Thundercblob
276 Reviews liked by Thundercblob
Breath of the Wild and its consequences have been a disaster for the gaming industry
lowkey boring, same stupid tower shit from the ubisoft open world games, very empty world with nothing to do besides collect those seeds or do another shrine that's very little different from the last 20. dropped the cool varying dungeons for four similar dungeons instead. plus the weapon durability system is far too annoying. hoping the sequel sets itself apart and actually has diverse content.
The first 15 or so hours are magical. Then there's 30 more.
Breath of the Wild has a perfect opening couple of hours that give you these great physics tools and quickly set you loose in the open world. All of its intuitive physics and weather systems, as well as the controversial weapon durability system provide you with these great moments of thinking on your feet and out-of-the-box problem solving. Exploring the landscape and the flora and fauna that reside there is fun for its own sake, and the music and general atmosphere is enchanting enough to make simply being in the world enjoyable. I really think the vibe and beautiful art style of this game alone are what give it such a legendary reputation, rather than any kind of revolutionary game design. Nintendo knows how to nail the presentation of their games better than anyone, and it gives them the illusion of being groundbreaking and artfully designed. I really felt that way at the start of this one.
But after building a near-perfect open world experience in the first act, Breath of the Wild spends the rest of the game tearing it down through sheer tedium and repetition. Fighting the same three enemy types with the limited combat system (and being interrupted by the same combat music track), constantly breaking your weapons (which serves as no more than an annoyance once you build up an armory of weapons), doing dozens of nearly identical shrines and korok seed puzzles that just feel like chores... All of this is fun and fresh at the start, but the novelty wears off fast, and then the game just keeps going. Eventually you realize there is nothing mysterious or novel to be found in this world, really; Every cool place you find is just a container for a shrine or a korok seed. The first labyrinth you find is exciting. Then you realize there are three of them and they're all just shrine puzzles. Breath of the Wild is the joy of discovery turned into a formulaic, easily digestible skinner box.
The memorable moments that the game does manage to nail, like reaching Kakariko Village or Zora's Domain, fighting the first Divine Beast, finding the Master Sword, and fighting through Hyrule Castle are all spread too thin across so many hours of the same skinner box slop endemic to open world games. And soon, most of the systems that make the moment-to-moment gameplay interesting early on become irrelevant. Eventually you'll just be teleporting across the map, using abilities like Revali's Gale to skip the climbing, wearing clothes to ignore the weather, using food to ignore the stamina system, and using regular weapons to ignore the shiekah slate and physics system in combat. The gameplay can literally only lose depth as you go; your reward for progression is that you get to engage with the game less.
Getting a non-linear, open world game right is hard; I think very few games have managed to live up to such massive scope and breadth of possibility. Breath of the Wild has been hailed as the solution to this problem, but far from being a revolution in open world design, it falls into the same trap of wearing you down with hours and hours of the same copy-pasted activities. It has some ideas that show amazing potential early on, but in the end the experience reverts to the player turning their brain off to wade through a sea of filler content along the path of least resistance. Just like every shitty Ubisoft open world game that Breath of the Wild is supposed to be the answer to.
Breath of the Wild has a perfect opening couple of hours that give you these great physics tools and quickly set you loose in the open world. All of its intuitive physics and weather systems, as well as the controversial weapon durability system provide you with these great moments of thinking on your feet and out-of-the-box problem solving. Exploring the landscape and the flora and fauna that reside there is fun for its own sake, and the music and general atmosphere is enchanting enough to make simply being in the world enjoyable. I really think the vibe and beautiful art style of this game alone are what give it such a legendary reputation, rather than any kind of revolutionary game design. Nintendo knows how to nail the presentation of their games better than anyone, and it gives them the illusion of being groundbreaking and artfully designed. I really felt that way at the start of this one.
But after building a near-perfect open world experience in the first act, Breath of the Wild spends the rest of the game tearing it down through sheer tedium and repetition. Fighting the same three enemy types with the limited combat system (and being interrupted by the same combat music track), constantly breaking your weapons (which serves as no more than an annoyance once you build up an armory of weapons), doing dozens of nearly identical shrines and korok seed puzzles that just feel like chores... All of this is fun and fresh at the start, but the novelty wears off fast, and then the game just keeps going. Eventually you realize there is nothing mysterious or novel to be found in this world, really; Every cool place you find is just a container for a shrine or a korok seed. The first labyrinth you find is exciting. Then you realize there are three of them and they're all just shrine puzzles. Breath of the Wild is the joy of discovery turned into a formulaic, easily digestible skinner box.
The memorable moments that the game does manage to nail, like reaching Kakariko Village or Zora's Domain, fighting the first Divine Beast, finding the Master Sword, and fighting through Hyrule Castle are all spread too thin across so many hours of the same skinner box slop endemic to open world games. And soon, most of the systems that make the moment-to-moment gameplay interesting early on become irrelevant. Eventually you'll just be teleporting across the map, using abilities like Revali's Gale to skip the climbing, wearing clothes to ignore the weather, using food to ignore the stamina system, and using regular weapons to ignore the shiekah slate and physics system in combat. The gameplay can literally only lose depth as you go; your reward for progression is that you get to engage with the game less.
Getting a non-linear, open world game right is hard; I think very few games have managed to live up to such massive scope and breadth of possibility. Breath of the Wild has been hailed as the solution to this problem, but far from being a revolution in open world design, it falls into the same trap of wearing you down with hours and hours of the same copy-pasted activities. It has some ideas that show amazing potential early on, but in the end the experience reverts to the player turning their brain off to wade through a sea of filler content along the path of least resistance. Just like every shitty Ubisoft open world game that Breath of the Wild is supposed to be the answer to.
heyyy its breath of the wild!! its the best game ever or something!! but not really, like it's pretty good but definitely has a lot of problems. its my second time completing the game and i've put it in a good 210 hours or some shit and im like... done with it now lol
so first of all how is it as an open world game? for one, hyrule is massive! and that is great, it feels honestly inconceivable to walk from the west to the east but you definitely could. i love how huge it is, and when you realise how far away stuff is it truly wild. the world has a lot of things in it that constantly rewards you, be it monster camps, shrines, towns, etc etc, its good! but herein lies one of the problems. once you happen upon a korok or a shrine a lot of the time it just feels like a chore. i came upon so many korok spots and just thought "I cant be bothered" because the reward just didnt feel worth it. thats true with a lot of the things in this game i feel, you see an enemy camp and think "what am i gonna get? a knight's claymore? not worth it" and just not worth going in! this would happen LESS if your weapons didnt break, but because they do you have to weigh the pros and cons of doing stuff. if you already have decent weapons youre attached to then why would you risk/damage them for something worse? its just not worth it
combat is mostly good! it's quite simple, and especially so when there isnt much normal monster variety either. (bokoblins are the best, then moblins, and lizalfos DEAD last) combat feels really good when fighting bosses and mini-bosses because they're intense. fighting lynels and guardians is particularly fun because of the big open arenas and how much room you have around them. otherwise combat is a LITTLE bland? it gets the job done and isnt bad but it definitely makes me want for a little more! maybe i should play dark souls!
as a last aside, the voice acting in this game genuinely sucks! zelda's fake british accent is not good, and all the old characters being voiced by VAs who are clearly young people and they do a really bad job! i sometimes think its quite shitty to dunk on VAs like that but in terms of the art of this game i do think it affects it. this game came out during the 2016-2017 VA strikes so potentially the VAs here are also scabs. hard to say!
so first of all how is it as an open world game? for one, hyrule is massive! and that is great, it feels honestly inconceivable to walk from the west to the east but you definitely could. i love how huge it is, and when you realise how far away stuff is it truly wild. the world has a lot of things in it that constantly rewards you, be it monster camps, shrines, towns, etc etc, its good! but herein lies one of the problems. once you happen upon a korok or a shrine a lot of the time it just feels like a chore. i came upon so many korok spots and just thought "I cant be bothered" because the reward just didnt feel worth it. thats true with a lot of the things in this game i feel, you see an enemy camp and think "what am i gonna get? a knight's claymore? not worth it" and just not worth going in! this would happen LESS if your weapons didnt break, but because they do you have to weigh the pros and cons of doing stuff. if you already have decent weapons youre attached to then why would you risk/damage them for something worse? its just not worth it
combat is mostly good! it's quite simple, and especially so when there isnt much normal monster variety either. (bokoblins are the best, then moblins, and lizalfos DEAD last) combat feels really good when fighting bosses and mini-bosses because they're intense. fighting lynels and guardians is particularly fun because of the big open arenas and how much room you have around them. otherwise combat is a LITTLE bland? it gets the job done and isnt bad but it definitely makes me want for a little more! maybe i should play dark souls!
as a last aside, the voice acting in this game genuinely sucks! zelda's fake british accent is not good, and all the old characters being voiced by VAs who are clearly young people and they do a really bad job! i sometimes think its quite shitty to dunk on VAs like that but in terms of the art of this game i do think it affects it. this game came out during the 2016-2017 VA strikes so potentially the VAs here are also scabs. hard to say!
Kinda boring?
Combat is not very fun. I hate the durability system - I can barely get familiar with a weapon before they break. I hate not having the right tool for the job because it broke a while ago.
The first few hours are very unique but afterwards I find myself either frustrated or bored.
The game is very pretty and the traversal is near perfect. It really flaunts its superiority when games like Horizon went with the Uncharted grip points. They feel extra artificial and limiting in an open world game.
I may still play here and there because there's more to this game but on the same hand I don't look forward to it.
It's hard to design an open world game, I don't really care for them anyways.
Combat is not very fun. I hate the durability system - I can barely get familiar with a weapon before they break. I hate not having the right tool for the job because it broke a while ago.
The first few hours are very unique but afterwards I find myself either frustrated or bored.
The game is very pretty and the traversal is near perfect. It really flaunts its superiority when games like Horizon went with the Uncharted grip points. They feel extra artificial and limiting in an open world game.
I may still play here and there because there's more to this game but on the same hand I don't look forward to it.
It's hard to design an open world game, I don't really care for them anyways.
I don't like this new Zelda approach personally, the physics are cool but that's about it. This is not the AMAZING MASTERPIECE game everyone thinks it is
impressive physics but after the tutorial area you have seen it all and it gets boring fighting the same enemies and finding the same rewards.
Didn't feel the gameplay loop. The world is big but feels very empty, and the rewards for exploring are mitigated by the weapon durability system.The Plot is also very sparse making the puzzle-solving the only incentive to move forward with the game.
Note: Given the universal acclaim of this game and my rating, I did a bit of research and it was clear that the big difference is what I came in expecting from this game is very different than what I got. However for those that loved it, they wanted something different from the zelda formula and they got it.... I wanted more of the same. Before this game I only played twilight princess and have not played any other zelda games. So I was not sick of any formula. I just wanted more of the same and an open world version of twilight princess. I was looking for an adventure game with good story, dungeoning, combat, and some puzzles, what I got was a open world puzzle game. Lets dive in! I did spend 60h in this game completing all the 120 dungeons and the 12 main story quests. I don't think I would play a 3 star game for 60h in the future but this one is an exception given its universal acclaim. I really wanted to educate myself before reviewing it.
๐ฎ Platform: Switch OLED
โ Time to finish - 62.5h (All shrines and main quests)
๐Game completion - 25% - How disappointing is this? I am in the minority here because I am one of those completion types. And honestly it was one of the reason why I sunk 60h into completing all the shrines in this game. The game was fine enough for me to keep going and finish the goal I set out of completing all 120 shrines. I know nintendo is not about completions and achievements. But when you realize after 60h the game gives you a 25% completion and the rest of the 75% is locked under gathering boring 900 korok seeds, its disappointing. Again... I understand this is not Nintendo's focus but it doesn't mean I am not disappointed.
๐Graphics โ I know people LOVE this game's graphics. For me it was a hit or a miss. What I loved are the weapon and armor models. Really nice! In handheld mode it was great! However, when i started playing it on a much larger screen, 24inch docked monitor, the weird shadow shading was very hard for me to look at. My analytical mind simply could not get over the fact that the shadow/shading on a persons body is not affected by light sources around them. Overtime I got use to it but it did not blow me away. But if I only played it handheld I can see the hype.
๐ฆ Atmosphere/Music โ The game uses very minimal instruments and sound. Often is just a piano + wind. This was definitely nice and immersive as you walk through hyrule. However.... because I was moving mainly from one average dungeon to another average dungeon, I.E. not really into this game, I don't really get into it. I just wanted to get from point a to b quickly and finish this game. In contrast, it reminded me of how in death stranding I had a similar feeling of walking alone in the wilderness, however I loved it there, because I loved what i was doing there.
I also liked some town and seeing the simple people busily going about their lives. The towns felt alive and real.
๐ Main Story / Characters โ Main story is fine, but it was a lot less meaty than I remember the twilight princess game. I expected a less meaty story to some of our AAA open world titles, but honestly I was expecting a lot more than this. I just came out of paper mario before this and this story pretty much was exactly the same. The 4 people you rescue in this game are basically the star people you rescue in Paper Mario. They all give you some power to use. The main story was fine.
The main story has a very interesting mechanism, dungeons you can manipulate to reach new areas. Some are pretty easy some are not. Overall when I was moving at a good pace it was fine, but sometimes my brain could not wrap my head around the harder dungeons, and how they get manipulated. It was fine... but guess what!!! MORE PUZZLES!!!!!!!! :( There is not a single traditional dungeon in this game.
๐คบ Combat โ basically Boring, hack and slash. Lets break down combat into open world, shrines, bosses.
Open world: Most often I avoided them... the time sunk into fighting them is not rewarding. Seriously are these mobs kiting me and extending the fight and then after all that drop a 5 damage weapon!? I've even had situations where mobs kite me.... looks so smart... and then they fall off the cliff. ๐คฆโโ๏ธ
Shrine: Boring. Apart from the highest level guardian. But once you figure out the pattern they are easy.
Bosses: unmemorable. Basically land and air phases. However, the lightning boss is absolutely bonkers hard compared to the rest of the game. He pretty much one shots you, and makes you drop the weapon. I am not sure who thought this was a good idea. Dropping all your weapons for simply swinging at an enemy removes player agency in a game and you now in the middle of a boss battle have to go run around and pick up weapons!!! Worst designed boss I played in a long time.
This is a perfect time to talk about my least favorite and inconsistent, half-baked mechanism in this whole game. DURABILITY! I spent so much time managing which weapons I dropped and kept. Yey, this is now an inventory management mini game as well! Most cool weapons I had zero attachment to because they just break after a few hits. However.... my armor where I take a ton of damage never breaks. Bows break at what feels like the same rate as swords. What are these made of paper??? Anyway, there is a reason item system has some very established rules in games. Going crazy like this and being inconsistent in durability completely took me away from the game. If you are going to have weapons that look cool, people want to collect them. If they break a huge part of the game becomes uninteresting.
๐งญ Side Activities / Exploration โ This breaks down into 3, Side quests, shrines, korok seeds.
Side quests are mainly fetch quests, did a few got bored. Shrines ... where do I start.... the combat shrines are boring, the rest are puzzles. It started off interesting but when I realized there are 90+ puzzle shrines, I started to loose interest. Did I come to hyrule to solve 90 puzzles that have no relationship to the story??? Last is korok seeds. I did all korok seeds in central plain and for those people that don't want to leave hyrle and LOVE this game I can see the appeal. For me it was nothing more than annoying collecting time sink.
Cooking: I mainly used the recipes for elemental resistances, and for extra hearts. It was helpful but nothing I wanted to spend experimenting my time in. What I really needed were simple recipes and I had no reason to experiment.
Horses: Cool but since you can't B line with them... I used them very rarely except as a novelty.
Temperature management: Another annoyance. Switching armor, making potions. I did find it cool that i can use my flamesword for 1 temperature point! Apart from that, this was super annoying and really breaks down the immersion. Look at that cool place over there... is that 1 cold or 2 cold resistance..or will I burn which is different from overheating...
๐ Movement/Physics โ Good. I never found anything of an issue except perfect parry and dodge. Because combat was so boring, I really tried to spice it up by killing only with perfect dodges etc. Unfortunately I could never get the timing right. Maybe I suck, but I tried over and over again. I could not consistently reproduce it. So it wasn't worth my time anymore, when i can just hack it in 2 swings.
๐ฃ Voice acting โ Fine. I know Link is normally not present in zelda games but in this one he is COMPETELY not present. They should have just removed his model and it would have had the same effect. Harsh I know. The best voice acting is in the link memories and the story cut scenes.
๐ฅ Best thing about the game - The exploration and the one continuous feel as you walk through the world. However, pretty much every AAA title does this now.
๐ Worst thing about the game - Its a puzzle game when i wanted an dungeon adventure game. Weapon durability!
๐กFinal Thoughts:
I hope my reasons for this score make sense to people. Ultimately I wanted something else. I cannot see why more people aren't talking about the issues I see with this game. Where are all the people that see this game the way I do? If you are looking for a puzzle game play with open world play this game, if you are looking for an open world adventure game look elsewhere. Outside the main story quests you won't get it. I had the DLC and had 0 desire to touch it after finish the main game. I should have waited before I bought it. :-/ Overall what drove me is my own goal oriented nature than the game driving me to keep coming back.
๐ฎ Platform: Switch OLED
โ Time to finish - 62.5h (All shrines and main quests)
๐Game completion - 25% - How disappointing is this? I am in the minority here because I am one of those completion types. And honestly it was one of the reason why I sunk 60h into completing all the shrines in this game. The game was fine enough for me to keep going and finish the goal I set out of completing all 120 shrines. I know nintendo is not about completions and achievements. But when you realize after 60h the game gives you a 25% completion and the rest of the 75% is locked under gathering boring 900 korok seeds, its disappointing. Again... I understand this is not Nintendo's focus but it doesn't mean I am not disappointed.
๐Graphics โ I know people LOVE this game's graphics. For me it was a hit or a miss. What I loved are the weapon and armor models. Really nice! In handheld mode it was great! However, when i started playing it on a much larger screen, 24inch docked monitor, the weird shadow shading was very hard for me to look at. My analytical mind simply could not get over the fact that the shadow/shading on a persons body is not affected by light sources around them. Overtime I got use to it but it did not blow me away. But if I only played it handheld I can see the hype.
๐ฆ Atmosphere/Music โ The game uses very minimal instruments and sound. Often is just a piano + wind. This was definitely nice and immersive as you walk through hyrule. However.... because I was moving mainly from one average dungeon to another average dungeon, I.E. not really into this game, I don't really get into it. I just wanted to get from point a to b quickly and finish this game. In contrast, it reminded me of how in death stranding I had a similar feeling of walking alone in the wilderness, however I loved it there, because I loved what i was doing there.
I also liked some town and seeing the simple people busily going about their lives. The towns felt alive and real.
๐ Main Story / Characters โ Main story is fine, but it was a lot less meaty than I remember the twilight princess game. I expected a less meaty story to some of our AAA open world titles, but honestly I was expecting a lot more than this. I just came out of paper mario before this and this story pretty much was exactly the same. The 4 people you rescue in this game are basically the star people you rescue in Paper Mario. They all give you some power to use. The main story was fine.
The main story has a very interesting mechanism, dungeons you can manipulate to reach new areas. Some are pretty easy some are not. Overall when I was moving at a good pace it was fine, but sometimes my brain could not wrap my head around the harder dungeons, and how they get manipulated. It was fine... but guess what!!! MORE PUZZLES!!!!!!!! :( There is not a single traditional dungeon in this game.
๐คบ Combat โ basically Boring, hack and slash. Lets break down combat into open world, shrines, bosses.
Open world: Most often I avoided them... the time sunk into fighting them is not rewarding. Seriously are these mobs kiting me and extending the fight and then after all that drop a 5 damage weapon!? I've even had situations where mobs kite me.... looks so smart... and then they fall off the cliff. ๐คฆโโ๏ธ
Shrine: Boring. Apart from the highest level guardian. But once you figure out the pattern they are easy.
Bosses: unmemorable. Basically land and air phases. However, the lightning boss is absolutely bonkers hard compared to the rest of the game. He pretty much one shots you, and makes you drop the weapon. I am not sure who thought this was a good idea. Dropping all your weapons for simply swinging at an enemy removes player agency in a game and you now in the middle of a boss battle have to go run around and pick up weapons!!! Worst designed boss I played in a long time.
This is a perfect time to talk about my least favorite and inconsistent, half-baked mechanism in this whole game. DURABILITY! I spent so much time managing which weapons I dropped and kept. Yey, this is now an inventory management mini game as well! Most cool weapons I had zero attachment to because they just break after a few hits. However.... my armor where I take a ton of damage never breaks. Bows break at what feels like the same rate as swords. What are these made of paper??? Anyway, there is a reason item system has some very established rules in games. Going crazy like this and being inconsistent in durability completely took me away from the game. If you are going to have weapons that look cool, people want to collect them. If they break a huge part of the game becomes uninteresting.
๐งญ Side Activities / Exploration โ This breaks down into 3, Side quests, shrines, korok seeds.
Side quests are mainly fetch quests, did a few got bored. Shrines ... where do I start.... the combat shrines are boring, the rest are puzzles. It started off interesting but when I realized there are 90+ puzzle shrines, I started to loose interest. Did I come to hyrule to solve 90 puzzles that have no relationship to the story??? Last is korok seeds. I did all korok seeds in central plain and for those people that don't want to leave hyrle and LOVE this game I can see the appeal. For me it was nothing more than annoying collecting time sink.
Cooking: I mainly used the recipes for elemental resistances, and for extra hearts. It was helpful but nothing I wanted to spend experimenting my time in. What I really needed were simple recipes and I had no reason to experiment.
Horses: Cool but since you can't B line with them... I used them very rarely except as a novelty.
Temperature management: Another annoyance. Switching armor, making potions. I did find it cool that i can use my flamesword for 1 temperature point! Apart from that, this was super annoying and really breaks down the immersion. Look at that cool place over there... is that 1 cold or 2 cold resistance..or will I burn which is different from overheating...
๐ Movement/Physics โ Good. I never found anything of an issue except perfect parry and dodge. Because combat was so boring, I really tried to spice it up by killing only with perfect dodges etc. Unfortunately I could never get the timing right. Maybe I suck, but I tried over and over again. I could not consistently reproduce it. So it wasn't worth my time anymore, when i can just hack it in 2 swings.
๐ฃ Voice acting โ Fine. I know Link is normally not present in zelda games but in this one he is COMPETELY not present. They should have just removed his model and it would have had the same effect. Harsh I know. The best voice acting is in the link memories and the story cut scenes.
๐ฅ Best thing about the game - The exploration and the one continuous feel as you walk through the world. However, pretty much every AAA title does this now.
๐ Worst thing about the game - Its a puzzle game when i wanted an dungeon adventure game. Weapon durability!
๐กFinal Thoughts:
I hope my reasons for this score make sense to people. Ultimately I wanted something else. I cannot see why more people aren't talking about the issues I see with this game. Where are all the people that see this game the way I do? If you are looking for a puzzle game play with open world play this game, if you are looking for an open world adventure game look elsewhere. Outside the main story quests you won't get it. I had the DLC and had 0 desire to touch it after finish the main game. I should have waited before I bought it. :-/ Overall what drove me is my own goal oriented nature than the game driving me to keep coming back.
The open world design has some neat mechanics, mainly the traversal and the physics engine built around it, but the stamina wheel early game makes traveling and climbing very tedious.
The world is empty and all you are going to find is the same 5 enemies with different colors and shitty kurok repetitive puzzles.
The world is empty and all you are going to find is the same 5 enemies with different colors and shitty kurok repetitive puzzles.
good game,just not as amazing as everyone says red dead 2 came out the year after and it's better.
at first it's really fun, the scenery is really beautiful and it's overall an amazing game, but as i progressed through the game i had less and less stuff to do. i feel like since it's an open world game i don't have a set objective, it feels like i have nothing to do. whenever i boot up the game i just run around the map and zone out because there's nothing much to do, or at least that's how i feel about it. with this game i also realized that i don't like open world games, because since you're free to do whatever you want i don't feel like i have a set objective and i become lost and bored really quickly. overall i understand it's an amazing game, probably the best of its genre, but simply not my type.
This review contains spoilers
BotW has remarkably less magic than other titles in the Zelda series.
The open-world concept is cool, but this game really lacked in story and the feeling of centralized locations. The Shrine puzzles feel bizarre. It doesn't really make sense to me why they're there in the first place, and many of them (even the ones I completed) left me feeling frustrated. I get that BotW is post-apocalyptic, but the map felt empty, incomplete. Your only company is the occasional stiff NPC or randomly spawning/despawning animal. All the characters that you have any ties to are dead, which makes for some pretty boring interactions throughout the game. The cutscenes are poorly acted and I feel that they should have stuck to the tradition of text and grunts only.
Some parts of the enormous open-world map are unique, but most of it feels samey. Every stable is the same, with essentially the same NPCs. I don't feel motivated to go on side quests because none of them feel consequential. Previous Zelda games, like OoT, might have literally had less content, but at least the ideas were fresh.
Don't get me started on the weapon system. When are game designers going to realize that not everything needs to be ultra-realistic? I don't want my axes and swords to break. It's annoying. And what, my Master Sword runs out of juice? I can't help but feel that Nintendo took some inspiration from mobile games here. The result is that I don't ever use my most powerful weapons, knowing that they'll break.
Finally, I've got to address "Calamity" Ganon in this game. They build him up all throughout the story, but when you actually do fight him, he's... a piece of cake. The DLC where you fight the monk is actually harder than the final boss of the game. Surely, that's a mistake.
To conclude, Nintendo seems just as swept up as other developers in contemporary trends like open world and breakable weapons, without stopping to think whether those are actually good features for their game. BotW feels incomplete like a lot of games released today do, and it kind of worries me that they're already developing a sequel.
That said, it wasn't all bad. The Guardians and Lynels were interesting enemies, and the Paraglider makes me wish I could glide off a mountain in every game. I don't know that it makes up for the lack of a real story though, or for the fact that the characters I interact with most in this game seem to be encamped Moblins rather than actual people.
The open-world concept is cool, but this game really lacked in story and the feeling of centralized locations. The Shrine puzzles feel bizarre. It doesn't really make sense to me why they're there in the first place, and many of them (even the ones I completed) left me feeling frustrated. I get that BotW is post-apocalyptic, but the map felt empty, incomplete. Your only company is the occasional stiff NPC or randomly spawning/despawning animal. All the characters that you have any ties to are dead, which makes for some pretty boring interactions throughout the game. The cutscenes are poorly acted and I feel that they should have stuck to the tradition of text and grunts only.
Some parts of the enormous open-world map are unique, but most of it feels samey. Every stable is the same, with essentially the same NPCs. I don't feel motivated to go on side quests because none of them feel consequential. Previous Zelda games, like OoT, might have literally had less content, but at least the ideas were fresh.
Don't get me started on the weapon system. When are game designers going to realize that not everything needs to be ultra-realistic? I don't want my axes and swords to break. It's annoying. And what, my Master Sword runs out of juice? I can't help but feel that Nintendo took some inspiration from mobile games here. The result is that I don't ever use my most powerful weapons, knowing that they'll break.
Finally, I've got to address "Calamity" Ganon in this game. They build him up all throughout the story, but when you actually do fight him, he's... a piece of cake. The DLC where you fight the monk is actually harder than the final boss of the game. Surely, that's a mistake.
To conclude, Nintendo seems just as swept up as other developers in contemporary trends like open world and breakable weapons, without stopping to think whether those are actually good features for their game. BotW feels incomplete like a lot of games released today do, and it kind of worries me that they're already developing a sequel.
That said, it wasn't all bad. The Guardians and Lynels were interesting enemies, and the Paraglider makes me wish I could glide off a mountain in every game. I don't know that it makes up for the lack of a real story though, or for the fact that the characters I interact with most in this game seem to be encamped Moblins rather than actual people.
I played this game for 6 hours every day for like eight weeks and then basically never touched it again. It's one of those.
Pretty cool. Gliding and shieldsurfing are easily like 40% of the fun in this game, which is a testament both to how copy-pasted and weaksauce the enemies are and to how deliberate and thought-out a lot of the level design is. The game rewarding you for playing it by just making the final boss fight shorter is unforgivably boring. This game really wants me to like cooking, which I would except it consists entirely of "select a bunch of stuff from some menus and hope for the best". Music is bad most of the time because it refuses to just go for it enough, exceptions being the Molduga and Hinox themes.
Monolith working on this makes a lot of sense because frankly a lot of the game feels like Xenoblade except blander and with less depth. (This is two out of a total of four unrelated reviews I have brought up Xenoblade in, because I am a parody of myself.) Not lost on me how "this game is going to be more high fantasy than other Zeldas" mostly means "oh fuck, we gotta get even more reactionary".
Pretty cool. Gliding and shieldsurfing are easily like 40% of the fun in this game, which is a testament both to how copy-pasted and weaksauce the enemies are and to how deliberate and thought-out a lot of the level design is. The game rewarding you for playing it by just making the final boss fight shorter is unforgivably boring. This game really wants me to like cooking, which I would except it consists entirely of "select a bunch of stuff from some menus and hope for the best". Music is bad most of the time because it refuses to just go for it enough, exceptions being the Molduga and Hinox themes.
Monolith working on this makes a lot of sense because frankly a lot of the game feels like Xenoblade except blander and with less depth. (This is two out of a total of four unrelated reviews I have brought up Xenoblade in, because I am a parody of myself.) Not lost on me how "this game is going to be more high fantasy than other Zeldas" mostly means "oh fuck, we gotta get even more reactionary".
Great until it isnโt