renegadefolkhero | Entries tagged with video games: zelda tears of the kingdom

Crosspost from .club for Reasons. All you need to know is I've been gameblabbing TOTK for about a month, and this time I'm actually playing the game which means completing the various temples and whatnot.

The boss of the water temple, the Muckterror, is a terrorist. An absolute little shit. It was one of the most annoying boss fights I've ever dealt with in recent memory. This little bastard shoots slime all over the place, and flips and flops everywhere, and belongs in jail. I initially put a hydrant on a homing device so it would clean things up for me, but it was far more effective to strap a hydrant to my shield and charge the damn thing. I'm torn between despising what I was put through and appreciating that they did something radically different for this boss.

Liberating the water temple earns us Sidon's water bubble power, as well as his undying devotion, which I'm pretty sure Link already had... 👀

Back when BOTW came out, I heard people shipped Link/Sidon and I was like, "Ok, you kids have fun." Now, as I explore the Zora's domain in TOTK, I increasingly 👀 have Thoughts.

Sidon is HUGE. The size difference is sending me.
Sidon is objectively hot, not up for debate.
Link evidently has a special relationship and history with the Zora. Multiple characters have commented on knowing him as a child, or giving him childhood nicknames and so forth.
Sidon's sister Mipha was in love with Link, and unless I completely misunderstood this is explicitly canon. (Whereas Link being romantically in love with anyone is nebulous by design and you could see it different ways).
Everyone, including Sidon, refers to Link as the Prince's very best friend, and so on.
Evidently Sidon will not shut the fuck up about Link.
There's a statue of Link riding Sidon's back in the town square, essentially, and the thought of them posing for this statue is sending me again.
Link is notoriously stoic about romantic matters and on the watsonian side you can up with any number of delicious reasons why he would hold such things close to his chest.

When you initially arrive at the domain and talk to Yona, she's like, "Surprise, I'm your best friend's fiance!" and -- knowing very little about any of this -- I truly had a moment, because there's so much you can do with a setup like that.

Anyway, my point is I get it now. The youth were correct, as usual. And I am ABSOLUTELY writing this and filing off the serial numbers. It's too damn juicy to leave alone.

One of the most annoying features of this game is slippery rocks, because it never fails to start raining when I want to climb some big thing. I was recently awarded the first part of the frog armor, and that is how I learned there are 3 levels of slip protection. So I can still slip, but chugging a few sticky frog potions helps.

The thought of doing enough side quests to get the rest of the frog armor made me go :P though. My interest is starting to wind down, which is fairly typical in open world games once I've put in around 60 hours. I didn't start playing regularly until December and it absorbed most of my gaming attention for the past two months. I periodically returned to Breath of the Wild over the years, and I suspect I will do the same thing with this game. Hopefully next time I'll be motivated to complete shrines and work on the main quests.

Completing the map early had the unexpected effect of making exploration a bit overwhelming. If I had to do it again, I'd try to focus on exploring one area at a time, if only to make it easier to keep track of where I've been.
I've discovered maybe half the shrines, but I still find them tedious and lack the patience to finish them. As a result, my heath/energy is still pretty low.
Bizarrely, I kinda got into finding koroks! This game has a lot more variety of korok challenge, which is part of it. I've unlocked plenty of weapon/bow/shield slots (honestly, maybe too many, it takes a second to scroll through my weaposn now) so now I'm just collecting korok seeds for fun.
There are 147 caves, and therefore 147 bubbul gems, and I've only found a fraction of them. I've unlocked maybe half the rewards. I didn't realize there was a bubbul gem in each cave when I started playing, and I have no idea how many caves I explored without finding one.
There are 12 geoglyphs and I've unlocked about half the memories.
I've discovered maaaaybe 1/4 of the armors, if even.
There are 58 wells and I've found about half.
I've barely touched the sky portion of the game. Every time I launched from a tower, I would explore whatever sections were within gliding distance, but I honestly found this aspect of the game underwhelming and generally uninteresting compared to the underground/caves/wells areas.
IIRC I've only undarked about half the underground area. I haven't been down there in like a month.

Overall, I like this game better than the first one and I've enjoyed playing it, but I feel like the lackluster storytelling is a huge missed opportunity, and Nintendo keeps doing really annoying things from a design perspective that feel assholish and contrarian for no good reason.

I don't know if it's a coincidence or planned, but ever since I came across the Yiga Clan at the observatory the Yiga have been constantly underfoot. They disguise themselves as regular people but you can tell by the eyes and their general weirdness about bananas. They also leave around banana traps in the middle of nowhere, then act like I'm the biggest idiot ever when in fact I did it on purpose because I wanted to slap Yiga and/or set Yiga on fire and get a few extra swords. Now that I've learned there is Yiga Armor in this game I am ON THAT.

I helped rebuild a village! The later stages of this quest were kind of silly. You "help" with construction by chopping down a tree and placing it as a support beam. It was still fun and it has a lot of neat rewards. It turns out there's a grassy field near Hateno where you can cut grass to reiably produce Hylian rice, and I was able to farm what I needed much more efficiently than waiting for the shop to restock.

What's interesting about the side quests in this game is the rewards tend to be pretty neglibile, unless you're going after Misko shrines, but I still find being given a plate of stewed tomatoes or whatever very rewarding. I really love that there are a billion armors to collect in this game, and I'm warming up to the fusion system.

OH, I almost forgot.

That happened. I approached what looked like a Great Faerie bulb and a Horse God popped out. I really, truly did not expect that. The Horse God is kind of a weirdo, but they can upgrade your horse and revive ones who have died. This is cool. The game reads your save files from Breath of the Wild, if you have any, and allows you to access those horses from a stable, which I thought was a nice touch.

I've continued roaming around completing side quests. Most recently, I filled out the full map and confirmed I've barely scratched the surface exploring though I've put over 50 hours into this game. I usually settle in for a 30 to 45 minute play session after work, which is generally enough time to find something new or die trying.

One of the main plots is to Find Zelda. Ask around and Zelda is seemingly everywhere asking people to do counter-intuitive things, like go into monster-infested caves naked or ignore strange ruins. Obviously this is an imposter and not really Zelda. I think the idea was to encourage players to get into the rich sidequest economy.

Mount Doom sucked the first time, but it sucks slightly less this time. One issue I have here (and elsewhere) is there are caves that are filled with excessive amounts of rock walls that must be broken, and this is primarily done with a sword fused to a rock. There's one on Mount Doom so large I broke 5 rock weapons tunneling through it. Weapons decay makes a "puzzle" like this even more tedious. The devs understand this, but rather than Not Doing That, they make sure there are lots of rocks and swords lying around so you don't have to constantly scrounge around for more rocks and swords which would be even more tedious. So thanks, I guess? But maybe we could have just skipped the excessive rock breaking part in the first place. (I say, even though swinging around a huge sword fused to a boulder is actually kind of therapeutic.)

In the plus column, there are a bunch of minecarts lying around and it has been good fun to hijack these and send a few koroks hurtling around the mountain. The first time was an accident, the rest were for personal enjoyment. I've since begun fusing rockets to koroks and launching them into space, which is fun and has been well-received by Donut.

On the sidequest side, I'm helping rebuild a coastal village (Hylian rice is proving to be a terrible bottleneck, but I've honestly enjoyed this one a lot) and I stumbled across a mayoral race and IDK what the hell is going on in Hateno but I need rice which they only stock in increments of 4 or 5 so I guess I'm here for it.

I sometimes search for topics like, "How to collect apples in Zelda," and that is how I learned there's an autobuild ability that can be found underground at Great Abandoned Central Mine and this can be used for clever and nefarious purposes.

I decided I would go there prematurely, and boy was I in for a surprise! Without spoiling anything (does it matter?) my fave is back, and is a badder ass than ever, so uh. I guess we'll just deal with that later!

After continuing to die in dumb ways, because I'd barely upgraded my hearts or armor and one-hit deaths were distressingly common, I decided to embark on the great faerie quests and improve my duds. The great faeries are just as awesome as they were in the last game, but with 50% less sexual harassment. This questline has been one of my favorites, because it requires recruiting minstrels and transporting them while they scream and holler for you to slow down and stop making the ride so bumpy. They're a bunch of crybabies; we always get there in one piece.

In the process, I've been digging into the Gazette questlines that are located at each stable. These are actually pretty fun and varied, and I enjoy them, and I enjoy diving into wells.

So, about Link and Zelda

Zelink, if you will. There was a meme floating around on Tumblr that was like, "THis is how Link lOoKs at Zelda" and it was just Link being utterly unemotive, as always, and someone replied to this by offering a comparison of pictures of Link eating food, which is quite literally the only time he seems to enjoy living.

As far as I can tell, Nintendo doesn't want to commit one way or another. They want to have their cake and eat it too without even having to bake or ice anything. If I was gonna be generous, I'd say they're leaving it open to interpretation so fans can enjoy a wide range of Zelink without the heavy hand of canon but here's the thing--Nintendo hates fan interpretation and only wants you to do/say/think what they want you to do/say/think and it has always been this way so there's no point in being generous.

In the previous game, the Zora chick was mildly obsessed with Link (understandable), and Link evidently rolled with that but it was impossible for me to tell if he was into her or if it was platonic for him or if it was a chaste romance or a diplomatic/political thing or what. I can't tell what sort of assumption we're supposed to be making in Tears of the Kingdom either, but Link seems to get uncomfortable when characters flirt with him and IDK man. I don't see it. I think we should just let him enjoy his dubious food in peace. The Zelgan people are right, Zelda ought to tap that. She needs to fuck the bottom out of Ganon and Fix Him (which is impossible) and cause massive amounts of toxic drama for everyone. But clearly nobody in any of these games is ever getting laid, not even the horny giant faeries who no doubt awakened many size-kink fantasies and live rent-free in my brain. The smut writers of this fandom bear an unfortunately high burden. Thanks Nintendo.