There are some areas you have to
beat for the side quests which will help you earn bonus Exp and decent weapons.
Not exact matches
The open - world is a treat to explore, especially getting off the
beaten track as you engage in
side quests, find Frank West statues
for additional experience points and kill thousands and thousands of zombies.
I mean that's one of the biggest downsides with that game along with it's questionable gameplay and along with the really terrible main story I absolutely hated what they did with the main
quest but I absolutely love the
side quest of just randomly going town to town
beating a bad guy
for the citizens.
Clearly what happened is that in testing, a lot of players gave up there, so rather than making the fortress optional (which would have made perfect sense, since there's an entire other mini-dungeon that you unlock by getting through there - an excellent reward
for a
side -
quest), they decided to just make the Hookshot act as a cheat code, letting everyone
beat the level at the expense of letting anyone actually enjoy it.
But in my ravenous greed
for a new Zelda title I devoured it too quickly,
beating the majority of the game (minus some tedious
side -
quests) in a little over 20 hours.
However by finding yourself off the
beating track, you'll discover additional
side quests and some great dungeon crawling, including upgrades
for items and of course experience to help you level up.