This Is What It Sounds Like When Dragons Cry - Tears of the Kingdom

 So, a couple things have changed since I played Breath of the Wild.

One that we shouldn't ignore is that I'm not playing the game on a super heavy Wii U tablet controller. The Wii U was a remarkable feat of ingenuity, but one that really didn't have the technology to execute its vision in a painless way. The Switch basically solved all of the Wii U's issues, and I imagine that most BotW fans played it on a Switch instead.

But also, I think that ToTK has rebalanced things in a way that make it less of a pain - weapons still break, but you get a pretty decent amount of use out of them before they do - I've cleared dungeons in this game only breaking a single weapon. While there's an impermanence to any cool weapon you come across, it's not nearly as much of a pain.

Indeed, the fact that your best weapons are created by fusing things to existing weapons was a huge revelation to me, and further makes it less painful - early on I was fusing whole weapons to one another, which turned out to be a bad strategy. Instead, simply by fusing Zoanite robot bits and horns or claws form various monsters to weapons that kind of fit with them (for example, Bokoblin Horns seem to go great on spears) will get you decently powerful weapons that also last a pretty decent amount of time.

Another difference is that I invested more in Stamina - I think in BotW I was getting killed so quickly that I didn't feel I could afford to ever get anything other than heart containers. There are for sure still situations in which I'll die from a single hit when I still have like 9 hearts (even with my high-defense Phantom Armor) but it's rarer.

Anyway, the point is that I can see myself really getting through this game - there's countless side quests to track down, of course, but with three of the four major dungeons down, and now with the Master Sword in hand, I feel like I can actually get to the end of the game and at least call it a success - hopefully before Final Fantasy VII Rebirth comes out in twenty days.

I haven't done a lot of monster-massacre construction like the things you've seen on YouTube - though I did put together that little Hover Bike thing, which is somewhat useful but I think I need to farm a lot more battery charges (I'm up to seven total - two full batteries and one third of another.)

The dungeons in this game are certainly, to my mind, better than the ones in Breath of the Wild, though there's definitely a samey-ness to the design of them (each has you activating like four or five things that you need your local companion to hit with their special ability). There aren't memorable mini-bosses, and even the bosses go down pretty easily (I did the Water Temple today, and the boss there seemed particularly easy - I might regret going to the Air Temple first, which had what definitely feels like the most epic boss so far).

Still, in contrast with the Ancient Beasts, the dungeons here feel very much like their own distinct places, with thematically appropriate puzzles.

Anyway, I'm going to try to stop and smell the roses as best as I can, but I do want to try to beat the game before the 29th so I can pick up with Cloud and the gang.