What Did We Play Yesterday?

Remember when I pissed and cried about how shrines are too hard for my smooth brain or whatever? Yeah, well, it turns out I was just being a classic pissbaby. Go figure.

At Donut's insistence I finally decided to complete a few shrines and before I knew it I'd done about 40 of them. Most were perfectly fine and I only noped out of a handful I didn't like. It turns out the 2 I remembered being unfairly tedious were tedious because I was trying to complete them in the most difficult way possible because uh (raises hand, points to self) smooth. Facts are facts, folks.

Most of the shrines have puzzles you need to complete, but if the puzzle is the act of getting to a shrine (it's in a maze, for instance) it's called a blessing and you just get straight to the good stuff. I am always down for this, because I'd much rather run around in a weird giant maze than do a physics puzzle. I think I've marked all of the shrines that are visible from higher altitudes, so the remaining 70+ must be tucked away or hidden in caves or underground. It's hard to imagine there are 120 of these, and harder to imagine completing them all, but I'll keep looking.

I also rediscovered the camera and figured out I could take wildlife pictures. Donut asked what I get for doing this. "Nothing!" I replied cheerfully, as a electric keese fried my ass while I was trying to get the Perfect Closeup. I'm not sure that's actually true, but in the grand scheme of Things Link Must Do filling the Hyrule Compedium is firmly relegated to side hustle.

Last, I must address the elephant in the room. The koroks. In a game whose main gameplay flaw is aggressive weapon decay, having limited slots for weapons is annoying. Koroks, of which there are 1000000 (or 900, whatever), can be found for points to open more slots. Nintendo basically said, "we want a collectible element that satisfies completely insane trophy hunters while managing to be useful and not overly burdensome to normies," and this is what they came up with. You'll probably encounter several dozen koroks just by walking around, and that's enough to unlock a few extra weapon/shield/bow slots.

There are about 5 or so different type of korok encounters. Most of them are catagorically stupid (chase the sparkle, pick up the rock, shoot the target, drop the massive boulder into a hole somewhere, run fast as hell to this mountain, and some other thing I'm forgetting). The only ones I like are koroks under rocks, because when I drop the rock on its head it says, "Ouch!" (Donut likes this part too.) Some of the puzzles/games to get the koroks are annoying as hell. Has this stopped me from collecting them? NO! It has not. As the little korok indicator goes up, I feel stupider, but I don't stop. Will I get 900? NO! I will die first! But I will never say no to extra weapon slots, so if I come across one and can reasonably catch it, I do. Well played, Nintendo, as usual. I am stripped of my meager dignity once again.

I've been pleasantly surprised by how I easily got sucked into this game after the ambivalence of my previous attempts. I usually play at least 30 minutes a day. Filling out the map by activating all the towers ended up being a fun task and I only have one left, the one near Mr. Doom or whatever it is--le big volcano.

Activating towers allows Link to download a topography map of a region but the details are filled in by exploring on foot or horseback. Seeing interesting areas on the map and visiting them and learning their names has been rewarding, and occasionally I'll come across a new enemy (not many, but I loved the fake treasure chest octos, which startled the crap out of me the first time I encountered one on a beach; they are easily revealed by checking with the magnet, but every now and then one will still startle me). I found the three giant fairies, who are total freaks and I absolutely love them. Their intense need to sexually intimidate Link is welcome and appreciated and I am extremely interested in pursing the possibilities further as giantess size kink is of great personal interest.

One issue I have with the UI, as an ingredient hoarder and devoted Picker-Upper of All the Things, is the dumb pagination. Having to scroll past all the ingredients before reaching cooked food and potions for healing/buffs, and vice versa to get back to weapons and armor, is definitely annoying. I refuse to accept that a game this well-designed did this by accident. I'd be perfectly willing to accept "Nintendo doesn't want you to hoard things" as A Reason except I don't ever know what I need to upgrade armor so if that's the case they are placing an unreasonable demand on me. If you could mod this game, I'm positive a QOL that moves the cooking tab to the left 1 slot would have been released within days.

I discovered the Lost Woods, which I loved but also hated for obvious reasons. The Deku Tree is all like, "I've protected Hyrule for ages," or whatever and I'm like "well u sure fucked that one up buddy" I mean, come on. We all know who's really doing all the work out here. Give me a break.

I finally relented and started working on shrines last night, after an intense and unrelenting pressure campaign from Donut. I'd worked my way back around to the areas near the base of the Plateau, which I skipped because I first hit Gerudo and explored outward from that direction, so I figure I can at least try the easier shrines for now.

The game has not yet forced me to attend the main quest, but we're getting there. I uncovered a few areas I think are locked until I am at the appropriate place in the story (a second lab, for example, that is currently empty). I found a shrine asking for shit and I have no idea what it's talking about. Stuff like that. I haven't gotten the camera upgrade yet and yeah, it probably would have been smarter to do that before I explored 80% of the map but... (points to Quina Quen sign).

The Planet Crafter by Miju Games is an Early Access planetary terraforming sim. I feel slightly misled by reviews claiming this was essentially a complete game, in fact it is not. There are glitches, some more annoying than others (issues with crafting modal screens are particularly annoying). Gamepad controller support has been bugged since lanch, so every time I play I have to manually set the game pad sensitivity twice to properly use my right stick (shout out to whichever Steam user figured out this fix).

Early game is pretty satisfying as a survival/terraforming sim. There are no enemies but the elements, and these have no bite. Meteor storms look and sound terrifying but don't harm the player or base in any way.

Oxygen, food, and hydration levels should be maintained but if you don't (and you're not playing permadeath) there's no real reprocussions. You simply spawn at the nearest base and have to hike back to get your stuff, which is helpfully stored in a spawned chest. Some have compared it to Subnautica without killing, and I agree with that assessment. It's a chill game, though a bit lonely.

The early progression is fun, but I'm starting to reach the stage in the game where I have to do a bit more grinding than I'd like. Donut enjoyed the early game, but abandoned it when progression slowed down, especially when they figured out we'd have to move their base, which had been built on low-lying ground in a flood plain.

The simulation is not hard science at all, but the planet was realistic enough it felt like SF rather than SFF... at least at first.

I was exploring a meteor field when out of nowhere, I stumbled upon a mushroom biome. To say this was unexpected would be an understatement. I went inside and found... liquid and broken wooden structures, on an arid planet? WTF.

Where did the wood come from? Why were there so many broken structures? WTF was up with the giant mushrooms? There's a relic that unlocks some kind of weird temple...

WHY?

After being treated to an apparently "realistic" planetary surface, the descent into pure fantasy felt jarring and strange. I think if I'd been given some hint of it prior, it would be fine, but I didn't discover this area until IDK 12 hours in? I'd already settled into the idea of this being a pseudo-realistic terraforming simulator.

Anyway, I'm on the cusp of having lakes, but it seems I have a ways to go.

I played this back in 2019 and was kind of ambivalent about it. Played again in 2021 and I enjoyed the game a bit more and beat one of the divine beasts, but I lost interest shortly after. Well, Donut randomly picked this game up the other day and is now formally obsessed with horses and cooking. They took over my 2021 save file, so I started a new game. My goals are straightforward:

• Get off the Plateau as quickly as possible (done)
• Completely ignore the story (done)
• Get kicked in the head by a really cool horse (done, a green horse beat the crap out of me)
• Activate all the towers (work in progress, maybe 50% done?)
• Fill out my map by discovering the POIs and activating shrines for the fast travel points...
• ...But otherwise ignore shrines, seriously fuck that
• Focus on horses, cooking, and enchanting or otherwise improving armor (just learned about dye, score)
• Find koroks (? like maybe 30? 30 seems like a nice, solid number)

The strengths of the game remain the same for me. I really enjoy exploration and appreciate the only real barrier is the stamina bar. Galloping through large, open plains is peaceful and relaxing. I like picking up ingredients even though the size of my ingredient stash is getting a bit unwieldy. The weaknesses remain the same as well, but I'll note I am fully aware I am the only weirdo on the planet who hates the physics puzzles and the shrines. Weapons decay, lack of enemy variety, blah blah, everyone has heard it all a million times.

I have no designs on the upcoming sequel. I have a feeling if I enjoy it will be more for aspects of it rather than the whole.