So, I have been immediately impressed with TotK so far (all 2 hours I've played so far.) Here are a few impressions that I don't think are spoilers because they are non-story things and also are presented in the opening hours of the game. Mostly I'd just like to start a conversation about this game as we all discover it, as I've usually late to the party for big games and rarely have had access to them on their initial release date, so the act of mutual discovery and conversation is one I hope to engage with here.

First, it's really smart how they have combined the powers of the previous game. Ultrahand is not only the crafting power, it also replaced magnesis but more versatile because it works on non-metal objects. Fuse is surprisingly the replacement from bombs. I dunno if there is a bomb skill later in the game, but fro now it's attaching boulders to sticks to smash bombable rocks or bomb plants to arrows to blow them up. Haven't encountered the replacement for stasis yet, but the time reversal is somewhat like it, minus the kinetic energy buildup. The Buckroo Bonzai rock swimming ability is more useful that I'd have initially thought too.

Second, and this is an odd one because i was replaying BotW just yesterday, but the ground map of Hyrule feels smaller, or rather it feels faster to travel on foot. I don't know what it is, a faster walk/run or the whole map shrunk by 10% to make the distance between spots feel shorter, but running on foot in Central Hyrule took forever in BotW but felt like it went WAY faster in this. I might just be imagining it, but I'm curious if anyone else had this impression.

Lastly, the gameplay really feels different but familiar to me, and that is making the controls actually a little frustrating because I've gotten so conditioned to the way BotW works for half a decade that the small changes keep fucking me up. The powers selection being on a circle menu is one part of this. The inventory menu using the shoulder buttons is too, even though most other games use the shoulders as well. It's all stuff that I'll adjust to, but it's a touch maddening right now as I transition from BotW literally yesterday to TotK today.

Anyway, what are all of your impressions and hot takes so far? Try to keep story spoilers out of it if you can, other than maybe just the opening scene.

OP, if you want to spearhead the TotK first impressions thread, be my guest, but could I suggest that the thread title mention if you mean story spoilers or gameplay/mechanics spoilers?

There are Zelda lore nerds who don’t want the story spoiled, there are Zelda gameplay nerds who don’t want the new abilities/dungeons/gameplay spoiled, and everything in between.

@bisonhero: I’ve made the adjustment.

Sooo... weapon degradation?

@mach_go_go_go: it’s there, and it’s still a bummer, but I’ve had two full playthroughs of BOTW to come to terms with it.

The performance on the Switch so far?

Meaning does the game run at a smooth 30fps most of the time or does it often dip below 30 frames like Breath of the Wild. I know many critics claim the game runs fine, but I'd like to hear the opinion of a duder playing the game fresh.

After spending months fretting over the creation heavy preview coverage, I couldn't help but join the zeitgeist after multiple reviews mentioned the discreet, item-based dungeons have made a triumphant return. Wound up playing about six hours last night after work, half mobile and half docked.

• I really, really did not like the initial tutorial area. Honestly, I was relieved when the clouds finally parted and I could get back to the ground. Not looking forward to heading back to the Zonai lands any time soon.

• In handheld mode, I can barely tell what I'm looking at half the time, while on a big screen TV the whole thing looks like a bit of a washed out mess. A lot of the textures are god awful, and while the draw distance is admirable some of the pixelated barfs they're letting us see are pretty bold.

• I get that Purah was already over 100 years old, but it's kinda weird to see that character redesigned as some kind of dummy thicc GILF, especially when Zelda also suddenly has ass for days and thighs that won't quit. This feels like the first time I've ever seen characters in this franchise as having overtly sexual characteristics and it's not a bad thing, just a little startling

• I vaguely remember having this same issue with Breath of the Wild, but because I've spent pretty much my entire post-SNES/N64 life gaming on a Dualshock, I absolutely cannot wrap my thumbs around the offset joysticks, X being the ∆ button, A/O being confirm and B/X being cancel. Hell, I'm constantly going to throw when I mean to pull my bow. I also find the navigating of submenus pretty clunky, but just in a different yet similar way to Horizon Forbidden West. There's so many systems and on-the-fly tasks it's hard to keep up right now.

• I love what the new powers have done to the shrines, they now feel way more like proper mini-dungeons than the sort of Zelda/Portal mashup a lot of the last game's stuff was.

• Seriously, it's a shame that it feels so easy to casually call this game ugly, but when you pop out o Sinakawak Shrine near the New Serenne Stable and you're faced with an image of Hyrule Castle that's making you nostalgic for the N64 (and it's the image quality, not the image, that's causing said feeling) I really can't believe it. Guess I've been PS5-pilled because I never had an issue with BotW.

It's maybe some combination of the color scheme of the tutorial area and playing maybe a bit close on a larger TV but the game just looks.... bad.

I mean I get it, it's the Switch and they're doing a lot with it and it still runs pretty good and is fun to play but every Switch game I play I always have this back of the mind thought of "Man I wish I was playing this on something better."

Oh the BotW camera loved keeping Zelda's new.. outfit in frame as well so this is not very surprising.

Played four or five hours so far. So far I've gotten down from the Great Sky Island, explored the depths, tamed a horse, and I'm on my way to Kakariko. I'm really enjoying it so far. It's the kind of game that sinks its claws into you and won't let go, so that you're always thinking about it in the back of your mind when you're not playing it.

It honestly feels a bit overwhelming. I haven't played BOTW since it launched, and I've forgotten most of the topography of Hyrule and how enormous it is, not even to mention all the added stuff. The controls take a bit of getting used to - this game seems to use every damn button in multiple ways and sometimes I forget what does what. This makes combat a bit trickier, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. I imagine this game would be pretty difficult to get into for someone who's not into gaming. There are just a lot of different systems and possible actions to take at any given time. I'm going to be playing this for a long, long, long time.

As corny as it is, I honestly love Zelda's style of storytelling. All the goofy NPCs and their larger-than-life personalities. It makes the world feel like a comforting place to explore. I'm not a big fan of Zelda's personality or voice acting, though.

I was slightly trepidatious about the re-use of Hyrule, but in retrospect, it seems obvious that it's not a bad idea. I like that I can re-visit locations to see how everything is changed. I don't mind going back to a city I've been before after a few years - why would I mind returning to this world, as long as there is plenty of new content?

I'm feeling similar now about Zelda as I do to Smash or Mario Kart - somehow we're starting to max out the level of depth and content these games can hold, and it makes me wonder where the series can go from here. I wouldn't mind seeing a smaller adventure for the next one - something strange that takes place on a different, more compact world, like Majora, with some major change-ups to the mechanics and a more focused story.

I don't really get this. I don't see her character as sexualized at all.

I don't and will never like the choice to have weapon degradation but I will say that having Fuse available to turn shitty weapons you find on the fly into Pretty Good stuff is doing a lot to mitigate things.

@wollywoo: I didn't mean sexualized, but other than the great fairies and a Gerudo villain or two the female characters in Zelda games are often either very androgynous or homely (same with the male characters, who are rarely strikingly handsome or traditionally masculine), like the BotW Zelda model or all the town women with broomsticks and whatnot.

This version of Purah's got a hip-high slit on one side of her dress, killer heels, calves in black stockings, and always throwing her ruler around while wearing an up-do. She's a total hot for teacher situation even if she's still mostly covered up and obviously isn't having any real emotional/sexual dialogue going on.

Just pointing out an interesting pivot in character design more than anything, especially considering Zelda essentially got the She's All That makeover too.

@nodima: the Purah thing is weirding me out to, specifically because I was playing BOTW yesterday and she was five in that, but now she’s got gams and heels. Apparently there was adult Purah in age of calamity, so the die was cast on her aged up design years ago, but still, sorta creeps me out. Vibes like the freaks that were counting down the Olsen twins 18th birthday.

I’m not much farther yet, I just got off work. The texture problems I’m hearing on here are valid, but it’s about the same as they looked in BOTW, and the frame rate thus far is better than BOTW. I’ll take framerate over texture any day so I’m mostly fine with it.

That tutorial goat man is absolutely gonna her deviant arted into the twilight zone. I fear for the future.

Looks like I read all I needed to. I'll wait and play the game in the future on better hardware. And I don't like that Zelda is once again regulated to a damsel in distress that needs rescuing. Nintendo really needs to change it up with the storylines.

I mean performance is fine, I just played one of these big group battles in the middle of a lightning storm and there were no dips and I'll be surprised if the game regularly is any busier than that.

A lot of the textures are rough, although it blends way better when you are back in Hyrule proper, but that's going to be true in the future as well that's just The Game.

Also y'all had me thinking they'd done something drastic with Purah but like... she's just Older.

Yeah, but also hot. Zelda characters are always either librarians or total freaks. But her and Zelda are smoke shows. It'd be one thing if she aged up to be Pam, but she's Joan, y'know?

Anyway, it's not a big deal at all and i anybody thought I felt that way, whoops. Just was funny to me for this franchise.

Anyway, I've had all day today and tomorrow off and despite the tone of my previous post and a handful of discouraging moments (of both the charming, Soulsian variety and the more "oh, c'mon, WTF" variety...the latter of which almost always having to do with sky sailing and just missing the mark on a landing, losing several minutes of progress) I'd say this game has a lot more immediate magic than Breath of the Wild did for me.

It doesn't feel novel in the way that game could because, for better or worse, this game mostly feels like a remix of the first game with a more consistent back beat (IMO). Better voice acting, more fleshed out story, better shrines, only done one dungeon but it was way better than the four from the last game, and it might just be my fault rushing it a bit but even the approach to said dungeon was pretty harrowing thanks to the survival mechanics.

I just wish the game looked nearly as good in motion as it does in its cutscenes. I remember some people saying the preview trailers had false graphics, but that's not really true, they just used whatever tech they're using for the cutscenes instead of actual gameplay. Which still isn't that cool but I get it.

This is also coming from somebody who wasn't particularly blown away by BotW when I finally got to play it in early 2021, but for me a lot of that game was one incredible magic trick tied together with shoestrings and duct tape. Tears of the Kingdom feels more..."complete".

Rapidly oscillating between Nice! It's a lot more Breath of the Wild and Man... It's a lot more Breath of the Wild...

i'm probably going to be relatively quiet about my impressions for at least the next couple weeks (no need to aggressively shout "THIS SEEMS FINE I SUPPOSE" into a room full of buzzing folks) but as someone who enjoyed but didn't fall in love with BotW- after 5-10ish hrs this round 2 isn't fundamentally changing anything about my enjoyment- and in fact i think it's just underscoring the parts i find friction in. but it's well made, for what it is.

also- if i can just be petty for a fleeting moment- where the hell are all those 'omg i'm so over crafting' people now? the amount of interface wrangling in this game...i dunno, feels like a game in desperate need of a 'favorites' function.

@mellotronrules: If you don't like something, you should not feel you can't say it, it's alright to share negative views. While I like this game and I started this thread, I have criticisms on it too.

There is apparently an autobuild function later in the game, according to the gamespot video review. And cooking recipes have recipe cards now instead of needing a wiki open on a second screen. I wish that could be patched into the previous game.

I like the building a lot because it's simple tools, simple concepts, to make Abject Nonsense.

So long as nobody is like Link! Can you build me a house to keep me out of the rain! I'm totally fine with it. I can build all of the wildly unsafe rocket mine cars you want.

@tartyron: thanks, i appreciate that! but i also want to give the game a fair shake, so i'll see some more before i more thoroughly draw my line in the sand. plus there's no need to be a buzzkill if people are having fun with these early days.

re: cooking- yeah i saw the recipes, it's a nice touch, thanks for the tip. i just wish there was a way to automate the process of holding multiples of something in hand from outside the menus so i could directly start crafting. like if i had a way from a radial menu to instantly hold 5 of something, i could just roll up and get to work. also- they should let you craft more than 1 at a time. i lucked into an orchard and now i'm sitting on 147 apples- let me industrialize my simmered fruit!

There's "sort by most used" which in effect works as a favourites. I use this a ton since there's a few items I use way more than everything else. It's made the inventory much easier to manage.

Also re: the autobuilding feature mentioned (no story or location spoilers for where to get it or anything like that. Just discussion of the auto builder functionality, which has been mentioned in reviews and on a bunch of streams): I accidentally sequence broke the game and found it about 5 hours in because I did random exploring and found it way earlier than I think the game wants you to based on where the related quests are so far. The autobuilding functionality rules. It allows you to automatically place pre-built vehicles and tools built from capsule components along with previously made things that don't use capsules if you have the required parts nearby like at those stalls where you can make wagons. It basically automatically creates blueprints for you so you don't have to worry about managing it. It works great once you figure it out.

My favourite thing about this game so far is how much less stingy they are with arrows. I already have nearly 200 without even trying to acquire them. It's made it so I use the bow far more than I did in BOTW since I don't need to worry about running out. In that game it seemed like to get a reasonable number of arrows you'd have to actively seek them out and buy them from stores. I've yet to need to even think about doing buying any.

So, I tackled a very weather based challenge probably way too early (and also forgot I’d found some pants that likely would’ve totally nullified this issue, lol, until the very last bit) which meant that I probably cooked and consumed about 40 different types of spicy food over the span of an hour and a half.

I concur, whoever felt it was cool to simply offer the recipe cards without also offering a “make 6,000 of these, I don’t care, the inventory has no weight, go wild bud!” toggle is a very rude tease.

That being said, forgetting those pants and really having to dig into my reserves, and at one point even do an emergency memory check for where I last saw some peppers, did make for some really good tension. I just don’t know that seeing that inventory deplete one by one rather than all at once contributed much to that.

I have to say that with the Fuse power I am finally willing to entertain the argument that the weapon durability serves a meaningful purpose. Because it has been a lot of fun to go through different weapons and staple different dumb monster parts on top of things.

Or, for optimal gameplay, the Shield-Shield.

Why can't I make a Double-Bow, you cowards.

I kinda vacillate between thinking this game is beautiful and thinking... yeah, it's a little ugly at times. I wish there was more color variation. The sky is very yellow and Hyrule is very green. Maybe that's partly for gameplay reasons, so that the interesting things pop out more against the background, but it could use a bit of variety. It's also weird that after six years there are still framerate issues in Kakariko. But overall, I think it looks great. I hope Nintendo held on to all the uncompressed textures for the inevitable remaster.

Ok. Last night I had to rage quit because I was in the middle of a shrine puzzle and my last bow broke and the little wind powered elevator I needed to progress dumped be down an unclimbable wall preventing me from finishing the shrine because I couldn't shoot it to turn the engines off and bring it back down and it was out of the ultrahand range.

I think that a compromise to the weapon degradation should have been that you always have a weak, baseline option for the bow, sword and shield so you don't get puzzle-fucked like I did last night. Like 1 power and non-fusable, but just something so you aren't totally high and dry ever. I was not in the mood to so hunting for a new bow. It was also 2am, so I should have gone to bed anyway.

Edit: I do realize today that I probably could have waited for the battery to die and it would come back down, but I was too annoyed to have patience.

@tartyron: I agree that sounds quite reasonable, especially since the game immediately respawns any tools you need to complete a puzzle if, say, you properly create a catapult but accidentally orient it directly into the bottomless pit instead of the ceiling. I was surprised when the starter sword broke, I actually kind of expected it to serve that purpose given what it is. I'm sure I'll stumble onto some narrative explanation in the next several hours back at the stone, but some kind of baseline weapon for puzzle solving would be nice.

THough I am happy to say, despite probably using a guide for 1/3 of the shrines I've come across so far (happily I was never too far off, and it's never been for an entire sequence so far) I've never gotten stuck like that yet. So you might also be right that patience was an equally valid solution.

The only time I've had that sort of frustration so far is a puzzle involving electricity transfer in water, but for whatever reason one of the pieces of metal retracts immediately from the area where it can receive the electricity, despite three separate guides showing a photo of doing exactly what I was doing. That made me so damn frustrated 'cause it was basically the end of the puzzle, too. I had to warp out to remind myself I was having fun.

I'm beginning to worry I will play this whole game constantly forgetting that I have Ascend.

I was that way for a while at the beginning, but after a few hours my brain shifted and now I look for spots to ascend constantly. It really changes everything about traversal, in a good way.

@wollywoo: Yeah it's a really great power, just been a lot of 'how the hell do I get up there...' and then oh right the Get Up There power.

Yeah, after I finally finished yesterday's marathon I read Mahardy's review on Polygon and he wrote a few sentences about how Ascend was essentially the power he looked for uses for most. I know for a while yesterday I was doing the same, but it seemed like a lot of places I was hoping to use it I was either just off being under the thing, or too far away, or something...

But so far today, more than anything, it's just been fun being in a well or monster cave and remembering, which I never did yesterday...oh right, I don't have to backtrack, I'll just...swim through rocks. It's even proved useful when I've found a couple challenges in caves I didn't feel prepared for but was far from my nearest fast travel point - instead, just fast travel above ground!

Speaking of "unprepared", something I was thinking about as I booted this game up again this afternoon is that I'm having to think about stamina far less than I did in the previous game, and thanks to all the effects you can apply to arrows I feel much more confident whittling encounters down from afar before rushing in to clean up...but it feels weird that after spending almost ever waking minute the past 36 hours playing this game, I'm still at just 4 hearts (I lost one for...reasons) and 1.5 stamina rings.

On the one hand, it's been nice that I'm accomplishing basically everything I want to traversal wise with just that much stamina, but it's also interesting that I can never tell whether every enemy can one-shot me or when I'll want much more health than I have. Which gives me stronger Souls vibes than anything from the previous game where I felt like I needed to maximize both resources as rapidly as I could.

I've only done one stamina upgrade so far whereas in BOTW I didn't upgrade health until I had two full stamina wheels. Stamina just isn't an issue anymore seems, much like arrows. It's like they looked at the worst pain points in the last game and tuned them to be less of a drag, especially early on. That was always the thing with BOTW: the first like 5 hours were always resource, health, and stamina scarce but then you'd hit a point where it became a non-issue. They removed a lot of the non-health related frustrations but instead it seems like there's a big focus on health and combat.

They seemed to recognize that there needs to be a reason to do combat (one of the best things you can do in early BOTW is just avoid combat altogether. Not so here.) They give you plenty of weapons and upgrades so you don't have to worry about running out of them and give better rewards and as a result this encourages you to actually fight enemies (much like what I mentioned before with arrows. By giving you tons of arrows they encourage you to actually use the bow rather than save arrows constantly like in BOTW). Because of all this, focusing on health suddenly makes a lot more sense since a lot of enemies can do big damage.

The one other thing I did notice so far is that rupees are much harder to get early on and they seem to have retuned the prices of everything. In BOTW, luminous stones were 70 a piece, now they're 20. The fancier meats are also worth substantially less. You can't make 5000 rupees in 10 minutes hunting like you could in BOTW. Most of the exploits to make lots of money quickly are gone which makes saving up for fancier equipment a bigger issue.

I've been thinking about this comment frequently throughout the game so far, and while I get the sentiment, I don't think it's even remotely accurate. I'll grant that she's once again as much an abstract concept of godliness and purity as she's ever been, and locked behind all kinds of gates and knightly challenges...but she's up to her own shit. Her function in the game hasn't been exactly novel, sure, but I don't get the sense that Link nor his cohorts are or should be worried about her. They just want to find her.

If I felt like criticizing her role in the story so far, she's more like the looming and imminent threat to the world you're aimlessly wandering, only (one presumes) she's the hope instead. I'm trying to abide by the no spoilers dictate, but as the absences of female princesses in hero stories go, I'd place Zelda far closer to the base of the tower than the Rapunzel chamber.

I do genuinely think it's a great game. Is it an incredible, transcendental game that's miles ahead of what any other video game on the market is doing? Well... no. Not really.

This is more Breath of the Wild. If BOTW was one of the greatest experiences in any video game you've ever touched, Tears of the Kingdom is more of that. If you dropped BOTW after five hours because of the vast expanses of nothing happening or the obnoxious weapon degradation or the poor framerate... well, that's all here, and there are even more vast expanses of nothing than ever before. I was on my way to climb around some stuff to get to the next story objective when it started raining in-game and I had to find a different way around because I would just slide off the side. You cannot batch-cook recipes, though the game does keep a recipe book now. If you have a problem with BOTW, chances are that issue is still here. Perhaps your complaint was alleviated a little bit, and Ascend frankly alleviates the climbing issues a lot, but I seriously doubt this will change your mind if you were disappointed in BOTW.

What swayed me to get this game was the new toolbox. Ultrahand and Fuse are kind of incredible to mess with. In practice I feel like I've made one too many log bridges to cross a gap, but also I've done some other really cool, neat things. For the past few hours I've been away from this game for reasons, but frankly I can't wait to get back to it.

As far as Fuse goes... well...

if you don't find stupid nonsense like this charming and hilarious, I don't think Fuse is going to do much for you.

As someone who has been unable to go back to BOTW because of weapon degradation - it's still here, it's still obnoxious, and it's still by far the biggest issue with this game. I cannot overstate just how much weapon degradation drags BOTW and this game down for me, it's literally the mechanic that turns the game from "maybe one of my favorite experiences ever" to "merely great".

Fuse helps. In BOTW, I just memorized the combat dungeons that gave you the good swords and teleported back to those frequently. Here, I don't see myself doing that because I can just glue one of the plentiful rocks to one of the plentiful sticks and have something to destroy things with, at the very least. Also, durability for crafting good weapons to other good weapons seems better.

All in all, the situation's improved, but "weapon durability" is the reason I wasn't going to buy this game. But also, I like smashing junk together to make cooler junk, and this game has lots of that. Like, lots and lots and lots of that, and that has made me look past the issue so far.

If BOTW's framerate bothered you, chances are good that it's going to bother you here as well. It's better, but the game still dips to low 20's whenever you turn on Ultrahand and populated areas seem problematic. I played BOTW on a Wii U and this game certainly runs better than that one, but I've never played a game that's simultaneously this technically impressive and also an excellent showcase for why the Switch maybe needs to be replaced.

Textures are extremely low quality, and noticeably so, in a lot of places. Water just sorta stops instead of lapping against shores. Clouds and fog are very obviously just 2D textures that spin with the camera (this is true of a lot of games, but most hide it better). The game is very "aliased", you see jagged edges all over the place, and houses and staircases that are more than five feet away just look bad. This game is absolutely capable of some incredible vistas and some great artwork and design, but at the same time I thought more than once that I should set it aside and wait for it to become playable on an emulator. I'm finding TOTK to be uglier than BOTW ever was. Maybe that's because it's been six years, but also, maybe that's because TOTK really should have been a launch game on a newer console.

@justin258: Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. I was in the market to buy a new game yesterday. I ended up going with the Resident Evil 4 Remake for two reasons. 1. I don't want to pay $70s for a game that runs on outdated hardware no matter how hyped and anticipated the game is. 2. I watched Jeff's full TOTK stream Friday and came away thinking the game is more like a DLC add on and upgrade to BOTW instead of a full sequel. I also agree with the many critics he made about the game while playing it. I still plan on playing it in the future, but I can wait. And I know Nintendo WONT make this game backwards compatible. So I'm not going to pay $70s twice.

@nodima: I just think that a game named after a character, should at least have the character do something meaningful instead of "Link, save me! Save Hyrule!" all the time. I haven't played this game yet, so maybe she does do something meaningful during the later parts of the game. It's sad the only game that comes close to her showing any real backbone is Ocarina of Time. One of the many reasons people see that game as the best in the series. And I don't mind thicc Zelda as it was talked about earlier. Link has to fight for something right? {shrugs}

I think the fact that it's very much "more Breath of the Wild" at its heart is a valid criticism but we can't just call things DLC because they're similar.

@av_gamer: Because I like you, and because I wouldn't personally consider this a spoiler...but I guess I'll spoiler block it! I'd be totally prepared for this to stumble home due to all the trope residue in its structure, but from a skydiver's perspective (or...the few cutscenes I've seen) I find it'd be very appropriate to criticize the game for engaging in a male hero fantasy...

But Zelda appears to be mysteriously cajoling modern day influencers via plot vibrant time manipulation tactics in pursuit of ends unseen. And so far every task I've completed (non-shrine, non-cave edition) has begun or ended with a reference to something Zelda did or seems to have done. Most spoilery of all, she's not in distress. She's performing some kind of inception on the modern day via the past thanks to Ganondorf's wormhole, it seems.

From the most telescopic, otherwordly perspective of perhaps a blood moon or an even more nefarious, existential moon, all Link is is a tool for promoting one idea of destiny over another. He doesn't seem to have any agency, unless the person holding the controller forces him to pretend he'd rather tame horses than his nightmares.

Link is basically the Doom slayer but without any self awareness. "Pig King Tyrant has awakened. Thaw out Time Boy and Title Princess."

Makes me want to see them change up Zelda a bit. Each time Link wakes up, it's a different Zelda instead of the usual look. Gives them a chance to have a Prince Zelda or NO ZELDA AT ALL.

@justin258: Maaan, I played through the first couple shrines on the emulator a week ago and am now at about the same spot on Switch. It sucks that some people can get the emulator working right and some of us , including myself, can't get it to run more than 20fps for some reason. I've got all the updates and patches and no dice. It won't even work on Yuzu for me. I'm seriously considering just waiting and hoping some updates improve the emulation and I can just continue there instead. You're so right that this game is a prime showcase for why new hardware would be nice. I don't need it to be Horizon or anything but its kinda sad seeing this game struggle so hard.

Edit: The emulator fps works fine in menu's but not the actual gameplay.

@av_gamer:I don't mean to imply that this game is DLC or even an expansion pack. It is not. It has enough new ideas and features and the way you play it is changed up enough that it's very definitively a full sequel. I understand if what I've mentioned is enough for you to put off buying this game right now, but for my part I think its creativity and its high points are more than enough to make up for its low points.

I just think the deluge of perfect scores is a bit rich. There are absolutely significant issues with this game, including issues that have nothing to do with performance and graphics and everything to do with sheer usability. Why, for the love of God, can I not batch-cook things? Why do I have to do it all individually? Why was that not first on the list of "things we can easily implement for the sequel"?

I have played enough of this game that I don't want to restart it and I've gotten used to the performance issues well enough to look past them, so I'm not going to take that route. If I ever replay this game, though, I certainly will.

Thanks for the feedback guys. You've given me some things to think about. If the game goes on sale by Christmas, I might just pull the trigger an get it, especially considering how rarely Nintendo puts their games on sale, especially big hits like this one. I did like the original BOTW a lot, despite the performance issues. So I might give it a go before a new Switch is released.

The reward for clearing dungeons is so much better in this game I'm glad I didn't get too sidetracked before heading to one.

that's good to hear- i need to mainline for a bit i think- i'm starting to get some shrine fatigue, and some of the more difficult roaming enemies i've taken down were a little anticlimactic in rewards.

I'm really, really enjoying this. I can't count how many times I have been just wandering the world, taking in the sights on my way to a tower or shrine, and I see something that makes me go "WTF is that?" The enemy variety was one of the few complaints I had about BotW, and that certainly seems to be improved here. I just love being in this world, talking to people, trying out crazy contraptions, experimenting with cooking, climbing to tall places... it's a joy. I don't know if it will sway people who hated BotW, because it's definitely more of that, but it's just *so much more* of that and so dense with interesting things to do. The world seems so much more alive to me than, say, Skyrim.

I find this game improves in just about anything in BOTW. And as worried as I was that it would feel to similar, I am not getting that feeling at all. Yea Hyrule is the same map, but think of it kind of as how OOT had the master quest. Sometimes you don't even feel like you are in a familiar area.

@nodima: is this post satire or do you realy talk like that?

I did not realize at first that Rewind applied to things that you moved with Ultrahand and now it's such a "Cool puzzle you got there, anyway..." ability.

I can't remember the last time a game has grabbed me this quickly and completely. Having a blast so far.

Just a quick question. There's no way to fuse things with your bow, right? I mean you can fuse things to your arrows, but I found some spiky bows and was wondering if I should also be fusing stuff to the bow somehow.

@isomeri: pretty sure that's correct. Those Bows were in Breath of the Wild, too.

@isomeri: you can however fuse a bow to a sword, and hit people with your swordbow