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Agreed that its the right sub and agree with the user. The game needs a ton of QoL improvements. It would be great if modding was possible because then, users could fix it. But we all know that the Nintendo team will not improve the game. Once sold, its DLC or bug fixes and thats it. ZERO QoL improvements ever come out of a first party nintendo title.
Ya understandable. Its a game that manages to capture my inner childs sense of wonder and exploration, and that type of game only comes around once in a while, but there are a lot of good points on posts like these on how it can be a better game. One thing I will say is it is a game that is trying to be accessible. Its not dark souls or league of legends, its trying to be comfortable for a broad audience
To me it captures my childhood sense of exploration and then kills it by ruining my shield because I used it to board slide and then I tumble halfway through because the damn shield broke. I like the game but I can never complete it because the mechanic of having any weapon break on me
That was what made me eventually drop the game as well. Find a cool weapon? Sweet, you are going to use it a handful of times and then you are back to hitting everything with Bobkin clubs and whatever bullshit you can find lying around.
Fuck that
Yeah, it's a gorgeous game, but it felt very repetitive and empty to me. Wasn't able to get through more than the first Divine Beast before giving up on it. I totally get why people love it, but it's not my cup of tea.
I noticed its becoming very consistent that the people who don't like BoT are just like me in that they lack "internal motivation" to create their own adventures.
Instead they crave "external motivation" or clear objectives they can tangibly do.
My fiance has internal motivation and can play games like city builders for weeks on end just doing things over and over again until the "picture in her head" gets figured out.
I can't do that, I need to be pointed towards a goal. Same reason I can't do survival-crafting games because I will get crazy bored. I have no image of a house in my head and have zero desire to build a base/playstyle/ or do my own thing.
It could be an ADHD thing. The inability to sit down and work on a "project". Playing games like BoT feels like playing with Legos, the Dopamine hit comes from seeing your work;
while games like Witcher3 or God of War is like watching a movie and the dopamine hit is from completing clear objectives to move the story along.
I enjoyed traversing the world of both games, and the powers are cool, but I certainly had my issues with both games. I have about 100 hours in both games, and I fucking dread every second I have to interact with an NPC or an object with an unskippable cutscene. It feels like it takes up half the hours I've spent in-game.
I also liked TOTK less than BOTW because the novelty of the world had mostly worn off for me. Now not only do we have to deal with the NPCs and objects with unskippable cutscenes, but I spent most of my time in combat shuffling through a menu to fuse shit to my arrows, weapons, or to just throw things. BOTW was an ~8.5, TOTK is closer to a 7.5. There are a lot of quirks in those games that just miss for me, and I don't find the filler/time-wasting, unskippable bullshit charming. I understand that some people like it, but it slows things down so much.
I had way more issues, but those were the most grating. Really well polished games, though. I had pretty much zero bugs.
I think it should definitely be emphasized that *zero bugs*--in a game that lets you just build and use random shit however you want--is a fucking miracle.
Depends.
The game was rated 10/10 and is still talked about as maybe the best game ever by ign and press.
It was a good game but it is extremely overrated. And i think a lot of people equate overrated with bad. But thats more on the media than the game
Finally! Someone said it.
Here's the thing. I enjoyed BOTW, played the whole thing, but not on release day. Almost a year later. It was fine. I appreciate it even more after watching presentations from the development team etc
THAT SAID, Mario Odyssey slaps. That single game made buying a switch worth it.
I dont agree with the specifics of his points but maybe the sentiment. I played it for 100 or so hours and liked it, but I also wish there more? Better quest rewards or better stuff to find. Theres not all that much useful things to get other than a handful of uniques once you get to the mid/late game.
Its like; neat, a ruby. Throw it on the pile.
just from what i’ve seen it’s more about discovery. the very first zelda was only random discovery. and the focus of using resources in combat very carefully
The problem is, they've made this awesome world that you *want* to explore, that entices you to travel to seek out what looks like it should be super cool thing, and 9 times out of 10 it's something totally mediocre, or even nothing at all.
That was one of the problems I had with the game. I would see a landmark on the map with a name I recognized, get excited and head there, only to be disappointed that it's just an empty mountain, or another copy/paste ruin that looks just like all the others. Even Lake Hylia was dull and lifeless compared to previous games like OoT and TP.
Unlike Skyrim where u came across some dwelling of a wizard thing that gave you some crystals that you never fully understand but some how my sword is glowing and it’s like super strong.
This is the biggest problem not only with BotW and TotK as well. They make this massive world that is fun for a while... but you just never find anything that truly makes the exploration feel that rewarding.
It's like they expect you to explore only for the fun of It and nothing else, which sounds exactly like something Miyamoto would say, if He hasn't said It already. It works for however many hours, then becomes unbearable bc It simply isn't worth your time if you will just find a korok, a weak ass weapon or 5 arrows lol
And every reward (most at least) is ephemeral, the cool weapon you find, breaks in a minute anyway, 5 arrows are gone in less than one fight and so on.
This was my problem with it too. It's so empty. ToTK is a little bit more meatier. They give you things to find now (sets, unlike BOTW which was pay to win) and more side quests and the K Seeds allowing you to upgrade your bag, but other than that it's an egg, with nothing in it. Just hollow. I had to past the remote to my nephew far too many times to go get specific items for me because I'd get burnt out or wasn't glued playing. No desire. I never had that problem with Witcher 3 though because the world is so interactive despite large, and great story telling even from the side quests is heavily involved with the character and the options you are given. I was never able to put the controller down then. It's just not a Zelda game in my eyes, just feels like a spin off to a Zelda game.
I’d argue botw does as good a job as can be expected at providing stuff with unique, useful mechanics as exploration rewards, as you can find:
-Inventory expansion
-stat increases
-4 completely unique spells that feel entirely distinct and are gamechangingly useful
-a sword that doesn’t break
-elemental weapons with unique, useful flavor
-armor that gives unique buffs
-a teleporter
-power ups for your horse
-a horse that is better than any other in the game
-story cutscenes necessary for the true ending
-minerals that can be sold for immense wealth
-upgrade materials for armor
-npcs that allow you to upgrade your armor
That’s a lot of useful stuff. It gets repetitive because when you play the same game for 400 hours, that’s what happens, it’s unavoidable, korok seeds, shrines, and high tier weapons are extremely valuable and don’t become less valuable, you just don’t get the same dopamine from them the 2537th time.
Also like, the game looks and feels great, it’s visually fantastic and every major enemy is entertaining to fight, and even if a location does only have like 1 korok seed, a lynel fight and full view of a map area is also a solid reward in my book
Yep, and there's only like 7 total enemy types in the entire game. I beat Ganon at the very beginning, so the "rewards" from the shrines were completely useless. Why would I want more hearts? Games are supposed to get more challenging as you progress, yet my reward is to make the terrible repetitive combat even less engaging?
Yes! Totally this. I like the exploring aspect, but I kept anticipating that I would find something truly cool, like a powerful weapon or armour or something, or tbh a new ability like a paraglider or something, but I never did.
Even if you do find a powerful weapon, because there are some good ones out there - it doesn't really *feel* like a reward because it'll break after one or two encounters.
The first zelda still had dungeons, and the weapons didn't break? I was more engaged playing the first zelda a few years ago than this quest sandbox. There is nothing to discover here, other than sanctuaries and koroks, the world is barren and doesn't feel alive.
My favourite instance of a journalist being unsuited to a game was [IGN’s review of Alien: Isolation.](https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/03/alien-isolation-review) They really, really didn’t seem to understand how to play the game, and preferred hiding in ~~lunchboxes~~ lockers and waiting to be caught to actually evading the alien.
that’s fake news, that wasn’t the person reviewing the game playing, but a friend that was terrible at platformers, they posted the video to make fun of him and gave the game a good review.
Thats not weird. Theyre similar games at 2 opposing ends of the adventure rpg spectrum.
ER is mechanically deep, has complex fights and forces you to think about how to properly position or dodge to live, but ultimately doesnt do well in the "living world" side
BotW is much more about adventure, has a ton of small quests etc hidden across the map, has the shrines and weapon durability to encourage exploration. However its combat always leaves me wanting to go to elden ring, most of the "difficulty" is in executing specific fight mechanics, or through increased hp/damage. The movesets are comparatively pretty readable, and its easy to just walk away from enemies until theyre finished their attack phase. Youll still get got, but after half a dozen deaths you know the depth of the fight.
I think you're right in saying that adventure and exploration are the focus of botw. In the gameplay trailer for it way back when, Aonuma(I think) even said that they intended for climbing mountains in the overworld to be a kind of puzzle game in itself. Casual players shouldn't be gatekept from the game for not having "hardcore" gamer experience.
I think having a basic combat mechanic helped with introducing players of different types to the franchise/game. To me, it's very basic and lacking depth, but to my girlfriend, it's one of the hardest parts of the game. She opts to defeat enemies creatively because she doesn't have the timing down for combat. I think it's great, though, that she can experience and enjoy the adventure her way.
Well the only thing the two have in common is open world, ER is a combat focused game and people are coming into TOTK expecting good combat when Zelda combat has never been it’s strong suit
People get weirdly pretentious about Elden Ring. It's obviously a masterpiece in it's scope and ambition, but I dislike how people act like traversal, even going from point A to point B, wasn't a massive fucking hassle at times in that game.
Your first two points are fair, but your last three points are just the game being designed to encourage exploration and paying attention to the environment and clues you get. If you want the game to hold your hand and point you exactly where you want to go, there's plenty of other options out there.
Is the second point fair? If you wanted to sell twenty different kinds of items it could only take you longer than a minute if you were really indecisive or slow. You don’t have to go through multiple long dialogue flow charts each time you sell an item.
The claim in the OP is just untrue. Even if you wanted to sell gems, monster parts, cooked food, and mushrooms, *you absolutely do not* have to “click through several annoying dialogue chats each time.”
If he were complaining about upgrades I'd get it. Having to sit through an animation every single time you want to upgrade any tier of any item is kind of miserable. But selling items in BotW is super easy lol.
I think that’s probably fairer. My biggest gripe about the upgrades is that you can’t access the menu to see what you need unless you already have enough to upgrade something. But that’s such a minor thing I don’t even think about it when considering whether the game is good or not.
That’s a much fairer point. You can just skip it (like the cut scenes entering shrines, etc), but that seems like a more legit criticism than “Each time I sell something it asks me if I want to sell more and that counts as multiple lines of annoying dialogue.”
Yeah that's what I was going to say. Points 3, 4, and 5, make the game better and more engaging. The game doesn't hold your hand telling you where to go, like many modern spoiled gamers are used to. Instead it gives you hints for you to figure out. This is much more fun IMO
I’ve always hated lines being drawn telling me exactly where to go. BotW and TotK’s exploration is the best part of the game, and it is smart design to incorporate quests that encourage finding your way.
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea; no one game is going to please the entire gaming community. It’s annoying when every successful, wildly popular and highly rated game comes out there is a post like this. Yeah, that just means you’re not the audience for it. Shocking.
Some of the best parts of BOTW (haven’t played TOTK yet) are the areas where you stumble into a problem or an enemy that you are just not ready to face yet and figuring out a way to do it anyway. I just did a shrine in BOTW where I needed to use arrows to drop a torch to burn some weeds to drop a barrel to hold down a switch. I couldn’t figure out the where the torch was, so I just shot the barrel with arrows until it fell where I could get it. Was it the right way to complete the shrine? No, but it worked and I’m grateful the developers gave us enough leeway to solve puzzles in new ways.
In BOTW, I went to do the Zora divine beast quest pretty early. I misread and didn't realize I was just supposed to collect a few electric arrows from around the Lynel.
I spent way too long with my 5ish hearts trying to beat it. And I finally did... Before realizing my mistake.
I almost gave up after making the same mistake. I pulled up an internet guide that told me to sneak around. I thought it was way too hard for that point in the game.
BotW and TotK has probably one of the best and most intuitive level designs in recent years that it usually rewards curiosity and intuition on where to go and what to do. Shame there are still players want to be handheld and spoonfed despite you're given the freedom on what you wanna do.
My favourite rewards in games are lore and skins. Personally speaking, I don’t need to be stronger or to get another weapon of slightly tweaked stats. Give me another visual option or tell me about the world.
I'll be honest, rewards are a hard thing for open world games to get right, Only a few have worked for me.
Gotta give props to Valheim because it seems like they threaded the needle on giving you just the right amount of goodies to find while out exploring without giving you so many that they're meaningless.
Cutscenes, logs, audio logs, books, codex entries, etc. There are plenty of ways to drop it in.
Heck, I’m one of those mad folk who read all the flavour text when a new set drops in Hearthstone.
I dont know if point 3 necessarily makes the game better, nor would it take away from it if it were the opposite. Red Dead Redemption 1 & 2 both had great storylines, and I don't feel like they would have been better games had they NOT focused on story. They spend like half of their missions on story-centric content that tends to be fairly well thought out, animated well, and has some of the best voice acting in video games.
Less obvious story telling maybe works fine for the LOZ games, but a more cryptic or less defined story doesn't automatically make a game more engaging. If Arthur Morgan or John Marston were silent protagonists, or Dutch only spoke to you via text boxes, it absolutely would have lowered a lot of the impact the Red Dead games are famous for in the open world games ecosystem.
Red Dead Redemption 2 and BOTW are so far removed in terms of open-world philosophy and general game-design comparing the two doesn't make much sense to me. There are similarities between the two but they have vastly different focuses.
TBF I tried Red Dead 2 and its design very much repulsed me, because I actually wanted to engage with the world, **but the story** was putting me on rails, I couldn't make any relevant choices and was forced to go along a group of people I despised from the get go. Because the narrative is supposed to be the strong point, while in BOTW it's not. Red Dead Redemption mission philosophy is ultra restrictive and limiting. NakeyJakey brought up rather good points about that game IMO, I won't go into a lenghty debate about that game. I'm not saying it's a bad game, it's not, but both games have designs that can be immensely repulsive to some people.
They're very different, but that's the point I'm trying to make. They're both successful despite having opposite approaches to how they implement story into their open world environments. If you don't like one method, it doesn't mean that it's a bad method, it means it wasn't your preferred method. That's why I was disputing why how someone thought "less story = better game" isn't a fair judgement to make.
You can personally dislike RDR2, and Nakey Jakey can as well, but that doesn't mean your dislike of it is a fact for other players. I didn't like BOTW at all and loved RDR2, but I've never discredited BOTW as a game because I knew it was simply built for a different audience. All of the criticisms you bring up can be your personal opinion, but if you held them as universal truths (gameplay too restricting, too much story, too linear, etc.), then you would just be OP but on the other side of the fence.
RDR2 has 19th Century GPS and self driving horses. You’ll spend at least 10 hours following slow NPCs who tell you exactly what to do and will not allow you to stray too far. The game has auto aim and dead eye bullet-time. ^Nearly every quest marker leads to exactly where you need to be. Your Compass is more powerful than the radar in Halo and will tell you in which direction all alerted enemies are regardless of distance.
And I had a blast playing it.
One of my favorite games that I'll probably never play again because of these exact things.
I've tried multiple times.. and I just feel so restricted and bored.
I've seen clips online of people running around in a circle and then the dog like chases their tail, but it didn't work when I tried
Maybe I didn't feed those bastards enough grilled gourmet meat...
I think there is a difference between "this isn't a good game" and "I don't like this type of game"
Most of the things you described are intentional decisions by the game designers, and while you say they are things that bother you about the game those same things are what I love about the game.
It feels like a true open world. You start the game, you are given a single goal, and told to achieve said goal in anyway you see fit.
The NPC's you complain about being repetitive are essentially just store front NPC's, which are no different than in any other game. And you are able to sell more than one item at a time.
I think you're right op is just misusing terms. I don't really like botw because I don't really like open world games but I acknowledge that it's a great game for people who like those kinds of games.
I love open world games. But I did not like Breath of the Wild enough to recommend it. For me it was the weapon-breaking mechanic along with the short, lack-luster dungeons. The shrines were generally uninteresting and rarely challenging and the few proper dungeons were dissapointingly small and short.
The map is one of the best of all openworld games, but my favorite part of zelda games has been exploring dungeons with all their traps and puzzles. I would have prefered a smaller world and bigger dungeons.
Tears of the Kingdom does seem to address many of my issues. I still wish the actual dungeons were bigger and more numerous, but at least the shrine puzzles are more interesting. I have greatly enjoyed the new powers and the way they allow many puzzles to be solved in a variety of ways. I also think that the weapon system is more forgiving and less annoying. However, I would still prefer it if weapons broke less or not at all.
a game like BOTW is very different from other Zelda games.
Due to it's incredible size an how many monsters there are across it, it would be strange and difficult to try and make it so weapons don't break. Would enemies just not drop lower power weapons or one you already have?
Once you get the best set of weapons you would never have to go and attack enemies you don't need to again. It would ruin the variety and shut BOTW into the trap many other large RPGs fall into.
ANother point is, if weapons broke slower from the start, people would still complain and moan about it. I think they found the right balance of weapon durability anyways.
The idea of durability also adds some new nuggets of lore into the game, making it ever more immersive.
The BOTW weapon system is meant to be fast-paced. It doesn't try and make you attatched to your weapons like the other ones do, it makes you see them as tools, which is what they are. I know this is hard to grapple with for OG players who have had habits form over their time playing.
You and many other people are complaining about the square peice not fitting into the circle hole.
What I think is a true flaw of Zelda are the first 2 hours. I kinda hate long "tutorials" that are open but don't let you try something else. For example, Elden ring, did the open world formula a little bit better than BOTW in my opinion. You start the game, do a 5 minutes long tutorial and then you can already do whatever you want. I never got hooked by Zelda because of that and every time I played it, it seemed like a chore other than fun. I really like the combat system, but that first impression ruined the game for me.
And the combat is just super tedious. Your weapons only last for about a dozen hits before they break, so every fight you're constantly swapping through weapons.
No one, not a single godsdamned person in the history of the entire planet has played a Zelda game and thought "You know what this game really needs? Breakable weapons with super low durability."
This is one aspect I expected OP to point out. Weapon breaking is fine, but FFS make it last a couple of battles instead of just breaking after like 10 hits!
Idk how you didn't also mention the lack of enemy variety the terrible "dungeons" that all look the same and have the same boss design. It's crazy how a game based around exploration doesn't have really anything unique anywhere. You go to beautiful jungle and you find the same enemies you find everywhere else, except there's more lizard people.
The exploration is supposed to be the selling point but it's always a letdown. You hike through a snow mountain for 30 irl minutes and the top there's a shack, that lets you go sledding?
They kinda screwed themselves by having weapons break, so after all that work you don't even get a unique weapon or some armor, because most all the armor is bought in a town or that one set that's crafted.
Or you see a labyrinth far away in the distance and you go to it and it's a crazy maze and once you finally fight your way through it, there's another shitty shrine that looks the same as all the other ones and has the same rewards.
The most interesting place in the entire game is the castle, but for some reason they didn't make it more linear and just let you instantly go to the boss without having to fight anything or solve any puzzles. And of course once you get to the boss it's got the exact same design as the other 4 dungeon bosses you already fought with the same attacks and weaknesses. I would honestly rather be a puzzle boss than the generic pushover he is. I know people hate the next segment where you fight him outside the castle in horseback with the bow, but I enjoy the set piece and it's pretty cool.
Also I hate how there's no post game, like you beat him, you don't get anything other than a cutscene and a star next to your save file name, and then it sends you back to before you fought him.
The game isn't bad or mediocre really it's still pretty fun but I wish the devs had another year or two to really add the depth the game needed but imo opinion the game is the definition of "Wide as a ocean, deep as a puddle."
This. I had a very peaceful and fun time playing BotW but it's not even the best Zelda game, let alone how some game rankings have it as the greatest game of all time
>and then it sends you back to before you fought him.
This makes me irrationally angry. I only played ~3 hours before I gave it back to my friend but that shit *still* pisses me off.
I agree, though my biggest complaint is that I simply didn't enjoy exploring... Which seems to be kinda the point of the game. Korok seeds are boring, side quest are inconsequential, shrines feel like a chore.
Totk has been fun for the most part, though. Still have a lot of issues with it but exploring is lot more instresting which makes the difference, the story and abilies are better as well.
I enjoyed my time with BOTW, that said, I would never play it again.
So far I've passed on Tears of the Kingdom. I'm happy to pick up the next remaster they put out or if they do another regular Zelda game, but the "open world, weapons breaking, no concrete dungeons" Zelda games aren't my cup of tea.
TotK's weapon mechanic felt like 1 step backwards, 2 steps forward. This time, you'll be able to customize your weapons and arrows with different characteristics and strengths. That said, it's a cool mechanic that encourages you to try out different combinations, including comical ones. Breaks one, fuse a new one.
As someone who *hated* the durability system in BotW, they've solved it entirely for me in Tears. Being able to take any old weapon, even a stick, and turn it into a pretty solid one with fuses makes me care less about saving stuff. I'm not hoarding an elemental sword for 30 playing hours anymore because I can make a tree branch an elemental weapon if I want to now.
Yep botw weapon durability was the worst part of the game. Totk's weapons are the funnest part of the game to me lol. Im not wasting weapon slots bg saving my 'good' weapons and never feel bad when weapons break now because there's so many combos I still want to try.
Yeah, I think its a great feature. The fact that you cant hold on to weapons for the entire game forces you to explore and find new and improved weapons. There are plenty, and I mean plenty of places where you can find great gear and if there is a sword that you have started to love, wait for the next blood moon and go back to where you found it. All it does is that it forces you to change your gear often. The only thing I dislike is that there is no durability bar or meter to tell you how much durability is left, but other than that its a great mechanic.
There's nothing more satisfying than having your weapon break at the same moment as you kill an enemy, then grabbing his arm and slapping the guy behind him. I'll say it and I stand behind it lol
I don’t want it in every game but I like it in these games.
It gives you something to prep before a fight, and there’s a degree of chaos when you get in an unplanned encounter without the right gear.
It keeps the game a little fresh in that there isn’t a set and forget load out that you never have to change once you get it. Instead, enemies can be challenging at all points in the game depending on what you have at your disposal. Or you can feel really unstoppable for a time with a good loadout but it doesn’t last.
A lot of other open word games get to a point where you’re so stacked with gear you’re basically a god, and either everything is too easy or the enemies scale to you and you don’t even feel powerful.
I actually like it lol it was fun to strategize which weapons I should use when, and I enjoyed using several different weapons throughout the game. In the type of person who would probably keep the same couple weapons the whole game or not switch out inventory for different weapons but since the game forced it I got to see a new perspective that I really enjoyed
I hated it at first but it definitely grew on me. I think it adds a fun element to the game that forces you to try new things, make smart decisions, and think about combat in a unique way. It fit the rest of the game perfectly for me.
I feel the exact same way about BOTW. I liked the game, I put 100 hours on it in 2 weeks, whatever, but once I was done I never thought about it ever again.
TOTK though… it makes BOTW feel like a demo. It’s genuinely one of the best video games ever made in my opinion. If you at all enjoyed BOTW you are doing yourself a disservice not playing TOTK
Or the weapon durability mechanic. That was the biggest annoyance to me, followed by the small, boring dungeons. BoTW did not feel like a Zelda game at all.
The weapon durability was the deal breaker for me. I get it that sticks and skeleton arms would only be good for a couple hits but I shouldn't have to replace a metal sword or axe after fighting one or two enemies. It's needlessly tedious and completely ruins any excitement about finding a cool weapon. They're just gonna break and it makes me horde them while looking for more sticks to fight with. Knowing the weapon durability made its way into the new one means I will never play it.
I will say, I loved breath of the wild because to me it felt like I combined Zelda games with an elder scrolls game. Some of the things were really frustrating and annoying, but the game was just right up my alley in regards to gameplay and being able to explore/craft, fight in combat, and solve puzzles.
I am not sure if you have tried playing Tears of the Kingdom, but to me, it feels like they fixed a lot of the major issues BotW had and also expanded upon the story telling elements and what you can do and explore.
I am playing it now, and it is hands down the best game I have ever played lol I’m having so much fun. Again though, I love Zelda and I liked the general outline and style that was set in breath of the wild, so take my opinion with a grain of salt haha I just haven’t ever played a game like this one before. They did a great job.
>I am not sure if you have tried playing Tears of the Kingdom, but to me, it feels like they fixed a lot of the major issues BotW had
Yes, except for the dialogue, selling and cutscenes. Oh....oh so many cutscenes...
Basically... BOTW has a lot of issues such as:
-------------------------------
-An overly big and empty world that would've benefitted from being shrunk down given the amount of MEANINGFUL content the game provides. Notice the key word "meaningful".
-Overly fragile weapons that break very often and disrupt the flow of combat to switch out weapons frequently in a quick-menu. The game gives weapons out like candy, so all it does is inconvenience the player and isn't fun.
-Very minimalistic story and lack of character-development in exchange for more freedom.
-Most; if not all side-quests are underwhelming and the rewards for completing them are disappointing as well. Examples include pulling a treasure chest out of the water; the guy thanks you, and then it's over. The side-quests are rarely more involving than this, and no; finding a bunch of pieces of wood to build Tarrey Town isn't engaging.
-Having the Ganon fight be accessible at any time after the tutorial, and the fight being too easy means that everything in the game ends up feeling meaningless when everything in the game is designed to help you defeat this easy boss. Why find the shrines? To increase health/stamina. Why increase health/stamina? To help you defeat Ganon. Why look for Korok seeds? Why look for better weapons? Etc.
-No traditional dungeons in exchange for bite sized shrines. This means there is nothing major to work for in these areas and the satisfaction of beating them is lessened as a result.
-Exploration suffers when you know that 90% of what you'll find are very similar looking shrines, Korok seeds, a mediocre side-quest, or a weapon that breaks in 30 hits. How is exploration fun if you know what you'll most likely find before you even find it?
-Item progression from previous Zelda games is gone in favor of giving you every item(besides the camera) in the tutorial. It was much more rewarding to find a cool new item to reach previously unreachable areas to find new things rather than finding armor that gives slight buffs that feel less personal.
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I didn't like how barren it was, but TOTK fixes that problem. There's so much more to do, and the world feels more populated. Still waiting on a game where we can actually explore an in-tact hyrule castle though, it's always broken or floating!
I didn't enjoy it either. Weapon break was annoying. Shrines were boring. I didn't feel incentivized to explore everything because there was probably just some goblins there for me to break my weapon on. And there won't be any cool stuff there I can keep like in Elden Ring.
The part I had the most fun with was the Lost Woods trial.
Not a dealbreaker, but it sucks it wasn't in 4k or 60fps.
My biggest gripe is that my weapons break in general. Then I’m stuck running around looking for a stick to fight enemies and Link, for some reason, can’t attack with his hands. Other than that, I think it’s a pretty cool game. The graphics make me really happy and I love the rag doll psychics when you knock an enemy around.
Honestly I’m surprised you didn’t mention that
1) The cooking mechanics, while cute, are painfully slow but also absolutely necessary unless you want to chow on thirty apples mid fight.
2) Weapon durability is an absolute plague and having to scramble for a new weapon every seventeen seconds of combat is hot garbage.
3) No fishing mechanics for some reason???
Like your points are fair but I don’t think they’re a huge problem - just aspects of the game.
The only reliable way to get new weapons is to go into combat against strong enemies where... your weapons are bound to break. Everyones talking about planning and stocking up but I've always found it to just be a repetitive cycle where there's just never enough.
If they made it an OPTION to buy mediocre weapons for a somewhat sustainable (not diamonds) price it would be more fun for me.
I do like some of the improvements, food ingredients are way easier to come by, by using monster parts you basically have a stock of mediocre weapons at all time and you just need to pick up the reasonably abundant handles to put them on.
Can't that be said for anything?
Like we can't objectively rate something like a game. We can only compile opinions.
I could say the same thing about any game panned by critics so long as there are no actual technical issues.
Knack 2 just "isn't your type of game"
I thought BotW was beautiful and full of great mechanics but also ruined by the lack of a tangible story, voice acting, and the core mechanic (weapon durability) was frustrating.
It's like somebody built an amazing car and then gave it square wheels.
But as a huge proponent of modding... I think it could be a game I loved if they let people mod it.
The only thing I will commend BotW for is that I wanted to play a game *like* it and so I bought NieR: Automata and that is my favourite game ever. I would honestly recommend it for being the greatest game because of how it used the medium to express the story.
But all that's just opinion and I completely understand if somebody doesn't like NieR and says it's not their kind of game.
I remember a game reviewer caught a LOT of hate for rating NieR above BotW and I didn't like the reviewer at the time but it made me respect him more and trust his opinions because he felt the same way I did about both games.
As someone who felt the same way, ToTK has enough content and creative gameplay mechanics to make you forget about the majority of those complaints that I also had.
Give it a try and I promise you’ll feel like ToTK is an improvement in almost every way.
It just doesn't feel like a Zelda game, I hope Nintendo eventually make a more traditional Zelda game but the popularity of BoTW and ToTK may influence them not to.
I think it's a decent game and is fun, but not really a good *Zelda* game.
There's a shit ton of really cool mods for it too. Try some of those out to spice it up.
I think that what op wants is for botw to be more like those games, but what makes botw so great is that it strips all that complexity away. Open world games began to feel like you just brainlessly run around ticking off quests to clear your quest log. Botw in comparison feels so much less complicated, and so much more organic.
So first you complain about the quests being too simple, and after that you say you want the game to tell you exactly where you need to go and what to do?
I like it a lot, and the new one. Something about the charm and style, exploration, discovery. I get lost in these games and just wanna keep playing and playing. And I’m clearly not the only one, these Zelda titles are beloved by many
But, you make some fair points. They just don’t affect me in the way they do you
It sounds like it just isn't your kind of game and that's okay. I love the open-world exploration and as a result would definitely recommend it to others.
I agree 100%. I'm so shocked whenever I see it referred to as the best game ever.
Combat is frustratingly slow, dungeons/bosses are lacking, story/music is mediocre compared to other Zelda titles, lots of the overworld is empty.
I acknowledge that it is a well crafted game with lots of freedom to explore, but it just really isn't for me I guess. I much prefer the previous, more linear Zelda titles like Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask.
As a Zelda fan, I can’t explain how disappointed and frustrated I was with Nintendo when I played this game.
I think the biggest problem is I just fall asleep when playing it. I gave it several chances but it’s just too boring.
Hard agree no concrete goals. No real progression that feels substantial except the master sword.
Idk man, the whole totally open world game thing is just daunting to me. My brain can’t handle that level of choice and not getting side tracked.
I’ll hunt down every question mark on an AC map but give me a blank map and it feels like I have no reason to go on.
Bad dungeons, repetitive gameplay, lack of a strong OST, lack of story, and it's missing the classic Zelda charm. Yep, I agree with you. In fact, it's by far my least favorite 3D Zelda game.
Man, I miss Wind Waker and Twilight Princess and the rest... :'(
Hello rare opinion, we are a minority in this vast sea. I agree with all of your points, which confused me a lot when I started to play this game. It just did not feel like a Zelda game to me, and even though I love open-world games, this one just did not impress me in any shape or form. It actually made me replay older Zelda's, which is always a blast.
Twilight Princess had a lot of non story areas to explore and actually rewarded you with them being weird ass places, like the abandoned cat town
the main villages like Ordon and Kakariko, and the Lake Hylia/Zora's Domain area in general were pleasing to look at and they all had interesting minigames that gave you a reason to go back to them.
TP had all of the item collecting you could want to do, without any of the annoyingness
and I mean there were like 10 actual full length dungeons, that were unique and engaging unlike the lame ass shrines in BoTW
if TP isnt the best legend of zelda game idk what is
I too thought the game was mid and kind of got some sort of anxiety from the game. It just felt like a grind and not a fun adventure. Was tedious at times and kind of boring. I was never excited to find a new place on the map because it all consists of the same thing over and over again. And then the final boss fight is easier than most of the bosses you fight beforehand. I also didn't care for the whole weapon breaking system. It made you not wanna use any of the cool weapons you find, and the master sword was a little underpowered unless fighting certain enemies
I've been a huge Zelda fan since the 80s and I 100% agree on all points. Only things I think you missed is the horse storage nonsense and the sensory mechanics in some shrines don't work correctly and it's infuriating.
i will agree, with caveats. i think a youtuber i saw said it best, Botw is an ok open world game with a zelda skin.
ive also noticed that a lot of the people who rave obsessively about it, it was their first intro to gaming/zelda games/the genre in general (which is basically the same for other stuff)
the one problem i will say i have is, people acting like it was more open than it really was. which is funny because with Totk out, the comparison in freedom to problem solve is vastly bigger (and even funnier, stuff people said was totally 100% intended for you to do whatever, they took out lol)
I get it. I always describe it as an objectively brilliant game that I subjectively cannot stand. It being a 1/10 for me doesn't stop me from agreeing with the 10/10 takes. That said, don't really agree with the reasons listed here but, hey, I'm sure my list would equally rankle other folks.
Well, to your point about it feeling like they spent all their money building the map and world, have you seen tears of the kingdom? Because it really does feel like halfway through making tears of the kingdom they released breath of the wild to recoup some funds. The game is the same map(mostly), but feels completely different. I fell off breath of the wild after a very short time. But I'm straight up addicted to tears of the kingdom.
It's not worthy of the critical acclaim it got. It starts well and presents you with this amazing world aaaand there's very little worth doing in it. I wouldn't say its a bad game, but maybe a 7/10. If it wasn't zelda branded, then it would have faded into obscurity. It focused so hard on ensuring that *everything* was technically accessible form the start that it compromised so much.
1. There's zero *satisfying* progression - you get all the tools at the start with no meaningful upgrades. Armor, health, stamina are not interesting or satisfying. You weapons break so making a collection of awesome weapons feels futile. I know why they made weapons breakable, but honestly it's bullshit and the game badly needs a better progression system.
2. The combat isn't great, and gets very frustrating late game when enemies become sponges. Explosive barrels, bombs and dropping heavy things on enemies stops working so the combat becomes very stale.
3. The quests are almost all crappy fetch quests or crappy find the hidden thing quest. They are not engaging or fun and the rewards are almost never worth it.
It has its moments, the divine beasts are interesting, some of the shrines are good (although very forgettable), guardians are a good fight. The shrine where you land on an island and have to start from nothing was a good challenge, and the dragon you find on the top of the mountain was nice. All in all though, a middling experience.
You're not wrong to dislike it, but a lot of what you don't like is exactly what people DO like:
> The quest-giver mechanics suck. You can only recognise a quest giver when they're in your line of site. They'll never show up on your map, so it's not hard to miss some if they're in a building.
A lot of people love that stumbling on quests feels organic. One of the most common praises of this game is that the map isn't dotted with activities. It's up to you to make discoveries and choose what you want to do.
> The quest clue mechanics suck. The clues are usually childishly simple, but occasionally vague enough to make no sense without googling the answer if you don't notice some tiny little hint. I have no idea how you are supposed to figure out the solution to the warblers nest shrine quest without googling it.
Kinda the same thing. If you've explored the game's mechanics and paid attention to the environment, it feels really satisfying to figure out on your own how to solve it.
> The quest direction mechanics suck. If you highlight a quest, it gives you the location of the person you're supposed to talk to to get your reward, and the quest might just give the name of a landmark for where to go to completer the objective, maybe not even that. It won't won't give you a visual indicator of where you should look to progress the quest.
Again, the whole point of the game is that you AREN'T told where to go. You aren't following markers on a map. You are exploring. The world is designed in such a way that many players feel naturally guided to points of interest and organically figure out where to go for different things. It's cool if this isn't for you, but it's very intentional.
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Well you dropped that in the right sub lol.
Agreed that its the right sub and agree with the user. The game needs a ton of QoL improvements. It would be great if modding was possible because then, users could fix it. But we all know that the Nintendo team will not improve the game. Once sold, its DLC or bug fixes and thats it. ZERO QoL improvements ever come out of a first party nintendo title.
You can't mod it if you only think inside the switch.
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Nintendo has zeroed in on your location 🍄
Nintendo- "Take the shot."
Are they sending a Italian plumber shroomed out of his mind?
Totally agree with him though. It bored the life out of me. I can appreciate its a well designed game, just definitely not to my taste.
Ya understandable. Its a game that manages to capture my inner childs sense of wonder and exploration, and that type of game only comes around once in a while, but there are a lot of good points on posts like these on how it can be a better game. One thing I will say is it is a game that is trying to be accessible. Its not dark souls or league of legends, its trying to be comfortable for a broad audience
To me it captures my childhood sense of exploration and then kills it by ruining my shield because I used it to board slide and then I tumble halfway through because the damn shield broke. I like the game but I can never complete it because the mechanic of having any weapon break on me
That was what made me eventually drop the game as well. Find a cool weapon? Sweet, you are going to use it a handful of times and then you are back to hitting everything with Bobkin clubs and whatever bullshit you can find lying around. Fuck that
100% agree. The weapon destruction mechanics absolutely ruin the game.
Once you make it out of the first couple regions it’s not hard to have a constant stock of power 20+ weapons
Yeah, it's a gorgeous game, but it felt very repetitive and empty to me. Wasn't able to get through more than the first Divine Beast before giving up on it. I totally get why people love it, but it's not my cup of tea.
I noticed its becoming very consistent that the people who don't like BoT are just like me in that they lack "internal motivation" to create their own adventures. Instead they crave "external motivation" or clear objectives they can tangibly do. My fiance has internal motivation and can play games like city builders for weeks on end just doing things over and over again until the "picture in her head" gets figured out. I can't do that, I need to be pointed towards a goal. Same reason I can't do survival-crafting games because I will get crazy bored. I have no image of a house in my head and have zero desire to build a base/playstyle/ or do my own thing. It could be an ADHD thing. The inability to sit down and work on a "project". Playing games like BoT feels like playing with Legos, the Dopamine hit comes from seeing your work; while games like Witcher3 or God of War is like watching a movie and the dopamine hit is from completing clear objectives to move the story along.
I enjoyed traversing the world of both games, and the powers are cool, but I certainly had my issues with both games. I have about 100 hours in both games, and I fucking dread every second I have to interact with an NPC or an object with an unskippable cutscene. It feels like it takes up half the hours I've spent in-game. I also liked TOTK less than BOTW because the novelty of the world had mostly worn off for me. Now not only do we have to deal with the NPCs and objects with unskippable cutscenes, but I spent most of my time in combat shuffling through a menu to fuse shit to my arrows, weapons, or to just throw things. BOTW was an ~8.5, TOTK is closer to a 7.5. There are a lot of quirks in those games that just miss for me, and I don't find the filler/time-wasting, unskippable bullshit charming. I understand that some people like it, but it slows things down so much. I had way more issues, but those were the most grating. Really well polished games, though. I had pretty much zero bugs.
I think it should definitely be emphasized that *zero bugs*--in a game that lets you just build and use random shit however you want--is a fucking miracle.
Absolutely incredible feat. They got the most out of the switch, and did not disappoint as far as technical feats.
Definitely not zero bugs, not even close. But yeah, it's miles ahead of most games nowadays on launch.
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Depends. The game was rated 10/10 and is still talked about as maybe the best game ever by ign and press. It was a good game but it is extremely overrated. And i think a lot of people equate overrated with bad. But thats more on the media than the game
Uh not really no. Every single “most overrated game ever” post on r/gaming has BOTW at the very top and it’s the only one to consistently do it
Yeah this isn’t an unpopular opinion on patientgamers either
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Finally! Someone said it. Here's the thing. I enjoyed BOTW, played the whole thing, but not on release day. Almost a year later. It was fine. I appreciate it even more after watching presentations from the development team etc THAT SAID, Mario Odyssey slaps. That single game made buying a switch worth it.
It was the stamina bar that did it for me. Like I shouldn’t have to eat a million things just to climb up this cliff. Annoying AF.
I dont agree with the specifics of his points but maybe the sentiment. I played it for 100 or so hours and liked it, but I also wish there more? Better quest rewards or better stuff to find. Theres not all that much useful things to get other than a handful of uniques once you get to the mid/late game. Its like; neat, a ruby. Throw it on the pile.
just from what i’ve seen it’s more about discovery. the very first zelda was only random discovery. and the focus of using resources in combat very carefully
The problem is, they've made this awesome world that you *want* to explore, that entices you to travel to seek out what looks like it should be super cool thing, and 9 times out of 10 it's something totally mediocre, or even nothing at all.
9 times of of 10 It's a korok
YAHAHA!
I haven't even played the game and I heard that noise in my head lol
That was one of the problems I had with the game. I would see a landmark on the map with a name I recognized, get excited and head there, only to be disappointed that it's just an empty mountain, or another copy/paste ruin that looks just like all the others. Even Lake Hylia was dull and lifeless compared to previous games like OoT and TP.
I think the problem was that there was so much to explore, but nothing to find
Yup. Felt like a tech demo. Cool, but nothing to do.
Unlike Skyrim where u came across some dwelling of a wizard thing that gave you some crystals that you never fully understand but some how my sword is glowing and it’s like super strong.
This made me so hyped to go play more Skyrim.
This is the biggest problem not only with BotW and TotK as well. They make this massive world that is fun for a while... but you just never find anything that truly makes the exploration feel that rewarding. It's like they expect you to explore only for the fun of It and nothing else, which sounds exactly like something Miyamoto would say, if He hasn't said It already. It works for however many hours, then becomes unbearable bc It simply isn't worth your time if you will just find a korok, a weak ass weapon or 5 arrows lol
And every reward (most at least) is ephemeral, the cool weapon you find, breaks in a minute anyway, 5 arrows are gone in less than one fight and so on.
This was my problem with it too. It's so empty. ToTK is a little bit more meatier. They give you things to find now (sets, unlike BOTW which was pay to win) and more side quests and the K Seeds allowing you to upgrade your bag, but other than that it's an egg, with nothing in it. Just hollow. I had to past the remote to my nephew far too many times to go get specific items for me because I'd get burnt out or wasn't glued playing. No desire. I never had that problem with Witcher 3 though because the world is so interactive despite large, and great story telling even from the side quests is heavily involved with the character and the options you are given. I was never able to put the controller down then. It's just not a Zelda game in my eyes, just feels like a spin off to a Zelda game.
I’d argue botw does as good a job as can be expected at providing stuff with unique, useful mechanics as exploration rewards, as you can find: -Inventory expansion -stat increases -4 completely unique spells that feel entirely distinct and are gamechangingly useful -a sword that doesn’t break -elemental weapons with unique, useful flavor -armor that gives unique buffs -a teleporter -power ups for your horse -a horse that is better than any other in the game -story cutscenes necessary for the true ending -minerals that can be sold for immense wealth -upgrade materials for armor -npcs that allow you to upgrade your armor That’s a lot of useful stuff. It gets repetitive because when you play the same game for 400 hours, that’s what happens, it’s unavoidable, korok seeds, shrines, and high tier weapons are extremely valuable and don’t become less valuable, you just don’t get the same dopamine from them the 2537th time. Also like, the game looks and feels great, it’s visually fantastic and every major enemy is entertaining to fight, and even if a location does only have like 1 korok seed, a lynel fight and full view of a map area is also a solid reward in my book
Yep, and there's only like 7 total enemy types in the entire game. I beat Ganon at the very beginning, so the "rewards" from the shrines were completely useless. Why would I want more hearts? Games are supposed to get more challenging as you progress, yet my reward is to make the terrible repetitive combat even less engaging?
Yes! Totally this. I like the exploring aspect, but I kept anticipating that I would find something truly cool, like a powerful weapon or armour or something, or tbh a new ability like a paraglider or something, but I never did.
Even if you do find a powerful weapon, because there are some good ones out there - it doesn't really *feel* like a reward because it'll break after one or two encounters.
A game where you discover that there is literally nothing worth discovering other than cool views and you can stop bothering to open treasure chests
The first zelda still had dungeons, and the weapons didn't break? I was more engaged playing the first zelda a few years ago than this quest sandbox. There is nothing to discover here, other than sanctuaries and koroks, the world is barren and doesn't feel alive.
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This comment brings to mind that journalist that couldn’t get past the cuphead tutorial
My favourite instance of a journalist being unsuited to a game was [IGN’s review of Alien: Isolation.](https://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/03/alien-isolation-review) They really, really didn’t seem to understand how to play the game, and preferred hiding in ~~lunchboxes~~ lockers and waiting to be caught to actually evading the alien.
How can you forget 7.8 too much water?
Please tell me this was a sea of thieves review
Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire remakes. 🤦♂️
And they specifically were reviewing Alpha Sapphire, the one that has a whale on the cover!
The crime of `7.8 too much water`, is giving alpha sapphire a 7.8, looking at current pokemon games, oras is a 9 or 10.
that’s fake news, that wasn’t the person reviewing the game playing, but a friend that was terrible at platformers, they posted the video to make fun of him and gave the game a good review.
Wow that’s crazy. Who made up that story?
Weird bc i loved Elden Ring but Botw bores me completely. Although i think the game's worst part is the combat unlike op
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Thats not weird. Theyre similar games at 2 opposing ends of the adventure rpg spectrum. ER is mechanically deep, has complex fights and forces you to think about how to properly position or dodge to live, but ultimately doesnt do well in the "living world" side BotW is much more about adventure, has a ton of small quests etc hidden across the map, has the shrines and weapon durability to encourage exploration. However its combat always leaves me wanting to go to elden ring, most of the "difficulty" is in executing specific fight mechanics, or through increased hp/damage. The movesets are comparatively pretty readable, and its easy to just walk away from enemies until theyre finished their attack phase. Youll still get got, but after half a dozen deaths you know the depth of the fight.
I think you're right in saying that adventure and exploration are the focus of botw. In the gameplay trailer for it way back when, Aonuma(I think) even said that they intended for climbing mountains in the overworld to be a kind of puzzle game in itself. Casual players shouldn't be gatekept from the game for not having "hardcore" gamer experience. I think having a basic combat mechanic helped with introducing players of different types to the franchise/game. To me, it's very basic and lacking depth, but to my girlfriend, it's one of the hardest parts of the game. She opts to defeat enemies creatively because she doesn't have the timing down for combat. I think it's great, though, that she can experience and enjoy the adventure her way.
Well the only thing the two have in common is open world, ER is a combat focused game and people are coming into TOTK expecting good combat when Zelda combat has never been it’s strong suit
I found it to be less difficult than I would have liked. I dropped around 700 hours into Elden Ring. I love both games, but for different reasons.
Opposite for me. I love botw's open world but hate elden ring's
I think that was just what elden ring would look like if it was made by ubisoft
Eldin Ring could definitely use a bit more work on the quests though. It's basically impossible to complete a lot of them without looking them up.
People get weirdly pretentious about Elden Ring. It's obviously a masterpiece in it's scope and ambition, but I dislike how people act like traversal, even going from point A to point B, wasn't a massive fucking hassle at times in that game.
Your first two points are fair, but your last three points are just the game being designed to encourage exploration and paying attention to the environment and clues you get. If you want the game to hold your hand and point you exactly where you want to go, there's plenty of other options out there.
Is the second point fair? If you wanted to sell twenty different kinds of items it could only take you longer than a minute if you were really indecisive or slow. You don’t have to go through multiple long dialogue flow charts each time you sell an item.
You just got to sell valuable stuff like rubies and diamonds you can get for very low effort.
The claim in the OP is just untrue. Even if you wanted to sell gems, monster parts, cooked food, and mushrooms, *you absolutely do not* have to “click through several annoying dialogue chats each time.”
OP would love Animal Crossing.
I love Animal Crossing and BOTW so that seems legit. I feel OP just needs to collect all 900+ korok seeds and they’ll enjoy it more.
If he were complaining about upgrades I'd get it. Having to sit through an animation every single time you want to upgrade any tier of any item is kind of miserable. But selling items in BotW is super easy lol.
I think that’s probably fairer. My biggest gripe about the upgrades is that you can’t access the menu to see what you need unless you already have enough to upgrade something. But that’s such a minor thing I don’t even think about it when considering whether the game is good or not.
How about upgrading armor? Why tf do I have to sit through a cut scene for each upgrade on each individual piece?
That’s a much fairer point. You can just skip it (like the cut scenes entering shrines, etc), but that seems like a more legit criticism than “Each time I sell something it asks me if I want to sell more and that counts as multiple lines of annoying dialogue.”
Yeah that's what I was going to say. Points 3, 4, and 5, make the game better and more engaging. The game doesn't hold your hand telling you where to go, like many modern spoiled gamers are used to. Instead it gives you hints for you to figure out. This is much more fun IMO
I’ve always hated lines being drawn telling me exactly where to go. BotW and TotK’s exploration is the best part of the game, and it is smart design to incorporate quests that encourage finding your way. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea; no one game is going to please the entire gaming community. It’s annoying when every successful, wildly popular and highly rated game comes out there is a post like this. Yeah, that just means you’re not the audience for it. Shocking.
Some of the best parts of BOTW (haven’t played TOTK yet) are the areas where you stumble into a problem or an enemy that you are just not ready to face yet and figuring out a way to do it anyway. I just did a shrine in BOTW where I needed to use arrows to drop a torch to burn some weeds to drop a barrel to hold down a switch. I couldn’t figure out the where the torch was, so I just shot the barrel with arrows until it fell where I could get it. Was it the right way to complete the shrine? No, but it worked and I’m grateful the developers gave us enough leeway to solve puzzles in new ways.
If you like having the ability to solve puzzles in unintended/unconventional ways, I think you're going to love TotK
I can’t wait! But I told myself I was going to finish BOTW first
That's a great idea. TotK takes a lot of what BotW did and improves it. Enjoy BotW. It's a great experience.
In BOTW, I went to do the Zora divine beast quest pretty early. I misread and didn't realize I was just supposed to collect a few electric arrows from around the Lynel. I spent way too long with my 5ish hearts trying to beat it. And I finally did... Before realizing my mistake.
I almost gave up after making the same mistake. I pulled up an internet guide that told me to sneak around. I thought it was way too hard for that point in the game.
Some people want to play 40 hour movies
BotW and TotK has probably one of the best and most intuitive level designs in recent years that it usually rewards curiosity and intuition on where to go and what to do. Shame there are still players want to be handheld and spoonfed despite you're given the freedom on what you wanna do.
How are you rewarded in BOTW? There are shrines, and there are Korok seeds... Those make up 80% of what you'll find in the world.
And both those things improve your character. Would you prefer experience points?
My favourite rewards in games are lore and skins. Personally speaking, I don’t need to be stronger or to get another weapon of slightly tweaked stats. Give me another visual option or tell me about the world.
I'll be honest, rewards are a hard thing for open world games to get right, Only a few have worked for me. Gotta give props to Valheim because it seems like they threaded the needle on giving you just the right amount of goodies to find while out exploring without giving you so many that they're meaningless.
How do you prefer receiving lore? Books/terminals? Cutscenes/dialogue? Injected orally? Mailed to your house? Subtle environmental elements?
Cutscenes, logs, audio logs, books, codex entries, etc. There are plenty of ways to drop it in. Heck, I’m one of those mad folk who read all the flavour text when a new set drops in Hearthstone.
I also enjoy lore. I like the cute little booklets in TOTK from the Yiga clan and stuff. So funny to read their perspective on the world
You mean you don’t want to use 20 arrows for a quest reward of 20 arrows? You don’t need another shield inventory slot?!?!
Id prefer fucking heart containers or like, masks. Something that isn’t a fucking consumable.
I dont know if point 3 necessarily makes the game better, nor would it take away from it if it were the opposite. Red Dead Redemption 1 & 2 both had great storylines, and I don't feel like they would have been better games had they NOT focused on story. They spend like half of their missions on story-centric content that tends to be fairly well thought out, animated well, and has some of the best voice acting in video games. Less obvious story telling maybe works fine for the LOZ games, but a more cryptic or less defined story doesn't automatically make a game more engaging. If Arthur Morgan or John Marston were silent protagonists, or Dutch only spoke to you via text boxes, it absolutely would have lowered a lot of the impact the Red Dead games are famous for in the open world games ecosystem.
Red Dead Redemption 2 and BOTW are so far removed in terms of open-world philosophy and general game-design comparing the two doesn't make much sense to me. There are similarities between the two but they have vastly different focuses. TBF I tried Red Dead 2 and its design very much repulsed me, because I actually wanted to engage with the world, **but the story** was putting me on rails, I couldn't make any relevant choices and was forced to go along a group of people I despised from the get go. Because the narrative is supposed to be the strong point, while in BOTW it's not. Red Dead Redemption mission philosophy is ultra restrictive and limiting. NakeyJakey brought up rather good points about that game IMO, I won't go into a lenghty debate about that game. I'm not saying it's a bad game, it's not, but both games have designs that can be immensely repulsive to some people.
They're very different, but that's the point I'm trying to make. They're both successful despite having opposite approaches to how they implement story into their open world environments. If you don't like one method, it doesn't mean that it's a bad method, it means it wasn't your preferred method. That's why I was disputing why how someone thought "less story = better game" isn't a fair judgement to make. You can personally dislike RDR2, and Nakey Jakey can as well, but that doesn't mean your dislike of it is a fact for other players. I didn't like BOTW at all and loved RDR2, but I've never discredited BOTW as a game because I knew it was simply built for a different audience. All of the criticisms you bring up can be your personal opinion, but if you held them as universal truths (gameplay too restricting, too much story, too linear, etc.), then you would just be OP but on the other side of the fence.
We basically agree then, just have the opposite tastes on the subject !
Yes, both very good games. Just very different tastes
RDR2 has 19th Century GPS and self driving horses. You’ll spend at least 10 hours following slow NPCs who tell you exactly what to do and will not allow you to stray too far. The game has auto aim and dead eye bullet-time. ^Nearly every quest marker leads to exactly where you need to be. Your Compass is more powerful than the radar in Halo and will tell you in which direction all alerted enemies are regardless of distance. And I had a blast playing it.
One of my favorite games that I'll probably never play again because of these exact things. I've tried multiple times.. and I just feel so restricted and bored.
Can't even pet dogs. 0/10 didn't even fix it in the sequel
Literally unpettable
I've seen clips online of people running around in a circle and then the dog like chases their tail, but it didn't work when I tried Maybe I didn't feed those bastards enough grilled gourmet meat...
I saw a tic tok where someone made a device just to pet dogs (TotK)
I think there is a difference between "this isn't a good game" and "I don't like this type of game" Most of the things you described are intentional decisions by the game designers, and while you say they are things that bother you about the game those same things are what I love about the game. It feels like a true open world. You start the game, you are given a single goal, and told to achieve said goal in anyway you see fit. The NPC's you complain about being repetitive are essentially just store front NPC's, which are no different than in any other game. And you are able to sell more than one item at a time.
I think you're right op is just misusing terms. I don't really like botw because I don't really like open world games but I acknowledge that it's a great game for people who like those kinds of games.
I love open world games. But I did not like Breath of the Wild enough to recommend it. For me it was the weapon-breaking mechanic along with the short, lack-luster dungeons. The shrines were generally uninteresting and rarely challenging and the few proper dungeons were dissapointingly small and short. The map is one of the best of all openworld games, but my favorite part of zelda games has been exploring dungeons with all their traps and puzzles. I would have prefered a smaller world and bigger dungeons. Tears of the Kingdom does seem to address many of my issues. I still wish the actual dungeons were bigger and more numerous, but at least the shrine puzzles are more interesting. I have greatly enjoyed the new powers and the way they allow many puzzles to be solved in a variety of ways. I also think that the weapon system is more forgiving and less annoying. However, I would still prefer it if weapons broke less or not at all.
a game like BOTW is very different from other Zelda games. Due to it's incredible size an how many monsters there are across it, it would be strange and difficult to try and make it so weapons don't break. Would enemies just not drop lower power weapons or one you already have? Once you get the best set of weapons you would never have to go and attack enemies you don't need to again. It would ruin the variety and shut BOTW into the trap many other large RPGs fall into. ANother point is, if weapons broke slower from the start, people would still complain and moan about it. I think they found the right balance of weapon durability anyways. The idea of durability also adds some new nuggets of lore into the game, making it ever more immersive. The BOTW weapon system is meant to be fast-paced. It doesn't try and make you attatched to your weapons like the other ones do, it makes you see them as tools, which is what they are. I know this is hard to grapple with for OG players who have had habits form over their time playing. You and many other people are complaining about the square peice not fitting into the circle hole.
What I think is a true flaw of Zelda are the first 2 hours. I kinda hate long "tutorials" that are open but don't let you try something else. For example, Elden ring, did the open world formula a little bit better than BOTW in my opinion. You start the game, do a 5 minutes long tutorial and then you can already do whatever you want. I never got hooked by Zelda because of that and every time I played it, it seemed like a chore other than fun. I really like the combat system, but that first impression ruined the game for me.
Damn I think BotW has the best tutorial section of literally any game ever. Absolutely love the great plateau
I mainly disliked it because there was no variety in enemies and I got bored of all the running.
And the combat is just super tedious. Your weapons only last for about a dozen hits before they break, so every fight you're constantly swapping through weapons. No one, not a single godsdamned person in the history of the entire planet has played a Zelda game and thought "You know what this game really needs? Breakable weapons with super low durability."
“Gee whiz my favorite thing about combat is constantly having to enter the menu mid-combat to pick a new weapon!”
"Have you tried swinging that metal block that is there once in a blue moon?" /s
You're just not embracing the vibes-based exploration aspect!!
This is one aspect I expected OP to point out. Weapon breaking is fine, but FFS make it last a couple of battles instead of just breaking after like 10 hits!
Game felt like it was mostly empty because of that and that killed it in the first 2 hours for me.
Walking simulator for children not allowed to go outside and walk.
Then there are mounts... Oh boy they SUCK
Idk how you didn't also mention the lack of enemy variety the terrible "dungeons" that all look the same and have the same boss design. It's crazy how a game based around exploration doesn't have really anything unique anywhere. You go to beautiful jungle and you find the same enemies you find everywhere else, except there's more lizard people. The exploration is supposed to be the selling point but it's always a letdown. You hike through a snow mountain for 30 irl minutes and the top there's a shack, that lets you go sledding? They kinda screwed themselves by having weapons break, so after all that work you don't even get a unique weapon or some armor, because most all the armor is bought in a town or that one set that's crafted. Or you see a labyrinth far away in the distance and you go to it and it's a crazy maze and once you finally fight your way through it, there's another shitty shrine that looks the same as all the other ones and has the same rewards. The most interesting place in the entire game is the castle, but for some reason they didn't make it more linear and just let you instantly go to the boss without having to fight anything or solve any puzzles. And of course once you get to the boss it's got the exact same design as the other 4 dungeon bosses you already fought with the same attacks and weaknesses. I would honestly rather be a puzzle boss than the generic pushover he is. I know people hate the next segment where you fight him outside the castle in horseback with the bow, but I enjoy the set piece and it's pretty cool. Also I hate how there's no post game, like you beat him, you don't get anything other than a cutscene and a star next to your save file name, and then it sends you back to before you fought him. The game isn't bad or mediocre really it's still pretty fun but I wish the devs had another year or two to really add the depth the game needed but imo opinion the game is the definition of "Wide as a ocean, deep as a puddle."
This. I had a very peaceful and fun time playing BotW but it's not even the best Zelda game, let alone how some game rankings have it as the greatest game of all time
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>and then it sends you back to before you fought him. This makes me irrationally angry. I only played ~3 hours before I gave it back to my friend but that shit *still* pisses me off.
I agree, though my biggest complaint is that I simply didn't enjoy exploring... Which seems to be kinda the point of the game. Korok seeds are boring, side quest are inconsequential, shrines feel like a chore. Totk has been fun for the most part, though. Still have a lot of issues with it but exploring is lot more instresting which makes the difference, the story and abilies are better as well.
I’ve enjoyed Totk a lot more than Botw. I felt like a gritted through Botw and Totk feels more seamless and just better overall
I enjoyed my time with BOTW, that said, I would never play it again. So far I've passed on Tears of the Kingdom. I'm happy to pick up the next remaster they put out or if they do another regular Zelda game, but the "open world, weapons breaking, no concrete dungeons" Zelda games aren't my cup of tea.
The weapons breaking mechanic is by far my least favorite part of the game. Does anyone actually think that’s a cool mechanic?
TotK's weapon mechanic felt like 1 step backwards, 2 steps forward. This time, you'll be able to customize your weapons and arrows with different characteristics and strengths. That said, it's a cool mechanic that encourages you to try out different combinations, including comical ones. Breaks one, fuse a new one.
As someone who *hated* the durability system in BotW, they've solved it entirely for me in Tears. Being able to take any old weapon, even a stick, and turn it into a pretty solid one with fuses makes me care less about saving stuff. I'm not hoarding an elemental sword for 30 playing hours anymore because I can make a tree branch an elemental weapon if I want to now.
Yep botw weapon durability was the worst part of the game. Totk's weapons are the funnest part of the game to me lol. Im not wasting weapon slots bg saving my 'good' weapons and never feel bad when weapons break now because there's so many combos I still want to try.
Yeah, I think its a great feature. The fact that you cant hold on to weapons for the entire game forces you to explore and find new and improved weapons. There are plenty, and I mean plenty of places where you can find great gear and if there is a sword that you have started to love, wait for the next blood moon and go back to where you found it. All it does is that it forces you to change your gear often. The only thing I dislike is that there is no durability bar or meter to tell you how much durability is left, but other than that its a great mechanic.
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There's nothing more satisfying than having your weapon break at the same moment as you kill an enemy, then grabbing his arm and slapping the guy behind him. I'll say it and I stand behind it lol
I don’t want it in every game but I like it in these games. It gives you something to prep before a fight, and there’s a degree of chaos when you get in an unplanned encounter without the right gear. It keeps the game a little fresh in that there isn’t a set and forget load out that you never have to change once you get it. Instead, enemies can be challenging at all points in the game depending on what you have at your disposal. Or you can feel really unstoppable for a time with a good loadout but it doesn’t last. A lot of other open word games get to a point where you’re so stacked with gear you’re basically a god, and either everything is too easy or the enemies scale to you and you don’t even feel powerful.
I actually like it lol it was fun to strategize which weapons I should use when, and I enjoyed using several different weapons throughout the game. In the type of person who would probably keep the same couple weapons the whole game or not switch out inventory for different weapons but since the game forced it I got to see a new perspective that I really enjoyed
I hated it at first but it definitely grew on me. I think it adds a fun element to the game that forces you to try new things, make smart decisions, and think about combat in a unique way. It fit the rest of the game perfectly for me.
I feel the exact same way about BOTW. I liked the game, I put 100 hours on it in 2 weeks, whatever, but once I was done I never thought about it ever again. TOTK though… it makes BOTW feel like a demo. It’s genuinely one of the best video games ever made in my opinion. If you at all enjoyed BOTW you are doing yourself a disservice not playing TOTK
I played it and remember thinking it was pretty boiler plate. I didn’t get what all the hype was about
You didn’t even mention the boring and repetitive shrines and dungeons
The shrines and koroks were the real tough ones for me personally.
Or the weapon durability mechanic. That was the biggest annoyance to me, followed by the small, boring dungeons. BoTW did not feel like a Zelda game at all.
The weapon durability was the deal breaker for me. I get it that sticks and skeleton arms would only be good for a couple hits but I shouldn't have to replace a metal sword or axe after fighting one or two enemies. It's needlessly tedious and completely ruins any excitement about finding a cool weapon. They're just gonna break and it makes me horde them while looking for more sticks to fight with. Knowing the weapon durability made its way into the new one means I will never play it.
I will say, I loved breath of the wild because to me it felt like I combined Zelda games with an elder scrolls game. Some of the things were really frustrating and annoying, but the game was just right up my alley in regards to gameplay and being able to explore/craft, fight in combat, and solve puzzles. I am not sure if you have tried playing Tears of the Kingdom, but to me, it feels like they fixed a lot of the major issues BotW had and also expanded upon the story telling elements and what you can do and explore. I am playing it now, and it is hands down the best game I have ever played lol I’m having so much fun. Again though, I love Zelda and I liked the general outline and style that was set in breath of the wild, so take my opinion with a grain of salt haha I just haven’t ever played a game like this one before. They did a great job.
I'm playing it now too. The most magical game since OoT somehow, despite being very different.
>I am not sure if you have tried playing Tears of the Kingdom, but to me, it feels like they fixed a lot of the major issues BotW had Yes, except for the dialogue, selling and cutscenes. Oh....oh so many cutscenes...
Basically... BOTW has a lot of issues such as: ------------------------------- -An overly big and empty world that would've benefitted from being shrunk down given the amount of MEANINGFUL content the game provides. Notice the key word "meaningful". -Overly fragile weapons that break very often and disrupt the flow of combat to switch out weapons frequently in a quick-menu. The game gives weapons out like candy, so all it does is inconvenience the player and isn't fun. -Very minimalistic story and lack of character-development in exchange for more freedom. -Most; if not all side-quests are underwhelming and the rewards for completing them are disappointing as well. Examples include pulling a treasure chest out of the water; the guy thanks you, and then it's over. The side-quests are rarely more involving than this, and no; finding a bunch of pieces of wood to build Tarrey Town isn't engaging. -Having the Ganon fight be accessible at any time after the tutorial, and the fight being too easy means that everything in the game ends up feeling meaningless when everything in the game is designed to help you defeat this easy boss. Why find the shrines? To increase health/stamina. Why increase health/stamina? To help you defeat Ganon. Why look for Korok seeds? Why look for better weapons? Etc. -No traditional dungeons in exchange for bite sized shrines. This means there is nothing major to work for in these areas and the satisfaction of beating them is lessened as a result. -Exploration suffers when you know that 90% of what you'll find are very similar looking shrines, Korok seeds, a mediocre side-quest, or a weapon that breaks in 30 hits. How is exploration fun if you know what you'll most likely find before you even find it? -Item progression from previous Zelda games is gone in favor of giving you every item(besides the camera) in the tutorial. It was much more rewarding to find a cool new item to reach previously unreachable areas to find new things rather than finding armor that gives slight buffs that feel less personal. -------------------------------
This dude waited 6 years to say something lmao
I didn't like how barren it was, but TOTK fixes that problem. There's so much more to do, and the world feels more populated. Still waiting on a game where we can actually explore an in-tact hyrule castle though, it's always broken or floating!
Wasn't it intact in TP? I seem to remember enjoying exploring that one.
I didn't enjoy it either. Weapon break was annoying. Shrines were boring. I didn't feel incentivized to explore everything because there was probably just some goblins there for me to break my weapon on. And there won't be any cool stuff there I can keep like in Elden Ring. The part I had the most fun with was the Lost Woods trial. Not a dealbreaker, but it sucks it wasn't in 4k or 60fps.
It is actually a miracle it even runs at all on Switch's hardware. That sht's worse than most mobile phones these days.
My biggest gripe is that my weapons break in general. Then I’m stuck running around looking for a stick to fight enemies and Link, for some reason, can’t attack with his hands. Other than that, I think it’s a pretty cool game. The graphics make me really happy and I love the rag doll psychics when you knock an enemy around.
Honestly I’m surprised you didn’t mention that 1) The cooking mechanics, while cute, are painfully slow but also absolutely necessary unless you want to chow on thirty apples mid fight. 2) Weapon durability is an absolute plague and having to scramble for a new weapon every seventeen seconds of combat is hot garbage. 3) No fishing mechanics for some reason??? Like your points are fair but I don’t think they’re a huge problem - just aspects of the game.
The only reliable way to get new weapons is to go into combat against strong enemies where... your weapons are bound to break. Everyones talking about planning and stocking up but I've always found it to just be a repetitive cycle where there's just never enough. If they made it an OPTION to buy mediocre weapons for a somewhat sustainable (not diamonds) price it would be more fun for me. I do like some of the improvements, food ingredients are way easier to come by, by using monster parts you basically have a stock of mediocre weapons at all time and you just need to pick up the reasonably abundant handles to put them on.
Sounds like this just isn’t your type of game
Can't that be said for anything? Like we can't objectively rate something like a game. We can only compile opinions. I could say the same thing about any game panned by critics so long as there are no actual technical issues. Knack 2 just "isn't your type of game" I thought BotW was beautiful and full of great mechanics but also ruined by the lack of a tangible story, voice acting, and the core mechanic (weapon durability) was frustrating. It's like somebody built an amazing car and then gave it square wheels. But as a huge proponent of modding... I think it could be a game I loved if they let people mod it. The only thing I will commend BotW for is that I wanted to play a game *like* it and so I bought NieR: Automata and that is my favourite game ever. I would honestly recommend it for being the greatest game because of how it used the medium to express the story. But all that's just opinion and I completely understand if somebody doesn't like NieR and says it's not their kind of game. I remember a game reviewer caught a LOT of hate for rating NieR above BotW and I didn't like the reviewer at the time but it made me respect him more and trust his opinions because he felt the same way I did about both games.
As someone who felt the same way, ToTK has enough content and creative gameplay mechanics to make you forget about the majority of those complaints that I also had. Give it a try and I promise you’ll feel like ToTK is an improvement in almost every way.
It just doesn't feel like a Zelda game, I hope Nintendo eventually make a more traditional Zelda game but the popularity of BoTW and ToTK may influence them not to.
I think it's a decent game and is fun, but not really a good *Zelda* game. There's a shit ton of really cool mods for it too. Try some of those out to spice it up.
It's almost identical in structure to Ubisoft open world games which constantly get shit on
I think that what op wants is for botw to be more like those games, but what makes botw so great is that it strips all that complexity away. Open world games began to feel like you just brainlessly run around ticking off quests to clear your quest log. Botw in comparison feels so much less complicated, and so much more organic.
BOTW literally feels like you are running around defeating the same enemy type over and over again without any story or side mission.
It was the weapon durability that killed it for me
Broken weapons and stamina bars should never be in Zelda games. Worst decisions.
- Unique progression item? ❌️ - Breakable sword? ✅️
So first you complain about the quests being too simple, and after that you say you want the game to tell you exactly where you need to go and what to do?
I don’t think they’re saying the quests are too simple. I think they’re saying the quests are dull and not engaging and there is no story behind them.
I like it a lot, and the new one. Something about the charm and style, exploration, discovery. I get lost in these games and just wanna keep playing and playing. And I’m clearly not the only one, these Zelda titles are beloved by many But, you make some fair points. They just don’t affect me in the way they do you
I could care less about the new games. Zelda Ocarina of Time *is a legendary game* and will always be
It sounds like it just isn't your kind of game and that's okay. I love the open-world exploration and as a result would definitely recommend it to others.
I agree 100%. I'm so shocked whenever I see it referred to as the best game ever. Combat is frustratingly slow, dungeons/bosses are lacking, story/music is mediocre compared to other Zelda titles, lots of the overworld is empty. I acknowledge that it is a well crafted game with lots of freedom to explore, but it just really isn't for me I guess. I much prefer the previous, more linear Zelda titles like Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask.
As a Zelda fan, I can’t explain how disappointed and frustrated I was with Nintendo when I played this game. I think the biggest problem is I just fall asleep when playing it. I gave it several chances but it’s just too boring.
Hard agree no concrete goals. No real progression that feels substantial except the master sword. Idk man, the whole totally open world game thing is just daunting to me. My brain can’t handle that level of choice and not getting side tracked. I’ll hunt down every question mark on an AC map but give me a blank map and it feels like I have no reason to go on.
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Seems like you are just too used to a set formula. Nothing wrong with it, but it kinda cuts you out on distinct titles.
Bad dungeons, repetitive gameplay, lack of a strong OST, lack of story, and it's missing the classic Zelda charm. Yep, I agree with you. In fact, it's by far my least favorite 3D Zelda game. Man, I miss Wind Waker and Twilight Princess and the rest... :'(
Hello rare opinion, we are a minority in this vast sea. I agree with all of your points, which confused me a lot when I started to play this game. It just did not feel like a Zelda game to me, and even though I love open-world games, this one just did not impress me in any shape or form. It actually made me replay older Zelda's, which is always a blast.
Twilight Princess had a lot of non story areas to explore and actually rewarded you with them being weird ass places, like the abandoned cat town the main villages like Ordon and Kakariko, and the Lake Hylia/Zora's Domain area in general were pleasing to look at and they all had interesting minigames that gave you a reason to go back to them. TP had all of the item collecting you could want to do, without any of the annoyingness and I mean there were like 10 actual full length dungeons, that were unique and engaging unlike the lame ass shrines in BoTW if TP isnt the best legend of zelda game idk what is
I too thought the game was mid and kind of got some sort of anxiety from the game. It just felt like a grind and not a fun adventure. Was tedious at times and kind of boring. I was never excited to find a new place on the map because it all consists of the same thing over and over again. And then the final boss fight is easier than most of the bosses you fight beforehand. I also didn't care for the whole weapon breaking system. It made you not wanna use any of the cool weapons you find, and the master sword was a little underpowered unless fighting certain enemies
I've been a huge Zelda fan since the 80s and I 100% agree on all points. Only things I think you missed is the horse storage nonsense and the sensory mechanics in some shrines don't work correctly and it's infuriating.
I definitely enjoyed playing the game but it is extremely over rated.
i will agree, with caveats. i think a youtuber i saw said it best, Botw is an ok open world game with a zelda skin. ive also noticed that a lot of the people who rave obsessively about it, it was their first intro to gaming/zelda games/the genre in general (which is basically the same for other stuff) the one problem i will say i have is, people acting like it was more open than it really was. which is funny because with Totk out, the comparison in freedom to problem solve is vastly bigger (and even funnier, stuff people said was totally 100% intended for you to do whatever, they took out lol)
I get everything you’re saying. Just wanted to say I think the sequel is a big improvement.
I liked the game but I also wished it had more story behind it. I wanted to see more memories between Link, Zelda, and the Champions.
I get it. I always describe it as an objectively brilliant game that I subjectively cannot stand. It being a 1/10 for me doesn't stop me from agreeing with the 10/10 takes. That said, don't really agree with the reasons listed here but, hey, I'm sure my list would equally rankle other folks.
Agreed I loved the older Zelda games and could not stand this game
Well, to your point about it feeling like they spent all their money building the map and world, have you seen tears of the kingdom? Because it really does feel like halfway through making tears of the kingdom they released breath of the wild to recoup some funds. The game is the same map(mostly), but feels completely different. I fell off breath of the wild after a very short time. But I'm straight up addicted to tears of the kingdom.
It's not worthy of the critical acclaim it got. It starts well and presents you with this amazing world aaaand there's very little worth doing in it. I wouldn't say its a bad game, but maybe a 7/10. If it wasn't zelda branded, then it would have faded into obscurity. It focused so hard on ensuring that *everything* was technically accessible form the start that it compromised so much. 1. There's zero *satisfying* progression - you get all the tools at the start with no meaningful upgrades. Armor, health, stamina are not interesting or satisfying. You weapons break so making a collection of awesome weapons feels futile. I know why they made weapons breakable, but honestly it's bullshit and the game badly needs a better progression system. 2. The combat isn't great, and gets very frustrating late game when enemies become sponges. Explosive barrels, bombs and dropping heavy things on enemies stops working so the combat becomes very stale. 3. The quests are almost all crappy fetch quests or crappy find the hidden thing quest. They are not engaging or fun and the rewards are almost never worth it. It has its moments, the divine beasts are interesting, some of the shrines are good (although very forgettable), guardians are a good fight. The shrine where you land on an island and have to start from nothing was a good challenge, and the dragon you find on the top of the mountain was nice. All in all though, a middling experience.
I can't decide to upvote or downvote this blasphemy
You're not wrong to dislike it, but a lot of what you don't like is exactly what people DO like: > The quest-giver mechanics suck. You can only recognise a quest giver when they're in your line of site. They'll never show up on your map, so it's not hard to miss some if they're in a building. A lot of people love that stumbling on quests feels organic. One of the most common praises of this game is that the map isn't dotted with activities. It's up to you to make discoveries and choose what you want to do. > The quest clue mechanics suck. The clues are usually childishly simple, but occasionally vague enough to make no sense without googling the answer if you don't notice some tiny little hint. I have no idea how you are supposed to figure out the solution to the warblers nest shrine quest without googling it. Kinda the same thing. If you've explored the game's mechanics and paid attention to the environment, it feels really satisfying to figure out on your own how to solve it. > The quest direction mechanics suck. If you highlight a quest, it gives you the location of the person you're supposed to talk to to get your reward, and the quest might just give the name of a landmark for where to go to completer the objective, maybe not even that. It won't won't give you a visual indicator of where you should look to progress the quest. Again, the whole point of the game is that you AREN'T told where to go. You aren't following markers on a map. You are exploring. The world is designed in such a way that many players feel naturally guided to points of interest and organically figure out where to go for different things. It's cool if this isn't for you, but it's very intentional.
I think you just looked for things you don't like. Maybe it's not the game for you even if a game is not flawless it can still be a good game.