Getting back out the North Lomei maze proved to be a new challenge. You start at about -672 and need to go up to +300 or so. Just over a 1000 units to travel up through a narrow tunnel. That's too far for a triple fan assisted rocket boost balloon. The balloon despawns and then you have to climb further. I didn't have any stamina food prepared, still too far to climb out.

I tried adding rockets, put them in the basket as cargo to use more boosts along the way. However when you use ultra-hand in a balloon, it starts shifting instead of continuing to go straight up. Also unlike earlier adding a rocket to the side affected the course pushing it into a wall. The difference with my first 'escape' is that that didn't have any helper fans, just single rockets added in flight. Then it kept going straight up despite the rocket being on the side. Here I ended up on the wall and the geometry of this entrance is that it narrows into a smaller square tunnel at the roof of the Depths, thus creates a perfect trap to get stuck while ascending.

Waiting to deploy the additional rockets until in the smaller tunnel didn't work either. The extra weight slows the balloon down, and I could only set off 2 rocket boosts ion the narrower tunnel before the balloon despawned, even further to climb up than not taking any additional rockets. I didn't try taking them out mid flight this time as it was such a pita first time.

Instead I quickly confirmed that using a control stick is pointless. You can't add while operating a control stick and you can't see where you are going and there's always some drift, so I ended up stuck on the wall long before reaching the narrower tunnel. Easiest solution was double up on the fans. 6 fan powered rocket boosted balloon to get 1000 units straight up, plus a large zonai charge to recharge my maxed battery 70% of the way up. This balloon time limit is challenging!

Then I noticed the master sword was flying over while going for the most NW shrine, so I went to grab that. Unfortunately picking that up teleports you to great sky island (for no reason) so then I had to fly all the way back again. How rude. But now I could grab the rest of the Yiga armor and picked up another memory along the way, pretty much completed the end of the story but still missing most of the earlier memories, getting everything backwards lol. So far still more to find when back tracking.

Currently in the sky again, another copy-paste zone with some small differences. Routine busy work.

Meanwhile Hyrule engineering keeps finding new ways to push the build engine
https://www.reddit.com/r/HyruleEngineering/comments/15dqwkn/floating_rotation_lazer_weapons/?utm_source=embedv2&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_content=whitespace&embed_host_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eurogamer.net%2Fzelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-players-use-quantum-linking-to-make-impressive-builds (dunno how to embed this)

https://www.eurogamer.net/zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-players-use-quantum-linking-to-make-impressive-builds

Enjoying the game but I definitely want & would of preferred a fresh start (Ala Majora's mask) versus revisiting all of these place. Even if the new map was only 1/3 the size of current Hyrule, that would of been a benefit to my experience. I'm only like 6hours in so maybe my feelings will change but there's a bit of fatigue in running around the familiar landscapes and towns.

I get that, though I never really bought into "journey is its own reward" mantra, I was always more of "how about both, journey and prize?" type of guy. So for me both BotW and TotK are very mediocre exploration games due to how subpar reward system is.

I was honestly amazed by some things in TotK when I started the game, looking at some of the distant islands in the sky, but that was my 35+ years of playing RPGs talking, and hoping for major changes from BotW, not the reality of the game. You know, when you see something in the distance and it looks amazing, like it holds a piece of very important information, or some ancient weapon or shield or armor or new spell that you will be using for next 30+ hours in 150+ game? Or a terrible evil you need to overcome to initiate response from BBEG, thus progressing the story? Yeah well, after 15-20 hours in I realized that will (almost) never be true, and most of the times prize for getting somewhere will be equivalent of proverbial middle finger - so I decided to cut the losses and went on to finish it mainly focusing on Main quest and some exploration for things that seemed interesting (and there were still quite a few interesting things).

Ultimately, I don't think Zelda could ever be fully satisfying exploration game - it would not only need to change its genre to full blown survival RPG, but also not just be open world, but open ended as well. And I don't think that is really good fit for LoZ - I think it would completely loose its roots based in monomyth and become something else. Which is perfectly fine if they opt to make a new IP based on experiences with BotW/TotK, just not for LoZ.

Haha yeah the reward is indeed often the middle finger. Da dana da da, 5 bright bloom seeds! Or some useless piece of nostalgia armor, or a weapon/shield worse than all you have in your inventory. Those are the most annoying, pop up the replace menu, hmm ignore.

And going for those interesting looking things in the distance has me basically playing 80% of the game backwards :/ The exploration part of the game keeps drawing me to things prematurely. Now I've solved the wind temple already as I had to know what was in the giant storm in the sky. I found the obvious 5 key points which look like they need a gust of wind. (Not budging with fans, looks like Tulin has to do it). So I have to go to Rito village first, follow the plot there before actually being able to finish the wind temple, even though I have pretty much finished the thing already like I did with the water temple. (Also looked interesting in the sky)

Last night I finished the Yiga infiltration backwards :/ I was coming at it from getting to the shrine, yet the game thought I was following an infiltration quest started at the clan hideout I had not been to yet. So after becoming blade master there was much confusion. I went to the place you defeat Khogo in BotW several times yet the door there remained locked. Turned out I needed to be at the front entrance to trigger the quest which immediately went on to completed and they all acted like they already knew me lol.

Also doing the spirit temple too early (another interesting looking phenomena in the sky) ruined the story, huge plot spoilers. Same with doing the master sword too early, but Zelda and master sword, seems kinda obvious someone would pursue that early in the game?! So now Link pretends in cut scenes that he doesn't know yet lol. (And I use the master sword for breaking rocks, fused to a stone talus heart. It's a utility item now. Too weak for combat)

Nintendo hasn't found a solution at all to marry linear story gameplay with open world. In an exploration based game you nudge the player around with interesting things in the environment. Yet for TotK's linear story approach you need to ignore all what you see and follow the regional quest phenomena first, and wait for Purah to direct you to other interesting things. Of course some interesting things you can do any time like the Lomei mazes. So it's inconsistent as well. Then there's the problem with the Geoglyphs spoiling the story if you find them in the wrong order so even the regional phenomena should really be done in a certain order to get the most sense out of the story.
 
And the biggest reward middle finger is finishing the game or rather defeating the end boss. The game simply reloads you back to before starting the boss fight as if you haven't done it yet. You do get a small star next to your save file and adds percentage complete counters. Yet plenty people get confused and ask on reddit if they're doing something wrong... Finishing the game is utterly meaningless, no prize, no change in the world, no end of blood moons, just rewind to before the boss battle.


It's an odd one.

It's a great open world exploration game with tons of mostly varied content let down by linear story gated environmental puzzles. You can go anywhere you want, check out the interesting stuff you see in the distance, but you can't play with it yet.

And it tries to tell an epic story with great twists and turns, visiting interesting people and clever temples and boss fights along the way, let down by openworld freedom making it too easy to miss half the stuff (fly, climb, glide right by) and cheese any combat. Here's all these freedom toys, but please restrain yourself from using them if you want to enjoy the story as intended.

Nintendo successfully deconstructed the Zelda formula, now can they put it back together for the next iteration.

Yeah, that's the problem with epic stories like Zelda that are based on monomyth (aka Hero's journey) structure - they don't really fit well with fully open worlds, especially if there' no DM to nudge, fudge and correct world and people in it, so it all interacts properly with hero(es). That's why I never found BotW formula to be a really good fit for Zelda - semi open world would be much better fit that balances nicely story progression, while giving players all the meaningful exploration.

It looks like the TotK Collector's Edition is back up for sale on Amazon (US). Check it out if you're in the market for an art book and steelbook.

Check out this new over-the-top Tears of the Kingdom statue:

This actually sums up the game pretty well  

Source

There is a million things I could complain and criticize about this game, but I keep coming back to it and I keep having fun with it. Of course I really want the problems I have with it to be addressed in the next installment, but the game is undoubtedly very entertaining.

They could start by addressing the "dungeon problem". Nintendo really should look back to Zelda 2's dungeons (palaces are amazing) for inspiration when designing the dungeons for the next game. The enemies and bosses are really cool in those palaces.

According to the latest financial data from Nintendo, Tears of the Kingdom has moved a staggering 18.51 million units from its May launch to the end of June.

I love when good games do well. 

It means we'll get more good games.