Clocking in at 120 hours or so…I dunno. It’s awesome that so many people love this game this much but I wasn’t THAT impressed. Is it an improvement over BoTW? In a lot of ways, yeah. I liked the ultra hand and the amount of stuff you could do with it. Ascend was useful too.
The bigger side quests and adventures were mostly a good addition too.
These things kept the world fresh and the changes to the various towns was surprisingly enough to warrant keeping the overworld the same as BoTW.
…But it only lasts for so long. I definitely think that this game is still affected by that open world syndrome where grinding eventually gets stale and side quests become a chore. You’ll be doing a lot of the same things, fighting the same enemies, teleporting to the same places, so on and so forth. The good thing is that you can just progress through the story whenever this happens, but I don’t think that excuses the issue entirely.
Then there’s the depths. This area was pretty miserable. I don’t quite understand what I was meant to enjoy here. You can try out inventions in the many open spaces I guess, but the rest of it is constant Zoanite hunting and looking for the next root. The various costume parts hidden here were not really enough to satiate any desire I had for more content to be in this area either.
Still, it was fun sometimes, other times it wasn’t. I definitely can say it’s one of the weaker Zelda experiences I’ve had though. Guess I’d prefer they go back to the classic 3D Zelda format.
Also feel a bit inclined to mention that the story disappointed me, but I was likely just expecting too much out of it. The scattered memory format just barely worked here, and I felt no connection towards the characters of the past including King Rauru and Queen Sonia. Was also a bit bothered by a lack of any mentions of the deceased sages connected to Sidon, Yunobo and Riju. It just felt weird having them only be casually mentioned in optional conversation.
Then there was Ganondorf, who just didn’t do it for me and probably bothered me way too much. His design was certainly cool, but both the voice acting (no offense Matthew Mercer) and his presentation didn’t do it for me. This incarnation was more similar to OoT’s with a Japanese samurai inspired costume. He wasn’t comically evil like WW’s, but still had a few moments that reminded me of that one. Maybe what I really wanted from this final incarnation was a Ganondorf that retained the memories of his past incarnations and used those to his advantage instead of more of the same. Acknowledging how many Links he’s faced. How many times he’s been thwarted. Maybe he’d appear more tired. More unruly, teetering between the line of calm and calculated but also displaying the unruly hunger and anger only usually seen in his Ganon incarnations. I guess with the lore they ended up using this wouldn’t have worked, but TP and WW Ganondorf were somewhat on their way to this, being more calculated and definitely showing noticeable change from the OoT one. The final boss we got was cool don’t get me wrong, we sort of got something with him giving himself up and swallowing the tear to once again become a beast (basically just another Ganon scenario though) but I just felt like there was way more potential for something more elaborate here.
The lore itself felt cookie cutter as well, especially with how much potential this cumulative entry offers. Mineru seems like a good character, but her struggle wasn’t necessarily believable with how little she appeared. She was barely seen even interacting with her brother Rauru, who she is supposedly close to. Again it just wasn’t elaborated on as much as I wanted it to. The rest is the standard “save the world from evil” Zelda plot, which despite literally depicting the Imprisoning War, does not manage to stand out past that, unlike other entires. I could microanalyze specific scenes here, but instead l’ll just say that I found Twilight Princess to be much better presentation and writing-wise.
I don’t fault the game for its story TOO much (the Ganondorf thing is very clearly a personal gripe) but it definitely could’ve been better in more ways than one. It’s a good entry, but not mind-blowingly amazing.
The bigger side quests and adventures were mostly a good addition too.
These things kept the world fresh and the changes to the various towns was surprisingly enough to warrant keeping the overworld the same as BoTW.
…But it only lasts for so long. I definitely think that this game is still affected by that open world syndrome where grinding eventually gets stale and side quests become a chore. You’ll be doing a lot of the same things, fighting the same enemies, teleporting to the same places, so on and so forth. The good thing is that you can just progress through the story whenever this happens, but I don’t think that excuses the issue entirely.
Then there’s the depths. This area was pretty miserable. I don’t quite understand what I was meant to enjoy here. You can try out inventions in the many open spaces I guess, but the rest of it is constant Zoanite hunting and looking for the next root. The various costume parts hidden here were not really enough to satiate any desire I had for more content to be in this area either.
Still, it was fun sometimes, other times it wasn’t. I definitely can say it’s one of the weaker Zelda experiences I’ve had though. Guess I’d prefer they go back to the classic 3D Zelda format.
Also feel a bit inclined to mention that the story disappointed me, but I was likely just expecting too much out of it. The scattered memory format just barely worked here, and I felt no connection towards the characters of the past including King Rauru and Queen Sonia. Was also a bit bothered by a lack of any mentions of the deceased sages connected to Sidon, Yunobo and Riju. It just felt weird having them only be casually mentioned in optional conversation.
Then there was Ganondorf, who just didn’t do it for me and probably bothered me way too much. His design was certainly cool, but both the voice acting (no offense Matthew Mercer) and his presentation didn’t do it for me. This incarnation was more similar to OoT’s with a Japanese samurai inspired costume. He wasn’t comically evil like WW’s, but still had a few moments that reminded me of that one. Maybe what I really wanted from this final incarnation was a Ganondorf that retained the memories of his past incarnations and used those to his advantage instead of more of the same. Acknowledging how many Links he’s faced. How many times he’s been thwarted. Maybe he’d appear more tired. More unruly, teetering between the line of calm and calculated but also displaying the unruly hunger and anger only usually seen in his Ganon incarnations. I guess with the lore they ended up using this wouldn’t have worked, but TP and WW Ganondorf were somewhat on their way to this, being more calculated and definitely showing noticeable change from the OoT one. The final boss we got was cool don’t get me wrong, we sort of got something with him giving himself up and swallowing the tear to once again become a beast (basically just another Ganon scenario though) but I just felt like there was way more potential for something more elaborate here.
The lore itself felt cookie cutter as well, especially with how much potential this cumulative entry offers. Mineru seems like a good character, but her struggle wasn’t necessarily believable with how little she appeared. She was barely seen even interacting with her brother Rauru, who she is supposedly close to. Again it just wasn’t elaborated on as much as I wanted it to. The rest is the standard “save the world from evil” Zelda plot, which despite literally depicting the Imprisoning War, does not manage to stand out past that, unlike other entires. I could microanalyze specific scenes here, but instead l’ll just say that I found Twilight Princess to be much better presentation and writing-wise.
I don’t fault the game for its story TOO much (the Ganondorf thing is very clearly a personal gripe) but it definitely could’ve been better in more ways than one. It’s a good entry, but not mind-blowingly amazing.
stefan1
10 months ago