"By the gods... what have I become?"

Sony's flagship franchise didn't start slow. It was an explosion of a brazen subversion, featuring the most angry gonzo of a man that defied all connotations of the typical underdog narrative. Wrought in deep layers of tragedy lies a curious character broken by his own lust for power and neck deep in personal anguish. His bloodlust and indulgence were made into a riveting narrative device. Santa Monica overindulges where most would exercise caution, crafting ceaseless processions of a bald Spartan rampaging through the ancient seas and the land of Greece. His unflinching killing spree stems from the very ounce of humanity within him. A shattered past of seismic guilt reveals itself piece by piece via fragmented cutscenes. It is these haunting memories, bloodlust and tits where you find the very fascination that acts as the primary gel between the player's interest and Kratos' hard-boiled emotions. The writing and world-building are both stellar and hilarious, in mere seconds it builds intrigue from its opening and as the game continues it creates a vivid picture of Athens at war with a moronic double-digit IQ God of War Ares, stupid white women and endless "foreshadowing" that is as subtle as a brick to a face. At one point it just outright tells you what's gonna happen in the next game. Like woah, he's chained by his weapons! The painting says Zeus will fight a mortal man! Wonder what any of that could mean 😲 The gameplay leverages DMC's ingenious hack n slash design and dungeon aesthetics, offering enough experimentation, spatial range, brute damage, and combos to keep the game fresh for its short duration. Enemies are by and large engaging and varied, whilst platforming is funny because you get to control Kratos tiptoe his way over ceilings, ropes, and beams of wood, which never gets old. Puzzles, if anything, are both clever and fit the narrative context. There's just one instance where it got lazy and just put Tetris and called it a day. The gameplay offers enough leeway for newcomers to not be overwhelmed, but it is still challenging enough that it doesn't turn into simple button mashing (some sections, however, can get really, really annoying. Like the Siren one.) Pandora's Box deserves an entire essay on how great it is. The level designs are also far more elaborate than I ever expected, capturing an immense level of depth, intricacy, and scale. You're rewarded handsomely for being demonic. Killing civilians gives you health. You throw a man to his entrail-ridden doom because you don't like his tone (and you return to do it once more because you really hate his swag.) You get to drag and fry a chicken, I mean a living human for gaining passage. It's all very wholesome and is accompanied by an epic orchestral soundscape that makes you feel like a tragic bald mortal with anger issues and zero moral consciences.

Thus the game with a transgressive angry bald Spartan as the protagonist became one of the most popular games of all time.

Overindulgence might be the key people.

7/10

Spending a year and a half slowly navigating the empty framework of botw world has been, an experience to say the least. Tens upon hundreds of hours spent scaling every nook and crany of a cyclical world where each element builds upon itself into a world that feels boundless yet is also, limited in its constituents. The first few hours are agony because the game is designed to let you loose into a world where you don't really know what's going on. It brings a sense of adventure like none other but also takes away the safe feeling of pop up tutorials that tell you "hey dont do this! hey dont do that!" so your hero's path looks like if sisyphus decided to hop onto the game and fight Boroklins with a twig and kept doing that for 2 hours straight hoping that something would change. (another reason why the game was so difficult to navigate was because I didn't set my emulator up properly so it was essentially running at 10 fps for the first 18 hours 😭) It's a wonder that I never dropped this game and kept coming back to it from time to time, week after week or month after month like a moth to a flame. Eventually I realise that everything I ever needed to know was already told to me from the beginning. After that realization struck, the journey became a lot more bearable until it eventually became so that I couldn't stop thinking about it for hours, even days on end. The quiet soundtrack, the sorrowful tales of hyrule, the interactions with all its colourful and eccentric habitants. The emptiness itself became my home, something I never wanted to sever myself from.

The game works. It just works. There's no lengthy essay than can properly state how homogeneous every tiny aspect of the world is. How each individual element can be extrapolated and experimented on. Complete with a set of wonderfully realised score and a timeless story that deals with loss, grief, tragedy and heroism in a world of inspired mythology. It wears its influence on its sleeves. Just take on look at the Koroks or Ganon's second form. It's basically a Princess Mononoke open world game and if that doesn't sound like the best thing ever then I don't know what to tell you. The detractors confound me, claiming that the game loses its sheen after the first few hours or that they don't understand why the game is so celebrated. But botw simply offers creative freedom unlike any other and it only becomes more evident to the player the more they spend time on it. It's just a creative firework and every game that has copied it since is all the better for it. For those who argue that the only reason BOTW is popular is because of the Zelda tag, I present to you: Genshin Impact. Exact same game down to the minutest details but without the Zelda tag and it won best mobile game.

Is it flawless? No. But that's a redundant question to begin with. Is it the best an open world formula has ever been implemented? That entirely depends on you. For me however, Breath of the Wild stands head and shoulder above its peers. There's nothing quite like it. It offered a liberating escape from the shackles of my mundane life and I'm eternally grateful for it.

Let's see if Tear of the Kingdom can shift my opinion.

10/10