this game is the perfect litmus test for anyone's capabilities as a reviewer.

-if you clutch pearls about the obvious inspiration points, general dudebro vibes, and the supposed instances of "plagiarism" (which consist of a single paragraph of text that is openly credited) in order to condemn the game on moral grounds, you get an F
-if all you can see from this is a product of malice, you get a D
-if you uncritically wash away all common criticism as uninformed and see the game as an okay romp with a bad combat system, you get a C
-if you take the half-hearted, detached "there were good ideas here but they didn't turn out right. their mom had cancer :(" approach you get a B
-if you can say literally anything else about this game, you get an A

the desperation is palpable. feels like Nintendo finally dropping all sense of "mystique" and finally admitting that their hackneyed, isolationist style of game development (which, lets face it, mostly just exists to serve a brand) isn't going to work forever. the result is a game that, despite some truly terrible combat balancing, ends up yielding almost completely to the player. the consequences of this are both good and bad, but fans who only like more cloistered and nuzzly titles like OOT and WW won't find their itch scratched

it's also got the character design of a sexless porn parody, if you're into that