west coast supremacy

the new abilities are fantastic but i remain skeptical that they'll keep me fully engaged if this game expects me to do the complete botw grind *again*

oh my god they really are expecting me to do the complete botw grind AGAIN. i was really hoping if nothing else they'd integrate shrines with the main quests (which do appear to be much more prominent and dungeony than in botw!), but right now it looks like it's all back unaltered. korok seeds, shrines, great fairies, plus one or two new collectible macguffins to add to the pile

there's a ton of great quality of life improvements though & a lot of the rest of the stuff is very compelling

it's so wild how, on the one hand, every addition & alteration has me PUMPED. the world map's been altered by time in a lot of really cool ways, they've added sooooo much more variety to crafting/fusing/etc, areas so far feel much more deliberately *designed* in a way i missed in botw

but on the other hand, oh god, please, couldn't you have *at least* decreased the quantity of all the shit from the last game's grind. like why's it gotta be EXACTLY the same???

it's like there's this awesome new zelda game that i really want to play but in order to not eat shit constantly i've got to replay all the worst parts of an older zelda game i already had mixed feelings on

i'm still holding out hope that the grind IS truncated & i just haven't seen how yet. there's already korok puzzles that give 2+ seeds, maybe there'll be some of that for not-spirit-orbs, like how they had triple-moons in mario odyssey. god i fucking hope so

of all the things i expected to feel about my first few hours with this game, "it addresses most of my problems with botw without addressing most of my problems with botw" was definitely not on the list

don't get me wrong, i AM enjoying it! the zelda fiend in me is eating this slop up. i have to hand it to fujibayashi, where botw was the redemption of skyward sword's mechanics, then totk is the redemption of its narrative and worldbuilding. there's still plenty of time for them to fumble the bag, but so far i'm intrigued

the depths are INSANELY cool

in the water temple where sidon follows you around. first of all: my favorite dungeons in wind waker were the companion ones, so i'm pumped as hell that we're seemingly gonna do that for all the main dungeons this game; secondly though, they got around the issue of messy companion animations when clambering over terrain by not having him ascend/jump until he's out of the view of the player, then playing the various barks & foley to make it *sound* like he did all the jumps after he teleports

really impressed by the dungeon so far. there's so *much* to explore in this game, it's fascinating-- instead of building a completely new world or expanding it out at the margins, they build complementary maps above and below the original, which gives them a million justifications to minutely tweak the layout of the original map in all sorts of ways. i am even enjoying the shrines, god help me. i don't know how to feel about this, still. botw started strong but flattened over time

really do not like that the floating platforms rely on your battery pack for energy :/