The long-awaited sequel to 2017's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom is due out for the Nintendo Switch on the 12th of May 2023: There are a few new gameplay mechanics this time around: And a themed OLED model to match: So, is anyone here looking forward to this latest adventure in Hyrule?
BOTW was a massive disappointment for me. Absolutely HATED the breakable weapon mechanic. It’s good they’ve kinda fixed it, but I’m gonna hold off picking this one up.
In the final run-up to today's launch, Nintendo of America's Treehouse Live posted a series of videos featuring some of the new game mechanics this time around:
For anyone interested, Nintendo (in the USA) currently has a voucher program where if you buy a $100 voucher ($106 total) you get to pick any two downloadable games. Picked up Tears of the Kingdom this morning as one of the two games.
I got the game today, I haven't had much time to play it but I did beat the first shrine and got the Ultrahand ability.
If you've played Breath of the Wild and have a save file of it on the same Switch as Tears of the Kingdom your horses transfer over. I completed the tutorial Sky Island quest and landed back on the ground.
I'm literally in love with this game. Can't stop playing. So much stuff. Game great. (I'm one of the very few people who played BOTW on Wii U so my horse data obviously doesn't carry over, but that's my own fault!)
I want to like the BOTW games so much but they just have so much busywork. Crafting, weapon maintenance, fetchquests. Whatever happened to just looking for the next unique dungeon and then going there? All unique challenges and puzzles, no chores. Modern gaming has so much chores. They expect you to do hours of repetitive crap before going to the next unique challenge.
Two things i hate with a passion in video games, unskippable cut scenes and weapon degredation mechanics, the later being nothing but busy work, hated it on the Wii U version, but the funny thing is if you play BOTW on CEMU and mod it to remove this mechanic with a simple mod, it improves the games immersion tenfold as you are no longer dragged out of battles mid fight to equip another stick, like the stick you just had. Lol
Games should have a hardcore gamer mode and a casual gamer mode. Hardcore gamer mode is full of crafting, weapon maintenance, grinding and sidequests, designed for people who play video games all day and fully intend to put hundreds of hours into every game. Casual gamer mode is more focused and streamlined, lets you go straight to the unique dungeons and main story events, skipping the grinding and repetitive parts so anyone can play for hour or two chunks and finish in a couple weeks. Most newer games are designed only for the eight hours a day players who want to put hundreds of hours in and don't care if 80% of it is repetitive.
I think the game is very clearly designed to be able to be able played bit by bit. There's hundreds of Shrines which can be completed in about ten minutes each (less if you know what you're doing...possibly much more if you get stuck.) You can play for twenty minutes a night if you just want to play one Shrine...though yeah you'll obviously then want to run off and find things and get distracted and end up playing for three hours. And playing at twenty minutes a night would take a very long time to finish it, and I realise I'm almost arguing against my point here. But there is lots of stuff you can do that doesn't require "eight hours a day." I don't mind the weapon degredation at all: there's always plenty of weapons around and it forces you to get creative; even more so with the new fuse mechanic in this sequel.
I've been playing off and on the past few days. I mainly wandered around but completed the first dungeon near the Rito village and got Autobuild while exploring the delphs.
While delving into the depths beneath Hyrule, I've made an intriguing observation. To fully map out the area, one must activate lightroots, which function similarly to the surface towers. However, in the depths, there is an abundance of these lightroots, and you can conveniently teleport to each one. Remarkably, thus far, all the lightroots have been easily accessible, without requiring any fetch quests or tasks. As I pieced together the map of the depths, I noticed a fascinating pattern. It perfectly mirrors the layout of Hyrule on the surface, albeit with inverted topography. Moreover, each lightroot's location corresponds precisely to a shrine's location on the surface. Although I haven't discovered every shrine or lightroot, I've been utilizing the below lightroot locations to pinpoint the exact whereabouts of shrines on the surface.
A few observations so far: * It's fun flying in the skies way high up. * So far the shrines seem a little too easy compared to the ones in BOTW. * I like the mechanic of fusing an item to your weapon to give it more abilities/power, but I wish the weapons were more durable. * I especially like being able to attach stuff to your arrows. So I don't have to spend a ton on all the fire arrows and bomb arrows like before. * I miss Ravioli's Grail, or whatever it was called. Kor