re: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

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but stasis rune + regular arrows + the master sword make pretty short work of them.

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Yea, I think stasis + the master sword is a little over-powered. I just spent a few hours slaughtering every guardian around hyrule castle.

Sterling address weapon durability and the backlash he's gotten from Zelda fans for giving BotW a 7/10.............maybe a **SPOILER** in the video

She's in Lake Hylia floating around on a small island. They totally trick you in that side quest and it pisses me off

I'm ok with the weapon durability. It adds a different challenge to the game. On the first divine I had to leave to kill a few mobs for more weapons b/c I got stuck in the dungeon and though stasis + beating something to death with my weapons was the answer.

I suspected before the game was released it was to force you to experience the variety and that's pretty much it. Don't worry about using a really cool weapon because there's always a cooler one around the corner

he mentions in the quest that she could be all the way in lake hylia, but I've scoured the map and haven't found it yet so I guess I'll find her eventually.

What throws you off is that he mentioned Zora River at first, so naturally you're going to check that out before anything. But once you don't see it, you panic and tell yourself I must've not looked good enough.


Then after a while you just stop and think like "frick this quest."

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I agree with Sterling that I wouldn't find it a "fun" challenge. I'm ok with that stuff in a game like Fallout

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I felt the same exact way before I played the game and I typically hate weapon durability / fragility in games.

It does make combat more dynamic. You may start a battle using a traditional sword and shield and then the sword breaks. Now you switch to your sledge hammer but it's two handed so you need to remember you can't block and there's a large wind-up to your attacks. Let's say that weapon breaks too because it was already damaged from a previous battle. So, you switch to a magical fire staff. It needs to be used as a ranged weapon and you aren't supposed to hit enemies directly with it. This frequent weapon switching has made even the most vanilla enemy encounters much more fun.

Sterling asserts that making a player use multiple weapons via weapon durability is bad because it is forced upon the player, which is an idiotic position or at least an idiotic way to argue how he feels about the game. Every game places constraints on the player(s), which is a core component of what makes something a game to begin with. Why can't Blanka throw a dragon punch? Why can't all my pawns move like the queen? Why is this game so rigid?

Constraints can do exactly what he argues they don't in this instance, give a game depth that wouldn't be there otherwise. But hey, the weapon durability clearly didn't work for him and that's fine. The childish reaction of (some of) the gaming community is embarrassing and unwarranted.

(I will, however, agree that plot-wise the weapon durability only makes sense at the beginning of the game. At that point you're only finding sticks, wooden clubs, and rusty swords. Now that I'm further in, I'm being occasionally given legendary weapons that can barely last one battle and that doesn't make sense. It does bother me a bit narratively.)

There's nothing particularly dynamic (or interesting) about a weapon breaking after 5 hits and forced to pause the action to select another generic melee weapon. Nor does a weapon breaking build depth in a game...what a Hell of a reach

It reminds me of the menu system in MGS3, switching out camo every other area. Other than that, I've finally gotten out of the tutorial area. Game is great; it's not perfect. Certainly blows away every other Zelda game of the last decade or so.