The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Sure its a good game but its definitely not the best 3D zelda or one of the best games of all time:

1. The enemy variety is awful. In every part of the map you mainly fight the same 3 enemies: bokoblins, moblins and lizalfos. Changing their level doesn't really add any difference, the fights against these 3 get really tedious. There really should have been different sets of enemies for each section of the map

2. Some of the shrines are lazy. There are too many combat shrines which are all basically the same fight with a guardian and there are some shrines which have no gameplay and say "You've already completed the challenge" despite the fact that there is barely any challenge for some of these (for example, one requires you to get to the top of a skull eye which is really easy) but other shrines already had a challenge to enter and still contain gameplay which just doesn't make sense

3. The main bosses are bad. The 4 fights against the Ganon blights are too similar and the final boss was kind of a let down for me: the first phase is too short if you completed the rest of the game as it loses most of its health at the start and the 2nd phase with the big Ganon on the field felt very anticlimactic, it is just a sitting duck with really inaccurate attacks that you have to do target practice on. This is a shame considering other legend of zelda games usually put a lot of emphasis on memorable and unique bosses...

4. A lot of the world is very empty. Compare the outside world to the starting tutorial world and it really becomes apparent how much nothingness is in a lot of the map

5. The story is very basic for a legend of zelda game: it is basically all summed up in that tapestry song cutscene and it doesn't progress or develop on it much with the memories

6. The soundtrack does have a few good songs but for the most part it is just random piano noises, its definitely not as iconic or memorable as other legend of zelda games like ocarina of time

7. The weapon breaking system is a cool idea at first but it does get really annoying, there is no durability meter or ways to repair weapons so when you get good weapons you are afraid to use it as you don't want to waste it, leaving you playing most of the game with bad weapons

I guess i'll be the one to say it. Definitely a fun game at times, but the issues that made themselves known throughout my playthrough were glaring. Mind you, I am viewing this game after playing ALttP and OoT consecutively.

The story is contrived and not very compelling. Voice acting was very unneeded as well. After playing OoT, I do not think they would be able to come up with anything better though. I really did not feel invested at all with the townspeople and heroes that assisted Link 100 years ago. Granted, I don't play games for the story at all, but the game really does quite the job beating you over the head with Ganon bad, Link good.

I didn't initially mind the weapon durability mechanic, but after really playing this game, the joy of finding an awesome weapon was quickly gone after realizing even the stronger weapons will still break rather quickly. Imagine acquiring a Great Thunderblade only to realize it will break after killing 2-3 Moblins. Just like the shitty Traveler's Sword I used at the beginning of the game! It's nice that some have positive attributes like Durability+ and Attack+, but those are seemingly random pickups, and to my knowledge, there is no way to enchant your weapons with those effects.

Although the climbing mechanic is a great addition, making it literally impossible to climb anything during a rainstorm is a really dumb idea. Sure maybe slipping every now and then would have been fine, but slipping 100% of the time is insulting. You basically have to either plot a new destination as opposed to the one you were originally heading out to, or just stay there for 5 real life minutes till the storm blows away. Neither of which are pleasurable. I can't tell you the amount of times I was in the middle of scaling either a tower or mountain, then all of a sudden rain happens. Oh well! Time to do something else I guess!

In relation to poor weather, lightning storms automatically forcing you to disarm yourself of anything metal is a really dumb forced mechanic. You will always get hit by lightning unless you remove your melee weapon/bow/shield. It's really frustrating when you are in the middle of a battle with a Guardian (or anything really), and a lightning storm happens out of nowhere, forcing you to flee after disarming yourself.

Although the wide open area environment is one of the largest that I have seen in a game, there is actually a whole lot of nothing going on with the desolate plains you traverse most of the time. Sure it looks pretty, but I found myself running for 2 minutes in a line without really encountering anything remotely interesting along the way at times. Lacking enemy variety is a disappointment as well. With this presentation of the Zelda universe in mind, this game feels like it is trying to be something it is not at times. I do not really care for the cartoony nature of the enemies or animals, because a game like this really reminds me of Skyrim and Farcry, except it is intended for a younger audience. It is really trying to be the epic, badass game, but then you arrive in villages and you are reminded you are playing a Zelda game when you interact with the quirky, cartoony residents. At this point, this is making me hope Elder Scrolls 6 fixes all the shit that was wrong with Skyrim, because this title seems like it is drawing too much influence from its contemporaries, which makes it feel like something it is not at times. This series is actually in a really awkward spot in time with that in mind, because this series initially influenced almost every sandbox RPG, but now the series feels like it is borrowing from games that it originally influenced. It lost some of its charm during the translation to this kind of format. OoT felt like it was definitely its own Nintendo product. BotW feels like a haphazard culmination of modern video game mechanics thrown into a stew of Nintendo nostalgia. Having a lack of music most of the times makes entering ruins and new locations lack impact as well. I thought it was kind of jarring how austere entering new areas felt. I guess it makes sense in the context of the detached nature of the landscapes from the damage that has been done, but going from new ruins location to new ruins locations didn't really feel special at all. I appreciated some of the tunes in towns like the remix of the Windwaker theme and Hateno village. Hyrule Caste was great too.

Now, about the shrines. I actually prefer shrines over finding heart pieces scattered over Hyrule, but I really wish the shrines were more varied in design and feel, even if some of the puzzles are fun. All of them seem like a copy/paste of the interior, which feels really lazy. None of them really felt special after the first few. A lot of them can actually be accomplished by cheesing with fire arrows and other ways of unintended manipulation, which felt even lazier by design. Because of that, some felt easier than they should have because Nintendo didn't force only one answer down your throat for some of them. Also, the gyro puzzles are something fucking no one asked for. Every single one of them was absolute torture. Like I said, I actually like the idea of the shrines, I just think the design and objectives could have been implemented a lot more tastefully.

Bosses do not seem too interesting either. They all look the same. All of them are homogenous shadowy beings in which the only variation is the element they represent in the region you are in. They all lack the character that I felt ALttP and OoT brought to the table. None feel unique and gripping like most of the earlier entries of this series. None are particularly difficult either. Also having Ganon looking like a combination of a guardian and any of the dungeon bosses in this game was also very disappointing. Talking about Ganon, it seems that the most awkward thing about this game is that it doesn't force you to complete all four Divine Beasts OR obtain the Master Sword. I was actually looking for the royal armor set after my third divine beast, only to accidentally trigger the final boss after exploring for a while. What the fuck is the point of introducing an objective that is part of the main quest that you seemingly need to fulfill before finally taking on the final boss, but actually don't? How the shit does not making it mandatory to completing all the dungeons in this game make any sense? The way this game was structured was absolutely bewildering to me after beating Ganon prematurely. What the fuck is the point of the Master Sword as well? After I beat this, I realized how slipshod the game design was compared to early entries. The ascent through the castle and infiltrating various enemy locations along with the great music accompanying it was awesome though, I will say. All the goodies you find are cool as well.

Having four dungeons with no sense of intending the player to go to one in particular (really just at your leisure) seems rather careless. The whole game feels like it just wants you to fuck around with lush empty landscapes while honing your combat skills against repetitive enemies and doing rather insignificant side quests, and then completing the game whenever you want.

I will still probably try the sequel to this game whenever that comes out, just to see if they fixed my gripes. Honestly, if the main quest structure gets fixed, that would be a huge improvement already. I feel like this had a decent formula on a few things, but they fucked up other things with lazy design and lackluster decisions. I really do feel like this game had the potential to be as amazing as most reviewers are claiming it to be, but it just never got there for me. Surely Nintendo will fix some of the bullshit in this in BotW 2.

With all the negativity I harbored from this playthrough, I will say that I still enjoyed a decent part of the game. The combat feels good, the weapons look cool, I like the cooking system, some of the shrines are fun (and the dungeons feeling like a larger shrine, although feeling lazy at times, were a bit fun at times altering whatever gimmick each dungeon had to morph it), climbing is great (barring weather fuckery), Hyrule Castle easily being the best part of the game, and paragliding was a perfect addition to roam the open skies. But seriously, playing this game with the hindsight of understanding the precedent Nintendo laid with past classic Zelda titles, and actually playing games that this game clearly drew influence from, rating this higher than OoT is ludicrous.

cool, zelda is good again

I will stand by this until the end of time. Breath of the Wild is the single best game of all time.

A lot of the time in open world games there isn't a lot that you can actually do, the options seem limitless until you try to do something that the game doesn't like. For example in almost all of Rockstar's recent games, if you try to complete a level in a way that isn't the exact way they intended you to, you fail.

This isn't the case at all for Breath of the Wild. While most open world games let you have freedom, they will almost always restrict it at some points, Breath of the Wild doesn't care how you complete any given obstacle, it just cares that you do it.

I could go on an on about the sense of exploration that this game gives you or how beautiful the landscapes are but you'll really only understand by playing the game.

I will say however, the boss fights can be a little easy, and the story is just fine, but the world and the exploration make up for it.

I didn't get super far into this. It was fine, but then I started playing Elden Ring and that kind of stole the Open World game hype.

Although I quite enjoyed playing through this game at first when the Switch first came out, I ended up putting it down shortly after Hateno Village, for a few main reasons.

The tutorial, as everyone says, does quite a good job at establishing the mechanics, atmosphere, and overall gameplay loop right off the bat. It's really fun to go through...the first time. The problem is that it really does not lend itself well to replayability at all, and while I've wanted to revisit this game and give it another chance, the Great Plateau ends up serving as the great barrier for that happening for me because I do not want to slog through 1-2 full hours of it to be able to get onto the rest of the game.

And as everyone also says, the weapon durability system feels absolutely dreadful, and it's the main thing that's been on my mind whenever I think back to this game. I focus on "consumable syndrome" quite a bit in games, looking at why it happens, what could've been made different to not invoke it, and Breath of the Wild sticks out in my mind as the centerpiece example of consumable syndrome in full effect. It just feels so bad having your weapon break when in a camp of enemies, and then the only reward you get is another weapon of similar quality which will then break when you try to defeat the next camp. By the time I first put the game down, I ended up just using tree branches and Remote Bombs because those were the only things I could guarantee that I wouldn't end up losing.

I've seen a fair share of people defending this system as not being that bad for X or Y reasons, a big thing I noticed after playing Elden Ring is how it doesn't need to be this way.
Because how Elden Ring handles its own reward system for clearing out content is A) having every single enemy give out EXP for you to increase your overall power through level-ups and B) giving out weapons, smithing stones to upgrade those weapons, armor, as well as talismans and special skills that both give special passive and active functions to the player. So when you clear out an area, oftentimes you'll find some interesting thing within one of those pools that could end up being quite the satisfying grab for your build. It's entirely possible that one of the small little catacombs you clear out could drop something for your build (like the Winged Scythe for my Dex/Faith build) that will last you for the entire rest of the game. The game is built around you trying various weapons out, but it doesn't force you into that variety because the game knows that people will just naturally want to try out different things all on their own.
But even in the absolute worst-case scenario, you go through an area that drops nothing useful or interesting for your build, you're just sticking to your one single weapon for the rest of the game, you still get a bunch of EXP to make it worth your while. It makes me wonder; why couldn't Breath of the Wild have done something similar? Why not have enemies drop a resource that you could spend on even just Heart Containers and Stamina Vessels? Why not have weapons be spread out throughout the world so your toolbox gradually, permanently increases the more you progress?

For what it's worth, though, the combat was otherwise quite satisfying, with the weapons all feeling satisfying to use (when they're not breaking on you) and the Rune abilities encouraging a lot of creativity when it comes to dealing with encounters. I even did like the Shrines as small little puzzle-oriented excursions from the rest of the open world. I'm curious how they'll end up handling the overall durability/rewards system in Tears of the Kingdom; will they try something new with the system, or will they just stick with the current durability system unchanged because it's simpler and enough people were fine with it anyway? Because if they pick the latter again, I don't think I'm going to be all that interested.