MTZehvor said:
That's actually my problem; my complaint isn't that the curve distortion makes part of the game too hard, it's that it makes the rest of the game too easy. The boost in strength that you mention is too helpful. The gap in skill demanded between Thunderblight and the other bosses, combined with the near infinite amount of healing items you can take with you into battle and the overpoweredness of the champions' gifts, meant that I was almost never in any real danger of dying from Naboris onward, including the final boss. To try and put things concisely, the start of the game + Naboris demands that you pick up a bevy of survival and combat skills in order to survive. The limited amount of healing items you have at the beginning of the game and the low quality of your equipment, combined with the difficulty of earlier encounters such as the first Lynel and Thunderblight, means that BotW requires a high degree of skill from the player in the first half of the game. In other words, you have to "git gud." And that's a good thing; I tend to prefer games that challenge me. My personal complaint is that the second half of the game doesn't keep up the same degree of challenge. After Naboris, you acquire three powers (Mipha's Grace, Urbosa's Fury, and Daruk's Protection) that make combat much easier. Simply by virtue of having played the game for a long time, you've almost assuredly found much better gear and weapons, and accumulated a large number of healing items. And, on top of all that, you have the skill you've developed from the first half of the game. You've gotten better at combat from having to fight Lynels and Thunderblight, and you've learned the ins and outs of surviving in BotW from the earlier parts of the game when you didn't have good equipment or healing items to fall back on. This should have been when even tougher enemies showed up; to force the player to master both the skills they've learned so far and the better armor and weapons they've found. The challenge level should have ramped up to match the increase in the players' skillset and improvement in equipment. But it doesn't: the enemies don't get any tougher. In fact, I think you can make the argument that they get easier. Personally, I think that Windblight, Fireblight, and Calamity are all easier than Thunderblight. I rarely felt like I was being challenged past Naboris; the game forces you to develop all of these combat and survival skills in the first half, but then never requires you to use them past the halfway point. This may all just be a matter of perspective and what kind of difficulty you're looking for in a game, but I thought BotW could've been improved significantly by making the latter half of the game demanding of the player in the same way the first half was. |
See if the late game had been more difficult, I for one would have found that too frustrating. Early on I was prepared to accept that I would die repeatedly in the process of learning, but by the time I'd accumulated more hearts and powers, better weapons, and plenty of healing items, I liked that this accumulated effort gave me some leeway. It felt like a fair payoff; I'd worked hard to get this strong, so my reward was that I would no longer have to fear the baddies I'd once fled from. As for bringing in even stronger baddies at this point, I feel like the White Lynels filled that niche for me.
The beauty of Botw is that the play gets to decide how hard it is; you can take the time to turn your character into a demigod if you're like me and prefer a more leisurely experience, or you can skip the Divine Beasts and just focus on getting the Master Sword and taking the fight to Ganon as early as possible.
