okay i apparently have a lot of thoughts on this game so in no particular order:

- i really liked the additions of rods, runes and flurry rushes. really added a lot of variation to the gameplay compared to the original hyrule warriors, which was basically combos + an item each for the recurring bosses. i like the original a lot but the combat can become tiring, which was significantly less of a problem here!
- it was nice to have a botw story with a lot of plot at its centre! i know people felt it went kinda off the rails but tbh i wasn't really expecting a 'true' prequel so i wasn't disappointed.
- i've actually been playing a bit of that game for my sister because she makes me do all the bits she finds hard and it reminded me how irritating i find to have a weapon break on you mid-combat - i like what this game has much more, where i get loads of weapons but can power up the specific ones i want to use and choose what stat boosts to apply to them
- as much as i like the adventure mode in the original hw i appreciated that the map here provides a more focused, contained experience which still feels fulfilling to complete! apart from the korok seeds, because by the time i got to the end and they were the only things i had left to collect so i was just trawling through stages i'd already played. i guess the moral is just pull up a walkthrough with their locations on the first go through but overall i think the skulltulas in the original worked better for what the game was - i'm not particularly inclined to comb over stages in this kind of game and maybe that's a me problem but it DID impact my enjoyment
- other minor quibbles: playing as the great fairy wasn't always great because the stages DEFINITELY weren't built with a character that size in mind, and sometimes the camera could be a bit janky. but otherwise i had a lot of fun, and enjoyed most of the 60+ hours i spent with the game

on balance i think i like the plot and world of three houses more (this feels a lot like it's stepping back into 'standard fire emblem mode' if such a thing exists), plus some of the balancing in this is bizarre - which maybe i noticed more because i like to grind the supports out so this is partly on me BUT i still don't really get why the skirmishes and training battles were consistently so much higher level than the chapters and paralogues. equally, there is some decent cry for the devil stuff with sombron at the very end, and the break and engage mechanics definitely add interesting things to the battle system. i don't think it outstayed its welcome, though equally i can't see myself spending over 120 hours on my NEXT playthrough. so i guess basically my feeling is it's not always GREAT but there's some pretty good stuff in there.

there's something about the metroid gameplay loop that i find innately satisfying, idk. although the diggernaut can die a thousand deaths my GOD that was hard.

i haven't played the original yet so i can't judge this as a remake tho i 100% get why people feel it misses some of the narrative resonance of the original. on the other hand, the introduction of teleport stations was a definite improvement and made me more likely to willingly backtrack, and that along with the map percentage counters means this is the first metroid game i've gotten 100% on! the scan pulse might make that a little easy but idk sometimes i DON'T want to bomb every block on the screen on the off-chance i find something. at some point i will play metroid dread and tbh this has primed me for having a Good Time with that

replaying this really reminded me how unabashedly i adore this game. i love the story, i love the setting and the items and even the motion controls, janky as the may sometimes be. also still looks great, albeit a bit fuzzy around the edges (at least playing on an hd tv) - the art style's held up really well. we probably aren't ever going to get a more 'traditional' zelda again, and i'm fine with things continuing in the direction of botw because this is a long running series and most things that old need freshening up, but i can still appreciate the stuff in this game that got lost with the move to a more open-ended format.

pretty fun, compelling and stylish beat 'em up which is hampered by a few glaring flaws that get more obvious as the game goes on: unlocking new stages by increasing rank is fine at the beginning, when it means you can progress even if you can't beat a particular stage, but as it goes on and you only unlock one stage per two ranks, it begins to feel grindy. the other big problem is the lag: i played on normal for most of the game but i had to do the final stage on relaxed because the lag got so bad it felt unwinnable otherwise! my ranking would definitely be higher if not for that. also, given how much emphasis the advertising placed on the plot it would've been nice to have some coda showing that the protagonist had 'won'. maybe that's something you can unlock on higher difficulties (since again, lag made the final level frustrating rather than challenging on normal mode) but i doubt it. i enjoyed my time with it, and i'll probably come back to it every now and again, but it could so easily be a better game than it is.

This might be nostalgia speaking but I think on the whole I prefer smaller, tighter Zelda games. There’s a certain point where exploration loses a bit of that exciting new sheen. Also, while I appreciate that the Gerudo have had more emphasis placed on their heroic characters and the Hylians themselves are more racially diverse than they’ve been in the past, I’m still not entirely sure that puts to rest the thornier aspects of Ganondorf as a character, a brown, hooked nose, brutal foreigner come to take over Hyrule. The fact that Ganon was the villain in the last game as well just meant that I wasn’t super interested in seeing his human form in the immediate next game. Maybe it’s because my in to the series was the handheld titles but my attitude is that we really don’t need the Same Guy to be the villain in every game.

That’s a lot of complaining but at the end of the day I did like this. I liked the additions to the BoTW formula (fuse especially was my friend, making weapon durability less annoying because even if all you had were sticks you could do something with them). I liked being able to be an intrepid reporter (tho I suspect I’m being underpaid at 100 rupees per story given I almost died for a fair few of them - where are Hyrule’s unions when you need them?) I liked that the dungeons and bosses were more varied in aesthetic than the last game (tho I always thought the map manipulation technique there was neat and I was sad to see it go entirely). At the end of the day, I like Zelda, and I haven’t ever played a Zelda game I disliked. If there are others I liked more than this it just means there are a lot of good video games out there.

didn't super vibe with this one even though i DO think it's a well-constructed platformer...whereas i got a lot of satisfaction from dkc and its difficulty here i enjoyed myself most when i was zooming through stages and that didn't happen very often, tho i did start to get into the zone more when i aimed to play for half an hour a day - so i wouldn't have to sink time into it if i was stuck but could still hopefully make progress. i don't think this is a bad game, just maybe not for me personally!