How did you feel about Breath of the Wild's Master Mode?

[Bananastand]

I rarely go back to games but I have had this itch to replay Breath of the Wild recently. It is one of my favourite games ever but I haven't really played it since I finished the dlc in 2017.

One of the things included in the the dlc is a thing called Master Mode. It is basically a hard mode with a few twists here and there. I restarted the game with this mode and the very first enemy I encountered killed me in one hit. Also, there is a Lynel walking around in the starting area. Holy shit, Master Mode is no joke.

From what I understand I am supposed to sneak around a lot more and I need to pick my battles. I had fun in the first hour, but I am not sure if I can keep up with this brutal difficulty if I ever have to face a real boss, let alone Calamity Ganon.

What is the general opinion about this mode. Did you enjoy it? Did you feel like it was balanced? I am curious to find out before I return to Master Mode.

 

[kadotsu]

I like it minus the goofy floating platforms and the triforce UI element.

 

[Murlin]

The health regeneration needed some additional tuning, it basically made the Trials of the Sword near-impossible for example. I did manage to beat the main campaign with it, though.

 

[SrirachaX]

I started my first playthrough on master mode. It was really rough in the beginning as it was tricky to finish encounters without breaking all of your weapons, but it made me learn how to use the environment (ie fire), stealth attack, and utilize runes to get through encounters.

It evens out when you get some gear from those octorok treasure things you see around the world. After about mid game the challenge kind of goes away once you got some armor and decent weapons. The master sword dlc/eventide island brought that back as everything was dangerous again

Personally I think I got more out of the game starting like this and appreciated having to plan out my encounters in the early game. I'd get rid of the health regeneration though since that's booty

 

[It’s Time To Go]

I felt it was far too obtuse to be enjoyable.

 

[flyinj]

I played about 6 hours of it and was enjoying it a lot.

But I stopped playing because the game forces you to have a white triforce in the bottom left of the screen constantly even in menu screens with no way to disable it and I didn't want to have it burn into my TV.

 

[Lobster Roll]

Wasn't really a fan of it, to be honest. The enemies were way too spongy.

 

[balgajo]

I liked the floating platforms but disliked the damage sponge and have mixed feelings about the enemies regaining the health.

 

[RoboitoAM]

Nintendo still can't make proper difficulty modes is my takeaway.

 

[Deleted member 37917]

I found it bad. The enemies absorbing a crazy amount of damages isn't an enjoyable gameplay mechanic from my perspective.

 

[Pancracio17]

I played about 6 hours of it and was enjoying it a lot.

But I stopped playing because the game forces you to have a white triforce in the bottom left of the screen constantly even in menu screens with no way to disable it and I didn't want to have it burn into my TV.

Click to shrink...

Nintendo just makes the dumbest mistakes sometimes.

 

[Deleted member 4034]

I really enjoyed it with the exception of bosses honestly. Loved how the Great Plateau became a survival game, but I balanced out the stronger I got. Floating platforms were a great addition.

But then I ended up avoiding Lynel fights and any other mini boss because of regeneration and then I knew the trials would be impossible for me in that mode.

 

[Doggg]

Trial of the Sword and the extra Divine Beast was good. Master mode didn't add much for me.

 

[Quinton]

What's the deal with the floating platforms?

Anyway, I wanna do a Master Mode file for my second playthrough but I'm kind of worried that the Trials of the Sword foes will be exceptionally irritating.

 

[Deleted member 4034]

What's the deal with the floating platforms?

Anyway, I wanna do a Master Mode file for my second playthrough but I'm kind of worried that the Trials of the Sword foes will be exceptionally irritating.

Click to shrink...

There are enemies and better weapons on top of them. They're pretty cool feel free to get on one or take it down.

 

[toadsworth]

I like the challenge, but it totally breaks the weapon system. You don't get enough weapons from an encounter to recoup your lost weapons, so it makes more sense to just avoid all enemy encounters instead, which isn't fun to me.

 

[Magnemania]

it's pretty hilarious how the Divine Beasts and boss fights are almost entirely unchanged so they represent a massive drop in difficulty compared to everything around them

the health regeneration discourages trying out most of the sandbox methods of killing enemies and makes fighting groups an enormous chore. Virtually every combat interaction beyond "hit them with your sword" takes too long between hits and activates the regeneration, with the sole exception of backstabs

the mode also does nothing to stop Link from scarfing down ten steak dinners in an instant to fully restore his health, nor does it prevent him from stacking max health boosts from food, so it doesn't do much to make dying more of a concern, outside of the removal of the instant kills

the floating platforms, while garish, can be fun to fly to

it's a great mode to try out if you want to play breath of the wild without killing anything

 

[Elshoelace]

I like it minus the goofy floating platforms and the triforce UI element.

Click to shrink...

Im the opposite, I liked the goofy platforms and did not care for the regen. It would be fine if the enemies were all stronger, but regen is too quick to kick in. That said you get a lot of great weapons from the platforms and kinda makes the stronger enemies not that threatening.

The trials though can be really bad in a few instances as well.

 

[Boclfon479]

I never finished it, I think I did 2 beasts and tried the first floor of the master sword trials before I stopped.

it was very hard at first, but I soon realized that the floating platforms usually have high power weapons, so those helped me get a foothold pretty easily.

Also the master trial seemed impossible to me, I couldn't beat the first floor. Only tried it for 2 lives though, maybe I could have figured something out eventually

 

[Deleted member 37928]

It was a bit unbalanced but overall it made me enjoy the game a lot more. I'll be very disappointed if the sequel doesn't have a difficulty option.

 

[Irikan]

Health regen is awful, everytime you do your little combo on an enemy, he goes flying and starts to regen... which sucks super bad when weapons have limited durability. So yeah, really not enjoyable for me.

 

[Deleted member 4034]

I like the challenge, but it totally breaks the weapon system. You don't get enough weapons from an encounter to recoup your lost weapons, so it makes more sense to just avoid all enemy encounters instead, which isn't fun to me.

Click to shrink...

It depends on how you go about fighting enemies. Wasn't my experience at all outside of the great plateau which mostly just had me choosing my battles.

 

[talkingood]

It's awful. Fighting enemies is no longer fun due to their ridiculous health regeneration. I can't believe they released the mode like this, it was a real missed opportunity.

 

[Quinton]

There are enemies and better weapons on top of them. They're pretty cool feel free to get on one or take it down.

Click to shrink...

Word, thanks!

 

[Synohan]

Get rid of the enemy regen and it would have been fun. The basic mobs becoming giant enemy sponges just caused me to completely avoid combat all together. Fighting them was tedious and is completely pointless in the long run.

 

[Starkiller]

I don't really like it.

I think regenerating enemy health and "upgrading" enemies is too much, and it makes some parts of the game, such as boss fights, very hard. I would have just doubled enemy attack power and flipped the world (like what Nintendo did for OOT 3D's Master Quest mode)

 

[Pascal]

Didn't enjoy it compared to the normal mode. Enemies are too spongy, boss fight became miserable with their healing, ugly floating platforms everywhere ruining the scenery...



Just stick with the normal game and do some challenge runs if you want more difficulty.

 

[Gurgelhals]

It doesn't really work as a hard mode, unfortunately. It breaks some parts of the game completely (the Trials of the Sword are nigh impossible in Master Mode). And the main game still becomes piss easy at some point – it just happens a bit later down the line compared to normal mode.

The best part of it is the beginning really, where it forces you to play stealthily. The Great Plateau section at the very start you basically have to play completely differently than in normal mode. But once you're over that first part where you're severly underpowered, the game just becomes a sloggier version of normal mode due to the enemies' ridiculous (and regenerating) health.

I wish that game had a properly designed and balanced hard mode, really...

 

[.exe]

It's terribly unbalanced in a way that actively makes the game less enjoyable rather than more challenging. The health regen is utterly broken. And I managed to beat the Trials. It's not that I can't handle the heat; it's just super unfun.

 

[Conkerkid11]

Makes the frustrating combat and weapon durability issues even worse.

Literally avoid fighting enemies at all costs because they're impossible to kill.

 

[Tarot Deck]

terribly balanced, made me like the game less and didn't made me want to do the trials.

The re-distribution of the enemies were cool, and finding the very rare level 1 enemies was interesting, but the regen stuff wasn't well implemented.

Still clocked over 100 hours though

Get rid of the enemy regen and it would have been fun. The basic mobs becoming giant enemy sponges just caused me to completely avoid combat all together. Fighting them was tedious and is completely pointless in the long run.

Click to shrink...

this

 

[slothrop]

Honestly I never even tried it because I did not even like it conceptually

 

[PlayBee]

The buffed enemies are kind of tedious

 

[Deleted member 4034]

I don't get the complaint about the platforms.

 

[His Majesty]

Its main drawbacks are the ridiculous weapon durability and health regen on enemies. It makes alternative approaches with environmental objects useless if they don't kill the enemies in one hit.

 

[Enduin]

It was OK, it highlighted a key weakness in BotW though that was already pretty apparent in the normal game and that was enemy variety and difficulty. While Master Mode was more challenging at the start in a mostly refreshing way it became tremendously tedious as you progressed because enemy types were too few and varied so all that was different was increasingly huge HP bars. Whatever element of resource management and strategy there was in dealing with enemies and crowds as you whittled down those massive health bars was rather insignificant compared to the boredom and tedium of actually doing it.

While I would like to see a similar mode for BotW2, and be available at the start, I really hope they drastically increase the enemy variety and their move sets while also fixing the incredibly inflated HP bars they have so it doesn't take 20+ whacks to take some of these guys down depending on what weapon you have. They need to provide us with a challenge that doesn't largely result in inflating how long combat lasts.

 

[Deleted member 58846]

It's a terrible mode that completely wrecks the finely tuned balance of the base game and misses the point as to why the base difficulty was so much fun to begin with.
It's a lot like Grounded in The Last of Us, actually. Both are terrible higher difficulties that entirely miss the point of the base games' balance, and in an attempt to be harder, completely wreck said balance.

 

[Jaded Alyx]

rubbish

 

[Alexhex]

Strange that people are complaining about the health regen? I honestly barely noticed it, it starts feeling like a normal playthrough fairly early on once you get your inventory fleshed out.

It was fun but the real solution to the game's difficulty issues would have been something like only being able to eat at campfires/outside of enemy encounters. Oh and maybe making weapons even less durable but no way would that have gone over well considering people didn't like/understand the system to begin with

 

[JershJopstin]

I'm still working through it. It has some strong moments, like the Plateau, Eventide, and Trial of the Sword where it really shines, but once you catch up in weapon strength it's really not all that different. The Master Sword is a little more important for staying ahead in the weapon degradation loop. Overall I'm glad I'm doing it for a second run.

I had fun in the first hour, but I am not sure if I can keep up with this brutal difficulty if I ever have to face a real boss, let alone Calamity Ganon.

Click to shrink...

It actually gets easier. Part of what makes the Plateau hard is its refusal to give you much in the way of sturdy weapons; sticks and such aren't even enough for red bokoblins, let alone blue ones. Once you have the freedom to explore and find good stuff consistently, a lot of the need for careful stealth goes away.

 

[hyouko]

It made me avoid enemy encounters since every fight would just become a protracted HP-sponge fest. You pretty much had to focus on one enemy at a time to avoid kicking in the health regen - AOE attacks became pretty useless unless you could somehow spam them exclusively. Some of the changes to enemy placement were clever or added interesting challenges, but I found the actual combat unfun.

 

[Bradford]

literally the only way to make the game halfway interesting and genuinely the best way to play the game. Especially with the Pro Mode HUD.

 

[No Depth]

I put in about 25hrs on normal diff at launch and stopped playing as it felt like the game lacked any real challenge with many systems feeling needless. Waited for the DLC Master Mode to restart instead.

Master mode often swings the opposite direction resulting in a similar balancing problem as it largely favors pressing the attack while other mechanics offer little to no help. Water is useful for drowning tougher foes, but boulders, fire, barrels, etc no longer can assist much. Many of the more compelling lateral strategies just barely help.

The speedy enemy hp recovery is just obscenely powerful, but you do earn so much strong equipment that when fights are chosen, it isn't impractical to waste several good swords as I never concerned over inventory often.

It can be grueling and not quite as well managed as I hoped, but it was my preferred play option. I'd rather fear enemies, and often I avoided combat, than vanilla which rarely incited the same. But yes, as mentioned, the mode flattens with a bit of progress.

Hoping BotW2 goes further into thinking of ways to better implement a Master difficulty for sure.

 

[JangleLuke]

I'm actually playing through it for the first time right now (just beat Vah Ruta and got the Master Sword).

The beginning turns into a semi-stealth game because of the pitiful weapons, but it does get better when the dynamic scaling starts giving you weapons worth a damn.
Items like the Korok and Majora's masks do help tip the scale toward you a bit, but encounters with multiple enemies feel like a one-sided waste of time and resources.

You do start to value some items more (like the korok leaf and elemental arrows), but god the regen is so ubnoxious.
Small guardians in shrines are especially annoying because you can't do much but wack at them repeatedly.