Kinda boring?

Combat is not very fun. I hate the durability system - I can barely get familiar with a weapon before they break. I hate not having the right tool for the job because it broke a while ago.

The first few hours are very unique but afterwards I find myself either frustrated or bored.

The game is very pretty and the traversal is near perfect. It really flaunts its superiority when games like Horizon went with the Uncharted grip points. They feel extra artificial and limiting in an open world game.

I may still play here and there because there's more to this game but on the same hand I don't look forward to it.

It's hard to design an open world game, I don't really care for them anyways.

so i feel like i have to justify my rating to this game because everyone always questions it.

so breath of the wild. "the definitive open world experience."

so some positives before i shit all over this game. the art style is nice, looking at the large empty fields of this game is made more tolerable by the nice artstyle. you have a lot of choices in how you approach situations, which is always great. anyway,

the fact that you have this option means nothing when the most viable option is almost ALWAYS to do it normally. sure, there's a lot of imagination you can have but the problem with not building scenarios out of imagination itself rather than leaving them open, is that you really don't encourage people to take the time to do something interesting when it's always a blank slate with the most convenient option is to do the same exact shit every time. i see people compare this game to mgs V all the time and i dont really think thats fair, because in mgs V the worst option is almost always the most convenient and easy to think of one, actively making you think "ok how could i creatively do this faster."

the open world is extremely empty, with the only real things filling it being meaningless side quests, stupid korok puzzles and boring shrines. lets talk about side quests first.

so the thing about the side quests is that minus the one where you build a town they're all boring fetch quests where you get extremely subpar rewards. you aren't encouraged to do them because there aren't any real upgrades you can get from them. often time the reward is just ruppees or something else stupid. so you never really feel encouraged to do any of them.

the korok seeds basically all boil down to "oooooo out of place rock?!??!!??!" i dont feel like i need to explain myself here because i feel like this is something most people already know.

the shrines are probably the most defendable parts of the game. there are plenty of interesting ones, like the twin shrines, or the ones with really elaborate, out of the box puzzles. however most of the shrines aren't like this, and are either "duplicate shrine of another shrine but HARDER" or "puzzles where you use one of your abilities twice." rarely do you actually have to use your brain for these puzzles because they're all so obvious on how to solve them.

so if the world is empty, the engagements are uncreative, what about the main story?

well, the main story is probably one of the worst parts about the game. actually doing the quests before the divine beast you're currently going for can be interesting. however, the divine beasts themselves are literally the same dungeon repeated 4 times with the same art style as every other shrine in the game. the story itself is bland and forgettable, especially compared to the wild creativity of other Zelda games. actually beating the game gives you nothing. the ending is weak and pathetic.

i hope ive given a somewhat decent summary on why i despise this game. anyway if you disagree with me you're wrong and fuuuck you.

people talk about this game like it's some groundbreaking, breathtaking, wonderful pinnacle of video games and i really wish i understood that. this game feels really nice to move around in, its visuals are really appealing and its score is pretty cute. but there's not much of a real narrative (or writing at all), no memorable characters, no cool side-quests, no dungeons, a pitiful lack of enemy variety + almost no bosses, and nothing that made exploring feel worthwhile. most of it feels like filler check-list fluff (towers, shrines, koroks). the world is well-designed but there's not much substance inside of it beyond its sandbox elements. i genuinely feel like, insane for not liking this the way people talk about it but i just do not see it personally. it's just okay!

I really wanted to like this game a lot more than I did. For years, Banjo and Kazooie were my most wanted characters for smash despite never having brushed up with this franchise at all, just because something about the premise and design rubbed me the right way. A pure collectathon 3D platformer with cartoony animal mascots is right up my alley. Playing it however, I was let down. Most importantly, it doesn't play stellar. It's not bad, just a little sloppy. Maybe it has something to do with the Xbox port (although any problems introduced by it are overshadowed by the misery of the n64 controller) but a lot of actions felt slow and unresponsive, everything was moving a pace just below where I needed it to be to feel fun to just exist. Plenty of ink has been spilled on the importance of how fun Mario is to just run and jump around in, even without objectives or level design. That simply isn't present here. Beyond that, the level design also is pretty hit or miss. Sometimes the bright color, wide variety of objectives, and scale of the whole thing, makes it fun to run around in and explore. Other times, those objectives are tedious or obtuse, the colors are bleak and ugly, and I experience such little joy being in the levels. I think this game is neat, it deserves some respect clearly, and I do wish more games were made like it, given that 3D platformers have moved more Mario (ie collecting "stars" and clearing a sequence of levels or objectives) than Banjo (ie exploring one large level for a variety of small collectibles at your own pace) but in the end, this game doesn't hold up amazingly.