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Friday Fun Thread for May 5, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Tears of the Kingdom has leaked, so who else has been playing it? I wasted many valuable hours of my life fucking around with the various systems in BOTW, so I am in heaven with TOTK, which goes full garrys mod, letting you build all sorts of ridiculous contraptions to fly or sail or trundle about the place, and with a very intuitive control set up. I been playing the game all week but still haven't beat the first boss, I've spent so much time jerry rigging airships out of camp-fires and balloons, and building go carts out of refuse. I have beat a heap of hinox and lynels though, and some of the new mini bosses like the constructs and shadow ganon.

The new weapon system is quite inventive too - the new evil decays all weapons in the land somehow, making even something like the royal broadsword ineffective trash. It's mitigated however, by the fusion system, with which you can fuse almost any item to your weapon, augmenting its effect. At first this seems to be a compelling reason to chase down tough enemies - fusing the horn of a black moblin to your weapon makes it much more powerful than a regular moblin horn as you'd expect. But as you play around with it you find you can do much more impressive stuff with other items than just up the attack power. Attach a ruby to your weapon and it becomes a wand, or attach an electric lizfalos claw and it will shock enemies. Same with your shield, attach a rock for extra durability, or a flame emitter for a flamethrower shield, or get more creative and attach a spring that pushes enemies away when they attack, or a dazzle bud to blind them. There are some much cooler effects you can set up too, but I don't want to spoil them all.

There's also a new underground area, sitting beneath the main map. It's a lot more sparse than above ground, but there's still quite a bit to do, and some interesting puzzles. There are caves all over the place too - and the presentation of it reminds me a lot of elden ring. Only superficially of course, things like how the caves are tracked and the way the underground area looks, but I appreciate it all the same.

There's still a lot of the trivial annoyances only Nintendo gets away with, like that old 'bad actor' style of cut scenes where people act and talk separately, but overall I'm having a blast. If you have played it, what were your impressions? Just nobody mention the goatse shrines.

I don't have it, but as someone who really disliked BOTW I'm curious if you can answer a few questions.

  • Are there actual dungeons this time?

  • Are there more than 4 items in this one?

  • Is there normal music in the game, not just ambient stuff?

  • Is weapon durability still a thing?

  • Is the world a bit more pleasant to go through? In BOTW it was just so boring to traverse, there was nothing interesting between point A and point B - but there was a lot of ground to cover between point A and point B.

To be honest I don't have high hopes that Nintendo did a good job on this game given how bad I felt BOTW was, but I am hopeful to be wrong. I generally love Zelda games, would like to be able to enjoy this one too.

Oh man you are not going to enjoy TOTK. In order it's no, no, there's a little, yes, and sort of? There's more variety and more things to find about the place - the caves in particular, but there's also the underground map so in effect the amount of empty space has doubled. There are a lot more people around though, I've run into way more random strangers who aren't yiga than by this point in BOTW.

And there are a shitload of additional traversal options now - the jerry rigged airships and go karts and so on are available from the start, and the ubisoft towers now launch you into the air so you can use that to travel much further much quicker. And one of your powers this time lets you swim up through the ground if there's a platform above you so you don't have to do nearly as much climbing.

Also, and I know this is battered housewife material but it's true - the durability isn't that much of a bother in TOTK. After Zelda got a haircut and caused the upheaval weapons decayed, but they also apparently bred like rabbits - they are everywhere. I went digging in a cave just before and the sediment appears to be comprised of about 40% rusty claymores, I had 8 lying around me by the time my rock hammer broke. The other thing is that because of the fusion system the weapons themselves don't matter as much as how you use them - even the best botw weapons are shit compared to fused weapons.

As for the LOZ qualities its still shrines and guardians whatever they're called now. I have beaten the wind temple boss now (astel the naturalborn looking antlion creature, cool if trivial fight) and once you do that it's hard to even call the sky gardens pseudo dungeons, they might as well just hand you the blessing.

Disappointing, but not surprising. Thanks for the answers! It sounds like this is another case of "it is a good game but a bad Zelda", just like with BOTW.

I wish there were some more good zeldas out there though. There have been a few released recently, like Death's Door was alright, but it feels very lifeless, no pun intended.

Tunic looked promising.

Have you played it? I grabbed it when it first hit gamepass but stopped playing after about five minutes because it bugged out and I couldn't attack. I've heard that now they've squashed those bugs it's a outstanding game, but it isn't on gamepass any longer and it is too expensive for me to buy sight unseen.

Although I did forget a couple of alright ones - Prodigal and the Blossom Tales games are ok, and if you like Zelda 2, Cathedral and Infernax are fantastic (although Infernax strays closer to metroidvania.)

Nope, just watched a bit of playthrough and thought it was too good to spoil.