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These are the kinds of games that need remakes. A game so dated that its 1994 visuals and gameplay really have dated far beyond their means.
Having never played the original, admittedly the first few hours of this were disappointing because I was expecting an immersive sim like the sequel and the spiritual successors like Bioshock and Prey. You get the full feel of exploration, progression deduction, but the complete freedom in gameplay like you see in Prey is not here. There isn't 5 different ways to gain access to a room. This is more of an open dungeon crawler crossed with boomer shooter gameplay.
Faithful in a good way for the most part; there remains a complete lack of handholding as the game expects you to use your brain and deduce where you need to go and what to do. Mildly faithful to a fault; the cyberspace 6DOF gameplay parts are utterly tedious and pointless to play, and feel like they don't belong. They could've seriously found something different to replace them with. I'm also not sure what the point in creating a relatively nuanced respawn system was - limited on each level, you keep your progress - when the game gives you a saving system that practically encourages save scumming.
The first 3/4 of the game are the most entertaining. Don't look at guides and delve deep into the mystery and confusion of how you escape this place. But the final few areas are a bit of a slog and turn into a more uninteresting linear affair of progression to the final showdown, which in itself is a massive, uneventful whimper with barely any closure or resolution.
It was a long time coming, and I'm just thoroughly impressed and satisfied with it. It's a shame the Immersive sim genre will never gain the traction it deserves, what with the disastrous route Arkane have taken. We need fresh blood in the genre, a hero development team that spearhead a rebooting of a niche, the same way Mimimi rebooted the Desperados style of games.
Having never played the original, admittedly the first few hours of this were disappointing because I was expecting an immersive sim like the sequel and the spiritual successors like Bioshock and Prey. You get the full feel of exploration, progression deduction, but the complete freedom in gameplay like you see in Prey is not here. There isn't 5 different ways to gain access to a room. This is more of an open dungeon crawler crossed with boomer shooter gameplay.
Faithful in a good way for the most part; there remains a complete lack of handholding as the game expects you to use your brain and deduce where you need to go and what to do. Mildly faithful to a fault; the cyberspace 6DOF gameplay parts are utterly tedious and pointless to play, and feel like they don't belong. They could've seriously found something different to replace them with. I'm also not sure what the point in creating a relatively nuanced respawn system was - limited on each level, you keep your progress - when the game gives you a saving system that practically encourages save scumming.
The first 3/4 of the game are the most entertaining. Don't look at guides and delve deep into the mystery and confusion of how you escape this place. But the final few areas are a bit of a slog and turn into a more uninteresting linear affair of progression to the final showdown, which in itself is a massive, uneventful whimper with barely any closure or resolution.
It was a long time coming, and I'm just thoroughly impressed and satisfied with it. It's a shame the Immersive sim genre will never gain the traction it deserves, what with the disastrous route Arkane have taken. We need fresh blood in the genre, a hero development team that spearhead a rebooting of a niche, the same way Mimimi rebooted the Desperados style of games.
A part of my less generous side wants to suggest that TOTK is probably a game far too big for its own good. But when I think about it, I probably only logged 60+ hours on BOTW, while I managed to hit around 90 hours on this before concluding I'd seen enough, so here we are.
It's still true, TOTK is monumentally huge even just with its exploration content, ignoring side quests, ignoring collectibles. The world is just gigantic with the addition of the depths and Sky Islands. And the big question is whether or not the size is complimented by quality. And, for the most part, it is.
It's by no means Elden Ring good in this regards, but what is? I've seen a lot of the industry reviews trying to convince people that they occupied the world with far more content per square mile; considering a main complaint of BotW was that it was just a barren set of environments with a few enemy encampments shoehorned everywhere. Honestly, TOTK doesn't exactly change much in that regards. Why would it? it's effectively the same map.
It still doesn't change the fact that exploration is still a joy... Though how you experience it can vastly differ to BotW, which brings us to the new additions of zonai contraptions, and their potential to bring both vast variety to your playthrough, but also unsatisfactory ease. While the mechanic can potentially offer up thousands of different options and physics based shenanigans, the whole thing becomes a passing novelty when you discover how to fly around everywhere with the simplest of contraptions. Why try to build a complex ladder or bridge to climb a mountain when you can hover bike your way up it? Why explore on foot and discover things the natural way when you can survey with a helicopter?
This train of thought dovetails into the intrigue of the depths and the only major fault of the game; the temples.
The Depths is a neat twist on the game and will at least provide a semblance of alternate exploration as you navigate the pitch dark, a la Subnautica. However, yet again, this can be as exciting or as dull as you like, depending on how you use zonai contraptions. And this is true tenfold for the temples, which, to begin with, are utterly pathetic in design compared to the series' past games. But they're just so disposable and meaningless with zonai building. And while it's mostly a marvel that TOTK crafted a game where you can explore and succeed in so many different ways, I don't really understand why they brought this mindset to the temples.
The Sky Islands offer up a few interesting puzzles depending on when you find them. Considering you likely want to explore them first as you scour the land for sky towers, there's a chance you'll encounter some neat Traversal puzzles that inaugurate you to zonai building. But, yet again, if you already know how to fix up a hover bike, these gimmicks are again somewhat wasted.
But apart from all this, TOTK is a resounding success. A worthy sequel that did what it needed to do and more. Whether it bests the first game is hard to say and probably irrelevant. What it is, is 100 hours of pure , joyous escapism.
It's still true, TOTK is monumentally huge even just with its exploration content, ignoring side quests, ignoring collectibles. The world is just gigantic with the addition of the depths and Sky Islands. And the big question is whether or not the size is complimented by quality. And, for the most part, it is.
It's by no means Elden Ring good in this regards, but what is? I've seen a lot of the industry reviews trying to convince people that they occupied the world with far more content per square mile; considering a main complaint of BotW was that it was just a barren set of environments with a few enemy encampments shoehorned everywhere. Honestly, TOTK doesn't exactly change much in that regards. Why would it? it's effectively the same map.
It still doesn't change the fact that exploration is still a joy... Though how you experience it can vastly differ to BotW, which brings us to the new additions of zonai contraptions, and their potential to bring both vast variety to your playthrough, but also unsatisfactory ease. While the mechanic can potentially offer up thousands of different options and physics based shenanigans, the whole thing becomes a passing novelty when you discover how to fly around everywhere with the simplest of contraptions. Why try to build a complex ladder or bridge to climb a mountain when you can hover bike your way up it? Why explore on foot and discover things the natural way when you can survey with a helicopter?
This train of thought dovetails into the intrigue of the depths and the only major fault of the game; the temples.
The Depths is a neat twist on the game and will at least provide a semblance of alternate exploration as you navigate the pitch dark, a la Subnautica. However, yet again, this can be as exciting or as dull as you like, depending on how you use zonai contraptions. And this is true tenfold for the temples, which, to begin with, are utterly pathetic in design compared to the series' past games. But they're just so disposable and meaningless with zonai building. And while it's mostly a marvel that TOTK crafted a game where you can explore and succeed in so many different ways, I don't really understand why they brought this mindset to the temples.
The Sky Islands offer up a few interesting puzzles depending on when you find them. Considering you likely want to explore them first as you scour the land for sky towers, there's a chance you'll encounter some neat Traversal puzzles that inaugurate you to zonai building. But, yet again, if you already know how to fix up a hover bike, these gimmicks are again somewhat wasted.
But apart from all this, TOTK is a resounding success. A worthy sequel that did what it needed to do and more. Whether it bests the first game is hard to say and probably irrelevant. What it is, is 100 hours of pure , joyous escapism.