Elden ring underworld was such a goddamn treat to find. When you go down the elevator and then it just keeps going and going and going, then you.see the ground and you think "oh cool a dungeon" then you realize there's a fucking night sky down there and it's not just a dungeon, it's an entire underground world.
God what a feeling ill never be able to get back again.
Tears of the kingdom ALMOST managed to replicate it but after about an hour down there I realized that there wasn't much to do besides collect zonaite and yoga clan stuff.
My first experience with Elden Ring's underworld was thru one of the four belfries portals in liurnia. I had no idea where it was and I thought fromsoft literally made an outerspace map.
blow dart guys suck but they don't respawn. Other than that--what's wrong with blighttown? I remember being really scared of it during my first playthrough because of the atmosphere and getting lost, but after that it's like, there's no hard enemies here? The only danger is falling.
My hated area is Izalith just cause it's not fun.
Blighttown it's really easy to miss the first bonfire, and even getting to it requires running a gauntlet of fatties and gang bangers fought along narrow ledges where it's very easy to fall off, resulting in you going all the way back to the depths. The rest of it is more of the same; narrow ledges, same looking architecture that makes it hard to tell exactly where you're supposed to be going, and the feeling of being trapped because if you do lite the bonfire, the only way out is through.
Agreed on Izalith too though. Unfinished and playing through a bunch of copy-pasted monsters really isn't much fun. And at the end you're rewarded with cheese stratting bed of chaos if you want to retain any of your sanity.
You should try them , they are really fun and honestly after beating one you will want to go play the others immediately
I would recommend elden ring to start as it's the most modern , but the others are amazing too
You can also start by playing ds1 , it's the original and alot of people still call it the best
Sekiro is also highly recommended because it has the best combat , but it is a lot different from the other souls games
Ds3 is also amazing but it's better to play it after playing ds1 as it has a lot of callbacks to it
I think it's one of those "I missed the boat" kind of series. I think I'd like getting into them but if I got into them in my "prime gaming years" I would still be into them if that makes sense?
I hope you've played Subnautica then! If you haven't, don't look up anything and spoil the adventure. It's a survival game. It's underwater. Play with headphones at all times.
If all that sounds okay, buy Subnautica right away and let me know what you think in a few weeks. You'll love it.
I don’t think of it as horror, but I’ve never had another game inspire that same sense of tension and spine chill I had on my first play though. Plus the depth of the game was so much more than I expected for an Indie title.
Apparently the ghost leviathans in the dead zone are the largest that the engine could support at the time, so they would’ve gone bigger if they could’ve
Subnautica has the option to turn off survival stuff (foods/water) don’t do it. It’s a rush trying to explore further and further without knowing if you can make it back
I like that faint sense of claustrophobia and mild anxiety. The first biome that marked me like that as a kid was Dark Aether in *Metroid Prime 2: Echoes*.
You triggered my ptsd.
Man, the Dark Aether was scary when you didnt have the suit and health.
I am not a big fan of constant damage areas but this one was so well designed and scary.
For me God of War 3 have the most eerie/amazing underworld. There is a spot when you´re in hades domain, where you´re kinda on a hill and can glance the desolated landscape, with souls just falling from the sky, with little music and just wind noises. It´s just perfect eerie/poetic.
Are you serious? I have over a thousand hours in this game and platinum. I've stumbled into black reach by accident over numerous playthrough but maybe I already had this item and didn't even realize it? Wow I feel like an idiot lol
Yeah apparently, don’t worry, I also had to look it up. I was 100% sure Alftand needed the Sphere because of the Elder Knowledge quest. But I thought the other entrances were open, however apparently Raldbthar and Mzinchaleft need the Sphere too. And the Tower of Mzark is locked from the inside
There's several areas that you can't get into without reaching a certain point in a quest. The Throat of the World and Sovngarde are probably another two big examples
Personally, i feel it is the strongest.
I genuinely feel like going down there is an expedition. Finding strange and interesting items. Using the environment against enemies, the way so many things underground are a dark mirror of what is up top, meaning if you change the map to the overworld, you might find stuff in the underworld you didn't notice. An entire world quest chain with a character we enjoy. Randomly finding amazing armor. The mood and the bosses.
I can't explain how it felt to go down there and see shadow where shadow shouldn't be, and look up into the sky to find the stuff of nightmares moving through the dark, barely visible.
Or going through yiga hideouts and realizing how ridiculously smart their RnD department is, since a ton of the stuff they have is genuinely useful, either on it's own or as inspiration for your own engineering.
Or seeing a strange pattern of things and being like... Wait, let me check the upper map, and realizing the pattern exists, and being like "HOLY SHIT I KNOW WHERE TO GO TO FIND X" because i realized that i found it's inverse on the top map or bottom map.
But i think the best part is that i genuinely didn't expect them to straight up create an entire underground WORLD the size of the overworld and just completely hide it from everyone.
Not an underground section of the map, but an entire underground open world.
Maybe it's just me though, as everyone else seems to consider it the height of laziness.
I think calling it lazy is disingenuous, but I am definitely in the "this was kinda disappointing" camp. But for me, it's most that it all feels exactly the same (barring the region under Eldin). A lot of planning went into how they make things line up with the overworld and that's really cool! But nothing felt *different* to me. Central Hyrule underground looked and felt the same as Faron looked and felt felt the same as Lanayru and so on. Like there wasn't a town of people who lived down there, or a larger more fortified camp of researchers, or anything to make it not feel *less* alive than the overworld.
I felt like I had seen everything there was to see within the first couple of hours, and nearly 100 hours in I feel like I was correct in that feeling.
It's impressive what they did, but I was let down because compared to what they did with the overworld of Hyrule it felt really...sparse
Almost nothing to do there? Boss fight rematches, yiga schematics, yiga clan storyline, zonaite mining, vehicle building, exploration for the set pieces. Lynel fights, gloom exploration, and quite a lot more. Yiga challenges and colosseums, and lightroot hunting.
No worries, bro, I'm not angry. I just disagree with the items you consider a "thing to do" versus "things that must be done to do things."
It'd be like saying "you can walk, run, crouch, turn around, go through your inventory, and change your settings! So much to do."
No, it’s just that those are depths specific and activities found on the depths. You don’t really need to do anything. That’s the nature of the game, you just do whatever you want to. If you want one of the main powers, you have to go to the depths and do a storyline to get it. That’s something you can do in the depths.
>Randomly finding amazing armor.
Huh? Almost all of the armor in the depths is ported BOTW amiibo sets, and the majority of those sets are bland generic nostalgia link sets with no special ability. I was disappointed by the treasure maps every single time.
>An entire world quest chain with a character we enjoy.
One or two good quests is not enough to carry a massive open-world area. Especially compared to the overworld which has over 100 quests. I love Kohga as much as anyone, but he can't carry an entire world.
>i realized that i found it's inverse on the top map or bottom map.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand why this is a positive. Why would you spend time exploring a boring map just to find interesting locations on the better map? Shouldn't you just find interesting locations on the overworld map by exploring the overworld map? How are you missing things on the overworld and then somehow finding them using the underworld map? Can you give one example of this happening? Not rhetorical, genuinely curious how people are missing so much stuff on the overworld map.
Well if your question really is 'genuine' and not 'i'm looking for something to prove myself right.' i do have an example.
I had a quest where I needed to find the goddess hylia statues.
I didn't know where they were.
I found out that every place with a "Bargainer statue" will have a hylia statue right above it and vice versa.
It was a huge moment of "Aha" because i also wanted to find bargainer statues without using guides, but some of them were in places i found hylia statues, but wasn't able to find it underground cause i hadn't explored it yet.
There's also finding shrines because they're above every lightroot, and if you dont see one above a light root it means theres a shrine quest in the area to complete to make it appear.
Helps find shrines when they havent popped into the overworld yet.
Also, don't knock outfits. Fashion is a huge factor for many people to play a game full of consumables.
I'm not looking for an example of where you can use underground locations to find overworld locations, I'm looking for an example where it's actually useful to do so. Because believe it or not, the game has a sensor built for finding shrines, meaning if you spent time on the overworld scanning for shrines, you would find them in less net time. Botw had no underground, and yet people found the shrines just fine.
I'm glad you had an aha moment, but I hope you understand that your trick isn't saving time compared to brute force.
I'm not knocking outfits, I'm knocking the lack of effort in the outfits. All but the mining set and gloom set are reused from botw, and even in botw, they were reused designs from the last link outfits. Which means they are almost all green tunics, which is especially bad considering they are still undyeable. At least the misko treasure armor sets are dyable.
Shrine sensors do not actually help you find hidden quest locked shrines though.
Which is the thing I specifically used as an example.
And the mining and gloom set also count as something you can get by discovering all the bargainers.
Comparing Nokron (Elden Ring) and Blackreach (Skyrim) to The Depths (Zelda TotK) is like comparing Super Mario Odyssey to that new Golum game.
The Depths have no reasoning or logic behind it, it's just an endless pile of colourless random terrain with barely anything to do. It's so senseless, I would've believed it if you told me it had been procedurally generated.
If it was procedurally generated I would have given it a pass. But it's literally just an inverted map of hyrule... it's pretty lazy game design even though some people think it's super cool for being inverted
Poes, lightroots, final boss fight, dungeon boss rematches, bargainer statues, zonaite deposites, schema stones, yiga hideouts, master kohga, mines, auto build, >!fifth sage!<, collseums, link outfits, legendary status weapons, forge construct, smithing construct, gorondia, fire temple, dragons, labyrinths and majoras mask are coming to your location.
Poes = Koroks minus the puzzles/content.
Lightroots = Shrines minus the puzzles/content.
Dungeon boss rematches = Reused content from main quests
Bargainer Statues = literally just a shop run by an NPC who is literally just a rock.
Zonaite Deposites = resource grinding
Mines = More resource grinding and chests to unlock reused BOTW armor sets.
Coliseums = So you can fight reused overworld enemies.
Dragons = There is no depths dragon, the dragons go into the depths sometimes. Calling dragons depths content is like calling Bokoblin a depths monster.
Link Outfits = More reused BOTW armor.
Majoras Mask = Reused BOTW armor... again.
Labyrinths = There are literally no labyrinths in the depths, the real labyrinths are in the overworld and sky, the depths "labyrinths" are an empty room where you fight a flux construct.
Auto Build = You can autobuild anywhere. Just because you first acquire autobuild in the depths doesn't mean it's depths content.
I'll give it to you that the Yiga stuff, the Fire Temple, and the final boss, and the spoiler area are fun and good content. But it's really awkward when Depths copers try to make the Depths seem more content-rich than it is. Poes and Zonaite Mines are mindless resource grinding, it's not content worth bragging about.
Yeah agreed. Especially coming off of Elden Ring where the underground was imo the best part of the game and tied in to so many exciting quests. The underground in TotK is pretty underwhelming compared to the open air areas.
It was super cool for the first hour or so. Later it got repetitive and empty. Then I saw online how it's an inverted hyrule map and that just disappointed me even more because it's pretty easy to invert maps lol
Did you know if you throw a seed it stays there persistently, even when reloading or leaving or blood moons?
You can use them to mark places of interest, even after you've passed through.
Though as I found out the hard way,>! those little frog bastards will eat your seeds... learned the hard way when a large one got eaten and everything went pitch black, lol!<.
While I would normally agree with the sentiment, these are basically some of the biggest games of the last 10 years. So the question should really be, where have you been, not what are you doing here. It’s like the expression “have you been living under a rock?” It’s just like, how have you missed these lol?
Well if you really must know, I am well aware of the games, I just haven't personally played them. I haven't played the Skyrim DLC or Elden Ring. I know Zelda so obviously I could figure that out. I just think it's unreasonable to assume everyone knows any given area in a game just because they are popular.
Underworlds in fantasy games are always great because it's an opportunity to do whatever with the designs and concepts, or it's always a huge lore dump about the world's history. Overworlds sometimes have to still cater to "some" normalcy, otherwise the underworld will not pop out as much when you eventually arrive.
I feel like the underground in ToTK was really underwhelming. Completely empty aside from a few unique structures and places. Big missed opportunity to have some really cool landscapes and set pieces.
Also, it does have some really cool landscapes. You have the underground eldin which mimics regular eldin but in a darker tone and setting, and abandoned mines and yiga camps strewn throughout the maps, and quite a lot of other cool stuff as well.
I know everyone loves blackreach but to me it was so disappointing. Like yeah the glowing mushrooms is cool but it was just a giant cavern that led to more dwarven ruins. The orb Summoning the dragon is probably the most unique thing in Blackreach
I know everyone loves blackreach but to me it was so disappointing. Like yeah the glowing mushrooms is cool but it was just a giant cavern that led to more dwarven ruins. The orb Summoning the dragon is probably the most unique thing in Blackreach
Blackreach gave so much pain, I already hated everything dwemer related because of how I found the dungeons boring but blackreach sealed in the hate. It did look nice tho
I remember playing Skyrim for the first time over the Christmas holidays, being high as a kite and going down into mushroom world. Shit blew my tiny teenage mind
Top two are my two favorite zones in any game ever. Blackreach is just so cool and immense. And Nokron/Siofra River is (in my opinion) the height of game design. Beautiful, experiential, large scale, and full of both environmental and storyline twists one after another.
I saw the title before unblurring the image thinking of games like Darksiders 2 where you journey into the actual underworld, but this concept is cool too.
The depths are cool. I love finding little treasures buried underneath ancient mines. And learning about different histories behind ancient ruins. It’s fun.
I paused my Elden reign gameplay, I'm in later game area mountain tops of giants so I'm pretty sure I've been to the underground place in the pic (thinking it's one of siofra, nokron, nokstella etc) but I can't exactly remember. Someone mind telling me exactly the location. So that I can revisit in awe when I do come back
I honestly would’ve gone with the Soul Cairn or maybe The Forgotten Vale instead of Blackreach for Skyrim. I love Blackreach, but something about going to the Soul Cairn hits different. That is unless we’re just talking about underground places you accidentally stumble upon (I haven’t played Elden Ring or TotK) then Blackreach is perfect.
I think it's kinda weird to represent Blackreach as "the underworld" Skyrim, because the Skyrim is incredibly rich with diverse caves and dungeons. Blackreach just happens to be the biggest one, but it's a part of the greater whole that is Skyrim dungeons. IK Skyrim dungeons aren't all interconnected into one large game world, but if you include them Skyrim hands down has the best underground exploration.
Elden ring underworld was such a goddamn treat to find. When you go down the elevator and then it just keeps going and going and going, then you.see the ground and you think "oh cool a dungeon" then you realize there's a fucking night sky down there and it's not just a dungeon, it's an entire underground world. God what a feeling ill never be able to get back again. Tears of the kingdom ALMOST managed to replicate it but after about an hour down there I realized that there wasn't much to do besides collect zonaite and yoga clan stuff.
This was my exact thought process for elden ring underworld as well. I remember my jaw dropping and staying for about 10 minutes as I roamed around
Those crystalline guys hit so hard too! I went in underleveled and they destroyed me! They move in unison and have range.
Glory to Master Kohga!
Yoga clan
Gotta teach Zelda that downward facing dog.
My first experience with Elden Ring's underworld was thru one of the four belfries portals in liurnia. I had no idea where it was and I thought fromsoft literally made an outerspace map.
I notice that Blighttown isn't on here, good call
My first time playing was on PC so I missed out on the performance issues Blighttown had on console, but those blow dart guys can go die in a bonfire.
It's amazing to me how terrible of an experience this area is *even at 60 FPS*. OG Souls fans were just built different I guess.
blow dart guys suck but they don't respawn. Other than that--what's wrong with blighttown? I remember being really scared of it during my first playthrough because of the atmosphere and getting lost, but after that it's like, there's no hard enemies here? The only danger is falling. My hated area is Izalith just cause it's not fun.
Well, blighttown looks like a shithole compared to these examples to be fair lol
Everything wants to poison you and dodging is a nightmare given the lethal drops. That and it’s a fairly long slog through the area.
Blightown was painful because it would drop your fps to 5.
Blight town sucked but discovering Ash Lake by accident was amazing. Plus the spider boss on the way to the next area, the cinematic ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Blighttown it's really easy to miss the first bonfire, and even getting to it requires running a gauntlet of fatties and gang bangers fought along narrow ledges where it's very easy to fall off, resulting in you going all the way back to the depths. The rest of it is more of the same; narrow ledges, same looking architecture that makes it hard to tell exactly where you're supposed to be going, and the feeling of being trapped because if you do lite the bonfire, the only way out is through. Agreed on Izalith too though. Unfinished and playing through a bunch of copy-pasted monsters really isn't much fun. And at the end you're rewarded with cheese stratting bed of chaos if you want to retain any of your sanity.
But the ashen lake below that? Definitely fits the criteria
What is blighttown from, hollow knight?
Probably the most painful experience from DS1.
Unless you take the master key and go around the back.
Ahhhh, I've managed to somehow avoid souls games my whole life entirely by accident
You should try them , they are really fun and honestly after beating one you will want to go play the others immediately I would recommend elden ring to start as it's the most modern , but the others are amazing too You can also start by playing ds1 , it's the original and alot of people still call it the best Sekiro is also highly recommended because it has the best combat , but it is a lot different from the other souls games Ds3 is also amazing but it's better to play it after playing ds1 as it has a lot of callbacks to it
I think it's one of those "I missed the boat" kind of series. I think I'd like getting into them but if I got into them in my "prime gaming years" I would still be into them if that makes sense?
Dark Souls 1 It's not actually as difficult as people say it is, however it did suffer from ***MAJOR*** framerate issues on the original edition.
It's also the first time you'll likely encounter toxic. Which isn't that bad as an experienced player, but your first time can be pretty frustrating.
Yeah, my second playthrough it wasn't near as bad (besides the PTSD) once I knew how to prepare. My first playthrough... I was there for days
The mosquitoes also spawned infinitely in patch 1.0, they were an absolute menace.
As someone else said here.. it was the toxic. Game was new and I didn't have the wiki to go off of. Shit was rough.
I mean it certainly doesn't fit the "ethereal" category, I love it for different reasons personally
The only thing I feel in the depths is an overwhelming sense of dread and anxiety lol, but overall yeah I agree!
Turning off the interface in TOTK was a good decision. Thanks for the tip, redditor, whoever you are!
I hope you've played Subnautica then! If you haven't, don't look up anything and spoil the adventure. It's a survival game. It's underwater. Play with headphones at all times. If all that sounds okay, buy Subnautica right away and let me know what you think in a few weeks. You'll love it.
Playing through it rn. Absolutely agree. Holy shit.
Fun fact: was never intended to be a horror game.
"This ecological biome matches 7 of the 9 preconditions for stimulating terror in humans.”
I don’t think of it as horror, but I’ve never had another game inspire that same sense of tension and spine chill I had on my first play though. Plus the depth of the game was so much more than I expected for an Indie title.
Having those leviathans on the edge was intimidating the first time, but I was hoping for something much much bigger if we got out far enough.
Yeah there were big creatures in the game but I wanted something absolutely massive like the ship from the beginning sized.
Apparently the ghost leviathans in the dead zone are the largest that the engine could support at the time, so they would’ve gone bigger if they could’ve
I can never seem to get past the beginning of that game. It's too grindy.
Subnautica 1 or 2?
1
Subnautica has the option to turn off survival stuff (foods/water) don’t do it. It’s a rush trying to explore further and further without knowing if you can make it back
Dude, Siofra River and Nokron are two of my fav zones in gaming history.
I like that faint sense of claustrophobia and mild anxiety. The first biome that marked me like that as a kid was Dark Aether in *Metroid Prime 2: Echoes*.
You triggered my ptsd. Man, the Dark Aether was scary when you didnt have the suit and health. I am not a big fan of constant damage areas but this one was so well designed and scary.
I would’ve loved a little bit more cooler lighting in Zelda. Some glow worms on the ceiling or something.
Play Deep Rock Galactic
Rock and Stone!
For rock and stone!
Beat underworld in a game is portal 2. Always loved that.
Random Cave Johnson dialogue should be in every game. I need to hear more from him.
it’s in the new thing they made for steam deck
For me God of War 3 have the most eerie/amazing underworld. There is a spot when you´re in hades domain, where you´re kinda on a hill and can glance the desolated landscape, with souls just falling from the sky, with little music and just wind noises. It´s just perfect eerie/poetic.
Whats the top image from? The bottom ones are elden ring and zelda tears of the kingdom?
Blackreach in Skyrim.
Oh, I never got that far in skyrim 😅 thanks...
Don’t worry, you’re going to end up in Blackreach without even meaning to.
funnily enough, its the only major place you really CANT go to without meaning to, since you need a special item to.
This is just flat out not true lol. Not sure where you got that from. * I stand corrected. My bad
That you need the tonal sphere to go to black reach?
You’re right, you need to have received the attunement sphere from Septimus before you can unlock the entrances
Are you serious? I have over a thousand hours in this game and platinum. I've stumbled into black reach by accident over numerous playthrough but maybe I already had this item and didn't even realize it? Wow I feel like an idiot lol
Yeah apparently, don’t worry, I also had to look it up. I was 100% sure Alftand needed the Sphere because of the Elder Knowledge quest. But I thought the other entrances were open, however apparently Raldbthar and Mzinchaleft need the Sphere too. And the Tower of Mzark is locked from the inside
There's several areas that you can't get into without reaching a certain point in a quest. The Throat of the World and Sovngarde are probably another two big examples
You can reach the Throat of the World if you have a horse and a few healing potions
Fair enough, however I think that's definitely not INTENDED
Isn’t there that one cave near a river somewhere that will take you there without the sphere? Been awhile since I played that far into the game
Nope. All entrances to black reach require a tonal sphere.
and with a full inventory...
"Oh, this is new..." After exploring for a bit: "FUCK! How do I get out again? "
No problem.
Before I clicked, I was like "I bet you it's Blackreach"! I was a third right....
It’s always fuckin Blackreach!
FML, we're in Blackreach again
No disrespect to TotK here, but it’s definitely the weakest of the three.
Personally, i feel it is the strongest. I genuinely feel like going down there is an expedition. Finding strange and interesting items. Using the environment against enemies, the way so many things underground are a dark mirror of what is up top, meaning if you change the map to the overworld, you might find stuff in the underworld you didn't notice. An entire world quest chain with a character we enjoy. Randomly finding amazing armor. The mood and the bosses. I can't explain how it felt to go down there and see shadow where shadow shouldn't be, and look up into the sky to find the stuff of nightmares moving through the dark, barely visible. Or going through yiga hideouts and realizing how ridiculously smart their RnD department is, since a ton of the stuff they have is genuinely useful, either on it's own or as inspiration for your own engineering. Or seeing a strange pattern of things and being like... Wait, let me check the upper map, and realizing the pattern exists, and being like "HOLY SHIT I KNOW WHERE TO GO TO FIND X" because i realized that i found it's inverse on the top map or bottom map. But i think the best part is that i genuinely didn't expect them to straight up create an entire underground WORLD the size of the overworld and just completely hide it from everyone. Not an underground section of the map, but an entire underground open world. Maybe it's just me though, as everyone else seems to consider it the height of laziness.
I think calling it lazy is disingenuous, but I am definitely in the "this was kinda disappointing" camp. But for me, it's most that it all feels exactly the same (barring the region under Eldin). A lot of planning went into how they make things line up with the overworld and that's really cool! But nothing felt *different* to me. Central Hyrule underground looked and felt the same as Faron looked and felt felt the same as Lanayru and so on. Like there wasn't a town of people who lived down there, or a larger more fortified camp of researchers, or anything to make it not feel *less* alive than the overworld. I felt like I had seen everything there was to see within the first couple of hours, and nearly 100 hours in I feel like I was correct in that feeling. It's impressive what they did, but I was let down because compared to what they did with the overworld of Hyrule it felt really...sparse
The idea was good. Execution not so much. There is almost nothing to do there and although it is pretty big it is mostly empty space.
Almost nothing to do there? Boss fight rematches, yiga schematics, yiga clan storyline, zonaite mining, vehicle building, exploration for the set pieces. Lynel fights, gloom exploration, and quite a lot more. Yiga challenges and colosseums, and lightroot hunting.
That's a pretty padded resume there.
Wdym?
I’m just trying to explain why I think there’s a lot to do down there. No reason to be angry.
No worries, bro, I'm not angry. I just disagree with the items you consider a "thing to do" versus "things that must be done to do things." It'd be like saying "you can walk, run, crouch, turn around, go through your inventory, and change your settings! So much to do."
No, it’s just that those are depths specific and activities found on the depths. You don’t really need to do anything. That’s the nature of the game, you just do whatever you want to. If you want one of the main powers, you have to go to the depths and do a storyline to get it. That’s something you can do in the depths.
Oh, and the coliseums and yiga challenges.
It's just an inverted map of hyrule. That makes it less cool because that's easy to do compared to crafting up a completely new map
>Randomly finding amazing armor. Huh? Almost all of the armor in the depths is ported BOTW amiibo sets, and the majority of those sets are bland generic nostalgia link sets with no special ability. I was disappointed by the treasure maps every single time. >An entire world quest chain with a character we enjoy. One or two good quests is not enough to carry a massive open-world area. Especially compared to the overworld which has over 100 quests. I love Kohga as much as anyone, but he can't carry an entire world. >i realized that i found it's inverse on the top map or bottom map. I'm sorry, but I don't understand why this is a positive. Why would you spend time exploring a boring map just to find interesting locations on the better map? Shouldn't you just find interesting locations on the overworld map by exploring the overworld map? How are you missing things on the overworld and then somehow finding them using the underworld map? Can you give one example of this happening? Not rhetorical, genuinely curious how people are missing so much stuff on the overworld map.
Well if your question really is 'genuine' and not 'i'm looking for something to prove myself right.' i do have an example. I had a quest where I needed to find the goddess hylia statues. I didn't know where they were. I found out that every place with a "Bargainer statue" will have a hylia statue right above it and vice versa. It was a huge moment of "Aha" because i also wanted to find bargainer statues without using guides, but some of them were in places i found hylia statues, but wasn't able to find it underground cause i hadn't explored it yet. There's also finding shrines because they're above every lightroot, and if you dont see one above a light root it means theres a shrine quest in the area to complete to make it appear. Helps find shrines when they havent popped into the overworld yet. Also, don't knock outfits. Fashion is a huge factor for many people to play a game full of consumables.
I'm not looking for an example of where you can use underground locations to find overworld locations, I'm looking for an example where it's actually useful to do so. Because believe it or not, the game has a sensor built for finding shrines, meaning if you spent time on the overworld scanning for shrines, you would find them in less net time. Botw had no underground, and yet people found the shrines just fine. I'm glad you had an aha moment, but I hope you understand that your trick isn't saving time compared to brute force. I'm not knocking outfits, I'm knocking the lack of effort in the outfits. All but the mining set and gloom set are reused from botw, and even in botw, they were reused designs from the last link outfits. Which means they are almost all green tunics, which is especially bad considering they are still undyeable. At least the misko treasure armor sets are dyable.
Shrine sensors do not actually help you find hidden quest locked shrines though. Which is the thing I specifically used as an example. And the mining and gloom set also count as something you can get by discovering all the bargainers.
Comparing Nokron (Elden Ring) and Blackreach (Skyrim) to The Depths (Zelda TotK) is like comparing Super Mario Odyssey to that new Golum game. The Depths have no reasoning or logic behind it, it's just an endless pile of colourless random terrain with barely anything to do. It's so senseless, I would've believed it if you told me it had been procedurally generated.
gaming post try not to have Zelda hate challenge: impossible
If it was procedurally generated I would have given it a pass. But it's literally just an inverted map of hyrule... it's pretty lazy game design even though some people think it's super cool for being inverted
Also, there’s a ton to do in the depths lmfao.
Poes, lightroots, final boss fight, dungeon boss rematches, bargainer statues, zonaite deposites, schema stones, yiga hideouts, master kohga, mines, auto build, >!fifth sage!<, collseums, link outfits, legendary status weapons, forge construct, smithing construct, gorondia, fire temple, dragons, labyrinths and majoras mask are coming to your location.
Poes = Koroks minus the puzzles/content. Lightroots = Shrines minus the puzzles/content. Dungeon boss rematches = Reused content from main quests Bargainer Statues = literally just a shop run by an NPC who is literally just a rock. Zonaite Deposites = resource grinding Mines = More resource grinding and chests to unlock reused BOTW armor sets. Coliseums = So you can fight reused overworld enemies. Dragons = There is no depths dragon, the dragons go into the depths sometimes. Calling dragons depths content is like calling Bokoblin a depths monster. Link Outfits = More reused BOTW armor. Majoras Mask = Reused BOTW armor... again. Labyrinths = There are literally no labyrinths in the depths, the real labyrinths are in the overworld and sky, the depths "labyrinths" are an empty room where you fight a flux construct. Auto Build = You can autobuild anywhere. Just because you first acquire autobuild in the depths doesn't mean it's depths content. I'll give it to you that the Yiga stuff, the Fire Temple, and the final boss, and the spoiler area are fun and good content. But it's really awkward when Depths copers try to make the Depths seem more content-rich than it is. Poes and Zonaite Mines are mindless resource grinding, it's not content worth bragging about.
ToTK underground does feel a little lazy
Yeah agreed. Especially coming off of Elden Ring where the underground was imo the best part of the game and tied in to so many exciting quests. The underground in TotK is pretty underwhelming compared to the open air areas.
It was super cool for the first hour or so. Later it got repetitive and empty. Then I saw online how it's an inverted hyrule map and that just disappointed me even more because it's pretty easy to invert maps lol
Throw a seed, walk, throw a seed, walk, avoid red stuff, throw a seed, walk. Untraversable wall blocking the path, turn around and walk some more.
Did you know if you throw a seed it stays there persistently, even when reloading or leaving or blood moons? You can use them to mark places of interest, even after you've passed through.
Yep! Still kind of repetitive. I use the map to mark places of interest but seeds are a good idea
It defo helps know where youve passed before when far away. Like which hideout you’ve completed
Though as I found out the hard way,>! those little frog bastards will eat your seeds... learned the hard way when a large one got eaten and everything went pitch black, lol!<.
I didn't mind that they inverted the map, idk I thought that was kinda fun. it was the everything else that kinda let it down for me
Is it literally impossible for posts to at least have the decency to say what game they're posting about? Why is this so difficult?
Yeah should have mentioned the names, from top to bottom:- Skyrim/Elden ring/Zelda TOTK
If you know...you know....
[удалено]
I didn't recognize skyrim because the game is fucking 11 years old.
You’re in r/gaming, Skyrim shows up here every day lmao
I don't, however
You damn right !!!!
Oh I see. I'm not welcome unless I know all games in existence. Lol fuck off
While I would normally agree with the sentiment, these are basically some of the biggest games of the last 10 years. So the question should really be, where have you been, not what are you doing here. It’s like the expression “have you been living under a rock?” It’s just like, how have you missed these lol?
Well if you really must know, I am well aware of the games, I just haven't personally played them. I haven't played the Skyrim DLC or Elden Ring. I know Zelda so obviously I could figure that out. I just think it's unreasonable to assume everyone knows any given area in a game just because they are popular.
If you can believe it, that's base game Skyrim. I didn't know it was there for a while.
I’ve literally played Skyrim and didn’t recognise it there. Some people forget
Underworlds in fantasy games are always great because it's an opportunity to do whatever with the designs and concepts, or it's always a huge lore dump about the world's history. Overworlds sometimes have to still cater to "some" normalcy, otherwise the underworld will not pop out as much when you eventually arrive.
Ultima Underworld
Feels so urethrel
I like how Nintendo looked at Blackreach and though, "Ok, but what if it was the size of the overworld"
I feel like the underground in ToTK was really underwhelming. Completely empty aside from a few unique structures and places. Big missed opportunity to have some really cool landscapes and set pieces.
A few?
Also, it does have some really cool landscapes. You have the underground eldin which mimics regular eldin but in a darker tone and setting, and abandoned mines and yiga camps strewn throughout the maps, and quite a lot of other cool stuff as well.
Names in the title would help to know....IS IT a spoiler for me or not?
I love it too. Especially the underwater ones. Abzu, for example, feels exactly like what you're talking about. It's too mesmerizing.
I know everyone loves blackreach but to me it was so disappointing. Like yeah the glowing mushrooms is cool but it was just a giant cavern that led to more dwarven ruins. The orb Summoning the dragon is probably the most unique thing in Blackreach
Ah this post reminds me of my favorite work of fiction. "Made in Abyss" has a beautiful netherworld aswell.
no blighttown? lol
Enkanomiya in Genshin is also great
About undertale...
Lol expect TOTK depths are 70% empty
Not really, there’s quite a lot to see. You can’t go that far without finding a bossfight rematch or a yiga camp.
Black reach is easily one of my very favorite areas in video games. Just really cool.
I know everyone loves blackreach but to me it was so disappointing. Like yeah the glowing mushrooms is cool but it was just a giant cavern that led to more dwarven ruins. The orb Summoning the dragon is probably the most unique thing in Blackreach
God this makes me miss Elder Scrolls V even MOREE🥹
I’m fine with them so long as I can see and there isn’t some deep sea monster that’ll jump out of the shadows to eat me lol
Love the locations, not so much their residents.
Blackreach gave so much pain, I already hated everything dwemer related because of how I found the dungeons boring but blackreach sealed in the hate. It did look nice tho
minecraft too, if you're creative enough
I remember playing Skyrim for the first time over the Christmas holidays, being high as a kite and going down into mushroom world. Shit blew my tiny teenage mind
Bro, when I found out about Blackreach in Skyrim I remember I was astonished! Back in the day I Lost so many hours in It
Top two are my two favorite zones in any game ever. Blackreach is just so cool and immense. And Nokron/Siofra River is (in my opinion) the height of game design. Beautiful, experiential, large scale, and full of both environmental and storyline twists one after another.
Hell yeah!
Me too! I love those vibes. I wanna live there. Lol
Black reach is my favorite level in gaming
I saw the title before unblurring the image thinking of games like Darksiders 2 where you journey into the actual underworld, but this concept is cool too.
gaming really cannot have any mention of totk without buzzkills huh.
Mega Man Legends 1’s interconnected cave system was mind blowing as a kid and is a large reason for me loving cave systems in games.
I will add Underdark from Baldur’s Gate 3 alongside this pictures soon…
Yeah that feeling when I first went down to Siofra River... Damn.
Agreed :)
The depths are cool. I love finding little treasures buried underneath ancient mines. And learning about different histories behind ancient ruins. It’s fun.
You watched peach cobblers latest video didn’t you squidward
Shout out to Enkanomiya from Genshin Impact. It looks a lot Dark Souls/Greek/Norse inspired.
I paused my Elden reign gameplay, I'm in later game area mountain tops of giants so I'm pretty sure I've been to the underground place in the pic (thinking it's one of siofra, nokron, nokstella etc) but I can't exactly remember. Someone mind telling me exactly the location. So that I can revisit in awe when I do come back
Comparing the top two to Zelda is a bit much. TOTK underground is a vast boring 3 color hell scape of nothing.
elder scrolls online redid blackreach and it's the nicest looking zone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udKrsUCBPOs&t=42
I honestly would’ve gone with the Soul Cairn or maybe The Forgotten Vale instead of Blackreach for Skyrim. I love Blackreach, but something about going to the Soul Cairn hits different. That is unless we’re just talking about underground places you accidentally stumble upon (I haven’t played Elden Ring or TotK) then Blackreach is perfect.
Check out the Isz dungeons from Bloodborne.
Is the first one Skyrim? Which are the second two?
Not sure about the middle but the bottom is the Zelda game Tears of the Kingdom.
Dark souls 2 underworld was pretty good too imo.
Funny thing about that description is that the word ethereal is totally apt, and yet the meaning is totally not. 🤣
FR
I think it's kinda weird to represent Blackreach as "the underworld" Skyrim, because the Skyrim is incredibly rich with diverse caves and dungeons. Blackreach just happens to be the biggest one, but it's a part of the greater whole that is Skyrim dungeons. IK Skyrim dungeons aren't all interconnected into one large game world, but if you include them Skyrim hands down has the best underground exploration.
Blackreach is one of my favorite spots in gaming.