Mari Musings

If it was not clear from my page, I am an ENORMOUS fan of the Legend of Zelda. Maybe one day I will write another blog post about my experiences as a Zelda fan, but today I will be talking about the newest release—Tears of the Kingdom!

I will not be posting explicit spoilers in this blog post, BUT I have seen the entire story and will be referencing my experiences playing the game AFTER having seen the story. I hope that makes sense!

I initially told myself that I would not touch the game until Summer break, as I did last quarter when playing Persona 3. However, I decided to just play through the intro last night to quell my boredom and give myself the motivation to push through the rest of the quarter. Before yesterday, I watched someone else play since release.

It was a unique experience to begin the game after already seeing the ending. No direct spoilers for now, but there were several repeated themes and images in the intro that I had forgotten about when seeing the ending. I was very emotional seeing the intro after a tear-jerking ending! As a long-time fan of the series, it has been fun comparing the new lore introduced in this game to the lore in the older games. I hope to talk more about that in a future post.

As I played through the tutorial, I compared the experience of playing with the new mechanics to the feeling of exploring Breath of the Wild Great Plateau for the first time. I have been trying to decide, as someone who played through BOTW, if a newcomer to the series would be able to enter the series here. Tears of the Kingdom seems to be building on the foundation that was set with BOTW. Both in terms of story and mechanics. Many emotional beats of the story rely on a player's previous connection with the characters. I worry that a newcomer would not feel the weight of the story and the joy of being reunited with old faces (or the sorrow of not!)

I would be curious to hear about a newcomer's experience to the series through only TOTK. Maybe my assumptions are completely off base. Please feel free to message me!

I look forward to writing more about this game.

Current Stats

Mood: Content

Listening to: Skyrim Soundtrack (good for study!)

Watching: Spy x Family

Playing: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

The Lamb Compels You...

I originally picked up the game during the Steam Winter sale, and I was immediately hooked. For those who are unfamiliar, Cult of the Lamb is half base builder and half rogue-lite dungeon crawler. As you grow your cult, your powers increase within the dungeon creating a compelling gameplay loop. It's easy to achieve a small goal for yourself even within 15 minutes of gameplay. I always find myself saying oh, I'm almost to the next goal, just 15 minutes more. Then suddenly I've played for 3 hours!

I started playing again a few days ago to check out the new update, and so far, the new mechanics are fantastic and intuitive additions to the game. My main complaint during my original playthrough is that the game lacks things to do once you have maxed out your cult. The dungeon crawling and bosses were difficult to me, and due to the amount of times I had to retry the levels, my cult was maxed out long before I beat the final boss. I am now interacting with my followers more than ever, trying to level them up high enough to be a worthy sacrifice for Baal and Aym. I love that the old bishops can become members of the cult now, too. I appreciate that the devs even gave them their own little quests, making each bishops stand out from the rest of the cult. My only wish is that they had the immortal trait, like The One Who Waits.

By far my favorite part of the update was the inclusions of charged attacks. This completely changes the gameplay loop of dungeon crawling for the better. It is satisfying to hit multiple enemies in a row, and I can progress through the dungeons more quickly. This is appreciated because there are a lot of dungeons to crawl with the new post-game content!

Overall, Cult of the Lamb is a fun game that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys a simple, cute dungeon crawler with some demonic base building on the side. Go forth and become a cult leader!

Current Mood

Mood: Joyful

Listening to: Cult of the Lamb OST - it's great!

Watching: One Piece

Playing: Cult of the Lamb