Aorus z370 gaming 7 bios update

Specs: Dell optiplex 790(2012) 16gb ram i7(cannot remember generation) Nvidia 1660
I have an older refurbished gaming computer setup, I know it is not the best but it gets the job done. I am probably due for an upgrade but have been holding out.
I left for a trip on 5/23/2023 and just returned 5/29/2023, my pc has not wasnt booted up during this time. When I returned home I turned on my pc and did some light housekeeping, emails, etc. All was good and I went to sleep. I wake up today 5/30/2023 and boot up my computer to find that the monitor is saying “no input detected” So I restart my pc naturally. Well this problem persists and so I realize I haven’t tried my other monitor, when I turn it on I see my pc stuck on the Dell logo screen with the blue loading bar. Sometimes the bar will fill, other times it’s stuck at halfway. I’ve tried a few online resources and replaced the CMOS battery but I cannot tell if I managed to accidentally restart in the middle of a bios update and now I’m just screwed.
I have tried rebooting and hard rebooting to no avail, I am so confused given that it turned on and performed just the night before. Any help is appreciated.
*also the boot options will not accept input, like once I get to the loading screen me pressing F12 will not trigger anything
I can provide any additional info

Hi all,
I'm from Australia and building a new pc to replace my 10 year old beast. Its been a while since I looked at the market and I'm still coming up to speed on the latest hardware, pricing dynamics etc. Can I please get some feedback on my build.
Objective:

• Gaming on 1440p max settings, 120hz+ (Ultra wide ~30 inches) + 2 other 27 inch monitors for work / movies / surfing at the same time
• Games: Dota 2, Diablo 4 and occasion AAA titles
• Platform that I can keep and upgrade over the next 5 – 10 years (therefore requires AM5)
• Relatively good price/performance ratio (Don't have a super strict price budget but prefer
• Not have to think about anything hardware related / look inside my case for at least 5+ years
• Don't care about RGB

PCPartPicker Part List: https://au.pcpartpicker.com/list/xRDFcb (All prices are in AUD, I'll need stuff I can source here)

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X 4.5 GHz 8-Core Processor (A$499.00 @ Centre Com)
• CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler (A$151.43 @ JW Computers)
• Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 AORUS ELITE AX ATX AM5 Motherboard (A$369.00 @ Computer Alliance)
• Memory: Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-5600 CL36 Memory (A$160.94 @ Amazon Australia)
• Storage: Silicon Power A55 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive (A$62.00 @ MSY Technology)
• Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (A$78.00 @ BPC Technology)
• Video Card: PowerColor Fighter OC Radeon RX 6800 16 GB Video Card (A$779.00 @ PCCaseGear)
• Case: Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case (A$161.78 @ Amazon Australia)
• Power Supply: Corsair RM850x (2021) 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (A$191.00 @ MSY Technology)
• Case Fan: Corsair ML140 97 CFM 140 mm Fans 2-Pack (A$44.00 @ Austin Computers)
• Case Fan: Thermalright TL-C12C 66.17 CFM 120 mm Fans 3-Pack (A$30.83 @ Amazon Australia)
• Total: $A2526.98

​
Key price drivers are the AM5 CPU + Mobo and the RX6800.
It is worth going for the RX6700XT? I can save about A$280
Is it possible to save much and keep a decent AM5 / Mobo combo that I can upgrade over the AM5 life cycle?
I probably went a little overboard with the cooling I want to set and forget stuff

I'm looking to purchase a new PC, upgrading from a 7 year old gaming laptop.
I wanted to purchase from Microcenter and have them most likely build. Ideally I wanted something that's just for gaming purposes only, so wanted to have something around a 7800X3D and 4090. Been waiting to see if anyone such as Corsair is going to offer a pre-build for this, but it probably won't be until the end of this year I suspect.
Have read a lot about the 7800X3D Issues, but my hope is with the latest BIOS updates for the Motherboards, that should be mostly resolved now if I buy new, the lower wattage is appealing long term for the gaming performance.
Cost isn't generally an issue, but ideally I think I can build for something under $3500 currently with the below, but just want to see if I'm missing anything or if anyone recommends anything else.
CPU - 7800X3D. $419 Motherboard - ASRock - B650M. $120. (generally seen ASRock is more reliable than ASUS motherboards for the 7800X3d currently?) RAM - Crucial 64GB DDR5 4800 PC5 38400. $175 Case - Lian Li O11 Dynamic EVO Tempered Glass. $160. Power Supply - Corsair RMx Series 1000W 80 Plus Gold. $190. GPU - Gigabyte 4090 Overclocked Triple Fan. $1700 SSD - Samsung 870 Evo 2TB. $110 NVMe SSD - Samsung 980 Pro 2TB. $150 CPU Heatsink - Deepcool AK400 Performance CPU Cooler. $35 Case Fans - Lian Li Uni Fan SL 120mm 3 pack black. $110.

Hello all,
I have an issue with my PC that randomly started happening a few weeks ago and im losing my mind trying to find a viable solution.
First up, rig details: 5950x (watercooled) 64 GB of DDR4 3600 Suprim Liquid X 4090 Msi 1000w psu (12vhpwr) Multiple 1TB SATA SSDs 1 M.2 Sata 256gb 1 NVME 1tB SSD 7 case fans + 2 fans on the 4090 rad
Now the problem.
It goes black and the fans spool up. Totally at random. Can be gaming or can be just chilling at the desktop doing nothing. Temps are good. Updated BIOS, Chipset Drivers, GPU drivers. Get no error or anything, just black screen and fast fans. Any help in resolving this would be exceptionally appreciated, i use this machine for a lot of stuff and i cant have it doing this.

Update AGESA to ComboAM5 1.0.0.7a Optimized UEFI setup settings 

Updated Intel microcode Support for 48/24GB DDR5 memory modules Optimized processor settings Improved memory compatibility 

As of Pokémon Home's update ver. 3.0.0, I've compiled a list of Pokémon which can be deposited into Home but which cannot yet be withdrawn. I did the same with 2.0.0 and some people found it to be interesting or useful, so I thought I'd share an update here as well.

1. Spinda 2. Snivy 3. Servine 4. Serperior 5. Tepig 6. Pignite 7. Emboar 8. Patrat 9. Watchog 10. Pansage 11. Simisage 12. Pansear 13. Simisear 14. Panpour 15. Simipour 16. Blitzle* 17. Zebstrika* 18. Sewaddle** 19. Swadloon** 20. Leavanny** 21. Ducklett** 22. Swanna** 23. Furfrou 24. Pikipek** 25. Trumbeak** 26. Toucannon** 27. Minior** 

For now, these are all Pokémon which can be transferred into Home from Bank and/or Go, but which cannot be withdrawn into any games at all. Once these Pokémon enter Pokémon Home, they are stranded there, and there are not yet any titles where they can travel to.
* Blitzle and Zebstrika are confirmed to return in "The Indigo Disk" downloadable content for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.
** These other Pokémon have data in Scarlet and Violet insinuating that they may become available either in "The Teal Mask" or "The Indigo Disk" dlc.
On the flip side, now that Pokémon Home is compatible with Scarlet and Violet, the following Pokémon are no longer stranded, as they can be sent to those games:

1. Unovan Samurott 2. Deerling 3. Sawsbuck 4. Alomomola 5. Tynamo 6. Eelektrik 7. Eelektross 8. Meloetta 9. Chespin 10. Quilladin 11. Chesnaught 12. Fennekin 13. Braxien 14. Delphox 15. Froakie 16. Frogadier 17. Greninja 18. Scatterbug 19. Spewpa 20. Vivillon 21. Litleo 22. Pyroar 23. Flabébé 24. Floette 25. Florges 26. Skiddo 27. Gogoat 28. Hoopa 29. Yungoos 30. Gumshoos 31. Crabrawler 32. Crabominable 33. Oricorio 34. Komala 35. Bruxish 

Of course, with this update also brings Home compatibility for all of the new Pokémon added to Scarlet and Violet so far, including both forms of Gimmighoul, etc.
It looks like of the missing Pokémon, we'll see a small handful of them coming back for the Scarlet and Violet dlc, but at this point it seems more to me like a drip feed. A good handful of Pokémon from Pokémon Black and White look like they're going to be stranded for a little longer--I'd assume until some as-of-yet unannounced related project--and any poor Spinda or Furfrou trapped in Home might be there for who knows how long before they can finally be moved back into games.

Welcome to Aegis [AGS]!
Aegis is a casual North American community looking for more players to call friends!
What do you guys think about the finished Gyala Delve meta? I personally am I big fan of the siege turtle, and I love shooting the sniper rifle at the end! The rewards are pretty decent along the way as well!
Filled with seasoned veterans and fresh new players alike, we have something for everyone no matter what kind of content you enjoy, nor your experience level. Our event schedule is set in PST.
PvE content run weekly includes meta trains, Fractals, Raids, and Strikes.
Wednesdays and Fridays are our official “Fractal nights”, though groups often form to do dailies of varying tier every day. Fractal CM training takes place on Fridays. We are always willing to teach!
Saturdays evenings we host raid trainings that prioritize new players and those working on their Envoy achievements evenings! On Wednesdays we do a full wings 1-4 clear, and on Sundays we do a full wings 5-7 clear. (These two days are for the experienced!)
Tuesdays we do a full run of the five EoD strikes!
Tuedsays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays we host meta trains to make bank (and hope for infusions)!
PvP content includes a weekly for-fun sPvP night, and possibly WvW on the release of Alliances! For now, if you're on the Fort Aspenwood server, we have a decent amount of people who do semi-regular WvW content that are always looking for more people to join us!
We also host community events such as custom jumping puzzles, lotteries, race tracks, and fashion contests with prizes for the top placed players!
Our community has a Discord server for new members to join. We use Discord to follow GW2 news announcements, post event info and updates, socialize and share cute animals. Voice chat is not required but is sometimes used for events!
A couple of rules:
Guild representation or event attendance is not required.
Treat everyone with respect. Absolutely no harassment, witch hunting, sexism, racism, or hate speech will be tolerated.
To join Aegis, we ask that you fill out a very short form. Once submitted, it will be reviewed and you will be contacted in-game with more details! We look forward to meeting our new members and are excited to play with a solid community of good people!
If you don't hear back from us, you can always contact me or an officer in Discord: bones#0917 or JiaYao#4240

Hello There,
Ive bought the MERC 7900 XTX a few weeks ago. Unfortunately i have several Issues with the Card.

1. Hogwarts Legacy is crashing after a few minutes. I could not find any temp or wattage spikes in the AMD software. When i run a 3D mark stress Test it ramps up higher and there no crashes. Probably there are other games as well?
2. The high Idle Consumption on dual screen setup (3440x1440 @ 165 Hz HDR and 2560x1440 @ 144 Hz). The VRAM Clock is constantly at 2480 Mhz. The Idle Consumption is up to 100 W.
   
   1. When i turn the 2nd screen down to 85 Hz it goes down to 60W and 909 MHz. Below that its getting normal.
3. Opera (chromium based) was lagging AF - especially videos. Problem got fixed - i dont know exactly how - maybe the MPO fix - but I did not focus on this issue.
   
4. And at the end the Performance is not as i would expect it - even with my "old" 3900X CPU. In Hogwarts i get around 70 FPS in Hogsmeade with everything on ultra and no raytracing (AMD FSR2 Upscaling Quality) to 3440x1440. As a reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIjC-LFXcPc&t=377s
   

The Issues 1 and 2 are boggling me. But mainly ofc the first one, because i suspect there are other games that would crash as well and i cant resolve it. I wonder, because the stress tests dont crash.
What ive tried:

1. Windows fresh install + fresh Chipset Drivers + fresh install of AMD Drivers and Game
2. todays driver 23.5.1 as the march revisions
3. MPO fix
4. Windows driver update deactivated / activated with DDU Deinstallation and fresh installation
5. Mainboard BIOS Update
6. probably more. I dont have good memory ;)

Has anyone had same issues? Is my card broken, altough its resiliant to the stress test? I guess its an driver issue or sthing, but why arent there more annoyed people out there?
​
Thanks and Greetings :)

Last updated: 05/30/23 11:13:00 EST

LEGEND

Note	Description
Italics	Pitched previous day or twice in last 3 days.
Strikethrough	Pitched back to back days.
Bold	Recent transaction.
L3:##	Number of pitches thrown in last 3 days.
***	SP first start.
**	SP yet to reach 5.0 innings in a game.
*	SP yet to surpass 6.0 innings in a game.

BULLPEN USAGE

Team	Opp	SP	CL	SU8	SU7	MID	LR
ARI	COL	Zac Gallen	Miguel CastroL3:25, Andrew ChafinL3:22		Scott McGoughL3:33	Austin AdamsL3:8, Kyle NelsonL3:31, José RuizL3:8, Kevin Ginkel	Drey JamesonL3:59
ATL	@OAK	Bryce Elder	Raisel Iglesias	Nick Anderson	Collin McHughL3:21	A.J. MinterL3:8, Jesse ChavezL3:13, Joe JiménezL3:30, Kirby YatesL3:27	Lucas LuetgeL3:30
BAL	CLE	Kyle Gibson	Félix BautistaL3:15	Yennier CanoL3:15	Bryan BakerL3:14	Mike BaumannL3:13, Danny CoulombeL3:3, Mychal GivensL3:23, Cionel PérezL3:10	Keegan AkinL3:40
BOS	CIN	Brayan Bello	Kenley JansenL3:13	Chris MartinL3:7	Josh Winckowski	Kutter CrawfordL3:27, Joely RodríguezL3:18, Justin Garza, Nick PivettaL3:54	Corey Kluber
CHC	TBR	Kyle Hendricks**	Mark Leiter Jr.L3:16, Adbert Alzolay	Michael FulmerL3:38	Michael RuckerL3:36	Brandon HughesL3:41, Jeremiah EstradaL3:39, Julian MerryweatherL3:13	Javier Assad
CHW	LAA	Lucas Giolito	Liam HendriksL3:27	Kendall GravemanL3:6	Joe KellyL3:41	Reynaldo LópezL3:3, Keynan MiddletonL3:32, Aaron BummerL3:28, Garrett CrochetL3:46	Gregory SantosL3:40
CIN	@BOS	Ben Lively*	Alexis DíazL3:40	Lucas SimsL3:27	Ian GibautL3:29	Alex YoungL3:8, Buck FarmerL3:12, Fernando Cruz, Eduardo Salazar	Kevin HergetL3:20
CLE	@BAL	Cal Quantrill	Emmanuel Clase	James KarinchakL3:16	Trevor StephanL3:16	Eli MorganL3:16, Enyel De Los SantosL3:29, Sam HentgesL3:23, Nick SandlinL3:19	Xzavion CurryL3:28
COL	@ARI	Kyle Freeland	Pierce JohnsonL3:6	Justin LawrenceL3:33	Jake BirdL3:29	Brent SuterL3:22, Daniel BardL3:19, Brad HandL3:25, Matt CarasitiL3:36	Peter LambertL3:43
DET	TEX	Alex Faedo*	Alex LangeL3:12	Jason FoleyL3:14	Will VestL3:25	José CisneroL3:16, Chasen ShreveL3:8, Tyler HoltonL3:28, Mason EnglertL3:34	Tyler AlexanderL3:9
HOU	MIN	Brandon Bielak	Ryan PresslyL3:37	Bryan AbreuL3:48	Hector NerisL3:15	Ryne StanekL3:9, Phil MatonL3:24, Rafael MonteroL3:17, Seth MartinezL3:12	Parker MushinskiL3:22
KCR	@STL	Zack Greinke*	Scott BarlowL3:27	Aroldis ChapmanL3:27	Taylor ClarkeL3:21	Josh StaumontL3:29, Amir GarrettL3:20, Carlos HernándezL3:28, Jose CuasL3:9, Nick Wittgren	Mike MayersL3:76
LAA	@CHW	Tyler Anderson	Carlos EstévezL3:32	Chris DevenskiL3:23	Jacob WebbL3:28	Ben JoyceL3:12, Aaron LoupL3:13, Chase SilsethL3:35, Sam Bachman	Tucker Davidson
LAD	WSN	Tony Gonsolin*	Evan PhillipsL3:22, Brusdar GraterolL3:36, Caleb FergusonL3:24			Yency AlmonteL3:26, Shelby MillerL3:35, Victor GonzálezL3:23, Justin BruihlL3:16	Phil BickfordL3:43
MIA	SDP	Sandy Alcantara	Dylan FloroL3:13	Tanner ScottL3:21	Huascar BrazobanL3:20	Matt BarnesL3:27, JT ChargoisL3:21, Andrew NardiL3:22, Steven OkertL3:38	Bryan HoeingL3:14
MIL	@TOR	Adrian Houser*	Devin WilliamsL3:26	Peter StrzeleckiL3:29	Joel PayampsL3:15	Hoby Milner, Elvis Peguero, Trevor MegillL3:14, Jake Cousins, Jake Cousins	Bryse Wilson
MIN	@HOU	Joe Ryan	Jhoan DuranL3:41	Jorge LópezL3:28	Brock StewartL3:31	Emilio PagánL3:7, Jovani MoranL3:9, Griffin JaxL3:12, Cole SandsL3:16	José De LeónL3:27
NYM	PHI	Kodai Senga*	David Robertson, Adam Ottavino		Brooks RaleyL3:6	Drew SmithL3:28, Jeff BrighamL3:45, Dominic LeoneL3:32, Tommy HunterL3:16, Stephen NogosekL3:29	Josh Walker
NYY	@SEA	Nestor Cortes	Michael KingL3:22, Clay HolmesL3:28, Wandy PeraltaL3:25			Ron MarinaccioL3:20, Albert AbreuL3:30, Jimmy CorderoL3:14, Matt Krook	Ryan Weber
OAK	ATL	JP Sears*	Trevor MayL3:33, Lucas ErcegL3:47, Richard LoveladyL3:8			Shintaro FujinamiL3:20, Sam Moll, Austin PruittL3:29, Sam LongL3:26	Ken WaldichukL3:16
PHI	@NYM	Ranger Suárez*	Craig KimbrelL3:19	Seranthony Domínguez	Matt StrahmL3:24	Gregory Soto, Connor BrogdonL3:18, Jeff HoffmanL3:41, Andrew VasquezL3:38, Yunior MarteL3:27	Dylan CoveyL3:30
PIT	@SFG	Johan Oviedo	David BednarL3:29	Colin HoldermanL3:14	Dauri MoretaL3:18	Robert StephensonL3:10, Jose HernandezL3:34, Roansy ContrerasL3:22, Rob ZastryznyL3:31, Yohan Ramirez	Cody BoltonL3:38
SDP	@MIA	Ryan Weathers*	Josh Hader	Nick MartinezL3:29	Steven Wilson	Tim Hill, Tom Cosgrove, Brent HoneywellL3:32, Domingo TapiaL3:12	Drew CarltonL3:36
SEA	NYY	Logan Gilbert	Paul SewaldL3:15	Justin TopaL3:36	Trevor GottL3:21	Matt BrashL3:9, Gabe SpeierL3:17, Tayler SaucedoL3:20, Juan ThenL3:29	Chris FlexenL3:38
SFG	PIT	John Brebbia**	Camilo DovalL3:29	Tyler RogersL3:16	John Brebbia	Taylor RogersL3:10, Scott Alexander, Jakob Junis, Ryan WalkerL3:16	Sean Manaea
STL	KCR	Miles Mikolas	Ryan HelsleyL3:33, Giovanny GallegosL3:5	Jordan HicksL3:23	Andre PallanteL3:18	Génesis CabreraL3:3, Drew VerHagenL3:40, Chris StrattonL3:8	Steven MatzL3:50
TBR	@CHC	Shane McClanahan	Jason AdamL3:38	Colin PocheL3:22	Kevin KellyL3:12	Jalen BeeksL3:19, Jake DiekmanL3:10, Calvin Faucher, Trevor KelleyL3:45	Joe La SorsaL3:32
TEX	@DET	Martín Pérez	Will SmithL3:26	Brock BurkeL3:25	José LeclercL3:13	Jonathan HernándezL3:25, Josh SborzL3:11, Joe BarlowL3:12, Cole RagansL3:28, Grant Anderson	John KingL3:4
TOR	MIL	Yusei Kikuchi	Jordan RomanoL3:16	Erik SwansonL3:18	Nate Pearson	Tim Mayza, Trevor RichardsL3:24, Adam CimberL3:26, Yimi GarcíaL3:20	Anthony BassL3:21
WSN	@LAD	Jake Irvin	Kyle FinneganL3:22, Hunter HarveyL3:19		Carl Edwards Jr.L3:18	Andrés Machado, Mason ThompsonL3:19, Chad KuhlL3:27, Erasmo RamírezL3:8	Thaddeus WardL3:30

TRANSACTIONS

Date	Team	Player	Category	Description
5/29	CHW	Liam Hendriks	INJURIES	Activated from 15-Day IL
5/29	TBR	Trevor Kelley	PROMOTION	Recalled from minors
5/29	TEX	Grant Anderson	PROMOTION	Contract selected from minors

UPDATE- (I guess I confused a lot of people with that title. But what I actually meant was adult companion. Not just from a partner but from friends or whatever. I have memorized all nursery rhymes, and know all of Optimus prime cousins by name at this point, it gets really annoying. I don’t have a problem with getting a date, men are always asking me out but I know it’s just fun and game and honestly I’m not interested in entertaining such things at this point of my life. Also, I’m in really good shape for a woman with twins. I’m 5’6 120lb, look really young for my age and take care of myself (as I’ve been told). Honestly right now I’m focusing on getting my life together financially and I know I can do it, it’s just frustrating and sometimes it feels like I can’t breathe. I wish I could call someone and vent ir meet up for drinks or something…… And for those who asked, yes I do have a college degree thanks god and I’m able to get a job, it’s just the schedule and childcare the problem for me. I’m also doing uber and what not whenever I can. But right now I’m trying to extend my education and/or field since I’m not doing anything else).
I 30F, divorce for a year now, with 2 kids (5years old), moved back in with parents when it happened, have been struggling finding a steady job due to the kids school schedule and before or after care for a regular 9-5 job. No support from kids father at all, kids are with me everyday 24/7. Parents help only when they can since they’re in the country only twice a year for shorts periods of time. I have completely given up on dating. I have no social life whatsoever. I’m unable to attend any activity without my kids, everything I do it’s child related. I can’t even go on dates because I have nobody to stay with the kids for a few hours. I have been talking with other single father who have told me they don’t mind if I go ove and bring my kids or we plan a date with them. My problem is that I would like to get to know a person first before introducing them to my kids and it’s so hard to even get a fee time for myself. Other men are just looking for a hookup and I’m just not interested in that. I’m also financially unable to get my life together or even save money because I can’t even work. My parents let me stay at their place for free and they don’t have a problem with it, they told me I can stay for as long as I want. But it seems that I’m stuck for at least another year or two until my kids start first grade and are able to join an after school program so I can start working a full time job without worrying about child care. It feels like I’m wasting so much time of my life just sitting around doing nothing for myself. I wish I could at least be studying or taking a course or improving myself on something but I can’t literally afford anything right now. I wish I could start building a new relationship but it seems that will never happen. I don’t even have close friends to talk to, or call. It’s just me and my kids. I love them to death but I feel so lonely, helplessness, and stuck.

Obviously, spoilers on the entire game here. For context, I have been playing Zelda since 2014 with Twilight Princess as my first game. Since then I have played Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild, Link's Awakening, and I am about halfway through Ocarina of Time. Because of my obvious bias towards more traditional 3D Zelda games (I enjoyed Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess the most) I will try to be as impartial as possible.
I tried so hard to like this game. I had my doubts at the beginning, but after watching the new trailer it sold me on the game. I didn't like some aspects of Breath of the Wild, but after seeing the new enemies and hopefully a return to a more traditional zelda game that people missed while keeping the awesome open world of Breath of the Wild I really thought it was going to be great. And some parts of it were, but some parts of it I did not like.
Firstly, I would like to congratulate Nintendo because the physics relating to the Ultrahand mechanic blew everyone away, including me, and it is clear that Tears of the Kingdom has some of the best physics and building of any video game out there. The amount of creativity that has sprung from this game is mindblowing, and I don't think any of us expected for there to be simply so much to do. Not only are there almost 30 devices you can obtain each with their own unique purpose, you can also combine them with almost anything you can find in the game. Want to make a stupidly long bridge that can get you around the temple of time at the start of the game? Why not? Want to skip the main puzzle in the shrine by haphazardly building a flying machine that just barely makes it to the end? Go right ahead. Ultrahand allows for so much creativity and makes the new shrines ten times more enjoyable than the ones in Breath of the Wild. Because of this, there is an infinite amount of replayability in this game and the community will always be finding new things to do with this. Judging from how you all pushed Breath of the Wild to its limits, I can't wait to see what will be done in this game. Ultrahand gets a 20/10.
Additionally, Fuse and Recall are also insanely fun and useful abilities that add so much to the game. While I miss the Stasis rune in particular, Recall and Ultrahand can be used in a similar way if done correctly, and it's so much more satisfying when you do it correctly. While Recall doesn't have as many uses as Fuse and Ultrahand, the game still finds great ways to use it, such as sending a Stone Talus' boulders back at it, or knocking those horrible Horriblins down from the cave ceiling. Additionally, I am extremely happy with how Nintendo fixed Durability with the Fuse mechanic. While the durability annoyed me less than some of the others who played Breath of the Wild, my main complaint was wasting several of my good weapons on an enemy like a Silver Bokoblin or Lynel that had a huge healthbar, and only getting one (or sometimes none) good weapons in return. However, with the guarantee that you will usually be able to get an equally powerful or sometimes even better weapon after killing an enemy by fusing their horns to any random "sturdy stick", I don't hesitate to fight Silver enemies or Lynels anymore and I feel much more free to do so. Both of these abilites get a 10/10.
My third compliment goes to the game's shrines. I disliked Breath of the Wild's shrines. I found them tedious and annoying to do, and often skipped them or looked up the answers online. Especially when your only reward was a piece of heart or tiny fraction of a stamina wheel, I just clicked on them to save them as a travel checkpoint and moved on. Even their design was ugly to me. However, the new shrines are much better. While they are easier than Breath of the Wild's shrines, the rewards are a little less lucrative to balance it out and they are so much more fun to do because of how they creatively use the new abilites and allow for a multitude of different ways to solve problems. Many people do not like the "Proving Grounds" shrines, but I absolutely love them because they are a real challenge and I don't have to worry about losing 50 bomb arrows or several good weapons for a "Guardian Sword ++" and some ancient screws. Even if I die five times trying to complete them, I still have fun. And aesthetically they are so much better, the look of the temple, the texture of the lights of blessing, even the music feels a lot less claustrophobic and drab like the ones in Breath of the Wild did. 9/10.
Fourthly, the Great Sky Island was absolutely amazing and I loved every second of it. It felt just like it did when I played Breath of the Wild for the first time, being plunged into an unknown and untouched environment and having to learn the mechanics of this new game. The Zonai Constructs don't carry the same fear level as Guardians did, but they were still cool enemies to fight with drops that were actually helpful unlike the Ancient Screws and Springs which only became helpful late-game. I obviously can't go through every part of the island, but the parts I enjoyed the best were crossing the huge lake to the west, climbing the snowy mountain to get to a shrine where I unsuccessfully attempted to craft a hovercraft out of logs, going on Minecarts around the island, and fusing random crap to sticks to make the most ridiculous weapons possible. 9/10.
My last compliment goes to the introduction of Gloom into the game. When it is first introduced, the Gloom is absolutely frightening, and plunging into the depths for the first time was beyond scary. Malice was an annoying obstacle that you just jumped across until you got to where you needed to be and ate a few foods, but you are forced to avoid the Gloom in this game because you know that it will be catastrophic if you walk in it for too long because the only cure is an extremely rare flower that can only be found in the sky. I just wish that the lightroots either weren't so common, or didn't heal your healthbar, because it kind of subtracted the fear aspect a little bit. The way it actually destroyed your heart containers in the final battle against Ganondorf instead of rendering them unusable for a little while was another surprise I did not expect, and killing the Demon Dragon with a single heart was the best moment of the game for me. 8/10.
Some other minor things I liked:
• Gleeoks are amazing bosses, better than any of the bosses in Breath of the Wild OR Tears of the Kingdom apart from the Ganondorf fight, easy 10/10
• While the Wind Temple wasn't my favorite, I did enjoy the Rito Village quest in the beginning and the leadup to the Wind Temple where you flew with Tulin to the very top. 9/10.
• Pizza?! I loved the introduction of Tomatoes and Cheese into the game! Shame you couldn't do more with them. 7/10.
• The Master Kohga battles were very good. While he was still easy to kill once he was stunned, it is another instance of Ultrahand and Link's other new abilities putting a creative and spicy twist on an old fight. Autobuild was also a lifesaver. 9/10.
• The second stage of the Ganondorf bossfight was probably the most fun I've had with a boss since Twilight Princess. It felt actually challenging in a way that could only be compared to the Gleeok Battles. It was so hard to even get a single hit into his massive healthbar when he could dodge more than 90% of your shots and destroy your health bar. Probably shouldn't have gone in without upgrading any of my armor but doing that was so tedious :p 20/10.
Now that I've talked about what was great about Tears of the Kingdom, here is the stuff I disliked about the game. While I think that the people who call this game an "overpriced DLC" are not arguing in good faith, I can see their point. Much of Breath of the Wild's structure was carried over into Tears of the Kingdom and it felt like I was redoing the same things I did in the old game, just with a new texture and a slightly different story.
Because of how insanely complicated it must have been to put Ultrahand in the game, it was clear that that was what Nintendo spent most of their time on when making Tears of the Kingdom, going for a more creative approach rather than a return to the traditional like I had hoped. And while this was a perfectly valid thing to do that clearly made a lot of people happy, it just wasn't what I wanted, and the final trailers for the game feel like they were marketing a different game than they were actually selling. When they went above and beyond with Link's new abilities, it left other aspects of the game such as combat, story, gameplay, and the structure of the game itself lacking and awfully familiar, if not the same, as Breath of the Wild.
Now that I've talked about what was great about Tears of the Kingdom, here is the stuff I disliked about the game. While I think that the people who call this game an "overpriced DLC" are not arguing in good faith, I can see their point. Much of Breath of the Wild's structure was carried over into Tears of the Kingdom and it felt like I was redoing the same things I did in the old game, just with a new texture and a slightly different story.
Because of how insanely complicated it must have been to put Ultrahand in the game, it was clear that that was what Nintendo spent most of their time on when making Tears of the Kingdom, going for a more creative approach rather than a return to the traditional like I had hoped. And while this was a perfectly valid thing to do that clearly made a lot of people happy, it just wasn't what I wanted, and the final trailers for the game feel like they were marketing a different game than they were actually selling. When they went above and beyond with Link's new abilities, it left other aspects of the game such as combat, story, gameplay, and the structure of the game itself lacking and awfully familiar, if not the same, as Breath of the Wild.
My biggest issue with this game is the story. I disliked almost every part of it. We start out with a very solid intro scene where we meet shriveled Ganondorf and Zelda disappears. Then we see her disappear as she steals our half of a master sword at the end of the Great Sky Island. However, the game then leads us into a wild goose chase to find Zelda for almost the entire game until near the end when we go inside Hyrule Castle. This was fine in Skyward Sword because Zelda was much more likable and it only took up half of the game. I felt like "I have to save Zelda. I have to." in SS and in Tears of the Kingdom I was like "Let's just get this over already." Additionally, the Upheaval which is apparently the placeholder of the Calamity in BOTW just feels like not a threat at all. The castle rose into the air and a few meteors came down and crashed into Kakariko village. The mud in the water doesn't seem to be affecting the Zora much at all, the Gerudo seem relatively unharmed by the Gibdos, only retreating into an underground bunker, and we have almost no time to see how the rock roast affects the Gorons before Yunobo is saved. The only place where I felt any sense of urgency was in Rito Village where the town was starving and abandoned the children to their fate because they're the worst parents ever or something. I enjoyed saving Rito village. The others not so much. And let's not even talk about the Sages. 3/4 of them we had already interacted with heavily in the previous games, which was another reason I liked the Rito quest so much. Yunobo is still as weak and annoying as ever, nothing has changed with Riju, and Sidon is so boring and lifeless comparing to the other game. As we go into the dungeons we have four conversations that are, quite literally, copy and pasted into each one voiced by the blandest sages ever.
"Come, Come" (Random Sage)
"Did you hear that voice?" (Yunobo, Sidon, Riju, Tulin)
and when we get to the end of the dungeon
"X, I am your ancestor from a long time ago. I was the sage of x. Descendant you make me proud. The monster you killed tried to stop you from obtaining my secret stone. Once upon a time there was a great war where the Demon King tried to kill us and Rauru gave us all secret stones but he was too strong so Rauru sacrificed himself to seal him away. And then Zelda appeared to me and told me that it was the duty of the x to aid you Link."
"So it's my duty to... help you? Now take my scary ghost form with a useless ability (besides tulin) to follow you around the rest of your journey!"
These cutscenes weren't disappointing. I hated them. As a person who loves the story so much they never skip a single cutscene these I physically couldn't watch. Everything about them was awful. The completely dry, lifeless, unneccesary sages which don't even have a name or a face and talk like NPCs or someone from an awful anime episode and say the exact same thing four times over, the empty void we are surrounded in, the cutscene we have to watch four times over, the robotic responses that come from the sages, everything about it was horrible and it feels like Nintendo was trying to reinsert the champions in the game but these are such a worse downgrade from them. At the end of the game I was like "ok... I give this a 7/10" and then the horrible after-credits scene with the four sages came in where they repeated the robotic speech from one of the memories and if that was supposed to be a meaningful scene it certainly was not.
Zelda's sacrifice probably would have meant so much more to me if the rest of the story hadn't frustrated me so much. But it feels like it meant nothing since the Demon King is such a non-threat compared to Calamity Ganon. Calamity Ganon devastated Hyrule, destroying most of the villages and probably killing half of the people there, and murdering 4 of the best characters in Zelda history who meant so much to their people that statues were built for them. In comparison, Ganondorf levitated a castle in the air and added some poo to Zora's domain. It ruins Zelda's moment so much because it would have been so beautiful if it felt like she was sacrificing herself for something meaningful. It frustrates me to no end because Ganondorf was a villain I was so hyped about and he's shriveled about 90% of the game and only appears three times, once in the beginning, once as a vision in Hyrule Castle, and once at the end, and only one of them is fully revived Ganondorf. In fact, we only see this version of Ganondorf for a third of the final bossfight. We need more Ganondorf! At least add a sixth dungeon to the game below Hyrule Castle where Ganondorf appears after, or maybe he appears before we get the Master Sword. We just needed more of Ganondorf and more of him being a threat to Hyrule.
Another complaint are the sages. I already stated that three out of the four sages had already been fleshed out in a previous game and not much was added to their personalities this time around. Why couldn't we have gotten new people? Maybe make Muzu a sage, we always like having an old man around, or give Barta/Bullaria some importance for the Gerudo and hand over the torch to one of those young Gorons that always follow Yunobo around. It would have been so much fun to have new characters. The sages add absolutely nothing to the experience of this game besides showing up in the awful cutscenes and it just feels like they're trying to repeat what they had in the last game. If they're going to do that, at least do it with someone new so it doesn't feel like I have to replay the game again. We already helped these people with their character growth in the last game. We know that Riju is insecure about her place as the Gerudo chief, and we helped her be more respected after retriveing the Thunder Helm and calming Naboris. We know that Sidon feels a sense of duty to his domain after what happened to his sister, and we spend time with him getting shock arrows, obtaining the Zora armor, and travelling around Lanayru with him until we got to Zora's domain. We helped Yunobo gain his confidence after he accompained us by firing himself at Rudania. These characters went through almost no development except for Tulin (again showing what Nintendo did right with Rito Village) because he's a new character.
Finally, the memories. Why did there have to be memories again. It would have been such an easy shift from Breath of the Wild, to give us a new main quest. While I was not a big fan of the time travel arc that Zelda went through, it was still workable, but there was no reason to have these stupid memories again. We saw so much of past Ganon and so little of present Ganon. I don't care what happened to the Goat Man and how the Kingdom of Hyrule was formed. Half of those memories were not essential to the plot and were just filler content. In particular, the one with Mineru just spoils Zelda's sacrifice altogether. Mineru as a whole just feels like such an annoying character and I would have much rathered a sheikah sage or even a korok.
While I criticize much of this game for remaining the same as BOTW, the story was one of the only aspects where it was a clear downgrade. So much of what was shown in the trailers hyped this game to be an impactful, story-filled game and many of these scenes are from memories, which I absolutely hate, and one of the scenes with Ganondorf wasn't even in the actual game, just a scene melded together from a memory and the speech at the end!
And why on earth did they call them secret stones. It was so cringe. It felt like something I would hear from a ten year old's cartoon show and I don't know why they insisted calling them that when we have a much better name for them that is in the TITLE OF THE GAME.
All in all, the story gets a 2/10.
Another issue I have with this game is Ascend and how it affects our experience in the dungeons. I liked the Lightning Temple, the Fire Temple and Wind Temple were okay, and the Water Temple was just plain awful. I saw a post about someone complaining about the puzzles in TOTK being too hard and I saw someone respond "If they think these puzzles are hard, I can't imagine them playing Twilight Princess." And I wholeheartedly believe that. While I'm not trying to make this review a comparison to Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, games which are completely different from this one, the puzzles in this game were either super easy or required us to do something that no one would have thought of. I was stuck in the Lightning Temple on two different points, one where the mirrors seemed to reflect to nothing in particular (what you had to do was grab a spare mirror from another room and fuse it to the statue so that it would face the right way which was a random solution that I didn't expect but I actually enjoyed) and another where I had no idea how to get to the last terminal and I looked around for 20 minutes until I looked it up online and found that I ascended into a place I wasn't supposed to and I actually had to teleport out of the temple to a nearby shrine, travel back to the temple on foot, go through another entrance I hadn't gone through, go through a really long tunnel to get to the terminal I should have gone to first. In a game which prioritizes open world exploration and being able to do anything you wanted, this haphazard "linearity" inside the lightning temple really ruined the experience of a dungeon I otherwise enjoyed. Which leads me to my point on Ascend. While Recall, Fuse, and Ultrahand add to this game in so many amazing and dynamic ways, Ascend just feels like something they added because they needed a fourth ability and a way to get out of caves. It allows so many dungeons to be cheesed and using it in the Lightning Temple made the experience so much more complicated than it needed to be. Apart from caves, every other place where you needed to use ascend could have been done with Revali's gale (rest in peace) or a bonfire + hylian pine cone, or any of the other devices that came with ultrahand.
The uses made for it in the Great Sky Island and in other places felt forced and the developers could have easily come up with another creative way to do this without ascend. I just wish that Ascend and Autobuild were disabled inside temples because it would have made things so much better. The companions also make the temples much more annoying because half the time all you're doing is waiting for Riju or Sidon to stop standing in a random corner and walk up to you. Especially in the Water Temple where your ability was on a time limit, this was especially annoying. The Water and Wind Temples felt like big sky islands and not dungeons. The Snowpeak Ruins in Twilight Princess and the Sandship in Skyward Sword are both excellent examples about how to turn something unconventional into an excellent dungeon, but these temples fail in so many ways. Not only is it so easy to get around the entire dungeon with a paraglider and Tulin that makes it possible to complete the dungeon in under 30 minutes on your first playthrough, the puzzles were so easy and the Wind Temple's boss in particular was so easy to kill despite it looking so fearsome. The Mud Octorok was actually a great boss that I have no complaints about, but the rest of the temple was really awful, with most of the puzzles simply being chalked up to "redirect this floating water bubble somewhere else so you can get to a terminal." The terminal thing returning was also something that was a huge letdown. There was no reason to continue it from Breath of the Wild, especially when the Divine Beast dungeons were such a huge complaint, when they could have added a system of small keys, miniboss, maybe even a new ultrahand ability similar to the ones we got from the sages to replace having a companion with you that you would be able to use across the dungeon. This would have turned the Lightning Temple from a 7/10 dungeon to an easy 9/10 or even 10/10 and would have improved my outlook on the other dungeons a lot more, particularly the fire temple, which was so great aesthetically but the gameplay and puzzles simply were not. While I liked the Lightning Temple and to a lesser extent the Fire Temple and the bossfights were much better, I found myself enjoying the Divine Beasts more than the Wind and Water Temples, and many of the bosses were such pushovers. The dungeons in this game get a 4/10.
I have a number of other smaller complaints. First is that I really wished there were more food and armor options. A return to the "meat skewers" and "fried wild greens" let me down a bit as I was hoping for more variance on food, especially after they added new items like stambulbs and tomatoes that I thought would replace the existing items. I mean, we had a whole sidequest dedicated to discovering Cheese and there's only three recipes for it! (as far as I know) Additionally, I wouldn't have been upset if they gave us the same effects for armor as before, just with a new name and texture. Like maybe they could have slightly updated the look of the Hylian set like they did with the Champion's tunic, or we could have the full Sheikah uniform instead of the Stealth armor, or a Lightning Helmet that actually looked different instead of one that reused the exact same texture as the thunder helm. New monsters such as Horriblins, Aerocudas, and Boss Bokoblins added some great new fights to the game, and I wouldn't have even cared if they reused the same enemies, but the way they attack is the exact same as in Breath of the Wild, which left the combat a little predictable and I was able to kill a Gloom Lynel first try. The only battles that really challenged me were against the Gleeoks, one of the best bosses in all of Zelda history.
My last issue with this game is that I really don't understand what vibe they were going for. Majora's Mask was twisted and disturbing. Twilight Princess was dark and gloomy. Skyward Sword was bright and hopeful. Breath of the Wild was free and really emphasized nature. But with Tears of the Kingdom, they really seem to be doing five things at once and accomplishing none of them. They try to put an emphasis on the creative aspect by adding things like Zonai Tech to the beginning and adding new technologies like the batteries, factories, skyview towers, and other. Then they also try to make this game dark and scary by introducing some horrifying things like chasms, gloom hands, and underground areas. They made the game seem bright and sunny like Skyward Sword in the beginning with the Great Sky Island and the bright yellow color palette. Then they also try to keep the open-world aspect of Breath of the Wild by keeping this massive open world, but with nothing to do inside it since we've already seen most of the stuff in this game's nature areas apart from the new caves. I don't understand what the developers were trying to make this game feel like, and it feels like they tried to do too many things at once and failed to flesh out all of them. I would have loved to see a restored Hyrule that we could explore and I would have also loved to have a nature-filled world like in BOTW with new plants, foods, caves, animals, and areas to explore, but the Hyrule in TOTK seems like a haphazard mixture of both.
There's no incentive to explore this time around with only 3-4 new plants and animals in the overworld and only a few caves that only have Brightbloom seeds, bomb flowers, and bubblefrogs. I love the caves, but they seem a bit same-y over time and I have no intention to find them all. I can't even ride around Hyrule on a horse like in BOTW or in a car like the developers seem to want us to do because I run into those stupid Zonai rocks that are littered around every 5 seconds for no particular reason. All they do is make transportation annoying and I wonder why they went through the effort to put all of the sky island materials on the overworld by these ugly rocks instead of actually having more sky islands like we wanted. The Great Sky Island was undoubtedly the most solid part of Tears of the Kingdom's Hyrule, so why did they deincentivise sky exploration by having most of the sky materials on these fallen rocks?
All in all, Nintendo outdid themselves with the coding in this game, especially putting a massive title like this on the six-year-old Nintendo Switch. However, it was clear that they spent most of their time coding in these new mechanics and the writers clearly phoned in this time around with the worst story and dialogue I have seen in any Zelda game so far. Maybe putting in a completely new game on Breath of the Wild's massive world was too much to ask, but so much of Tears of the Kingdom either directly copies Breath of the Wild (four dungeons in the exact same lands, the exact same food, combat, armor, and people) or takes the same structure and retextures it (four terminals in a dungeon, memories, shrines, a quest to rebuild a village from scratch, "champions" that pass on their abilities to their successors, and those cursed Korok seeds) that I really found no reason to play this game after 100 hours because there was nothing new left to do besides a multitude of side quests that I didn't feel like doing because I had no attachment to this Hyrule like I did in Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, Link's Awakening, and Breath of the Wild. Maybe I would have liked it more if I was a new player and hadn't played BOTW before, but the amount of content that was unnecessarily copied from the last game into this one really ruined the experience for me. All in all, this Zelda is a C+ for me, a 6.5/10. While it was more fun than the linear and small world of Link's Awakening, it couldn't compare with the story aspect of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword or the feel of Breath of the Wild.
TLDR: While Nintendo went above and beyond with the new Ultrahand, Fuse, and Recall mechanics, it ultimately wasn't enough for me to save a game that had an extremely lacking story, underwhelming content and dungeons, and a multitude of side quests that was basically repeating everything you had done in 2017. If you're going to argue with me in the comments, please actually read the whole thing first.

Howdy all! Joined a dynasty premier league last season, and it was a blast until halfway through when the commish seemed a bit over their head with the complexity and bailed out. It gave me the fever though, so I am staring up a similar but less complicated league. I've filled most the league with friends / work colleagues and am looking to help round out the last 1-3 slots. I also manage a couple of long-standing (10+ years) football and hockey leagues, so I'm hoping to add a Premier League group to that list!
What we're looking for in league members:

• Enjoy watching and chatting about the Premier League (all communication done on a discord server).
• Looking for a competitive / casual league experience
• Can communicate with others in a fun, adult environment without taking shots at people (this was a source of drama in the original league I mentioned)
• Wanting to commit something long-term

League Information Summary:

• 12-Man Dynasty Premier League (members mostly in the US - Midwest)
• $100 buy in each season
• Available player pool is made up of Premier League players only
• 30-man active roster; 7 IR slots; 10-man youth squad (under 21)
• 11-Man valid starting roster required for each game week.
  • 1 G; 3-5 D; 3-5 M; 1-3 F
• Can provide points categories on request. The categories were selected to gauge the overall form of a player in a given match vs just the glory stats
• Startup draft will be a slow-draft over the course of a week or so
• Each season will include an Entry Draft when the summer transfer window closes in August for players that entered the league in the summer
• Rest of season acquisitions will be done through FAAB and waivers - including the winter transfer windows
• Owners can hold onto a player copy that has transferred out of the PL as long as Fantrax permits - we will not be managing player rights outside the system.
• Payout to the top 3 teams in the league at the end of the season (no playoff / tournament structure for now)
• Future league changes including rule updates and league expansion will be handled through league voting.

If you're interested in joining, then shoot me a personal message with some info about yourself and why you're interested in the league, and we can move forward from there!

Obviously, spoilers on the entire game here. For context, I have been playing Zelda since 2014 with Twilight Princess as my first game. Since then I have played Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild, Link's Awakening, and I am about halfway through Ocarina of Time. Because of my obvious bias towards more traditional 3D Zelda games (I enjoyed Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess the most) I will try to be as impartial as possible.
I tried so hard to like this game. I had my doubts at the beginning, but after watching the new trailer it sold me on the game. I didn't like some aspects of Breath of the Wild, but after seeing the new enemies and hopefully a return to a more traditional zelda game that people missed while keeping the awesome open world of Breath of the Wild I really thought it was going to be great. And some parts of it were, but some parts of it I did not like.
Firstly, I would like to congratulate Nintendo because the physics relating to the Ultrahand mechanic blew everyone away, including me, and it is clear that Tears of the Kingdom has some of the best physics and building of any video game out there. The amount of creativity that has sprung from this game is mindblowing, and I don't think any of us expected for there to be simply so much to do. Not only are there almost 30 devices you can obtain each with their own unique purpose, you can also combine them with almost anything you can find in the game. Want to make a stupidly long bridge that can get you around the temple of time at the start of the game? Why not? Want to skip the main puzzle in the shrine by haphazardly building a flying machine that just barely makes it to the end? Go right ahead. Ultrahand allows for so much creativity and makes the new shrines ten times more enjoyable than the ones in Breath of the Wild. Because of this, there is an infinite amount of replayability in this game and the community will always be finding new things to do with this. Judging from how you all pushed Breath of the Wild to its limits, I can't wait to see what will be done in this game. Ultrahand gets a 20/10.
Additionally, Fuse and Recall are also insanely fun and useful abilities that add so much to the game. While I miss the Stasis rune in particular, Recall and Ultrahand can be used in a similar way if done correctly, and it's so much more satisfying when you do it correctly. While Recall doesn't have as many uses as Fuse and Ultrahand, the game still finds great ways to use it, such as sending a Stone Talus' boulders back at it, or knocking those horrible Horriblins down from the cave ceiling. Additionally, I am extremely happy with how Nintendo fixed Durability with the Fuse mechanic. While the durability annoyed me less than some of the others who played Breath of the Wild, my main complaint was wasting several of my good weapons on an enemy like a Silver Bokoblin or Lynel that had a huge healthbar, and only getting one (or sometimes none) good weapons in return. However, with the guarantee that you will usually be able to get an equally powerful or sometimes even better weapon after killing an enemy by fusing their horns to any random "sturdy stick", I don't hesitate to fight Silver enemies or Lynels anymore and I feel much more free to do so. Both of these abilites get a 10/10.
My third compliment goes to the game's shrines. I disliked Breath of the Wild's shrines. I found them tedious and annoying to do, and often skipped them or looked up the answers online. Especially when your only reward was a piece of heart or tiny fraction of a stamina wheel, I just clicked on them to save them as a travel checkpoint and moved on. Even their design was ugly to me. However, the new shrines are much better. While they are easier than Breath of the Wild's shrines, the rewards are a little less lucrative to balance it out and they are so much more fun to do because of how they creatively use the new abilites and allow for a multitude of different ways to solve problems. Many people do not like the "Proving Grounds" shrines, but I absolutely love them because they are a real challenge and I don't have to worry about losing 50 bomb arrows or several good weapons for a "Guardian Sword ++" and some ancient screws. Even if I die five times trying to complete them, I still have fun. And aesthetically they are so much better, the look of the temple, the texture of the lights of blessing, even the music feels a lot less claustrophobic and drab like the ones in Breath of the Wild did.
Fourthly, the Great Sky Island was absolutely amazing and I loved every second of it. It felt just like it did when I played Breath of the Wild for the first time, being plunged into an unknown and untouched environment and having to learn the mechanics of this new game. The Zonai Constructs don't carry the same fear level as Guardians did, but they were still cool enemies to fight with drops that were actually helpful unlike the Ancient Screws and Springs which only became helpful late-game. I obviously can't go through every part of the island, but the parts I enjoyed the best were crossing the huge lake to the west, climbing the snowy mountain to get to a shrine where I unsuccessfully attempted to craft a hovercraft out of logs, going on Minecarts around the island, and fusing random crap to sticks to make the most ridiculous weapons possible.
My last compliment goes to the introduction of Gloom into the game. When it is first introduced, the Gloom is absolutely frightening, and plunging into the depths for the first time was beyond scary. Malice was an annoying obstacle that you just jumped across until you got to where you needed to be and ate a few foods, but you are forced to avoid the Gloom in this game because you know that it will be catastrophic if you walk in it for too long because the only cure is an extremely rare flower that can only be found in the sky. I just wish that the lightroots either weren't so common, or didn't heal your healthbar, because it kind of subtracted the fear aspect a little bit. The way it actually destroyed your heart containers in the final battle against Ganondorf instead of rendering them unusable for a little while was another surprise I did not expect, and killing the Demon Dragon with a single heart was the best moment of the game for me.
Some other minor things I liked:

• Gleeoks are amazing bosses, better than any of the bosses in Breath of the Wild OR Tears of the Kingdom apart from the Ganondorf fight, easy 10/10
• While the Wind Temple wasn't my favorite, I did enjoy the Rito Village quest in the beginning and the leadup to the Wind Temple where you flew with Tulin to the very top. 9/10.
• Pizza?! I loved the introduction of Tomatoes and Cheese into the game! Shame you couldn't do more with them. 7/10.
• The Master Kohga battles were very good. While he was still easy to kill once he was stunned, it is another instance of Ultrahand and Link's other new abilities putting a creative and spicy twist on an old fight. Autobuild was also a lifesaver. 9/10.
• The second stage of the Ganondorf bossfight was probably the most fun I've had with a boss since Twilight Princess. It felt actually challenging in a way that could only be compared to the Gleeok Battles. It was so hard to even get a single hit into his massive healthbar when he could dodge more than 90% of your shots and destroy your health bar. Probably shouldn't have gone in without upgrading any of my armor but doing that was so tedious :p 20/10.

Now that I've talked about what was great about Tears of the Kingdom, here is the stuff I disliked about the game. While I think that the people who call this game an "overpriced DLC" are not arguing in good faith, I can see their point. Much of Breath of the Wild's structure was carried over into Tears of the Kingdom and it felt like I was redoing the same things I did in the old game, just with a new texture and a slightly different story.
Because of how insanely complicated it must have been to put Ultrahand in the game, it was clear that that was what Nintendo spent most of their time on when making Tears of the Kingdom, going for a more creative approach rather than a return to the traditional like I had hoped. And while this was a perfectly valid thing to do that clearly made a lot of people happy, it just wasn't what I wanted, and the final trailers for the game feel like they were marketing a different game than they were actually selling. When they went above and beyond with Link's new abilities, it left other aspects of the game such as combat, story, gameplay, and the structure of the game itself lacking and awfully familiar, if not the same, as Breath of the Wild.
My biggest issue with this game is the story. I disliked almost every part of it. We start out with a very solid intro scene where we meet shriveled Ganondorf and Zelda disappears. Then we see her disappear as she steals our half of a master sword at the end of the Great Sky Island. However, the game then leads us into a wild goose chase to find Zelda for almost the entire game until near the end when we go inside Hyrule Castle. This was fine in Skyward Sword because Zelda was much more likable and it only took up half of the game. I felt like "I have to save Zelda. I have to." in SS and in Tears of the Kingdom I was like "Let's just get this over already." Additionally, the Upheaval which is apparently the placeholder of the Calamity in BOTW just feels like not a threat at all. The castle rose into the air and a few meteors came down and crashed into Kakariko village. The mud in the water doesn't seem to be affecting the Zora much at all, the Gerudo seem relatively unharmed by the Gibdos, only retreating into an underground bunker, and we have almost no time to see how the rock roast affects the Gorons before Yunobo is saved. The only place where I felt any sense of urgency was in Rito Village where the town was starving and abandoned the children to their fate because they're the worst parents ever or something. I enjoyed saving Rito village. The others not so much. And let's not even talk about the Sages. 3/4 of them we had already interacted with heavily in the previous games, which was another reason I liked the Rito quest so much. Yunobo is still as weak and annoying as ever, nothing has changed with Riju, and Sidon is so boring and lifeless comparing to the other game. As we go into the dungeons we have four conversations that are, quite literally, copy and pasted into each one voiced by the blandest sages ever.
"Come, Come" (Random Sage)
"Did you hear that voice?" (Yunobo, Sidon, Riju, Tulin)
and when we get to the end of the dungeon
"X, I am your ancestor from a long time ago. I was the sage of x. Descendant you make me proud. The monster you killed tried to stop you from obtaining my secret stone. Once upon a time there was a great war where the Demon King tried to kill us and Rauru gave us all secret stones but he was too strong so Rauru sacrificed himself to seal him away. And then Zelda appeared to me and told me that it was the duty of the x to aid you Link."
"So it's my duty to... help you? Now take my scary ghost form with a useless ability (besides tulin) to follow you around the rest of your journey!"
These cutscenes weren't disappointing. I hated them. As a person who loves the story so much they never skip a single cutscene these I physically couldn't watch. Everything about them was awful. The completely dry, lifeless, unneccesary sages which don't even have a name or a face and talk like NPCs or someone from an awful anime episode and say the exact same thing four times over, the empty void we are surrounded in, the cutscene we have to watch four times over, the robotic responses that come from the sages, everything about it was horrible and it feels like Nintendo was trying to reinsert the champions in the game but these are such a worse downgrade from them. At the end of the game I was like "ok... I give this a 7/10" and then the horrible after-credits scene with the four sages came in where they repeated the robotic speech from one of the memories and if that was supposed to be a meaningful scene it certainly was not.
Zelda's sacrifice probably would have meant so much more to me if the rest of the story hadn't frustrated me so much. But it feels like it meant nothing since the Demon King is such a non-threat compared to Calamity Ganon. Calamity Ganon devastated Hyrule, destroying most of the villages and probably killing half of the people there, and murdering 4 of the best characters in Zelda history who meant so much to their people that statues were built for them. In comparison, Ganondorf levitated a castle in the air and added some poo to Zora's domain. It ruins Zelda's moment so much because it would have been so beautiful if it felt like she was sacrificing herself for something meaningful. It frustrates me to no end because Ganondorf was a villain I was so hyped about and he's shriveled about 90% of the game and only appears three times, once in the beginning, once as a vision in Hyrule Castle, and once at the end, and only one of them is fully revived Ganondorf. In fact, we only see this version of Ganondorf for a third of the final bossfight. We need more Ganondorf! At least add a sixth dungeon to the game below Hyrule Castle where Ganondorf appears after, or maybe he appears before we get the Master Sword. We just needed more of Ganondorf and more of him being a threat to Hyrule.
Another complaint are the sages. I already stated that three out of the four sages had already been fleshed out in a previous game and not much was added to their personalities this time around. Why couldn't we have gotten new people? Maybe make Muzu a sage, we always like having an old man around, or give Barta/Bullaria some importance for the Gerudo and hand over the torch to one of those young Gorons that always follow Yunobo around. It would have been so much fun to have new characters. The sages add absolutely nothing to the experience of this game besides showing up in the awful cutscenes and it just feels like they're trying to repeat what they had in the last game. If they're going to do that, at least do it with someone new so it doesn't feel like I have to replay the game again. We already helped these people with their character growth in the last game. We know that Riju is insecure about her place as the Gerudo chief, and we helped her be more respected after retriveing the Thunder Helm and calming Naboris. We know that Sidon feels a sense of duty to his domain after what happened to his sister, and we spend time with him getting shock arrows, obtaining the Zora armor, and travelling around Lanayru with him until we got to Zora's domain. We helped Yunobo gain his confidence after he accompained us by firing himself at Rudania. These characters went through almost no development except for Tulin (again showing what Nintendo did right with Rito Village) because he's a new character.
Finally, the memories. Why did there have to be memories again. It would have been such an easy shift from Breath of the Wild, to give us a new main quest. While I was not a big fan of the time travel arc that Zelda went through, it was still workable, but there was no reason to have these stupid memories again. We saw so much of past Ganon and so little of present Ganon. I don't care what happened to the Goat Man and how the Kingdom of Hyrule was formed. Half of those memories were not essential to the plot and were just filler content. In particular, the one with Mineru just spoils Zelda's sacrifice altogether. Mineru as a whole just feels like such an annoying character and I would have much rathered a sheikah sage or even a korok.
While I criticize much of this game for remaining the same as BOTW, the story was one of the only aspects where it was a clear downgrade. So much of what was shown in the trailers hyped this game to be an impactful, story-filled game and many of these scenes are from memories, which I absolutely hate, and one of the scenes with Ganondorf wasn't even in the actual game, just a scene melded together from a memory and the speech at the end!
Another issue I have with this game is Ascend and how it affects our experience in the dungeons. I liked the Lightning Temple, the Fire Temple and Wind Temple were okay, and the Water Temple was just plain awful. I saw a post about someone complaining about the puzzles in TOTK being too hard and I saw someone respond "If they think these puzzles are hard, I can't imagine them playing Twilight Princess." And I wholeheartedly believe that. While I'm not trying to make this review a comparison to Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, games which are completely different from this one, the puzzles in this game were either super easy or required us to do something that no one would have thought of. I was stuck in the Lightning Temple on two different points, one where the mirrors seemed to reflect to nothing in particular (what you had to do was grab a spare mirror from another room and fuse it to the statue so that it would face the right way which was a random solution that I didn't expect but I actually enjoyed) and another where I had no idea how to get to the last terminal and I looked around for 20 minutes until I looked it up online and found that I ascended into a place I wasn't supposed to and I actually had to teleport out of the temple to a nearby shrine, travel back to the temple on foot, go through another entrance I hadn't gone through, go through a really long tunnel to get to the terminal I should have gone to first. In a game which prioritizes open world exploration and being able to do anything you wanted, this haphazard "linearity" inside the lightning temple really ruined the experience of a dungeon I otherwise enjoyed. Which leads me to my point on Ascend. While Recall, Fuse, and Ultrahand add to this game in so many amazing and dynamic ways, Ascend just feels like something they added because they needed a fourth ability and a way to get out of caves. It allows so many dungeons to be cheesed and using it in the Lightning Temple made the experience so much more complicated than it needed to be. Apart from caves, every other place where you needed to use ascend could have been done with Revali's gale (rest in peace) or a bonfire + hylian pine cone, or any of the other devices that came with ultrahand. The uses made for it in the Great Sky Island and in other places felt forced and the developers could have easily come up with another creative way to do this without ascend. I just wish that Ascend and Autobuild were disabled inside temples because it would have made things so much better. The companions also make the temples much more annoying because half the time all you're doing is waiting for Riju or Sidon to stop standing in a random corner and walk up to you. Especially in the Water Temple where your ability was on a time limit, this was especially annoying. The Water and Wind Temples felt like big sky islands and not dungeons. The Snowpeak Ruins in Twilight Princess and the Sandship in Skyward Sword are both excellent examples about how to turn something unconventional into an excellent dungeon, but these temples fail in so many ways. Not only is it so easy to get around the entire dungeon with a paraglider and Tulin that makes it possible to complete the dungeon in under 30 minutes on your first playthrough, the puzzles were so easy and the Wind Temple's boss in particular was so easy to kill despite it looking so fearsome. The Mud Octorok was actually a great boss that I have no complaints about, but the rest of the temple was really awful, with most of the puzzles simply being chalked up to "redirect this floating water bubble somewhere else so you can get to a terminal." The terminal thing returning was also something that was a huge letdown. There was no reason to continue it from Breath of the Wild, especially when the Divine Beast dungeons were such a huge complaint, when they could have added a system of small keys, miniboss, maybe even a new ultrahand ability similar to the ones we got from the sages to replace having a companion with you that you would be able to use across the dungeon. This would have turned the Lightning Temple from a 7/10 dungeon to an easy 9/10 or even 10/10 and would have improved my outlook on the other dungeons a lot more, particularly the fire temple, which was so great aesthetically but the gameplay and puzzles simply were not. While I liked the Lightning Temple and to a lesser extent the Fire Temple and the bossfights were much better, I found myself enjoying the Divine Beasts more than the Wind and Water Temples, and many of the bosses were such pushovers. The dungeons in this game get a 4/10.
I have a number of other smaller complaints. First is that I really wished there were more food and armor options. A return to the "meat skewers" and "fried wild greens" let me down a bit as I was hoping for more variance on food, especially after they added new items like stambulbs and tomatoes that I thought would replace the existing items. I mean, we had a whole sidequest dedicated to discovering Cheese and there's only three recipes for it! (as far as I know) Additionally, I wouldn't have been upset if they gave us the same effects for armor as before, just with a new name and texture. Like maybe they could have slightly updated the look of the Hylian set like they did with the Champion's tunic, or we could have the full Sheikah uniform instead of the Stealth armor, or a Lightning Helmet that actually looked different instead of one that reused the exact same texture as the thunder helm. New monsters such as Horriblins, Aerocudas, and Boss Bokoblins added some great new fights to the game, and I wouldn't have even cared if they reused the same enemies, but the way they attack is the exact same as in Breath of the Wild, which left the combat a little predictable and I was able to kill a Gloom Lynel first try. The only battles that really challenged me were against the Gleeoks, one of the best bosses in all of Zelda history.
My last issue with this game is that I really don't understand what vibe they were going for. Majora's Mask was twisted and disturbing. Twilight Princess was dark and gloomy. Skyward Sword was bright and hopeful. Breath of the Wild was free and really emphasized nature. But with Tears of the Kingdom, they really seem to be doing five things at once and accomplishing none of them. They try to put an emphasis on the creative aspect by adding things like Zonai Tech to the beginning and adding new technologies like the batteries, factories, skyview towers, and other. Then they also try to make this game dark and scary by introducing some horrifying things like chasms, gloom hands, and underground areas. They made the game seem bright and sunny like Skyward Sword in the beginning with the Great Sky Island and the bright yellow color palette. Then they also try to keep the open-world aspect of Breath of the Wild by keeping this massive open world, but with nothing to do inside it since we've already seen most of the stuff in this game's nature areas apart from the new caves. I don't understand what the developers were trying to make this game feel like, and it feels like they tried to do too many things at once and failed to flesh out all of them. I would have loved to see a restored Hyrule that we could explore and I would have also loved to have a nature-filled world like in BOTW with new plants, foods, caves, animals, and areas to explore, but the Hyrule in TOTK seems like a haphazard mixture of both.
There's no incentive to explore this time around with only 3-4 new plants and animals in the overworld and only a few caves that only have Brightbloom seeds, bomb flowers, and bubblefrogs. I love the caves, but they seem a bit same-y over time and I have no intention to find them all. I can't even ride around Hyrule on a horse like in BOTW or in a car like the developers seem to want us to do because I run into those stupid Zonai rocks that are littered around every 5 seconds for no particular reason. All they do is make transportation annoying and I wonder why they went through the effort to put all of the sky island materials on the overworld by these ugly rocks instead of actually having more sky islands like we wanted. The Great Sky Island was undoubtedly the most solid part of Tears of the Kingdom's Hyrule, so why did they deincentivise sky exploration by having most of the sky materials on these fallen rocks?
All in all, Nintendo outdid themselves with the coding in this game, especially putting a massive title like this on the six-year-old Nintendo Switch. However, it was clear that they spent most of their time coding in these new mechanics and the writers clearly phoned in this time around with the worst story and dialogue I have seen in any Zelda game so far. Maybe putting in a completely new game on Breath of the Wild's massive world was too much to ask, but so much of Tears of the Kingdom either directly copies Breath of the Wild (four dungeons in the exact same lands, the exact same food, combat, armor, and people) or takes the same structure and retextures it (four terminals in a dungeon, memories, shrines, a quest to rebuild a village from scratch, "champions" that pass on their abilities to their successors, and those cursed Korok seeds) that I really found no reason to play this game after 100 hours because there was nothing new left to do besides a multitude of side quests that I didn't feel like doing because I had no attachment to this Hyrule like I did in Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, Link's Awakening, and Breath of the Wild. Maybe I would have liked it more if I was a new player and hadn't played BOTW before, but the amount of content that was unnecessarily copied from the last game into this one really ruined the experience for me. All in all, this Zelda is a C+ for me, a 6.5/10. While it was more fun than the linear and small world of Link's Awakening, it couldn't compare with the story aspect of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword or the feel of Breath of the Wild.
TLDR: While Nintendo went above and beyond with the new Ultrahand, Fuse, and Recall mechanics, it ultimately wasn't enough for me to save a game that had an extremely lacking story, underwhelming content and dungeons, and a multitude of side quests that was basically repeating everything you had done in 2017. If you're going to argue with me in the comments, please actually read the whole thing first.

I cannot decide on a system (second hand). Would be cool if someone here could share opinions.
The most demanding tasks are photo and video editing (Lightroom, Photoshop, Topaz etc) and a bit of gaming (currently something like Assassin's Creed, Hogwarts Legacy). I would also like to have something that's at least more or less on par with the Xbox Series X. Currently I'm using a Thinkpad T590 with an i5-8265U and an NVIDIA MX250 for photo editing and I'm a bit annoyed by the slow processing speeds especially of AI sharpening, masking and denoising (Topaz & Lightroom). What's also a bit of a relevant factor is power consumption when idling or doing non-GPU-intensive tasks, I couldn't really find out if there are very significant differences in the systems below.
All of the systems below include 32GB RAM and a 500GB SSD. € to $ is roughly 1:1.
PC 1 CPU: Ryzen 7 2700X GPU: MSI RTX 2060 Super Gaming X MB: Asus ROG strix B450-F Gaming PSU: ? Else: 2TB SSD + 3TB HDD Price: 535€
PC 2 CPU: Ryzen 7 2700X GPU: RTX 2060 SUPER 8GB MB: GIGABYTE B450 AORUS ELITE PSU: ? Else: Nice be-quiet tower, Wi-Fi included Price: 570€
PC 3 CPU: Ryzen 5 1600 GPU: RTX 3060 12GB MB: GIGABYTE B350M DS3H PSU: 425W Else: - Price: 615€
PC 4 CPU: i3-13100F GPU: RTX 3060 12GB MB: MSI PRO B760M-P DDR4 PSU: 650W Else: Looks like a cheapish tower, no fans apart from CPU and GPU cooler Price: 635€
PC 5 CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 GPU: RTX 2070 SUPER VENTUS OC 8GB MB: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX PSU: 400W Else: - Price: 635€