Be Excellent To Each Other

So tomorrow's the day! Link sets forth once again to silently bludgeon his enemies to death like some terrifying wide-eyed silent killer emerging from the woods upon some hapless monster picnic. The bad guy this time is some tall bloke who looks like he really wants to be on Eurovision. I have no idea who he is because the only Zelda games I've played have been Breath of the Wild and Link's Awakening.

From the trailer I've seen it appears we'll be wandering around a more cluttered Hyrule where things have fallen from the sky in the worst case of littering seen in a game since I last ran out of storage space in Animal Crossing. Worse yet rather than picking every bit of sky-trash up and dutifully putting it in a bin like any sane person driven by a laudable obsessive compulsive notion to keep areas of outstanding natural beauty clean and tidy, Link instead seems driven to cover things in horrible minty-green blobs of chewing gum, the clammy spit-encrusted grip of which sticks together everything it comes into contact with. Eurgh!

I'm sure all this is to some purpose. I'm also, yes, incredibly hyped. I managed to complete all the Shrines in BOTW and had a blimmin' good time doing so, though there's still a whole bunch of Koroks hiding about the place, probably breeding like rabbits.

So anybody buying this Day 1? The Day 1 being tomorrow? Anybody going for some absurd Collector's Edition? And who will be enjoying this on regular Switch and fancy OLED land? I've still managed to avoid giving into OLED temptation, and though that Zelda special edition OLED looks mighty nice I'm heroically resisting by telling myself that the Pikmin one, should it come, would probably be nicer.

So I guess this is a thread to keep track of our jumpy-crouchy adventures and rejoice in branch waving fun! Until somebody points out that everybody is already talking about this in a topic already posted weeks ago. Tsk.

Funnily enough... Look what was waiting for me when I got back?

I didn't opt for the collectors edition this time around. I couldn't face paying an extra £70 on four enamel badges.

It’s £51 on Amazon at the moment. I gots me one coming.

This is very good!

£44.99 if you want to give argos an email address :

https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/the-le ... os-4134071

Got it! I had £13 e-shop credit, so I went for a voucher deal and picked up Advance Wars 2 and Zelda for £71, which is nay bad a deal. (Advance Wars has still got it, btw.)

Crikey, this game is a bit big, isn't it? I think I spent about six hours in the tutorial area alone. So far I'm really enjoying Zelda: Tears of a Clown. Tricky trying to avoid spoilers so I'll stick to generalities I guess. First off I'm amazed that I'm getting lost again. I play minimal hud and I know the landscape has shifted a bit, but it's still a bit staggering.

The new abilities are fun indeed, and I can see the sort of puzzles that will be looming up in the new pistachio nut shrines. I don't know if I'm not used to them yet and have merely forgotten the learning curve on the original, or am incredibly clumsy, but I'm finding it hard being quite as elegant and fluid with the new set of powers. They're a bit stop-starty in design and hard to pull off in combat. In fact it feels as if the new powers are geared more to exploration than combat.

So far I've been having the most fun underground, which surprises me. I thought it would be the other way with me enjoying the sky more. I'm also impressed at the sense of dread and chaos, and how Hyrule feels way more populated now than it used to be. There's NPCs everywhere! And they're on a mission! There's definitely more story and mystery going on.

My only regret is that I feel the absence thus far of good-looking weapons. I'm sure I'll get used to life in this more cobbled together Mad Max Zelda Edition Hyrule, but it was nice having a gleaming sword at one's side. Heigh-ho.

Graphically the new mist and particle effects are stunning. Colours and lighting are richer. Shadows are a bit flickery / messy at times in the sky-kingdoms, but fine on handheld. Load-times are considerably wooshier. I think there's a slightly bit more slowdown when it gets busy, but it's not an issue.

So how's everyone else doing? So far I've got my behind kicked by a Stone Talus, had immense fun fusing pieces of fruit and veg to arrows and have climbed a surprising number of things with the default stamina (which feels a bit more generous than before). I've also been sproinged high into the air on a bouncy thing and have just got my glider thing. I think I've uncovered about 1% of things after eight or nine hours play.

Gave in and ordered this today.

My eldest just finished Breath of the Wild the other day and now really wants this - I'd like it too but I want to encourage patience by waiting until we have a bit more money and have finished some of the other things we have looming over us first.

I fell to my death twice off of the same waterfall, so, y’know.

My incredible ability to take rocks to the face as I bungle hitting the Recall seems to be about 80% of my deaths currently. Beaten my first boss, it's was wonderful battle. I'm pretty surprised at how many cutscenes and story there is. I'm warming to the scrappy weapons and blades look pretty boss when fused to monster horns. I'm also very happy about the massive number of arrows knocking about in crates. Really enjoying the new monsters too.

My only niggle is that some of the beauty has been lost from Breath of the Wild. With the random things having fallen everywhere the landscape doesn't look as coherent, and I'm a bit disappointed in one of the great fairy locales. They used to be this lovely little secluded spots but one of them just seems plonked down someplace random close to a main road. Balancing that out there's lots of neat little details in a more lived in world. Had a chat with an explorer headed out someplace. Doubled back five minutes later in a rain storm and found her sheltered under a little pup tent that I'd noticed empty earlier, she was just watching the world going by waiting for the storm to clear!

New favourite hobby is making little zip-line logs and platforms and then failing to jump on, so sending them off on their own jolly adventures as I stand on a cliff edge, waving them goodbye.

Very very minor spoiler:

I’m getting really good at this game now.