Last night I ran into the Water temple, access denied :/ So I explored the area, messed with some of the outdoor puzzles. I actually managed to get a door open with a whater wheel behind it but that stayed unresponsive while pointed a fire hydrant at it. So started the quest to find the quest :/ Meanwhile playing Super Mario Sunshine while I was trying to find the quest NPC that will open the door. Carrying a fire hydrant around with ultra-hand to clean the goop. (Which is also pointless, all back after doing a shrine). I did restore some water source on an island, must be for something, no info.

I finally backtracked the whole path far enough to run into Sidon, but he just told me to go find his wife further back. And she finally told me to go find Sidon again. Why do these NPC's keep sending me back and forth, reminds me of Asterix and Obelix getting the run around trying to navigate the Roman bureaucracy. (The twelve tasks of Asterix) Someone cut the red tape and let me in lol. Anyway after meeting the wife I back tracked further to get more fire hydrants as they seem important here.

Zora's domain does look like quite an upgrade from BotW graphics wise, however it comes at a price. Lot of frame rate drops there. Holding a fire hydrant at the water temple area had the fps drop in the low teens and constant stutters around the Zora city. I never had any framerate issues in the Depths so it stands out now. The water temple 'bubble' also suffers from massive pop in and loading stutters while traveling around on a hover platform.

It seems to be a theme in TotK, find the destination first, then go look for the start doh. Much easier to spot a temple than the person to start the quest! It's a bit of a shame the quests are rigidly linear affairs as that doesn't work with the freedom of travel. But I guess at least I got to see the path to the temple (in reverse) which would otherwise be far too easy to skip in its entirety. 3 temples located so far, plus a construct factory, mazes and other places that are all closed / access denied. I guess I need to visit the towns to collect quests, as in just go to the dots from the regional phenomena.

Zelda TotK: You can do what you want, but if you don't do it in the order we want you to do it in, you'll spoil half the game and end op backtracking most of the time! BotW had this problem far less since you can't simply fly anywhere and the map was still new making it rewarding to explore the land and find the cities. Naturally in TotK I'm drawn to exploring the unknown, yet the quests are apparently all in the old bits.

I left the game at the fire hydrant gacha machine, tonight back to Sidon to see if he can spare a minute to let me in the water temple.

68% map completion now and I am seriously asking myself if I should bother. @Veknoid_Outcast The experience is way overloaded already. There are so many things that aren't fun to do and what's really missing is a sufficient number of main objectives that provide purpose to all the collecting and upgrading you do throughout the game. In the beginning there's this one door at the temple of time where you need four hearts to open it; back then I assumed that TotK might have a few of these doors as checkpoints for the overall progress. But there's nothing; there's actually less than in BotW which had an intimidating dungeon in Hyrule Castle; TotK doesn't even have that and that's why it all feels a bit hollow. A comparison to Octopath Traveler 2 applies here: That was another sequel in the same vein with baby steps forward and a lot of unpleasant things remaining unchanged.

The next game I am going to buy is the Atelier Marie Remake, eleven days to go until its release. I am very much looking forward to it, because the origin of the Atelier series is about nothing more than a game that is fun to play without the bloat of what Atelier games have nowadays. Something fun to play is what I really need now, so in the coming ten days I am probably opting to play Etrian Odyssey 2 rather than TotK with its growing monotony.

The next Zelda should either have half the size of Breath of the Wild's world map or a dozen of dungeons embedded in the same size as BotW's map; embedded like the Gerudo temple in TotK, that's what I mean with it. There needs to be more density of interesting places to visit instead of this vast emptiness with occasional korok seeds, treasure chests and minibosses. Zelda needs proper dungeons, filled with powerful enemies instead of puzzles. Such dungeons would give the experience purpose, be the goals that the player is working towards.

The difference between BotW and TotK is that players were more forgiving towards BotW because it was a step in the right direction for the Zelda series after all the lock and key mechanisms of Skyward Sword that greatly narrowed down the choices that the players had. TotK failed to take the next step and I think that's how it will be remembered. I am just glad that I didn't have high expectations, because otherwise I would have been let down tremendously. I had huge expectations for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and then was disappointed because not all of it could match or exceed the previous two games; but all that was complaining on a very high level, because XC3 joined the ranks of all-time great JRPGs and will be great to replay; I know because I already did a few times. But TotK... yeah, it's a lot like Octopath Traveler 2: A could-have-been that didn't bring to the table what it should have done.

I'm curious, how have you managed to reach the Water Tample without activating its quest? There are no steam of water to reach it before the quests starts, at least I don’t remember any

Let me ask you guys this: I found the fire temple in the depths. Is it possible to beat it without fallowing any story at all??

Last night I ran into the Water temple, access denied :/ So I explored the area, messed with some of the outdoor puzzles. I actually managed to get a door open with a whater wheel behind it but that stayed unresponsive while pointed a fire hydrant at it. So started the quest to find the quest :/ Meanwhile playing Super Mario Sunshine while I was trying to find the quest NPC that will open the door. Carrying a fire hydrant around with ultra-hand to clean the goop. (Which is also pointless, all back after doing a shrine). I did restore some water source on an island, must be for something, no info.

I finally backtracked the whole path far enough to run into Sidon, but he just told me to go find his wife further back. And she finally told me to go find Sidon again. Why do these NPC's keep sending me back and forth, reminds me of Asterix and Obelix getting the run around trying to navigate the Roman bureaucracy. (The twelve tasks of Asterix) Someone cut the red tape and let me in lol. Anyway after meeting the wife I back tracked further to get more fire hydrants as they seem important here.

Zora's domain does look like quite an upgrade from BotW graphics wise, however it comes at a price. Lot of frame rate drops there. Holding a fire hydrant at the water temple area had the fps drop in the low teens and constant stutters around the Zora city. I never had any framerate issues in the Depths so it stands out now. The water temple 'bubble' also suffers from massive pop in and loading stutters while traveling around on a hover platform.

It seems to be a theme in TotK, find the destination first, then go look for the start doh. Much easier to spot a temple than the person to start the quest! It's a bit of a shame the quests are rigidly linear affairs as that doesn't work with the freedom of travel. But I guess at least I got to see the path to the temple (in reverse) which would otherwise be far too easy to skip in its entirety. 3 temples located so far, plus a construct factory, mazes and other places that are all closed / access denied. I guess I need to visit the towns to collect quests, as in just go to the dots from the regional phenomena.

Zelda TotK: You can do what you want, but if you don't do it in the order we want you to do it in, you'll spoil half the game and end op backtracking most of the time! BotW had this problem far less since you can't simply fly anywhere and the map was still new making it rewarding to explore the land and find the cities. Naturally in TotK I'm drawn to exploring the unknown, yet the quests are apparently all in the old bits.

I left the game at the fire hydrant gacha machine, tonight back to Sidon to see if he can spare a minute to let me in the water temple.

The lead up to the desert with the extreme weather is cool; I like the dynamic approach to dealing with temperature, like sticking to the shadows and using water to wet Link during the heat of the day. This kind of systems-driven gameplay is one of TOTK's greatest strengths. It's almost like an open world take on the Immersive Sim.

That mental "oh wow" moment when something unexpected but logical happens like a weapon accidentally starting a fire that creates an updraft, or wetness protecting against heat and conducting electricity, is just so satisfying.