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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - Breath Wilder

Vaeran

(GRUNTING)
(he/him)
The Sheikah towers were all bought up by Comcast and relocated to Montana

The Divine Beasts went to a farm upstate where they can run and play with the Colossi from SotC all day

Calamity Ganon was a collective hallucination experienced by the people of Hyrule. This is what a diet of Hylian Shrooms gets you
 

BEAT

LOUDSKULL
(DUDE/BRO)
I do have one major complaint about the dungeon rewards.
They're all theoretically quite useful, but with the lone exception of bird boy, actually using them is an enormous pain in the ass.
 

Daikaiju

Rated Ages 6+
(He, Him)
Is Calamity Ganon even explained now that Ganondorf is here?

It looks to me that with the knowledge we have now, Ganon hadn't given up on reincarnation/physical manifestation so much as he couldn't. With his dessicated frame pinned well below Hyrule Castle, Calamity Ganon was an attempt to exert his will and rectify that. He probably would have had the Guardians excavate his tomb if Zelda hadn't sealed him immediately. Heck, razing Hyrule Castle Town was probably as much as groundwork for that as well as pure malice. And afterwards most Active Guardians clustered near the Castle, probably waiting for the princess to finally falter and they could resume their work.
 

Falselogic

Lapsed Threadcromancer
(they/them)
These two videos by a Religious scholar examining aspects of Hylian religion as they do actual religions are interesting.



I thought some of the Zelda fans here might appreciate it.
 

Paul le Fou

24/7 lofi hip hop man to study/relax to
(He)
I don't understand why the combat is so poorly tuned. It seems like every enemy does obscene amounts of damage, and the game has been throwing killer enemies at me way earlier than it feels like it should be. I barely saw any red enemies before they all turned blue; now that I'm FINALLY not getting slaughtered by blue-level enemies, it doesn't matter because it seems like all I find are black now. And even with 2-star armor and 11? hearts they still nearly kill me in a single hit!

It's made me fear combat and avoid it entirely when I can, but now I'm being punished for that because I don't have the materials to upgrade my armor. Can't fight because my armor isn't upgraded, can't upgrade my armor because I don't fight, it's a catch-22. The balance of the enemies and everything around them in TotK just feels completely fucked in a way that I'm 99% sure BotW didn't, and it's really dampening my enthusiasm and my will to keep playing.
 

R.R. Bigman

Coolest Guy
I am not having any fun. I don’t think the new powers like Ascend and Recall are as versatile as Cyber Bombs and Stasis. I don’t have the parasail, so I can’t do much in the sky. Every pissant bokoblin kills me in two hits. I don’t give a damn about the story or world anymore since none of the events from the first game mattered now.

Despite it’s major flaws, I did enjoy Breath of the Wild a fair bit, and did everything in the game, from completing every shrine to finding all 900 or so Korok Seeds. Tears wants me to those exact things again, but I have to build bridges and boats with Magnesis, to beat Ganon and save Zelda, again.

Majora’s Mask was a miracle.
 

MrBlarney

(he / him)
In contrast for me, the game has been a blast, sucking up all of my free time over the past week. The density of threads in shrines, caves, and quests to keep pulling me around to discover new things has been an incredibly compelling treadmill. I agree that the early game is a step up in difficulty compared to Breath of the Wild, but after gathering enough of a foundation, I've been able to keep up with the enemies fairly well. I did quite a fair lot of general meandering around Central Hyrule and nearby areas before I even completed my first major regional story objective to help me get back into the swing of things. There's SO MUCH to do, it's pretty ridiculous.

On the small topic of regional story objectives, I gotta say that Colgera was quite the spectacle of a boss fight. (In my excitement, I forgot to take a picture of his mug. Unfortunate.) I like that the key of breaking through his ice shell was telegraphed through needing to break ice during the ascent to the Wind Temple. I also liked that there were multiple ways of dealing damage to his sections. I ended up divebombing my body through one section, then shooting arrows into the other sections during his ascending attack followup. Definitely a heroic-feeling battle.

I barely saw any red enemies before they all turned blue; now that I'm FINALLY not getting slaughtered by blue-level enemies, it doesn't matter because it seems like all I find are black now.
Where are you fighting, and what is your story progression? My armor's around the same level as yours, and I've gotten into taking down Black Bokoblins and Horriblins now. I also haven't been going out of my way too much to start fights, but then again I already have a pretty solid foundation established. If you haven't been fusing higher-level horns onto your weapons, you should definitely be doing so: they provide major boosts to both durability and strength, and you'll gather enough of them to make up spending your first one(s) on Fusion. Also,
have you considered taking some time to explore the Depths? I haven't done especially much down there, but from what I experienced, the enemy tiers were a little lower than what I saw on the surface, and there are stone columns that you can illuminate that hold un-decayed weapons -- which can also mean higher strength pre-fusion.

I don’t have the parasail, so I can’t do much in the sky.
I'm not sure how to parse this since you can't really get into the sky (barring the opening tutorial area) without the paraglider. It does seem to be a common complaint cited about Tears of the Kingdom that it really wants you to follow some of the opening story beats even after completing the tutorial area to fill out vital parts of your ability set, moreso than going out to Kakariko and Hateno in Breath of the Wild.
 

gogglebob

The Goggles Do Nothing
(he/him)
Hold on, is the Sheikah tech and Divine Beast stuff really just not mentioned in this one!?

I cannot emphasize enough that Goggle Robbie and Purah accidentally used Sheikah Tech to invent immortality twice over the period of BotW: Once through the straightup revival of Link, and then again when Purah reversed the very concept of aging. Hyrule authorities had to do something to wipe out the chance of these knuckleheads transforming the populace into gods over the weekend.
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
I ended up disliking Breath of the Wild overall, but this game has made the concept work for me in ways it didn't before, to the extent that it's a sequel where it's both natural and useful to directly compare it to its predecessor (for being so baseline-identical) and consider it a rare case where such a sequel improves on virtually every aspect of the first game--I cannot think of anything that fares worse here in the comparison between the two.

The biggest immediate divider comes in the form of the rune-equivalent abilityset, all of which are more interesting, diverse, and integrated to the game's overall design than before. Ultrahand is the obvious showpiece, diversifying Magnesis's limitations and facilitating the glue contraption and vehicle-building the game is very invested in, and it's really as to the point or creative as you want it to be--most puzzle components are provided for right there, and it's very easy to improvise on the spot for what's lacking, so you can treat it as an utilitarian lock-and-key function if there's no interest in building your own things. Leaning into physics as a central play model also makes use of this formula's particular strengths, where those kinds of interactions were more ancillary before, or the realm of show-off Stasis riffs. It's both easier to conceptualize a use for Recall and to reap its immediate functional effects, and to then apply it in sync with Ultrahand's manipulation--something many Shrines will call upon you to do, making them too better designed than before.

Despite the puzzle-solving half of the abilities being so strong, the way Ascend and Fusion support and--in my opinion--patch up holes in the game's design language is probably even more impressive. So much of Breath of the Wild was about long and arduous climbs to high altitudes: you'd take in the vista, and then jump and glide off to undo that trek in a fraction of how long it took to get there. Tears of the Kingdom no longer cares about the journey single-mindedly up top; it knows most of its playerbase has done this before, in this very setting. Instead it provides numerous and trivially accessible ways to get to as high a vantage point as possible--sky towers, Recall, fast travel to shrines in the sky--so it can recontextualize the second visit to what could and can be a played-out setting if you set out to interact with it identically to before. Ascend is nominally a very pedestrian movement ability, barely more interactive than fast-traveling somewhere... but it stresses the new emphasis on depth and trivializing long ascents which the game no longer tasks you to "earn" because that test has already been passed. You are instead called upon to visualize the environment as more of a layered space in which upward travel, even through solid matter, is a spatial factor and point of interest.

Fusion does the same in calling attention to what previously did not cohere so well in relation to the larger design sense and rhythms, and then provides a meaningful recontextualization. Equipment durability in these games (and others) introduces more of a psychological burden than a practical one, but the effect was still the same in that it made players wary of engaging in combat for "wasting" valuable resources. Fusion not only makes any old handle you might come across a decent-to-good component of a functional weapon combination, but it transforms your relationship to the copious amounts of "immersive sim" junk you're picking up, which previously had limited or exclusive use in what you could do with them. Now that monster parts can be made into weapons, fighting enemies is itself incentivized because you'll nearly always be rewarded with something as good or better for the resources you "spend." The worrywart hoarding instinct is almost completely undone by an ultimately small reorientation of elements that already existed in the game, which is really the Tears of the Kingdom mantra: it shares most of its being with Breath of the Wild, but knows way more effective and interesting uses to apply itself with.

That's indicative in the overall world design, because the number one dissuader for this game is the developers reusing a world that was the entire focus of the previous game, one of the most-played games there's ever been. There is ultimately nothing revolutionary or startling in how this aspect is handled--you are still engaging in the same baseline mechanics and exploration--but it is altogether diversified. The numerous cave systems that have turned up all over Hyrule are my favourite part because they add much-needed micro-depth and intertwined topography to the setting--something as superficially simple as jumping down the dozens and dozens of wells in the game can make the exploration feel that much more adventurous. The way the three macro layers of the world operate as distinct variations and emphases on the game's fundamentals further justify their overall inclusion, because they provide different avenues for interaction with the game mechanics and aesthetics. If you want to do dialogue-oriented questing and ground exploration, stick to the surface. Should you want to put vertically-oriented, grand-scale puzzle-platforming to the test, take to the skies. And if you want to chart dangerous, pitch-black expanses in which combat and vehicle travel are both the focus, the depths are there. All these three "modes" of the game are strictly layered on top of each other, but they're also fairly seamlessly transitioned between that's both technologically and player mindset-wise an impressive feat to be able to instill as well as it has been here.

Writing-wise the game also fares better because it is no longer weighed down by the fish out of water premise of a player avatar being introduced to a literal world's worth of major and minor characters; many remember or have heard of Link and what's transpired before, so the game is not obligated to establish character for what's already been covered, freeing it up to pursue its own tangents. It's not like I met or remember every character from Breath of the Wild, and that's fine--the benefits of a recent, acknowledged history are still present in what the game is and how it talks about and treats its setting, where change in all its forms is under a scrutinous lens on part of the audience, in which it can be observed that some of the worse transgressions of the prior game (Gerudo scenario transphobia, stuck-in-child-body Purah) are now absent or lessened. The localization and patter sensibilities of the dialogue are beyond reproach, even if the source material leaves much to be desired: you are still caught in the grips of a tremendously, stiflingly heteronormative world, being flirted with and crushed on by most women you meet as your dude avatar. Zelda's role in the story is to sacrifice herself for an eternal vigil, waiting for a man to arrive to release her from her duty. It's the same old Nintendo bullshit they cling to out of an outsized degree of "tradition" and lineage and having boring creatives in charge of things. This whole game would be transformed if Link and Zelda's roles had been reversed, which is not a new or radical theoretical premise--and because it is not, it's all the more frustrating that it never seems to take.

In some ways it feels like the developers set themselves up for success in patterning things so closely after one of the most lauded games ever, but in my perspective it is interesting in how much the nuances matter because I maintain that I did not for the most part enjoy Breath of the Wild, whereas Tears of the Kingdom does work for me, so there must be something in all the myriad tweaks and adjustments that coalesces into a significant shift in opinion. If it was just "previous game but more" it probably would not go over so well, but fortunately the goal seems to have been to rethink what was already present instead of settling on additive changes.
 
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BEAT

LOUDSKULL
(DUDE/BRO)
I've done all four Regional things.

I don't like the new champion abilities very much. in botw they felt like natural additons to the moveset. Jump, now hold jump to SUPER JUMP. Attack, now hold attack to SUPER ATTACK. Guard, now hold guard to SUPER GUARD. Shit made sense.

Now if I wanna super attack I gotta run over to one of 4 ghosty motherfuckers to politely ask her to activate a slow area of effect. The 4 ghosty motherfuckers are all the same color, all translucent, and all follow their own mad whims, bunching up or spreading out across the area as they will. Sometimes you talk to the wrong one. Sometimes the one you want isn't there at all.

It's not a great way to increase the moveset.
 

Peklo

Oh! Create!
(they/them, she/her)
I love the Sage spirits because they allow you to have a functional RPG party with you while you're out and about. It turns the game from a solitary experience to something that's verging on Dragon's Dogma in the dynamic you have with combat encounters and exploration, and that's all good in my book. The increased group combat emphasis this game has does wonders for the chaos of interactions that can happen in such scenarios; the messier this formula is the more I end up liking it.
 

Becksworth

Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
This really does feel like the Galaxy/Galaxy 2 dynamic playing out in Zelda, with the second making improvements and adding more ideas to the gameplay, but feeling messier and less holistically cohesive in the process.
 

muteKi

Geno Cidecity
Zelda's role in the story is to sacrifice herself for an eternal vigil, waiting for a man to arrive to release her from her duty. It's the same old Nintendo bullshit they cling to out of an outsized degree of "tradition" and lineage and having boring creatives in charge of things. This whole game would be transformed if Link and Zelda's roles had been reversed, which is not a new or radical theoretical premise--and because it is not, it's all the more frustrating that it never seems to take.

Now I'm thinking about Zelda's backstory in the previous game as a stressed but astute and clever mechanic. As you point it out now, I'm frankly astounded that they didn't decide, given the game being built so strongly around engineering and constructing shit, to make this a game where you play as that Zelda. Obvious missed narrative/thematic opportunity.
 
Now I'm thinking about Zelda's backstory in the previous game as a stressed but astute and clever mechanic. As you point it out now, I'm frankly astounded that they didn't decide, given the game being built so strongly around engineering and constructing shit, to make this a game where you play as that Zelda. Obvious missed narrative/thematic opportunity.
Whoever is in charge of these things at Nintendo HQ is smoking the same bullcrap that the Gundam franchise has for the last 45 years where they just assume nobody will like a Zelda game if you can't play as Link/self-insert into a bland boy-character. Meanwhile over in Gundam, they've got the first Gundam show with a female lead, and it's probably the best/most popular the franchise has been since SEED which is saying a lot. Like, their plamo flies off the shelves and even the preorders sell out immediately. It's kinda wild to be more conservative/behind the curve more than Banrise, but I guess that's where Nintendo is at.
 

R.R. Bigman

Coolest Guy
The game sold a bajillion copies, so maybe most people are fine with TradWife Zelda? It’s something that should change, and I agree, playing as Zelda would take a lot of the sting out of essentially playing through the same game again, if only thematically.

I‘m focusing on the main story missions, which have opened up more basic gameplay features that probably should have been open from the start. One thing lots of people loved about BotW was how once you got off the starting zone you could go right to the final area, so I find it odd that Tears has a good bit more tutorial quest busywork.
 

Becksworth

Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
Generally I'm of the opinion that they have a perfectly good Linkle over there gathering dust they could use to add gender options to future Zelda games while keeping Zelda's character dynamic the same if they want. Ignoring that, yeah this game of all the Zeldas seemed perfectly suited to have the Triforce of Wisdom bearer be the protagonist, what with all the machine building and toying with physics.
 

Vaeran

(GRUNTING)
(he/him)
Re: housing, I'm puzzled as to how you're supposed to incorporate the "study" room without having two of them side by side, or leaving part of a room open to the elements. Curiously it's the only room type that's 1x1; everything else is 2x1 or 2x2 and all the interior connections are 2-wide. It has no function aside from aesthetics so it's hardly a big loss, but it seems like a weird oversight. There's probably some blindingly obvious solution and I'm just not seeing it.

My hope is that the inevitable DLC will include more robust housing options so I can play Animal Crossing: Tears of the Kingdom.
 
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The game sold a bajillion copies, so maybe most people are fine with TradWife Zelda?
To bring things back to my Gundam analogy - Gundam is one of the most successful franchises on the planet and it’s fans were “fine” with the formula. But turns out changing the formula just a little to be more inclusive and give people something really fresh feeling as a result has led to *even more success* than normal rather than alienating any of the audience. And it’s managed to do something rare in today’s world - actually *expand* the audience too.

So like, yeah. Zelda is “fine” as is. Doesn’t mean it can’t be even better, or that people shouldn’t want it to be better either. Maybe if they weren’t such conservative cowards they might stand to make even more money than they currently are. But what do I know.
 

Bongo

excused from moderation duty
(he/him)
Staff member
Hi, I just spent over a week doing nothing but playing this game. It's pretty good
 

Lakupo

Comes and goes with the wind
(he/him)
I don't understand why the combat is so poorly tuned. It seems like every enemy does obscene amounts of damage, and the game has been throwing killer enemies at me way earlier than it feels like it should be. I barely saw any red enemies before they all turned blue; now that I'm FINALLY not getting slaughtered by blue-level enemies, it doesn't matter because it seems like all I find are black now. And even with 2-star armor and 11? hearts they still nearly kill me in a single hit!

It's made me fear combat and avoid it entirely when I can, but now I'm being punished for that because I don't have the materials to upgrade my armor. Can't fight because my armor isn't upgraded, can't upgrade my armor because I don't fight, it's a catch-22. The balance of the enemies and everything around them in TotK just feels completely fucked in a way that I'm 99% sure BotW didn't, and it's really dampening my enthusiasm and my will to keep playing.
So, I have 7 hearts, and 1 star armor, but haven't had much of a problem with encounters? I've taken down black bokoblins and such pretty easily. To be clear, I'm not saying I'm great at sword fighting in this game, and in fact whiff back flips and stuff a lot. But I might treat this like I treat Elden Ring, where I ignored fights unless I saw tactical advantage to be had with my glass cannon build.

There's so many more readily available tools for exploiting the battlefield than in BOTW. Elemental arrows were pricey and could only be bought in certain places in Breath, but here, elemental fruit grows on trees and bomb flowers are common enough if you're spelunking, so it's way easier to ignite barrels or nuke a base from above. Gems and elemental Lizalfos horns are also easy to attach to weapons, so you can lock down most enemies with an ice spear, or shock a construct with a topaz sword-wand. Best thing for groups I've found are the muddle buds: let that big tough guy do all of the work for you and sit back and watch the show.

Kind of like how cooking encouraged foraging, I think enemies are tuned a bit higher so you are encouraged to take advantage of the new tools to exploit weaknesses.
 
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YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
This game rules and it's an incredible accomplishment that it's somehow even more compelling than BotW was to just explore the hell out of some shit.
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
I finally managed to focus on a task in this game and completed the Rito regional quest, after doing ~50 shrines. Since that unlocks a bunch of useful stuff in Lookout Landing, I followed those for both Josha and Robbie, which means I now have the last arm ability and an upgraded sensor. The latter upgrade there is probably dangerous for me to have because I'm absolutely going to use it to track Bubbulfrogs and find all these damn caves that way.
 

BEAT

LOUDSKULL
(DUDE/BRO)
I've seen some whining about how little this game is interested in closing plot holes from botw IN THIS VERY THREAD but I gotta say I absolutely love how it built upon the WORLD of botw.

It really feels a place that was recovering but wasn't there yet. The rebuilding has started but wasn't anywhere near finished, and then everything got fucked up again. But it's a recent fuckup, not something that everyone's been dealing with for a century, so everyone's actively working to deal with it, because it's not just a fact of life this time.

It rules.
 

BEAT

LOUDSKULL
(DUDE/BRO)
Also Hudson and Rhodson had a daughter, expanded their business and set up a bunch of pro-bono supply depos I love those guys.
 

Sarcasmorator

Same as I ever was
(He/him)
re: Sheikah shrines, a lot of the chasms into the Depths are where prominent shrines used to be (especially obvious once you get to the Great Plateau). I don't remember where the towers were to compare.
 
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