57
votes
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom discussion
Just joined this site and I wanted to make a good place to discuss the recently released: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for the Nintendo Switch.
I wanted to get your opinions, gameplay videos, screenshots, or whatever it is you want to talk about in regards to the game.
To start, did you buy the game and what's your completion / time spent playing?
This game is so good it derailed some bug fixing I was doing in code that I contributed to a project. Haven’t had this much fun playing a game since Oblivion or Skyrim, honestly.
It’s one of those games where I do something and think I did it the best way and then see a video where someone makes a robot to do it. Insanely amazing.
At my workplace it's similar. Work genuinely and noticably slowed down, because if nothing else meetings draw out while everyone talks about what they've been doing and what they discovered.
Likewise, other than some FFXIV raiding, I didn't do anything in my spare time. TotK takes it all up. Such an engrossing game.
More fun than slaughtering traveling bands of Thalmor? Surely you must be mad. That good, huh.
Based. Yeah, this game will do that. Social relationships? Who needs those!
40 hours in and just scratching the surface. BotW felt like a serene, lonely vacation. TotK is a constant journey of discovery. I'm amazed at the depth of the experience when compared to BotW, though a part of me is missing the sense of melancholy emptiness of that title.
I think it's good that they're so different though. People were worried TotK was going to feel like a big expansion for BotW. And that's clearly not the case. Even if you put aside the massive additions in the sky islands and the depths to explore, you still have the entire general vibe of both games being very different.
The world in TotK feels much more alive. BotW was more of a post-apocalyptic world. People were still reeling from the calamity and fearful to leave their homes. The only people wandering the world were merchants and warriors. In Tears, people have begun to rebuild. The world is filled with hope. The world feels more alive with people exploring, traveling, etc.
BotW's world was amazing to explore the first time. I kept wanting to see what was on that next hill over the horizon. But the land in Tears is less like that (though some of that certainly still exists) and more about the encounters you have in the world and how you solve the problems before you.
I disagree. It definitely feels like DLC for BotW. But not $70 worth of DLC but more like $700 worth. It's like almost the entirety of BotW is in there, as a base layer. But it's now an absurdly small part of the game, considering how big BotW already was. They took every part of the map and added content, mixed up existing stuff, added the sky and depths areas, the building mechanics and a general polishing pass. The result is fantastic.
I agree with that, but some QOL issues also make it just... feel bad, sometimes. Like the hit-stop effect and the lag when closing quick menus. BotW felt smooth and streamlined to play, and TotK often just doesn't.
The game is amazing but if I wasn't getting enjoyment out of speedrunning, I think I would've put it down after finishing all the quests. In contrast I played through BotW maybe 5 or 6 times before getting into speedrunning it.
The only things that annoy me so far are the lack of mass-/quick-cooking and other repetitive tasks such as upgrading armor.
Should just be able to "repeat" something you just cooked with a single button press at the cooking pot. And likewise, mass-select armor pieces to upgrade in one fell swoop.
Ah well.
They went through the work to track every combination of ingredients you used to make any given recipe, but wouldn't let us press a button to even bring that set of items to hand? It makes me sad.
It's a good game. I'll be honest, I'd still prefer the old 3D Zelda formula. I'm just not that big into open world games, and I feel like the BotW formula doesn't reward exploration as much as I'd want with weapon durability. Mainly in that generally the reward for exploration is spirit orbs and korok seeds, which are flat - a shrine hidden deep in the map gives the same amount of spirit orbs as a shrine in the the middle of plains.
That being said, ToTK is just a better game than BotW (not that there's anything wrong with that - it should be). The shrine puzzles are waaay more fun. Ultra hand and time reverse and fuse are just way more powerful and enable way more creative puzzles than the runes in BotW. Almost feels like scribblenauts. Never really like most of the shrines in BotW.
The world has way more things in it. BotW I feel got carried by the unknown - at the beginning, because you didn't know what was there, you imagined the world to have much more than was actually there. When the curtain gets pulled back there's not actually that many things in Hyrule in BotW.
I still wish you can just find a sick weapon that doesn't break. Fuse does help.
The dungeons... they're basically the same as the divine beasts. The bosses feel more like "Zelda" bosses, which is true.
I wish there was a way to persist the things you make with ultrahand. In practice, there's not much reason to make more than the bare basic vehicles. The crazy contraptions on the internet are mostly for fun.
That sort about the 3D worked out the opposite for me, I think I nowadays prefer my "classic" Zeldas in 2D again. I used to prefer OoT and MM but then ALBW and the Awakening remaster came out and no, I am a 2D person after all.
I suspect that's why BotW and TotK work so well for me: they're very very different, so my usual "I prefer 2D" doesn't really take hold.
I don't know how deep you are into the game, but there is a skill/rune called Auto-Build you can unlock where you can save your builds and call them on fly, using existing items in the world or building them out with Zonaite (or a mix of both, bringing costs down), although for crazy contraptions, it isn't really efficient for sure. I have only done boring builds (cars, hoverbikes, boats, small killing machines) to avoid wasting resources myself.
As for an unbreakable weapon...
Small spoilers for the game.
The closest thing would be the Master Sword, but it does "break", requiring a 10min recharge. I haven't found a quest to keep it fully powered like in BOTW either, but it works decently and you can fuse items to improve durability and get effects.
But otherwise either using undecayed weapons from the Depths or sturdy sticks alongside some strong mob drops is basically as good as it gets. I haven't had issues keeping my inventory stocked with good weapons using that strategy, although I have to say some enemies are like damage sponges (silver-tier enemies being the worst out of the bunch), they quickly eat away your low-tier weapons or take a good weapon to its limit.
Yeah, I know about autobuild but it's not really the same thing. It just becomes annoying when the contraptions can despawn for fairly arbitrary conditions. For example, if you only play ToTK, and therefore can just suspend all the time, your builds stay around. But if you swap games, because you play more than one game, or your switch is shared, then saving and loading does not keep them around.
It makes it so that it's always better to build, say, that two fan hoverscraft, or the one wheel cycle, because you have to autobuild them every time, and it's much cheaper.
Fuse does mitigate the raw power level part of things, but mainly I want more persisted, and non-fungible, rewards for exploration. I don't like korok seeds and spirit orbs as rewards because of their fungibility. Getting new weapons never feels as good as in other games because they break.
It was a lost opportunity, because they could have made autobuild for weapons, that way it still costs a resource but getting a new powerful weapon feels exciting because you unlock the ability to rebuild it forever.
Yeah, I can relate to that. If they stayed around until the blood moon, it would've been good enough IMO. I wonder if it was due to balance reasons, since they easily overpower most weapons with (mostly) minimal effort.
I agree on that, I personally didn't care much to keep tracking orbs and seeds after I managed to get into a comfortable spot and I doubt I'll ever go back to do 100% of both because it's already "good enough". Another complaint is that there are so many unique weapons one can build with mob drops and it is hard to consistently keep them around, since the power level of mobs doesn't scale as story progresses. Sometimes all you have are low tiered parts to replace broken weapons if you're focusing on a certain region.
Sounds like you and I have similar taste in Zelda games!
Tears of the Kingdom is the first 3D Zelda I haven't bought on release day because I was pretty let down by Breath of the Wild. The only thing I really enjoyed about it was the world and its physics engine... which are quite similar in TOTK, I understand.
Would you say enough has changed to make the game worthwhile for someone else who prefers the old Zelda formula to the new?
If the physics engine is one of the things you liked most about BotW... then TotK sounds right up your alley. You could spend hours just building stupid contraptions and making them do stupid things, if you so choose. There's way more opportunities to get yourself up in the air.
I think TotK has improved dramatically over BotW which was already one of my favorite games of the 2010s (along with Dark Souls 1). But the many ways in which it has improved do not bring it closer to the old Zelda formula, it's building on what BotW did to give the player even more freedom and let their creativity bloom.
Just based on your comment I dunno if I'd recommend it for sure. But it's really hard not to recommend it to everybody, because it's just a fantastic game. I actually wonder if I'll ever be able to go back and play BotW without it feeling lacking in comparison.
Thanks for your response!
Messing around with the physics and building contraptions just isn’t my thing. When I say I liked the physics engine, what I mean is that I loved the way Link moved and interacted with the world. “I love the way Link controls” might have been more accurate.
He feels so much better to play as than any other Link in the series. Only Skyward Sword comes close.
I’m thinking I will eventually play the game because I’m intrigued by these mentions of “The depths” and I want to check out the dungeons (even if they’re not a highlight).
But I do wish they’d gone with a new map for TOTK!
I've only played one of the 'dungeons' so far so I can't speak for them all... but I would say the dungeon itself wasn't any more interesting than the Beasts from BotW. But the boss was really great, better than those from BotW, and the route to the dungeon itself was much more fun. But the dungeon design didn't feel like an overhaul or anything. It's a similar philosophy it seems.
The shrines are much more interesting. Like BotW there's some that fall into a "type", but they have a lot more variety within that type. For example there's quite a few where you are sent in naked and must use only what's in the shrine to defeat all the enemies. This means using all kinds of different strategies, and being forced to use the stuff around you to kill them, stealth them, trap them etc using just the items you find and your powers.
The depths are perhaps a love it or leave it thing. They're enormous, and can offer a lot of exploration, if you find it interesting. I do. Venturing into the dark and lighting your way through, building stuff in the underground to help navigate faster, finding hidden mines and such - it's cool. But it's also a lot of free-form exploration without shrines, quests etc generally. So if you aren't into that you might not be as keen to fully explore it (and in fairness you don't have to, there's very little in the depths that is mandatory if anything, but you will want some of the bonuses and hidden treasures it has to offer).
It would have been cool to have a new map, but frankly having played 200+ hours of BotW, they've changed enough in this game that it feels pretty much new to me. The geography is mostly similar, but you have many new ways to traverse, and many regions have changed quite a bit. The Hyrule of BotW was also so large that it's not like most parts are burned into one's memory and the ones that are (towns, notable landmarks) have for the most part changed.
I just finished the story a few nights ago, got busy doing a lot of the side quests. While I enjoyed the game and think it's a masterpiece, I can't help but feel a bit underwhelmed by it. The best way I can summarize it is: when I played BotW, I had never played anything else like it. The physics engine is absolutely revolutionary for its time. But playing TotK, I don't get that feeling. I'm not saying "ToTk Is A dLC" but it's more evolutionary than revolutionary. I don't know if I'll ever experience anything like playing BotW for the first time again (in gaming), but I know TotK didn't come close (for me).
I had the inverse reaction as you. BotW felt dated on arrival to me: visually, physics (I don’t know what you mean when you say they were cutting edge for the time, do you mean the climbing?) and above all else the immersion. The world was big and empty, and the story was vague with really slow pacing.
I did one of the temples in BotW and then lost interest. TotK definitely hooked me because the pacing is MUCH better. It gives you literally everything you’ll need for the rest of the game on the very first tutorial zone you start in, and the crafting and fuse system immediately made me start thinking about what neat interactions they had accounted for. I was just blown away that putting a leaf on a stick made a fan, and putting a cart on a shield turned it into a skateboard.
If you thought BotW's visuals were dated, wouldn't TotK's be even worse?
By physics engine, I mean the engine that makes everything in TotK possible, like wind physics, fire physics, ice physics, sound physics, rain physics, etc.
I bought it, and am emulating it on my desktop for that smooth 60fps.
I just beat the Air Temple, have like 40 shrines done, 2 stamina and 9 hearts, all while just trying to unlock all the towers and following fun leads. Particularly interesting diversions are shrines and any outfit lieces I can get, as I really want every advantage.
I'm getting a regular rotation of solid weapons as well from black mobs, and tend to have one or two at any moment. I want to have more, as well as gem weapons, so I need to track down Hestu.
Excuse the ignorance, how does one do that? And what’s the gameplay quality like as compared to native? I’ve not played a Zelda since … NES, because that was the last Nintendo console I had access to (when I was 10, or so)
You'll need to find the ROM yourself, but it is fairly simple. There's a decent guide on Reddit here: https://redd.it/13gh9ts
I won't say where, but there's a subreddit for everything.
I'm using the Yuzu Switch emulator and some mods to crank up the framerate, which tweak the engine to render at a higher framerate, and have a hack to play the in-engine cutscenes at 30FPS so they play at proper speed.
I don't know how it compares to native because I don't want to retread the game, but I'm also not a huge fan of playing on handhelds. I'm not having any game-breaking issues. I get stutters in new areas because of asynchronous shader compilation (it recompiles Switch shaders into AMD+Vulkan native shaders), and rare input drops that may result from it, but nothing serious or frustrating, and by the time you're doing anything serious in a region you've gotten most of the shaders anyway.
Not anywhere close to completion yet. I think I'm about halfway through the main quest. It's amazing though. I always get distracted. I'll set a goal of something to do and then end up doing 10 other things along the way. It's incredible how much choice this game gives you and how much it drives you to experiment, tinker, and explore along the way.
I'm loving every second of it, though I plan to take my time playing it. I've just finished the air Temple, only have 7 hearts and 1.3 stam. I enjoy the aimless wandering, taking in the atmosphere.
The mood of this game is absolutely phenomenal to me. The graphics may not be next-gen, but the painterly strokes of dawn, the Zonai architecture, just the general feeling all accompanied by the score... It's the perfect game for me to relax in, just climb a mountain and watch sometimes. Or dive off a sky island just for the hell of it.
And if I'm not doing that, there's the amazing inventiveness with which to approach the puzzles and combat. Even completely cheesing your way through something actually feels like an accomplishment because you thought of that.
The major upgrade towards BOTW for me is the combat though. I actually don't mind the weapons breaking now, since it plays in neatly with the scrappy MacGyver Link has become. There's a thrill in having a weapon break, then cobbling something together from your environment instead of just picking something out of your inventory and winning the encounter with that. Not to mention all the crazy combinations.
I'm going to come back to this game many, many times in years to come.
I got into BotW pretty late, in 2021 or so, and I really loved the exploration aspect of it. TotK takes that exploration aspect to another level. Hyrule seems much more interesting to explore now and the addition of the sky islands and the depths are amazing. I really love Zonai devices and constructing things with them, the system seems to be extremely polished and I've had no issues with it whatsoever.
TotK definitely does feel a bit like an evolved BotW but I can' t really complain about that haha.
Glad so many are finding joy with the game. It's not for me, nor is really any of the modern Zelda games. Just don't scratch that itch (eg get off my lawn, etc etc). Most of the time I mention this I am treated as some sort of terrorist, so please, don't get mad at me :S
Have you tried the 3DS title, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds?
It makes some changes to the classic formula, but it displaced Link's Awakening as my favorite 2D-Zelda now. I l love how clever many of the puzzles in it are, and the freeform dungeon order was an interesting change of pace.
A Link Between Worlds is my second favorite 2D Zelda game right behind A Link to the Past. I highly recommend playing it if you haven't.
I have. Again, I just don't really enjoy the style of game they are. Im not really a Zelda "fan" as it were. I have fond memories of the NES games but they are just that. That said, I'm glad others find joy in the series! I just dislike the behavior of SOME fans who "can't believe" people don't think it's the best thing ever. Certainly other games have similar fans, it's just always louder with the larger releases.
It’s very strange to me how people get so defensive over their favorite titles. Not everyone will have the same love for certain games that I do.
Case in point:
I fucking loathe Bethesda games. I think they’re all boring, horrendously designed, and buggy games. That doesn’t mean that I disrespect the fan base or get mad when people love those games over my favorites. Different strokes.
To put it mildly. Fully agreed, Bethesda games are so much not my thing I struggle to name a category I'd universally dislike more. I think even Football or Racing games have the odd title like Sensible Soccer or Split/Second that I enjoy, while Bethesda is just 100% pure boredom with 50% too little dev time to become a finished product.
But yeah, plenty people love them. Fair enough! Different strokes and all.
I feel like I suck at this game more than the average user because I keep dying over and over and over again. I have 11 hearts and plenty of food, but I’m just not good at evading attacks even with my armor enhanced by the fairys. -sigh-
And I don’t blame the game and I’ve read strategy guides. The problem is me lol
11 hearts is still pretty low, I stopped getting one-shotted around 15. Also, if you're using a one handed sword, get into the habit of just holding shield and you'll block most attacks.
Work on your parry. I tend to forget it's an option, but it's saved my butt plenty of times. I'm not particularly good at video games in general, but another main strategy I learned playing Elden Ring, which applies, is keep moving in circles, and jump.
If you didn't know, you can do a shield parry, or a well-timed sideways/backward jump and get a "flurry rush," basically a free bullet-time mass attack. I'm sure there's a tutorial in a shrine somewhere.
I felt like I sucked because I kept falling off of cliffs and islands.
EDIT: One more thing: On anything big, especially if you can't target it (there's a few), keep it in view so you can dodge projectiles.
It's not easy. Certainly tougher than older Zelda titles. Make sure to use everything at your disposal. Shoot enemies in the head with arrows whenever you can to stun them, then get some hits in.
Have you completed any of the 4 big phenomena yet? If you do you might find something helpful. :)
I'm at 100 hours and I finished the main quest at about 85. It's probably my game of the year. I could never really get into BOTW but this game speaks to me somehow.
Full Game Spoilers
However, the story is a little bit meh. On the second memory (i think) you learn about draconification and it's almost slapping you across the face with "Hey Zelda is a dragon now!" which is a pretty sick plot point, I just felt it could be handled better. Also I get why they didn't, but Nintendo should've comitted to the whole permanence of the draconification.Finding out about the 5th Sage was also really cool. I know some people found that temple early but finding it at the "intended" point in the story was so cool. Same for the Master Sword quest, it all felt like a suit up sequence. The Final Boss was also an incredible experience, I lost my mind when I realized Ganon was deleting hearts, not just gloom-ing them away.
The Temples were alright (except the water temple, way too easy imo) but my favorite would definitely have to be the Wind Temple, plus Tulin is so cool.
Mechanically, I wish autobuild could pull out of your inventory before charging you Zonaite. I know I can just drop it but why is this not a feature. Other than that, I have yet to experience any major issues with anything else, even physics bugs. I managed to break it once when trying to loop a stone bridge around a post which it did not like!
Ditto on being able to pull right from your inventory; that would have been such an amazing improvement. Let's hope it happens in the DLC.
Just realize I didn’t post mine lol:
Note this was originally posted on my Facebook, but it hasn’t changed:
I feel like the my thoughts have been everywhere regarding Zelda in the last few games. I've always consider Ocarina of Time to be the measuring stick. I've thought that way even after completing Breath of the Wild and beyond.
Those thoughts have ceased. Tears of the Kingdom is now my favorite Zelda and Nintendo game of all time.
Let's the get (small) critiques out of the way, the TOTK has it fair share of performance issues, but it also fixed other issues that plagued Breath of the Wild. Just small things like dumping inventory to make way to better items, or even in some cases fixing issues like The Lost Woods slowdown.
All of this issues are so, extremely minor compared to vast amount of content, fun, and just otherworldly detail that Nintendo and the creative unit made for Tears of the Kingdom. When you realize it's not just the sky and Hyrule itself, but whole other world underneath the lands of Hyrule, I was just dropped. Tears of the Kingdom even with it's issues is still a technical marvel.
That's not even scratching the surface of all there is to do. I played most of the game just exploring, I didn't have a set path, I just did whatever I wanted because Nintendo gave me that chance to do it. I was rewarded with the brand new abilities such as Fuse (which makes find weapons even more rewarding than it did before), the ultra handy (no pun intended) Ascend and Recall, and of course the best ability in the series: Ultrahand. It pushed me to my ultimate creative freedom, even if the game is a bit limited what you can do with that freedom. And then you bring back dungeons, while may not be as detailed as the older games, still had a lot of nice little surprises and familiarity within the older games, was a great touch.
And then there was the story (I'll say nothing about it) that is easily one of the best the franchise (if you've beaten the story, let me know because I need to talk about it) including one of the best final boss fight in the series, period.
I can go on and on for hours, but then it would get too spoilery, so I'll stop it up and summarize here and it's fairly simple:
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is currently my Game of the Year favorite. It's not official yet, but I don't see any game beating it out of me. It's my favorite Zelda game, my favorite Nintendo game...No, it's not just that, it's my favorite game of all time, now surpassing even Final Fantasy XIV...a feat I never would have expected. It took 12 hours upon completing the game to really cement that feeling down. It's a masterclass.
TOTK is the measuring stick of how I will be judging and critiquing video games in the future.
10/10
For me, the most frustrating part of the move towards “open air” and away from classic dungeons in the Zelda series is that the release of new 2D titles has completely stalled.
A Link Between Worlds (2013) is the most recent original single player 2D Zelda game.
That was 10 years ago.
I’d feel better about the lower emphasis on dungeon design in BOTW (and apparently TOTK—I haven’t played it yet) if new 2D instalments with the classic dungeon design were being released. But in the last decade, all we’ve had in 2D are remasters and spin-offs.
I feel like there has to be an original 2D game from Grezzo at some point just because they’re running out of 2D games to remaster (lol).
I have a very similar view of the recent Zelda games, though I haven't picked up TOTK yet because I was so underwhelmed by BOTW it wasn't worth $70 to me. The lack of large cohesive dungeons with "proper" bosses really hurt the feel as did the very wide variety of temporary weapons/gear. It felt wide, but shallow as a whole. It didn't help that some great open world games have come around the last few years and BOTW doesn't, IMO, stand up to them on that aspect. I didn't feel particularly rewarded for exploring the big open world of Hyrule, and because it wasn't ability gated like the older games, there was little reason to ever return to an area either. The amount of people calling TOTK a masterpiece has me likely to pick it up and try it at some point, but I feel like the massive success of these two recent games mean the spirit of the series may be lost for players like me.
I think TotK is a wonderful game on its own and really has so much to do. The world feels so alive and the characters, visuals, and puzzles are all top-notch. Where I find it lacking is as a sequel to a game that did all that already. What I mean is, some of the actual gameplay and ui functionality is the exact same as it was in BotW.
If I want to cook 10 of a specific recipe, I have to go through the process of cooking it 10 times, I can't just tell the game to make 10 of them. This was a sore spot for BotW and it seems all criticism in this vein has just been ignored.
Likewise, in BotW if I wanted to equip fire arrows, that's what I did and that was that. In TotK, every time I want to shoot a fire arrow I have to bring up a menu to fuse a fire flower to my arrow. There are just some real QoL improvements that seem like they should have been refined to smooth out the actual gameplay.
I still really dislike that you can't equip a few key items to a hot bar to scroll through to use (kind of like how Dark Souls and Elden Ring let you do). Instead you have to open up a menu and pause the gameplay even in the middle of combat. The same goes for using any healing items.
Criticisms aside, I think it's a fantastic game, I had just hoped that these flaws that were present in BotW had been addressed in the 6 years it took to bring us TotK.
I played a frankly embarrassing amount over the first two weeks after it launched, so I’m taking a break from it now. I’ve had a lot of fun with it, although I couldn’t help but feel at times like there was almost too much game? It felt Skyrim-like with how easily I could completely lose track of a goal and run into tangent after tangent. In that respect, I do think there’s still value to BotW’s more focused adventure.
Loved BOTW, and sold my Switch lite after I finished it in 2020. Felt like I had completed the system.
Fast forward to TOTK launch day and I’m up at midnight watching the cutscenes on YouTube, then, unconnected to that and without any discussion about it, my wife brings home an OLED Switch that afternoon for my birthday the week before! Went ahead and finished watching the cutscenes, and said I didn’t have to play it. Probably…
And that brings us to this past Monday, a month after getting the Switch on TOTK launch day, when probably lost and I started playing. Okay, long ramble to connect to the comment above. After spending hours on Great Sky Island getting to the second shrine, I said to my wife, “Good thing I watched the cutscenes and know the story already - I’ll be playing this for the next 3 years before I finish!” Then I showed her the maps on my companion app. Holy cow.
I'm fairly early in the game still, but I'm finding that I really dislike the addition of the Ascend ability. It doesn't feel like it rewards creativity, as it just pushes you to look for ceilings that seem specifically designed for the ability to be used.
I'm at the bit where you're trying to reach the sky island area above Hebra, and there's a big tower that looks way too long to climb. I personally felt like I came up with a clever way to ascend (build a fire + toss a pinecone + use the glider on the updraft to get height, then climb the rest of the way). But I was met with an unclimbable overhang bit at the top. So I fell down and ended up just using Ascend instead, which felt significantly less satisfying.
Climbing in BotW & TotK feels rewarding to me since it's like solving a puzzle (mainly finding a route that lets you recover stamina partway through). Ascend feels like... find the spot where you're supposed to use Ascend, and then use it.
Curious if anyone else feels that way? Overall still really enjoying everything else about the game -- seems like a better BotW in just about every aspect.
For what it's worth, I'm about 40-45 hours in and have largely felt that Ascend is one of my least used powers. Climbing still factors very heavily into the way I approach the game, but it's now only one particular method of getting somewhere. It feels as though the developers had a big interest in giving the player a huge variety of ways to move vertically very quickly (something you'll likely find as you progress further and experiment with various Zonai devices).
While it's definitely unfortunate that the section of the game you mentioned limits you in that manner, I feel as though your pinecone technique seems far more true to the experience I've had with the game since progressing a little further. See a great height? Here's a ton of different ways you can approach it, have fun.
On a separate note, I do think that I'm also underutilizing Ascend just a bit. I think that the less linear approach to solving things with Ascend (the same approach that makes the other powers feel satisfying to use) almost requires me to stretch my brain in a way I'm not used to when it comes to other games, but maybe that's just me.
That's a relief to hear! I'm still generally finding terrain exploration to be natural and satisfying as it was in BotW. Glad to hear that I don't need to expect a lot of "you have to use Ascend here and nothing else" moments.
I understand why you feel that way, but I LOVE Ascend. Climbing was nothing but a pain for me on BOTW, especially in the rain. Ascend is perfection, for me specifically.
This game is probably very good but the behavior of nintendo in leveling lawsuits at so many people as a result of it. The fact they wanted to and then succeeded in controlling the environment around the launch has led me to swear off of them basically entirely.
Does anyone want to buy a Nintendo switch? Gently used. About a dozen games with it.
Enjoying this game so far, it a bit like a rehashing of the old one, and the writing isn't strong, but the puzzles and gameplay is excellent!
How could a nautically oriented individual play this game?
Carefully.
Emulator-wise, you should check out Yuzu and/or Ryujinx.
Well it's on Switch, so assuming you bring a charger I don't see what is stopping you from playing it on a boat?