Rotational Hell

Apparently according to Storm I am still logged into Final Fantasy XIV downstairs on the laptop…  so that is something that I am going to have to take care of before I head to work.  I ended up in that state because I had probably the worst Palace of the Dead run I have ever experienced.  Before leaving floor 51 we had to use the rez shrine three times…  because for whatever reason people kept running in to aggro entire rooms worth of mobs at the same time.  Had I been the last one standing I would have just wiped and ended the run.  However I kept trying to pull things out, but since I shifted to being a monk to level that job…  it just wasn’t happening.  So instead I wound up leaving the party and eating the 30 minute debuff that keeps me from queuing for anything else.  At which point I THOUGHT I logged out… and wandered off into the bedroom to play some Zelda, never to actually return.  I am not entirely certain why I find this game so damned compelling.  It is like an unsolved puzzle that I keep going back and fiddling with…  and while I don’t make a lot of progress in any attempt…  I keep plugging along.

I have however found the absolute bane of my existence.  Firstly the game has a ton of shrines like the one pictured above scattered throughout the country side.  Inside of each is a puzzle that requires you to do something to utilize the various skills and abilities that you have collected to that point.  However there is one shrine type that I am absolutely certain was not designed for Wii U players.  Every so often you encounter these gyroscope gadgets that force you to stop using the Pro Controller and pick up the Wii U Fisher Price Little Tykes Gamepad.  I may be bitter about the Gamepad and its over sold promise of being able to play the console remotely from within your house…  so long as that somewhere is within 5 feet of the base unit.  Anyways the puzzle requires you to rotate the gamepad to solve it…  but it also requires you to do some super contorted angles that make you feel like you are steering a garbage barge down an interstate.  The primary problem however is the fact that when you are playing with the GamePad…  the video feed is ALSO on the game pad.  If I could figure out how to get this to work while holding the tablet but staring at the television I would probably be okayish with this process.  However during these puzzles it seems to always want to put the video feed on the tablet, which means that when I have to flip the tablet upside down or something stupid like that… it also means I have to contort myself in all sorts of bizarre positions so that I can still see the tablet screen.  I’ve completed two of these at this point and hated every minute of it, but I am just assuming these were designed for the much higher fidelity rotational sensors of the switch joycons… and that the Wii U players simply get fucked by an outdated experience.

The only other real problem that I still have with this game is the durability bullshit.  You have to understand… that I am one of those players that finishes a Final Fantasy game with 500 potions of various kinds because I feel like I need to hold onto them for a moment when I “really need them”.  So when that moment never comes and the final credits roll…  I think why the hell did I hold onto those potions.  That said it is an instinct that I just cannot root out of me, and it is severely effecting my enjoyment of Zelda because I feel like I cannot risk using any weapon that is not complete and total crap…  because I might need it at a later date.  So instead I am using various sticks and clubs while I have a Guardian Sword sitting in my bag just waiting there, begging me to use its awesomeness.  Instead I have that and another awesome looking sword flagged as “for a boss fight” but you can damned well be certain that when said boss fight comes along… I am going to try and defeat them with a bunch of expendable garbage first.  I think part of it is the simple fact that I never quite know exactly when I am going to get my next reasonable weapon.  If there were a swordsmith in one of the towns… then I could at least know that I could keep returning to them and stocking up on good weapons and shift my mindset to farming rupies to pay that upkeep.  So instead I am just stuck in this indecision hell of not knowing when I can and cannot use reasonable weapons for fear that I might be stuck in a bad situation with a bad chock full of worthless crap.

For a game that causes me so much internal strife… I am constantly amazed that I keep returning to it.  Every time I see the game over screen…  I keep hitting the button and starting again trying to sort out what went wrong during the fight.  This is not a souls game, but I am sort of playing it as though it were.  I still think however this would be a much better experience on the Switch and I am constantly annoyed with myself for not pre-ordering.  I knew this would happen.  I knew that a combination of demand and Nintendo’s piss poor supply chain management would end up with no units available for purchase.  I’ve checked every place I can think to check and now am simply resigned to hope for one of a handful of places to restock, which is supposedly coming mid April.  The other level of hell that I have wandered into… is that I am now trying to collect the Zelda related Amiibos because you can get nifty shit in game for using them once a day.  Those also seem to be completely sold out, and each day at lunch I have been venturing to new places to see if they happen to have any left.  For a game that obviously frustrates me… I cannot put my finger on why I am finding it so damned sticky.  It reminds me of the feeling you have when you are watching a horror film and screaming at the person not to go into the closet…  but also at the same time wanting them to go in…  so you know what is inside the closet.  Zelda Breath of the Wild is a deeply conflicted experience…  but man do I at least on some level deeply love it.