#like the way zelda gives you her time power thing and the way the mastersword got sent back in time

[ganondoodle]

feeling much better now having gotten some sleep (the dont trust how you feel about yourself past 9pm is good advice no joke)

of course all my criticism of totk still applies but im feeling less depressed about it, tho i will say its honestly kinda baffling how many times the game actually got me interested and excited about stuff and then just kinda drops it in a dead end, of course they were those kind of things in botw as well but it seems much less .. balanced in totk

(not even just the big things like making me want to actively do something to help zelda turn back when it just gets solved on its own in the end, but also some lil things like the fact that so many NPCs tell you about that newly discovered animal species and when you find the dongos they are just gem vending maschines)

in the end i can say, no, i dont like totk, tho i still love the graphics and the way the world is made ( botw showed me jsut how immersive and alive a world can feel i love it to death), i liked the gameplay and that it kept the freedom botw had established, the bossfights are mostly fun (tho i wish you could refight more of them), i LOVE the yiga and im glad they got more of a spotlight, the music is FANTASTIC i keep catching myself humming along, alot of the sidequests are much bigger and feel like you are actually doing something, i like how the sages are a bit more integrated into the story, the majority of the new designs are great, both the japanese and german voice acting is great, and the end fight has some of the best build up i have ever experienced, my heart starts to race when that music build up starts even tho i have beaten it 3 times already-

however, the story is both simple and incredible flat with lots of stuff that doesnt make sense especially when it was said to be a sequel, the zonau should have stayed a mystery imo, they failed to make me care about them even a little bit and often felt forcefully crammed into the world and its history, i think you could have told an incredible story taking place in the present and leave the past be the past, you easily could have connected botw and totk in a much better way than they did, i dont like how it changes aspects about botw all the while nigh ignoring it ever happened, it still feels like it was trying to be a replacement and not a sequel and all the referencing and callbacks to the old titles may have been done in good faith but that and including time travel yet again ultimately lead to people ripping each other to shreds over trying to prove its placed in the old timeline despite it making no sense at all and confusing people even more; often when the game made me care or be excited about something it was dropped in a dead end, there was a ton of missed opportunities and lost potential to tell a much more nuanced and interesting story/lore, and thinking about it only makes me sad for the things that could have been

overall i think my disappointment is outweighing my fun and the only way i can keep playing it while having fun is ignoring everything that isnt, which works quite well most of the time since im pretty much done with all story stuff but i keep slipping into my little rants nonetheless; i will say its making me a little worried about the future of the franchise, but i know im in the minority and maybe i will just have to accept that the new stuff wont be for me anymore and i should not hope for anything that interests me xD

except for some meme material or specific characters i love i dont think i will make much use of anything totk tried to establish, and i hope thats fine with the lot of you (<3) hopefully that also means my ranting days are over xD

anyway, back to making niche art i go! (sorry for making you endure these long ass rambling posts :,) )

#ganondoodles talks #would you believe me if i said i found more stuff that i find a lil weird #like the way zelda gives you her time power thing and the way the mastersword got sent back in time #like i dont need to have it all written out to me like im a baby but soem things are just kinda weird but acceptable #and some things actively take you out of the game- threatening your immersion #-stares at the shrine of life- #i will miss digging through theory videos on youtube tho #bc considering how big of a game totk is and how wide its influence goes .. its gonna affect everything #anyway i want to reiterate that damn the music is good #and it makes it all just hurt more #the music got me more emotional than anything else in the game besides koga #and it kinda sucks thinking about the impact it could have had if both the music AND story were this great

[sometipsygnostalgic]

tipsy reviews: breath of the wild

So last month, early november, I went and got myself a Nintendo Switch. And for my new console I bought 3 games: MarioKart Deluxe, Super Mario: Odyssey, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

What I used it for mostly during this time period was.... Mariokart. It’s a fun and addictive little game while the two openworld games required a lot of effort with no linear path, so I wasn’t looking forward to a lot of busywork.

To my pleasant surprise, when I finally sat down to complete Odyssey, I discovered that the game was filled with many little secrets. It would reward you for experimenting, for putting objects in funny places, and solving its puzzles. The addictive gameplay helped me steamroll through the game to its logical conclusion, and then beyond.

Breath of the Wild, fortunately, follows a similar path. Gone are the many hours of tutorials, talking swords, and narrow Hyrule paths. Now we find the world not only open, where you’re free to move in any direction  and climb any mountain, but filled with many secrets and challenges to spend your days working through!  It’s not fair to say that Breath of the Wild is without its challenges though; the open-world formula starts out with many, and though Zelda subverts the issues plagueing more well-known users like Assassin’s Creed, it does fall into some unique pitfalls. 

In this post I will discuss the different areas of this game - story, gameplay, puzzle elements - and see how they compare.

Environment: I felt like it was most important to talk about this aspect first, because the world of Hyrule is so significant to the potential and failures of every other part of the game. Everything to do with story, puzzles, difficulty, it’s all related to the open world, what’s in it, and how you navigate.   Breath of the Wild kinda looks like a barren, empty game when you look at its open world face-value. There’s very few cities, most of the place is ruins littered with some enemy camps and lots of caves. Not a lot of history at all! It reminds me of the empty Hyrule Fields in Ocarina of Time. And there are no sprawling dungeons like in its predecessors. The closest to this is the shrines, short mini-dungeons which were created by the Sheikah predecessors to help the Hero destroy Ganon.  But what Breath of the Wild does RIGHT is utilize this seemingly empty open world to its full advantage. It’s filled with a variety of animals and critters to use for cooking, challenging opponents who you can loot, korok seeds which you need to solve a riddle to collect (but which are far less irritating than riddler trophies), hidden treasure for you to discover... And perhaps the most immersive tactic is how we are able to take damage from the environment - you can freeze to death on a mountain, or dehydrate in the desert, or roast in the Goron mine. All of this, combined with the many, MANY shrines and seeds and their corresponding puzzles, makes this world feel... alive. Like people and animals actually live here.   And the most adrenaline-bursting part of all is entering a Divine Beast for the first time and realising you can manipulate the environment using the map. THIS is what makes a great adventure game. Now, it’s still a fair departure from the classic dungeon crawlers or the previous three entries, but I think Breath of the Wild pulled off its world very impressively. Much more fun to explore than London or North America. It is only for an issue I’ll discuss later on that I have to rank it as low as 8/10. 

Story: BotW does make an interesting departure once again from before, though in some ways I feel this had lost potential. The story is COMPLETELY optional - as soon as you leave the great plateau, you can fight Ganon and call it a day. But if you choose to dig deeper into the memories of Link, you’ll discover that you were ALREADY the Chosen Hero, sealed deep into the Resurrection Shrine by instruction of Zelda. You were identified early because of your upbringing as the son of a Royal Knight, and that’s about it for Link’s known pre-mastersword history. It’s unknown what adventures you went on before. Now you and four Champions were chosen to prepare to fight Ganon. The backstory between you and Zelda is.... mixed, kind of depressing actually; she resented you for a long time because you were so good at your job as the Hero of the Sword while she was deeply insecure over her inability to activate her powers and how her father kept putting pressure on her to constantly pray when she just wanted to become a huge nerd, helping out in other ways.  It ends with Ganon unleashing its power across Hyrule, the Champions being killed and trapped in the Divine Beasts they were going to use against him, and Link nearly dying protecting Zelda who  saves him last second with an awesome Light that Burns the Sky.   After watching 25-ish cutscenes, I... was quite disappointed, because they kept rehashing stuff I already knew; Zelda was insecure over her lack of power, she disliked Link but grew to respect him, and the other Champions are.... well, Mipha’s the only one who has any real history with Link. Revali sees him as a rival, Urubosa looks after Zelda, and Daruk is very hardy and enthusiastic. It’s really cool meeting these characters in the Divine Beasts but you don’t learn much more, and I heard the Champion’s Ballad DLC is the same...  Ganon himself isn’t a chilling villain like before, moreso an intimidating threat. He’s not nearly as scary as the Twilight Beasts or any named Ocarina of Time boss, and he takes very little skill to defeat, even compared to some of his Blights (Thunderblight Ganon took me multiple attempts with its fast hard-hitting moves). In fact I think I’d be able to sweep him easily without saving any Champions. The worst part of all though has to be how it just CUTS YOU OFF.  You complete the game? Yeah, that’s kind of it. There isn’t a “post-game”, it just lets you load your past save. That’s what pisses me off the most. I wanted to speak to Zelda about all those memories I found! Oh yeah the game is also sneaky and won’t load the secret ending cutscene if you didn’t report to Impa and recover the hidden memory after unlocking the Hyrule Tower memory, so good luck doing what I did and getting that one last just before the final boss.  All in all, 5 out of 10. It did its job, but was nothing special whatsoever, lots of wasted potential.  

Gameplay: When you first start playing Breath o the Wild it is extremely punishing. Your weapons  are shit, your damage is shit, you WILL get oneshot many times. But when you pump more hours into it, you gain lots of momentum; since there are so many areas of gameplay, so many ways to approach a certain situation, it becomes inevitable that you’ll figure out a good solution to any fight.  This is a double-edged blade; while it’s lots of fun to kill enemies inventively, the difficulty curb at the BEGINNING of the game is so steep that you’ll find it becoming stupidly easy later on, when you’re more overpowered and you’ve mastered the enemy attack patterns. Sure, they may turn black or silver and do hella damage, but what’s a god to a player who knows how to exploit their AI?  And you’ll be swimming in so many powerful weapons that you’ll abandon them all after a certain point, cos there’s nothing worse to trade out.   The biggest victims of the difficulty scaling have to be the Ganon bosses, all of them, which DO NOT gain health or difficulty at any point. It’s like fighting Champion Wallace’s level 40 watertypes with a level 70 rayquaza, which is what I did in my Emerald playthrough...  This means that the greatest elements of Breath of the Wild’s gameplay are those moments where your tools aren’t quite enough, where you have to prepare and plan. Maybe there’s too many moblins to take on at once? Maybe you’re playing the Island Trial and you have no decent weapons? Maybe you’re trying to complete the Zora divine beast quest and you come face-to-face with the Lynel on the summit? Maybe there’s multiple Guardians aiming at your direction and you have no Ancient Arrows? In all these situations I’ve had to be inventive, sneak around and attack on the sly, or avoid combat altogether.  But what’s even more reliable is the puzzles. You’re not handheld, you’re not told how to do anything outside of the very basic controls - every single puzzle you solve is completely your own accomplishment, your own skills, and sometimes it’s not set out clearly at all so you have to be creative. Nobody TOLD you to put that one rock in the gap between all the others, but you did it, and now you have a rock! And nobody TOLD you how to make a recipe that heals all your hearts and gives you 3 to spare, but your experimentation crafted a recipe.   THIS, in my opinion, is what makes a definitive gaming experience - respect for the player. 9 out of 10 too many royal swords.

Music - No videogame review is complete without an OST ranking. Now.... BotW tried to play a certain role with its music, having it in the background colouring your experiences rather than defining them. This is quite appreciated because it would have been distracting to have booming enemy music for an opponent I knock out in 2 seconds (cough OOT cough). However, outside of its main theme, Breath of the Wild lacks almost all the signature Zelda tracks that have been defining for the series. I’d say that the absence of this booming music makes it.... not feel much like a Zelda at all. It better reflects the open and partially destroyed world, at the expense of recogition. That’s not to say it’s without gems though.. there are very few things more chilling than the music that plays in ganon-possessed guardian containing the tormented soul of your dead zora girlfriend. 7 out of 10, servicable and decent. 

Conclusion - Breath of the Wild is a smashing game, which deserves the praise it gets, not because it’s an open world Zelda but because it REDEFINES the possibilities of an open world game. Instead of littering itself with countless copy-paste fortresses, it offers puzzles and challenges that show respect for the player’s adaptability, encouraging you to explore all the different options its mechanics offer. Instead of making you choke through an insufferable and possibly frustrating campaign to unlock new areas, it gives you the options and tools to go anywhere you like as long as you prepare. It says much when even this game’s biggest weaknesses can be played for strengths. And oh man, what a solid introduction to the Nintendo Switch generation. 

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: 8 out of 10. 

#botw #breath of the wild #loz #the legend of zelda

[ganondoodle]

i might have talked about it before but i kinda wanna rant a lil how nonsensical both the "getting of the time reversal" and "giving zelda the mastersword" things are

bc ... to get the time reversal powers you touch a ... ghost of the enigma stone that used to be there .. and i GUESS it was the one zelda has now but used to be raurus and since its now linked to her we get .... link being astral projected into ghosty dimension similar to the other sages and we get zeldas sage power, but .. how does that even work, zelda, having supposedly long lost her soul to being a dragon is somehow still able to do the whole sage thing of taking you to fogland mclight dimension, just doesnt tell you the same stuff the other sages do word for word (thank GOD)

but how did that even manifest? even ignoring her soul being GONE how can she make that oath or whatever while shes not awake and just floating there, what business does the ghost engima stone have there and why dont the others have something similar to where they were once stored (in the forgotten temple backrooms tm bc we cant have the sonau NOT touch a thing in this world all of the sudden-)

is it bc they were like ... released of their holder from the old sages since they had long died and those go back to being big floaty stones (for whatever reason .. shouldnt have sonias stone done the same when gan took it then??)- also zeldas ability being put into the hand ability wheel while we gotta chase down the damn sages any time you want to use one of their abilities is so unfair .. you could have made the sages usable .. but no ..

its a relatively small complaint compared to the rest but it still bothers me bc it just ... feels so contrived, like it feels to be so clearly just some loose string to get you that power

the same with the weird ass time bubble to get the mastersword back in time to zelda just so she can have a flimsy reason to do what she does (we wouldnt want the character this series is named after be an actual CHARACTER instead of a pretty prize at the end now would we??) and its jsut so .......... why not have her grab the broken master sword as shes falling into the past (SOMEHOW) or it falling down with her bc really link shouldnt maybe not be able to hold it anymore- wait he reaches for her with that hurt hand .. so he did drop it .. and it somehow got back to him instead of being put into the past WITH zelda right then and there?? why??

(also ..rauru just teleporting him to the sky island ... wasnt that arm the last bits of raurus physical body? was his ghost just chilling up there the whole time- ... can ghosts in totk control and teleport their physical, dead limbs to whereever their ghost is? why can a ghost even be so far apart from the rest of his remains .... or was that spiraling energy stuff just him slowly turning into a ghost there ... but my point about ghosts controlling their dead limbs still stands- WAIT he ALSO has to be able to ... SEE somehow bc he grabbed link before he fell too .... the way he talks when you find him chilling on the island tho is like hes seeing it all for the first time too .. so .. he wasnt a ghost yet and still knew where to go .. even tho the place is somehwere totally different to where it used to be and if he became a ghost right there why couldnt you see him when he grabbed link... if the hand that grabbed link wasnt actual the one that fell off gan why does it look like it then? bc gan hand was long and thin with long ass class and raurus actual ghost hands are barely different from typical human ones- .. i think im having more thoughts about this point thant nintendo had over the entirety of making the game .... also fuck rauru for doing the fake out "oooh noooo im fading awayyy" thing just so he doesnt have to answer any of your thousand questions i guess, only to return at the end going, "actually, i want my arm back and yours was fine anyway lol, and here sonia is here too for some reason! also check this out! zelda is back and you didnt have to do shit, isnt that cool?")

the weird time bubble makes me so angry when i remmeber it exists bc it just .. makes NO sense?? what even is it?? if it was a foreshadowing to zelda learning to use her new time powers and you find more over time in the game where she manifests mroe and more until she manages to return on her own like it was kinda teased with sonia tellign her shell find a way to use her new powers to go back since she (SOMEHOW) also got herself here and that point going nowhere like so many other points (hows it going impah, foudn a way to get zelda back yet? dont bother, turns out the solution was 'beat the bad guy' and it all solved itself) OK fine, that works

BUT ITS NOT a foreshadowing of anything, the time bubble thing is just THERE and it drives me nuts, it really only adds to this whole game feeling so weirdly held together by loose strings and it just gets worse the more you think

#ganondoodles talks #zelda #totk #ganondoodles rants #sorry ijust remembered that stuff #and when i think about something that doesnt make sense i kinda spiral into trying to make sense of it #i know a ramble alot but this is pretty much my thought process #i realized soem stuff as i was writing this and it all got more confusing #i want to apologize for the incoherent rambling #but i also know some people like reading through my literal thoughts #i just wish a was a bit more eloquent njkdfbjkdbfks

[ganondoodle]

you know, as if it wasnt already boring enough that both link and zelda got back to their 'perfect' physical selves without any consquences from all that happened, the fact that zelda doesnt even remember anything either is just adding insult to injury

although it was also a lil disappointing at the end of botw that zelda didnt age even a little bit or had any other physical change at least she was conscious during the time she sealed calamity ganon in the castle and it overall feels less illogical

when you get the mastersword back in totk you get a cutscene of zelda with it after she had already transformed which kinda .... is weird? she seemed pretty awake there, and it being right after transforming is strange since the mastersword was already restored in that cutscene, i would expect it to be a slow progress- that said .. it also seemed like her soul was doing pretty fine, unlike how mineru said that you lose your soul when you do the dragon thingy; i guess it could be that that was jsut a thing that was believed without knowing if its true but ... why even mention it then, just to dangle some consequence in front of us only to reveal there wasnt any danger actually?

also someone (i think) commented once that zelda being turned back in that weird way was meant to be that she got time reversed .. which ... okay??? the teleport to that weird nakey floating dimension is still a weird choice to me (yes i know its probably the spirit realm or soemthing and thats why the ghosts that went poff already were there but it still feels off to me) .. aynway, i guess it was meant that ghost sonia + rauru did the give power to link thing that sonia and zelda did to rauru when he magic laser blasted all those poor moldoras (and never does it again ... why not magic laser blast away gan instead he was pretty openly standing on that rock problem solved hfldshnflsnjlfs) and that time reversed the dragon thing .... but aside from the symbol for the time thingy lighting up theres no indication for it if i remember right? its just some awkward looking magic beam blast save zelda edition (tm) why not at least include the clear tök sound that goes off when you use time reversal in game? would it have been both more clear AND cool if link was still standing on her head, the world gets that spirit realm filter like it did in skyward sword to indicate that theres a shift, then have the ghosties appear and let you as the player select time thingy and then her, ghosties give you their energy and the sound of time reversal goes off, the schemes of the world below goes black and white and start to shift; you dont need to literally show the path zelda had been flying over those thousands of years, but make the world a blurry mess and let the music speed up so you feel like you are actually doing something and then she turns back maybe near the temple of time (zonau edition) so its near the place where she was last human, the filters and ghosts disappear and whoop you got your epic falling scene ... but i would like to have zelda still remember it, otherwise it just feels .. weirdly manipulative? like lets reverse your brain and memory zelda no dont worry i meant good lmao trust me

that is if it was meant to be read as a time reversal on her .... but then i question why it wasnt used beforehand? couldnt you have done that to ganondorf even? if sonia and rauru can give you enough energy as ghosts then why couldnt sonia reappear after getting one-punche-mand-to-death or when you fight gan in the present time? is the excuse that he was so miasmafied or deep below the earth that the spirit world thing isnt in reach? couldnt you have done it after he did the dragon thing then? or is it a one time thing so they saved it for zelda? but then why didnt sonia get her ghost ass back there immediately after she died and time revrsed gan getting the enigma stone? ALSO if it was a time reversal on zelda where did the stone go??? shouldnt it be time reversaled out of her in some way to undo the dragon thing? where it go?? also to time reversal a body gotta be different to getting her soul back?? or was it just never gone so what mineru said about the risk was literally jsut so it seemed more tragic when it really wasnt??? like the apparent possibilty that the time reversal CAN be used on living things and not just objects makes me question it all even more?

(also was it meant to imply that rauru somehow through his arm got them both into the ghosty dimension?? bc how did they get there, and why cant they do it again? if spirits are fine over there even if they already went poof then why act so sad about mineru fking off like that? just go back there and say hi? njfkdnjkdj)

like im sorry i cant help but overthink all of this, with every supposedly explanation i just question it more?? i dont want to sound like one of those guys that go -OoHoh there was no clear text explanation for it so i dont knooooOOOOoOw i dont know how to use ma braiiin it makes no seeeensee- or maybe i am? i dont need an explanation for everything, in fact i LIKE when there are unexplained things, but it still has to feel .. whole? there are unexplained things that make a world and story feel more mystical without taking you out of it, but theres also a way to leave things both over AND underexplained with it seemingly contradicting itself or it just trusting that you take it all at face value and never think about it that it just feels off, the the first big moment where i felt SO taken out of the game i felt actually stunned was when i was at the shrine of life and it wasnt there anymore, at all, the cave shaped like a vague imitation of it, i felt like the game was laughing at me for being so distraught about it, like what you remember and care about the game this new one was supposed to be a sequel to? lmao, anyway theres a puddle of healing water :)))

idk i just ... if its not obvious already zelda is my special thingy so of course i overthink and criticize it in ways that may seem insane to the average person, but thats just how i work i guess :/

(i am still too thinking so much about how it all feels like such an afterthought, like especially with the weird time bubbles that literally NEVER COME UP AGAIN???? WHAT WAS THE POINT??? AND WHERE DID THEY COME FROM??? and why youd choose to suddendly give zelda time powers out of nowhere and then basically not do anything with it?? zelda astral projecting to the temple of time somehow even tho her soul was lost but is also fine just to give you the time reversal gimmick is so ?? oh wow look at that zelda gave you her sage oath before you even knew about them look how coool ok but how? and why? it wasnt the actual engima stone you touch to go into ghosty world either just like a .. a weird ghost of it, it just feels off man, ok you got zelda out the way and have your neat gimmicks and uuuh dang we need to find a way to give them to you idk lol listen, i KNOW you are not supposed to question it, i KNOW they always go gameplay over story but goddamn the story ruined the gameplay for me bc everytime i think about playing it again i just get reminded of the things that dont make sense or are just so .. lackluster in ways that even botws worst parts didnt)

#ganondoodles talks #ganondoodles rants #zelda #totk #totk spoilers #just to be safe #man i just #i keep thinking #i cant help but keep thinking #why