This review contains spoilers
Very complicated experience with a game. I bought and started it on release night but only finished it the day before haloween. I started and finished persona 5 royal, 2 playthroughs of pikmin and yakuza 0 in the time while i technically had this game on the go. It's a good game outside of the start and a few great moments later on, i just didnt feel the insatiable drive to jump back in like i did with breath of the wild. Maybe its because i had less games to play then and was marginally less entrenched in the online gaming sphere, where after the initial hype, titles of video essays and analysis' consistantly talk about how "flawed" the game is. Obviously i didnt watch them to stay spoiler free but even seeing them kind of mentally conditions you to be more critical while you play. Anyway.
The game is all about freedom which is good but in many of the little world puzzles in the sky or underground (and fire temple) solving those puzzles in anything except the intended way, while possible, is extremely boring. I dont know if this is a hot take but i wish some of these places had more shrine like design with quick death pits so you dont have to go all the way back up to where you were, and unclimbable walls, so you dont spend 5 mins doing a boring climb that had a much cooler alternitive solution too if you had looked around harder.
Side adventure/ side quest split is cool; good to get an idea of which stuff has more impact on the world and game.
Combat could be better, i think we really needed another weapon type. The fuse peripherals make some encounters more fun but do feel a bit too situational a lot of the time. Armour upgrade system still sucks.
The engineering aspect is very cool, not as fiddly as you would expect.
Shrine quality starts very high and falls of a cliff the further away from hyrule field you get. Also too many rauru blessings, they had like 8 years. I think theyre should have been more progression for link, with more people recogniing him and stuff. Zelda twist was cool, loved that whole segment of watching the sword memory and then seeing her. Cool box art, i have a poster of it in my room. I wish they could use this link and zelda in a different setting, not just a fairly static hyrule. rediscovering old places was cool, better boss fights the depths suck ass
The game is all about freedom which is good but in many of the little world puzzles in the sky or underground (and fire temple) solving those puzzles in anything except the intended way, while possible, is extremely boring. I dont know if this is a hot take but i wish some of these places had more shrine like design with quick death pits so you dont have to go all the way back up to where you were, and unclimbable walls, so you dont spend 5 mins doing a boring climb that had a much cooler alternitive solution too if you had looked around harder.
Side adventure/ side quest split is cool; good to get an idea of which stuff has more impact on the world and game.
Combat could be better, i think we really needed another weapon type. The fuse peripherals make some encounters more fun but do feel a bit too situational a lot of the time. Armour upgrade system still sucks.
The engineering aspect is very cool, not as fiddly as you would expect.
Shrine quality starts very high and falls of a cliff the further away from hyrule field you get. Also too many rauru blessings, they had like 8 years. I think theyre should have been more progression for link, with more people recogniing him and stuff. Zelda twist was cool, loved that whole segment of watching the sword memory and then seeing her. Cool box art, i have a poster of it in my room. I wish they could use this link and zelda in a different setting, not just a fairly static hyrule. rediscovering old places was cool, better boss fights the depths suck ass