Pretty hard game to review, I felt all kinds of way while playing it. The new abilities are a step up from BOTW and all really good, the story has some great moments and the gameplay loop created by the previous game still holds up super well.
Unfortunately I don't think the decision of reusing the map paid off, especially because of how much repetition in content there is in the stuff that is new. The depths, while a cool concept and great at first, is way too big with very few things to do and rewards that amount to dlcs from the previous game, which are just not satisfying at all to find. The sky islands are definitely better but there's so much repetition in them with the same concepts being used multiple times until you know exactly what you're going to find based on the shape of the island, with a few exceptions.
The story is probably one of my major gripes with it, as it overlooks a lot of what we experienced in BOTW. What's even more perplexing is its failure to acknowledge integral aspects within ITS OWN STORYLINE, which is baffling to me. I don't want to get into spoilers but having so many quests framed around investigating something you can learn early in the game with absolutely no reactivity is very immersion breaking.
Ultimately this is a good game that disappointed me in a lot of ways, and I don't think it comes close to reaching the revolutionary status that BOTW achieved, even if it improved it in some ways. Also very annoying they had so many years to fix flurry rush and it's still just as inconsistent as it was before.
Unfortunately I don't think the decision of reusing the map paid off, especially because of how much repetition in content there is in the stuff that is new. The depths, while a cool concept and great at first, is way too big with very few things to do and rewards that amount to dlcs from the previous game, which are just not satisfying at all to find. The sky islands are definitely better but there's so much repetition in them with the same concepts being used multiple times until you know exactly what you're going to find based on the shape of the island, with a few exceptions.
The story is probably one of my major gripes with it, as it overlooks a lot of what we experienced in BOTW. What's even more perplexing is its failure to acknowledge integral aspects within ITS OWN STORYLINE, which is baffling to me. I don't want to get into spoilers but having so many quests framed around investigating something you can learn early in the game with absolutely no reactivity is very immersion breaking.
Ultimately this is a good game that disappointed me in a lot of ways, and I don't think it comes close to reaching the revolutionary status that BOTW achieved, even if it improved it in some ways. Also very annoying they had so many years to fix flurry rush and it's still just as inconsistent as it was before.