legend

I will second that you should upgrade your armor. It makes a huge difference. I don't think any regular shrine enemy should take a minute to beat. Are you just whacking them with a stick? You should at least fuse something to any sticks! I think the hardest shrines I've done so far were naked combat shrines, but even those usually have means to very quickly upgrade your gear. There was one that seemed incredibly hard until it become apparent you could just ultra hand the things they were standing on And if you do want better weapons, a quick stroll through the castle is a good place to grab some. Just run from the enemies if you feel unable to deal with them during the raid.

The other thing you have to give to TOTK is just how fucking creative and awesome the combat can be. Obviously there is the crazy machines you can make, but even in the more "traditional" combat space good players can do some amazingly epic shit by playing on all the systems. My twitter feed is like 30% TOTK content at this point and some of the shared videos are really fucking cool. Ultimately, you'd be hard pressed to find a game with systems as expressive as the ones in TOTK, even ones that are built to be simulators of some sort. It's a staggering design and programming feat.

There are are objective observations I can make about the controls that are sub par and were largely "resolved" after the first wave of 3d games. Not everyone has to feel like they're deal breakers (even though I won't understand that!) but they remain true all the same! For example, the targeting is wildly inconsistent. The game practically makes the lock a requirement to use because if your character is even a slight amount off of looking directly at the enemy you're attacking, they will not adapt and will clean miss to the side of them. This lack of any adaptation is compounded by the fact that attacks in Elden Ring are pretty slow, so even if you were "on" before, you might not be when it's done. The "fix" to that is to use the target lock. Which I would have been okay with doing, except it sucks too! You can be fighting a giant enemy and click the target lock only to find the target locks on to a very distant non-hostile enemy instead because the game decided they were more "centered" even though you may not have even noticed they existed because there is a giant enemy in your face. I might have even put up with that if you could just lock on once reliably and stay locked on until you turn it off. Sorry! Enemy attacks (and I think other movements) will automatically break your target lock so you have to do it again! There are other similar things about the controls that bugged me, but that one I remember best. It's mind blowing how bad it is to me. And to be fair, TOTK has some menu clumsiness and I dislike that there is no action queuing in certain situations, but that's sooooo much more tolerable than failing the basics like Elden Ring.

Elden Ring has early 2000s levels action controls. I cannot fathom how anyone puts up with it. So yeah, TOTK, but it wasn't even a fight.

Could be done! Unfortunately if it’s like chat gpt it will ultimately just agree and say it made a mistake if you insist forcefully enough even if you’re full of shit, so that might not be much better! In general though, AI is coming to games in lots of different ways, which is great!

I am a big fan of the first (though I wish I could have entered my own responses in the philosophical arguments ), so I am looking forward for this one!

The original Marathon trilogy was my favorite game series as a kid. I put absolutely absurd hours into it and a billion mods. I'm pretty psyched for it to return.

You need a "breath of the wild."

Donated! Good luck!

I think I mostly agree with that, although sometimes some degree of attacking the person is unavoidable. For example, if you're trying to dissuade others from associating with someone or their organization because they're bad news, you can't really avoid calling them a piece of shit at least implicitly

If you actually want to convince someone of anything insulting them is a bad plan the majority of the time. But I also think not meeting contemptable positions with appropriate contempt normalizes their position and allows it to spread. Striking the right balance in the right situations is key.

Yes, the game some times points out where to go. But that's not really a counter argument. In fact, BotW straight up tells you exactly where to go to "finish" the game after the tutorial area. It's not even subtle: you're directly told and It's the giant castle in the center of the map viewable by nearly everywhere. And you can in fact go right there and finish the game. This is in fact a strength that adds to the value of exploration and adventure. The interplay of what is communicated to you, what is required vs what is optional, and how things can be discovered is wildly important and you can't boil the analysis down to simple context-free bullet points "it does x" to properly understand it. Even if we have the deeper discussion though, it's still not going to make you like it, which is why I don't think having the extended discussion is going to be very worthwhile for anyone

I've written a fair amount about why BotW was so different on this board in the past, but I'm not sure I have it in me to do it again Suffice it to say I've thought a lot about why it was so different. If you didn't like it, those things might not stand out to you though.

1. Tears of the Kingdom. Not finished but nothing beats the adventure you feel in this game. 2. Breath of the Wild. Previously a new standard for how to do open world games, but TotK is just this but better. 3. Ocarina of Time. There are a handful of games that just felt like magic. This is one of them. (The two above it are, incidentally, also in that small list ) 4. Links Awakening. I only played the remake but was very pleasantly surprised at how well it held up. Just plain fun. 5. Skyward Sword. Not great, but solid. For some reason, I have never been able to get into A Link to the Past. I don't know why, it seems like it should work for me. Will probably try yet again at some point in the future to see if that changes. I never cared for the Wind Waker games for some reason. I'm also the rare person that kind of hated Majora's Mask.

Sadly, this tracks.

You need to 100 crystalized zonite and then you can take it to the forger in the main Sky Island to craft into another battery third. It sounds like there's ways to farm that better, but I still haven't reached it

I have international travel in September, and that might be the right time to finally get one. @Rev has been telling me I should get one for a year now, and the price is looking good.

Everyone playing TotK

I think AI upscaling might look better than this.

But when it breaks it's an instant critical!

I keep seeing videos of people with 8 fully charged batteries. Most of my time is above ground rather than under, but I *just* got one extra sliver. So 8 full batteries seems like a crazy number! Are these people. 1. Sinking every last moment they have into Zelda? 2. Using something you find later which makes it much easier to upgrade the battery? 3. Using a dup glitch? If it's 2, I don't need to know how, just that here is an in game mechanic that makes it easier.

I'd like them to remake OoT but in BOTW's format, just to maximally piss off @Bacon In all seriousness, I think the direction they're going with progressively more systems-oriented game design is the right path. Systems-oriented games almost always result in the most memorable experiences. One of the reasons BOTW was great was because of its systems and TOTK takes it to a whole other level. The trick with that is your systems need simple rules, but when composed together allow for complexity. Thus far they've nailed that. If they can extend it further while maintaining that, all the better.

I apparently have asserted more self control than some of you, but I can't say I'm happier for it.

I guess I don't know what these are either I was waiting for news of the bigger PvE and haven't touched the game otherwise.

I read a lot of that article/interview and am still confused as to what "Story missions" are now.