Tears of the Kingdom: Hail to the Queen

[aubergion]

Ok. Way behind again. Let's recap!

In the desert, there is a light puzzle. Under the light puzzle... is a ziggurat! Also Riju is here again. This time I actually remembered to snap a pic of Patricia the Sand Seal (who has her own unique entry in the creatures section of the Compendium, so if you're missing something right after the sand seal, it's Riju's prophetic mount. Yes. Really. That's your BotW/TotK Fact Of The Day)

The Lightning Temple (but of course) is covered in Gibdo (natch), and we find Zelda (briefly) and the source of all the ant-mummies - a Queen Gibdo (also got a picture! I am trying to remember to do that more. I didn't get a picture of the frost whatchamacallit in the Stormwind Ark unfortunately). And she is a nightmare to hit. Like, she's enormous and her hitbox is very close to her body, so even when she's de-armored with Riju's lightning powers, I can't close with her fast enough to hit her with anything but arrows and the occasional spear.

Also, half my inventory is 2H weapons. I need to drop some of those. After getting a few hits on the queen, she fucks off into the temple. I was curious to see how Riju's significantly lower mobility would play with navigating her through the temple - turns out, making paths so she can follow is roughly 1/3 of the gameplay in the Lightning Temple. She does spontaneously drop from the ceiling a few times, but only to fast travel to places that she can physically get to from her previous location that I happened to access in a bonkers manner. Overall, I was pleased with the verisimilitude of her pathing, and I am thrilled with being able to have Tulin and Riju out at the same time. BotW could be so lonely. Now I get to have a whole adventuring party in the palm of my hand, and Zelda is fighting with the other five sages (I guess Rauru doesn't count as one even though he has a stone?). Whatever may be happening to me and Zelda and Hyrule, we are not alone. Not this time.

I am less pleased with how Riju's ability plays in combat. The problem is her ability procs off arrows, but, when not surrounded by her guards Riju is a melee combatant. So to talk to her, I have to chase her down. Into melee. While wielding a bow. In the enemy's face is the LAST place I want to be with a bow! For Tulin, this is a non issue - his gust ability is primarily noncombat utility and his attack is ranged, so there's no real interaction between his sage power-up and his combat-ally status. Riju is all combat, all interaction, in the most inconvenient way possible. Couldn't you have a shield or something and just hang out nearby me so I could lightning-arrow at will from behind cover? Urbosa gave me Dawnbreaker last game. It's totally on-brand!

Anyways, that gripe aside, I did manage to take down the Queen Gibdo. Mostly using fire and spark fruits, but Riju did contribute - every so often, the Queen would aggro to Riju instead of me, giving me some breathing room to nail her in the head with my biggest baddest arrows. And I did deal the final blow with Riju's lightning, priimarily for the flair factor.

After that I ran some errands. Delivered an archaologist to the seven heroines, found the desert stable had closed down which is annoying because I wanted to ride out of here, turned around, delivered a Korok back to Kara Kara, headed north, and took another jaunt into the depths to finish trailing the statues. Found the mines (conveniently under Kara Kara and Gerudo Town), beat up Kohga for the second time, and scooped up the schema stones for something called an instant scaffold and a hot air balloon. Also annoyed that these things don't expand my favorites menu and instead come with someone else's premade designs on them. Like, they're useful designs, but I wanted to be clever and resourceful myself. Right now it feels like every time I spend an hour scrounging around to get the pieces and figuring out the mechanics to make something new and cool, I turn around and some random steward hands me the blueprint for it five minutes later. Sort of takes the thrill out of my success, you know?

Kohga fucked off to Lanayru, so I'm definitely solidly on the beaten path now. Based on the stuff I found during my week-long entrapment under Kakariko, he's going to go to Lanaryu and then finish up in Akkala, so probably Rito-Gerudo-Zora-Goron is the expected route.

Well, I don't want to.

So I headed north under the Deeps, successfully escaped the Depths via hot air balloon twice at Biridia and the Yiga Hideout, because I could (using my hot air balloon, not the steward's. My design has a flame emitter in it. I am small, genderqueer, and contrary, and that goes for me and Link kthx), picked up the horn player, delivered him to Mija, grabbed the Hebra tear and the golden horse, and returned to Josha where she was quite surprised to see I came pre-prepared with a picture of the proto-Gerudo statue and the Yiga at the end defeated already. Again, I get the pointer to Lanayru, so I am going to continue to not do the thing.

For all that I felt overwhelmed by potential on the Great Sky Plateau, I feel like the game is holding my hand too much now. Quest locations are pre-pointed out for me without any exploration - geoglyphs, Great Fairies. There's a big secondary side adventure with the Yiga laying out the suggested main quest order. All the useful inventions come preloaded at the mine. I was confused at the beginning because I didn't understand the mechanics. Now that I do, I would like the NPCs to stop holding my hand, please!

So I'm ignoring Josha, and Kohga, and all of that crap now.
 

I'm going to Lurelin.

Comments

[canadian_jay]

oh this is *fascinating*. I can really see it feeling very handholdy by virtue of how you ended up playing. I *still* haven't done the "follow the statues to the Gerudo Mine" because I was like... nah? I'll get there eventually, I guess, but chasing down Kohga is very low priority. So I haven't gotten *any* of that side-adventure-compass, and went Rito > Zora > Gerudo > Goron, pretty much entirely of my own accord! The promptings without the Yiga Depths quest are subtler -- mostly NPC stable chatter -- and I had intended to go Gerudo second (bc I/Link wanted to check and see if Ganondorf had recruited them) but got sidetracked. A lot.

Also RIP @ your schema stone luck. I've only picked up a couple, and they haven't taken the wind out of my sails (lol). Favourites upgrades would be *nice* tho.