I love Zelda I always have. The first game I ever played was the original Zelda on the NES and I was hooked ever since. I’ve even played most of the games and really enjoyed all of them.
But there’s one glaring issue that I have with botw/totk. The weapon/armor system. I hate games with weapon/armor degradation and Zelda’s system is even worse than normal.
They went from weapons never breaking or taking damage at all, to shields taking damage but get the Hylian shield and it’s unbreakable, to every single weapon and shield breaks after a pathetic amount of uses.
I would’ve even been fine with an Oblivion style degradation system where the weapon does less damage the more damaged it is but can be repaired with the right tool or by going to a blacksmith.
It’s even worse when you notice that higher tier weapons break faster than lower tier ones, or that enemies can use weapons forever, yet the chosen fuckin hero only gets about 15 whacks before a solid piece of wood/metal just fuckin explodes.
I agree, it was not very fun. It would have been much more fun to just find one copy of the elemental swords, wands, and such, and just carry around as many as you could carry and use the ones that made sense for the current battle. Even better if there were slashing versus stabbing swords which were better for certain enemies. Stuff like that.
I will say, though, even a few hours into the game it got to the point where I had too many weapons, and I very rarely ran out. Every enemy drops some. And it turns out, I didn’t really mind fighting Lynels or “Major Test of Strength” guardians to get their goods weapons once every blood moon. I enjoyed how those fights were difficult and technical.
Even just adding a repair mechanic would have been great. It also would have made a lot more sense lore-wise if BotW had the “everything made of metal is degrading from a curse” that TotK had. It made sense in TotK that weapons were fragile, but not in BotW.
All in all, it was a top-design choice. They didn’t want you to find one Royal Guard weapon an hour into the game and faceroll everything all game. That’s one of the downsides of even having a “this sword does more damage than other swords” type weapon system. How do you even explain that lore-wise? If a sword is magical, sure, but some “Royal Guard” sword isn’t automatically better than an ordinary sword of the same size, shape and also made of steel.
I broke Skyrim for myself on my first playthrough because I did dual wielding, smithing, and enchanting, maxed both of those out, and made the most insane double-enchanted dragon bone(?) swords before I finished even 1/10 of the plot. When the first dragon attack happened, I chopped it up in like 5 seconds. I was so insanely overpowered. That never happens in BotW. Even with the best weapons in the game, fighting a Silver Lynel is work!
This is why I don’t get Zelda games anymore. I also am not a fan of the huge open world thing that makes most of your game time running from place to place so they don’t have to make much content.
For me BotW was amazing right up until you fired your second ancient arrow. Guardians start as terrifying monsters you have to run from. When you finally get ancient arrows, you get revenge, and that’s extremely satisfying. After that, it’s just a boring slog of killing guardians to farm their parts to kill more guardians ad nauseam until you beat the game.
Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom.
I love Zelda I always have. The first game I ever played was the original Zelda on the NES and I was hooked ever since. I’ve even played most of the games and really enjoyed all of them.
But there’s one glaring issue that I have with botw/totk. The weapon/armor system. I hate games with weapon/armor degradation and Zelda’s system is even worse than normal.
They went from weapons never breaking or taking damage at all, to shields taking damage but get the Hylian shield and it’s unbreakable, to every single weapon and shield breaks after a pathetic amount of uses.
I would’ve even been fine with an Oblivion style degradation system where the weapon does less damage the more damaged it is but can be repaired with the right tool or by going to a blacksmith.
It’s even worse when you notice that higher tier weapons break faster than lower tier ones, or that enemies can use weapons forever, yet the chosen fuckin hero only gets about 15 whacks before a solid piece of wood/metal just fuckin explodes.
Yep, I hate spending a decent chunk of time going somewhere to collect some good weapons, then like 2 encounters later half of them are broken.
It MASSIVELY slows down the pacing of the game and makes it feel like such a slog.
I agree, it was not very fun. It would have been much more fun to just find one copy of the elemental swords, wands, and such, and just carry around as many as you could carry and use the ones that made sense for the current battle. Even better if there were slashing versus stabbing swords which were better for certain enemies. Stuff like that.
I will say, though, even a few hours into the game it got to the point where I had too many weapons, and I very rarely ran out. Every enemy drops some. And it turns out, I didn’t really mind fighting Lynels or “Major Test of Strength” guardians to get their goods weapons once every blood moon. I enjoyed how those fights were difficult and technical.
Even just adding a repair mechanic would have been great. It also would have made a lot more sense lore-wise if BotW had the “everything made of metal is degrading from a curse” that TotK had. It made sense in TotK that weapons were fragile, but not in BotW.
All in all, it was a top-design choice. They didn’t want you to find one Royal Guard weapon an hour into the game and faceroll everything all game. That’s one of the downsides of even having a “this sword does more damage than other swords” type weapon system. How do you even explain that lore-wise? If a sword is magical, sure, but some “Royal Guard” sword isn’t automatically better than an ordinary sword of the same size, shape and also made of steel.
I broke Skyrim for myself on my first playthrough because I did dual wielding, smithing, and enchanting, maxed both of those out, and made the most insane double-enchanted dragon bone(?) swords before I finished even 1/10 of the plot. When the first dragon attack happened, I chopped it up in like 5 seconds. I was so insanely overpowered. That never happens in BotW. Even with the best weapons in the game, fighting a Silver Lynel is work!
This is why I don’t get Zelda games anymore. I also am not a fan of the huge open world thing that makes most of your game time running from place to place so they don’t have to make much content.
For me BotW was amazing right up until you fired your second ancient arrow. Guardians start as terrifying monsters you have to run from. When you finally get ancient arrows, you get revenge, and that’s extremely satisfying. After that, it’s just a boring slog of killing guardians to farm their parts to kill more guardians ad nauseam until you beat the game.