Lord of Ostia
Member
He makes great videos, will definitely give it a watch later.
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Joseph Anderson - Breath of the Wild Analysis
- Thread starter nynt9
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Death Penalty
Member
The guy you quoted specifically mentioned that the points in the video about the combat were good, not just that he thought the combat was shit, so the subject matter was actually the points in the video and this guy saying "I agree" not this guy just saying "combat was garbage lol". I see what you're saying but I don't think what you were responding to was a shit post in the way you interpreted it to be.
Channeling your inner fourth grader gave me a good laugh though.
Radical Edward
Member
That's what i'm excited about. BotW was a solid 8/10 for me. I expect the next one will be even better if they build upon this awesome foundation.
I think you can stay away from this series now lol
Shame he starts off with the one point I can longer stand and stop at whenever it shows up. "X isn't proper Zelda" I have heard this damn argument used against, in "look at how detached I am and super smart" against ever single Zelda game.
It is a meaningless line of argument and I wish people would get over it. Esdpiacly sinceit carries, unintentionally, a nasty subtext "Oh you like Zelda games for X, but I have declared X isn't what Zelda is about? Guess you don't like Zelda the right way!" No one means to say that, but its buried in there. And is great example of how little thought so many vaunted game crtics actually put into their arguments.
It is a meaningless line of argument and I wish people would get over it. Esdpiacly sinceit carries, unintentionally, a nasty subtext "Oh you like Zelda games for X, but I have declared X isn't what Zelda is about? Guess you don't like Zelda the right way!" No one means to say that, but its buried in there. And is great example of how little thought so many vaunted game crtics actually put into their arguments.
kunonabi
Member
Yeah, the "not a real Zelda game" was the weakest part of the video. Totally shaking up conventions is fine as long as you nail the execution and still manage to properly replace what you took out with something equally worthwhile. BotW didn't nail the execution but it isn't any less of a Zelda game at the end of the day.
Joeshabadoo
Member
except its not as long as you're approaching encounters multi-dimensionally with melee weapons, bows, rune powers and environmental nuance.
i constantly felt organically encouraged to weave those elements together in my approaches. I guess many didn't? ¯\_(ツ
_/¯once I got a solid feel on how to properly bait and wrangle together collections of dudes, exploiting the lesser AI of the grunts against the leader enemies and disarming them, what began as challenging and occasionally frustrating turned in to living up to the role of sworn knighted chief royal guard. I leveled up through raw proficiency, not exp bars and simple stat increases (which isnt to say those are totally absent either)
I didn't watch the whole thing, but I agree with some of his criticisms at the beginning. The combat is incredibly poor, there's no story, and the some of the shrines are pretty lame. I personally think the exploration is fun, but that's about it. I don't quite understand the praise for this game. I've enjoyed my time with Horizon more, which has a very good story, excellent combat, and a beautiful world.
Lord of Ostia
Member
I really don't agree with his assertion that Shrines having more than one solution is a negative. Personally, that was the single best thing about the game. It gives you a toolset, puts you in front of an obstacle, and let's you use any means at your disposal to overcome that obstacle. Part of why Zelda was beginning to feel stale was the one puzzle=one solution design they had for the dungeons. The greatest strength BoTW has is allowing the player to creatively combine the toolset on their own to discover clever solutions to obstacles. In fact, this design ethos applies to nearly every aspect of the game, and it is the main reason why it reviewed so well.
kunonabi
Member
except its not as long as you're appraoching encounters multi-dimensionally with melee weapons, bows, rune powers and environmental nuance.
i constantly felt organically encouraged to weave those elements together in my approaches. I guess many didn't? ¯\_(ツ
once I got a solid feel on how to properly bait and wrangle together collections of dudes, exploiting the lesser AI of the grunts against the leader enemies and disarming them, what began as challenging and occasionally frustrating turned in to living up to the role of sworn knighted chief royal guard. I leveled up through raw proficiency, not exp bars and simple stat increases (which isnt to say those are totally absent either)
eh, that stuff is ok in the beginning but when you're hundreds of hours in trying to get other things done it just isn't worth the worth the time or effort for the minimal amount of extra entertainment it provides. The game just doesn't take into account that once players have gotten accustomed to the world and are just trying to work towards various goals that a lot of its systems become annoyances or just kind of pointless once they no longer really serve their purpose that they did earlier on. If the game actually evolved as you do this wouldn't have been such an issue but instead the game just stagnates much earlier than it really should.
Tarextherex
Banned
This, people can be so dramatic in the analysis of games that are already better than 99% of the industry's output. While I do agree with the idea that it that retaining some past Zelda elements would have made it a better game, it's still top notch compared to its competition. It beats Western AAA open world at their own game, that's why it had so many 10s. We're talking about an extremely huge world that has no hint of feeling like a random terrain generator. Some devs usually overhype certain details/physics effects or unique gameplay mechanics that end up not really mattering. In BOTW not only the many different systems work well(fire, runes, lightning, wind, etc) but you can basically progress through the game however you want unlike in other games where you have a much more limited set of actions. The way there's many solutions to the same problem is especially amazing. When the core gameplay is basically a 15/10, that's why people overlooked other aspects of the game that while competently realized, could have been better compared to past Zeldas. However, calling the weaker aspects "unfinished" or amateurish does nothing constructive, it encourages hyperbole in message boards and limits creativity on the developers' side. What if Nintendo takes that to heart and makes TP2 as their next Zelda, a good game but that doesn't bring anything new for the series. On the other side of the spectrum, BOTW might have had traditional dungeons and more detailed, scenarized challenges rather than doubling down on size and crafting elements if "fans" didn't call 3D Zeldas "archaic" or surpassed by open world AAA games. That's why games like OOT and MM are some of the overall most liked games in the series, they weren't made with the pressure of catering to certain fans' arbitrary standards.
Really nice analysis. He makes a lot of good points and does a good job explaining his thoughts. In a few areas he stumbles with some "this isn't what I want from Zelda" type arguments and some hyperbolic language that seems out of character with his thoughtful analysis. Maybe that's a symptom of internet style communication: everything has to be extreme or it's not interesting. Overall, nice write up.
Ok, this isn't a problem (why would combat change? It's expansion depends on how you use the tools the game gives you)or true if we're talking how the AI changes based on their color. Also please name a single non Ganon/SkywardSword fight in a 3d zelda that's as hard as a camp of black and white bokoblins.
And the entire world being a dungeon is true when the whole thing is handcrafted to hold little nooks and secrets, handwaving the shrines away like their puzzles don't dwarf the push-block-remember-hallways sequence of past zeldas doesn't mean they offer nothing; especially when past games only got you rupees or heart pieces.
It sounds like you probably liked Twilight Princess a lot, which was disappointing for me in 2006. BOTW is Zelda finally shaking things up, which was long overdue. Another linear story with a linear dungeon progression sounds boring to me.
Joeshabadoo
Member
disagree, especially about the time/effort part. Herbosa's fury in particular helps create situations where, when used optimally, Link is a god damn wrecking ball. Get in, get some gems from silver dudes, a nice drgaonbone fresh weapon for the rotating 'throwaway slot' and move on. But fair enough. what you feel as 'minimal amount of extra entertainment' I find quite the opposite, continually finding faster ways to Rambo through hordes.
moving forward and accomplishing late game goals still needs resistance and obstacles. Where before a player (like me) may've found themselves in harsh cold conditions with a big ol camp of moblins, bokoblins, and a wizrobe over a small hill and thought' yea I'm not going to comb over this stretch and explore just yet', later game me is licking his lips to unleash hell
does this video include proper credit paid to how great shield surfing is during discussion of traversal and exploration? it's pulled off so fantastically and meshes with the glider so well.
The combat is bad but its not hard. The game is really easy for the most part. Its just annoying to engage in combat most of the time because of how repetitive and clunky it is. As for using runes in fights it never works out with those metal crates. I don't know if it's because I was using the pro controller but moving crates around is kind of slow and the amount of damage it does is so tiny late game that its pointless. Like the plateau area probably had the most opportunities for environmental kills in the entire game. I think the most fun I actually had with the game was the plateau area and then most of the systems were just downhill or level from there minus the exploration and discovery aspect. You can say the game plateaus at the... plateau.
kunonabi
Member
black and white bokoblins aren't any harder than the red ones. Just flurry rush them to death like you do everything else.
You're accusing me of handwaving when you're simplifying previous zelda puzzles as a series of push-block puzzles as well claiming that all previous rewards were just rupees and heart pieces? The former was true in like the first zelda and the latter was never true.
lvl99 Pixel
Member
the N64 Zeldas were never topped for me. I was all for them doing something more open world, but not at the expense of what made the Zelda games so unique.
BOTW could easily have been a new IP and not a Zelda game at all.
why? the next one might be quite different. Telling me to abandon the series of games that meant the most to me because im not over the moon about breath of the wild? err ok
Aldric
Member
l disagree with his claim about the game lacking Zelda identity. l think it has all the elements that constitute Zelda, just balanced differently.
That being said, l really enjoyed his dissection of the combat system and l agree with a lot of what he said, although it didn't bother me nearly as much. l discovered his videos a few weeks ago actuallly and l think he's the best videogame "analyst" on Youtube if you have the time and patience to sit through his hour long videos.
That being said, l really enjoyed his dissection of the combat system and l agree with a lot of what he said, although it didn't bother me nearly as much. l discovered his videos a few weeks ago actuallly and l think he's the best videogame "analyst" on Youtube if you have the time and patience to sit through his hour long videos.
Joeshabadoo
Member
sorry, we fundamentally disagree. Dont find combat clunky, also why do you selectively only talk about magnesis when bringing up runes in combat when bombs and stasis are far more useful in such cases. The later not just for buying time and getting hits in, but setting up hilarious friendly fire scenarios
to be fair, the AI gets progressively better as the color changes and the hitpoints increase. They dodge more often, will actively identify and try to avoid visiable traps set, fire arrows more often with greater accuracy, catch weapons tossed at them, etc
This topic has been on my mind a lot recently and this is a fairly interesting solution. My biggest complaint with BotW is the shrines. I've found them to be way too easy and I'm not really sure how you solve that. Nintendo is never going to stop making Zelda games accessible to a wide audience, but throughout my BotW playthrough, I never felt like the shrines posed any real challenge.
How is it a hot take? Combat is my least favortie part of the game.
Broken lock on system and dodge system, and generally quite boring.
Fortunately you can take out enemies in various other ways, which is what makes up for it, but the act of facing off against an enemy with your weapons, is pretty poor in the game.
Joeshabadoo
Member
*sorry mistakenly quoted myself*
I go back and forth on videos that analyze the hell out of games and lean heavily on critique. Although well presented criticism is super interesting, sometimes these critiques/analysis lose any sense of joy. Although this video does examine what BOTW does well and what is good about the game, it deep dives into his perceived negatives and, to me, loses the original opinion that the game is great or has really great parts.
Well there are normal weapons that do the same/more damage than the master sword. Although any 'big hitters' I've found are all clunky slow two-handers so the master sword has the advantage of being a faster weapon to nt know if you get stronger one-handed normal weapons later in the game?
Evil's Bane
Member
This video is great and opened my eyes to the game's issues. Like, I knew they existed but I didn't know the specifics and how to articulate them.
Still, the first playthrough of this game is some of the most fun I've had of this game in quite some time and that will never be taken away.
Still, the first playthrough of this game is some of the most fun I've had of this game in quite some time and that will never be taken away.
newtypepilot
Member
he always give insightful and thorough reviews so I'll definitely watch later. I just wish he would break his video to chapters.
When he said NMS was a tedious mediocre game, the reactions from the defense force was hilarious, so this should be fun.
When he said NMS was a tedious mediocre game, the reactions from the defense force was hilarious, so this should be fun.
But part of that multi-dimensional approach is not forcing you to engage at all. Because there isn't an XP bar you don't feel any obligation to engage the enemies. If it is a relatively low level group, you have decent weapons (so fighting them may be a downgrade or at best a side grade), and you have business to attend to elsewhere- then just avoid them.
The
masks
Define 'hard'. If you mean death is a slap on the wrist so you can do crazy stuff with almost on consequences, sure it isn't hard. If we're talking about the chances of actually succeeding in said self-imposed goals, that is something different.
If it is so easy, then by all means, go on a three heart run and raid Hyrule Castle. Should be a piece of cake for anyone apparently.
Also, saying a game is flawed because you can become over leveled is blaming the game for you deciding for yourself to be over leveled. No one forced you to upgrade your armor or even buy armor, or told you to even put a shirt on.
Listening to players would have also given us a female Link and a Dark Soul battle system. Players don't always know best.
I can't agree with that, especially when Skyward Sword had dungeons with many different puzzles since they went with a fusion theme like merging the water/forest tempe and the whole thing with the time stones.
A big part of this game. that the video briefly hints at but doesn't deep dive on, is the idea that the combat is more fun the more creatively you approach it. To me, the game rewards creative gameplay as part of their multiplicative design philosophy. Some people defeated all the bosses by keeping their distance and spamming bomb arrows. Some players want to find the most direct solution and then repeat that over and over. But to me, BOTW rewards experimentation in a kind of "create your own fun" way in combat and traversal.
I disagree. Some of the test of strength shrines, fighting the hinox/step tallus/sand monster thing, or even going to eventide island or fighting guardians. There are lots of examples of enemies and challenges I could not complete until I had both upgraded myself and learned to use the games mechanics (and in my own style too).
I am 90 hours in, still chipping away at the world, and my jaw is still open thinking 'this...this game'.
Although I do welcome criticism, I'll have to look into it after I complete the game to avoid spoilers. Having read some of the comments and complaints on here, I just don't agree or feel like they hopes for a sequel poised as flaws.
Aldric
Member
Yeah, that's why l thought his comments about his first Lynel encounter were weak. He complains about the weapons durability system preventing him from defeating the Lynel despite him being skilled enough to do so which in turn discouraged him from exploring but this isn't a flaw in game design, it's just him coming to a wrong conclusion. Had he kept exploring, which is a pretty natural incentive due to how forgiving the save system is, he'd have realized Lynels are rare enemies in the area and the level design makes it so you can spot them very early and climb or run around them. Then he might have found better weapons lying around in the area and used them to defeat the Lynel, even with his early game inventory space.
Absolutely. My brother (who has 100% the game) watched me play today for a few hours and at almost every instance remarked how different I accomplished goals/solved puzzles/fought enemies.
Finally did eventide island and there's just so many ways to approach it.
These weapons also break while the Master Sword just recharges, which is why it is the best weapon in the game overall, especially in dungeons where its attack doubles. I mean, I have a 50 attack weapon that I haven't used because it is so rare to find, along with a special rare weapon which a attack power of 65.
Also, if he was so skilled, he would beat the Lynel regardless of the weapon durability. Good weapons are easy to find once you know where to look and you can mark locations on your map. Sounds like he's just whining because he doesn't want to waste his precious special weapons like how you horde those rare healing items in RPGs until the final or bonus boss. If he wants to beat Lynel, waste him with an ancient arrow. They're expensive and you won't get the drops, but hey, easy kill and you don't waste weapons.
The battle system in Breath of the Wild isn't the best or my favorite in the series, but calling it 'bad' is just a step too far. And I hate the 'not a real Zelda' game with a burning passion. It reminds me of people who claim that there are no good Zelda games after the first one or Ocarina of Time killed the 'real Zelda'. Because if you like those 'not real Zelda games' you're obviously not a 'true' fan of the series. Seriously, screw off.
Aldric
Member
Chill out. lt's a good critique with a lot of solid points. Definitely not SuperBunnyHop or Sterling level rubbish.
Reptars Revenge
Member
I mean when I think of bullet sponges I think of destiny and division. These are just simple optional 2-3 minute boss fights to show how powerful you become. Shoot them with arrow, spin attack, jump on them. They just actually have a some hp unlike the rest of the enemies.
Hoarding weapons to beat an enemy who has an over abundance of hp is no fun, the combat would be okay if the enemies would be more complex, the basic moblins are joy to watch while they scramble around the battlefield but they pose no threat to you. Lynels are the only monsters that have a decent number of moves, but with the low enemy variety and basic moves it really doesn't do the game any favors.
Encounters in breath of the wild feels like if in Doom you would only fight imps the whole game with a cyber demon sprinkled in every now and then.
The white variant of enemies help to keep combat interesting once you get access to the strongest weapons. Once you have 50+ damage weapons, or even 30 damage weapons, most regular enemies die with 1 hit or one string of a 4 hit combo.
White enemies have enough hp for me to execute fun combat loops like glding in, bombing them with bomb arrows, then landing with a large radius jump attack, then using Urbosa's Fury on a charged spin attack and then still having some hp left to mess with them with the spring hammer or some other weapon.
Except Doom is 99% about combat while it's maybe a 30% slice of BotW (if that). You seriously hardly ever even need to engage in combat unless you want to, and there are easy ways to work around the problem of big HP enemies. Attack buffs, bombs, arrows, critical hits as weapons break.. that's how I defeated a Lynel very early on even with poor gear. It's the player's fault in the youtuber's case for not understanding the systems and making a lot of poor conclusions based on running into a dangerous enemy early on.
And while more complex/varied enemies wouldn't be a bad thing, the combat variety is ultimately something in the player's hands. At 150+ hours in I'm hardly engaging in actual combat anymore. An enemy encampment never knows what hit them as I drop in from above, snipe sentries with arrow time, hit explosive barrels, and then Urbosa the hell out of the survivors. It's 10-15 seconds. It never stops being fun to me, but if it did I surely would have avoided combat more since that's fully possible too. If all you're doing is rushing in with your sword and flurry rushing I can see how things would get stagnant after a while.
It's not problematic. The whole point of the Defeat Ganon main quest is to prepare for the task. When you feel you're ready for the task, you go to Ganon. Simple as that. (You can then continue playing the game.)
The problematic thing would be if the goal post for defeating Ganon would change just because Link has become OP.
fabricated backlash
Member
Just from reading the Op, the point about flurry rushs only triggering when the attack would miss anyway is patently false.
lol don't worry he says it's one of the best game he ever played and the best open world ever, so the defense force can rest easy.
I agree with some people here, he makes some great point but the way some of those critics break down every single part of a game and are forced to have a strong opinion about it isn't ideal. Some people say 5 minutes critics are too shallow, but there's something to be said about managing to get your opinion across without having to dissect every part of the game. As such, I think some of his gripes are silly, notably the shrines, the Lynel encounter, the runes telling you what to use... I'm one of the people that were not impressed at all by puzzles in previous Zelda game, so I'll take this non linear approach any day.
Also I really really hate people that mentions other scores and critics to make themselves stand out. He did the same thing with Inside, where he opened saying he did not understand how could someone gave it a 10. As a result the whole comment section was filled with stuff like "yeah you tell them Joseph!" "lol IGN", shit like that. I hate when people do that. Just do your critique like you want to do it.
He might not have to complain about shrines having too many solutions if there were more then like four shrines in the game that required any critical thinking / originality.
id much rather have had the 60 best shrines have a redux version with obstacles in the way of the obvious solutions then have the pittance of trivially easy shrines and the flood of an identical combat puzzle that is the "test of strength"
seriously hoping hard mode is more then a numbers tweak and they blow up 90 of the shrines and have 30 real puzzles
It is still the weakest part of the game and even if you do explore more combat is still one of the core elements of the game, and i shortcuts like that just goes to show that combat is lacking and in my mind it's the enemy variety that's the cause. I beat lynels too fairly early on, took like 20 minutes to kill it with everything i had, doesn't change the fact that lynels are the only enemies worth fighting in the game and even they have fairly predictive and limited move set, after a few fights against them you can just bait those charges and charge slashes which are super easy to counter. And even if i can come up with an creative way of dispatching an moblin encampment they are still a bore to fight because they do nothing else other than swing their sticks at you and throw rocks at you if you are too far away, hardly an exciting enemy. And t hat wouldn't be bad if there were more enemies that used different tactics in those packs, boars that charge, horse riders whittling you down, wolves ambushing you, anything. The game doesn't have a lot of enemies to begin with and it's a huge shame that none of the encounters mix those up, every single moblin camp only has moblins and those bigger dudes, the lizards newer have any help, same with those fire rod wizards. Hell the most exciting battles in the game come when two of those assassins group up on you while one being ranged and other being melee. I pretty much avoided combat after getting the master sword and until i got to the castle, the minimal damage boosts didn't interest me because the weapon was still the same that i had previously, the boring enemies just died a bit faster, whoop di doo. It's a shame that a world that gives player a lot of choices on how to tackle fights and express themselves gets dragged down shitty encounters.
Breath of the wild is probably my second favorite zelda, all of them have problems but like many have said it's a bit ridiculous how some people here, not necessarily you try to keep the image up that the game is somehow perfect, like the enemy variety, BotW has around 20 different enemies not including the color variants and all of the sentries which only add one more weapon to the wheel in trials, while something like twilight princess has the double the amount of different monsters.
Magic Mushroom
Member
I mean, it's not Bloodborne but I don't think the combat is bad at all. I love the parry system, the flurry strike is nice, the bow and arrow is great and you have a versatile toolset and world interactivity to exploit. Lynels and Watchers are cool new enemies as well, with nice movesets. And fighting mobs is quite challenging.
I mean, this looks pretty cool to me.
https://youtu.be/zntiMv1c8m4
It's not like previous Zeldas were some hallmark of great combat. Combat in those games felt far more limiting and easy than in BotW.
I mean, this looks pretty cool to me.
https://youtu.be/zntiMv1c8m4
It's not like previous Zeldas were some hallmark of great combat. Combat in those games felt far more limiting and easy than in BotW.
Aldric
Member
l forgot there's a mechanic that allows you to hit Lynels without damaging your weapons when you're mounting them. So there you have it, he could have beaten the Lynel with 5 tree branches and 30 arrows haha.