Support NeoGAF

[Vital Tundra]

I appreciate that you can go without upgrading Link for the added challenge. I plan on making a new save when both DLCs come out on the harder difficulty and no upgrading.

 

[Cpt Lmao]

Yeah, the Yiga are odd. So easy. Never once did they pose any challenge whatsoever. Thought they would evolve into something actually dangerous eventually, but that never happened.

I thought the Yiga would have a much bigger part in the game. They should have been made much more menacing. The surprise assassination attempts, while funny, offered such little threat to the player. They should have instilled the same fear that a Guardian would have.

 

[UnemployedVillain]

Even in the beginning the game isn't challenging. Combat is rather trivial except some bigger enemies which are cheap with one-hits. But yes, it really becomes extremly easy later on. Even the boss-fights.

The combat was still fun for me because it was snappy and you have a good arsenal of weapons and possibilities.

I don't think a much larger and stronger enemy one hit killing you when you have shit for armor and health and can't fight well is "cheap". That shouldbe the case.

I thought the Yiga would have a much bigger part in the game. They should have been made much more menacing. The surprise assassination attempts, while funny, offered such little threat to the player. They should have instilled the same fear that a Guardian would have.

I don't know about that. Thematically that would make little sense. If you have this clan of random humans as strong as guardians, but yeah, there should be more than just 2 types of them. They should have as many as normal enemies (ie red, blue, black, silver) and should get stronger weapons.

I think the main "issue" isn't with Link getting stronger, it's with enemies not necessarily getting stronger in meaningful ways. It could easily be remedied by
1. Giving enemies stronger weapons
2. Introducing the higher "colored" variants sooner
3. Making them faster, and not simply HP sponges

That alone keeps players on their toes, while still providing a sense of progression

 

[GoldStarz]

I thought the Yiga would have a much bigger part in the game. They should have been made much more menacing. The surprise assassination attempts, while funny, offered such little threat to the player. They should have instilled the same fear that a Guardian would have.

Considering that they can pop up out of nowhere I wouldn't go that far, but they definitely should have been hard enough that I don't roll my eyes every time they show up

 

[Gators300]

I mean, I get where you are coming from, but you can just unequip your armor and the game gets immensely harder. Maybe don't cook food either and limit yourself to healing when you go to an inn for the night. Only use spears. My point is that you can make it the experience you want.

 

[Reptars Revenge]

Good thing I beat all the beasts, completed the map, found the cutscenes, and finished the game in 30 hours. Went back and solved all the shrines though and went exploring and was still having so much fun. Only got 16 Korok seeds though so maybe resource management was still engaging.

 

[Rodin]

Weapon variety doesn't mean shit when the core mechanics are so sloppy. Souls games have roughly the same archetypes but do so much more with the mechanics. That's plenty but the weapons are all that archetype with just higher attack and a different look. The dodge mechanic isn't very tight and the counter being a spam of attacks regardless of what weapon you use is really repetitive. Now as for tackling enemies using runes and other methods, they really only work in certain areas where the options are available and even then I found the implementation sloppy. Like bludgeoning enemies with metal objects was annoying to do with the controls and later on the enemies have so much health that its a waste of time. Encouraging you to use different weapons is fine but the goddamn problem is that they break all the time so you're stuck using a club sometimes or just the general high attack weapons they start dropping. I would have liked to bring an elemental sword to one shot elemental lizalfos but then the weapon breaks so then what? Back to wacking them over and over with the same tired weapons. I would have liked the combat much more if the enemy variety was better. Even the minibosses minus Molduga were lame.

This is simply false. Weapons variety matters because enemies have very different patterns, reach and movement, so using the most effective weapon against a certain enemy is pretty important, both early on and when high rank enemies start to appear. About the environment, i think i'm just making my point over and over again, because i already said this, but using the environment against high rank enemies also helps in preserving the most powerful weapons across more encounters. Not sure what you mean about the magnesis controls, which become intuitive pretty quickly.

Souls combat works because the enemies are placed in tiny corridors/rooms and have aggressive patterns, but they're stupid as fuck. If you place those enemies in a game as large and with so many possibility as BotW, they quickly become a joke as well. It only works in its structure, so it's really a moot point to make. I also explained the difference between the Souls main audience and Zelda's in other posts.

Aside from that, the level design gives you plenty of environmental tools to interact with in every part of the world thanks to the physics engine. If there are camps or single enemies without interactive stuff around, well, they're pretty rare.

And no, you aren't stuck with a club, that literally NEVER happens later in the game because enemies get better weapons over time, and a club is just enough early on (especially since you can also set it on fire to deal more damage, at the expense of durability... but hey, sloppy mechanics right?).

Also breaking a normal weapon is literally a matter of picking another one after you kill an enemy, in fact they drop many more than you can possibly get even if you expand your weapons inventory to the max, the message i've seen more often in the game isn't "your weapon is about to break", but "you can't carry any more". Elemental weapons are obviously less common, but they aren't THAT hard to find that you can't possibly stack them, i almost always have a couple of them with me to kill elemental enemies because i manage them (i don't use a fire spear against a random bokoblin, i use it to kill an ice lizalfos or to deal more damage to a strong enemy after freezing him). You also have elemental arrows, which you can literally buy.

As for Shrines give me a break. Not only do they break up exploration because you have to go in and investigate, they are made up of mundane little bite sized puzzles that don't really connect to each other except for that one twin shrines. The beasts were so short and simple too the only one I liked was the Gerudo desert one.

They don't break shit. Puzzle solving is a big element of the Zelda games, and the only way to give you puzzles to solve in every region was to make a large number of mini dungeons with puzzles in them across the entire world. So yeah, they could've ammassed some of them and give you less but bigger dungeons with more rooms, but that wasn't the point. Then there's the fact that a huge chunk of them has brilliant physics based puzzles in it that you can solve in different ways, which is far superior design compared to the "key-lock" mechanic of previous Zelda games, where weapons and tools are basically only used to interact with specifics puzzles designed to work with them.

Beasts being short is one of the biggest problems i have with the game, but some of the puzzles were still brilliant, especially in Naboris and Ruta. The first time i realized i could

Spoiler

use the map to move the proboscis

and progress i couldn't fucking believe it.

I don't really have a problem with the different armors but they really overlooked a lot of things with the food system like instant health refill from easy to find mushrooms rather than having to concoct cool interesting stuff to get that. The problem for me isn't the progression of armors and upgrades, its that the enemies didn't really change much with that progression. They just have more health and deal more damage. For a game as huge as Botw the enemy variety was really lacking.

Debatable. There are what, 25 different enemies plus their variants? That's good enough considering that fighting them actually requires different approaches. A fast weapon with tons of reach like a spear is more effective against a lizalfos compared to a slow two handed sword, which is better to fight huge and slower enemies with tons of hp.

About the higher rank enemies, as i said they also have more AI patterns, like getting weapons from their subordinate if you disarm them. Would have been better if they also had more aggressive patterns? Of course. But things are hardly either perfect or shit, so yeah, they could've handled this better, but how they do doesn't magically turn the game to utter shit and it is still better than what most other open world games do.

I also have many more problems with the game like the way they handled the story and pacing with the main quests. The sidequests were also very disappointing. I expect much more from the next game.

The actual sidequests are the shrine quests, and there aren't many games with that kind of quest design. Most of them are absolutely brilliant and perfectly in line with what you would expect from a Zelda game.

The mini challenges (or whatever they're called in english) are just a mean to gather rupees, materials and give you an extra purpose to explore. If you expected the narrative of TW3 in the subquests, well, wrong game. Different titles have different focus and different strenghts.

About the story, as i said in the OT and in the thread about the dlc the problem isn't what is told, but how. The devs made the choice to tell you what happened 100 years ago from fragments of Link's memory that you only get to see in cutscenes, which makes sense from a gameplay perspective considering they went for a non intrusive narrative that didn't take you away from exploration too much (aka what people were asking vocally until last year), but this choice obviously has some drawbacks.

A large party of the story is in the past, some of the best characters are in the past, and you don't get to be invested in those things as much as if you had played them directly. Hopefully i'm right and the dlc2 will address this, in that case (and if it's done well) there wouldn't really be a problem anymore. The game could end up having one of the best stories in the series as a whole, because what it wants to tell is already good. It just needs to get you more invested in that.

For what its worth I really did enjoy the game but only really for the massive world exploration with a Zelda skin over it.

And that's just underselling it, but to each their own.

Yeah, the Yiga are odd. So easy. Never once did they pose any challenge whatsoever. Thought they would evolve into something actually dangerous eventually, but that never happened.

The big ninjas are pretty challenging, and they regularly appear in the map after a certain point.

 

[watershed]

I like the progression system a lot. The first time I even dared venture to Hyrule Castle I felt scared. I did some quick exploring but also got my butt whipped. The second time, some 20 hours later, I was stronger and beat the game but it was still a challenging fight. The third time, another 30 hours later I was totally OP. I explored every corner of the castle, found every secret, and beat Ganon like a pro. It felt good. Now I am the master of Hyrule and can take on groups of white enemies and win. It feels great. I take a ton of risks and get creative with combat encounters and the result is it stays fun.

 

[Cpt Lmao]

I don't know about that. Thematically that would make little sense. If you have this clan of random humans as strong as guardians, but yeah, there should be more than just 2 types of them. They should have as many as normal enemies (ie red, blue, black, silver) and should get stronger weapons

I didn't say 'as strong', I said that they should instil the same sense of fear. And considering that they're a rogue faction of the Sheikah tribe, of all people, in my opinion it makes little sense thematically that they don't do that. I'm not asking for much, just that it is technically feasible that tribe of assassins are at least somewhat able to defeat the player in combat.

 

[Addi]

This man does an excellent review and analysis of BotW. A bit long but worth it.

https://youtu.be/T15-xfUr8z4

No he doesn't. Mark Brown does.

I skipped through the first video and even though I can understand some of the criticism, the second video is much closer to how I feel. It comes down to if you see the glass as half full or half empty.

Also, I haven't played the game since April and I already feel a bit nostalgic when I hear the game's musics Really looking forward to the DLCs.

 

[M-PG71C]

Casual gamer here: Fuck that shit. It is a miracle I finished BOTW and it is the first 3D Zelda game I ever have. It was a lot of fun but I really like that sense of progression later on. It also help me finish the damn game after 70 hours too.

I'm glad stuff like Eventide Island and DLC 1 exist for others, but for me, count me the fuck out.

 

[spannicus]

This game is like a drug to me. Once i pick it up i cant put it down.

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

My biggest problem was that while you get over-powered, it didn't feel like you earned it or it was as rewarding as other games where you can cleverly break them in the end. Final Fantasy Tactics was a good example of this, where you do your time with the normal gameplay, but then you become an all-powerful time mage/arithmetician by the end of the game that levels everything in your path. BoTW on the other hand, you just end up avoiding enemies, because it's like, what's the point.

Many of BotW's problems are the downsides of creating a rules-based world. You eventually realize there's not a point to climbing to the top of a mountain because all you're going to get is a Korok seed. You eventually realize there's no points in fighting enemies because you'll just break your powerful shrine weapon. Etc.

 

[andthebeatgoeson]

Casual gamer here: Fuck that shit. It is a miracle I finished BOTW and it is the first 3D Zelda game I ever have. It was a lot of fun but I really like that sense of progression later on. It also help me finish the damn game after 70 hours too.

I'm glad stuff like Eventide Island and DLC 1 exist for others, but for me, count me the fuck out.

The cool thing is you don't have to finish much. You can do as little as you want. You can upgrade as little as you want. Nail the parry down, figure out the recipes and a few Divine beasts and some hearts and you could easily finish the game.

 

[Shamrock7r]

Totally agree with you OP. After 80 hours (3 beasts, Ganon already beaten, 54 shrines and 160 koroks) I start to be a little bored because fights are quite easy like you just said, there is not much exploration surprises left.

I would have wanted more unique ennemies, like lynel, hinox and such. This is so cool when you encounter one for the first time.

I hoped for something more than just monsters with more HP for the master mode, like :
When you open the menu to get food the action is not paused / or the use of food is ruled by cooldowns for example.

I mean, 80 hours is a damn good amount of time before you got bored though, lol

I see that a lot though, "Man after 60, 80, 100 etc. hours the game started to bore me"
Like, how long do you expect the game to go?

 

[InsaneTiger]

I skipped through the first video and even though I can understand some of the criticism, the second video is much closer to how I feel. It comes down to if you see the glass as half full or half empty.

Skipping through the first video has you miss a lot of context or points he make, so you can't really comment. To each their own.

 

[M-PG71C]

The cool thing is you don't have to finish much. You can do as little as you want. You can upgrade as little as you want. Nail the parry down, figure out the recipes and a few Divine beasts and some hearts and you could easily finish the game.

Yep! I really like the sense of freedom the game has. There were days I literally, "fucked off" and did whatever to my heart's desire. Other days, I felt like moving on. There was no hand-holding, but the difficulty there felt organic and as I progressed, it became "easier" for me. Which was great because if it became the "Dark Souls of Zelda" I would've quit.

But on the other hand, if you wanted that challenge, it was all there for you. I knew some friends that are still playing with it and are looking forward to the Sword Trials or whatever. I may come back for the second part of the DLC but only because I like the world a lot.

 

[Shamrock7r]

Skipping through the first video has you miss a lot of context or points he make, so you can't really comment. To each their own.

I watched the entirety of the first video a few months back, and feel that Mark Hunt's video was superior.

In general, I remember feeling like the first video overstated some of the criticisms of the game while understating what the game does well.

 

[kunonabi]

My biggest problem was that while you get over-powered, it didn't feel like you earned it or it was as rewarding as other games where you can cleverly break them in the end. Final Fantasy Tactics was a good example of this, where you do your time with the normal gameplay, but then you become an all-powerful time mage/arithmetician by the end of the game that levels everything in your path. BoTW on the other hand, you just end up avoiding enemies, because it's like, what's the point.

Many of BotW's problems are the downsides of creating a rules-based world. You eventually realize there's not a point to climbing to the top of a mountain because all you're going to get is a Korok seed. You eventually realize there's no points in fighting enemies because you'll just break your powerful shrine weapon. Etc.

Yeah, that's pretty much the problem with the whole game. Every system or design decision is only worthwhile or satisfying for the opening hours. Once you get far enough along everything either ends up being a dull slog, an annoyance, or a pointless "reward"

Hell, even collecting all the memories for the true ending is handled as badly as it possibly could have been.

It there was ever game that would show up next to the phrase "diminishing returns" it's BotW. Games are supposed to get better the more time you put into them not the other way around.

 

[Barry Burton]

My biggest problem was that while you get over-powered, it didn't feel like you earned it or it was as rewarding as other games where you can cleverly break them in the end. Final Fantasy Tactics was a good example of this, where you do your time with the normal gameplay, but then you become an all-powerful time mage/arithmetician by the end of the game that levels everything in your path. BoTW on the other hand, you just end up avoiding enemies, because it's like, what's the point.

Many of BotW's problems are the downsides of creating a rules-based world. You eventually realize there's not a point to climbing to the top of a mountain because all you're going to get is a Korok seed. You eventually realize there's no points in fighting enemies because you'll just break your powerful shrine weapon. Etc.

Yeah, that's pretty much the problem with the whole game. Every system or design decision is only worthwhile or satisfying for the opening hours. Once you get far enough along everything either ends up being a dull slog, an annoyance, or a pointless "reward"

Hell, even collecting all the memories for the true ending is handled as badly as it possibly could have been.

It there was ever game that would show up next to the phrase "diminishing returns" it's BotW. Games are supposed to get better the more time you put into them not the other way around.

I probably didn't get to this point until crossing the 100 hour mark (I played about 175-200 hours in total), so it feels weird to complain about a game that was so great for such a long stretch. But you two are right. It's a game that was an absolute dream to play but at a certain point it just stops being enjoyable. Sure, in any video game, at a certain point you are going to run out of new things to discover and it's hard to fault BotW for that. But that also shouldn't automatically preclude the game from still being fun, and in Zelda's case, this is what happened.

If I had to pinpoint it to one moment in particular, it's towards the conclusion of the main story missions and then the endgame itself. I didn't feel particularly rewarded or fulfilled at all by finishing the main quests, but after that point there's still this huge world out there that hasn't been fully explored and...I just felt empty. There's no point in engaging much of anything after that point. I would just fast-travel to wherever there still might be a shrine or Korok seed nearby, do that, and mostly ignore combat and traversal going forward.

I get that they didn't want to give you abilities that would break the game's systems and progression, but it comes at the expense of not feeling a great sense of accomplishment at the end game. For example, the reward I got for doing all of the shrines was worse than something I already had, so I never used it. There's nothing that eventually makes the stuff about the game that isn't fun, fun. Combat, especially, is never less fun or worthwhile than it is in the latter stages of the game. Enemies become sponges that wear your best items down, and then drop worse loot.

BotW is still, to me, an amazing game due to its incredible highs during the first half of my playthrough, and it's still probably my favorite Zelda since the N64. But I can't deny that I went from "I really want to see everything that this game has to offer" midway through, to "I wish I didn't try to seek out everything that this game had to offer" once it was over.

 

[True Fire]

The game is supposed to get easier over time. Being lost and angry for 100 hours is horrible game design.

Even Soulsborne gets stupid easy after 30 hours.

 

[Shamrock7r]

I probably didn't get to this point until crossing the 100 hour mark (I played about 175-200 hours in total), so it feels weird to complain about a game that was so great for such a long stretch. But you two are right. It's a game that was an absolute dream to play but at a certain point it just stops being enjoyable. Sure, in any video game, at a certain point you are going to run out of new things to discover and it's hard to fault BotW for that. But that also shouldn't automatically preclude the game from still being fun, and in Zelda's case, this is what happened.

If I had to pinpoint it to one moment in particular, it's towards the conclusion of the main story missions and then the endgame itself. I didn't feel particularly rewarded or fulfilled at all by finishing the main quests, but after that point there's still this huge world out there that hasn't been fully explored and...I just felt empty. There's no point in engaging much of anything after that point. I would just fast-travel to wherever there still might be a shrine or Korok seed nearby, do that, and mostly ignore combat and traversal going forward.

I get that they didn't want to give you abilities that would break the game's systems and progression, but it comes at the expense of not feeling a great sense of accomplishment at the end game. For example, the reward I got for doing all of the shrines was worse than something I already had, so I never used it. There's nothing that eventually makes the stuff about the game that isn't fun, fun. Combat, especially, is never less fun or worthwhile than it is in the latter stages of the game. Enemies become sponges that wear your best items down, and then drop worse loot.

BotW is still, to me, an amazing game due to its incredible highs during the first half of my playthrough, and it's still probably my favorite Zelda since the N64. But I can't deny that I went from "I really want to see everything that this game has to offer" midway through, to "I wish I didn't try to seek out everything that this game had to offer" once it was over.

I think a lot of opinions of the late game would have changed if there was some crazy secret end boss that required you have the best equipment ala Culex from Super Mario RPG.

 

[En-ou]

If you're smart you'll realize the game gives you options to customize the gameplay you see fit? So what if there are 400 weapons and foods. It's up to you how much of a challenge you want.

 

[paragonpro]

I like getting stupid big and steam rolling the idiots that once gave me a hard time, its how i play dark souls! In before "your doing it wrong"

 

[kunonabi]

I probably didn't get to this point until crossing the 100 hour mark (I played about 175-200 hours in total), so it feels weird to complain about a game that was so great for such a long stretch. But you two are right. It's a game that was an absolute dream to play but at a certain point it just stops being enjoyable. Sure, in any video game, at a certain point you are going to run out of new things to discover and it's hard to fault BotW for that. But that also shouldn't automatically preclude the game from still being fun, and in Zelda's case, this is what happened.

If I had to pinpoint it to one moment in particular, it's towards the conclusion of the main story missions and then the endgame itself. I didn't feel particularly rewarded or fulfilled at all by finishing the main quests, but after that point there's still this huge world out there that hasn't been fully explored and...I just felt empty. There's no point in engaging much of anything after that point. I would just fast-travel to wherever there still might be a shrine or Korok seed nearby, do that, and mostly ignore combat and traversal going forward.

I get that they didn't want to give you abilities that would break the game's systems and progression, but it comes at the expense of not feeling a great sense of accomplishment at the end game. For example, the reward I got for doing all of the shrines was worse than something I already had, so I never used it. There's nothing that eventually makes the stuff about the game that isn't fun, fun. Combat, especially, is never less fun or worthwhile than it is in the latter stages of the game. Enemies become sponges that wear your best items down, and then drop worse loot.

BotW is still, to me, an amazing game due to its incredible highs during the first half of my playthrough, and it's still probably my favorite Zelda since the N64. But I can't deny that I went from "I really want to see everything that this game has to offer" midway through, to "I wish I didn't try to seek out everything that this game had to offer" once it was over.

Yeah, it was roughly aound the 100 hour mark that the apathy started setting in. It was around there where I realized the divine beasts were ass and then completing the dragon quest made it obvious that the side content was never going to be worthwhile.

The first 100 hours had me prepared to put it in the GOAT discussion and the following 260 dropped it into a bottom 5 Zelda game for me.

 

[andthebeatgoeson]

Yep! I really like the sense of freedom the game has. There were days I literally, "fucked off" and did whatever to my heart's desire. Other days, I felt like moving on. There was no hand-holding, but the difficulty there felt organic and as I progressed, it became "easier" for me. Which was great because if it became the "Dark Souls of Zelda" I would've quit.

But on the other hand, if you wanted that challenge, it was all there for you. I knew some friends that are still playing with it and are looking forward to the Sword Trials or whatever. I may come back for the second part of the DLC but only because I like the world a lot.

I'm counting down the days so i can restart on hard mode. I got bored in the middle until i focused on upgrading my armor. I may try to 100% it next time over a few months or a year. Pick it up for 20 minutes, do a few things and then play something else.

The first 100 hours had me prepared to put it in the GOAT discussion and the following 260 dropped it into a bottom 5 Zelda game for me.

The most Zelda fan sentence ever uttered.

 

[watershed]

Yeah, it was roughly aound the 100 hour mark that the apathy started setting in. It was around there where I realized the divine beasts were ass and then completing the dragon quest made it obvious that the side content was never going to be worthwhile.

The first 100 hours had me prepared to put it in the GOAT discussion and the following 260 dropped it into a bottom 5 Zelda game for me.

Playing a game until you hate it is entirely on you. Zelda BOTW provides an amazing 20 to 70 hour experience, even more so for some people. But if you keep returning to a game even after you stopped enjoying it or put off the end game to keep squeezing out gameplay you no longer found fun, all of that is on you not the game.

 

[Team Filler]

Skipping through the first video has you miss a lot of context or points he make, so you can't really comment. To each their own.

As someone who has watched both videos and is a fan of both, my opinion is that Mark Brown's critique still runs circles upon circles around the analysis video done by Joseph Anderson. Even discounting opposing perspectives and difference of opinion, I generally think Joseph has a bad habit in his analyses videos of belaboring minor points of interest or dissent into big and major issues that become the primary driver behind the rest of his critique.

Just my personal opinion as a fan, still really respect the guy and his effort.

 

[OrbitalBeard]

Playing a game until you hate it is entirely on you. Zelda BOTW provides an amazing 20 to 70 hour experience, even more so for some people. But if you keep returning to a game even after you stopped enjoying it or put off the end game to keep squeezing out gameplay you no longer found fun, all of that is on you not the game.

Pretty much. I genuinely cannot fathom the mindset that goes into the decision to play another 260 hours of a game I'm starting to lose interest in.

Like....please, someone explain this to me. It seems to be either obsessive behavior or a form of masochism.

 

[Not]

I don't want to be challenged all throughout the fucking game. Things getting easier as you progress and earn power ups gives you a feeling of gradually growing more powerful. That's part of the charm. It's perfect the way it is.

Go play hard mode.

 

[DrLazy]

BotW best parts are, undoubtely and dogmatically so, the first 30 hours or so, where resources are scarce, encounters are always somewhat challenging, and venturing in unexplored lands always pose some dilemmas (frost/hot/burning areas). After a certain point, food become way too abundant, absolutely trivializing every kind of encounter or challenge, and armor/hp become also absurdly OP in a way where nothing can actually challenge you.

In fact, it's a testament to how absurdly good those first hours are if the game still feel amazing despite losing a lot of its luster in the latter half, where combat appearances become just boring A-fest spam with 0 risk or tactics in it with infinite food to recover to boot, and different enviroments just become a matter of changing your clothes or spamming any kind of overpowered food to make up for it.

I absolutely understand the need for the feeling of progression in any given game, but the way BotW do it is extremely ruinous to its core experience, that of wandering around and always feel challenged in a way or another by the exploration. Its overabundance of loots also become just a way to infinitely stack your inventory with OP healing items as well. This is a kind of progression that is suited for something like Disgaea or Diablo where you can increase the challenge constantly to make up for your number-crunching OP-ness, or even something like minecraft where you can use all the things you pick to effectively create things and give a sense to the grind.

The kind of progression BotW present also make so that monsters have to become HP sponges later on, because due to your near-infinite health pool (combined with the food), they have to at least consume a bit of your weapons AND rely on your eventual mistakes to force you to consume some of your foods.

Monsters upgrading being not only HP-upgrades but more of speed-upgrades of their patterns would make both more sense lore wise, and play better in the way of progression -> knowing patterns -> being more able to react to them faster , instead of progression -> farming items. Another consequence would be making contextual way to take them out more effective, like explosive barrels which do trivial damage to blue and above monsters, or boulders from above, as well as pushing them off cliffs. A lot of creative approachs to camps tend to be worthless later on because of the huge HP pools of said monsters, which make trying to separate them or stealth kill them impossible because they have too many hp to effectively kill them fast enough to avoid all the camp ganging up on you. The game even recognize this, making tower patrols blue at most, so you can always sniper them from afar with a decent bow.

I've found myself restarting the game multiple times only to re-experience those magic first 20-30 hours where every encounter or challenge has you taking in consideration your experience, your weapons/armor/foods, the weather (raining is a huge factor when sneaking in big camps and make for some of the best and most rewarding experiences), and the enviromental helps like barrels and boulders to take out monsters safely.



All this said, it would be a relatively easy fix for the game to actually retain a lot of its scarceness-feel and to keep you a bit more challenged even in the later parts of it.

First of all, armor need to be fixed in how it scale. Having armor that reduce any and all damage to 1/4 of an hearth except for silver lynel special attacks is a joke. A simple solution would be to make so that armor can never reduce damage below half or a quarter of the original value. This way, 24 damage (6 heart) weapons would still do 3 or 1 .5 hearts no matter the armor you get.
Optionally, armor shouldn't give you max resistance to cold/heath/burn by itself, forcing you to always keep potions/foods in consideration for harsher areas.

Food is absolutely, disgustingly broken, and in general, it's way too easy to amass. An easy fix is to limit consistently the amount of it you can carry. 3 pages is way, way too much. A row of 5 is more like it, possibly upgradable if you want to decrease the challenge. I am artificially playing limiting myself to 2 slots, and i find myself constantly using the raw foods i pick around, giving much more sense to my full pages of ingredients.
This is a change i would've really liked in the hard mode, or some other food limiting mechanic, instead of monster which are even more of HP sponges.

To keep enviromental approaches to combat viable (boulders, barrels, falling metal boxes, putting camps on fire etc...), HP for monsters shouldn't scale nowhere as much as it does now, with better monsters having betters stats other than just HP (Faster animations/movement/reaction, better aim, better AI, more damage, ability to parry etc...).

Monster parts and their drops in general shouldn't be as common as they are now. Make them rarer to avoid just cluttering your inventory and making the game all about picking up thing constantly. Improve the reward in chests camps if anything. This, combined with limited food slots, would give a meaning to your ingredient tab without needing a cooking pot, and would also make cooking pots in the wilderness much more of a reward than they actually are, since you can just stack yourself in a city right now.


I find it a bit frustrating that the absolutely amazing first parts of the game get so diluted and ruined by you becoming a walking wal-mart food store with armor that make you effectively invulnerable and hp bars in the 40+s of hearts. Past zeldas had basically little progression, but had 0 challenge from the start aside from puzzles. BotW has like the perfect amount of challenge, adjustable to your likes from where you want to go and what you want to do, but give you so much progression that the challenge after a while is even less than traditional "easy-mode" zeldas.
Personally i can't wait for the next zelda where they learn to do progression right (lot of ideas in the right place, like the ability to sell your heart containers which was made with people who like challenge in mind for sure), with the challenging exploration of BotW to go with it. I may as well stop playing right after that.

This is a really terrific post and great critique of a really great game. The balance of going from hard and challenging to very easy can be counter intuitive. Just as I'm getting great at the games systems like combat or cooking I don't need to use them. You nicely lay out some great suggestions for improving the system.

I would add they really need about 3 more mini boss style over world enemies. You can only fight so many moblins and giants.

I'd love as well if they were to add even more variety to the korok seed puzzles, although they're pretty awesome. I just don't need to place so many apples on statues

 

[nynt9]

As someone who has watched both videos and is a fan of both, my opinion is that Mark Brown's critique still runs circles upon circles around the analysis video done by Joseph Anderson. Even discounting opposing perspectives and difference of opinion, I generally think Joseph has a bad habit in his analyses videos of belaboring minor points of interest or dissent into big and major issues that become the primary driver behind the rest of his critique.

Just my personal opinion as a fan, still really respect the guy and his effort.

I disagree. You simply can't cover issues like hitboxes or armor scaling without going in depth and showing the values and frame by frame animations like Joseph does. I love Mark Brown (I even support him on Patreon), but his video is more of an overview. Joseph does have some pet peeves, but his work is also way more in depth. Mark looks at what works about the game and why, Anderson critiques the game. Mark's video doesn't really criticize the game for the most part.

Regardless, things like riposte hitboxes and armor/damage scaling values aren't minor points.

 

[Not]

Yeah, it was roughly aound the 100 hour mark that the apathy started setting in. It was around there where I realized the divine beasts were ass and then completing the dragon quest made it obvious that the side content was never going to be worthwhile.

The first 100 hours had me prepared to put it in the GOAT discussion and the following 260 dropped it into a bottom 5 Zelda game for me.

This is not the way to enjoy a video game

 

[kunonabi]

Playing a game until you hate it is entirely on you. Zelda BOTW provides an amazing 20 to 70 hour experience, even more so for some people. But if you keep returning to a game even after you stopped enjoying it or put off the end game to keep squeezing out gameplay you no longer found fun, all of that is on you not the game.

Even if I had just skipped the shrines and just hit the beasts and finished it I still would have disliked it immensely since the beasts and final dungeon are some of the weakest parts of the game. I just wouldn't be as in tuned to just how much worse the flaws would get is all.

I also find it hilarious that playing less of a game is the key to it being good. That's like the biggest sign there is that something went horribly wrong in a game.

 

[entremet]

I’m enjoying being a bad ass now. So I can’t agree honestly.

 

[OrbitalBeard]

Even if I had just skipped the shrines and just hit the beasts and finished it I still would have disliked it immensely

This isn't true at all, because you've already said you thought it was GOAT status at 100 hours and you would easily be able to do these things in half that time.

 

[Muffdraul]

I don't think this is unusual for Zelda and many other similar games. You start weak, with experience you beef up, and the longer you play the more powerful you become. In the beginning most enemies are at least somewhat of a threat, and in the end most of them are pushovers, then you face the final boss... which should be reasonably challenging. I guess I can agree Ganon could have been more challenging in BotW. But otherwise, I have no complaints. I never got to the point where I felt like Lynels were so easy they were boring. Like others have said, you want a tougher experience, there are ways you can easily do that for yourself.

 

[Team Filler]

I disagree. You simply can't cover issues like hitboxes or armor scaling without going in depth and showing the values and frame by frame animations like Joseph does. I love Mark Brown (I even support him on Patreon), but his video is more of an overview. Joseph does have some pet peeves, but his work is also way more in depth. Mark looks at what works about the game and why, Anderson critiques the game. Mark's video doesn't really criticize the game for the most part.

Regardless, things like riposte hitboxes and armor/damage scaling values aren't minor points.

Critique and criticism are not synonymous with one another, something that lately I often see misconstrued with BOTW analysis, so I'm hoping that's not the mistake being made here.

 

[lvl99 Pixel]

You eventually realize there's not a point to climbing to the top of a mountain because all you're going to get is a Korok seed. You eventually realize there's no points in fighting enemies because you'll just break your powerful shrine weapon. Etc.

its always been a real problem with Zelda where your reward for completing tasks and exploration is essentially just things that make a fairly easy game even easier. Its like an anti-reward and Wind Waker especially they must have been having a laugh if they thought heart pieces were worth the effort.

Majoras Mask rewarded players with character development and lots of unique scenes.

 

[Starfish Hero]

The first 100 hours had me prepared to put it in the GOAT discussion and the following 260 dropped it into a bottom 5 Zelda game for me.

Probably the best sentence I've ever read on a gaming forum

 

[kunonabi]

This isn't true at all, because you've already said you thought it was GOAT status at 100 hours and you would easily be able to do these things in half that time.

Replace that opening 100 hours of exploration and shrine hunting with 40 hours of me just bumrushing the shitty beasts and final dungeons and i still would have soured on the game just like i did when i got around to them at the 100 mark. I might even like it less since i wouldnt have experienced the initial illusion of an amazing open world or all the excellent NPCs which were the one thing about the game i absolutely loved.

 

[OrbitalBeard]

Replace that opening 100 hours of exploration and shrine hunting with 40 hours of me just bumrushing the shitty beasts and final dungeons and i still have soured on the game just like i did when i got around to them at the 100 mark. I might even like it less since i wouldnt have experienced the initial illusion of an amazing open world or all the excellent NPCs which were the one thing about the game i absolutely loved.

Wait, you didn't tackle a single divine beast before 100 hours?

Ok, fair point then.

 

[3DShovel]

This man does an excellent review and analysis of BotW. A bit long but worth it.

https://youtu.be/T15-xfUr8z4

Let's not pretend that this is a "good" review of BotW. Joseph is a smart guy but he very much so goes beyond the line of "not nitpicking" very frequently in this video.

A major "negative" mentioned in his review is the fact that as soon as he got the glider, he flew straight into a Lynel fight and couldn't win because his gear was garbage. He deemed this as poor design and continually referred to it as a "problem with the open world game design". Also, he mentioned that this encounter was the hardest thing of his run -- because yeah, fighting a super-monster when you have 0 good equipment is obviously gonna kick your ass.

Mark Brown does a much better job of assessing actual good points and actual negative points in his review.

The first 100 hours had me prepared to put it in the GOAT discussion and the following 260 dropped it into a bottom 5 Zelda game for me.

Lmao what the actual fuck. Where is the neogaf.gif?

 

[kunonabi]

Wait, you didn't tackle a single divine beast before 100 hours?

Ok, fair point then.

I actually stumbled it by accident too since I climbed up the mountain with the lynel and shock arrows then dropped down to the beast before even seeing the king or the rest of Zora's domain.

 

[Lord_Byron28]

I don't think the progression system is the problem. In a future Zelda title, I hope they dramatically increase the enemy variety. You can guide players by positioning tougher and different enemy varieties around the map. They did this a little bit with the guardians surrounding Hyrule Castle. They could also introduce more physical barriers on the map such as large underground areas/civilizations to explore, places beneath the sea to explore such as a Sootopolis like city, and islands in the sea and sky.

 

[RedSwirl]

I get where people are coming from, but I guess my priorities with Zelda are just different.

BOTW has stayed interesting for me because of how much there is to discover in the game even after 100 hours, and that's not related to the progression. To me, all Zelda has really ever been is a great sense of exploration with good level design, propped up by adequate gameplay systems but also tight controls and game-feel. And I feel like difficulty-wise, ever since OOT the Zelda series has been pushed as a more mainstream game, not really meant to be a hardcore challenge.

 

[ZOONAMI]

Meh, I like that OP feel.

 

[Interficium]

OP sounds like he wants Nintendo to make Zelda a Souls game. That's not going to happen. Frankly the difficulty of the bulk of the game is already surprisingly hard already considering the wide audience (read: not just 30something forum hardcores) Nintendo games are targeted to. If that's not enough for you, there's the option to voluntarily make the game harder for yourself, or wait for master mode.

The first 100 hours had me prepared to put it in the GOAT discussion and the following 260 dropped it into a bottom 5 Zelda game for me.

This Is a brilliant parody of Gaffers/Zelda fans.

 

[watershed]

Even if I had just skipped the shrines and just hit the beasts and finished it I still would have disliked it immensely since the beasts and final dungeon are some of the weakest parts of the game. I just wouldn't be as in tuned to just how much worse the flaws would get is all.

I also find it hilarious that playing less of a game is the key to it being good. That's like the biggest sign there is that something went horribly wrong in a game.

I don't think its strange or funny at all. You burned yourself out on the game. BOTW is not Destiny or an mmo. It is not meant to be played indefinitely the same way the designers of BOTW do not intend for the average player to find every single Korok Seed. Doing so would probably be a pain and burn people off on the game. So the designers put enough Korok Seeds in the game to invite curiosity about the world and give the average player enough inventory slots to play the game comfortably. In the same way there is enough content in BOTW for every player to get their own slice of the full game and have it be super fun and also unique to their playthrough. If you decide to go for 100% or play an addition 260 hours of boredom after an initial 100 hours of joy, you are burning yourself out on the game. The game was well-designed enough to provide an amazing 100 hr playthrough. That means it's a great game. But you did the equivalent of finding every Korok Seed even though you stopped enjoying the hunt after the 100th you found.

 

[Nickle]

Yeah, it was roughly aound the 100 hour mark that the apathy started setting in. It was around there where I realized the divine beasts were ass and then completing the dragon quest made it obvious that the side content was never going to be worthwhile.

The first 100 hours had me prepared to put it in the GOAT discussion and the following 260 dropped it into a bottom 5 Zelda game for me.

Dude, I still don't understand why you continued to play for so long. I quit at 70 hours after exploring the entire world and confirming that the game had nothing interesting to show me.