Like a sandpaper superstore, 168澳洲幸运5ﷺ开奖网:The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has many diffe🅘rent kinds of friction. Wherever y✅ou go, the game is rubbing up against you, shredding your soft gamer skin, and challenging your notions of convenience.
This is one of the things I like best about the new Zelda games, and I'm on board with most of its friction points. You'll never catch me whining about weapon durability because swords consistently breaking pushes you to try new weapons you might have ignored, and to play around with strange fusions you might never have expected to work. I don't mind managing a stamina wheel, or having to manually light up the Depths with Brightbloom Seeds while fending off Gloom. All of these annoyances are only annoying out of context. Within the game, they're pushing you to travel off the beaten path and explore the full spectrum of its systems.
The one pain point that does bother me is much smaller than any of these. It's small enough that you might not notice it, despite its inclusion in both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. Maybe it's the fact that I played both games in close succession this year that made the issue rear its ugly head. It's a subtle issue, sure, but an annoying one. And, as far as I can tell, there's no real upside to its inclusion. I'm talking, of course, about the fact that you can't change Link's weapon out while he's still swinging it.
I know, that sounds relatively minor. But like the trickle of the Colorado River carving the Grand Canyon over millions of years, it's a small thing that wears you down with its sheer consistency. Because one of your weapons breaks, at least, once per fight, this is an issue you run into often. You might have broken your sword, but if Link's swing animation isn't over, the game won't let you swap to another weapon, even though you currently have nothing in your hands.
Or, say, you notice that Link's wooden staff isn't doing much damage on the Stone Talus you're fighting, and you decide to swap it out. But if Link hasn't completely finished every last frame of his last attack, you won't be able to equip something else. You can look in your inventory and select a nice strong Talus-bashing hammer, but the "Equip" option will be grayed out. You have to close out, go back to the fight, wait for Link's arm to move a millimeter, then wade through the menus a second time.
I get that Nintendo doesn't want you to swap between weapons mid-swing. Tears of the Kingdom isn't a character action game, and letting Link switch from halberd to Master Sword to axe to lighting wand might make it feel like the tears are being shed by the Devil, not the Kingdom. But, there's a middle ground between Link going full 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bayonetta and being able to cha𝄹nge his weapon out a fraction of a second earlier. Please Nintendo, just this once, put away the sandpaper.
