![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Tears of the Kingdom, Part Four
May. 31st, 2023 08:38 amI’ve gotten much better at using the Ultrahand to rotate objects in space, but the shrine puzzles aren’t getting any easier.
The problem with the Ultrahand tool is that its attachments don’t consistently snap to a grid. Breath of the Wild was robust enough to allow multiple solutions to spatial puzzles; but, in Tears of the Kingdom, there is (almost) always only one solution, and this solution needs to be precise. When you understand what you need to do but the game insists that you can’t do it without being fussy, this can be maddening.
I’ve been going through two or three shrines a day, and every day I’ve encountered a simple puzzle that’s taken half an hour to complete. I’ll look at guides online that confirm I need to do exactly what I think I need to do, but attaching Thing A to Thing B to Thing C in exactly the right way at exactly the right angle requires a ridiculous degree of precision. In addition, it’s frustrating to lose time exiting and then re-entering a shrine when I make a mistake at the end of a sequence and all the puzzle pieces fall into a void.
Today I plan to do my first full dungeon, the Lightning Temple in Gerudo Desert. We’ll see how it goes.
The reason I’ve been focusing on completing shrines is to get more hearts. I want to spend more time exploring the underground area, an enormous full-dark Halloween playground filled with jumpscares. I think, if I weren't infested with Dark Souls brain fungus, I might be frustrated by how often you die in The Depths. But thankfully, to my Soulsborne-rotted mind, the puzzles implicit in The Depths (ie, try not to die) are much more satisfying than those presented by the shrines.
The problem with the Ultrahand tool is that its attachments don’t consistently snap to a grid. Breath of the Wild was robust enough to allow multiple solutions to spatial puzzles; but, in Tears of the Kingdom, there is (almost) always only one solution, and this solution needs to be precise. When you understand what you need to do but the game insists that you can’t do it without being fussy, this can be maddening.
I’ve been going through two or three shrines a day, and every day I’ve encountered a simple puzzle that’s taken half an hour to complete. I’ll look at guides online that confirm I need to do exactly what I think I need to do, but attaching Thing A to Thing B to Thing C in exactly the right way at exactly the right angle requires a ridiculous degree of precision. In addition, it’s frustrating to lose time exiting and then re-entering a shrine when I make a mistake at the end of a sequence and all the puzzle pieces fall into a void.
Today I plan to do my first full dungeon, the Lightning Temple in Gerudo Desert. We’ll see how it goes.
The reason I’ve been focusing on completing shrines is to get more hearts. I want to spend more time exploring the underground area, an enormous full-dark Halloween playground filled with jumpscares. I think, if I weren't infested with Dark Souls brain fungus, I might be frustrated by how often you die in The Depths. But thankfully, to my Soulsborne-rotted mind, the puzzles implicit in The Depths (ie, try not to die) are much more satisfying than those presented by the shrines.
