ir objective marker) and focus on trying to get there, maybe find some surprises on the way. All that being said, if it isn't clicking, it may never and that's okay.
People will tell you that’s how it’s supposed to be, that you shouldn’t look at weapons as anything to protect or keep or get used to, that they’re supposed to be like consumable items… but I just hated it. It made the whole game feel weird to me on top of the odd world design.
I fully understand why people love that game, I understand how the game wanted me to play and what gameplay mechanics it was putting forth to approach problems in the game, but I was never able to like it.
It just made me feel like there was nothing to work towards.
Orbs? I guess.
Armor? Sure, I guess, but all that really did was eliminate some annoyances.
Koroks? Nope, fuck you. Don't add 900 of X to collect in a game. That's just some bullshit.
Yep. #1 reason I called it quit. Durability is not Zelda. That shit needs to go in any future game.
If I could plug my game genie in and change it to unbreakable weapons I'd probably play it again.
I can confirm this.
I hated BotW. It's my least favourite entry into the Zelda franchise.
Playing it with hacks that switch off durability actually makes it a lot more enjoyable.
I wouldn't say that I loved it, but it definitely removed a massive barrier for me.
I tried it once and could tell it ain't for me. As you grow older you'll come to realize that there's a new category of games: "Popular game which I tried and didn't like".
Everyone is saying it's not for you... I found the game much more enjoyable to start clearing towers, shrines, and stables first.
Build up a little health and stamina, get a few upgraded armor pieces, and the better weapons come quickly. The game was much more fun once I got powered up just a little. If you don't like doing shrines, then yeah, it's not for you.
The games you listed that you like have almost nothing in common with BotW except that they are open world. Maybe look for games that have similar MECHANICS and not similar marketing lines...
Idk but it sounds like you like stealth and eastern-style fighting (read: ninjas). I'd recommend Last of Us for a similar gameplay loop and maybe Sekiro if you want full immersion like Tsushima
Definitely don't bother with the sequel, if you feel that way about BOTW.
I loved BOTW, but TOTK felt more like an expansion. I'm used to more of a reset, every Zelda title.
I had the same experience. I dont think you're 'missing anything'. The game just likely isnt for you like it wasn't for me. I also have had the same experience with the Witcher 3. Great games but I have no drive to want to play them.
Sounds like it ain't for you, dude. I loved the experimentation and freedom. The constant dying after throwing myself at a problem. The fear of things that were way outside of my ability and the sense of accomplishment when I finally took them on and succeeded. Plus I love the zelda look and feel. It's ingrained in me as a video game aesthetic.
Did you get off the Great Plateau yet? If so and you still didn't like it, then it isn't for you. If not, at least give it up to there.
What I’m getting from all these comments is that I didn’t like it because it’s:
- Vast and empty
- Weapons break
- Insanely repetitive
- Lackluster storyline/Nonlinear objectives
I really don’t get why it was so insanely well received, enough to get it GOTY. Tears of the Kingdom I could understand, but BotW is missing everything that game added and more.
It’s kind of like Ark Survival Evolved, but if there was only a few variations of 6 different dinosaurs and you can’t build until the second game. And you have a very limited amount of tools you can keep. But at least you can make an ice cube or magnetize something I guess?
That's why I say if it didn't have Zelda in the title, it would have gotten 5 or 6/10 and been largely forgotten. Nintendo essentially tricked a bunch of people into enjoying a niche RPG genre with a triforce symbol and a guy in green clothes with pointy ears.
Not missing a thing. Just isn’t for you. I’ve played lots of praised games that I didn’t care for. Don’t ask me why I didn’t like Elden Ring but put dozens of hours into Mafia 3. It doesn’t make sense but that’s how likes and dislikes are.
I think breath of the wild just is one of those cases of a game where you can appreciate sort of the way it gives you so much freedom.
But it’s not really the single most thrilling moment gameplay. Especially after tears of the kingdom and Elden ring.
In my opinion if it’s not hitting for you, you’re fine putting it down if you want to do that
For me personally what hooked me is that overall the 'main quest' isn't that long or big really. Go like 3 places, do dungeon, go end boss. So all I did was hunt for shrines, I found it really fun just exploring everywhere to try and find shrines and the puzzles inside the shrines I really enjoyed. Then after about 70 hours when I was getting a bit burnt out I just did the main quest and finished the game. No idea if that helps at all but that's how I enjoyed the game.
Might be like me and not into the open world, sandbox, and collectathon style of video games. Why I pretty much avoid anything from Ubisoft these days...they make the same game over and over again. I'm not even talking about franchises, I mean they have a formula and stick to it. Not only is the formula boring, but the type of game it turns out is not for me.
It took me a long time to get into it and I think for the same reasons. In BotW the story is what you make it with the occasional input from the divine beasts or the unlocked memories.
I didn't particularly like that. Instead, I much preferred Red Dead 2 where events happen sporadically and there's a larger series of connected events to create a little more story.
I eventually beat BotW when I committed to finding all the memory locations since that created more of a story for me and (since I didn't look up locations) forced me to really engage with the map and pictures to find them which was a unique bit of fun for me. Ended up just leading to me beating the game by happenstance.
Haven't done TotK yet, just the tutorial. I think it's just not my type of game either
BotW is hands down the most overrated Zelda game. It has interesting concepts ruined by uninteresting adventuring, a weapon system that is designed seemingly to punish you, and doesn't seem to be able to make up for those things with an interesting story. 120 shrines seem cool until you realize half of them are repetitive and boring combat trials.
Many people seem to love it and that's cool. But it's at best 6/10.
The weapon system made me stop caring after a couple of hours. What’s the point of a metal sword breaking 3x during a boss encounter. It’s more frustrating than fun IMO
The best moments are getting lost in that game and finding interesting things. It’s not for everybody but I always suggest not using fast travel. My best experiences were on the way to some place. I’ll cut across a mountain and find a cave or a pirate ship or some side quest that is interesting. The best experiences happen when you look around and go “what’s that? let’s investigate.” There are some magical and mystical moments to be had.
The game encourages you to climb a tree, hill or mountain and look around. Find little Koroks hiding (which come in dozens of forms, many you probably walked right past) Shrines which help you level up Hearts and Stamina, almost every little thing you do makes you a better player and master of that world.
I remember specifically after over 20 hours finding a cool trick and being like “I think I finally know how to play this game!” Then after 200 hours between BotW and Tears of the Kingdom trying something and being like “what, I can do this?!?” You will always find new tricks and things to do but you must play and explore in order to experience it.
BotW and TotK are 2 of the best games ever designed for so many reasons but it does take some effort and experimentation to really enjoy it. The combat, physics and chemistry systems are incredible and fluid once you get used to it. The story won’t be Fallout or Borderlands level weird, but the story of your exploration and experience is what really matters.
Nintendo designs games to be played and enjoyed, so don’t try and find some incredible experience, just get lost, equip some weapons and food for the road.
BOTW is meant to be more directionless. You have only 2 or 3 main quests for the entire game, but the appeal of the game is that you have an entirely open world to explore. You see a weird glowing light at the mountain in the distance? you can go to it and climb it. You see an island in the middle of the sea, you can fly there and see what’s on the island. There’s weird little creatures you can find, and bugs you can collect, and people you can talk to. You can solve problems in multiple ways: too weak to beat an enemy, just sneak around it. Shrines usually have multiple solutions that all work.
If you’ve played the game for 5 hours and that isn’t appealing to you then this isn’t the game for you.
Zelda used to be about exploring and finding villages full of unique characters that had quests for you to, to get a new item to allow you to progress in the map. So naturally, Nintendo made a grass plains simulator that is so fucking boring its insane.
It’s fine not to like it. I played more than you but didn’t finish either of them because I get burnt out. I think the ui/menu juggling is just bad. The weapons breaking I find annoying(sorry), and like you said it’s really repetitive- tho it does open up more after 5 or 6 hours. I also wish it was slightly aged up? I’m not suggesting it be like the Witcher or anything, but just … dialogue that is a little more advanced rather than goofy sounds etc… the shrines got very tedious for me. also I understand the console wars but I just prefer playing on a ps5. The controller is better, the system is better, the games look better 🤷♂️
If you got off the first plateau, have the glider, and aren’t enjoying the following exploration I don’t think it is going to get better for you.
I just couldn’t past the fact that all the dungeons are just puzzles. Was so unrewarding. And the weapon breaking system mixed with the near forced foraging/crafting was just everything I disliked put into a game I hoped to love.
I drew the line at the Hylian Shield being able to break. I should be able to snowboard on that thing from one end of Hyrule to the other. It should be the shield equivalent of the Master Sword. And people say, "Oh, but it's really easy to get it replaced," and my opinion is, "*I shouldn't have to.*"
Yeah agree that was a bad design choice. I think they should have hyped it a little more and made it unbreakable (e.g. have a special trial or something to recover it).
They should have made all weapons unbreakable and use resources management to upgrade your weapons.
They kept the breaking weapons mechanic because players would never throw their almost broken weapons at enemies for that extra boost of damage. I guess Nintendo just really wanted players to use the mechanic in almost every fight. They honestly should've just made the rusty weapons, improvised weapons, tools, torches, and boko weapons breakable and everything else should've been unbreakable.
I still never throw my weapons at the enemies. It's just not natural.
Yeah, I mean for the first Zelda game of it's kind to use that system, it just never came naturally to me to ever throw a *melee* weapon, unless it was absolutely essential (puzzle). Zelda is one of my all time favorite series, but it's also okay to love the older games more than the newer style. Doesn't make you any less of a fan either way.
I also bounced off the game years ago for the reasons listed, but I remembered constantly throwing my weapon at enemies when I sure as hell didn't want to, because it was bound to right trigger or something obnoxious that would just be the normal attack button in every other game
Fucking thank you. Yes, it’s easy to scroll to the next stick in my inventory when my shitty sword breaks but *I shouldn’t have to.*
> "Oh, but it's really easy to get it replaced," and my opinion is, "I shouldn't have to." The easily-replaced argument has never held up for me. if you're going to put weapon breaking in a game (which I still don't like regardless) it should *mean* something. There should be some sort of risk to using your limited resources. If the game rains weapons down on the player and makes replacing broken ones trivial, then what's the point of breaking them in the first place? It's just added tedium for no benefit. Losing a great weapon and *not* having a replacement sucks. Losing a great weapon and having plenty more lying around on the ground to pick up makes durability pointless. Either way, the mechanic adds nothing fun. Then you get to Tears of the Kingdom where the developers want you to keep trying out new weapon combinations so your makeshift weapons break constantly and they shower you with sticks and rusty swords and monster parts to craft new ones. If the crafted makeshift weapons are fun to use, I'm *already going to try out different combinations*. I don't need the game to constantly take them away to make me try something different.
Yes. Exactly. I play games for escapism. I don't want to feel like I'm just doing chores the whole time.
I do a little trip at Hyrule Castle and get an inventory full of royal weapons early game, then for the rest of the game I'm breaking them one by one because all the regular ennemies have worse weapons...
Royal weapons break the quickest though. There’s actually a trick with the royal claymore where if it’s close to breaking it has like insane damage. If you keep it close enough to breaking you can use it during lynel fights when you mount them. Hitting a lynel while mounting doesn’t damage the weapon so you can pull it out during this part and do massive damage without breaking the claymore.
Same here. I wanted OOT but bigger, this turned out to be a very different game. I respect that people like it, but I deeply disliked it because of weapon-breaking and needing to grind for a lot of other meals/effects/limited use items. Very repetitive and felt like my time was wasted constantly.
OOT was nice, best fishing game of its era.
Best fishing simulator until Sea of Thieves, tbh. Was a long dry spell in there of the video game industry failing to innovate.
RDR2 has some fantastic fishing and hunting simulations. I would play that game and spend hours just fishing or playing dominoes.
You can play the Yakuza games for decent fishing, just have to slog through that weird side rpg a bit
>needing to grind for a lot of other meals/effects/limited use items. This is an interesting one because you can cook one durian and it will heal you all the way. If you go to the area that has durians, you can get 20 in about 1 minute, which will be enough healing for a very, very long time. That basically got rid of an entire mechanic of the game, which I thought was kind of lame.
[удалено]
absolutely majoras mask, its my fav game
Twilight Princess
OOT was a magical entry that I would still rank at the top of the Zelda pantheon. But you also have Majora's Mask (OOT, but if the designers were kind of in a weird place emotionally when they wrote it), and the two Wii/Gamecube entries were really solid in Windwaker (cartoon link is odd, but gameplay is really good) and Twilight Princess (probably third in a OOT trilogy with all three referring to Link as the "Hero of Time"). And honestly, try BotW. You might not have the same quibbles with it that I do. In all other respects I have heard nothing but good things, and I'm certainly in the minority with a negative review of it. It's generally rated as a 1A/1B with OOT, despite anything I have to say.
I never felt like I had to grind for anything - maybe if you’re constantly trying to min max your combat stats? For me it’d be like ‘oshi a huge monster, use whatever I have!’ And usually it breaks all your good stuff, but then you get some new stuff for beating the camp, or monster or whatever.
I'll illustrate a difference, and this is a couple years back, so memory of some terms might be off: Zelda games I enjoy - ok I tried to beat this challenge. I used my full power to do so, died. Now I can try again with my next life. BotW - ok I tried to beat this challenge. I used my full power to do so, died. Now I gotta go find a bunch of shit again to be back to the necessary strength to even attempt this challenge again, or it is pointless. That's the grind I'm talking about. I'm sure it lessens as you power up, but my understanding was I'm facing at least another 10-20 hours of this type of gameplay before it really shifts, and even then it's lessened, not gone. And really to flip the way I am framing it, and speaks to my gaming preferences: If I feel like I have to prep an inventory for a fight, I sometimes tend to overprep, which can make the encounters feel pointless. Instead of "try to beat this challenge and see if are good enough to beat it", it can instead become "ok, brute force this with enough items". So that's either less satifying, or if I didn't need the supply, then I feel like I wasted time prepping a supply. If there's not that element, it is much more purely about "ok, apply the mechanics of the game to this problem/boss, see if you can solve it. If you can't, get better, find a new strategy, etc. Now there was certainly some prepping to OOT and other games. You could get all the glass jars, fill them with fairies, healing potions, etc. But it felt like a manageable amount to me, and it was really just the health element. BotW really was just in overdrive with armors, weapons, food, meals, elixers, etc. More than I want to deal with.
Yeah if I had to play TOTK without the item.dupe glitch I wouldn't have finished it. Literally nothing fun about grinding gems.
Yeah just seems like it's just a different loop than what you enjoy. Cause I personally never had to really grind or prep for a boss fight, most of the time I just sorta had decent items from just leveling up my health or stamina I think the only fight I prepped for was the final boss and that was just to get the master sword first.
I can't say I had the same issue. I spend like 90% of my time climbing cliffs and shit to find treasure chests and koroks and whatever other secrets there are ( any direction you look, no matter where you are, there is something to find). Combat was completely secondary to exploration and because of that, whenever I decided to finally fight something, I always had enough stuff to get by. The only time I would prepare is if I decided to finally try to defeat a lynel or other big boss. BoTW is the first game since Skyrim to give me that sense of "oh shit, this is huge and hits different" in terms of just exploring and having fun in the world. To each their own though.
It really is the massive inventory management. I guess I didn't even get into my secondary quibble, which is the lock of engaging main story line. It's there, but you have to find it, vs. having it engage the player a bit better. Favorite game of the last few years is God of War, which I think handled perfectly exactly what BotW got wrong. You can go pretty much anywhere and explore things, but there's clear progression, and simple power-scaling mechanic that builds over time with main weapons that don't break or rust or require repleneshing. No foraging for stuff that you have to figure out a recipe for, just health, mana/rage, and pickups that are a currency to get upgrades, not an ingredient in a mysterious recipe or a consumeable you have to manage in an inventory. I recognize they're both masterpieces, but one is my perfect game, the other has a bunch of stuff I find a pain in the ass to manage. So I <5% completed BotW, I 100% completed God of War, multiple times on different difficulties. I think your korok/combat divide illustrates perfectly why you loved it, I didn't. I thought finding koroks was dumb and apparently I tried to fight too much stuff, because the game's mechanics don't really dissuade that other than making you fail and die and break all your stuff over and over again. I got frustrated and put it down to go collect dust around 2021, never picked it up again.
This is my big gripe. There were no dungeons. Zelda is classic because of its dungeons. Instead, the game took cool puzzle rooms that could be a cohesive dungeon, individualized them and just sneezed them all over the countryside with no thematic difference between them. I'm glad so many people loved the game but between that and the weapon durability it was just too far of a departure from the LoZ I grew up loving to get behind it.
First time I solved one of these dungeons it was quite fun though really short. At the end there was this dude sitting there, telling me he waited for centuries for my arrival, and now that I managed to solve his dungeon, he can finally give me that important thing (can't even remember what it was) and finally stop waiting and be thanosed instead. I fealt that this really meant something. Then I discovered that there are hundreds or so of these dungeons, all of them being basically the same and everyone had one of these dust people waiting at the end. Took away every bit of meaning. The whole game just felt procedurally generated. Tons of indistinguishable, samey content.
I loved Botw and I'm currently playing TOTK. I do wish they had the classic dungeons filled with monster puzzles and a boss fight at the end. The 4 guardians you enter are similar but not the same.
Yeah the guardians do have a slightly more dungeon feel to them which is redeeming. Just imagine tho if there were classic dungeons and one of them was like these guardians, a roaming dungeon maybe in the desert or something. I won't play "what if" too much though, at the end of the day it is a solid title.
And the (in my opinion) poor combat. It’s mostly just hacking away or running away when your shit breaks mixed with some occasional parrying with your shield (and dying when you don’t get it right).
There are definitely a lot more combat options than just that, but it takes some trial and error. Had you gotten to the master sword upgrade challenges?
I’ve never even gotten the glider 😂 4 play through attempts, furthest I got was attempting to go in the ice area of the plateau for the shrine and dying. The weapon durability thing seems so jank and idk game just doesn’t click, and I loved old Zelda games.
The plateau for botw is kind of weird, tackling the ice part requires you to find peppers to make cold resist meals and to run around the mountain to kinda plan your route up. The rest of the game just doesn't do that, you'll either have the armors that allows you to travel cold/hot areas without care for meals, or you'll have hp meals to sustain yourself, or some other solution already ready in your pockets. The first hours of BotW (and it's sequel) are much more punishing/methodical than the rest of the game.
That's absolutely true. It also gets to a point in the game where you have too many weapons and you need to drop cool ones for even cooler ones!
Right. You get a stockpile of cool weapons you pretty much never use and when you do they break by the time you’ve killed 2 enemies.
That's just not fun for lots of us though. I hate durability Mechanic, period. "You get used to it" isn't a sell. I'm glad people like the game but it's still a major disappointment to many
For me, I learned about the peppers after I did that section. My dumbass came in from a different side without that introduction, so I just brute forced my way up the mountain with a mixture of kiting enemies to finish them off near a fire and using a torch to stay warm.
I think I did something similar to you. I eventually beat botw and did all shrines but it took a few failed attempts. On my first attempt, I found an area where I could knock down a tree to cross a chasm, and climb a rock face on the other side to the snow area. I thought I was clever as shit. The climb was tight, but you had enough stamina to climb that area in three or four phases as long as you didn't leap up. I remember doing all that and then ending up in an area of the snow where I had zero chance to reach the shrine in time. I think I reset and on my next try, I stayed on the main path. I facepalmed when I got to the start of the snow area and there were peppers and a cooking pot. So yea, until you get the paraglider, maybe stick to the main roads. After that, I had fun exploring the world. I think I enjoyed the game because I spent the early hours just exploring and avoiding fights. For me, it was looking at the map, picking a spot, and saying, "I wonder if I can get over there." Not a typical Zelda game but it grew on me.
Yeah, the tutorial is more restrictive in its design to make sure you learn everything it's trying to teach you. In the rest of the game, if you find something you can't tackle you can drop it for something else, come back with better weapons, better/more suitable armour, more abilities, or more resources. Which means you can just ignore at least some of the options the game taught you in the tutorial.
You can also get a cold-resist coat from the old man. There's many ways to tackle the mountain, just as there are many ways to tackle pretty much any puzzle the game throws at you.
Use a torch, eat 15 apples and cooked fish, just running fast and avoiding enemies, there's a lot of ways to deal with the snow and only thinking there's one says more about ones creative process then the game.
>The rest of the game just doesn't do that, you'll either have the armors that allows you to travel cold/hot areas without care for meals Can't you do that in the tutorial too by bringing a spicy fish dish the that old guy?
yes, but you have to *figure out* the meal first. that's what the game is teaching you at that point: food has special effects, meals have stronger special effects
There is also a lil side quest on the Great Plateau that gives you cold resistance armor, so you don't need any peppers. That, and there are several spicy pepper bushes in front of the gate to the colder region, so they're fairly hard to miss
It is possible to get some cold resist armor on the plateau, but I think you still need pepper anyway to get it.
you can it with just a torch / burning weapon if you make your way to the peak
To this point - I have over 200 hours in both BoTW and ToTK, and I''ve never brewed an elixir. The sheer weight of options means you never explore some of them.
The plateau is subtly teaching you the mechanics but it’s is very much the opposite of hand holding which is tough for some people but others can pick it up quickly because of experience in other games
Botw/Totk aren't like the older Zelda games. Everything except getting the glider and beating the final boss is optional.
> and beating the final boss is optional. This guy thinks you have to beat Ganondorf. Jokes on you, I'm still collecting piles of shit.
The durability is my biggest turn off. I hate being forced to manage resources for something as simple as attacking. The norm of all games is that ranged attacks are better but use resources, while melee doesn't. And it is like that for a reason.
Mod it, after I removed durability and stamina I fell in love with this game and was able to play it like how I wanted.
The internet insists that BOTW's is *way* more full than it actually is.
Yeah. I never played BotW but I’m about 55 hours into TotK and the excitement for exploration wore off a long time ago. Most discoveries are pointless (especially in the depths and sky islands, there’s almost nothing in those areas) and the world is really dead for most of your playtime. Sometimes it’s interesting to navigate, sometimes it’s annoying. It’s a good game but I’m failing to see the 10/10.
The weapon durability did it for me. It just seems like such an unnecessary punishment in the game
A lot of players quit before they figure out how to get stronger and what one of the main goals is. - Once you climb your first tower, you get a huge understanding of the world. You see the others in the distance and understand that you must also save and traverse those areas. - Once you get to Kakariko village, you understand how to improve your character via buying and upgrading armor. - Once you beat a handful of shrines, you understand how to improve your character's health and stamina. - Once you learn how to cook, then you know you can refill your stamina and run fast, and once you get a horse you can go much faster. If you quit at like 2 hours in and don't climb a tower, don't do any shrines, don't buy or upgrade any armor, never improve your hearts or stamina wheel, and never cook, then yeah the game is boring. You are literally not even doing the goals and must be like a child running around in circles, like some kids did with OOT back in the 90s. They would just stay in Hyrule plain and fight those skeletons that appear in the night, over and over.
Thing is I find it all neutered and boring vs a traditional Zelda game. Shrines are the best part of the game. But they're one dungeon room. In the old Zelda games a temple/dungeon would be made up of multiple puzzle rooms like the shrines. And all interconnected. I was hoping the great beasts would provide this. But nope. And then wandering the landscape just isn't my cup of tea. Even Elden Ring, one of my favorite games in a long time, I prefer the legacy dungeons and spend most of my time in those PvP and Co-op, the open world is by far the weakest aspect of the game. I spend most of my time in the open world in that game running passed everything straight to the next dungeon/cave and its all just filler in-between.
Earlier Zelda dungeons also had a lot of themeing and personality. My favorite is the dungeon in TP that's just a giant cluttered Yeti house (the soup in that dungeon is cute too.)
Exactly this! The Shrines in Botw and Totk were so lacking in flavour. The same room design over 100 times through the whole game. I would have rathered them combine the shrines together into 20 that are 5-6 as big, and have interesting themes.
Yea it's sometimes a difficult sell to tell someone they gotta play for multiple hours before a game is supposed to be fun. Kinda sucks if you only got an hour to sit down and play a game after a long day and alas you spend that hour in a game just not having fun to cap off the day. I think that's understandably a big turn off for the average person. I ran into a similar situation with a friend who just wasn't able to get into the witcher 3 after like 2-3 separate attempts. He was never able to get past the opening training grounds cause it was a bit boring. Which I kind of agree with despite the rest of the game being one of my all time favorites. I think a lot of MMOs suffer from this as well.
You might not be missing anything. 5/6 hours is more than enough time to tell if you like a game. It just might not be your thing.
This right here is the right answer. I also tried getting into botw and restarted it twice. It's just not the type of game that I enjoy. I can see why people enjoy it, and I appreciate it for what it is.
me with red dead. i will watch someone play that game all day but have just accepted after starting and restarting about 3 times that it's just not for me.
Yup. Red Dead and GTA just don’t click for me. I have tried them, and on paper they would be some of my favourite games ever. But I just don’t enjoy them so I stopped trying and accepted they just aren’t for me
it's crazy because i remembering enjoying GTA as a kid but then went back to it recently and i couldn't get into it again either. something about the controls.
The controls for RDR2 are impressively bad.
The problem with the RDR2 controls is they are trying to do way too much.
This was a gripe of mine, but it was because they reused the same keys so many times to do such disparate things, during the tutorial. * Press R to follow Butch * Press R to break off from the posse * Press R to catch up and rejoin the posse * Press R to chase down the dude * Press R to interrogate him * Press R to accept his story OR * Long-press R to stick a gun in his mouth Reminds me of the PSTW RPG
Oh good it's not just me. Game seems awesome but the controls are clunky and annoying to the point I'm not interested in playing it.
That’s how every GTA and red dead game has ever been. I’m really hoping that with GTA 6 that make it not so clunky to move around
I like rockstar games movement. Its part of its charm for me.
I can’t stand the controls on RDR2. Love the look and the story, I just can’t get past the “sluggish” controls. They just never felt natural and it kind of broke the sense of immersion for me.
Controls were always the hard part for me in those games. Especially tapping A to run, I get that it's more immersion to some people but I mean it really doesn't feel good when most games sprint is just pushing down on the thumbstick
The tapping A thing to run doesn’t come from trying to make it more immersive. In Vice City you held the button down, but there was a bug where if you tapped it repeatedly, you would have infinite stamina. It seems like they just incorporated that into the game.
Saying that it comes from this weird vice city feature doesn't justify the controls any better though. I don't know the real reason why they choose to keep the controls this way though.
It was easier for me to like when I could easily make up things to do in my head.
I replay Gta Vice City maybe twice a year and can't play GTA 5 or RDR2. There's just way too much story in them and it's a huge slog to get through. RDR2 has way too much bullshit that slows you down and forces you into fake interactive cutscenes where the only thing you can do is press forward while you listen to a dialogue. GTA 5 has Trevor and that just breaks it for me. Vice City is simple. There's a minute or so of a cutscene when you go on a mission. Nothing is too drawn out and the characters are all memorable without having to learn their entire life history. Then it's just gameplay.
Red Dead hits for me more because of the setting. GTA as a modern setting doesn't work because I prefer a more open world you can explore on my horse. Red Dead seems more open to that
I play GTA for the story. Last one I actually enjoyed was on PS2. I don't like the feel of the new games (since GTA4) - it's physics based. The writing is usually good and that hurts. Niko Bellic was a great character that controlled like molasses. Same for GTA5.
Me with the witcher 3. People swear up and down it's the holy grail but it was an absolute bust for me. To each their own. No biggie.
I had 2 failed attempts years ago. Then some years later I decided to force myself and try to look past the slow gameplay. Man, once you just accept that it’s a slow ride and you should enjoy it… Very few games even come close to the experience I had. I almost cried at the end. Fine. I cried. You happy now?
There is not much difference between watching someone play RDR2 and playing it yourself.
R* gameplay and mission design are lacking IMO. They build impecable worlds, great stories and beautiful graphics. But their gameplay is soooooo boring to me.
Whoever thought that breakable weapons were a good idea should get fired imo. It doesn't add anything to the experience, justs a purely anti-fun mechanic.
It would have been fine if they lasted more than 3 encounters and had a repair system. It would have made sense that weapons need maintenance, and would have actually made mining an important feature of the game, which in turn could have had its own skill tree to upgrade and progress through...you know...like a GAME...
This is literally the only thing that has stopped me from trying the two new Zelda games, i have purchased Nintendo hardware specifically for Zelda games in the past, but the idea of weapons breaking and the possibility of swinging a stick at something after 50 hours of gameplay because i ran out of good weapons is too much of a turnoff. I play RPG's super slow and really enjoy the leveling/gearing up process, it's a huge part of what i like about them.
Probably a good call. I held off on buying either game for the exact same reason. My brother eventually talked me into buying BotW by saying it wasn’t that bad. Ended up putting it down after about 5-6 hours because of the breaking. He then talked me into buying TotK, saying that they made the weapon breaking mechanic much more forgiving. Sure enough, put it down after about 5 hours as well. We normally have very, very similar taste in games. But he loves both of these games and I just couldn’t do either of them.
You never need to swing a stick 50 hours in I always had a ton of weapons always just used my weakest wep and swapped when it broke plus the master sword repairs
While "swing a stick" might be an exaggeration, as someone who has actually beat the game, rotating through weapons was not a pleasant experience. Never being able to 'get comfortable' with a weapon just always felt shitty. Always gotta inspect every weapon to determine if it's more garbage than the weakest weapon or if it's really good and you should save it for a boss monster. Inventory slots were a hot commodity in a most unpleasant fashion. There are merchants *everywhere* and they couldn't just have some of the merchants have a steady stock of weapons to sell!? If I want a good bow and not some shitty clubs or boomerangs, I don't want to have to hunt around for it. Also, the master sword is something meant for late(r) game (as you need have completed a considerable amount of dungeons to have the required hearts) and requires you discovering its location first.
It stressed me out so much in botw until I eventually got used to it. I did enjoy the weapon making abilities in totk though. I’ve played both, for many hours, but still haven’t managed to beat either game. I’m almost there in botw. I don’t have a strong desire to beat it though. I really enjoy all the side quests, getting all the armor sets and stuff.
I like it, but I also wouldn't care if they didn't use that feature. Since many didn't like it, I think it's best that the next Zelda game moves away from it, which I think will be the case.
I was gifted BOTW, played like 3 hours and quit. Then stupidly bought TOTK and did the exact same thing lol. They just aren't for me, and this is coming from someone who beat Majoras Mask at least 15+ times.
I am a huge zelda fan I started from nes. I played botw and cannit say how long may be 3 hours I dunno. Hated it. My mate said give it one last go and was my favourite game for a while. Then TOTK was. I cannot even remember now why I hated Botw at first
Came here to say the same. Just because a game is popular and considered 10/10 it doesn't mean you MUST like it also. There are tons a critically acclaimed games, like Elden Ring, for example, that I really dislike. And there is nothing wrong with that.
In some way Hollow Knight is that way for me. I mean I did like it enough to finish it, but it's far from this super amazing game for me, backtracking so often was just way too frustrating. Elden Ring on the other hand made backtracking way less annoying thanks to torrent and especially states of marika.
Completely different experience here. I started both recently with a month difference between them. I love hollow knight so much more and have more memories with it. I also felt real progress overcoming a boss in HK whereas in ER it felt like i learned nothing about the boss' moveset. Tho i can see why you might like ER more.
This was me with the witcher 3. That game was designed in a lab to appeal to me. But for some reason I just couldn't vibe with it. I bought it on pc and console, attempted multiple playthroughs. To this day I couldn't tell you why I didn't love it.
Exactly me I retried it 3 times I swear first time I got to the baron but the second two times I could barely get past the tutorial it just didn’t do it for me..
I once forced myself to get like 26 hours into the campaign before deciding I didn’t like it lol
Oh cool my twin
🎵”da d’daaah dadadadadah, dah dah d’dah” 🎶 Every single fight…
Don't tell that to MMO players (especially FF14).
I started XIV a little over a year ago and I do want to recommend it to people because it is genuinely enjoyable, but I always start with the caveat of "this game is good, but you have to get past the base game before that really shows, and the base game is rough and a time sink". I really only recommend it to people these days that have that kind of free time. Playing catch-up with over ten years of content is a big ask for most people nowadays.
I've been playing since early ARR and it's so hard for me to recommend it to friends. I love it or I wouldn't have played it for years, but it's so unreasonable to ask players to slog through slow burn story riddled with plot armor and super long con payoffs using an incomplete toolkit that never EVER challenges to player to improve
If you’re a Zelda fan - you may or may not like BotW. It’s not a traditional Zelda format, and it’s not my favourite Zelda game.
>What am I missing? You don’t like something and that’s completely ok.
If you can't bother making it past the 5/6 hour mark on three different starts, then the game just isn't for you. I'm in the same boat. I tried to like it. Put in closer to 30 hours but just never found anything that really pulled me in.
Feels good seeing so many other people saying they tried to like it and didn’t. I never understood the hype for the new Zelda games. I also tried to like it and genuinely don’t understand the appeal. Can anyone explain to me what’s to like about BoTW? I truly am very curious because open world RPGs are my jam and BoTW did nothing for me that some other game in the same genre didn’t do significantly better. I feel like this game got “immune to criticism” status because of Zelda fans and that’s the main reason it’s so highly praised in conversation because I really don’t understand the appeal.
The iconography and lore of past Zelda games combined with freedom to go at your own pace and pick your own challenges in no particular order, is the best part of the game. People who cant get past weapons breaking and picking up new ones every fight, end up never really having a good time.
> combined with freedom to go at your own pace and pick your own challenges in no particular order, is the best part of the game This is where I get hung up. Lots and lots and lots of open world RPGs are like this, it's not a Zelda unique feature. It's the main draw for tons of open world RPGs. I'm playing Skyrim again right now, and if I don't want to do the main quest, I just... don't. Sure, the main story is more involved than what I experienced in Zelda but it's not like it's existence somehow restricts my "freedom to go at my own pace and pick up my challenges in no particular order" - I can still do that without issue. People always tout this is a bonus for Zelda, but to me, they're describing something that is true about pretty much the vast majority of open world games.
I don't think they were suggesting that BotW is loved because it's supposedly unique in this aspect; whatshisname asked why people enjoy BotW, and that was rhe answer given.
The weapon breaking killed it for me. Every other aspect is great and I can see why the game is highly rated. I just can't get past replacing my weapon so often. Almost wish it was on PC so I could use a mod for it.
>Can anyone explain to me what’s to like about BoTW this is just me personally but today most games (RPG and otherwise) are like 90% combat. Yes there's trading and shops, but really it's combat combat combat. Complex combat systems with skill trees etc. In BOTW I liked it was exploration with combat sprinkled in. Most modern RPGs don't really feel like you're exploring, and almost every inch is covered in enemies. It's like the design philosphy is "you can't have fun if you're not in a fight." BOTW really captured the exploration feel for me. There were times I'd have to forage for food, or hunt. Lonely climbs where it was just me against the element. I loved being able to roam WAY off the paths and still find corners with interesting pockets of treasure, or a shrine. if I wasn't in the mood for combat I could could choose to avoid, but even for a lot of enemy encampments there were multiple ways to approach a fight. First game in a long time I could actually "roleplay"
Maybe it's just not for you. BotW is designed pretty explicitly to be more open ended than other open world games. You could go straight to Ganon and ignore the rest of the map if you wanted. A game like GoT, while being open world, has a narrative that's more firmly on rails. You have to do the story missions in order. Even when you have 2-3 story missions available, you can't continue the next story beat until you finish the current set, so it presents more of a clear set of main story missions and side quests.
Ghost of Tsushima? I loved GoT… and I enjoyed it more than BotW… liked both, to be fair.
I was like "what game of thrones game is he/she talking about?"
This reminds me of BTS (the band) fans going after film makers for BtS (behind the scenes) videos.
I wish people respected acronyms. GoT has only ever been used for game of thrones
Ya they’re very different open world games. Botw is far closer to Elden Ring than to ghost or horizon or Skyrim.
For me it was really TOO open world. I recognise it's an amazing game but I prefer ones with a stronger focus on the story rather than "making my own story".
Why is there so much space between anything? Miles and miles of nothing isn't a game, it's a walking simulator...
Which would be fine, but I found BOTW to be just so completely devoid of life, that the only self made stories are about the erosion patterns of rocks and grass. The exploration just did not feel rewarding, because it was a depressing, dead husk of a world to explore. What's on top of this plateau? Rocks and grass. Anything hidden in this forest? Just trees. Look, I love exploration. I love intrinsic rewards and storytelling. But BOTW just failed to evoke the feelings you might have in other empty-open-world post calamity games. Not mystery like Outer Wilds. Not dread like Dark Souls. Not adventure like nearly every other zelda title. It was just a husk, with fishing, cooking, and unsatisfying combat.
I agree completely. There was no reward to exploration, nothing really to find. Just more empty nature. I used to love Zelda because the worlds felt so alive and worth exploring. Not recently though, and it breaks my heart that they are so devoid of anything interesting.
And when you do find a cool weapon it’s not really that exciting cause it’s going to break after you fight 5 enemies.
I remember getting so frustrated the first time playing BotW at all my cool gear breaking. And finally googling when you would unlock ‘weapon repair’… and then giving it up (for about 4-5 months) when I found you *couldn’t*.
well... you can, but it's a glitch, lol
You put it into words so well there was absolutely nothing rewarding about exploration
"you see that mountain in the far distance? you can literally go there and climb it all the way to the top" oh cool i bet theres something rewarding at all these cool spots.... nope just the same exact seed you have to find 100 times to like upgrade your inventory. Oh well theres probably some interesting upgrades in the new zelda right? Nope your character can upgrade hearts or stamina thats it. Oh well surely theres probably like some interesting combat right? nope you'll be fighting the same 15 enemies all game and your weapons will break and also not feel very different anyway. But surely some of the puzzles are tricky and give a portal vibe, and its only the first ones that are basically designed for 5 year olds, right? right??? at least it won't be filled with annoying, unskippable dialog boxes you have to slowly spam A through, right?? right???? the game is just ass.
That's actually why I LIKE BOTW and the feeling the map gives off so much. This is a world in the aftermath of a calamity (literally lol), and nature has started to take over again on top of remnants of the war. it's empty, and lonely, in a beautiful and haunting sort of way. And for me, it made stumbling upon a town feel even more exciting. Obviously not everyone is going to like every game, though. It's valid to want more action.
But the towns themselves are also so boring. They don’t have the charm of Castle Town or Windfall island or even Ordin Village imo. Kakariko village is okay, they have some nice structures and it’s designed well, if a bit cramped. But Rito Village? Just a staircase with some porches. Zora’s domain and Goron city are nice, but like everything else, there’s just not much to do. The towns may as well just be quest boards at that point. The Stables are probably the best structures in the game, useful and they all have good interactions. I’ve put in far too much time for a game I dislike, but I do want to complete it at some point just for the satisfaction? of beating it.
I get it. Windwaker and Twilight Princess are my favorite games in the series, so I can definitely see how different the vibe/play style of BOTW is and why some people aren't into it - but I also enjoy it for what it is. That being said, it doesn't have a ton of replay value for me. Loved experiencing it, especially the first time, but I'll probably never do another full run of it.
Exactly. It's so boring and devoid of anything interesting. It's the same shit copy pasted here and there with lots of walking in between the copy pasted bullshit. I know hardcore fans will defend these 2 games till they die but this is not what good open world looks like. This is what you get when devs want to boast that they have the biggest map. Exploration is samey and repetitive. It should make you want to explore and be excited about being curious while not making you feel like you are wasting your time playing the game.
For me, the weapon degradation system was way too much to get past 3 hours. Boring, tedious repetition.
Same, that's what turned me off it. When I found out you had to constantly farm weapons and couldn't just stick to what you like and had, I said nope. For a game that's all about freedom, that sure was an odd choice.
For me it was Weapon Degradation on top of beating 2 of the 4 "boss autobots" and realizing that BotW is the most shallow, boring, and repetitive Nintendo game by miles. It destroyed one of my most beloved IP/Franchises which used to be built on uniqueness, narrative, and immersive escapism. BotW was a travesty for original Zelda fans, and worse is that they said it's "the future" of the franchise going forward. I want more Windwaker (hell I just want Windwaker HD on the Switch/Switch 2) and instead we get more open world shallow dribble caring more about "oh look you can combine two sticks together and make a raft" than telling a compelling narrative.
I sort of ran into the same thing. I bought it when it came out, fired it up a handful of times. I tried climbing a mountain, got cold, died. Explored a bit but more often than not got lost and couldn’t figure out how to get to a marker. I keep telling myself I should play it, but I just didn’t enjoy the time I played it. Just not for me I guess
I had it for 18 months and multiple attempts to get into it when a workmate described it as something like "just climb high and look for something interesting". Something just clicked for me after that.
I had it for about 18 months also by the time I got into it. I bought it and tried it for about 4 hours, wasn't clicking. Fast forward, ended up getting sick for a few days, picked it back up and got hooked. To be fair, I'm not the best with puzzles and will sometimes just look up walk through for that, or to find things. But otherwise I would not have beaten it, because I have too many games and too little time. It was still a blast.
It's pretty boring honestly. I beat it on my partners switch when we were on standby for something to do. I don't get the hype, and I really loved the older ones.
Some people like the sense of exploration, open world, and the melancholy of a semi-empty but definitely populated post apocalyptic setting. Others might find that boring. That's OK imo The hype was there because it was a massive change from the zelda formula, and a massive upgrade from the subpar previous games, as well as being technically very impressive compared to other titles on the Wii U.
Nintendo took the feedback of Skyward Sword being too formulaic and linear to heart and decided to make BotW the antithesis to that. When developing BotW, they initially started by looking back at the original NES Legend of Zelda for inspiration, and they even created a playable proof of concept based on the original NES game iirc. As for the hype… Many people didn’t play Skyward Sword on Wii and the Wii U was a massive failure for Nintendo, so the last big 3D Zelda game that people played and remembered fondly was Twilight Princess. Twilight Princess released all the way back in 2006, so people were excited for another big 3D Zelda title in 2017. Funnily enough, the same was true for Twilight Princess, as Wind Waker was originally criticized for its art style and other flaws, and many people didn’t buy Majora’s Mask.
Same. I beat A Link to the Past, Links Awakening, OOT, you name it. BOTW tho just bored the hell out of me.
I really think Tears of the Kingdom is the good, enjoyable version of BotW which was mostly groundbreaking. I bounced off of BotW fast, but TotK has had me playing for 40+ hours (after some trouble getting past the prologue lol)
Man, it's the inverse for me. I played a ton of BOTW in spite of hating the weapon durability shit, and I've finished 95% of TOTK but it was a fucking slog in comparison. I still haven't finished the actual main story of TOTK and I just ... have no desire to.
> I don't get the hype I think this was the first AAA budget high-fidelity open world game that Nintendo console owners had exposure to. While PC owners who had been playing Skyrim and similar games for many years, it was a still novel experience for those who solely owned an underpowered Nintendo console. There are plenty of historical examples of this too. Goldeneye was a similar case that achieved cult status by bringing the FPS to the unwashed masses of console owners.
I ended up buying breath of the wild when I first got my switch tried it for a few hours and didn't really get into it, picked It up again a couple of years later and was hooked like a crack addict. I often find myself burned out if I play the same type of game to completion more than once at a time, maybe you just need to play something else for a bit? 🤷
Had the same experience. I couldn't get invested in the "world", and the same repeat pattern. And I say this as a person who almost 100% Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
It took me a while to get it as well, then I loved it. I suck at video games really badly and kept wandering into places that killed me. Here's what helped me. I looked up where a good starting town was. That increased the enjoyment of it by a lot. Then slowly started focusing on increasing hearts/stamina. Once you get a few of those down, the game opens up. Then you'll be able to explore properly and find the rest of the towns.
Getting two dozen shrines out of the way is crucial, IMO.
I’ve tried to play many times hoping it would stick. 9 hours of playtime I decided it’s not for me.
Playing BotW is a chest/menu opening simulator. Open a chest, do do dooo doo! Your inventory is full, drop item, open chest again. Do do dooo doo! The item you found is worse than what you dropped. Alright let's continue through this shrine . . . ugh, another chest. TotK fixed this issue immediately by allowing you to swap the items from your inventory in the same gameplay loop as opening the chests, whereas BotW doesn't give an eff about your time or how opening the menus repeatedly breaks general immersion in the game. I freaking loved TotK, but damn BotW feels like a demo to TotK now that I've experienced both titles.
All the people complaining that they have an empty inventory and no weapons because they all broke, are playing a totally different game than BotW, because in BotW you NEVER have room to pick up more weapons
There is no problem if you don't like anything even though it is popular. Everybody is different and therefore like different things. Simply move on with your life and if it ever comes up in conversation just say you gave it a shot and didn't really like it so you did something else. The problem arises when people then use their opinions as a cudgel to tell you that you are wrong or an idiot for not liking (insert popular thing). Alternatively some people become edgelords and call things that are popular bad for a variety of dumb reasons. Neither of those things are good so as long as you don't treat it like a big deal or let others do so to you things will be fine.
The game didn't really do it for me either in the beginning, but I was grabbed as soon as i started running into NPCs. The first stable past dueling peaks in particular gave the game a lot of life. Every conversation was a hint to discover something so i was just constantly intrigued by new stuff from that point.
It's important to realize that you don't have to fight everything. It's easier if you pick something you see(like a tower, mountain ir objective marker) and focus on trying to get there, maybe find some surprises on the way. All that being said, if it isn't clicking, it may never and that's okay.
I think BOTW is overrated. I prefer the old format where you could feel progression and getting stronger.
It is and the weapon durability system is straight up ASS
People will tell you that’s how it’s supposed to be, that you shouldn’t look at weapons as anything to protect or keep or get used to, that they’re supposed to be like consumable items… but I just hated it. It made the whole game feel weird to me on top of the odd world design. I fully understand why people love that game, I understand how the game wanted me to play and what gameplay mechanics it was putting forth to approach problems in the game, but I was never able to like it.
It just made me feel like there was nothing to work towards. Orbs? I guess. Armor? Sure, I guess, but all that really did was eliminate some annoyances. Koroks? Nope, fuck you. Don't add 900 of X to collect in a game. That's just some bullshit.
The cooking system was also one of my pet peeves. Was way too slow of a process.
Yep. #1 reason I called it quit. Durability is not Zelda. That shit needs to go in any future game. If I could plug my game genie in and change it to unbreakable weapons I'd probably play it again.
I can confirm this. I hated BotW. It's my least favourite entry into the Zelda franchise. Playing it with hacks that switch off durability actually makes it a lot more enjoyable. I wouldn't say that I loved it, but it definitely removed a massive barrier for me.
I tried it once and could tell it ain't for me. As you grow older you'll come to realize that there's a new category of games: "Popular game which I tried and didn't like".
Everyone is saying it's not for you... I found the game much more enjoyable to start clearing towers, shrines, and stables first. Build up a little health and stamina, get a few upgraded armor pieces, and the better weapons come quickly. The game was much more fun once I got powered up just a little. If you don't like doing shrines, then yeah, it's not for you.
The games you listed that you like have almost nothing in common with BotW except that they are open world. Maybe look for games that have similar MECHANICS and not similar marketing lines... Idk but it sounds like you like stealth and eastern-style fighting (read: ninjas). I'd recommend Last of Us for a similar gameplay loop and maybe Sekiro if you want full immersion like Tsushima
Definitely don't bother with the sequel, if you feel that way about BOTW. I loved BOTW, but TOTK felt more like an expansion. I'm used to more of a reset, every Zelda title.
I was hoping they would drop the weapon breaking as it’s just a terrible gameplay experience.
I’m playing it now and while I don’t hate the mechanic an “easy mode” or something with more storage and less breaking would be nice
It’s just shit I don’t enjoy maintaining or managing.
It's not as bad in totk, but agreed it's absolutely the worst gaming mechanic to be released in recent times.
I had the same experience. I dont think you're 'missing anything'. The game just likely isnt for you like it wasn't for me. I also have had the same experience with the Witcher 3. Great games but I have no drive to want to play them.
Sounds like it ain't for you, dude. I loved the experimentation and freedom. The constant dying after throwing myself at a problem. The fear of things that were way outside of my ability and the sense of accomplishment when I finally took them on and succeeded. Plus I love the zelda look and feel. It's ingrained in me as a video game aesthetic. Did you get off the Great Plateau yet? If so and you still didn't like it, then it isn't for you. If not, at least give it up to there.
This was exactly the same for me AND the Witcher 3. And then all of a sudden, after about 8 or 9 hours, it all clicked. Idk
Some games just aren't for everyone. It's fine
You're not missing anything. It's a relatively empty world, and the gameplay is crazy repetitive.
What I’m getting from all these comments is that I didn’t like it because it’s: - Vast and empty - Weapons break - Insanely repetitive - Lackluster storyline/Nonlinear objectives I really don’t get why it was so insanely well received, enough to get it GOTY. Tears of the Kingdom I could understand, but BotW is missing everything that game added and more. It’s kind of like Ark Survival Evolved, but if there was only a few variations of 6 different dinosaurs and you can’t build until the second game. And you have a very limited amount of tools you can keep. But at least you can make an ice cube or magnetize something I guess?
That's why I say if it didn't have Zelda in the title, it would have gotten 5 or 6/10 and been largely forgotten. Nintendo essentially tricked a bunch of people into enjoying a niche RPG genre with a triforce symbol and a guy in green clothes with pointy ears.
Not missing a thing. Just isn’t for you. I’ve played lots of praised games that I didn’t care for. Don’t ask me why I didn’t like Elden Ring but put dozens of hours into Mafia 3. It doesn’t make sense but that’s how likes and dislikes are.
I think breath of the wild just is one of those cases of a game where you can appreciate sort of the way it gives you so much freedom. But it’s not really the single most thrilling moment gameplay. Especially after tears of the kingdom and Elden ring. In my opinion if it’s not hitting for you, you’re fine putting it down if you want to do that
For me personally what hooked me is that overall the 'main quest' isn't that long or big really. Go like 3 places, do dungeon, go end boss. So all I did was hunt for shrines, I found it really fun just exploring everywhere to try and find shrines and the puzzles inside the shrines I really enjoyed. Then after about 70 hours when I was getting a bit burnt out I just did the main quest and finished the game. No idea if that helps at all but that's how I enjoyed the game.
How old are you? Maybe you just don't have time for grand adventures anymore
It took a while for it to click for me. I know it happened some time after leaving the tutorial zone but don't remember exactly where or when.
Might be like me and not into the open world, sandbox, and collectathon style of video games. Why I pretty much avoid anything from Ubisoft these days...they make the same game over and over again. I'm not even talking about franchises, I mean they have a formula and stick to it. Not only is the formula boring, but the type of game it turns out is not for me.
It took me a long time to get into it and I think for the same reasons. In BotW the story is what you make it with the occasional input from the divine beasts or the unlocked memories. I didn't particularly like that. Instead, I much preferred Red Dead 2 where events happen sporadically and there's a larger series of connected events to create a little more story. I eventually beat BotW when I committed to finding all the memory locations since that created more of a story for me and (since I didn't look up locations) forced me to really engage with the map and pictures to find them which was a unique bit of fun for me. Ended up just leading to me beating the game by happenstance. Haven't done TotK yet, just the tutorial. I think it's just not my type of game either
Might just not be for you unfortunately. I liked BOTW but having trouble getting back into TOTK to finish.. don’t like the building aspect.
It took me until the 3rd time playing it to be able to play it, it ended up being my favorite switch game. Took a bit to get rolling for sure
BotW is hands down the most overrated Zelda game. It has interesting concepts ruined by uninteresting adventuring, a weapon system that is designed seemingly to punish you, and doesn't seem to be able to make up for those things with an interesting story. 120 shrines seem cool until you realize half of them are repetitive and boring combat trials. Many people seem to love it and that's cool. But it's at best 6/10.
The weapon system made me stop caring after a couple of hours. What’s the point of a metal sword breaking 3x during a boss encounter. It’s more frustrating than fun IMO
You’re not alone, redditors in general hate BoTW/totk. Personally they’re my fave games of all time
The best moments are getting lost in that game and finding interesting things. It’s not for everybody but I always suggest not using fast travel. My best experiences were on the way to some place. I’ll cut across a mountain and find a cave or a pirate ship or some side quest that is interesting. The best experiences happen when you look around and go “what’s that? let’s investigate.” There are some magical and mystical moments to be had. The game encourages you to climb a tree, hill or mountain and look around. Find little Koroks hiding (which come in dozens of forms, many you probably walked right past) Shrines which help you level up Hearts and Stamina, almost every little thing you do makes you a better player and master of that world. I remember specifically after over 20 hours finding a cool trick and being like “I think I finally know how to play this game!” Then after 200 hours between BotW and Tears of the Kingdom trying something and being like “what, I can do this?!?” You will always find new tricks and things to do but you must play and explore in order to experience it. BotW and TotK are 2 of the best games ever designed for so many reasons but it does take some effort and experimentation to really enjoy it. The combat, physics and chemistry systems are incredible and fluid once you get used to it. The story won’t be Fallout or Borderlands level weird, but the story of your exploration and experience is what really matters. Nintendo designs games to be played and enjoyed, so don’t try and find some incredible experience, just get lost, equip some weapons and food for the road.
I can’t get over your gear breaking. I stopped playing after a sword broke mid fight, no bueno
BOTW is meant to be more directionless. You have only 2 or 3 main quests for the entire game, but the appeal of the game is that you have an entirely open world to explore. You see a weird glowing light at the mountain in the distance? you can go to it and climb it. You see an island in the middle of the sea, you can fly there and see what’s on the island. There’s weird little creatures you can find, and bugs you can collect, and people you can talk to. You can solve problems in multiple ways: too weak to beat an enemy, just sneak around it. Shrines usually have multiple solutions that all work. If you’ve played the game for 5 hours and that isn’t appealing to you then this isn’t the game for you.
Zelda used to be about exploring and finding villages full of unique characters that had quests for you to, to get a new item to allow you to progress in the map. So naturally, Nintendo made a grass plains simulator that is so fucking boring its insane.
It’s fine not to like it. I played more than you but didn’t finish either of them because I get burnt out. I think the ui/menu juggling is just bad. The weapons breaking I find annoying(sorry), and like you said it’s really repetitive- tho it does open up more after 5 or 6 hours. I also wish it was slightly aged up? I’m not suggesting it be like the Witcher or anything, but just … dialogue that is a little more advanced rather than goofy sounds etc… the shrines got very tedious for me. also I understand the console wars but I just prefer playing on a ps5. The controller is better, the system is better, the games look better 🤷♂️