whatsoup
2016
UNBELIEVABLY good audio, music, art, and character design. If the actual game play was less clunky, this game would be an all timer.
2019
kai dear please use those long legs of yours to run across the screen faster
2017
Loved the artstyle, some puzzles were quite good, others were brainless, the voice acting and writing was uhhhh... corny at best. The game as a whole was like if you told an AI to make Psychonauts.
2012
this game desperately needed some sort of savestate feature
This review contains spoilers
I don't think it's a perfect game, and not even my favorite Zelda game, but what this game manages to pull off is nothing short of a miracle.
The task that the designers were presented was to make a sequel to a game that shook the world back in 2017, one that could stand on its own and be equally as revolutionary, and they succeeded in every way possible. There isn't a single feature in Breath of the Wild that this game didn't improve on in some way, all while adding 10 game's worth of new content to boot.
To go into every detail of this game would take far more time that I'm willing to spend writing a review right now, but safe to say each facet of this game blew me away, from the new powers, to the even more vertical map, to the dungeons that felt more dungeon-y this time around, to the wonderful cast of characters, to the art direction and soundtrack, to the ridiculously cool finale... it's just all so good.
My only real complaint about TOTK is that there can be too much of a good thing. I WANT to see everything this game has to offer, to drink it all in and savor every minute detail, but there's just too much of it to do that properly. I finished with around 63% completion, having done all the shrines, finding all of the lightroots, many other completionist things, and all of that took me around 130 hours (more time than I spent on Elden Ring, another enormous game, and that one even had bosses that walled me for hours). This game is unapologetically anti-completionist, even more so than BOTW, and I miss the days of being able to comb every nook and cranny of Hyrule looking for secrets without it taking you until retirement age to do so.
The task that the designers were presented was to make a sequel to a game that shook the world back in 2017, one that could stand on its own and be equally as revolutionary, and they succeeded in every way possible. There isn't a single feature in Breath of the Wild that this game didn't improve on in some way, all while adding 10 game's worth of new content to boot.
To go into every detail of this game would take far more time that I'm willing to spend writing a review right now, but safe to say each facet of this game blew me away, from the new powers, to the even more vertical map, to the dungeons that felt more dungeon-y this time around, to the wonderful cast of characters, to the art direction and soundtrack, to the ridiculously cool finale... it's just all so good.
My only real complaint about TOTK is that there can be too much of a good thing. I WANT to see everything this game has to offer, to drink it all in and savor every minute detail, but there's just too much of it to do that properly. I finished with around 63% completion, having done all the shrines, finding all of the lightroots, many other completionist things, and all of that took me around 130 hours (more time than I spent on Elden Ring, another enormous game, and that one even had bosses that walled me for hours). This game is unapologetically anti-completionist, even more so than BOTW, and I miss the days of being able to comb every nook and cranny of Hyrule looking for secrets without it taking you until retirement age to do so.
Super creative and charming game! In universe, it's being presented to you by an preteen-aged kid and the writing and art did a great job at making that seem authentic. It reminded me of how I would excitedly show others my creative works when I was young.
The story is about as generic as a fantasy RPG story gets, but that doesn't really matter since the draw (hehe) of the game is the artwork and general presentation.
I had a couple of gripes with the actual gameplay that keeps this from being a higher score. Firstly, the game is PAINFULLY slow at some points. Walking across screens and waiting for the dialogue to advance if you're anything around an average speed reader will feel like it takes ages. Some repeated actions suffer quite heavily from this as well. A good 30 minutes of the 7-8 hour play time could be trimmed by just speeding up some animations and screen transitions.
I played on PC and the port had some really questionable features missing, such as the need to literally Alt+F4 to stop playing the game. Also, there was no way to adjust game settings until 1-2 hours into the game, and even then the options are baffling. For example, there is a volume control that only lets you choose between two preset options?? The game is naturally loud as hell, I had to turn it down to 3 in the Windows volume mixer, and even that was still a touch too loud.
Anyway, I had a good time and the game kept me with a smile on my face for 90% of it. I don't know if I would agree with its price at the moment, wait until it's on sale if you want an easy, charming, 8-ish hour game.
The story is about as generic as a fantasy RPG story gets, but that doesn't really matter since the draw (hehe) of the game is the artwork and general presentation.
I had a couple of gripes with the actual gameplay that keeps this from being a higher score. Firstly, the game is PAINFULLY slow at some points. Walking across screens and waiting for the dialogue to advance if you're anything around an average speed reader will feel like it takes ages. Some repeated actions suffer quite heavily from this as well. A good 30 minutes of the 7-8 hour play time could be trimmed by just speeding up some animations and screen transitions.
I played on PC and the port had some really questionable features missing, such as the need to literally Alt+F4 to stop playing the game. Also, there was no way to adjust game settings until 1-2 hours into the game, and even then the options are baffling. For example, there is a volume control that only lets you choose between two preset options?? The game is naturally loud as hell, I had to turn it down to 3 in the Windows volume mixer, and even that was still a touch too loud.
Anyway, I had a good time and the game kept me with a smile on my face for 90% of it. I don't know if I would agree with its price at the moment, wait until it's on sale if you want an easy, charming, 8-ish hour game.
2022
any game that has the ability to inspire me to spend hours translating a fictional language just to uncover more about the game is a 5 star in my book
2023
"the game is playing itself, jon"
it's a pretty polished experience as far as like, presentation and environments are concerned, but there isn't much substance here. if you're not already a fan of the series then there's nothing here for you.
one of my biggest gripes was the writing. pretty much all of the straw hats were boiled down to their running jokes for 75% of the dialogue, which gets old incredibly fast.
major shoutout to the inclusion of auto battling and speed ups, this game would have been completely unbearable without it. i spent most of the game in auto battles and was able to switch windows to continue my hunt for the woodcutting pet in OSRS (didn't get it).
OH ALSO i never figured out what the yaya cubes were for, and never figured out how to open the locked chests that were scattered around the world. i didn't try very hard to figure it out, and i'm not sure if that detail is more of a knock on the game or my brain.
it's a pretty polished experience as far as like, presentation and environments are concerned, but there isn't much substance here. if you're not already a fan of the series then there's nothing here for you.
one of my biggest gripes was the writing. pretty much all of the straw hats were boiled down to their running jokes for 75% of the dialogue, which gets old incredibly fast.
major shoutout to the inclusion of auto battling and speed ups, this game would have been completely unbearable without it. i spent most of the game in auto battles and was able to switch windows to continue my hunt for the woodcutting pet in OSRS (didn't get it).
OH ALSO i never figured out what the yaya cubes were for, and never figured out how to open the locked chests that were scattered around the world. i didn't try very hard to figure it out, and i'm not sure if that detail is more of a knock on the game or my brain.
2012
This review contains spoilers
most of the puzzles are fun, the gravity mechanic is annoying to deal with though. good aesthetic, the professor is charming, but MAN that ending peters out so fast lmao
2022
This review contains spoilers
beeny
2022
pretty rough around the edges but had some very cool moments at the end
2014
other than the times it was extremely unfun, it's pretty good
2022
it's more of a 9.5 but this game kept me hooked for 3 weeks straight
2021
nothing could have prepared me for the things 2-X made me feel
2021
would be 9/10 if the game had a map