Current Progress
- Difficulty: Very Hard
- Chapter: 3
- Battles: 8
- Challenges: 30
- Quests: 72
From now on I will be posting my current progress right at the start, so you can quickly see how far I'm in the game as of writing the post. This should guide you which posts you can safely read or not. (I've also changed the previous post accordingly.)
And those of you who are already past this point should know that I've just crossed a very important milestone in this game. Beating any of the major battles never felt as good as the eighth one. But let's start talking about the seventh battle first, "The Yiga Clan Attacks!".
Ghost Town
After the four missions for the Champions, this one felt a little bit underwhelming at first, mainly because of the music. The music tracks for the Champion missions were absolutely superb and beautiful, where I'll be listening to these for quite a while. Now, here you get a rendition of the Yiga Hideout theme...
But it works great for this missions' overall atmosphere, where as always the battle felt very unique and different. Again, it was nice to see the outpost town next to the Great Plateau in full glory, even though you don't get to interact with any people of course. It was quite spooky, because the heroes were just going for their daily business and suddenly the whole town turns into a Yiga ghost town. I also enjoyed the scenery around the level quite a bit, where you get to see the Coliseum, the Great Plateau and the Dueling Peaks a little closer.
At the end you get to face Sooga for the first and hopefully last time. The guy is called "Supah" in German, as in "Super", which is kind of hilarious, but also fitting. He's a pure quick time boss during his second half. When he uses this attack which requires you to stop him with bombs, you either bomb him or you get stunned and slashed for eight hearts or something.
I don't know whether this is also the case on the lower difficulties or not, but at least on "Very Hard" the enemies love to abuse these kind of attacks, which means you never ever can use your Runes for anything else. Normally it's a good idea to use Stasis to extent the weak point phase of enemies, which works well against Sooga early. But if you do this in his second phase, he will immediately trigger his death slash attack when he comes out of Stasis, where then you can only run.
It's similar with Revali as a boss and his Bomb Arrow hail attack. It's either you bomb him or he bombs you hard. And Hylia forbid that you accidentally trigger any of the other Runes... It's a good thing that holding the R button will slow down time, so you don't have to panic.
Anyway, after dealing with Sooga, it was time to train again! With the first mission of Chapter 3, there was a sudden jump of the recommended level from 16 to 22. And ideally you don't just go in there with exactly level 22, where I brought everyone to 28, just in case. Luckily, the Training Grounds are quite cheap so far, but this might change with the higher levels...
But with "training" I didn't just mean buying levels, of course, I also meant completing side quests and Challenges and grinding. This actually took me the majority of play time yesterday and today, so in between the main story missions it really feels like I'm truly preparing for the Calamity and it's nice that the story at least acknowledges this, where in this case Mipha and Daruk talk about training with each other and they do some practice with their Divine Beasts...
Divine Blasts
The eighth main mission starts with another Divine Beast demonstration, where you blast all the monsters and their outposts all around Korok Forest with Vah Medoh. Before this I also played the training missions for Vah Ruta and Vah Rudania, where I had three Divine Beast runs one after another for some good comparisons.
And I'm sorry, Daruk, but your Divine Beast is trash. It's basically made out of Sheikah cardboard and it's a miracle that it's still around 100 years later... With Vah Ruta and Vah Medoh you get nice defense mechanisms and a great firing rate. With Vah Ruta you can just hold the shield button and nothing will happen to you. And these Divine Beasts really should be nearly invincible or else they would be no threat.
Vah Rudania, however, only gets this silly counter move, where it grabs an enemy attack and throws it back. Well, good luck with that, if you have like six Igneo Talus all throwing magma rocks at you, which for some reason do massive damage on the Divine Beast that throws magma rocks. It's almost like the Gorons, who suddenly are hurt by fire...
Well, in the least it makes things really challenging, where you have to play it super safe, while you're also in a hurry, because you have to defeat 4000 enemies in a time limit. Oh, those time limits... Luckily, the enemies don't immediately attack you on sight, so you can snipe them from afar. You really have to look for anything in the pixelated mess that might resemble a Moblin or an Igneo Talus, then stop and blast at it, before they blast at you. Rinse and repeat.
But you also have to do this fast enough, so that you reach the end of the level in time. And this took me a couple of tries, while the Vah Ruta mission was a win on first try. Needless to say, I wasn't really psyched about the start of the Korok Forest battle, but playing as Vah Medoh was super fun, where again this gives Revali all the reasons to be bragging. But it probably helps to not have any lava giants throwing rocks at you all the time...
Also, I tried going with stick controls here and it was awful. I really like having the motion controlled aiming and with Vah Ruta and Vah Medoh this wasn't an issue. I only kept having problems with Vah Rudania, which didn't really help with its more difficult missions...
Now, I'm really curious about trying Vah Naboris. Since this used to be
my favorite of the Divine Beast dungeons, I really hope that the Divine
Beast itself won't be a such a disappointment, like a certain Death
Mountain loser. It would also be absolutely amazing, if they were to use the whole time travel story to unearth the fifth Divine Beast, whatever that thing was supposed to be.
Ghost Forest
This is another battle with quite the spooky atmosphere. I always liked the Lost Woods in Breath of the Wild with that "maze theme" playing in the background, where I now wonder whether one of the Lomei Labyrinths could act as a battlefield as well... But they did a great job of translating the Lost Woods into this interwoven map, where the battlefields are massive improvement over what Hyrule Warriors used to offer.
And like all of your weapons, it seems like Stal enemies used to be much sturdier 100 years earlier. They don't go down on a single hit here, where they would be basically just a re-skin of the normal enemies, if it weren't for the company of the cursed enemy heads.
Anyway, the biggest surprise was easily Hestu. And I don't mean the fact that he was going to appear in this mission, because I fully expected this to happen, but that he got added to the playable roster right away... Yihaha! It almost feels like he is supposed to be the Korok Champion, where all he needs would be a Divine Beast in the form of a giant squirrel.
But since Nintendo made such a big secret about any further playable fighters, I expected characters like Hestu or King Rhoam to be endgame material, where you unlock Hestu for collecting 100 Korok Seeds or something. But that's not the case and I'm really happy how this fighter turned out.
How Hestu summons all the little Koroks with his Maracas reminds me of Olimar and his Pikmin. And I love all the silly things that they did with this, like throwing all kinds of junk. Or when Hestu uses the Bomb Rune, he throws a big bomb and then the little Koroks join him and throw multiple small bombs. That's so great. (Though, despite of this, it's sometimes tough to hit explosive barrels with this move.) And I love how the Bokoblins dance around you when you do your Special Move.
Hestu's voice acting in German (where he's called "Maronus") is absolutely horrible, however. In Japan it seems to be some sort of custom to dub quirky male characters with (older) female voice actors. Son Goku from Dragonball or Luffy from One Piece would be the most prominent examples for this. This doesn't translate all that nicely to the west, however, where I'm glad that the English voice for Hestu didn't turn out as bad.
Otherwise, the attention to detail with these fighters is just amazing and it's good to have a goofy character like this in this quite serious setting for a good dose of humor. And then it gets more serious already at the end of the mission with the introduction of Astor, the "Prophet of Doom".
At this point I really wonder if the theories about this guy being the fortune teller who told King Rhoam to unearth the Divine Beasts are true, because it could make sense. And it feels like Koei Tecmo is trying to do their own version of Agahnim with this, where this Astor could be just a manifestation of Ganon's malice. But he also reminds me a little bit of Cia with his ability to create these shadow clones (in this case of the Champions), as well as some of his attacks. Sadly, he doesn't look as good as her...
Facing Astor for the first time is also where the weapons of Hyrule finally show what they are made of, meaning that Link's trusty sword suddenly breaks. Luckily for him, there was a new sword nearby to loot:
He can also count himself lucky that he already had 13 Heart Containers in my save game or else he probably would have died on the spot. I'm joking, of course, but I wonder whether this was just a coincidence or by design. But if you don't do all the side quests and aren't leveled up properly, you won't have the 13 hearts at this point.
Another coincidence was that the Master Sword had the exact same attack value as my sword that just broke: 34. And it's nice that the Master Sword comes bundled with the Hylian Shield in this game right away. Imagine some Hylian Soldier in the background, waiting for the chosen one to give him the mass produced shield of legend. Let's face it, the destinies of these two items are intertwined, much like Link and Zelda's.
But you need some good equipment, because the fight against Astor isn't exactly easy, where he plays quite differently from the humanoid bosses before him. He is not a quick time boss, for a change, where instead he keeps bombarding you with bullshit magic. What gave me a lot of trouble where the large orbs, which for some reason went through my brandnew Hylian Shield (and here I thought blocking trumps all) and was also hard to dodge. And it of course did the most damage, where my apples were eaten up quickly.
So, I fought the bullshit magic with some bullshit magic of my own. It turned out that all the elemental rods that you can get throughout the Lost Woods are there for a reason. Burn him, freeze him, fry him for some cheap weak point attacks. Since he doesn't do evil quick time stuff, like Sooga or Revali, you could also extend weak point phases with Stasis, so that helped...
But at the end I was standing there with just a quarter heart left and only one round of Lighting Rod at my disposal. I knew, if Astor was going for his shield again, where he summons the Dark Champions, I would be dead. So, I made that one last lightning count and finished the battle on a quarter heart. What a thrill!
It's moment like these where playing on "Very Hard" makes the game feel tremendously rewarding... But it also always makes me feel uneasy before going into the next battle, like when I'm doing the Trial of the Sword in Breath of the Wild.
Though, this time I don't know what to expect from the upcoming battle at Crenel Peak at all. I didn't even expect that they would consider this location for a separate battlefield, where this already quite amazing. And I have no idea what could happen here... I just hope that it will be something different and not end on a major boss fight for the eighth time, because that's getting a little predictable and also stressful.
At least the recommended level was only raised by one, so I could play this battle right away. I was still playing all the side quest things first, where finally I was able to beat the One-Handed Weapons Training for Link thanks to the Master Sword. Those sword beams at full hearts made all the difference and I even had plenty of time left on the clock when I finished...
Koroks, Lynels, Moldugas
Sadly, unlocking Hestu doesn't show you right away where you're still missing Korok Seeds or else I would be focused on this right now. The Korok Seeds also still don't work like I expected them to, where you have a fixed place to trade them for more inventory space. Instead there are side quests with maracas icons, where you can trade them once... Okay, will the entire map be plastered by them at the end or what?
But I suppose that it was similar in Breath of the Wild, where at first you meet Hestu in two places and only can do limited expansions, before you can do it regularly. So, it might be the same here, where a true Korok Seed trading feature will be unlocked later, probably together with the Korok Seed indicator on the missions. But you can also get Korok Seeds as a reward from side missions, so this seems to be kind of a mess right now...
The Korok Seeds also let you increase your apple storage... But what I
really need is better apples, because if you use up like half of them to
fully heal yourself once, it's not going to make a big difference. So, I hope that this
will be possible later on. The lack of health really makes playing on "Very Hard" a nuisance sometimes, as much as the fact that your apples and rods aren't refilled at the beginning of a mission.
Talking about side missions, there were some quests that required Link and Mipha to get one more Lynel Trophy and a Molduga Fin. So, I decided to take my new Master Sword to the one Challenge in Hebra, which seemed way easier with Revali. He makes it look easy, I guess. It was worth the trouble, though, because it gave one-handed swords a special feature, where they do more damage after a strong attack.
As for Mipha, her quest gives her the first ever Special Meter expansion. And with her healing ability this will be extremely useful, so it was worth it to revisit the Gerudo Desert scenario for the first time, where a Molduga is inhabiting the northwest corner. When I first played this mission, I didn't dare to go near it, but back then almost everything could kill me easily, so that was a good idea to stay away. But now I've grown much stronger, so Link donned his freshly completed Desert Voe set and Mipha followed him into battle like a loyal puppy, both ready to take on the giant desert monster.
I love how these side quests all create these little stories. They already have some story details attached to them, but in addition you might do certain things that creates another tale of its own, like Link and Mipha heading into the desert to slay a Molduga together. They are actually quite a good team, where Mipha's Special can heal Link, so that he can use his sword beams again.
Mipha did most of the work, though, because her usage of the Bomb Rune is amazing against the Molduga. She's now known in all of Hyrule as "Mipha, the Molduga Slayer". And overall the battle was a lot easier than they used to be in Breath of the Wild, where you basically were dead if you dared to step on the sand. Here you can just walk around the giant monster and wait comfortably for some weak point attacks. But so far the Molduga is really the only boss enemy that feels easier than in Breath of the Wild and that's a good thing. And I get it that they couldn't replicate the exact mechanics in this game, where it's cool that the Molduga appears at all.
The battle against Master Kohga also was a breeze now, where it didn't give me any trouble and the whole mission felt like I was playing on "Normal" difficulty. But that's what the increasing levels do for you and it feels good to have this sort of accomplishment in the game, where it's fun to revisit the earlier missions just to feel like a god now. I will do a lot more of that, once I know which missions still have hidden Koroks in them. And I suppose there is also a damage cap, so you don't just one-hit-kill everything after a certain point.
However, there are two Challenges right now that I'm unable to do, because they want to you to fight big, slow bosses in a strict time limit, which is impossible if they take like six weak point attacks to be defeated... All the time limit stuff really isn't fun, Koei Tecmo.
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