My First Week With Zelda: Breath of the Wild (part two)

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Did you miss part one? Be sure to check out my first piece about the gameplay in Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

As for this article, the following are some other tips that I have picked up from playing over the last week and my final thoughts on the game.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get enough rupees to buy a house, only to realize that the only redeeming qualities are a bed to sleep in to replenish health and a mount to show off some cool gear you’ve picked up. Honestly, early on in the game this doesn’t mean much. In fact, replenishing health is fairly quick and easy and spending rupees on a bed or even sleeping at an inn is just a waste. You can quickly gather some mushrooms or apples and cook them to refill your heart containers very easily. A big part of the reason that I believe you should hang onto your rupees for important gear is because unlike previous installments, rupees are much harder to come by. In fact, I wasn’t even sure they existed for many, many hours of gameplay because I had not found or earned a single one. I recently noticed that some rupees (amongst other things) can be found by simply picking up a rock. Quick tip, if you see a rock hanging out in an odd place by its lonesome, pick it up and see if there’s anything (or anyone) special waiting underneath.

Talk to any and all NPC’s that you come across, but don’t just talk to them once. In fact, you should try to talk to people during the day, at night, and even when you see them hanging out in a new spot. You never know what useful information they might give you, or better yet, what quests you might trigger. The NPC’s are great for gathering very useful tips and hints. I know that talking to NPC’s in games can be tedious or boring, but most of your conversations are fairly short, and a lot of them pay off in the end.

I know I mentioned this before but I will stress it again: don’t be afraid to get new weapons and let go of degraded ones before they break in battle. This strategy proves key in winning fights against multiple or difficult enemies.

Also, don’t forget to take pictures of everything that will pop up in your compendium once you get the camera, even things like birds and horses. The compendium will provide you with location information and even what you can get out of them. I know that it’s very reminiscent of Pokemon Snap, but you don’t have to worry about taking the best or clearest photo (unless you are a perfectionist). Every time you see something new, take out your camera and snap a quick picture so you can compile as much information as possible. And as I mentioned earlier, you will be able to set your Sheikah slate to certain items that you will need to help you succeed throughout the game.

Don’t be afraid to try new things. Save often so you can give things a shot, no matter how crazy it seems. You will have several save slots that cycle through both your manual and autosaves, but beware that these slots are limited and overwritten often. My best advice is to manually save a lot so you can control where you will go back to when restarting or after you have continued from a Game Over. Once you have the saving thing down, it will provide you the option to try out new weapons on enemies to see what works best and even see what good different elixirs will do you. If you think something will work, do it.

Cheat a little and read up on different approaches to the game. Everyone’s experience is different from one another’s and you never know what useful information you might find that someone has figured out. For example, I picked up using stasis to my advantage while I was looking up something else about the game. Honestly, these tips you can grab from all over the place can really change up your game.

Mark places on your map with the stamps. Personally, I have solved a couple of shrines but had trouble getting to the chest or chests inside. Since I wanted to figure it out on my own, I left a treasure box stamp on the map at the shrine so I could come back to it later. Also, there are some really tough baddies out there that will reappear after the blood moon. (The blood moon makes all of the enemies you have defeated reappear). It would suck to forget that in the middle of a set of woods there is an overpowered enemy that you would like to avoid, or perhaps come back to after they respawn for the drops they provide. Either way, you have 100 stamps you can use that vary in category and I say use them. You can even drop a stamp for a difficult Korok seed so you don’t forget where it is — after all, there are 900 of those guys and you may not want to miss one.

Explore, explore, explore. Nothing should be overlooked because you never know what you will find.

Give the motion controls a shot for aiming. I have found that in a pinch, the motion controls go well with lining up good bow shots. You won’t be able to turn the controls off for the motion puzzles, so having a good grip on how to use them will prove imperative to solving some shrines. Don’t worry, it’s not like the Wii controls where you will be standing up and knocking your cat off her sleeping place or hit your spouse in the head while trying to fight enemies. Instead, the controls are very smooth and subtle, making it very comfortable to sit on the couch and play with them. Word to the wise though, if you have a small child or animal who likes to climb on you while you are playing, you will definitely have a much harder time with the motion controls. From experience, I missed several carefully aimed bow shots because my energetic eight-year-old was cuddled up against me moving around and playing.

Finally, and most importantly, take breaks. I have found that it is very easy to immerse yourself in this game and forget about other things. Give your eyes a break from the screen and get up and move around. Trust me, time will fly while you are playing — you’ll go to do one quest, wind up three more deep, and realized several hours have passed.

Overall, Zelda: Breath of the Wild has been an amazing game. It’s not without its faults, and I wouldn’t call it perfect, but it is pretty darn close. On the Switch version I could see some frame rate issues, but otherwise it plays well on both the HDMI connection as well as the tablet. There is a very seamless transition between the two which makes playing the game in a full household much easier than I imagined. Even the motion controls work well on the tablet. The game is breathtaking in beauty and phenomenal in gameplay. It is by far one of the best games I have ever played and I still have barely scratched the surface. This title is a definite buy.