I played BotW a lot, and really loved it. I feel like the beginning of the game was relatively easy compared to TotK, I died a few times trying out things, discovering the game and possibilities ; in TotK I died a lot and still do even with good gear and armour (1*-2* armors, 30-40+ damage weapons). You could say it’s skill issues and I would agree with you as I am not a pro player and play games once a week maybe, however I feel like the difficulty curve is far greater in TotK. That has affected how I view the game to the point that sometimes I think I dislike it (even though the new powers are the best thing they could have added, with the verticality of the world) ; that might also have to do with the much darker ambiance of the game, which can feel frightening (to me) to the point going underground is hard.
Is it just me? Should I just “git gud”?
It’s not so much that it was difficult, it’s that it felt a bit more unfair than BotW. It seemed like the regular grunts (Bokoblins etc.) were far tougher than they needed to be. Every single encampment of them would have a few silver ones and they’re just damage sponges - you just get through all your weapons just clearing out a small camp. Even the master sword felt like it used up a whole charge just taking out a few of those buggers. I shouldn’t have to completely rebuild and restock my weapon arsenal every time I clear out a small camp of fodder.
The game itself didn’t really feel much harder than BotW though. It’s just all these little encounters that annoyed me.
The initial sky island is as easy as the beginning of BotW. The initial constructs are easy to defeat (a few hits with a branch, and they’re gone).
I think by the time you jump to the surface, you’re expected to know how to fuse weapons. This will give you an advantage, and makes enemies easier to defeat. But if you don’t fuse weapons and play the game like in BotW, it becomes really hard, since enemies are designed to be attacked with stronger, fused weapons.
The depths adds another layer, as there you find resources that will make defeating enemies extremely easy: bomb flowers, muddle buds and puffshrooms are extremely useful when used strategically. As long as you avoid large enemies and bosses, the depths difficulty level is not hard. But again, you need to use fused weapons.
The main point, in my opinion, is understanding the new mechanics you can use, and play the game using them, and not like you played in BotW. It’s really a different game in a lot of aspects, specially combat.
Edit: Oh, I almost forgot: in TotK, you have the help of the sages avatars. Contrary to BotW, this game is designed to play with them, and not completely alone. A lot of people just dismiss the avatars and go alone against enemies, but this game is designed to have them around you almost always. If you’re not using them, try summoning them and having them by your side always. They help a lot.
I think the sages are the biggest thing here. The bad guys don’t typically do the thing that games like Assassin’s Creed bad guys do where your may have a gang of events but they’re roughly taking turns coming at you. In TotK, they’re just all over you constantly and the most effective way to keep that heat off of yourself is via the sages.
In some ways I think players coming from BotW are at a disadvantage over coming to it fresh.
It took me hours (too many) to finally realize that it’s a different game and I needed to play it as its own thing, not BotW 2. And as soon as that clicked it became much easier.
If you mostly play it as BotW, key additions like using thrown items take a backseat to dodge/flurry attack or such. Similar to how you might early on be climbing things as opposed to bouncing on a spring or finding a ceiling to pass through.
When it finally clicked, even though most of the BotW toolset was available to me, I barely touched it anymore.
Honestly the best learning experiences were the naked combat shrines. Don’t skip those - they become incredibly easy after you finally get using the new mechanics available to you, but they are there to force you to adapt. Same as how some of the annoying puzzle shrines if you do them the ‘right’ way are there to force you to learn how to use reverse to solve nearly everything in seconds.
Many encounters can be solved as easily as an active Zonai flame emitter you just carry around with Ultrahand.
The bow in TotK is so much more OP than in BotW. Also, thrown stuff can straight up break fights - silver lynel in depths? Yawnfest with abusing puffshrooms and a near breaking royal armament.
The one area where there’s a legit serious step up in challenge is the phantom Ganon world encounters. Those are hard fights even with all the tools at your disposal.
But the combat is much more tuned around preparation with itemization than in BotW. If you are having difficulty with parts, try using more items and play around with the options available to you. Shoot a powerful enemy with the muddle bud. Fuse a gloom sword to a gerudo dagger.
Playing it more like BotW is going to be unnecessarily painful. Forget what you knew, and don’t be afraid to experiment with radically different approaches to combat from what worked in the last game.
Also, I recommend farming the spikes from the frost dragon when you see it in the overworld. Cheap and easy way to have a freeze weapon you switch between to set up your hard hitters (frozen enemies take 3x damage on the next attack).
You can get really strong weapons really fast with Fusion, so I was able to take down black enemies with ease two hours after landing on the surface when in BotW, I was avoiding them for days. Other than that, I’d say the games are equal. The new enemies like Gleeok seem hard when you first run into them, but once you find a way that works, every enemy becomes a chump.
Shrines, on the other hand, I thought were harder but not in a good way. Where BotW asked you “Can you solve this puzzle?”, TotK asks you “Can you get this to work?” and it’s just annoying when you know what to do and still need to do it several times until it works.
Somehow I ended up in the Gerudo Desert really early, and if you have bombs and arrows, Molduga fights are super easy to cheese. Just make sure you have lots of weapons for the first one. After that, they take 45 seconds.
Elixirs made of the guts are worth a lot of money. Fins are useful because you can stockpile a lot of them and they’re useful in a pinch and you just need a 20 power weapon to get by. They also make decently valuable elixirs. Jaws boost weapons +32 and you’ll always get one or two after a fight. Attach one to a Gerudo Sword or spear and you’re wrecking some shit.
I’m glad I’m not the only one that finds the underground creepy. I still haven’t explored all of it. I cheese most of the fights with bows. If you have bombs, freeze items to fuse, keese eyes, and muddle buds you’re pretty golden.
