!! NOT spoiler-free !!
i loved the first section of the game. it's simple and straightforward, but i loved walking with zelda and listening to her nerding out :] also the detail of us starting with full hearts, like at the end of botw, and losing them bc of the corruption.... ough

the starting area is so niceee i love how it replicates the shrine of resurrection but prettier (in my opinion. that open sky was just so gorgeous). and the jump with the music and title screen?? chills


the great sky island is so pretty, I've been enjoying sightseeing around and watching the birds. the sound design so far is awesome, of course. I also love the music that plays there. and the tune in the temple of time is so pretty and familiar!
oh OH I adore the steward constructs!!! so much!!!!!!!! poor guy. he's lonely :(
OOOH SHIT just found out you can fullscreen the pictures you take with the slate. lifechanging
I just talked to rauru by the temple of time. his design is so fucking cool. and oh god the sunset was so pretty. im about to enter a shrine! wish me luckk

got all the shrines from the great sky island, and am on my way to the temple of time again. I think I'll get the paraglider next and I'll be able to go to back down to the surface!!

i had just gotten out of a shrine and the sky looked pretty so i took a screenshot but he appeared right on time LOL
also I LOVE the caves they're so cool??? and the little frog guys that launch bubbles at you are so neat

ZELDA.... HI...... I MISSYOU.....


zelda literally said fuck this shit im out

my sister was watching me play as this happened and we just fucking lost it. it was so funny

im loving to see all the development that's been going on over hyrule!!!! so many new things to look out for..... I love lookout landing and purah and josha:]



OOP forgot to give more updates. rn I just finished the wind temple! am with 7 hearts and 1 stamina thing. GOD the wind temple was so fucking cool. the aesthetic? the MUSIC. GODDD the rito motifs!!!!! also zelda wtf? zelda sage of time??? holy fucking shit. and well it ended up not being demise I guess? its just ganon kind of powered up. and uhhh OH OH the fucking. caves? the fucking depths?? THE CHASM?? the moment I jumped in I was going insane. what the fuck. this game is so so big. I want to take my time but I'm also so fucking curious about what the fuck zelda is up to!!!!


ok i've progressed a LOT so i'll try to give an update. BIG STORY SPOILER warning ahead
yesterday i focused on getting the geoglyph memories bc i was way too curious about the story. and GOD are these cutscenes cool! but, also, like :( zelda baby what did you do. im so sad and lost and confused. what the fuck do you mean you turned into a dragon. so youre like kind of dead now. WHATTTT the FUCK!!!!! watching tear of the dragon #17 made me fucking cry. i was already crying during the cutscene and then when it ended and the light dragon was up there and left all these fucking. silent princesses. what the actual fuck thats so evil. im so sad.

but yeah theres still like a few memories left and i have no idea how to get those. so now i'll get to doing the other main quests at each region. i just arrived at goron city and i'm very uncomfy with whats going on there. also i want to punch yunobo in the face. now i understand why they didnt reveal his design early alongside the others. hes awful.
and umm ummmmmm the depths. i did that quest where you have to follow the statues to get to the temple and dude im so in awe of this whole area. they really did this huh. its so big and scary and mysterious, i need to know more about this place's lore so bad but idk where to get that info ! my side quests are piling up already but i'm focusing on the main story first. i want to get that out of the way and then i'll focus on getting all the shrines and powering up my gear and doing side quests to get ready for the final boss fight.
oooooh also. hateno village. zelda and link living in their little house and zeldas secret room and her building a school and all the little drawings the kids made of her.... maaaaaaan
DUDE and what the fuck is that gloom monster thing. so far i only came across it once and it freaked me the fuck out. now im always on edge when walking around hyrule + caves
o yeah check out my drip


once again. been forgetting to write these... but i really want to make an effort to document my playthrough a bit
okay okay. hmmm. checking my switch album. YEAH i finished the fire temple!! thank god yunobo came back to normal pretty quick i couldnt stand him. i love how the dungeon was in the depths, it had a really cool athmosphere! though i had a really really hard time on it. it simply wasn't clicking for me. the puzzles were so weird. i had to watch a walkthrough bc i got tired, and dude i did not see any of the solutions coming. i feel like it didnt hint at things enough. or maybe it's because i just jumped into the dungeon quest without exploring around eldin/doing shrines there lol? could be that.
zelda looks so baby. i want to squish her cheeks so bad

that quest on the great plateau where you have to give the statue's four eyes back down in the depths was so eerie and cool..... a bit anticlimactic that it just opens up a little poe shop since the area was all. idk. big. big big statue. i was sure it'd start walking or something. but its cool anyway.
oh i came across that malice hands monster again, this time at the top of the akkala citadel ruins. dude that thing is fucking AWFUL i hate it so much. theres no peace walking around hyrule anymore. not when that can just appear out of nowhere and give you a heart attack. i miss the guardians !!!! anyway yeah i simply teleport away when it appears. dont want to deal with it right now.
i arrived at zora's domain yesterday. sidon has a wife now i guess. but whatever they literally have a polyamorous mountain there so yona can join the polycule now (im not even a big sidlink shipper but dude i cant deny the homoeroticism. its right there. theres literally a statue of link riding sidon on the center of the domain!!!!!!! his very best friend :)

now i stopped before entering the water temple to do a bit of exploring around and run some errands. like getting the sensor upgrade, foraging around on some sky islands, getting the cool skydiving gear and some more map data. it's been fun. i should go to sleep though this game is ruining my sleep schedule even further...
have some pretty images i took:





finished the water temple yesterday! at first it was a bit confusing but once it clicked i breezed through it pretty quick. same for the boss fight, it started out weird but when i found out i could just jump to get midair bow shots it was easy.
i also reached tarrey town and found out about the dream house thing. i spent a good hour or so just figuring out the layout i wanted for my house.... im sad that it has a 15 room limit and that there's these ugly rails inbetween every room you put together but overall i had SO much fun with it. now i always go to my house to see the statue for heart/stamina upgrades. i wish we had an option to put more greenery around the terrain though, it's so... naked!! i need a few trees and flowers and rocks and bushes there. it looks very unnatural as it is.
tonight i went to gerudo town. arriving there and seeing that the town was empty and having my first encounter with these gibdo things was terrifying!!!! though theyre pretty easy to deal with. theyre just creepy.
i love love riju in this game!! her power is so cool and useful. i always use it during combat now. and the lighting temple was nice! i felt intimidated by the amount of floors but turns out it wasnt too complicated to figure out.
now the main quest is telling me to go to hyrule castle. arriving at lookout landing and everyone looking up observing the castle was so ominous...... idk what awaits me there but i should wait a bit and get ready first. i need to do more shrines and get the fairy fountains to upgrade my armor!!!

these ring ruins at kakariko village were always sus to me. the glow coming from the floating one made me think it had a tear inside. so in an attempt to figure out how to be able to get in there i did the quest of getting pictures of the ancient hyrulean tabloid things. which was very cool lore-wise but when i was finished and there was nothing else to do/no big reveal i was a bit disappointed. so i looked up how to get in the ring ruins and found out i really had to go to hyrule castle first.
so i did. oooohoho seeing puppet zelda there was so creepy. the cutscene in the sanctum? MAN. her teleporting around link.... that was a cool sequence. and then BAM 5 phantom ganons all at once and i had never even gone against a single one before that. but! turns out! it was not challenging LOL idk if its bc i should have gone there earlier or because the other champions helped distract them or what. but i really expected the phantom ganons to be quicker/stronger. theyre just so slow.

zelda is the impostor guys....................

so after that i went to the ring ruins and stuff. the glow was just a lantern not a tear lol but the whole 5th sage thing has been nice!!! ive yet to finish building minerus body thing (last night i didnt progress on that bc i dont like going to the depths when its late at night KSJDJKSDJK), but i did get the master sword!!
i kind of got spoiled on it? not really? basically, i didnt catch that detail of the master sword being on the light dragon from the memory cutscene. and yesterday when i was watching a playthrough, the guy noticed it immediately. so when i got home i went straight after the light dragon. thing is: it was flying WAY too high and i couldnt reach it at all. i spent a good hour or so teleporting around sky islands and towers to try to get close, but no success.
i once again searched about it. found out you have to do the korok forest thing in order for the dragon to fly a bit lower. before i was postponing the deku tree thing because i was scared of the gloom hands/phantom ganon, but now having fought against 5 of these guys at once, i could handle it. for the gloom hands i just threw bomb arrows at it before i even reached the bottom of the deku tree chasm, and the phantom ganon fight was a walk in the park. talked to the deku tree, saw the first cutscene, and went after the light dragon again.
so i got the master sword. that cutscene of zelda floating in the light with the sword is GORGEOUSS im obsessed. im also still sad as fuck about zelda and everything shes gone through. this really is the legend of zelda huh. and her tears. AUGHHHHHHHHHH (fucking explodes)



have been doing some prep before going after the final boss. went after a couple fairy fountains and upgraded my armor a bit, got some nicer weapons, killed a lynel just to check if i Still Have It in me from my botw times (id kill lynels for fun. for some reason ive been avoiding them in this game). im pretty sure i killed that blue lynel without taking damage so yeah i still got it !
did the hateno election quest so i could change link's hood LOL but its a pretty cool side quest overall. also did that one where the girl gets the cheese recipe and i've been hoarding some cheese now.
i came across a npc named nat who has a younger sister. her hairstyle is even kind of similar to mine save for the hair color! epic. i really want to work on a sona of some kind.......

and pretty image i got on top of hyrule castle :)


finished the spirit temple! it was interesting how different the dynamic for it was. in the temple itself we only did the boss battle, the journey to get to it was the main task. which wasnt difficult; i had mineru's construct and all the other champion abilities to help me with the enemies so i was chilling. collecting their drops while my friends distracted the rest of the monsters B)
it took me a second to figure out how to do damage on the seized construct battle though! the controls for mineru's construct are a bit slow, so i took a bunch of damage before i figured out that alternating the right and left arm for hits was faster than doing consecutive ones of the same side.
oh the cutscene of the battle and rauru sealing ganondorf looks awesome. the music too...... Excellent
i did some depths exploration and noticed how useful minerus construct is for traversing through there. not only to walk through all the gloom but also to get zonaite!
i had entered the tunnel in the emergency shelter at lookout landing before but i only reached the horned statue and then got out for some reason. a friend of mine commented on that tunnel system and how its very long and theres some armor there, so i went back into it and holy shit is that a long and confusing place. i managed to get 2/3rds of the soldier armor, couldnt find the helmet and got sick of the place (i got a blood moon right in the middle of my search and didnt feel like killing all these strong enemies again on my way back).
BUT oh wow i loved that cave so much because of the lore. its on the way under hyrule castle and you even reach a place where there's a tabloid with lore written on it. basically, the state of the castle had an influence on the magic sealing ganon deep down there. thats why the castle was built there in the first place!! and some areas of the cave were very reminiscent of the game announcement trailer back in 2019......

needed some light dragon scales so i spent a good half hour searching for her. got lucky that she was coming right in my direction and hopped on. i think riding the light dragon is my favorite aspect about this game. i could spend so much time there just keeping her company and admiring the scenery. god this game is beautiful


made up my mind on finally going into the hyrule castle chasm. i decided to keep watching a playthrough just bc i wanted to know what to expect on the way down there, but stopped once the person reached the boss arena.
and MAN, even though i already knew what was down there, i was tense and terrified all the same. the ambience is crazy, you just go deeper and deeper and the music gets more and more intense, you get to a point where the powers of the sages can't reach you anymore, then you recognize the tunnels you're walking through. the same place from the start of the game. which of course isn't a surprise, but oh god is it cool as hell. and you fall down into the chasm ganon made before, where he fell into, and at the bottom there's a torch. the torch zelda was carrying. the DETAIL oh the detail....
the sequence where you fight the demon king's army alongside the sages was epic as hell, even if i was kind of too prepared and barely took damage at all lol, and the music for that was awesome too!!

i was terrified of continuing through to the ganon battle arena!! it was all so ominous. the first phase was very quick and easy, ganondorf's moveset is very similar to phantom ganon's. loved him telling us to die !
the second phase looked intimidating, but the sages distracted the other ganons pretty well and they ended up not bothering me at all so i could just focus on the real ganon. here's where he started using more gloom attacks, but i was very prepared with a bunch of gloom restoring food. the third phase was trickier. i had been doing damage to him mainly through flurry rushes, i didnt really try to hit him outside of that so i didnt experience him evading attacks before. but DUDE when he evaded my fucking flurry rush. i was so confused. how the hell would i do damage to that guy. well okay i threw his gloom projectiles back at him whenever he did that specific attack, and kept trying to do flurry rushes. after some time i finally got the hang of double flurry rushing (lol) and was done with him.
SADLY as i was fighting the third phase i did a quick search about how to deal with him and accidentally saw the name of the fourth phase. so i already knew he'd swallow the stone.
IT WAS EPIC ANYWAY oh goddddd the demon dragon going up and out of the castle with link in his mouth. and the light dragon rushing after us. i was already getting emotional here just because of her. the music during this battle is fucking incredible and even though its not difficult at all, the whole spectacle more than makes up for it!!!!

and then......... and then. you know. the light dragon's state is reversed back into the zeldy we know. and she starts falling down and we have to go catch her. i started sobbing so hard on this sequence its beautiful as hell and its just so fucking poetic!!!!!! link couldnt catch her at the start of the game so we are doing it now !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (explosion)


the cutscene after of zelda talking to link is kind of awkward though lol why couldnt they have link showing even a little hint of a reaction???? a little smile????? a little nod????? hes just shirtless and kneeling in front of her as shes processing everything and. yeah i know hes the silent protagonist and represents us or whatever but dude. that was so anticlimactic. if hes supposed to represent me then why did he have a plain ass expression while i was bawling my eyes out ?


anyway yeah. what a game..... in terms of completion im probably not even half done bc i barely explored, i was mostly focused on getting shrines and progressing with the story. now its time for side quests and getting to 100%! thankfully im done with the main part so im not as obsessed and dont end up ruining my sleep schedule as much........
as for this page, ill keep it up of course, i just need to decide where ill properly put it (the link on my homepage is a temporary placement). i also still have lots to explore so maybe ill give more updates here if i feel like it!

i was thinking and: heres my personal dungeon ranking based on my first impressions with them!

5- fire temple. im sorry but as i said this one did not click for me. im not blaming the design or anything, its just because i went into it without doing any of the eldin region shrines beforehand, so i didnt get the puzzle solutions at all. and all the minecart riding was a bit too much for me. also the whole marbled rock roast thing at the beginning made me lowkey uncomfortable !

4- water temple. it was okay! i liked the part where sidon makes a whirlwind in the water so we can get inside that one area. didnt have a hard time with the puzzles. the low gravity stuff annoyed me a bit at times but it was an interesting mechanic, i like how it enables us to go into bullet-time (is that the right term?) whenever we want, which made the boss fight very easy to deal with too.

3- spirit temple. to be honest, i was expecting them to make purah be the fifth sage, but building up mineru's construct body was cool! yeah sure the puzzles got annoying at times but, since this is tears of the kingdom, i just used a few rockets and recall ability shenanigans to deal with them without having to fry my brain. the boss was a bit wonky at first but i managed to get the hang of it after getting my ass beaten for a good few minutes.

2- wind temple. i would put this at first but i loved the buildup to it more than the temple itself. it was the first temple i did, and going up higher and higher with tulin as the music progressed with us was such an experience. when you reach the top and the music goes quiet and you get That view of hyrule from so high up? so so stunning. the temple puzzles were okay, it took me abit to deal with it all bc i didnt understand you had to use tulin's ability to activate the terminal thingys LOLLL but once i got that down i solved it all pretty fast. the boss on this one is my favorite overall! reminded me of the battle with teba to get in vah medoh, which was also a favorite. i love these battles where you're just flying around...

honorable mention: floating hyrule castle. going up there for the questline and seeing zelda Just Standing There before the monsters would spawn was so ominous and offputting, even if i already knew it wasn't really her. the cutscene of puppet zelda taunting link is so so good. the phantom ganon(s) fight is... Chill. underwhelming for my first time coming across a phantom ganon, i thought theyd be harder to deal with, but it was a cool sequence.

1- lighting temple. the whole journey to get to it was so engaging, from the second i stepped into gerudo town and saw a gibdo for the first time. i was terrified. they really nailed the whole mood of the place! riju is also possibly my favorite sage, her power is just so cool looking and fun to use. the two battle sequences we had to do in gerudo town with riju were so good, it kind of reminded me of age of calamity with all the warnings we got during them and such. and the temple itself is so HUGE and interesting. the amount of levels intimidated me at first but it wasn't too bad. the puzzles were a good balance of not too easy and not frustrating to solve. the boss was an experience, especially once all the crawling gibdos started appearing, it was CHAOS and extremely fun!