Games Beaten 2017

[MrPopo]

This is basically the life I saw for myself as a kid, so I'm living the dream. Only way it could be better is if I were already retired.

I might be able to put out a BotW review sometime next week. My plan is to do all the shrines before finishing the storyline. I just crossed the halfway point last night.

[prfsnl_gmr]

I am stoked about Breath of the Wild though. Could this be the 2017 game I actually play in 2017? Time will tell.

It is awesome, and I absolutely love it. It's like the Legend of Zelda (NES) crossed with Demon's Souls (PS3). I haven't even scratched the surface, but I am quite certain that it will become my favorite game in the series. Everything about it is just so good. (I am playing it on my Wii U, BTW.)

I might be able to put out a BotW review sometime next week. My plan is to do all the shrines before finishing the storyline. I just crossed the halfway point last night.

I've completed eight shrines...

[ElkinFencer10]

It's like the Legend of Zelda (NES) crossed with Demon's Souls (PS3).

That's the most perfect description of the game that I've seen, and I fully intend to quote you whenever I get around to finishing it and writing my review of it.

[Exhuminator]

What about the Monster Hunter angle though?

[alienjesus]

I've only played Monster Hunter Tri, but from what I've played of Zelda I don't see too much that's similar to be honest.

[ElkinFencer10]

There are some similarities with Monster Hunter, but there aren't that many big "monsters" to kill. There are some, for sure, but I think Demon's Souls is a more apt analogy, personally, given that most of the combat save for a few bosses and sub-bosses are roughly your size and in a mostly humanoid shape.

EDIT - I've also only played Monster Hunter 3 on Wii and Wii U, so I can't speak to similarities with other games in that series.

[isiolia]

I'm a technophile, so I love being up on the latest tech.

To me, it's not necessarily that, but kind of an offshoot. I'm a general fan of gaming, as I think most posters here are. Part of that enthusiasm is a desire to keep up with the current state of the industry, which is best done by actually playing new releases with an open mind. Hard to have an accurate opinion on modern games if your personal experience stops 5-10+ years ago.

Plus, it's for fun, and with some genres, not needing to spend the next however many years avoiding spoilers is nice.

So, seeing folks get things that interest them day one isn't at all surprising to me.


BoTW seems like it probably draws a bit from survival games, albeit without much of a base/house building aspect. I've not really be into that genre, but it'd be interesting to see the perspective of folks that have. The collect/craft loop to prepare for challenges seems like it at least. Monster Hunter is one of the few others I've seen do that for environment, but it's a limited knowledge base.

What I've seen of the combat was very rudimentary, and in that way not very similar to the Souls games (nor is needing to grab a new weapon every few enemies). You can die real quick though.

[MrPopo]

What about the Monster Hunter angle though?

I'd say HZD is closer on the Monster Hunter stuff. In Zelda you're killing dudes to get some upgrade materials to increase the strength of your armor, but it's pretty optional. The combat is built around the dodge into flurry (sort of this game's take on Wind Waker's dodge roll super damage maneuver) so if you understand the enemy attack tells you don't actually need protective armor.

I've completed eight shrines...

I played for 8 hours on Saturday, 14 hours on Sunday, and 3-4 hours for each of the past week nights. I also focused on getting all the towers ASAP and in the process either stumbled upon or marked a lot of shrines. I haven't done much in the way of sidequests; mostly stuff that was on the way to something I was already doing or to collect materials I already had.

[prfsnl_gmr]

What about the Monster Hunter angle though?

There's also a fair amount of crafting in Demon's Souls, and the cooking/crafting in BOTW feels very similar to the crafting in that game. The approaches to combat are also similar, although the penalty for failure in BOTW is much less severe than it is in Demon's Souls or King's Field. (This is a good thing in BOTW, by the way. It encourages creativity, and it highlights the amount of freedom the game give you in overcoming its obstacles.) The game is also much less linear than either The Legend of Zelda or Demon's Souls.

So...basically, I see a lot of From Software's influence on the game's mechanics. Certainly, the game much more forgiving than From Software's output, but its approach to combat and environmental hazards is similar. (If a bokoblin stabs you, you die. If you fall of a cliff, you die. If you fall into a freezing river, you die.) It is, to my knowledge, drastically larger than any From Software game, and its goals are a lot different. Nonetheless, it is clear to me that the people on the design team spent a lot of time studying the games in the Souls series.

[Exhuminator]

it is clear to me that the people on the design team spent a lot of time studying the games in the Souls series.

I got the same vibe reading about it and watching videos. It's like BotW's designers tried to hybridize popular open world WRPG mechanics, in tandem with Souls' gameplay, and a dash of Monster Hunter cooking/crafting/weapon degradation, wrapped around a Zelda premise. Which totally proved successful for them, but at the same time comes across as a bit zeitgeist-derivative. Though nowadays every game is derivative of some other game at some point. So fair's fair, and the formula obviously works well.