I wish there still were a fishing rod and bug net, it would certainly make getting those easier!

@DrFinkelstein@kriswright

Update: Objective complete. A good night's sleep left me fresh for battle in the morning, and the battle was a cakewalk for some reason. Oh I remember why. I was drinking heavily last night.

@TheBigG753

I finished my last one today. Up in the NorthEast/DeathMountain area.

I'm only one of the standard 12 Memories away from having all those which is my goal atm. I think it's near Hyrule Castle but I don't quite know. I'm not ready to go there for the actual fight but I should explore somewhat.

Well, I did it, on a whim and accidentally still in my swim trunks. Tons of stuff left to see, so I'm not done completely, but I've got many thoughts on how it wrapped up. Type it up later, though.

Do you guys think we should make an All Spoilers thread for this game? That way we could discuss it post-play without having to redact a bunch of text?

@kriswright You did what? Beat Ganon?

@Mop it up

Yep. The part where Kirby, Samus, Mario and Ness all show up to help was a little weird.

...


No, of course that didn't happen.

Man, I'm still shocked at how much this game has consumed me. I finally got around to beating the first dungeon. It felt very different. I enjoyed the story bits with Mipha, too. Some of the dialogue was a bit stilted (and I'll assume that the weird, halting way of speaking was a deliberate affectation). But, even with the voice acting, it still managed to be kind of affecting, in that abstract Zelda way.

Anyway, still diggin' it. I'm also diggin' the daily hauls of fish that good ol' Toon Link brings me.

Also, I love the economy of this game. The limited resources, degrading equipment system, purchasable armor sets, mining, hunting and foraging, cooking, blood moon, etc. really dovetail together beautifully to make every activity seem important and worthwhile. Finding a 100 rupee piece or a gem is always pleasant and welcome.

@kriswright Great, thanks a lot, now I'm going to be disappointed when this doesn't happen.

@Mop it up
Just replay Subspace Emissary.

Did a lot today. Finished my last divine beast. This has been one of my favorite parts of the game so far, the whole Gerudo area in general. The dungeon and the lead-up to it was probably the 2nd best out of all of them, and Thunderblight Ganon was definitely the best boss fight so far. I'm guessing it would have been a lot harder without the Stasis upgrade!

Got a lot of interesting stuff in the surrounding areas to check out still, I'll probably do some more of that tomorrow. There are some really awesome shrines in that region; two in particular were really neat (one involving moving an ice block, and another involving bombs). Also got over 200 Korok seeds!

I've almost completed a full donut around central Hyrule; I've got two towers left to climb. Once I finish exploring a bit around the place I'm at now, I'll probably start moving in towards Ganon. I've also still got 4 of the main/Zelda memories left to find. I suspect I'll find them along the way in places I haven't been to yet, though #12 has had me scratching my head for a while now. The picture doesn't give any sort of indication where it might be located on the map, aside from that there are trees, but based on its placement in the timeline and other story stuff I've gleaned from NPCs, I have an idea of where it seemingly should be -- but that was not the place. So I dunno...maybe it's closer to Hyrule Castle than I would have thought...we shall see.

So I beat Ganon tonight (in no way would I say I finished the game, because there's still so much content I want to see). So I was curious and just checked my Wii U's log to see how many hours I'd played. If you'd asked me, I'd have guessed around 40-50 hours.

It was 96.

96?! This is insane to me. It took me a couple of months to put that much time into Overwatch. What have I been doing with my time? Have I been bathing? Did the kid get fed? Is the fish still alive? This game has consumed me... I would say like no game since Galaxy, but actually I think it's like no game ever. It's to the point where I'm willing to say it's changed my life - and for the better. I know this sounds like crazy talk, but I feel like it helped lead to a kind of spiritual awakening in me. I'm interested in going out and doing some real life adventuring, now. I've got things I've been putting off that I want to go accomplish and this game has really emboldened me to go do that.

I've never felt that from a game before. I mean, GTA IV made me want to go steal cars and Clubhouse Games made me want to play hanafuda, but this game kind of reached out of the imaginary world and changed the way I look at the real world.

If you need me, I'll be climbing a local water tower and jumping off it with a pillowcase.

@kriswright I'm just under 70 hours, and it'd be quite a bit more if I hadn't gone away last weekend. And I still have not finished any of the four DBs (though I'm right at the doorstep of each, I think). I've still got plenty of sidequests to do, and while I have all the towers done, I've left a lot of the map unexplored, main roads and out-of-the-way stuff alike.

Pretty big game. Pretty big.

@Hero_Of_Hyrule I mostly agree with you, and you probably said it better than I could. Or would want to...

@Hero_Of_Hyrule Nah, that's just me being silly, Zero told me to stop it with my joke 0 score so I was slowly increasing the score by 1 each time I visited since then, for my own amusement if nothing else. I have a weird sense of humour, I know.

Still not sure what my final score will be since I'm not done with the game, but I guess I could enter what I'm really feeling at the moment and change it later if I wanted.

I didn't exactly say STOP I presented my reasoning for why it would be nice to have accurate scores and left you to your own devices.

@Hero_Of_Hyrule I'm liking this game a lot more than you are and I'm still too early in to give definitive views on this either way, but I don't think you're wrong in that other Zelda games are better a lot of individual parts than BOTW is. While I definitely think this is one of the best Zelda games, it feels like there was some give and take to get it made. Lost a lot in puzzles (and probably dungeons, though I haven't gotten to one yet) for instance. Soundtrack is not really the best. There doesn't seem to be as much powerful storytelling as something like Majora's Mask had, and my memory is a bit foggy but I definitely remember some pretty smart puzzles connected to Majora's Mask sidequests as well (some of that here too, but maybe not at the same level?)

The combat is awesome in the sense that it is dynamic and individual battles matter again, and a lot of the mini set piece battles are awesome, and it's cool to just stumble upon boss fights, but none of the fights I have had so far feel as brilliant as a really powerful Zelda boss fight... so for me it is tough to say where the combat ranks.

Exploring though, by FAR the best. And it just feels so packed and alive.

@Zero I can read between the lines, I could tell what you were really saying is "Cut that out right now or we will ban you, your children, and your children's children! We will then find out where you live, steal all your games and replace them with a hundred copies of Carmageddon 64! I can be the one and only true Zero, so no zeroes shall ever be given to any game!"

By the way, has anyone ever given a 0 as an honest score and not some sort of joke or troll?

@Mop it up

I gave Spider-Man X-EMN III a zero, but that was more in *response* to a joke. Kris gave it a 10 and set the average above Ocarina. Dark times for NW. Dark times indeed.

I doubt few games on this planet deserve a 0. The lowest I could see giving even the shittiest games I've ever played is like a 3 or 4. And I'm trying to think what games they might be.

Pit Fighter on SNES jumps out at me as a dreadful game.

Anyways back to sink more hours into the western region of the map. There seems to be a major Shrine Quest involving some gameplay I really haven't seen elsewhere so I think I'm gonna do thatt before I move onto the village I'm supposed to get to leading to the DB of the region.

@Mop it up

I would only give a 0 to a game that was actively offensive, like that racist Stormfront game. But I'd never actually play a game like that and I wouldn't review it, so the option is more theoretical.