I’m by no means close to 100%ing Tears of the Kingdom, but having just completed the story I feel prepared enough to say that it absolutely floored me. Breath of the Wild has been completely blown out of the water, with a total improvement on abilities, unique gameplay mechanics, traversal, sound design, storylines/lore, the list goes on and on and on.
It takes almost no time at all to understand that Tears of the Kingdom attains its own very unique identity despite having the foundation of Breath of the Wild to build from, taking complete advantage of verticality, pre-established characters and locations as well as fresh and inviting additions littered throughout.
There is an unfathomable amount of things to do in this world, taking a distinctly darker approach and allowing its most climactic moments to truly shine and stand out, which was an area where BOTW started to show its cracks. If creativity and open-ended gameplay is something you seek, this game is the magnum-opus. An incredible experience top to bottom.

A take I see around the internet a lot is that this is where the Elder Scrolls franchise went mainstream given its massive success; however, I would argue that Skyrim is the result of the mainstream success Bethesda found with the 3rd installment, Morrowind. That game is where Bethesda had found that simplifying a game and streamlining systems previously more complex to create an accessible experience for a wider audience was a recipe for success. For better or worse, this sealed the fate of the franchise as a whole.



And how do I view the result of 9 years' worth of streamlining? Well, it's a bit complicated. The thing is, I don't entirely hate Skyrim as a video game. It didn't earn the merit of being the biggest success Bethesda had ever released at the time based on reputation alone. As simple as an Elder Scrolls game as Skyrim is compared to its predecessors, it still has enough going for it. The melee combat is pretty darn good. I felt rewarded at points for having to manually aim my strong attacks to avoid hitting a companion or actually hit an enemy who was mid-movement. Archery is good, but it’s impossible for Bethesda to fuck that up.



What they did appear to fuck up, however, is the magic. This being said, I should say upfront that the most magic I’ll use in any Skyrim is generally healing magic. I’ve never deeply delved into this game's magic system, and I can’t begin to imagine what a magic-only run of Skyrim would look like with how bare-bones this game’s magic catalog is. Phasing out movement-based spells is one thing I can understand why something as busted as levitation had to go given the direction the games were going with regard to their environmental structure. This system focuses largely on a three-element scheme: Fire, Ice, & Shock. Every offensive spell is more or less designed with these three elements in mind. There is a vampirism spell that siphons health from enemies, but it seems to be a novice spell without any strong version of it present in the game. And without spell crafting, this limits the level of play for magic heavily. And while I can use some illusion spells to fuck with the enemy, I struggle to imagine why I’d do that for anything beyond a challenge run when the better alternative is to enchant your war axe with a 10% chance of inducing fear and then hacking everything around me into little bits.



So as far as Elder Scrolls games go, Skyrim doesn’t have a lot going for it outside of its setting, and even that feels stale when compared in aesthetic when compared to the dry palette video games were hard focused on having at the time. I can’t hold it fully against this game, however, given the setting they set out to build, the odds were stacked against it having a vibrant environment like Oblivion or something otherworldly like Morrowind. Skyrim is the cold, dry mid-west of Tamriel. Any colors that ought to stand out from the stone gray, dirt brown, & snow white is muted to all hell and back. That being said, I should reiterate that I don’t hold it against Bethesda; in fact, I’d even go as far as to say I kind of like how Skyrim looks. This, of course, is with the massive caveat of moving the other Elder Scrolls games just out of the frame of your mind. But if I do that, then I can say I don’t hate Skyrim as a video game.



Skyrim is just a nice game to shut your brain off. If you don’t think too hard about what you’re doing on any given quest, then you’ll avoid any unnecessary rage from the simple of thought how asinine this game is. There’s no real sense of reputation in this game. No matter how much you do on the side, everyone in the main & guild questlines will treat you like a baby bitch. I suppose it’s because they couldn’t account for that in all the dialogue & writing they’d already done, but that’s something I’ll blame on them using voice acting too much. One can only spend so much on a voice-acting budget before the dialogue has to be curbed for the sake of every NPC having fully voiced lines. So I’ll round off this with my lukewarm take that opting for full voice acting was the worst direction for Bethesda to make period. I think Morrowind’s system for dialogue was so much better and I’d rather have that than hear Stephen Russel or Paul Ganus for the millionth time.

Brave Story: New Traveler is secretly a very underrated gem of the JRPG genre that is stashed away on a handheld no one uses anymore. It's not revolutionary in any way but it's not trying to be. What it does instead is look at the tropes of the genre and execute on them with extreme quality to the point that every aspect of this game is so solid that it wins over your heart no matter how many games you've played where you save the world via the power of friendship.

Also there's a lizard dad and who wouldn't love to pal around with a big lizard dad.

This game is my childhood dream. You can build amazing things in this game and get really creative about how to overcome the obstacles, build really fun devices to travel and explore. Exploration is the most important thing in this game and they did it brilliantly. If you are a guy like me that watches speedruns now and then and try to break every game you started this game will fulfill your dreams. Game gives you couple of hints and ways to play it but you can just make up a way for yourself with the abilities and get really creative. You will most likely think most of the time "Is this how i am supposed to get past here?" and do really crazy things and satisfaction of clearing a dungeon with your own way of thinking is really good. There is limitations to your abilities but they draw the line perfectly and most of the time if you use your brain you can break the game and its perfect.

5/5. Would recommend to anyone with a interest in games. I will buy this game for my child and make this his first game.