The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Wii-U, Switch) 2017

[Sonictrainer]

Some of that awesome official art shown at E3

[KHCast]

If they released those last two before it was confirmed Link would only be male...lol imagine the hopes getting raised haha

[Potada]

So, I figured this was something worth raising this thread up for:

 

 https://youtu.be/R7C9Tq_k2f4

 

 

It's a mod that lets you play as Zelda instead of Link. A few of the costumes you gain throughout the game have even been given their own designs for her and been implemented in-game. Looks pretty cool!

 

Worth noting that it's being done on Wii U, but not on Switch, I believe.

 

 

 

 

[The Deleter]

It's crazy how useful Horses are in BotW after coming back to it again. I never bothered with them in my first playthrough, since I wanted to make sure I climbed and searched every nook and cranny, but now that I know basically all the content the game has to offer, (and how worthwhile it is past a certain point) roaming around searching for shrines and revisiting the divine beasts is a million times more bearable than I thought it'd be. They're kinda antithetical to the "climb everything" nature of the game, so I get why people took issue with them... But they still serve their purpose pretty well once you get over the urge to explore anything and everything.
 

Also while I'm here screw Master Mode. That mode sucked all the joy I ever had with this game into the void it came from, and turned every single problem the game could have had in some way, into insurmountable barriers of entry and mediocrity. Every Test of Strength is next to impossible because lol guardians, enemies are no longer challenging playthings and instead grindy meatwalls worth avoiding, and weapons you have to fight to keep and find because for some forsaken reason they don't scale with the enemies and camps anymore. And if you're avoiding all enemy camps to keep your weapons and find hidden, top tier gear for the rare times you actually need powerful weapons (LOL GUARDIANS) and save ammo... where exactly did the challenge go? You've basically stripped the entire game of it's positive feedback loop of scavenging, fighting, and being rewarded with better loot, ammo, and weapons as you push your limits, just for the sake of an easy health-boosting mode that checks enough boxes for the title.

I felt the base game got too easy as time went on, but that's more to do with the inevitable fact that you're flat-out overpowered at one point or another. There's a distinct lack of challenges worth facing at that point, but I really don't think scaling the entire world up to balance out that power was the right call, especially when it destroys the game's systems like that. Hard mode DLC should have just offered more optional challenges to find and overcome with that power, like more bosses, or gold-enemy areas around new shrines to overcome, or even just gold enemies that took massive amounts of damage (and broke weapons faster because grinding is ridiculously boring and shallow) but offered up massive amounts of ore in comparison for, say, seasonal outfits like Mario Odyssey offers, and stickers for completion sake.

Now the boss encounters, as the only points in the game that should offer challenge to your highest potential, definitely needed more health than the base game offered, so at the very least it should still offer a more challenging Ganondorf fight worth returning to for a casual playthrough. Since I'm still trying to find all the shrines and complete the DLC, though, caving in to vanilla mode was the best possible choice I could have made, even if I had to start from scratch after my first playthrough was erased. Game is back to being a joy to play through, thankfully, and I'm loving every minute of it all over again.