Breath of the Wild EX Log, Entry 10

Trials, Trials, Trials

And more trials. It's funny, what they put Link through to prepare him for the tasks ahead, while beating Ganon is probably a lot easier and less dangerous than many of the trials of the Sheikah that he has to master.

Anyway, my first impression of the DLC wasn't a good one. They did a bad job at handling the DLC armor and the "Don't get hit" trial on the Plateau wasn't really fun. My mood is a lot better now, after I did the individual trials of the Champions. There was a lot more to do than I expected and it was quite entertaining.

I thought that there might be four additional shrines waiting for me at this point, but for each Champion you can face a series of three different trials, where each trial leads to a new shrine. So, that's new 12 Sheikah Shrines, where the DLC added a total of 16 shrines to the game. That's twice as much as I had hoped! Nice!

But the 12 shrines that are uncovered by the Champion trials don't offer new Spirit Orbs, instead you receive Emblems for the respective Champions, which are basically Spirit Orbs with the Divine Beast symbols on them. You can trade them at each Divine Best to enter a "Realm of Memory", where you will re-battle the four Blights. I was hoping that the DLC let me fight them again at any point and my wish came true.

It's actually quite similar to the boss rooms of Ganon's Tower in the Wind Waker, where you can re-experience four of the game's bosses. The visuals are different, it all looks a lot darker, because you're playing a memory. You get all your hearts and stamina, as well as the Champion abilities, but the rest of the equipment is pre-defined. It's mostly the specific Champion's weapons, as well as some other tribe weapons and the full armor set of the corresponding trial, e.g. you get the Lightscale Trident, a Zora Bow with 10 arrows and a full Zora Armor when facing Waterblight. (You don't get the Great Eagle's Bow in Vah Medoh for some reason, however, only a Falcon, Duplex and Phrenix Bow, as well as a Feathered Edge, but not Revali's trusted weapon.) It's fun to play, but again you have to follow certain rules based on the limited equipment and can't really experiment much here.

Beating the Blights again will reward you with upgraded Champion abilities, where the reload time is shorter than before. I would have liked it, if they also incremented the number of consecutive uses for each ability, but it's still better than nothing. And I do like that you can replay the Blight battles now at any time. This also adds more to the Divine Beasts than just being another teleport point on your map and I like this. I'm still sad that you can't re-enter them, but the Realms of Memories are at least something. So, overall this feels quite rewarding.

In the Footsteps of the Champions

I did the trials in the following order: Mipha, Daruk, Revali and Urbosa. So, I went counterclockwise and saved the best for last.

The trials themselves aren't really that special. Each Champion has a trial, where you have to follow blue rings of light in higher movement speed, e.g. by gliding or surfing. At first I was afraid that this would be another Tadtones hunt, but this was probably the most fun part of the trials. Otherwise you have to defeat certain enemies or do other smaller tasks. It's nothing too special, but it gets the job done.

Highlight was certainly discovering all the new shrine locations. I was really excited about this, because there were several spots, where another travel gate would have been useful. And the ridge above Zora's Domain was certainly one of them. Before the DLC there was nothing on Upland Zorana and Ploymus Mountain, so whenever you wanted to get back up there, you had to swim up the waterfalls behind Zora's Domain. But now there are two shrines up there...

There's a new piano piece around these obelisk shrines and overall the quality of the shrines was above average. No Blessings or (normal) Tests of Strength in the DLC, which is nice. And many of the puzzles were really clever, I enjoyed doing all these new shrines quite a lot. And it was nice to get back into shrine play after such a long while.

But I don't get, why Mipha actually faced some Guardians as part of her trial. At the time they shouldn't have been corrupted and maybe they should have used some other enemies for this, e.g. a modified Hinox.

At least Daruk got a more fitting enemy as part of his trials with the Igneo Talus Titan. It's not really a new enemy, but simply a larger version of the Igneo Talus. "Don't get hit" challenges and enlarged enemies sold as "new" ones? Was this DLC developed by Koei Tecmo by any chance? It feels incomplete that only this form of the Talus got a Titan version and the others didn't, however...

Anyway, both the Rinu Honika Shrine ("Block the Blaze") and parts of the Sharo Lun Shrine ("Blind Spots") were very easy with the Flamebreaker set, because you can just walk through the flames completely unharmed.

Position-wise it's nice to have shrines at the east and north borders of Death Mountain, because there weren't any teleportations points there yet. I always wanted some faster access to the Delian Badlands to fight the Lynels there, where using the Shora Hah Shrine with the minecart rails wasn't really convenient. So, I usually went over there from the Zuna Kai Shrine above the Skull Lake in Akkala. But the Kamia Omuna Shrine at the north of Death Mountain should be much shorter, which is nice. (I also found the cannon puzzle there very enjoyable until the part with the motion controls...)

Out of Revali's trials, the two new shrine positions in the Hebra Mountains aren't really that useful, because they are in the proximity of other shrines, but I liked the puzzles "Four Winds" and "Master the Orb" very much. I also noticed that the shrine counter on the loading screen doesn't increase, it's still at 120, so the new shrines only seem to affect the completion rate on your map. (Update: This might be, because the new shrines have different icons, which doesn't fit the icon on the loading screen.)

The Shira Gimar Shrine on the other hand is probably in a more useful in location with Upland Lindor, where you can find the best horses in the game. It's a good shortcut there. The trial to uncover this shrine, where have to shoot Dinraal's horn, was also nice, but if you've upgraded all your gear in the game, you probably did this many times already... So, this didn't anything new, really, other than the glowing horns. It's pretty much the same with the target practice trial, so it seems like Revali really got the short end of the stick here.

Well, with the cutscenes it was clearly noticeable, how much this has evolved since the beta footage in July. It was day, when Zelda (who looks really lovely in that winter dress) visited Revali and not night, while the activated Sha Warvo Shrine also wasn't visible anymore. This and the fact that you couldn't really tell, whether Urbosa or Riju was sitting in the Gerudo Throne, led to the speculation that this might become an epilogue scenario, while it really was simply the memories about how the Champions were recruited by Zelda.

Off to the desert and the trials of Urbosa, you have to face another "mod" of one of the overworld bosses, in this case a "King Molduga". While I took pictures of both this guy and the Igneo Titan Talus, it makes me wonder, whether you can actually miss them in Hyrule Compendium. They might respawn with the next Blood Moon, but my impression was that they are only there for the trials, really. And it might be that Symin offers them after you're fully done with the new Main Quests, but since Nintendo keeps getting details like this wrong with the game, I wouldn't be surprised, if they actually managed to sneak in missable pictures with the DLC...

At the same time it makes me worry about entry 137. At first I thought that this would be another type of Yiga, maybe a new version of Master Kohga, where I expected to face the "new" enemy in the trial with the orb. But while it brought back a "stealth" sequence in the Yiga hideout, where I could now just easily defeat them instead of sneaking around, it didn't seem to include any new foes. I'm still worried that I might have missed something here. It's either that or 137 is the boss of the new dungeon.

Anyway, the new shrines in the desert offered some interesting puzzles as well. It took me a while to figure out the "Big or Small" trial of the Keive Tala Shrine. I even experimented with Yellow Chuchu Jelly in the water, which allows you to feed the contact at the beginning with electricity without any metal objects in between, but of course this isn't necessary.

The "Dual Purpose" puzzles of the Takama Shiri on ther other hand are very easy with the Thunder Helmet, because you just walk and climb over the energized boxes without any harm. It's similar to the new flame puzzles and the Flamebreaker set. But I might try these puzzles a second time without the Helmet just for the fun of it.

So, I kept Thunderblight Ganon as the last boss and he is still the toughest of the four Blights by a margin. When I started the game, Vah Naboris was my first Divine Beast and I had trouble defeating Thunderblight. By now I have an easier time dodging his fast attacks to initiate a Flurry Rush, but the electricity is still annoying. I dropped the Scimitar of the Seven and the Daybreaker multiple times...

What's funny is that Urbosa's Fury wrecks the Blights including Thunderblight. You can do massive damage on him with this attack, while it really shouldn't, because it's just lightning strikes. But it helped with the battle, so I don't mind about the logic here too much. And that it now reloads even faster, makes you a lot more powerful.

Entering the Final Dungeon

After finishing all the trials and concluding the Champions' Ballad, you get invited back to where it all started, both the main game and the new DLC: the Shrine of Resurrection. I was surprised that they used the cryochamber room as an elevator to the dungeon, which lies under the Great Plateau. This is ingenious and such a great location to what's labeled as "the Final Trial".

I didn't have the chance to beat this new dungeon yet and I won't be able to play it until Monday evening, but I took a first glimpse... It's certainly not very large, one main room and four tube like rooms at the sides, where this appears to be the typical final Zelda dungeon that the 3D Zeldas usually have - like Ganon's Castle and Tower in Ocarina of Time and the Wind Waker, the moon minidungeons in Majora's Mask or the Sky Keep in Skyward Sword. So, there are small rooms based on the individual dungeons of the game, like one lava room, an electricity room, a wind room and a water room. Each room probably also makes use of one of the main Sheikah Slate Runes. It's a typical Zelda game feature and it makes sense that Breath of the Wild now got this as well, much like a trial pit dungeon or a Hero / Master Mode.

I doubt that you get a new Rune here. If anything, the new Master Cycle Zero will be summoned by one, similar to the amiibo goodies.

The dungeon itself is supposed to be another Divine Beast and it does look a little bit like a creature, but it's hard to tell what exactly. The four tubes are like the limbs, the elevator entrance looks like a tail and there's a head (probably the boss room). But it doesn't look like a horse, more like a giant underground turtle. But maybe this is part of the mystery, where we will never know for sure. On the other hand it would be epic to see this Divine Beast emerge from under the Great Plateau, where it was hidden all this time and never excavated like the others...

I hope this has a new boss, which will fill 137th entry in the Compendium, and this won't just make you fight the four Blights yet again... I think, Dark Link / Shadow Link still makes the most sense in this scenario, because this Divine Beast shows no sign of corruption from Ganon, so the Blights wouldn't fit in. And that you have to face yourself as the final trial would be an awesome throwback to the Great Temple in Zelda II - The Adventure of Link, where it would fit that the Sheikah impose this trial on you, like the Old Man protecting the Triforce of Courage. I also hope that - whatever the boss is, if there's one - you will be able to replay the battle, now that this option is available for the Blights. But let's see on Monday...


Current Progress:

• EX Memories: 4/5
• EX Side Quests: 13/13
• Koroks: 833/900
• Map Rate: 94.45%