[Electric Turahk]

Finally beat Breath of the Wild last night.

Wow. What a game.

I really don't want to stop playing either. I've got some content left to get to at least, but every main quest is done and Calamity Ganon has been defeated. (What a silly name.) Rather anticlimactically, though I was pretty overpowered by that point.

I had set a goal for myself - as I often do in an open world game - to do as much as possible before facing the end boss. I visited every shrine before facing him. (Found 106 without a guide and felt pretty good about that. Well... I'd like to think 108 really. There was once I missed as you start climbing Eldin Mountain that I just forgot to mark and return to because my fire resistance was running out. And I figured one would be in the castle, which I didn't approach until I was going to fight Ganon. So that one was last and I'm sure I would have found it on my own. Did so accidentally once I was in there anyway, as I had no knowledge other than it existed.)

I only found maybe 150 Korok seeds, but I am not crazy enough to go find the rest. ...Yet. Completed every side quest I could find, which was still somehow 11 short. Should've looked at a guide for that too heh. But that's what I'll be working on now.

Even set personal goals of filling the entire compendium, which I very nearly did. I was really obsessed with taking pictures of everything I could. Just need the damn Bow of Light because I figured I'd get to keep it after beating Ganon so didn't stop in the middle of the fight to take a picture of it lol. Granted, a fair few of them I ended up buying from the guy... Maybe 30 total? Out of ~400 isn't bad. And some I missed were just silly. Many were bugs, which were just hard to take pictures of but I had definitely captured, and same goes for a lot of fish. The one enemy I never got one of was just a Talus variant I definitely fought but didn't think was distinct enough. And then the rest were weapons. Which I actually found really annoying. Some were just early game weapons I didn't see for a long time and really only used before I got the camera rune. A couple I had made great use of and must have just assumed I took pictures of at some point. So just me being stupid. And then there were all the Lynel weapons... Which leads into my biggest problem with the game I'll get to soon... I literally just never saw a huge chunk of them. Most Lynels in my game became white manes very quickly. So I never got the crushers or spears from red or blue because I only know a single place where either spawns consistently. And they usually just had swords. So that was frustrating.

So it's not like the game isn't without faults though. And my biggest complaint are the enemies. Chiefly, there's not enough variety and the scaling did not (for me at least) perform well. Variety's obvious enough - you tire real quickly of Bokoblins, Moblins, and Lizalfos. And they are just everywhere. The occasionall Hynox or Lynel (not even going to count Modulgas as they're so isolated and if it weren't for a quest I would have never found them) aren't really enough to break up the monotony. Heck, the nighttime enemies just being skeletal versions of these common monsters just made it even worse as you just can't escape them. It became boring after a while because everything was so predictable.

And I don't know what caused it, but very quickly in my game I was just encountering black enemies. Skipped over blues very quickly (excepting Bokoblins as blues replaced the reds as the weak support). Which made things hard for a short while, but not in a good way. They weren't killing me still, it was just a frustrating hard as it took longer to whittle away health and I'd run out of weapons faster until I was getting gear that lasted longer.

Those are really my only lingering qualms though. The world is vast and beautiful. The joy of discovery was ever-present. Shrine puzzles were fun, although I understand the desire for a few more longer dungeons. I really did have a lot of fun playing it.

I was ready to call it quits after beating Ganon and finally move on to another game while awaiting the forthcoming DLC, but knowing I have a decent number of quests left to do has me pretty confident I'll be firing this one up again tonight.