I never found the 'npc that hints about shrines' either.
Spoke to someone yesterday and it sounds like there was a fairy substantial 'side quest' that I missed - it's pretty easy to miss them / ignore them when you do what's necessary and frequently get a crap reward in return! Clearly didn't speak to the relevant person.
Building your own house and a 'new village' - wut!
Likewise I could never find that blooming swimming hat that my girlfriend said she was 'just given' - fail
I still don't feel the need to revisit the game though. I think the appeal goes once you've completed it. The journey of the game is much better and more satisfying than the climax IMO.
im coming up to 60hours played and decided to head for another DB, done 2 so far so am now working my was up from south west region and end towards the top and my 4th DB
im not suprised folks are saying they dont feel like playing again after finishing, i never do either in bigger open world games.
I completed it after 60-70 hours I think and then I have sunk another 20-30 since then. You're right, in most open world games you don't feel like continuing after you have completed it but because so little of what makes this game good is the main quest I am perfectly happy exploring and doing more shrines after the end of the game. Its odd because the shrines themselves are pretty much a 5 minute event but finding them is the exciting bit.
I even realised after I had completed the game that I managed to forget a complete section of the map. I don't know how I missed it but suddenly I spotted a tower that wasn't blue and I had another huge area to explore.
Is it wrong that I spent the best part of 20 mins last night trying to use stasis on one of the Shrine challenges (trying to nail the timing so a ball would "bounce") only to find that moving off the pad at the right time did the same thing.. I was so engrossed trying to nail the timing I wasn't even mad.
I am still finding the controls frustrating (mainly sprint and jump mapping) but that is more a learning curve than a outright problem.
I completed it after 60-70 hours I think and then I have sunk another 20-30 since then. You're right, in most open world games you don't feel like continuing after you have completed it but because so little of what makes this game good is the main quest I am perfectly happy exploring and doing more shrines after the end of the game. Its odd because the shrines themselves are pretty much a 5 minute event but finding them is the exciting bit.
I even realised after I had completed the game that I managed to forget a complete section of the map. I don't know how I missed it but suddenly I spotted a tower that wasn't blue and I had another huge area to explore.
I'll reserve judgement til I beat Ganon then as maybe I'll be compelled to continue! I was thinking of doing all shrines before fighting him just incase I don't come back afterwards!
Jump is definitely in a stupid place. I can't remember the last game where the bottom button wasn't jump, and it made swapping between Zelda and Splatoon a pain.
I still don't feel the need to revisit the game though. I think the appeal goes once you've completed it. The journey of the game is much better and more satisfying than the climax IMO.
Or rather one can't easily relive the journey afresh again. It just ain't the same if you know exactly what you're doing and all the surprises are gone. As for open-world games, I wouldn't necessarily cal them off after completion. Look at games like GTA5. I even played Far Cry 3 a 2nd time through and Xenoblade Chronicles X I played a fair bit after completion, but then the RPG grindyness burnt me out.
I guess overall I'm just burnt out on playing nothing but Zelda for the past month. Playing the same game does that to folks sometimes.
Buttons also can't be mapped, this is a console game. But I do believe you can switch X and B, which is suprisingly the only thing they let us do.
Anyhow, my thoughts on the final segment. It's fairly lengthy, so be warned.
I'd already actually explored the castle a week earlier, to find some Royal Guard weapons for a quest and also because an NPC mentioned that there's a shrine in there through the docks. I never did find the cookbook for a quest, only one with the recipe for the Monster Cake which was labled volume 2 and some books by Zelda/her dad. By far the worst thing covering this entire last segment of the game is the performance. Bloody hell, I swear it just made simple things like combat a lot more difficult due to running at what looked like 10fps (and sudden freezes).
The guardians who roam the castle are mostly the fixed turrets, decayed guardians and a few flying ones. Only issue there is that they are both too annoying to ignore and damage sponges. I'm glad I went in fully stocked with gear. My 5 shot Lynel bows could 2 hit a decayed guardian. Trouble with the flying guardians is that they're so high, half the time you can't even aim at them. This made the gauntlet to the top a lot more annoying and tedious, rather than simply difficult. Cos otherwise it was fairly easy. Though some might struggle with the Lynel in the 2 keeps. And a bloodmoon occured within the first night, meaning all those annoying guardians respawned.
The other enemies weren't too difficult either, I found myself even dodging/flurrying the Lizalfos and felt good about it. A Silver Moblin in the Guard's Quarters dropped the most powerful weapon in the game that I've seen. It was a +40ish royal Guard's Claymore totalling base power of over 100.
In all fairness, even with the treasure chests and hidden areas, the castle did feel a bit empty. It looks a lot bigger and seemed as if there should have been more areas in it. I never found any sort of kitchen, which is where I expected the book for the quest to be. Partly due to the poisonous guff blocking off many directions without a way through (no eye's to shoot).
As I came in to the throne room where Ganon was 'incubating' in a pod on the ceiling, Zelda was talking ot me from the pod and all I could think was how on earth does that make sense? Did Ganon eat her? Was she a ghost? I thought the plot said she was keeping Ganon at bay. Just as the boos fight is about to start, a cutscene occurs and the 4 divine beasts fire at Ganon reducing his HP down to half. I guess that's fair, but then one would expect lasers to be more powerful. I would have thought they'd do something like deplete his shield for stage 2.
Most of the early stage of the Ganon fight is just shooting him with arrows and dodging certain moves to get flurries to attack him. Only problem is, if you are close to him and he's not stunned (e.g. after a flurry), he'll always do the shockwave move, which has a wide AoE, so it doesn't appear that it's possible to dodge it other than being far away in the first place.
Stage 2, he becomes invulnerable and this stage I realise that he fires a ton of AOE lasers. Again, I have no idea how the lasers are countered, I tried shooting the point the laser comes from, since the game has taught me that shooting the eye/origin of the laser will stop it. Doesn't work for Ganon. Thanks to the laser, my 1 page of healing food (hearty meals: Radish + Meat/Fish) was wittled down fairly fast. In this stage the average player might get stuck, since there doesn't seem to be any way to hurt him. Only thing I found was dodging certain moves and then during the flurry, magically the shield disappears.
Then you appear to kill him, only to go outside for his true and 2nd/final form. This stage was just the worst. It's riding around avoiding very easy-to-avoid moves and occasionally shooting spots with a level 90 Bow of Light that somehow does a ton of damage. And Zelda tells you exactly what to do like it's a tutorial and she keeps repeating herself. Ugh. Oh and you can't get the Bow of Light outside of this section anyway... I'd be very suprised if anyone ever actually died at this section. It's just taking the mick with how simple it is. My brother was watching me and saying: Zelda should be easily able to do all this herself, why does she need Link/the player to do it?
Overall, Ganon himself was very disappointing. Which is such a shame considering some of the other Ganon bosses in the dungeons were better. Or even the fact that fighting a Lynel instead would have made for a more epic/amazing/fun fight.
The story itself also makes no sense. Zelda somehow talks from the sky and then magically appears unaged with no explanation. Link we can understand cos he was in a sort of coma/suspended animation. But Zelda? She's alive and normal and there's no real conclusion other than Ganon is banished. I didn't notice anything special for getting all memories/shrines in the cutscenes either. Maybe it was the post credit bit, where Zelda prepares to go around Hyrule with Link?
Gameplaywise, there's zero reward for defating Ganon. No keeping the Light Bow or exploring the castle without the framedrop inducing corruption/large numbers of enemies (i.e. post-Ganon gameplay). All you get is a star on the profile and you have an auto-save of the moment before you enter the boss fight.
All of the ending combined, it was a bit anti-climactic and lackluster IMO, especially compared to the rest of the game. The best bit was exploring Hyrule Castle and having the epic Lynel battles in the keeps.
I've read what Nitefly mentioned in his spoiler section and I agree with most of it. Combat I would have agreed with had I not learnt a lot of it from fighting Lynel. It sounds exactly like my experience of combat before I learnt how to fight Lynel. Though I never got down the shield parry, the flurry was handy when you 'learnt' an enemy wielding a certain weapon. Pretty much all of Lynel moves could be used against them somehow, only ones that I found were exceptions were the spin by the 2-handed Lynel and the leap attack by the spear Lynel. Charges could be either dodged or even flurried if timed correctly. I ended up getting the flurry from the leaping charge every single time.
It's time to close the book on this one. And literally I've not opened the book on it. The guide I ordered like a month back never arrived (Amazon still says late April). I might keep it and one day come back to polish off any small things I missed, but it's highly unlikely. After finishing the game if I were to give it a rating, I'd give it an 8 out of 10 (maybe less). Looking at the game now with different eyes, makes me realise that outside of some quests, shrines, Koroks and armour upgrades, there's not too much going on here. Not amazing, but pretty good.
Very interesting to read that - I pretty much shared your experience of the end of the game.
...very weak comparatively. I really did expect SOME plot development and explanation of Ganon. Like you, I raided the castle before I wanted to take on Ganon and got a good weapon stash. There were a few secrets to find here and there. Ultimately though, when I did want to get to Ganon, I just rivali'ed my way to him... stopped to fight the Lynels just because I thought I was 'missing out'
The final fight section was painfully easy - almost comical. Thinking back to how God of War did epic battles the beast was just a bit lol with its meh-ness.
Yup for collecting all the memories you get that 30 second clip roaming hyrule...
Interesting re: fighting. I really didn't pick up the Lynel tactics... I didn't feel like I needed to. Just spam them and take the occasional hit - win by brute force
In retrospect, as I alluded to, the best bit of the game is NOT knowing what's there, and the excitement of wondering what's around the corner. Most of the map is really rather good and there's some great moments of discovery, but it's actually topped by the prospect of discovery.
I still think it's very good. So many experiences to talk about and good memories / thinking about them puts a smile back on my face
Just the text conversations between me and a friend....
Friend: .... I just got struck by lightning?! What the hell.
Me: Dude I just got attached by a fricking BEAR.
Friend: whaaaaat
Oh the HARDEST bit of the game:
That fricking horseback archery challenge - hurrrrrrrghn!
It's got to be be 9/10 if I'm fair. But it's hard not to be jaded by the end game.
Finally finished it, gave up for a couple weeks at some point because the crashing was becoming too frustrating, never stopped happening either I just felt like I wanted it finished and done with.
Story, bad, stuff to find.... mostly boring. The more you explore the more you 'break' the world. There are too many shrines, too much food, too much health, too many upgrades. Games struggle badly with this, scaling, they want to fill a world up with things to find, but it lets you become so powerful it's worthless. Because it's not really the story making you explore, they had to add something else, which is basically upgrades. But those upgrades basically break the game. Then as always the game has a balance issue, people who don't want to explore have to be able to finish it just as well as those who do explore. For me that is why open world games need to encourage exploration via interesting characters and enticing storylines which drag you around, not just basically singular things which are essentially unconnected, like shrines, which have to offer an upgrade to be worth looking for them.
So you can get 30 hearts or whatever.... but since you can get a easily available food that has + 20 hearts.... what on earth is the point. Because when you max out stars you can't get + hearts. So 5 dorian fruit gives you + 20 hearts if you start with 10, and + 0 if you're already maxed out.
The end boss was disgustingly easy and a boring fight, have a shield, reflect lasers and the fire is painfully easy to avoid. The lynel fights, with maxed out ancient armour a full hit was taking a 1-2 hearts, you could have a say 79 I think ancient axe or a 50 sword with the added effectiveness from the armour.
Characters are dire, there is no one to care about in the game, the memories trying to make you care for Zelda were extremely boring and uninvolving. The whole go 4 places, do a pretty easy 'dungeon', then go kill Gannon is a terrible story.
The reward for exploring the world shouldn't be scaling yourself out of any danger or fun in the game. There was no challenge from not that far into the game. Once you had a near infinite supply of raddishes/dorians and say 10 hearts, there is nothing that can really touch you. AFter the first 5-6 hours I don't think I died or even came close to dying at any time. It was getting the point that I'd wait till my health was way down before using food because it just meant having to go refill food to avoid the tedium and irritation of cooking. Have a device you interact with and gives you a basic menu, click several things you want to use and how many of them you want to make. Most fights you didn't get close to death and some shrine or a new heart container would fill you up anyway.
Won't buy another Zelda game, Nintendo set with open world games, great, but Nintendo being stuck in the past in terms of no voice acting, awful characters, poor story, etc, not for me. It's a big world, it's nice, I like some of the mechanics, but the world felt devoid of actual character. Fighting the same 2-3 types of guys over and over, respawn them constantly and then the pop up versions constantly. It threw so much junk at you but forgot to add the compelling narrative.
For me a great narrative is what makes me want to explore a world for it's secrets, to find interesting characters who send you on an interesting storyline. This game was all about just finding singular things, most pretty boring, with absolutely no interesting characters in it.
I can't myself comprehend the big scores, for a game to fail so spectacularly on the story/characters side of a game to get 9-10/10 is a joke to me. For me, a 6 out of 10, maybe. Putting more difficulty options in DLC, honestly, disgusting, particularly when they've made the game so insanely easy and have ruined the scaling of the game so incredibly badly.
I will literally never play this again, there is nothing left to find and no story options to maybe change decisions, also no challenge to feel like playing through again. Where I could still play the Mass Effect Trilogy through again(maybe for the 4th time or so?) because the story is fun to play out and you can do things a little differently, a game with no story has almost zero replay value to me.
The world they built was pretty great, but the manor in which the story was told and the story itself belongs in the 90s, confined to cartridges with a few MB of data.
Finally finished it, gave up for a couple weeks at some point because the crashing was becoming too frustrating, never stopped happening either I just felt like I wanted it finished and done with.
Story, bad, stuff to find.... mostly boring. The more you explore the more you 'break' the world. There are too many shrines, too much food, too much health, too many upgrades. Games struggle badly with this, scaling, they want to fill a world up with things to find, but it lets you become so powerful it's worthless. Because it's not really the story making you explore, they had to add something else, which is basically upgrades. But those upgrades basically break the game. Then as always the game has a balance issue, people who don't want to explore have to be able to finish it just as well as those who do explore. For me that is why open world games need to encourage exploration via interesting characters and enticing storylines which drag you around, not just basically singular things which are essentially unconnected, like shrines, which have to offer an upgrade to be worth looking for them.
So you can get 30 hearts or whatever.... but since you can get a easily available food that has + 20 hearts.... what on earth is the point. Because when you max out stars you can't get + hearts. So 5 dorian fruit gives you + 20 hearts if you start with 10, and + 0 if you're already maxed out.
The end boss was disgustingly easy and a boring fight, have a shield, reflect lasers and the fire is painfully easy to avoid. The lynel fights, with maxed out ancient armour a full hit was taking a 1-2 hearts, you could have a say 79 I think ancient axe or a 50 sword with the added effectiveness from the armour.
Characters are dire, there is no one to care about in the game, the memories trying to make you care for Zelda were extremely boring and uninvolving. The whole go 4 places, do a pretty easy 'dungeon', then go kill Gannon is a terrible story.
The reward for exploring the world shouldn't be scaling yourself out of any danger or fun in the game. There was no challenge from not that far into the game. Once you had a near infinite supply of raddishes/dorians and say 10 hearts, there is nothing that can really touch you. AFter the first 5-6 hours I don't think I died or even came close to dying at any time. It was getting the point that I'd wait till my health was way down before using food because it just meant having to go refill food to avoid the tedium and irritation of cooking. Have a device you interact with and gives you a basic menu, click several things you want to use and how many of them you want to make. Most fights you didn't get close to death and some shrine or a new heart container would fill you up anyway.
Won't buy another Zelda game, Nintendo set with open world games, great, but Nintendo being stuck in the past in terms of no voice acting, awful characters, poor story, etc, not for me. It's a big world, it's nice, I like some of the mechanics, but the world felt devoid of actual character. Fighting the same 2-3 types of guys over and over, respawn them constantly and then the pop up versions constantly. It threw so much junk at you but forgot to add the compelling narrative.
For me a great narrative is what makes me want to explore a world for it's secrets, to find interesting characters who send you on an interesting storyline. This game was all about just finding singular things, most pretty boring, with absolutely no interesting characters in it.
I can't myself comprehend the big scores, for a game to fail so spectacularly on the story/characters side of a game to get 9-10/10 is a joke to me. For me, a 6 out of 10, maybe. Putting more difficulty options in DLC, honestly, disgusting, particularly when they've made the game so insanely easy and have ruined the scaling of the game so incredibly badly.
I will literally never play this again, there is nothing left to find and no story options to maybe change decisions, also no challenge to feel like playing through again. Where I could still play the Mass Effect Trilogy through again(maybe for the 4th time or so?) because the story is fun to play out and you can do things a little differently, a game with no story has almost zero replay value to me.
The world they built was pretty great, but the manor in which the story was told and the story itself belongs in the 90s, confined to cartridges with a few MB of data.
I broadly agree with you but I think you are underselling the world itself - you presumably wouldn't have completed it if it was that boring at the time. I had a lot of fun!
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, some variety with even the aesthetics of the shrines may have helped keep things fresh, because they were definitely not fresh at shrine 90.
I broadly agree with you but I think you are underselling the world itself - you presumably wouldn't have completed it if it was that boring at the time. I had a lot of fun!
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, some variety with even the aesthetics of the shrines may have helped keep things fresh, because they were definitely not fresh at shrine 90.
Not really, I'm partially disabled, not working and had little else to do. One of the massive problems in these situations is playing the game then finding out how broken the scaling is right at the end. When you're running around looking for shrines, you don't know that what you are doing is in effect breaking the end game until after you play it.
Likewise I had it in my head specifically that it was so irritating I never want to come back to it, I wanted to put the extra time in so I didn't feel like maybe later on I'd come back to try and do the unfinished stuff.
I think that 120 shrines to fill out the world rather than having say 50 or so which is plenty and filling the world with more stories was just a cheap way to fill the world with less effort. But it just turned the game into a grindfest. Though again the problem with so many games with scaling is they give you a way to get uber powerful which usually requires a little grinding, but you don't know it's unnecessary until you finish.
Because there are great games which have armour/weapon upgrades throughout a game but with good scaling so you need most of them to be effective towards the end of a game and that is better game design you don't generally rush to the end of the game to see if you can do it yet. You play a game thinking it makes sense, so if you know the ancient armour can be upgraded 4 times, you feel like you better do that before going to the end game stuff.
Probably 60-70% of the game felt like a chore rather than fun. Even things like the god damned beeping of the shrine finding sonar... dear god it was badly done. Beep quieter, beep when it's detected then stop beeping and have the signal strength only.
I'd agree that once you finish it you lose the impetus to do much more but that's common with many open world games. That's why I did all of the shrines before taking down Gannon as it finished the game on a great note.
I'll also concur that the open world nature meant that the shrines didn't ramp up in interest or excitement, there are some great ones but the difficulty never hits truly challenging levels because the game can't be sure what order you'll hit them in. The combat challenges were probably the low point, you'd find a shrine and wonder what cool thing was inside only to have to fight another mini-guardian.
For all that, the sense of exploration was incredible and the game was full of little touches and charming bits that made it a joy to play. I'm playing Horizon Zero Dawn at the moment and it's a cracking game, better story, better fighting but the world feels less "alive" and as gorgeous at is looks it doesn't give me that same sense of being an adventurer in a huge world.
Motion controls my friend. Once I decided to finally use the gamepad for it... it was a piece of cake. Really does help with accuracy. When it comes to things requiring aim like FPS or even games like Pikmin 3, motion controls are the best and most accurate way. Of course, I only used them for those motion puzzle shrines and this one bit. Traditional controls all the way for the rest of the game.
Edit (at 6 in the evening, don't want to double post since I was the last to post):
Guess what arrived today...
It's that deluxe edition guide I ordered almost a month ago. Just as well it arrives 3 days after I finish the game, having done pretty much everything in it.
To be fair, I'm not being negative about the game, more like giving honest criticisms of it. It's an average game as opposed to the '10/10, game-of-the-year, best zelda ever' that many claim it is. And it's not like it's a bad game, after all, I'd have long given up before putting 180 hours into it if it was a terrible game.
Still loving the game. I can't resist upgrading bits and finding gear. The castle is full of bits and I definitely left with more than I started. It felt risky and a bit exhilarating.
An. NPC said something about a shield, so I thought stuff it. Explored the first tower, and fell onto the Lynel! Luckily, the combo of the charged Master Sword and the rage attack made quite short work of it. Found my way to Zelda's tower and the memory up there. Went one way and died before I could get to the waterfall, so went the other way along the bottom of the castle grounds. Went to the Docks, did the shrine. Beat a Talus and went to the library, so know two ways into the library. Found one more entrance to the Lockup and beat the Stalnox for the Hylian Shield! Easy fight, one swing of the black claymore (70 base?) and had taken some attack up too. Might explore the library now. My son loved watching it all, so excited. He was grafting bowling for me earlier, he has a better strike rate than me.
Blame the game's mechanics or I would have discovered it too. Cos sod's law, I actually passed by the very area you mention. When I was exploring a week before finishing the game, I saw that area (and the obvious mini-boss in it) and thought, that I'd best leave it, since I was loaded with loot/weapons already. I usually stop fighting mini-bosses when I'm full up on weapons, since they'll drop more weapons and I wouldn't have any inventory space left for any cool new drops. So I saw it and thought that I'd rather come back later. But obviously I forgot by the time I finished the game...
And that's the story of how I missed out on that quintessential item. Thanks a lot game...
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