Not sure impulse. I haven't left my horse anywhere really yet. I mostly was roaming around just to get a bond with it and then look for other stables.

I tend to agree so far with a horse. I can only imagine it being worth it to me if I want to travel for a long distance, straight away with no detours. If I had a quest that was go talk to X person and that town happens to be on the complete opposite end of where I am at, I'd find the nearest stable and ride it to my destination.

I might start looking up some stuff on horses on my lunch break and know first hand before I loose my horse or some such.

I'm taking the route of horses, like I wished I knew about training Chocobos in FF7. I want to read up and see what if any are the advantages and the time it takes to put into getting more horses, or training them, or better equipment, etc. I don't want to spend days and hours on a horse like I did training Chocobos, only to be underwhelmed by the payoff. Cause man, I can never get that time in my life back racing Chocobos and hunting greens.
: -/

And I think I have 3-4 more areas to find still. As far as finding the tower and unlocking the map. I just got one tower activated last night, but didn't get to travel much past it. So I have a good chunk to still explore. But I've pretty much been playing like you said. Actively seeking towers and shrines. I've done so little to the actual main quest. But I have been doing side quests as I travel around too, if it seems the payoff is worth my effort. Found out a lot about cooking from little Koko in Impa's village (because I can't spell it).

If you leave a horse in the middle of the wilderness it stays where you left it until you come back for it.

I actually did the elephant divine beast with just six hearts. It took a few tries, but once I got used to dodging the boss' attack and realized that I'd do quadruple the damage with my soldier's bow he went down pretty easy.

I think I've concluded that regular combat is a step down from the Wii's Zelda games. I don't see the point in having ax's and lances if they don't really function any differently from swords except for very specific times. It's all just pressing the same button to make Link swing or thrust his equipped weapon. The strategy only really comes in the preparation or in using the environment through the Sheikah slate powers. It works, and using the physics is great fun, but the act of hitting enemies with a sword is a big step down from Skyward Sword, where each blow had to placed perfectly and there were 8 directions you could swing in, and from using the 7 hidden skills in Twilight Princess. So I don't think the tradeoff of motion controls for different kinds of weapons was worth it. Aiming the bow works great. The inability to press a button to center the camera makes it inferior to the bow controls from SS and TP, but it still works very well most of the time and is better than analog stick aiming.

The joy of exploring and experimenting is unmatched, though. One of my problems with open world games is that I feel like I haven't really done anything and have wasted my time if I didn't advance the story. I haven't gotten the feeling that I did nothing after any of my play sessions with BOTW.

I've been claening out in my video game collections and decided what I am going to sell. Among other things are two of the 4 ps2 I have... Yeah its not as bad at it sounds.

For those who have been playing Zelda on the wii u: Is it descent enough on that? I dont think I really want to buy a Switch in the near future but I really want to play it soon.

Oh, it's fine on the Wii U. It was designed for the Wii U, after all. It has a few frame rate issues but nothing game breaking.

In fact, I just finished the game a couple nights ago. I encourage everyone to finish all main story quest lines before finishing the game. Just main quests, not the myriad side quests and collectibles. There is plenty more I could do in the game, but frankly it gets a bit samey and repetitive after a while. Having said that.. I started Dark Souls 2 (had it in my Steam library) last night at a friend's recommendation, and I must say I am quite spoiled by BotW's controls. Dark Souls feels much less sophisticated and precise coming off of 100 hours of Zelda, but I just need to get used to it.

I'll agree with impulse too. Though I have no comparison to the Switch, it runs just fine. It's beautiful and rich graphics are still amazing with the Wii U and our like 7 year old HDTV. (I refuse to play on the gamepad but my son does and he seems fine with that too.) I haven't gotten near as far as impulse cause I have to compete with my son, and the TV itself with both kids.

So that being said, with the TV, Wii U and 360 tied up with my kids, I've been hanging out in my son's room the last two nights, and bought Castlevania Symphony of the Night on the PS3. Bringing us up to three consoles we have SotN on now. It could be one of the most perfect games. Which sparked my sons and I to talk about our top 5 games of all time. We all agreed SotN was for sure one of them. My oldest said BotW is now too for him. I couldn't commit to it at the time, as I haven't gotten as deep into the game as he has, but I could see myself reaching that conclusion once I have played more. If I get a chance this weekend I think I am going to take a stab at one of the Divine Beasts.

I've always had a hard time immersing myself in games on portables. So for me it's not that there is a lack of quality (I tried a bit of playing on my son's N3DXL and it's WOW as far as graphic quality) but the lack of immersion.

Yeah there are definitely those that did sandbox and/or open world as good as BotW in execution, so I wouldn't want to say that either. I think in scope it's at least the biggest open world I have played. And the amount of things to do is staggering. Though I can see it becoming tedious if it doesn't have some finite aspects of it, to give it some guidance to the end goal. I'm still very hesitant to give an overall "grade" to it. But as far as I have played it's a hell of a game. Where it would fall in games that have impressed me the most over almost 30 years of playing; that I don't know yet.