That's always how I've played games. Once I see the ending the game is "done" and I can't get myself to play it anymore, so I always do the final boss last

This is the exact reason why I haven't killed Ganon yet, in spite of putting 400+ hours into the game. Now I look forward to starting all over again - this time in 4K and with hopefully better performance, once I get my Switch 2.

100%. The blood moon's appearance and the scary piano music when you encounter a guardian, always gives me anxiety. I wish I could skip the blood moon's cutscene reliably.

> But they’re not the first games that came to my mind when I see “cozy video games that can quell stress and anxiety”.

I think what quells stress is the lighting, a game which is mostly outdoor sunny is relaxing in my experience compared to mostly dark games. I had that experience with rocket league of all games

Haven't played BotW though, so this was my impression from gameplay videos

That's why I am playing TotK without durability, it was such an annoyance that ruined everything else for me. Might make some things easier but I am not there for the challenge.

The game doesn't hold your hand, but it does guide you to discover things pretty well. I never really felt lost, which is something I've often had problem with when playing open world games. I could explore, but I could also easily get back to whatever I needed to continue progress. There was also no penalty for exploration once you can fast travel, as you can easily get out of a bad situation.

What I think is really good is that there is no one right way to do something. With some games if you can't figure out what they are trying to tell you, you hit a brick wall. With BotW, I could always figure something out, even if it wasn't "right". For example, at one point you can talk to the old man chopping down trees and the intent is for you to chop down a tree to make a bridge across a gap. For whatever reason, I didn't pick up on this. However, there was a wall that I thought I might be able to use to climb over there. It wasn't trivial (I died several times), but it taught me how to find little places on walls to recover stamina while climbing. I was still able to get over there. This lesson on climbing paid dividends throughout my entire play through, while the tree bridge mechanic was almost never needed again.

The first non-red Bokoblin (in the skull with the archer out front) probably killed me 10 times on the first play through. That was a bit frustrating, but I eventually got it. But I just ran in there and tried to fight him directly. To use tactics, you should have just gotten a bow and arrow before activating the first tower, and you can shoot the rope that suspends the hanging light inside the skull (by shooing through the hole where the skull's eye would be). This causes an explosion and gives you a big leg up in the fight. Later there are shines that help teach you how to use the various fighting mechanics, which help level up your skill controlling Link.

Most of the dying I didn't mind so much, because there was little to no penalty for it, and all felt like I was learning something. Can I jump off this high thing... nope dead... how else can I do this? I used the manual save a lot, instead of just relying on the autosave, if I was about to do something risky.

I rage quit the game several times before it finally clicked.

The realisation was that "wait, Link is a coward!". I then avoided most battle encounters and spent most of my time just exploring.

Once you’ve grabbed your initial set of abilities from the opening area and stocked up on some weapons it becomes much easier. Shifting your mindset to “combat is almost entirely optional” also changes how hard the game feels.

Newbies tend to be really afraid of the monsters early in the game. Maybe you are used to games that puts enemies there for players to kill. You’re supposed to sneak around enemies in the early game (you just woke up weak after a 100 years…)

With that being said I don’t think it is newbie friendly though. The controls uses all buttons and many with different modes. It’s can be quite overwhelming imho.

I might have to try this again. I got it on the GameCube when it came out, but remember hitting a wall and being frustrated. The open world change really old me on Zelda. I might give some of the older games another look after finally falling in love with the modern Zelda games.

For me it's also mostly the exploring angle. Do you know any more BOTW style exploration games ?