Not gonna lie: it's starting to drive me bananas. I was surprised that it wasn't annoying me initially. But now that I'm off the plateau and the enemies are tougher, my weapons break suuuper quickly and, well, I find it increasingly irritating.
The Lizfalos have really durable weapons. But the Bokoblin weapons break easily. You'll find better weapons in shrines and as the game progresses. Just give it some time. Also, when you take down Vah Ruta, you get the Lightscale Trident, one of the most durable and powerful spears in the game, very early on.
Yes, I can find ways to basically sneak or rush into the shrine (which is ultimately what I did), but the shrine was literally surrounded by them, which to me as a player, tells me "this isn't for you quite yet." Except that the old man literally told me I did need to be there.
IDK where you went, but the guardians on the plateau are hidden behind a shrine, and there's only two of them. If you do a successful shield parry you can take them out, but they are very easy to avoid. Don't go to the ruins, go to the shrine. Right now it sounds like you're upset you can't beat the most powerful enemies in the game during the tutorial. There is a lot of trial and error and teaching through experience in this game. If you don't like the fact that the game is teaching you how powerful enemies are by putting you in close encounters, IDK what to say. Don't play video games that refuse to hold your hand and expect you to learn on your own.
"Oh, you like that sword? That's too bad because now we're gonna force you to use a club. Because freedom!"
There are only 3 weapon styles. 130+ weapons, but only 3 different weapon styles. Small sword, which swings fast and lets you use a shield, big sword, which swings slow and forces no shield, and spear, which has longer reach to stab and strikes quickly, but no shield. As the game goes on you face off better enemies and get better weapons, especially when you go through the story. I don't see this as a problem. If weapons weren't durable, it wouldn't make sense to have 130 different weapons in the game, and the Koroks wouldn't be necessary.
But your inventory bag is so small at the start and they also break soooo quickly that I just feel like I'm never able to even enjoy any weapons, never mind get used to them, because they're gone before I even know it. It's not fun to me, with the way they do it.
WHEN YOU START YOU ARE WEAK. On your way to Kakariko village, just talk to Hetsu and expand your inventory. Replace your sticks and Bokoblin weapons with actual swords. They are scattered EVERYWHERE: the ruins, the tutorial level, the Lizfalos weapons... My God. You don't like it because it works differently than Dark Souls, not because it's actually that bad.
Teach me how to cook, just give me the quick, simple tutorial at the very beginning when he talks about baking an apple.
Find the old man in the woods. He'll tell you. This is Zelda, you're supposed to be able to figure these things out on your own. You hear cooking is possible, so it's up to you to ask around and find out how to do it. This is the game. You're presented with a problem, then you need to find out how to solve it. There are people who will tell you how and what to do. Every stable has a cooking pot and someone to tell you about cooking. Every single thing you're yelling at the game doesn't do, well actually it does. IDK what you're doing, but you're not doing it right.
When? Where? I'm sure he does at some point and in some location. But this has literally not happened for me. I have had virtually no conversations with the old man about how to cook. He told me at one point that he was baking an apple and that I should consider doing the same, but that's literally it.
In the forest he has a lodge, and he'll tell you about cooking. Some fires are open flame, others are cooking pots. The same way you place an apple over a fire, you do literally the same thing over a cooking pot to cook. The game does everything short of holding your hand to explain literally every single button press required to cook. Just... use your brain.
Which I somehow get the impression if this were any other game from any other studio other than Nintendo, if multiple players were saying, "They were very unclear with basic mechanics of the game and we couldn't figure out how to perform a basic core mechanic," you'd be all over that as being a problem or flaw with the game rather than being like, "Players are just too stupid."
You missed all the signs, you're not talking to the NPCs, you're not even using common sense. This issue you're having, no one else is having. If there's something you don't know, the game won't get instant gratification by spelling it out for you right away. You need to figure these things out. Other games hold your hand throughout the entire story and then throw a thousand enemies in your face. Zelda doesn't hold your hand and gives you the agency to learn things on your own. But if you don't make good decisions, it won't work.
Most studios who try to do it the way Zelda does don't give you the same consistency. There are stables and cooking pots everywhere, and the way you roast something over a fire is the same way you cook. And the inventory tells you about cooking. Plus, the old man mentions it in his lodge in the forest, if you explore there. So you will naturally stumble into it while you're playing, and the game tells you to explore and gives you reason to talk to people. Most games will just expect you to magically know what to do and aren't designed to give you a good reason to think that might actually be the solution at all.
items cannot be repaired outside of unbelievably specific circumstances with limited equipment
The Champions weapons can be repaired. But there are a million ways to get good weapons, so repairing the champions shouldn't be the way you go about it. I'm gonna chalk this up to "Git gud." You don't know how to manage the weapons durability to work in your favor. You're not expanding your inventory and stocking up on royal series. You're not keeping a stash of weapons in your Hateno Village home. You're not using attack boosts to end fights early. You just want to bust out anywhere you go with whatever weapons you run into and hope they last forever. I have the opposite problem: I'm managing things so well that I'm leaving plenty of royal and Lynel stuff behind. In fact, I never EVER had a problem with durability. I scouted ruins to collect swords and left the Bokoblin stuff behind. Replace the crappy weapons in your inventory with better ones. Just play the game, it isn't that hard.
It's literally the worst part of such a system, the weapons breaking, with almost none of the rewarding parts.
Holy shit, dude. Play the game. Actually play the game the way it was meant to be played, and you'll find there are no issues. If you go to lower-level enemies and try to grind without doing literally anything smart, you'll just break all your weapons and end up with crappier ones. That's not how BOTW works.
The big difference I'm seeing is some people are just complaining and can't figure out how to actually play the game. Zelda is not a combat sport, it never was. It's an adventure/puzzle game. Play it smart, and you won't run into these issues. Make an attempt to play it at all and you shouldn't run into these issues. If you think the whole game is about beating everyone with a stick or a boko club or boko bows, you're gonna have a bad time.
;)