I've changed my mind on the durability system being a negative. I think it's a good design and works well.

The main flaws imo are the music and the voice acting.

Can't justify the Switch at all financially - medical bills are insanity. But in a few months hopefully can get the Wii U version. Really looking forward to it and hoping that Twilight Princess HD and Wind Waker HD scratch the itch until then. (Haven't played Wind Waker at all and have only played half of Twilight Princess)

I'm only about 40 minutes in getting to my first shrine, but so far so good in portable mode! It will take a bit getting used to the controls and I may look at switching things but no issues any lag as of yet.

One sort of bummer is that after 40 minutes of playing it as well as 5 more minutes to download Master Blaster I went to charge it and it shows 51%. I thought you could get 3 hours playing BOW unless a setting needs to be changed to extend the battery?

Are your joycons attached? May be draining juice to charge them. I dunno how all that works.

Yeah playing with them attached. I can maybe try with them attached to the plastic piece it came with instead. I'd rather not dim the brightness settings as it looks great as it is...just was curious if anyone else had that problem. It also looks like most of the power adapters won't actually be strong enough to charge it to give you longer battery, but basically slow the decrease time (giving longer battery). Has anyone found one that is strong enough to increase it?

mine lasted about 3 hours the one time I used it in handheld mode

I'm like 15 hours in and have barely scratched the surface of the game. I think I've completed like 16 shrines and only traversed like a tenth of the world.

They've done a number of things really well to encourage exploration and make it satisfying.

I recently climbed a very tall mountain and was genuinely stunned at the beauty of the world sprawled out below me.

Two nights ago, I wanted to play for like 30 minutes before bed so I pulled out the switch and started looking for the next piece of the main quest. I'm exploring an area that has a number of cliffs and I keep needing to know what's over the next cliff. Finally I reach the top of the area and find a shrine and decide to stop. It's been over two hours.

I generally don't enjoy open world games like GTA and prefer more story guides gameplay, but they've done such a good job with BotW that I'm loving it and can easily imagine sinking 100 hours into this.

I'm also really impressed with the switch. It works great in handheld mode and the battery has lasted long enough that I'm usually ready to take a break from gameplay anyway when it gets low. I experienced some frame rate drops in docked mode while running around one of the towns, but nothing major. I see this is a handheld first for me. Now I just wish I could find a carrying case in stock anywhere so I could bring it to work and be playing Zelda instead of writing this post while taking a ****.

Reading through this thread for the first time and this is the 2nd time I've seen this. Only Zelda games I've played so far were the original two for the NES, and neither of them were very difficult IMO. What part of 2 was hard?

Beating it without a guide?

2 was definitely difficult

Played about 7 hours today I think. This game is humongous, it's going to take a long time just to complete the main story line let alone the side quests. I'm 11 shrines and a whopping three areas of map filled out. Found a shrine I left uncompleted after dying a gajillion times, marked it for later when I'm more durable. Almost threw my controller with the tilt table shrine but managed to complete it. Found my first major species and will probably tackle my first dungeon next time I play (I assume the four Divine Beasts are the "dungeons" for this game, or as close as it's going to get to a traditional Zelda dungeon).

Game is much harder in the early going than most other Zelda games. This isn't a bad thing, just creates more situations where you might want to think what the best route to take is or if a given group of monsters is worth taking on given your current hearts/weapons. I also probably suck, which increases my death quota. I definitely take the run and hide approach a lot more than I would this early in any other Zelda game. Depending on their weaponry, even Moblins can be a challenge, particularly in packs. My favorite strategy so far, other than just run away, is to roll bombs down if I can get the high ground.

For the tilt table shrine, did you



I heard someone mention that as a strategy on a podcast.

I did it properly then heard what Noodle posted and went back to confirm and you can definitely do it that way.

Zelda 2 is hard as ****, you must be Billy Mitchell if you thought that was easy as a kid.

Hahaha no I did it mostly properly, on the successful run I was shaking my controller and the ball bounced into the final slot at the start. That was after a few attempts of course. If I'd have know the other way you can be damn sure I'd have done it.

Have cleared all but the boss fight on the first dungeon. Not overly challenging once you figure out the general theme. The boss is a ***** of course. Will tackle that tomorrow. Have to say I loved actually boarding this dungeon on the Prince's back. Da **** you need 20 arrows for tho? I mean I missed the first couple getting used to the controls but after that it was a snap.

any leftover arrows are handy for the boss fight

Yeah, I've gotten that impression. I took two tries then shut down for the night, I'll check my arrow numbers tomorrow and warp into town if I need more before tackling it again.

Pretty quick dungeon clear, tho. It's more like a really elaborate shrine than a Zelda dungeon of old. I don't think that's a bad thing, myself, but if really complex/deep dungeons are your thing in Zelda you might be disappointed. It was far more about solving the puzzles than any kind of fighting. The enemies were almost an afterthought. Of course maybe I stumbled on the easiest one first. I deliberately haven't watched a run through so I don't know what order would be considered optimal - I was just running around and hit this section first.

No keys tho. Thank god no keys.

Use spoil tags on that ****.

Zelda 2 is fine, I played it in college. The only two issues I had were:

1) I thought I was stuck missing an item (perhaps having done something in the wrong order), so asked on Usenet just to verify that I was still ok and finding out what incorrect assumption I had. Figured it out from there.

2) My friend was in the room when I got to the last boss, and he coached me on a technique to use. I still would have beaten the boss eventually without the coaching - just happened on the 1st-2nd time instead of the 5th-6th time.

A guide is not necessary. I've found that very often certain games or segments of games seem incredibly difficult if you never tried them for yourself, just hearing the solutions, but in many cases you would have figured things out fine in the normal context of the game.

Yeah zelda 2 not too bad playing it as an adult now. It's certainly no battletoads or tmnt.

Yeah I eventually beat Zelda 2 and Battletoads, never going to attempt TMNT again.

As I was obsessed with the turtles as a child, I played the game like crazy. Probably made it pretty far based on obsession alone.

For anyone considering a used Wii U from GameStop, Nintendo resells refurb units on eBay for $50 cheaper (free shipping) and with a game. (It's actually cheaper than other 32gb auctions I've seen, after shipping)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Black-Wii-U-...374%3AFeatured

I may snag one of these, as I'm still kicking myself for assuming Nintendo would do a console launch properly and selling our Wii U.

I played TMNT some this past summer. Was improving, but still didn't get to the final boss of the 3rd level (out of 6).

Good article about it: http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/tmnt/tmnt2.htm

/ot

We didn't have guides back then