I didn’t play any Zelda since Ocarina of Time which I loved. I was expecting to have the same feeling in BOTW but I just can’t get into it.
After a few time into it I feel lost. I know that I have to go to some dungeon in the mountains but I just can’t because the character is freezing to death. I cannot afford spending hours randomly exploring the map, relying on luck to discover which mechanic protects agains the cold. There is no guidance except for the fact that there is a dungeon to explore.
I looted a nice sword but after very few encounters it broke in the middle of a fight. Weapons being so fragile just do not make sense, maybe some people appreciate that but knowing that whatever looted is going to be destroyed just make me want to stop playing.
If anyone felt the same, did it click at some point into the game ?
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Sounds like it’s not the game for you. Overcoming environmental challenges is kind of the name of the game, and if the baseline “cold bad but fire hot” thing isn’t something you enjoy then I’m not sure you would enjoy trying to navigate any of the main story areas in the game.
Right? This is the first time ive heard a complaint about not being able to solve the weather problem. How much of a problem would the rest of the game be if you cant solve this.
It’s one thing to not want open world/environmental stuff in a Zelda game, but this sounds like someone got high and couldn’t focus lol
Been there lol
“this game is too complicated!” And never touch it again.
Meanwhile the homies are all raving about it.
Pretty sure they put a bunch of hot pepper plants around the entrances to that region as the hint.
Not only that, but the item description tells you that cooking them has a cold resistant effect. The old man also gives a way to combat the temps.
If you can’t work out how to make a cold person warm, maybe this isn’t the game for you, I didn’t even realise that was a puzzle or challenge tbh
It practically forces you to figure out cold weather on the plateau.
A nine year old out there has probably beaten the game. This complaint is kinda hilarious ngl
Lots of spicy fruits for me. Until I could afford a jacket lol
The exploration and physics IS the game. You kinda do the objectives along the way.
It really helps that you follow the road though and turning off the UI. I dont think this is for you though of you got frustrated by the weather. The old man teaches you to cook and make a fire.
Sounds like you’re still at the Great plateau which is just the tutorial area of the game basically. You can watch a few videos on YouTube to find the easy way to get past it. The weapon breaking mechanic is really annoying at first but eventually you’ll realize that they did it so that you can enjoy all the variety of weapons in the game without having a hundred things in your stash. Exploration is one of the most enjoyable parts of this game so try to look around for the old man and he will help you.
This. I also remember being overwhelmed at the Great plateau, but I’m hindsight, it’s just a simple tutorial…
It just kind of sucks because there isn’t really any guidance. The key is to talk to the old man and read the book in his hut.
At the risk of almost spoiling it… they are trying to teach you the cooking mechanism, which is quite important in the game, but has quite a learning curve.
Once you get out of the great plateau, then the game really starts and boy is it big. Just enjoy the scenery and don’t get too focussed on quickly completing it.
I kind of regret rushing the game the first play through.
Eventually I played through it multiple times. It’s really, really good. But it does take a lot of time!
I’m going to be real- I enjoyed BotW and TotK enough, but I don’t see them as traditional Zelda games and it actually pisses me off that Aonuma has come out and said we will NEVER get a traditional 3D Zelda ever again. So the success of the open-world Zeldas is the nail in the coffin for the games we actually grew up loving. The death of the open-world fad can’t come soon enough, most of these games are nothing special.
I tried and hated both. Which sucks, because I have played just about every Zelda game up to botw. It’s just not a Zelda game. It’s generic open world adventure game number 58957853378 with a Zelda graphics pack…
I agree wholeheartedly, I haven’t played any Zelda before BotW and based purely on reviews you’d think it’s the second coming, but then it’s just kind of a cool open-world puzzle game with truly atrocious combat system. It feels like some people just love bland and uninspired as long as it has Zelda branding.
I wanted to like this game but the story was just so uninteresting to me that I had to put it down. I know not everyone is like me but as someone who adored the stories in oot and majoras mask, I couldn’t do it man.
Hahaha tooootally fair. Both BotW and TotK were story snoozefests for me, but I thought the gameplay was great (withdoubledurabilitymodinBotW)
I loved the story in OOT, never got into Mask.
Yeah TOTK story was better in that you’re unraveling a mystery instead of just seeing stuff that already happened. Technically the stuff in TOTK also “already happened”, and mechanically it’s pretty much identical, but imo the way it’s framed makes it much more interesting and compelling. I think the key is you’re seeing these events in order to uncover new information, whereas BOTWs flashbacks didn’t really give you any useful information, just filled in the details of a story you already had the cliff notes for.
Agreed fully that TotK story is much much better that BotW.
I went straight from BotW to Elden Ring though, so they took my score down. Elden’s gameplay, story, and world are unmatched by any other open-world game. The world is so full and flush and ALIVE. There’s oodles of empty space in the open-world Zelda games, and there’s so few enemy types. I still love the games, but as a late late Elden Ring adopter, I have a new impossible standard for a world… that’s open.
The actual story portion was way too short. I prefer Tears of the Kingdom, because the story is longer and more involved.
The weapon breaking is annoying, even in TotK still. It‘d be more bearable if you could at least repair broken stuff at a blacksmith or something, but as it is, I’m scared to lose my cool stuff to a buncha gremlins. So I‘m hoarding the good stuff and cope with poor throw-away weapons…
It‘s a bit like the „elixiers“ situation in old FF games: Game‘s over and you have 22 unused elixiers you saved for when you really need them.
There are some special weapons that you got from story quests that are repairable.
The game literally tells you you can use warm clothing or elixirs to keep warm. There’s even another method they don’t tell you, equipping an elemental weapon can change your temperature. Just have a flame blade on your back and you can survive running around in snow.
Learning where to buy clothes and how to make elixirs is not hard. Just talk to people near where you’re struggling.
Weapon durability is only a problem if you don’t exercise any discretion in which weapon you use for which situation. If you use your best weapon on weak enemies, you won’t have it later when you face stronger ones. So… don’t.
Also at the entrance of the ice region there is a campfire with bowl and next to it the ingredients for the food that keeps you warm iirc.
I personally modded the game to remove weapon and shield durability, and it was unreal how much more enjoyable this made BOTW to me.
I got farther than you, but felt all of those things didn’t really improve or feel as fun. The weapon breaking is annoying. I feel like it’s too quick.
Edit: I eventually gave up after the ‘first’ boss (I know you can do them any order, but water blight is generally considered the easier one to do first).
A few tips for you:
Cook food. Lots of it. You can sell cooked food (especially meats e.g. rare meats) for crazy amounts of rupees. Use rupees to buy cold weather clothing from the various towns in game, then use that whenever you feel cold (same goes for hot weather, you’ll need hot weather clothes).
Don’t try to go way off into the mountains right to start. Find the shrines close to you, mark them on your map, and go there. Do the same for towns. You can then fast travel via the map around the game world, making things way easier.
Finally, when it comes to weapons, you really can’t get attached to any of them. The Master Sword is the only one that doesn’t break, but it will lose energy and take time to recharge before it can be used again. It’s just part of the game mechanics. While annoying, it does force you to plan out your attacks and consider your resource usage.
It did finally click for me, but it took well over a year. Someone told me to play for a couple weeks with no goals, and that finally made it happen. I didn’t put it down for another hundred hours.
BotW and TotK are a very different type of game from OoT. As others have pointed out, there are a lot of environmental mechanics to learn as well as how to find and use different types of weapons due to weapon durability. It’s a much more open ended game than OoT where exploration is much more of a focus, whereas OoT is more story focused and has a more specific order to do things (which isn’t 100% set in stone, as the whole Spirit vs Shadow Temple debate proves) that’s still more straightforward than the newer games. I like both types of games, especially for both OoT and BotW/TotK being gaming masterpieces for their time, and the three of them are my top 3 Zelda games for sure. But if you don’t like one or more of them that’s perfectly fine. Not every game will appeal to everyone.
Fun fact, Spirit and Shadow aren’t the only temples in that game you can do out of order. You can do the Fire Temple first, as there is only one chest that requires arrows and it doesn’t have anything crazy important in it. Water Temple can also be cleared without arrows, but you do have to get a bit more creative with some non-intuitive jumps and either saving and resetting or using a warp song to go back to the dungeon entrance without raising the water level in order to do that. Spirit Temple does require arrows but nothing else from the other dungeons is required so you could do it as early as your second dungeon. Even then I think you can abuse invincibility frames to skip an eye switch and I can’t remember anything else that required arrows in there. Shadow Temple is the most restrictive, but only because you have to clear Forest, Fire, and Water in order to gain access to it. Once you’re actually in the dungeon you’ll find that arrows are the only item from the other dungeons you actually have to use to beat it.
I bought BotW right when it came out and I’m still not all that much further than you. I’ve come back to it multiple times, but just can’t get into it. I had trouble with the freezing area too. Took me an hour before I finally stumbled across a solution. I’ve gotten a bit further than you, and it just keeps getting more and more over complicated as you go.
I just don’t think the game is fun, personally. But I also don’t think Skyrim is fun. I’m not really into most open world games. I wish they would make us a new one more in the style of Ocarina and Twilight Princess, but it seems like we’re in the minority
