selenicseas

Neotropic cormorant standing in front of a rock in front of a Ring-necked duck and an unidentified other duck in the water. I've seen these cormorants for a while and wasn't able to identify them until today. That one duck in the back, though...it mystifies me. The Merlin Bird ID isn't helping, either.

Great egret in a tree. There were a couple at this one particular pond and this particular one kept going from the shore to a tree.

A flock of pelicans in the water. They were pretty far away and moved around fast enough that I couldn't get any decent photos of them.

Hours played: 27 hours

I thought this was going to be a shorter game, but that wasn't the case at all. It took me 27 hours to complete, and that's without doing all of the sidequests.

This is the first Zelda game where you actually get to play as Zelda, and I had a lot of fun with it. Rather than using weapons like Link, she uses echoes (summons) that fight for her. There is a special form where she gets access to a sword, bow, and bombs, but it has an energy meter and runts out quickly. It also goes away near the end of the game, since those things actually belong to Link.

I liked most of the dungeons, though the last one I did (in Eldin Volcano) had a much easier boss than all of the other dungeons. Though I may be thinking that because I had the whole rest of the game to get used to the dungeons.

The final boss fight had so many stages and I didn't die once! I did have to use a lot of healing items, which aren't possible to create in the final area.

I think that's my major criticism – consumables for healing and buffs can only be created in certain locations around the overworld, and hearts very rarely drop from pots and grass. If you go into an area without healing, you're going to have a rough time. There is a way to heal without items, but it isn't very accessible in the middle of a fight.


 

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