#especially the compendium in totk

[chai-sweets]

I can’t believe I waited so long to play this game it’s literally perfect for me

[solomonara]

I was looking for a good screenshot of gloom spawn to show a friend who hasn't played totk, and I noticed something I never got close enough to see before (because if there's a gloom spawn I am up a tree a mile away firing bomb arrows before you can say 'complete the compendium')

Spoilers ahead.

This screenshot is from Nintendo via Polygon (source), so I assume it hasn't been edited.

The hands are wearing rings.

The rings look like the rings on Link's borrowed hand. They do NOT look like the rings Ganon is wearing - his are on the index and middle fingers only.

TOTK has a pretty heavy emphasis on hands. There's Rauru's hand, of course, but also the very near miss of Link grabbing for Zelda at the beginning of the game (using his decayed hand specifically), which is finally rectified at the end when he IS able to grab her as she falls.

Consider also the obvious connotations of depression associated with gloom sickness.

I had been assuming that gloom spawn were extensions of Ganon, especially given Phantom Ganon, but this makes me think that perhaps the gloom spawn are supposed to be a representation of Link's fears and general state of mind - of his own hands betraying him when it mattered most.

[dracomelody]

A lot of people don't play Zelda games for the story, and that's perfectly fine. But I think we all have to admit that a good story can only make the game better, right?

1) the story beats in almost all 3D Zelda games are happening throughout the game. This gives you motivation to both keep playing (because now you're given a task to complete) and so you can see what happens next.

2) the story beats (memories) in BotW and TotK take place in the distant past. And you can beat the game without ever seeing them, so they don't really make a difference to the gameplay or your desire to keep playing.

3) the memories can be gotten in any order, so you might end up spoiling yourself by accident.

BotW saved the final memory until after all of the previous ones were found, so it was fine in terms of spoilers.

TotK didn't do that, and the key for the order of the memories isn't outright said to you, they're pictures on a wall that 1) you might miss, 2) might delete the photos you took of them on accident if you're filling out your compendium, or 3) you may not even have the camera app when you come across it (I was too chicken to go into the chasm at that part in the game, so I thought I could do the dragon's tears first, but I didn't have the camera so I did them out of order thinking the spoilers would be saved for last like in BotW. Nope.)

BotW's plot with the divine beasts wrecking havoc on the world was good. I liked their effects on the neighboring environments and the races who dwell there. The threat of a great flood, a neverending sandstorm, a volcano's constant eruption, and the Rito being potentially maimed if they fly too high. You prevented disasters and helped save people, and you gained useful abilities from the characters who used to be fight alongside, which ties them into the memories. The Master Sword in BotW was what let Zelda know Link could still be saved, and retrieving the Master Sword as a means to beat Ganon was mentioned after every dungeon, stressing the importance of it as a weapon that can't be broken.

All in all I liked BotW's story because of this.

But there were only four divine beasts (excluding DLC), so it was short lived compared to how massive the game is in every other regard.

TotK handled the dungeons better, but it had a similar problem, and some of the plot just doesn't make sense. As Yunobo would say: "Why'd you do it?!" Fake Zelda getting the Gorons addicted to marbled rock roast serves what purpose, exactly? It just makes them lazy?

Zelda turning into a dragon to restore the Master Sword serves what purpose, exactly? We saw in the beginning cut scene that dehydrated Ganondorf could shatter it, so what good is that weapon against a fully powered Ganondorf?

The sage abilities you get in TotK are cool, but they're mostly passive, so you're not in direct control of what the sages avatars do. Activating 3/4 of their abilities requires you to interact with them by pressing A, which is hard to do if you're in the middle of life and death combat and they're running away with you. In BotW the abilities were tied to buttons you could press at any time without this issue.

TotK followed the exact same route as BotW: find shrines, find memories, and beat dungeons. The dungeons also follow the same exact route as BotW by needing to activate terminals to reach the boss.

TotK had better gameplay mechanics with the building options and the amount of dungeons and their designs. But the story just doesn't make sense, and then it's shoved down your throat after each dungeon. It's even worse if you try to see where it fits into the timeline, it's like they went from not caring about the timeline to directly contradicting it with the founding of Hyrule. Especially after they advertised Skyward Sword HD and TotK to have some sort of tie-in.

TotK is easily the Zelda game with the least amount of thought/care put into its story, and no matter how cool the gameplay is, the story is a huge detriment to it.

[maryellencarter]

"low fast travel" run continues: having climbed all the way up to shee vaneer because i discovered you can see shee venath from a korok spot above bosh kala (look it's the photographic memory i'm pretty sure i know all 120 shrine names if i think about it okay? the totk ones aren't sticking at all though. i can clarify locations and associated puzzles about the botw ones but i'm not sure anybody reading this... cares really), i am now considering whether i'm stubborn enough to do the glide-and-climb *back* up to shee vaneer after solving shee venath.

(i am still doing them guideless or i could just look up the answers :P i had to look up some for my first all shrines run but once i've seen the solution it's much easier to understand the possible strategies to get there)

(technically "guideless" fell to "i have been around the entire circumference of the great plateau wall looking for a sword i know is here but my fucking irl perception check is not high enough to spot it" but i'm okay with that. i'm trying to rely *primarily* on memory and exploration, as much as possible. sometimes i need to know where to look and/or what i'm looking for, or i will Not See)

i am entertained to discover that from the summit of shee vaneer peak you can see ta'loh naeg through a gap in the pillars of levia, hinting you towards kakariko if you've been ignoring it thus far.

i really, really need to get back on the damn path though. i need hestu. i have nineteen korok seeds and i keep dropping perfectly good weapons i haven't even used because i only have eight slots, and i'm committed to keeping my basic tools on hand at all times: a torch, a hammer weapon, an axe, and a korok leaf.

(what am i gonna do when i've broken all the axes and they're not respawning because it's a no blood moon run? i rely so much on the respawning double axe at woodland stable. ...hopefully have the master sword or something? jeez. i usually try to save it for situations where it gets powered up, like the divine beasts and the castle.)

i did successfully manage the exploit to delay the blood moon for another week -- you save around 11:57pm in game, let the last few seconds run until the first frame of the blood moon cutscene hits with that BOOM, hit home and close the game, load it up from the manual save (not the autosave from the blood moon occurring), and the extra loading time squeaks past the "blood moon timer is reset to zero" flag but doesn't actually trip the "enemies and weapons are all respawned" flag.

the exploit itself is so simple you can do it by mistake, and in fact that's how the streamer I learned it from discovered it. The challenge comes from paying attention to the blood moons; remembering not to leave a shrine, divine beast, or the castle right after midnight unless you're sure it's not a blood moon night; not being able to roll over nighttimes with beds or fires unless you're *very* sure it's not a blood moon night; using your knowledge of the game to pace out your kills so that, for instance, you don't go after a lynel or a hinox until you have space for his weapon drops; the possibility of running out of weapons is a little higher in master mode because of health regen (calamity ganon in master mode is a *beast*, i doubt i'll ever play master mode myself for that reason, i'm too cautious to play a mode that doesn't allow for slowly whittling down health), but i'm sure it could also happen in normal mode, especially since there are just fewer total weapons in normal mode.

I don't know if it'll be physically possible to fill out the Hyrule Compendium without buying any pictures, during a no blood moon run. I'm stacking a lot of goals that I haven't seen anyone else do all in the same run. I know it's possible for certain weapons to go extinct in the game even during normal play -- I killed all 22 lynels in my main save without ever getting a mid-tier gear drop, because I was so scared of them that I put them off until they'd all evolved into white-maned or silver lynels. (There's a non-scaling blue one in the castle gatehouse for the compendium photo, but he won't drop his weapons unless you save-reload during the fight.)

in other news i have successfully parried a chuchu! it didn't damage it any though. shame.

[knght0wl]

just finished the game

botw and totk shouldve released together as a packaged deal to make it worth the total $70, like a chapter or part 1 and 2 kind of thing. i get making games takes time and you cant please everyone in the corporate world but still

gripes. annoyed you can’t find and wear gerudo vai clothes anymore, peeved they saved the data of your horses but not all your clothes, and the items you’d hung up on the walls of your hateno house (they honestly couldve just had bolson hold onto your stuff in storage for your newly bought house in totk). Ticked they didnt transfer over the data from your shiekah slate compendium to your purah pad, link should already know what all/most of the edible food stuffs, creature ingredients, and monster parts are if youve played botw on the same device.

something i hated but this extends to most japanese games: i wish we could skip cutscenes especially if they were the same animation x5. also didnt like the way they introduced the tutorials via shrines, mainly boring and sometimes frustrating. went into two of the temples not realizing i needed the characters to be there and say their dumb little comments before activating them. very handholdy and feels like theyre talking down to you, not trusting you to make the conclusions on your own/can’t pick up on where the designers are pointing to or where they want you to look or go

HATE HATE HATE how they made the dark skinned great fairy hypersexual that says innuendos constantly, double hate how some npcs have light lips that look a little too similar to jim crow art, its 2023, jesus fucking christ.

wish you could just summon the sage’s wills through a wheel or assigned buttons like in botw, having them out like that was clunky and the ai was not fun to work with especially the mecha and riju, turning em off is an option, and running around the same monsters all the time that riju and sidon can kill in 2 or 3 hits is also an option.

wish the depths were more spooky/scary or atleast darker in themes, more stuff to interact/look at, Something. skeletons laying around everywhere, gibdos even, maybe apparitions of the lost souls standing or laying around or in a fighting pose idk the entire place was pretty big but bland/lacked character. that can also be said for the sky islands too really.

storywise, it wouldve been cool to see past heroes and princesses coming together and teaching link and zelda stuff alongside rauru and sonia’s powers. wouldve been way more interesting to see the different heroes’ journeys and how they defeated their version of ganon/related event (that would then contribute to how to better defeat our ganon?) in times past, rather than the rehashed cutscenes with the powerstone holders or whatever getting decimated from each of their perspectives

the ganon fight cutscenes made me wish we were playing that game instead of running around looking for zelda. i did like the game, but only in the sense that i liked the artstyle, the ascend ability and the fact that the roads, strongholds, and towns feel a lot livelier. and i really liked the end fight with ganon, that was tense and fun (personalized opinion since i didnt have enough sundelion meals and was on 1 heart before the transition to the dragon fight); a major step up from botw’s ganon fight

[babblingbranches]

Man, TotK really did weapons right. It’s cool that they gave each weapon type its own gimmick. That in combination with the fuse mechanic meant that weapons that were almost never used in BotW now have utility in TotK.

Normally, no one would ever use the soldier gear once the game progresses enough to make knight equipment, and later especially, the royal weapons more readily available, rendering any other weapon virtually obsolete. However, now that they have the quick charge mechanic, the spear in particular can output so much DPS with the right fused materials.

The Zora weapons, who’s only selling point in BotW was that they’re pretty looking, can be incredibly powerful under the right conditions. I initially thought it’d be too situational to be useful, but thanks to a certain ability, the water warrior perk can be activated at almost any time.

The Gerudo weapon gimmick of enhancing fused materials is very complementary for a game where fusing is a core combat mechanic.

Apparently the Rito weapons can create gusts of wind according to the compendium. I haven’t been able to find a Rito weapon that wasn’t already attached to another Rito, so I haven’t been able to play around with it, but I’m assuming it works like a Korok leaf/frond.

The Goron weapons basically kept their perk from BotW and made that their gimmick. Which means, they’re still very good Talus smashers.

Even the Champion weapons I’m a lot less apprehensive about using, because they’re replicas from the get-go and not the actual weapons the Champions once used.

[girlhorse]

been finally having time to sit down and play totk lately.. it's such a massive map. not to be a normie but i really enjoy open worlds sometimes especially if they have a good natural element to them...i really like taking pics anf filling up the compendium. I also like hunting for pretty horses

[linkedkingdom]

I have been solidly in TOTK mode since the game released with… quite a few hours logged. Just making a small checkpoint post.

Finished 3 Regional Disturbances, the Rito, the Zora, and the Gerudo. In that order. I have been to Goron City but tbh while the disturbance is upsetting it didn’t feel as in imminent danger as the other three.

Unlocked all of the surface/sky map. Eeby Deeby (the depths) still unnerves me so I only have a few lightroots. I’m currently looking for the bargainer statues to get an armor set to help defend against gloom.

My Purah pad is tricked out. I have upgraded it as much as I can. The compendium is a work in progress but that is gonna take a hot minute.

I have the habit of getting distracted doing side quests and side adventures. Especially if armor or paraglider skins are involved. So I have my Froggy armor and all great fairys unlocked.

Koroks? I have over 100 but less than 200 of them. It’s gonna be a bit before I finish that.

Oh! I have 2 remaining geoglyphs to do. I know where they are but I am waiting to do them until after I help the Gorons.

[taffywabbit]

Official Taffy Epic Gayming Update: i have now cleared every shrine in TotK AND filled the entire Hyrule Compendium (i ended up caving and paying Robbie for the last few weapon entries because i already knew what they were and decided i was not interested in tracking those down, but i DID do like 95% of it myself as i went along!) i love running around taking pictures of everything, especially when it's trying to kill me. it's so funny

thank god the shrines in this game are actually usually pretty interesting and fun to beat tho because i would be pretty pissed about that completion reward otherwise 🙃

I successfully beat that Emerald Rogue run during the stream AND I'm also down to just 2 more shrines left to complete in TotK now... truly it has been a Night of Epic Gayming