Rank the Divine Beasts and their dungeon

camel > lizard > bird > elephant

Anything other than them >>> major test of strength >>>> any of them

boring, bland, uninspired, and not challenging in the least.

Shit, shit, shit and shit

They're all so bland in terms of puzzle and design though, so I'll just rank the visuals...

Elephant > Bird > Salamander > Camel

By far the worst dungeons in the Zelda series.

I genuinely don't remember anything about the bird and the lizard.

Camel > elephant

Now that it's pretty much agreed that BotW had the worst dungeons in the 3D series, which of the 3D games had the best ones?

I'll go:
OoT > TP > SS > MM > WW

SEETHING

Neboris > Medoh > Rudania > Ruta

Fuck off, I loved BotW, sank 100+ hours into it and consider it to be the best Zelda game objectively, though not my personal favorite.

Dungeon? Breath of the Wild had dungeons?

Camel > Elephant > Salamander > Bird.

OoT > MM > TP > SS > WW

2D games probably have the best dungeons in terms of puzzle/macro structure but 3D has some great atmosphere. A shame BotW dropped the ball real hard in both regards.

They were all so bland they honestly just blend together for me
I guess the lizard one was the best because its the only one I remember. I barely remember anything about the others other then the elephant and the moving trunk gimmick.
I get that the open world was "truly open" to explore and all that but Id rather have 4-6 great and memorable dungeons than 100 tiny boring ones. with some being cut and paste.
I dont mind the shit ton of tiny trials laying around since they also act as a way to upgrade link and tp points, but holy shit dont just make the dungeons bigger trials. Actually try to make a set of good dungeons. Jesus everytime I think about how BotW was just a free roam experiment with no emphasis on the dungeons it just makes me more disappointed.

Don't act like anyone knows the games

Water is the best because it introduces features that will be later used in the boss fight, all the others are sub-par/bad.

they are all terrible desu. I sill dont understand what people see in this game.

lizard > bird > elephant > camel

I don't know why but I really hated the camel one. I've done it twice and each time it caused the game to start glitching.

Wait what the fuck happened in the water that introduced new features? I don't remember.

Urbosa’s Rage > Revali’s Gale > Miphas Grace >>> Daruk’s Protection
The dungeons are basically the same

The worst parts of the game, excluding their boss battles.

Camel>Bird>Elephant>Lizard

Bottom left one looks like a bird with a huge cock

>spending that much time scrolling and finding every post you disagree with
Now that truly is seething.

I liked the Sky one because I think the tilting of the entire thing gimmick was the most fun.
The Camel was a decent and probably the best designed one of them all, but it's boss sucked eggs.
Water was the one you almost certainly did first and was a good early game challenge, it also had the trickiest boss.
FIire just fucking sucked hard, it had the lamest gimmicks and a lame boss, it just sucked.

Camel>Elephant>Bird>>>Lizard
The darkness gimmick would've been great if it lasted more then 3 minutes for the Lizard. Like maybe they could've made it so moving the Lizard would expose it to lava and thus lighting certain areas of the dungeon for you.

I don't really remember much about the dungeons themselves except for forgetting that cryonis exists inside ruta.
For everything before you got to them:
ruta>naboris>rudania>>>>>medoh
The zora feel like they had the most fleshed out story. Gerudo were nice and fuck you i liked the yiga hideout.
Gorons were passable and birds were shit. There was no real build up. All i remember is you going into the town, going to the shooting range and suddenly you are already attacking medoh. I think they ran out of steam there.

>it also had the trickiest boss.
Just use bomb arrows, I beat in a literal minute.
The Camel boss the very least had a puzzle element to beat him making him the hardest and interesting one of all, since none of them are difficult.

They should've had all the bosses have some puzzles to them if they couldn't make them traditionally difficult.

While I enjoyed BotW one of the big things I disliked was the dungeons and the bosses of said dungeons. They just felt incredibly phoned in and halfhearted, which is a shame because conceptually the Divine Beasts were fantastic. My favorite was probably the elephant, that was the first one I did and it felt like a classic Zelda dungeon.

My ACTUAL favorite dungeon in the game was Hyrule Castle, that was great.

>My ACTUAL favorite dungeon in the game was Hyrule Castle, that was great.
I didn't like how 90% of the castle is basically optional and you could easily just climb to Ganon from the get go. It's made even worse when you realize Ganon is just as easy as all the other bosses.

I just liked how Hyrule Castle was at least like, a little harder than the other dungeons. And it does a good job of making you utilize everything you learned so far. You do have a point about how easy it is to reach Ganon, but I do think the battle is legitimately harder than the others. But not by much.

At the beginning it had bomb arrow stuff that you would later use against the water boss, it showed the gimmick before the boss to give you an idea of what to expect. Unlike every other dungeon boss.

>I didn't like how 90% of the castle is basically optional and you could easily just climb to Ganon from the get go.
The first time I just swam up the waterfalls on the back and was right at ganon. That non linearity and openness makes for a terrible traditional dungeon but damn was it fun to explore the whole structure.

they all look and feel the same.
pretty weak zelda game when it comes to art and environments desu

>revali's gale not at the top and above all the other useless ones
user you ok? you need to lie down?

but did you seriously enjoy the copy paste dungeons? that was pretty damned unforgivable in my book.

>Never played a Zelda game all the way through
>bought BotW
>Followed story through Hateno Village
>Looked at map, thought it would be most efficient to totally explore the southern 1/3rd first
>Go to gerudo
>Completionist tendencies wouldn't allow me to leave. Finish Gerudo Divine beast first
>Urbosas Fury
>Rest of the game becomes trivial

Why

Muh completely free open world, that’s why. Having actual progression and restrictions at certain points is absolutely required for a game like Zelda or anything with emphasis on adventure to be great.

Hyrule Castle >>>>>>> DLC Dungeon > Camel > Elephant > Bird > Salamander

Really though the only ones I thought were passable for the divine beasts were the Camel and Elephant, and honestly I’d rather the next Zelda get rid of 80 of the shrines, get rid of all the divine beasts, and give us 6-8 great dungeons with 40 quality shrines sprinkled around the world to compliment them, and that way fans of older Zelda games and BoTW fans would both be happy. Great dungeons CAN work with the BoTW formula because the DLC dungeon was solid, and Hyrule Castle is one of the best parts of the game. Hyrule Castle has all of these secrets to find and a ton of ways to navigate through the castle, as well as a ton of enemies thrown in there. There’s a lot of attention put into it and obviously those 6-8 dungeons don’t need to be that good but something similar to it would be great.

In order from favorite to least favorite:

vah medoh
>i love how the music gets so intense and elegant after activating a few of the chambers. and what's cool about this one is the perspective. I love how sometimes you are gliding in an UPWARDS direction because of the way the bird is tilted. and i love the dramatic squak after manipulating it
vah ruto
>first one i did so felt the freshest. sparse beautiful music. love manipulating the trunk, and the beast makes a really powerful, elegant sound when moving it around.
vah naboris
>didn't like the puzzles, but the atmosphere was really good. its so cool to see the desert moving around, and the music gets really interesting near the end.
vah rudania
>love how its dark at first, music is really catchy, but ultimately its just not very interesting. feels like the shape of the lizard doesn't really factor into its design. i also think the path TO rudania (having to escort the goron) sucks and is the worst part of the game, so it kind of soured me on it.

I think their atmosphere is underrated. They feel weirdly intimate, even if they are robot machines, hearing them make a really loud groan when you move them.

The "Have it your way" level design makes it really difficult for some form of dungeon designs, just look at how all the bosses were made to be all equal and thus all equally weak.

That said I can't see why they can't either A)Do what Eventide Island or some Strength Shrine did and have the game unafraid to kick your ass if you aren't ready or B)Like the Master Sword make it were you need to reach a certain level of hearts to enter (though this bring the problem that you may have to much hearts in an early stage Dungeon and thus be able to curbstomp the boss and other enemies).

youtube.com/watch?v=moJdgTCaq40

>that part at 4:36

When every shrine and dungeon has the same "industrial magic" feel it gets old.

They should give freedom in chunks. So you’re free to choose between the first set of 2 dungeons, then 3, then 2, etc.

Wouldn't it just be easiest to make you complete a percentage of a regions content that would allow you progress?

Say there are 15 shrines and one major dungeon per region.
Completing 10 of them opens the dungeon and completing the dungeon opens one or more adjacent regions.

You can justify the big "Fog of War doesn't let you pass" trope with "Lol Ganons power stops you."

The optional "The real treasure was the friends we made along the way xd" design permeates the entire game

Yeah, you can skip the entire dungeon, but you said it yourself it's not fucking fun to do so, it's like taking a tranq or lethal run in MGS

Even total freedom doesn't mean everything has to have the same difficulty. So what if one of the dungeons would be way more difficult? Either the player will have to realize they aren't prepared and come back, or try to beat it anyway. Making everything an equal difficulty is total shit for immersion. Having things that are way too difficult early on is a good way to do progression without actual blocks

In the original LoZ for instance you could enter most dungeons early but the later ones will kick your ass. and what's weird is that the seem to understand this with hyrule castle, making the enemies in and around it much tougher so i don't see why that couldn't apply to the rest of the game

That absolutely would allow for better control of the games pacing, I'm simply discussing what BotW itself could've feasibly done.

You're example is a good one and one I wouldn't mind be explored in a future Zelda game but it strictly goes against the "total freedom" philosophy that BotW was pushing hard for.

The difference is that exploring in Hyrule Castle actually feels WORTH IT, though, because you see a lot of interesting rooms and journals. Exploring in most of the rest of the game is not nearly as interesting

This game could have used a couple more years in development to add more variety to the assets.

Why bother? They're all garbage.

That didn’t stop them from making enemies in the bottom left corner of the map a fuck ton easier than enemies in the bottom right corner of the map.

The problem with the Hyrule region is that there are multiple paths that allow you to stealth by the mobs, and every Guardian can be destroyed with a single pot lid if your timing is half decent.

The only one that left an impression on me was the elephant, and it wasn't even because of the dungeon itself but rather everything leading up to the dungeon. The actual dungeon itself was a letdown, I don't get why the Zelda fanbase went from "dude fuck puzzles and fuck aonuma" to "I LOVE PUZZLES BOTW'S DUNGEONS ARE THE BEST BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL BIG PUZZLES"

So did anyone here actually really fucking like BoTW? I can see it’s flaws but I still really loved playing through it and I think a sequel that fixes its problems could be near perfect.

They could've also made bosses be more like puzzles to raise the difficulty a bit. I liked the Camel and Yiga Clan boss since the second stage forced you to figure out how to defeat him in other ways beyond the extreme abundant resources you probably have.

The leadup to the dungeon _is_ part of the dungeon, like how sidequests to reveal a shrine are part of the shrine

The enemy filled climb to reach Zora's Domain is the dungeon of itself and then it concludes with a giant shrine

I don't get it either. Seems like before BotW the main complaint was that the games were getting too puzzly and it was shit for the flow. BotW is the most puzzly Zelda yet....its what makes the world feel so wildly artificial

I liked the game, but if we don't point out its flaws then that said future game that improves said flaws can't ever happen.

I guess that’s just part of learning how to get past enemies and learning their weaknesses. I didn’t really think about shield bashing the guardian lasers until pretty late game but it definitely helped. Not to mention that if you fuck up that shield bash your shield is done, so there’s some risk there.

The game could have used a reconception of its design. Some compelling survival mechanics and item interactions but they only feel essential on great plateau and eventide.

I’d like it if they just took BotWs core mechanics and used them in a traditional Zelda world.

...

I agree 100%. There’s also the problem that Nintendo might make the second game even more like BoTW and just give us even more shrines of even lower quality.

But BotW is basically what Hyrule looks like in its best, truest, most fully realized form

When has Nintendo actually doubled down on a questionable mechanic like that

BoTW easily has the best overworld of any Zelda game.

>The leadup to the dungeon _is_ part of the dungeon
That's flawed because that leadup existed in almost every 3D Zelda.
>sidequests to reveal a shrine are part of the shrine
Those ARE the shrine, not part of it, because all those shrines contain is an item and an orb. The divine beasts on the other hand, you have to actually complete.

Motion controls.

Despite the empty Hyrule Field I still felt like TP had a cooler world. I love how some of the areas feel so secluded and out of the way.

sky > fire > water > desert, and yet overall they felt the same

Nintendo has made a lot of dumb mistakes in the past and will often completely ignore complaints to do their own thing, I mean just look at stuff like Paper Mario and Star Fox, completely unnecessary changes that don’t fix any flaws of the original.

>lighting strike not being OP as fuck
Don't tell me you've never actually used it. It deals fuck ton of damage to bosses and stuns all mobs it doesn't kill for way too long.

I meant in terms of style. I want a denser more medieval world. Non of that bland magitech and open air shit.

Yeah I’d have to agree. I feel like 3 of the 4 blessings are way too powerful for their own good and make battles fucking trivial unless you’re playing in hard mode.

We all agree on "STANDING HERE" being the best part of the game, right?

Fair enough, I can agree with that. I thought the ruins were cool to explore but you can only take so much of that before it starts feeling empty rather than atmospheric.

Vah Naboris > *

Is this loss?

It was the highlight of the DLC along with the dungeon. Would’ve been a total disappointment of a DLC without it and I still wasn’t happy with the DLC overall.

Ruta > Nabooris > POWER GAP > Rudania > Medoh

I think they're all really quite good though. The problem is that Medoh and Rudania are way too short. If I could change anything about them, I'd add in a lot more combat encounters, possibly mandatory ones. There's some really good puzzles in the dungeons and I love the movement gimmicks and the non-linear design, but Medoh can be completed in all of ten minutes.

A lot of people complain that they're too samey, but I don't really agree with that because they're open air dungeons that take place in extremely different environments. That was a really good idea and I hope they keep that up in the next Zelda.

I wish the game explained it lore better. What exactly is the purpose of making the Beasts look different and base them on animals? I understand the champions are meant to pilot the divine beasts and thus they would need to be good over different terrain, but if their purpose is to confront ganon and aid the hero in an assault, does it really make a lot of sense? Or, is their purpose just to stand on a mountain and fire a laser, in which case, couldn't they all have just been birds?

Haven't tested this myself: can you jump off Vah Medoh and glide to safety on the overworld? Or does the game prevent you from doing this?

No, there's a kill plane.

They all share 4th place.

I didn't use bomb arrows so that's probably why I didn't notice.

Same here, I enjoyed Naboris the most since it was the first one I did. Massive disappointment with all the rest that they were the same shit with a different minor gimmick, especially so when I got to Ruta and it was the most braindead of the lot since the game pushed you towards the zoras first.