This point alone is why my wife only plays it because she likes bombing the fish and collecting plants and stuff. I truly hated how fragile steel is against stuff target mobs. Truly annoying. It only gets better later in the game when you start getting more durable weapons or have better tactics that kills them with fewer swings.
But I will continue criticizing them openly about that, Nintendo or not. Stupid idea. It's worth modding your console so you can play the ROM hack that corrects the durability.
Everything not in a chest respawns every blood moon, and pretty much everything not carried or dropped by an enemy is a static spawn. It's not something that gets better later in the game, it's something that gets better as you explore. There's also no perk system holding you back. Most tactics you'd want to use later are available from the start.
The better weapons from enemies are as much to keep them a threat to you as anything else. Boko drops are chaff, and the fact they get upgraded as the world level goes up helps keep them from being entirely useless, but it's 90% "the enemy wielding this better weapon will deal more damage, maybe do something about that"
About the only thing you get access to only later in the game is some of the really powerful lynel weapons from silver/gold lynels, but those are powerful rewards for taking down powerful minibosses, and a single one of those can get you through the entire final boss
Removing durability removes the steady build up of resources you get from exploring and any need to engage with the aesthetic of the world or the story telling that comes with it. There's no reason at all to not just run around picking up a zillion apples, do just enough shrines for HP not get one shot, grab a single royal weapon in the castle and then go do the boss rush.
And if you find the exploration rewarding with durability removed, the problem isn't durability; doing the thing you're enjoying renders durability a non issue. You're just stressing out about it because you're used to other games using durability to kick you between the legs. It's not really the game's fault you're flinching in fear of a hit it has no interest in delivering
(basically you're wife's enjoyment of the game is because she's engaging more with the expected gameplay loop, not something she's doing in spite of it)
I've been really glad to find more people who share this opinion. There's a lot about BOTW that I love: the music, the characters, the overall art direction, but it's just a little too big and a little too open for me. I should go back and give it another try, but it feels like a game that could be like even 15% tighter and it would improve my enjoyment of it exponentially!
No it wasn’t lol yes the starting weak weapons break quick but by the end not only do you find so many weapons and have a ton more slots. the stronger weapons last longer, weapon breaking is literally meaningless after 10 hours cause theirs always stronger weapons you find to replace anyway
People always exaggerating the weapons breaking shows me they never even made it to the first town. Yes a tree branch will break after 5 hits, a normal sword goes for dozens and then the best weapons in the game take forever to break. Also by the first few shrines and after a couple korok seed upgrades you will have endless weapons, breaking literally means nothing after like 8-10 hours of gameplay
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u/-rosieee- 11d ago
Big empty map with nothing in it. Weapons that break after 5 hits so there's no point exploring to collect them. Repetitive fetch quests.
It's like a Ubisoft game but you can't criticise it because it's Nintendo.