Spensylvania
2021
Interesting premise. Incredible pixel art. I just wish the game wasn't so committed to being autoplayed. Got pretty boring for about the second half of the game.
2022
One of the greatest games I have ever played.
Incredibly creative game design and puzzles. Has an amazing sense of discovery, including some of the biggest A-ha moments in gaming.
Visually beautiful, and the soundtrack is great.
I've seen many people complain about the combat. I did not think it was much of an issue. I am used to playing souls games, so maybe I am just more used to managing a stamina bar than most people. I did find that some bosses I had to adopt a very specific strategy to beat . E.g. get very close and hold shield most of the time, or always be o the boss's backside. Others I was only able to beat with the use of certain mana consuming items the player may not find. But I think the level of difficulty adds the games atmosphere and makes the puzzles more interesting. If there were no combat, I suspect many puzzle solutions would be more obvious, since all areas would exist only for the sake of puzzles. With combat, an area may have a puzzle, or it may just be a combat challenge. This allows many things to be hidden in plain sight. There was one late game boss that I was only able to beat using nearly all of my consumable items. I would have been stuck for a very long time if I had used those items and did not beat the boss in that run.
There were only 3 puzzles I remember that had unsatisfying solutions.
Incredibly creative game design and puzzles. Has an amazing sense of discovery, including some of the biggest A-ha moments in gaming.
Visually beautiful, and the soundtrack is great.
I've seen many people complain about the combat. I did not think it was much of an issue. I am used to playing souls games, so maybe I am just more used to managing a stamina bar than most people. I did find that some bosses I had to adopt a very specific strategy to beat . E.g. get very close and hold shield most of the time, or always be o the boss's backside. Others I was only able to beat with the use of certain mana consuming items the player may not find. But I think the level of difficulty adds the games atmosphere and makes the puzzles more interesting. If there were no combat, I suspect many puzzle solutions would be more obvious, since all areas would exist only for the sake of puzzles. With combat, an area may have a puzzle, or it may just be a combat challenge. This allows many things to be hidden in plain sight. There was one late game boss that I was only able to beat using nearly all of my consumable items. I would have been stuck for a very long time if I had used those items and did not beat the boss in that run.
There were only 3 puzzles I remember that had unsatisfying solutions.
Great game. I think fuse, ultrahand, rewind, and ascend are all very interesting powers and much better than the abilities from the first game.
Sky islands were a very cool idea. I just wish there were more of them, and that there was more going on in each one. Having 2-3 islands the size of great sky island would have been great.
I still don't love shrines, but the ones in TOTK are a massive step up in quality from BOTW.
I wish the core combat was made more complex. Despite having many interesting abilities, I still find myself resorting to the same basic tactics (attack until enemy strikes then shield, or jump off a ledge and use slow motion arrows). As the game progresses, having weapons with really high stats is much more efficient than interacting with the environment in most cases, even though it's less interesting. Making vehicles or weapons with zonai devices was very fun though (most of the time). I wish there were better opportunities to fuse materials to weapons because of their interesting properties, e.g. mushrooms for their springiness. But monster parts with high fuse attack power are much more effective in combat. One solution might be to give each weapon two fuse slots: one that solely increases attack power and one that determines the properties of the weapon.
I like the increased enemy variety over BOTW. All the new bosses are great.
There are some good UX improvements, like being able to drop weapons from your inventory after opening a chest while your inventory is full. But overall a lot of the UX is annoying once you have put a substantial amount of time into the game. There is too much dialogue attached to actions that I performed frequently, like upgrading armor or taking out a horse from the stable, that make a lot tasks frustrating over time.
Faster loading times would have been a massive improvement. Not sure if this would be feasible with a moderate amount of work or if the game is well optimized, but I suspect it should be possible to keep the shrine assets loaded at all times so the player can enter and exit shrines with minimal loading times.
I also wish sage powers were a little easier to use. Having their abilities available on a wheel would have been great. I also wish the sage upgrades actually upgraded their abilities (reduced cooldown, more distance for wind gust, etc) instead of just the sage attack power.
Thematically, I like how the NPCs in this game are all working to rebuild Hyrule. There are construction workers, survey teams, mob patrols. It makes the world feel very alive and determined.
Plot-wise, I like the mystery and time-travel aspects of the game. I don't like that this game seems to ignore the Shiekah's presence from BOTW.
Final boss fight was awesome.
Sky islands were a very cool idea. I just wish there were more of them, and that there was more going on in each one. Having 2-3 islands the size of great sky island would have been great.
I still don't love shrines, but the ones in TOTK are a massive step up in quality from BOTW.
I wish the core combat was made more complex. Despite having many interesting abilities, I still find myself resorting to the same basic tactics (attack until enemy strikes then shield, or jump off a ledge and use slow motion arrows). As the game progresses, having weapons with really high stats is much more efficient than interacting with the environment in most cases, even though it's less interesting. Making vehicles or weapons with zonai devices was very fun though (most of the time). I wish there were better opportunities to fuse materials to weapons because of their interesting properties, e.g. mushrooms for their springiness. But monster parts with high fuse attack power are much more effective in combat. One solution might be to give each weapon two fuse slots: one that solely increases attack power and one that determines the properties of the weapon.
I like the increased enemy variety over BOTW. All the new bosses are great.
There are some good UX improvements, like being able to drop weapons from your inventory after opening a chest while your inventory is full. But overall a lot of the UX is annoying once you have put a substantial amount of time into the game. There is too much dialogue attached to actions that I performed frequently, like upgrading armor or taking out a horse from the stable, that make a lot tasks frustrating over time.
Faster loading times would have been a massive improvement. Not sure if this would be feasible with a moderate amount of work or if the game is well optimized, but I suspect it should be possible to keep the shrine assets loaded at all times so the player can enter and exit shrines with minimal loading times.
I also wish sage powers were a little easier to use. Having their abilities available on a wheel would have been great. I also wish the sage upgrades actually upgraded their abilities (reduced cooldown, more distance for wind gust, etc) instead of just the sage attack power.
Thematically, I like how the NPCs in this game are all working to rebuild Hyrule. There are construction workers, survey teams, mob patrols. It makes the world feel very alive and determined.
Plot-wise, I like the mystery and time-travel aspects of the game. I don't like that this game seems to ignore the Shiekah's presence from BOTW.
Final boss fight was awesome.
2000
Awesome rail shooter with unique controls. Constantly finds ways to change up the camera angles to present unique camera angles. Short game (which is fine, since rail shooters tend to focus on replayability) but new gameplay challenges are being introduced at every point throughout its length. Treasure excels at making unique gameplay.
2022
Combat was fun, I wish they let you spend more time doing that than canoeing down rivers. I didn't like the story.