Zelda BotW Combat Initial Impressions

Early thoughts on Zelda: Breath of the Wild's combat (Monday after release, 24:33:07 playtime).  Trying to keep this spoiler light.




Let's start with the good - conceptually the combat is pretty sweet.  Largely the same old 3D Zelda system but with the new Fury Strike twist. It's actually similar to Bayonetta - dodge at the right moment to get into slow motion beat the ever living #$%^& out of them mode, except it's only good on one target (that I've noticed) (Also if a second target happens to be nearby RIP them anyway).  So far so good.

It's also pretty neat that you get more than 1 weapon type.  One handed weapons (sword, club, branch, boomerang, rod) with a shield, two handed blades (greataxe, greatsword, sledge hammer), and pole arms (spears, pitch forks, brooms).  Really spears are the only new one here, but it's still fun because of their reach.  The greatswords I'm less fond of because of the windup time to actually attack!  That said, the dodge mechanic actually makes these weapons usable.  Sadly I'm starting to drop these like the plague.  Thrown weapons are kinda okay, but it quickly became a gimmick.  Even the great Lord Banana is lame when you have to catch him manually on the way back.

I didn't mention bows above because, well, range.  It's taken a while, but I'm finally starting to shoot while on the move.  It's nice to nail head shots against moblins on the run!  The different arrow types are a nice touch too.

Also bombs.  These were amazing early on, but they are quickly being relegated to initial strike and downhill bombardment duty.

The set piece encounters do make for some nice opportunities to sit back and giggle, especially when the bow is put to good use, but I have some other problems with these....

The bad

Combat has the same intended movement in that you can side dodge and backflip.  So far so good!  Except the camera doesn't lock behind you and you have to actually point "away."  I can't count how many times I've side hopped into a swing while holding the control stick down.  It's getting old.

Worse?  Armor and Hearts are worthless.  Pretty much every enemy I've encountered does all but 1 heart of damage.  Some more.  Link should not be one-shottable by random encounters with 12 full hearts.  At this point he's a knight with 4 times the health of a mere mortal!  Better armor?  I'd love to, but I just had to switch out my actually good armor I've found items to improve so I could wear cold weather gear to not die from the cold.  I could grind improvements to the cold weather gear, but I'd rather not grind item drops.  I'm starting to rethink my decision to get this many hearts given how little the game cares.

Also electric keese are the plague.  Get shocked!  Drop all weapons!  Try to line up another attack and BAM SHOCKED AGAIN!  I've actually started just bombing myself to take care of them.

Speaking of bombs, their normal effectiveness is still weird.  They don't do much damage, but they still have a lot of force!  So I can stab something once for 20 damage, and get stabbed back for 5 hearts, or I can use a bomb and send them flying off the cliff to their death.  Something feels off here.

Let's not forget - weapons breaking.  I'm okay with it, but not really in love with it.  I have one weapon that I can supposedly rebuild, but the asking price to do that is exceptionally high.


Overall it's okay.  I want the camera fixed so I can stop non-dodging into attacks, and maybe a little leniency on damage.  I don't want to say where damage should be capped, but 12 hearts (at least) on the overworld is a bit much.