"Unfortunate" doesn't begin to describe my series, this game rewards blind luck and nothing else, I am beyond convinced at this point. After getting completely tooled by scheduling with my opponent changing times on me last minute and refusing to provide confirmation prior to the day of the match as to play times, losing this way somehow felt even worse than I had thought possible. My preparation was superior, my play was superior, and I lost, so I don't see a reason to continue engaging in an activity where what is within my control is overwhelmingly outweighed by what is not.

I am done with competitive Pokemon, and you won't get a fond farewell. This community is infected to its roots with a degenerative disease that grows stronger over time but stops short of killing its host. Tournaments used to have a competitive spirit at their heart, this has been transplanted and replaced with an artificial organ that feeds on vitriol and mockery from insecure little boys that heckle by the sidelines and tear each other to shreds over scraps of attention. The environment we fostered has trapped us all like this in a vicious cycle, and escaping it requires acceptance of the harshest reality we all scramble to explain away, that none of the countless straining efforts we put ourselves through here will ever amount to one single shining glimmer of significance. I would make this the end, but World Cup is still ongoing, and I would never leave so many great friends out to dry, so I'll suffer through a few more games for them.

One last thing before I leave you all to react with disdain, ridicule, and self-righteous fervor, before you do everything in your power to minimize my words and thoughts, box them up and shove them to some cobwebbed corner of your memory, and hope they disappear forever as a stain on your finite time ground to dust. From this moment on, nothing you say matters to me. The foulest insults you hurl with intent to wound will calmly settle at the earth before my feet, and the venom you spit will bring all the pain of a warm summer breeze. You are less than anything you can conceive, while I carry on, brimming with joy distilled from detachment.

One of my best friends hates this game and so I'm giving it a 5 to spite him.

I'm no longer spiting him. I still feel positive about this game even after years but there's some things that turn it off from being an ideal zelda experience. The first being there's not really that many (mandatory) dungeons in this game at least compared to how many there are in others, and this is due to the fact instead of just going to dungeons they'll want you to be sailing around the great sea to find everything. While I do enjoy this aspect of the game I also really don't like how on-rails sailing is until you've already done the tower of gods which is a solid chunk into the game. Treasure maps and Sea charts are fun on their own but requiring story progress behind finding specific charts and then having to pay a metric assload of money that you'll only really have on hand if you found both wallet upgrades isn't exceptional design either. Honestly I think it's a game I like sidequesting in more, but I'd still default to something like Majora's Mask that has fun sidequests as well as a good main quest. I want to put it higher due to my time with it as a child but I also can't say it's a zelda game I've replayed much y'know.

Tetsuya Takahashi: "i skimmed the abstract of like 5 different philosophy books and arthur c clarke novels and i'm here to just vomit all that back at you for 70 hours without saying anything meaningful about any of it"

Me: "sounds bad"

Tetsuya Takahashi: "i've also included kung-fu and robots"

Me: "sounds sick"

Yoko Taro: (furiously taking notes)