70
I had my fun with this one! The exploration of Hyrule, finding shrines, upgrading Link, and that overall sense of adventure and discovery is just as good as people say it is up to a certain point for me. After a while, the overall structure starts to fall flat for me with the find a shrine for spirit orbs then go to the statue to upgrade once you have enough. The sense of discovery that I felt during the early portions starts to lose itself on me the more I go on, and some of my biggest problems with the game starts to shine.
Most of the problems can be contained into the fact that many of the gameplay aspects here are done much better in previous games, and some of the changes Breath of the Wild makes on the Zelda Formula don't appeal to me. The dungeons and boss battles are one of my biggest problems with the game. The dungeons themselves feel formulaic and basic even without comparing them to the previous games. Not that the previous games didn't follow a dungeon formula, but they did a far better job making each one feel fresh despite following one. Here, that isn't the case, and the same can be said for the bosses. There are about a handful of fine bosses, and a lot of reskins of those bosses making for a very boring roster. The only boss I would call "Good" is Ganon, and even he suffers from a second phase that is way too easy.
Many of the changes that Breath of the Wild makes on the Zelda formula do actually work for me. The open world feels justified as that sense of exploration, discovery, and experimentation is felt when playing around in this fully realized environment. The focus on shrines is more hit and miss for me, but I think it was a needed change to support the open world, and the game never forced me to start grinding shrines once I started to get tired of them. However, I do think that the change from finding heart containers to a full fledged upgrade system doesn't appeal to me. It feels much lamer and generic compared to heart containers which encouraged exploring the much smaller worlds of previous Zelda games. Second, I personally find the weapon degradation to be more of a bad thing than good. I understand that it functions as a way to support the survival and item management mechanics of the game, but it makes one of the most fun parts of the game for me which is exploring the world to find cool weapons feel useless to do. I think with a good weapon repair system this could have been fixed, but unfortunately it doesn't exist in the game.
I do complain a lot here, but I do genuinely enjoy the game. Dungeons, bosses, shrines, upgrades, and weapon degradation I find to be mediocre, but those systems working in unison with other gameplay mechanics that I do actually enjoy helps makes those problems much easier to bear. I also spent about 45 hours playing this game, so if I hated it I don't think I would have poured that much time into it.
I had my fun with this one! The exploration of Hyrule, finding shrines, upgrading Link, and that overall sense of adventure and discovery is just as good as people say it is up to a certain point for me. After a while, the overall structure starts to fall flat for me with the find a shrine for spirit orbs then go to the statue to upgrade once you have enough. The sense of discovery that I felt during the early portions starts to lose itself on me the more I go on, and some of my biggest problems with the game starts to shine.
Most of the problems can be contained into the fact that many of the gameplay aspects here are done much better in previous games, and some of the changes Breath of the Wild makes on the Zelda Formula don't appeal to me. The dungeons and boss battles are one of my biggest problems with the game. The dungeons themselves feel formulaic and basic even without comparing them to the previous games. Not that the previous games didn't follow a dungeon formula, but they did a far better job making each one feel fresh despite following one. Here, that isn't the case, and the same can be said for the bosses. There are about a handful of fine bosses, and a lot of reskins of those bosses making for a very boring roster. The only boss I would call "Good" is Ganon, and even he suffers from a second phase that is way too easy.
Many of the changes that Breath of the Wild makes on the Zelda formula do actually work for me. The open world feels justified as that sense of exploration, discovery, and experimentation is felt when playing around in this fully realized environment. The focus on shrines is more hit and miss for me, but I think it was a needed change to support the open world, and the game never forced me to start grinding shrines once I started to get tired of them. However, I do think that the change from finding heart containers to a full fledged upgrade system doesn't appeal to me. It feels much lamer and generic compared to heart containers which encouraged exploring the much smaller worlds of previous Zelda games. Second, I personally find the weapon degradation to be more of a bad thing than good. I understand that it functions as a way to support the survival and item management mechanics of the game, but it makes one of the most fun parts of the game for me which is exploring the world to find cool weapons feel useless to do. I think with a good weapon repair system this could have been fixed, but unfortunately it doesn't exist in the game.
I do complain a lot here, but I do genuinely enjoy the game. Dungeons, bosses, shrines, upgrades, and weapon degradation I find to be mediocre, but those systems working in unison with other gameplay mechanics that I do actually enjoy helps makes those problems much easier to bear. I also spent about 45 hours playing this game, so if I hated it I don't think I would have poured that much time into it.