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Breath of the Wild How difficult is BoTW for you?

athenian200

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I haven't seen a lot of conversation about the difficulty level of this game. So, I'm just wondering how tough it is for everyone else.

For me, this game is extremely tough because I really only have significant experience with Zelda, but I've heard playing games like Skyrim or Dark Souls would be better preparation for BoTW.

I'd rate it a 8 out of 10. 9 would be the average NES game, and 10 would be something like Super Meat Boy or Dark Souls. In my view, this isn't quite as bad as that, but it's close.

Do others see the game as easier?
 
Difficult is a poor word choice, imo. Overwhelming probably better describes BotW. You have so much independence with what to do and when to do it, you sort of just need to like figure out what it is exactly you want to do. But, that's the thing. It's not really possible to get lost in this game, as you can just be wandering around aimlessly and still be accomplishing tasks.

As far as actual difficulty goes, I guess combat has some challenge, especially at first. My big issue was the addition of the jump button, and adjusting to pressing X instead of A to dodge attacks. That's always been my style in 3D Zelda games, and it took me a little while to get used to. If they actually let me remap the buttons myself, it probably wouldn't have been so much an issue, especially since the R and ZR buttons I always got backward (and still do, sometimes). I can see attack damage adding to the difficulty, as well. When you don't have much of a health meter, you can easily get downed in one hit if you're not careful.

I have no experience with any open-world games prior to BotW, and I think I adjusted ok. Most of the challenge comes down to strategy, but the freedom of BotW grants you multiple ways to solve the same puzzle; multiple ways to defeat the same enemy. The game at its core is repetitive, yeah, but you yourself can do something to keep things fresh--you can interact with the game in so many ways instead of just going through the motions. Yeah, that requires some extra thought sometimes, but I wouldn't say it's overly difficult. I enjoy being able to exercise creative thinking, and that's why the game is fun to me.
 
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I'd say that the early game is much more difficult. There are lots of new enemies and weapons, your armor might suck and you may not know how to improve it, it could be dozens or even one hundred hours into the game before you find out how to get better damage resistance. Dodging, or parrying, or whatever your method of choice for fighting may take some time to get used to, and for people who tend to run from a fight over facing one, there may be spots where you find yourself without weapons because paradoxically, the more fights you involve yourself with the more weapons you have, even if some of them are just junk filler. Yes, the initial experience with the game might be called difficult.

The problem is that the difficulty doesn't scale. At all.

Eventually, assuming you aren't willingly wearing clothing with low armor ratings just to try to eke some challenge out of the game, even Silver enemies wielding Royal weapons become a joke. The four main dungeons aren't much better, since the developers decided to eschew an implied difficulty curve and instead opted with the "we have no idea how strong the player will be when they get here, so let's make everything pathetically easy" approach that we saw with A Link Between Worlds. Many of them can be completed in a half hour or less, and I don't personally know anyone who took more than 20 minutes on Vah Medo. Only one of the four bosses can be called a genuine challenge, and only then if you still don't know much about the combat system when you fight him. And then.... and then there's Calamity Ganon.

sigh.

Let's just say, the less said about him, the better.
 
It was difficult in the beginning.

Controls werent the same as previous Zelda games so i was dodging into attacks instead of slashing at the enemy. The enemies can tank hits too so you cant just pummel them like in previous games, you have to learn to cook to survive too so there was a lot to get used to.

I wouldnt say BotW comes anywhere near Dark Souls in terms of difficulty, the early one shot deaths make things tense but i've played much harder things.

I found it difficult even after i got used to the controls. I didnt start being able to survive hits until going for the third beast. By that point i'd found decent weapons, completed tens of shrines and upgraded a few pieces of gear.
 
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Aku

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Apr 3, 2014
It depends on what one considers difficult. On my first playthrough, enemies were difficult enough but some of that was due to me failing to develop enough skill and instead relying on my 25+ hearts to absorb damage. On my second playthrough, I have not increased my hearts from the standard three (although I will upgrade stamina) and it has been forcing me to get good. Yes you can die easier, but you learn to move quickly and to deliver headshots with crappy bows, dodging and using your swordfighting skills to the max (and I'm not even talking about the Matrix-style moves, since I can almost never seem to initiate those.)

Now I still am not super-great, I tried to fight a Lynel once with just 3 hearts. I have yet to suceed...
 

Dio

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Combat isn't difficult and killing enemies isn't hard from the beginning. That said the game doesn't explain how to do it fully until an optional shrine, hours in.

There isn't much skill to fighting, the controls are very basic and enemies attacks are easy to dodge. Only thing is some enemies do silly damage so a mistake could cost you.

Weapon breaking doesn't make combat harder in itself as weapons are so easy to find. I never in my entire play through had nothing to fight with. All it does is make combat annoying and hard to enjoy.

Bosses are ridiculously easy and dont scale at all. Yes they do massive damage IF you get hit, but they are just ****ing little *****es and go down in a few hits with a decent weapon, which are easy to find.

As for shrines, most are too easy and offer very little stimulus for the brain. Only a couple offered me a real challenge, maybe there are more challenging ones I missed but I don't see the point in challenge without a good reward.

Dungeons required some thought but weren't what could be called hard.

I dont understand those comparing the game to Dark Souls. Dark souls is much harder and is designed to be that way. BoTW clearly wasn't.
 
On my second playthrough, I have not increased my hearts from the standard three (although I will upgrade stamina) and it has been forcing me to get good. Yes you can die easier, but you learn to move quickly and to deliver headshots with crappy bows, dodging and using your swordfighting skills to the max (and I'm not even talking about the Matrix-style moves, since I can almost never seem to initiate those.)
The same can be said with stamina, tbh. In my file, I have made it a point not to upgrade my stamina. Started off just because I was prioritizing health, but then in the late game, I had become so efficient with my one wheel, I don't feel the need for the other two. I've watched other people play on youtube, and I've observed how quickly people accustomed to max stamina will give up on scaling things when an obstacle presents itself. They don't know how to look for small footholds on the side of a mountain; they don't know how to efficiently scale mountains in the rain. They don't know how to recover stamina while switching back and forth between climbing and sliding down the cliff face where there is no place to stand. These are just things I picked up without really giving it much thought, but in hindsight, it's definitely because I never upgraded my stamina, so I know how to conserve it quite well. If upgraded it now, I'd be unstoppable.

But regardless, yeah, you develop survival skills based on your equipment and current health/stamina. I'm a reckless fighter and never care if I get hit--that's always how I've been in Zelda games--so that meant avoiding most combat until I got a decent sized health meter.
 
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I think it depends on your personal approach to the game... if you just go charging straight in to everything, then you will find it tough, but if you take your time to prepare and plan ahead, then it becomes a lot easier.
I personally took the latter approach and found the game relatively easy for the most part.
 

Azure Sage

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Like others have said, it depends on how you approach the game. This game gives you all the opportunity in the world to be prepared for things, but it throws you in with no instructions on how to actually do said prep work. I managed to figure out everything the "tutorial" shrine teaches you long before I ever left the plateau, so combat was never an issue for me as long as I was careful. I watched the E3 footage so I knew about cooking beforehand, and honestly cooking isn't hard if you think about it from real-world cooking logic, like what ingredients would go together. If you're prepared with meals and weapons, and you think outside the box when fighting (i.e. don't just charge into everything like a madman) you'll be fine. The game kind of encourages you to play strategically and manage your resources (weapons, food, etc). If you choose not to think much about what you're doing, you'll have a harder time.
 

MW7

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I think it has a particularly high learning curve, and the difficulty depends on how you play the game. I collected everything and at the end of my first playthrough the game was much easier. I like how much freedom the game gives you. You could play a 3 heart run, a no armor run, or whatever to make the game much much harder. I felt the game started very difficult and then became very easy as I acquired hearts and better equipment. If I did a more minimal run, I think I'd find it extremely difficult.
 

Dizzi

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if youre like dim like me then its hard but others who have brains and actually use them will probably find it easier....
 
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I don't understand why so many people say that the game doesn't teach you about combat until Kakariko. Every single facet of combat, I learned and practice while still on the Great Plateau. I mean, i still kinda sucked at them but I was nonetheless exposed to things like Perfect Parries and Perfect Dodges.
 

misskitten

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To put it this way, when I started playing BotW, I wasn't sure if I would ever get good enough to actually complete the game (have now done every shrine and completed the main quest). Guardians terrified me, it was overwhelming how enemies constantly one-hit killed me, and it just seemed like quite the challenge. And I encountered a lot of challenges as I went through the game. Whenever people talked about going to Hyrule castle or hunting Lynels, it was mindboggling to me, because of how challenging everything else seemed to be.

How difficult the game is depends on what you're used to, simple as that. Yes, you aren't taught anything in the beginning and enemies can one-hit kill you at a regular basis. For some people this is going to be tough as hell, for others who are used to approaching enemies in roundabout ways, it's going to be familiar territory. For me it was more of the first, I was used to Zelda conventions and button-mashing combat from other games. My confidence in my own abilities was low as simple button-mashing won't cut it here, so it took a while before I attempted greater challenges, like world bosses, or going up against Guardians, even decaying ones. I put off doing test of strength shrines after my first encounter with one, as it had been a grueling experience (in my second playthrough I took on a Major test of strength with only 3 hearts).

I would rate this one of the hardest Zelda games I have played, not *the* hardest, as nothing is going to be more grueling than AoL (I couldn't even get into that one), but it's a doable kind of hard, because you will grow as a player. I initially thought it was the better gear, the increased hearts and stamina that made me better, but starting my second playthrough I noticed just how much better I was playing the game despite low hearts/stamina and weak gear.
 

Vanessa28

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During the game you'll definitely learn. At first I was like "how the hell am I supposed to kill THAT thing??" Especially when I first encountered a Lynel. I also found the big skeleton Moblins a bit overwhelming at first. but after a while I accidentally hit one of them and his head felt off and I was supposed to kill the head. I was like "ohhhhhh". You learn a lot along the way. When I encountered the Shrine which taught you how to fight, I already knew everything I had to do because I learned it by going into battle. And tried everything out myself. I was searching for enemies to fight. Like someone else already said, you can't really get lost in this game. There is always something to do.
I pushed killing Lynels far away. I was just convinced I couldn't kill them. After having killed a Hinox, Talus, Molduga and Guardian I thought it was time to take on the challenge and beat a Lynel. I went to the colosseum and saved the file and yep....my first Lynel kill was there and boy what a blast it was! The game starts "difficult" because you basically are on your own and not taken by the hand by a companion or something. But after a couple of hours in, you just notice that it's very refreshing and that you can't really go wrong. You wanna go left, well go left. You wanna go right, fine too. Just explore. The only way you learn is just by going on your own and fight as many enemies as possible. During the game you start with low levelled weapons but after a while you'll notice you're getting better weapons. Making you feel a bit more like a boss against those enemies who seem to be overwhelming at first.
 

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