sywas
2 reviews liked by sywas
very very very much carried by the extremely tight controls and design that came from botw. all the new stuff falls completely flat for me, save ultrahand. the depths are so so boring. i could show you three screenshots of 3 corners of the depths. and tell you they were all the same spot from different angles, and you would believe me. reusing the map from botw is perhaps the biggest fumble in any game this high profile that i've played. maybe that's just me speaking as someone who 100%'ed that game twice, but for a sequel to a game based upon the wonder of exploring its open world, this game cannot even come close because i've seen it. sure, having caves around is cool, but i can't see a cave from miles away and be like "let's go there!" of course, it's still fun to explore anyway because again, the core controls are so strong that the act of going in a straight line is a fulfilling activity. the dungeons are the worst in the entire 3d series. literally you go around to 5 spots, and press the a button on each of them. i am not kidding, theres maybe like one actual puzzle in each dungeon. the new sage abilities (equivalent to the champion abilities from the last game) are more useful than botw's but implemented so obtusely that i never used any of them except for the wind power. imagine everytime you wanted to use one of the champion abilties, they would start trying to run away from you, and all of them were bound to the exact same button. that's what this game does, it's really crazy to me this game allegedly got a whole extra year of devtime for polish, and this was never seemingly brought up or changed.
the story is really harmed by the nonlinear presentation. theres many cutscenes which are basically rendered pointless because they only serve to recap information you already got just in case someone saw this one first. i don't really understand why this game even went with the nonlinear structure in the first place when you practically need to follow the exact order they want you to anyways. there was a point where i reached a dungeon early by complete accident, and got really excited. it was maybe the only moment in the entire game where i got the same feeling as finding a secret in botw's world. it was short-lived, as i soon found out that i couldn't actually do anything because i had to follow their pre determined story path first. why even let me go in the first place? just to fuck with me? i hate you! leave me alone!
the gameplay is more of the same, as of i've said before. ultrahand enables so many possibilities it's overwhelming to start. it's really fun trying a bunch of batshit solutions to any problem and the game just letting you do it. so many times i went into a shrine, got frusturated trying the "intended" solution, and went "screw this" and just used ultrahand to create some elaborate solution that was 100% way more hard, and complex to do, but also 100% more fulfilling. that's the main reason why half the shrines in this game are great. the other half stink. because they aren't shrines. why is there so many shrines where you go in, get a blessing, leave. what's the point. gone are the limited, but elaborate shrine quests from the original, and in comes the crystal walk. where you get a crystal, by defeating a boss at best, but most of the time just by walking over. then you bring it back. ta-da. i don't think a single one of these was entertaining, and there is WAY too many. others are just a blessing shrine for seemingly no reason? like you go in a cave, congrats here's your light thingy! why even have these at all? the thirty hearts in breath of the wild was already enough to practically never die, does this one really need 40? maybe it's just me, but personally i would be alright with them cutting out some of these disposable shrines even if meant a little more bare map. i do appreciate them cutting some of the time required to find these shrines since they use the same map, even if it means you have to spend more time exploring the depths to do it. by the way did i mention the depths are boring. the depths are boring!
the other side content is whatever. do you like collecting 10 apples to give to the "give me 10 apples!" man? that's good! heres 20 rupees and a warm meal for giving the 10 apples man 10 apples :) there's a few bigger ones that are fun, which i won't spoil, but nothing even close to the level of something like tarrey town from the first game. this game does have an equivalent of sorts, but it basically just amounts to putting a log through a hole 6 times. it's all pretty underwhelming stuff even if there are some standouts. theres a reoccuring side thingy where you have to help the worlds biggest moron figure out how to make a sign stand up straight, and i really enjoyed trying to find the most insane ways possible to get it to stand. i hate the koroks with a passion, and the new transport thing STINKS because i always feel the need to help them, even if i have to go in the complete opposite direction of my destination to do so. build your own damn mech you lazy bums!
in the end, i do still like this game, but i just wish it was more. i understand the circumstances of this games development, no doubt developing something of this complex, and of this scale would be incredibly hard, even if there wasn't a worldwide pandemic that no doubt disrupted the development. it's a miracle how polished this game is. outside of some framerate issues that can get pretty bad at times (can't wait for the next time i play this to be all on an emulator at 60fps just like botw!) and a reoccurring "issue" (if you can call it that) where the game froze briefly when transitioning from the surface to the depths, i encountered zero bugs. that is INSANE for the type of stuff i was doing in this game. up until this point, part of every physics based game was breaking those physics. i could not break this games physics, and i tried. that's pretty impressive! but i would have traded it all in a heartbeat for a brand new map, even if it entirely consisted of reused assets from breath of the wild. i mean hell, one of the best games in the series is all reused assets! could you imagine if instead of making majora's mask, they only released the master quest for ocarina of time? that's how i feel about this game. it's fun, it's really fun, it's really polished, but it's a really fun, really polished game where i feel like i've already seen all it has to offer before i even started it.
the story is really harmed by the nonlinear presentation. theres many cutscenes which are basically rendered pointless because they only serve to recap information you already got just in case someone saw this one first. i don't really understand why this game even went with the nonlinear structure in the first place when you practically need to follow the exact order they want you to anyways. there was a point where i reached a dungeon early by complete accident, and got really excited. it was maybe the only moment in the entire game where i got the same feeling as finding a secret in botw's world. it was short-lived, as i soon found out that i couldn't actually do anything because i had to follow their pre determined story path first. why even let me go in the first place? just to fuck with me? i hate you! leave me alone!
the gameplay is more of the same, as of i've said before. ultrahand enables so many possibilities it's overwhelming to start. it's really fun trying a bunch of batshit solutions to any problem and the game just letting you do it. so many times i went into a shrine, got frusturated trying the "intended" solution, and went "screw this" and just used ultrahand to create some elaborate solution that was 100% way more hard, and complex to do, but also 100% more fulfilling. that's the main reason why half the shrines in this game are great. the other half stink. because they aren't shrines. why is there so many shrines where you go in, get a blessing, leave. what's the point. gone are the limited, but elaborate shrine quests from the original, and in comes the crystal walk. where you get a crystal, by defeating a boss at best, but most of the time just by walking over. then you bring it back. ta-da. i don't think a single one of these was entertaining, and there is WAY too many. others are just a blessing shrine for seemingly no reason? like you go in a cave, congrats here's your light thingy! why even have these at all? the thirty hearts in breath of the wild was already enough to practically never die, does this one really need 40? maybe it's just me, but personally i would be alright with them cutting out some of these disposable shrines even if meant a little more bare map. i do appreciate them cutting some of the time required to find these shrines since they use the same map, even if it means you have to spend more time exploring the depths to do it. by the way did i mention the depths are boring. the depths are boring!
the other side content is whatever. do you like collecting 10 apples to give to the "give me 10 apples!" man? that's good! heres 20 rupees and a warm meal for giving the 10 apples man 10 apples :) there's a few bigger ones that are fun, which i won't spoil, but nothing even close to the level of something like tarrey town from the first game. this game does have an equivalent of sorts, but it basically just amounts to putting a log through a hole 6 times. it's all pretty underwhelming stuff even if there are some standouts. theres a reoccuring side thingy where you have to help the worlds biggest moron figure out how to make a sign stand up straight, and i really enjoyed trying to find the most insane ways possible to get it to stand. i hate the koroks with a passion, and the new transport thing STINKS because i always feel the need to help them, even if i have to go in the complete opposite direction of my destination to do so. build your own damn mech you lazy bums!
in the end, i do still like this game, but i just wish it was more. i understand the circumstances of this games development, no doubt developing something of this complex, and of this scale would be incredibly hard, even if there wasn't a worldwide pandemic that no doubt disrupted the development. it's a miracle how polished this game is. outside of some framerate issues that can get pretty bad at times (can't wait for the next time i play this to be all on an emulator at 60fps just like botw!) and a reoccurring "issue" (if you can call it that) where the game froze briefly when transitioning from the surface to the depths, i encountered zero bugs. that is INSANE for the type of stuff i was doing in this game. up until this point, part of every physics based game was breaking those physics. i could not break this games physics, and i tried. that's pretty impressive! but i would have traded it all in a heartbeat for a brand new map, even if it entirely consisted of reused assets from breath of the wild. i mean hell, one of the best games in the series is all reused assets! could you imagine if instead of making majora's mask, they only released the master quest for ocarina of time? that's how i feel about this game. it's fun, it's really fun, it's really polished, but it's a really fun, really polished game where i feel like i've already seen all it has to offer before i even started it.
Instead of doing what Zelda has always done and innovating with their structure and design concepts, for the first time in the 37 years of Zelda games, I feel like Zelda team bought into its own hype after BotW. Marrying a more classic structure to BotW's lush world and free systems could have yielded the best Zelda game ever made. Instead, the only major change made to BotW is the addition of more stuff TM, with no attempt to innovate or create something new like Zelda always has. And for me, this structure is infinitely less charming on the second go around. Probably the single most disapointing gaming experience of my adult life made worse by the fact that all anyone can do is call it the greatest game of all time, apparently.