this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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I played BotW a lot, and really loved it. I feel like the beginning of the game was relatively easy compared to TotK, I died a few times trying out things, discovering the game and possibilities ; in TotK I died a lot and still do even with good gear and armour (1*-2* armors, 30-40+ damage weapons). You could say it's skill issues and I would agree with you as I am not a pro player and play games once a week maybe, however I feel like the difficulty curve is far greater in TotK. That has affected how I view the game to the point that sometimes I think I dislike it (even though the new powers are the best thing they could have added, with the verticality of the world) ; that might also have to do with the much darker ambiance of the game, which can feel frightening (to me) to the point going underground is hard.

Is it just me? Should I just "git gud"?

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[–] ArghZombies@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago

It's not so much that it was difficult, it's that it felt a bit more unfair than BotW. It seemed like the regular grunts (Bokoblins etc.) were far tougher than they needed to be. Every single encampment of them would have a few silver ones and they're just damage sponges - you just get through all your weapons just clearing out a small camp. Even the master sword felt like it used up a whole charge just taking out a few of those buggers. I shouldn't have to completely rebuild and restock my weapon arsenal every time I clear out a small camp of fodder.

The game itself didn't really feel much harder than BotW though. It's just all these little encounters that annoyed me.

[–] Dmian@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The initial sky island is as easy as the beginning of BotW. The initial constructs are easy to defeat (a few hits with a branch, and they’re gone).

I think by the time you jump to the surface, you’re expected to know how to fuse weapons. This will give you an advantage, and makes enemies easier to defeat. But if you don’t fuse weapons and play the game like in BotW, it becomes really hard, since enemies are designed to be attacked with stronger, fused weapons.

The depths adds another layer, as there you find resources that will make defeating enemies extremely easy: bomb flowers, muddle buds and puffshrooms are extremely useful when used strategically. As long as you avoid large enemies and bosses, the depths difficulty level is not hard. But again, you need to use fused weapons.

The main point, in my opinion, is understanding the new mechanics you can use, and play the game using them, and not like you played in BotW. It’s really a different game in a lot of aspects, specially combat.

Edit: Oh, I almost forgot: in TotK, you have the help of the sages avatars. Contrary to BotW, this game is designed to play with them, and not completely alone. A lot of people just dismiss the avatars and go alone against enemies, but this game is designed to have them around you almost always. If you’re not using them, try summoning them and having them by your side always. They help a lot.

[–] Raiderkev@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

The lightning chick pisses me off to no end. Hey, I could really use a lightning arrow. Where's that chick? Oh, apparently she went all Leroy Jenkins on the boss... cool.

[–] CynicRaven@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I think the sages are the biggest thing here. The bad guys don't typically do the thing that games like Assassin's Creed bad guys do where your may have a gang of events but they're roughly taking turns coming at you. In TotK, they're just all over you constantly and the most effective way to keep that heat off of yourself is via the sages.

[–] lvl13charlatan@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

I'm glad I'm not the only one that finds the underground creepy. I still haven't explored all of it. I cheese most of the fights with bows. If you have bombs, freeze items to fuse, keese eyes, and muddle buds you're pretty golden.

[–] sdcSpade@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can get really strong weapons really fast with Fusion, so I was able to take down black enemies with ease two hours after landing on the surface when in BotW, I was avoiding them for days. Other than that, I'd say the games are equal. The new enemies like Gleeok seem hard when you first run into them, but once you find a way that works, every enemy becomes a chump.

Shrines, on the other hand, I thought were harder but not in a good way. Where BotW asked you "Can you solve this puzzle?", TotK asks you "Can you get this to work?" and it's just annoying when you know what to do and still need to do it several times until it works.

[–] spicytuna62@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Somehow I ended up in the Gerudo Desert really early, and if you have bombs and arrows, Molduga fights are super easy to cheese. Just make sure you have lots of weapons for the first one. After that, they take 45 seconds.

Elixirs made of the guts are worth a lot of money. Fins are useful because you can stockpile a lot of them and they're useful in a pinch and you just need a 20 power weapon to get by. They also make decently valuable elixirs. Jaws boost weapons +32 and you'll always get one or two after a fight. Attach one to a Gerudo Sword or spear and you're wrecking some shit.

[–] kromem@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In some ways I think players coming from BotW are at a disadvantage over coming to it fresh.

It took me hours (too many) to finally realize that it's a different game and I needed to play it as its own thing, not BotW 2. And as soon as that clicked it became much easier.

If you mostly play it as BotW, key additions like using thrown items take a backseat to dodge/flurry attack or such. Similar to how you might early on be climbing things as opposed to bouncing on a spring or finding a ceiling to pass through.

When it finally clicked, even though most of the BotW toolset was available to me, I barely touched it anymore.

Honestly the best learning experiences were the naked combat shrines. Don't skip those - they become incredibly easy after you finally get using the new mechanics available to you, but they are there to force you to adapt. Same as how some of the annoying puzzle shrines if you do them the 'right' way are there to force you to learn how to use reverse to solve nearly everything in seconds.

Many encounters can be solved as easily as an active Zonai flame emitter you just carry around with Ultrahand.

The bow in TotK is so much more OP than in BotW. Also, thrown stuff can straight up break fights - silver lynel in depths? Yawnfest with abusing puffshrooms and a near breaking royal armament.

The one area where there's a legit serious step up in challenge is the phantom Ganon world encounters. Those are hard fights even with all the tools at your disposal.

But the combat is much more tuned around preparation with itemization than in BotW. If you are having difficulty with parts, try using more items and play around with the options available to you. Shoot a powerful enemy with the muddle bud. Fuse a gloom sword to a gerudo dagger.

Playing it more like BotW is going to be unnecessarily painful. Forget what you knew, and don't be afraid to experiment with radically different approaches to combat from what worked in the last game.

Also, I recommend farming the spikes from the frost dragon when you see it in the overworld. Cheap and easy way to have a freeze weapon you switch between to set up your hard hitters (frozen enemies take 3x damage on the next attack).

[–] Contramuffin@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

I agree, the early game is definitely harder in ToTK than in BotW. The vibe feels a bit similar to Noita, IMO, in that the odds are stacked against you, and you offset the disadvantage by making liberal use of as many overpowered combos as you can think of.

Anyways, my advice is really just that. Find good combos, and spam the hell out of them. One easy thing to do is to burn chuchu jellies to create red chuchu jellies. Then, fuse them onto arrows to create incendiary arrows. Great for dealing with crowds, and the explosion radius isn't as big as a bomb flower, so there's less chance of you accidentally killing yourself. Red chuchu jellies's function similarly to fire fruits, but I just find that it's easier to get a ton of red chuchu jellies.

If you're in snowy areas, you can also shoot down some icicles and fuse them onto spears. That freezes any enemy that it hits, which is good if you get surrounded easily. You can also collect ice fruit/white chuchu jellies to make freezing arrows.

In general, you get way more arrows in ToTK than in BotW, so your playstyle will naturally need to lean a bit more into long range combat to make effective use of your resources

Here's a couple other interesting interactions you can take advantage of:

  • find (or ultrahand) a heavy object. Drop it onto the enemy.

  • wind staggers enemies. If you find an enemy charging up an attack, take out a guster and blow wind at the enemy

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's not difficult as much as it is tedious to fight regular mobs by just hitting them with a weapon since they are so spongey. You're intended to use all your gimmicks in combat to make quicker work of them.

[–] jimbolauski@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I found running in circles around large hoards of enemies and letting my champions do my dirty work was pretty effective. Shooting muddle buds and waiting around is just as boring.

[–] haukesomm@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago

While I think the overall game is harder than BOTW (especially some enemies), I found some boss fights to be less challenging while others were more difficult for me. When I started out with BOTW I was rather disappointed with the game as I had struggled with the mechanics but eventually got better and ended up loving it so much it became my favorite game. TOTK might feel easier for me as I already was familiar with the core mechanics from the start. Either way I ended up enjoying it like no other game.

[–] Newby@startrek.website 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For me, it was hard because the button mapping made it incredibly difficult for me to sprint and jump. I cannot remember if BOTW was the same or different. I played through that just fine. Maybe I am just getting older.

[–] ram@bookwormstory.social 2 points 1 year ago

BOTW was the same.

[–] LarryTheMatador@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] virku@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I play these games by barging as fast as possible away from the main plot. In TotK I was punished quite hard by this as I didn't get all the skills until very far into the game (the auto build was maybe at 150+ hours until I unlocked and had all of the depths mapped)

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wanted to do the same as in BOTW and go get the towers shrines I found along the way before doing anything else... The towers don't open before you start doing quests???

When I discovered the depths though that's when I went wild and unlocked as many pods as possible.

[–] virku@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, I climbed a couple of towers and trundled around without figuring out how to enter them before realizing I had to do some main quest as well.

[–] MajorHavoc@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The world of toothpick durability weapons killed it for me. Again.

[–] Stabbitha@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It seems like the weapons are less durable in TotK, I didn't mind durability in BotW but I go though weapons way too fast now.

[–] boredtortoise@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Oh? I felt fusing extended durability so much that it was less of an issue. But I didn't mind the feature in the first one either

[–] Thavron@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's probably to force you into being creative with the games mechanics. Which is not a good reason.

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What? That’s an excellent reason to restrict a weapon.

I’m reminded of the RE4 remake. They added a cool parry system, but with practice it becomes too reliable, turning enemies into a non-threat. By adding limited durability to the knife, they get players to prioritize offense, only use parries as a last resort, and use all their resources proactively.

[–] Thavron@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

Alright, so it's a good reason, but in this case it's not optimally executed.

[–] shrodes@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Yes, definitely harder and especially the end game.

I basically never used food in BotW and didn’t really have to seek out equipment upgrades, but found it was pretty much mandatory for the final area after banging my head on it over and over.

[–] McWolke@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

I think it's definitely harder, but it also gives you much more tools to work with.

I finished the game without realizing you could upgrade your armor, so I just ate a lot of buff food and healed myself up a lot.

[–] bighi@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I found it easier than BotW. I died here and there, but I never thought any part was impossible to beat. I’m not a pro player, I’m a middle aged guy with a small family.

But in both games, combat is by far the worst thing in the game.

Maybe you didn’t upgrade your armors enough?

[–] electrogamerman@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

With enough hearts and stamina, the game is pretty easy, so I guess you can adjust the difficulty with the amount of hearts.

[–] Grangle1@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Overall it's not "difficult", I would say, but there are individual things I find difficult here or there. A couple bosses (looking at you, Water and Lightning Temple bosses) took me more than one try to beat, and there have been a few shrine puzzles I had to look up solutions for, but those are exceptions to the general difficulty. The most difficult thing to me for general difficulty is trying to figure out how to reach a lot of places in the sky. I'm on the " final push" to get all the shrines before I take on the final boss, and I'm definitely gonna get them all on the surface, but I may choose not to do all the sky shrines because I just don't know how I'm going to get up/over to them. In many cases, islands are just spaced out too far apart or too high for devices to last long enough to reach, and you can't really glide to them because you're always on a soft descent when gliding. Basically, sky navigation has me kinda stumped, and I may find getting all the sky shrines to then just not be worth it.

[–] lvl13charlatan@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

The air bike is the way to go to get to harder to reach sky islands. I think you can make them last longer by fusing gems.

[–] Dewded@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I don't think the game is particularly more difficult in terms of mechanics.

It just has more enemies that deal more damage per hit.

However, I've hardly got any extra hearts, but the game never 1-hit-kills you. So as long as you eat plenty of food, you'll always be okay.

Enemies can be very spongey if you don't engage in the fusing mechanic. I've found crowd control weapons to be the best. Topaz, opal, ruby and all those are great. Combine them for bonus elemental damage. Freeze this biggest baddie and kill the fodder with some generic spear you made.

[–] FISHNETS@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

Honestly, not at all. The game gives you so many opportunities to cheese through it I feel, and at least for me I got pretty good weapon upgrades early on and kept that momentum going from there. BOTW had less opportunity to become OP from an early stage, thus making it the harder game imo.

[–] De_Narm@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I felt the same at the very begining, however I missed like the first NPC and explored the whole sky island without unlocking shrines. Afterwards, I did the water temple first and had a hard time both with the boss there as well as the mud thing before you even get to the dungeon. Kind of sabotaged myself there twice in a row, the remainder of the game felt quite easy.

[–] Narann@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I feel like the beginning of the game was relatively easy compared to TotK

Wow, I had the invert experience. Game gets easier with time.

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is why the pros are paid the big money.

[–] SuperFola@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

I don't understand what this has to do with my post?