The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

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Sithro

Molten Core Raider
1,497
197
So I just noticed that if you kill one wolf, the rest of the pack bails the fuck out.

That's a really cool detail.
 

krismunich

<Silver Donator>
567
361
- between 4 am and 9am you can traverse dessert without overheating. If you jump in a pool it cools you down and that lasts for a while
- if you leave Kakariko to the west and stroll a bit down the hill, there are two goblin riders. Run around in circles to dodge arrows and collect them. 10 mins equal 200 arrows. Normal foes shooting at you only have 3-5 collectable arrows
- you can shoot rocks thrown at you mid air to deflect them back to the thrower
- the last red portion of the stamina bar has a sweet spot where you can time a jump or a final glide/stop before running out completely
- you critically crit cooking food 100% during blood moon
- you can get rice with the sickles assassins drop using them on Hylian grass
- you can swap bought hearts vs stamina and vice versa at a special statue (costs rupees)
- shops and farmables respawn every blood moon (maybe not everything ingame but most stuff)
- you can continue doing stuff after beating Ganon/finish everything
- foes who drop their head like lizalfos can be killed by picking their head up and throwing it into them (even the larger ones)
- the aiming laser attacks from guardians can be parried but the timing is super difficult and your shield takes a lot of damage

And so much more...
 
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jayrebb

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
14,561
14,392
I wouldn't even consider myself a Zelda fan necessarily but this game is amazing. It is whimsical, gives a true sense of exploration, challenging, engaging ... it has a lot going for it. Bonus that my wife loves watching it too so I can play it on the big TV for hours on end and she loves to play backseat Link and help me solve the puzzles. It is really a great game. If you already own a WiiU this is a must pickup title.

More or less whimsical than Super Mario RPG?
 

Denaut

Trump's Staff
2,739
1,279
So, without writing a large thought out review I am just going to say that I am unbelievably impressed with this game. I am usually pretty harsh on games, mostly because even "good" games often express very poor game design from an abstract designery perspective (looking at you Uncharted). Breath of the Wild knocks it out of the park.

The attention to detail and level of polish in this game is absolutely astounding. Leave it to Nintendo to show everyone how to do an open world game correctly. There is simply no substitute for large amounts of well designed hand crafted content, especially puzzles. I feel like this game shows up even the super star games of the genre like GTA in this department.

I also believe that balance of difficulty and various game mechanics (especially weapon durability) are precisely where they need to be in order to make you stop and think about exploration and combat. I don't think the game is difficult, there is just an element of preparation and thought involved before you decide to engage in a significant undertaking.

One example is my first encounter with a Centaur (forgot how to spell its name). When I first saw the Centaur I ran up to him and was immediately face smashed by one shots. I tried again, didn't die as quickly, but still failed horribly. I realized that I could kill him, but that it would take some preparation. I went back to town to make up a few batches of +defense potions and buy the soldier's armor. These were critical as they stopped the one-shotting. After that, knowing I would get hit a bunch, I also made a ton of food that just filled up all of my hearts (so as not to waste any). Finally I stocked up on some disposable weapons at an enemy camp killing them with arrows.

Then I went back and although I got hit far too much at first, I was able to survive long enough to get his combat pattern and he isn't as difficult, the main concern is needing to make certain I have enough weapons to finish the task. This is a good example of the difficulty being critical to enabling the player to explore the various systems and mechanics of the game.

I'd say the three biggest flaws (aside from various UI stuff) are that your house doesn't have enough equipment storage (especially for weapons), that it takes too long to cook larger amounts of food, and there isn't a built in recipe menu.
 
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chaos

Buzzfeed Editor
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Yes, lack of a recipe menu is an oversight imo. IIt seems like a pretty obvious thing too, to the point that I spent like 10 minutes digging through menus because I was certain the game would have one.
 

Siliconemelons

Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
11,871
17,836
Just imo...

but don't look too much up, takes some of the fun away..

I looked up just general info on the master sword and it was just a wee bit much- like now I know its in the lost woods...but any zelda fan should know that, if its not in the temple of time ;-) and the lost woods is over to the left bottom quad of the map- and also you have to be 'strong enough' for it? or something... its not toally spoiled but still... I "me" knew to find the lost woods and look there- but i was halfway waiting to get hints in game, thus far I have gotten 2, or 3 - one the master torch guy...kinda a hint (not at loc) 2nd the guy who said you are not the hero because you dont have the sword- and 3rd kinda you have it in a memory of the zora girl (and I assume more) - and of course its mentioned from the start in the legend.

time to plug my wiiu up to my big tv and get goin :-D
 

GeneralF

Golden Knight of the Realm
389
226
35 hours in and I haven't made it to a dungeon. I'm roaming the countryside looking for shrines and koroks, smashing fools and blowing stuff up. 10/10
 
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chaos

Buzzfeed Editor
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Yeah I did Ruta and I am working my way up Death Mountain now, but I think I am going to take some time and go get all the towers and shit before progressing the story any further.
 

Terial

Trakanon Raider
1,269
585
the fact that if you want to just skip to any area if you can figure out how to get there and survive is great. My 11 year old, snuck into Hyrule castle, and collected a bunch of high lever gear then escaped and has some good stuff. While i'm here scrounging around for the gear i've found. I have some nice stuff as well, but the fact that you have the ability to go there at any point is a pretty sweet feature.
 
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zignor 4

Molten Core Raider
592
754
The attention to detail and level of polish in this game is absolutely astounding. Leave it to Nintendo to show everyone how to do an open world game correctly. There is simply no substitute for large amounts of well designed hand crafted content, especially puzzles. I feel like this game shows up even the super star games of the genre like GTA in this department.

Have you played Witcher 3? I can't comprehend a game improving on it terms of open-world depth and detail any time soon.
 

Denaut

Trump's Staff
2,739
1,279
Have you played Witcher 3? I can't comprehend a game improving on it terms of open-world depth and detail any time soon.

Yes, and it is significantly better than W3. Although I played it for many hours W3 is far too reliant on the cut-scene and "Movie with some game between the scenes " crutch. The world interaction (outside of scripted events), gameplay, and combat of W3 were not very polished or detailed. The characters and explicitly told story are what carried my interest, but the interaction with the world itself was shallow and extremely mechanically linear.

Zelda is more akin to Dark Souls in the terms of how it is structured but with significantly more features and mechanics as well as a more open world. Dark Souls is an extremely well designed "Dungeon Crawler" whereas Zelda leans more on world exploration and so seamlessly embedding "puzzles" (using the term loosely) into every aspect of the game you don't even notice them unless you really think about it and break it down (such as my previously given example).
 
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Luthair

Lord Nagafen Raider
1,247
85
I have a contrarian opinion, the game is maybe a 7.

There are a large number of annoyance mechanics in the game - stamina, durability, camera, crafting, weather, horses. Maybe I'm overlooking something but I'm 20+ hours in and virtually everything past 5-hours or so has been able to kill or near to it in a single hit. The auto-save feature is unreliable and I've lost 30+ minutes because it turns out the game hasn't been saving.

On the WiiU the only performance problem I've noticed is when I knock over a moblin where it drops to zero. That said loading loading, including after death can be slow - particularly annoying when the game loads the blood moon cut scene then needs to reload the area you're in.
 

Soygen

The Dirty Dozen For the Price of One
<Nazi Janitors>
28,433
44,761
I don't disagree that some of those things aren't annoying, but I still give this game a solid 8.5(at least for the first 10 hours I've played). The durability is lame and the camera is shit. I think the stamina is an important part of making you plan things out correctly, so I don't think it's a negative for the game. I would complain about autosave, but you can manually save whenever you want, so it's not really a problem unless you forget to save(and that's on you).
 

chaos

Buzzfeed Editor
17,324
4,839
I have not played Witcher 3, if it compares to this game I guess I will have to move it up the list. I had planned on Horizon Dawn next but all the praise for Witcher 3 has me doubting that.

Personally, I don't mind the stamina mechanic at all. Durability sucks on one hand, but on the other it forces you to vary up the weapons you use. For me, in games like this, I typically stick to the same weapon or weapon class. I've been forced outside of that in this game and have used all weapons, all the time, even in situations where they aren't ideal. I don't know if it was the best choice, but I get it.

Not sure what the complaint about horses or mob strength are. Horses are awesome.
 

Noodleface

A Mod Real Quick
38,274
15,097
I have not played Witcher 3, if it compares to this game I guess I will have to move it up the list. I had planned on Horizon Dawn next but all the praise for Witcher 3 has me doubting that.
Witcher 3 is very, very good. I had problems with the controls feeling clunky but apparently I'm the only person that did.
 

Soygen

The Dirty Dozen For the Price of One
<Nazi Janitors>
28,433
44,761
chaos chaos The Witcher 3 on PC is probably my favorite game of all time. Noodleface Noodleface The controls are a bit janky, like when you try to loot shit and Geralt ends up punching the air because you just drifted a millimeter past the loot icon. That's probably my single complaint about the game, though. It was a masterpiece that only got better with DLC.
 

Itlan

Blackwing Lair Raider
4,994
744
I have Horizon and TW3 for PS4 (I broke my computer and too lazy to build another) and both are outstanding. I personally enjoy the combat in Horizon (so far) a lot more than TW3, but TW3 took like a solid 4-6 hours for me to actually enjoy the game. I don't know if that's just me but it was painfully dragging in the beginning.

Can someone buy me a Nintendo Switch? I'll post tits.
 

zignor 4

Molten Core Raider
592
754
Yes, and it is significantly better than W3. Although I played it for many hours W3 is far too reliant on the cut-scene and "Movie with some game between the scenes " crutch. The world interaction (outside of scripted events), gameplay, and combat of W3 were not very polished or detailed. The characters and explicitly told story are what carried my interest, but the interaction with the world itself was shallow and extremely mechanically linear.

I'm not sure exactly what "many hours" means, but if you've opened up and at least started to explore all of the major areas and still claim that a game in at least something resembling a similar genre is significantly better, I find that very difficult to believe. I will certainly give Zelda a shot and I'm looking forward to it, but that sounds like one hell of a stretch.

I'd put W3 as a contender as the best game I've ever played (I'm going back to 1983 and my Christmas gift of a TI-99). No, it's not very deep in terms of strict world-interaction, and the combat is decent-to-good at best, but besting it in detail, polish, number and depth of both main and side quests, character development, graphics etc etc is going to take an absolutely titanic effort.
 
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Lenas

Trump's Staff
7,559
2,299
I paid for the Witcher 3 and have spent significantly less time playing it than this, which I got for free.

TW3 kinda sucks.

- you can get rice with the sickles assassins drop using them on Hylian grass
Any blade will cut the grass and get rice.

-the aiming laser attacks from guardians can be parried but the timing is super difficult and your shield takes a lot of damage
Shields take barely any damage on parries, even a pot lid can deflect multiple laser shots no problem.
 
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