Last Game You Finished And Your Thoughts V3.0

I'm going to start of by saying the game is gorgeous along with top notch sound design, their is some rough edges here and there along with some technical issues but I can let that slide when your in the wild with embers coming of a torch, wildest in the long grass.

Now what I don't like is lack of dungeons sure we have the shrines but its not the same as entering Snowpeak Ruins for instance and the what you would call the dungeons are samey with boss fights that also quite similar as well and I've had like 6 boss fights and none of the are memorable.

Lack of items, the runes are nice but I like going into a dungeon getting a Hookshot and learning how to use it to over come the dungeon and boss.  

Characters, the best one is Sidon and that's saying something. None will be remembered like Tetra, Midna, Groose, Fi or Navi even if some of them are for the wrong reasons and I don't like this Princess Zelda at all.

Story, I've now seen all the memories but going into the game from the trailers Nintendo have put out for the game, I did think I was going to get a really good story but knowing it's behind these memories and without them it is super basic with very little info, also you see nothing of Ganon in till you decide to go fight him and then he does nothing.

The gameplay is fine but I don't see what's so magical about it and same with the world its rather empty part from the shrines and a few villages, sure it's lovely to look at and sure I've not played much of Witcher 3 but the world from what I have played felt lived in.

Overall I played for over 25hrs according to my Switch and did what I needed to finish to it but this isn't Zelda to me and what it is trying to be a open-world western style RPG their are better out their already.

I still think on here it will be GOTY come the forum awards or the podcast unless Super Mario Odyssey is amazing and it will likely will be with the mass media part from maybe Red Dead Redemption 2 as everyone seems to wank over rockstar.

7/10

I can definitely see where you're coming from with the character standpoint - a lot of them were forgettable at best - and I could take or leave the story personally, but I disagree wholeheartedly with the rest of your assessment.

When it comes to the dungeons, I think they've done a great job here. Sure, you're not going to spend hours in them like the dungeons of old, but that's because they've removed the chaff of having to wander about collecting keys to open a door to collect another key and so forth. They're tightly designed with some really clever puzzles wrapped in them. I came away satisfied with my time inside the Divine Beasts, whereas some Zelda dungeons have had me saying "well thank god that's over" after I'd cleared them. I can't see how these dungeons could be called "samey" when the dungeons of old were, in general, formulaic. They'd have you find a few keys to get to the sub-boss, you'd find the dungeon's item, use that to get the boss key and clear the boss - rinse and repeat.

That ties into your point about the lack of items - again, I think what they've done with the items in BotW is brilliant. How many times did you use the Spinner in Twilight Princess outside of its dungeon? Or the Dominion Rod from the same game? Or the Skull Hammer from Wind Waker? But in BotW, you're using the runes constantly during your journey. The game gives you all of these tools in your first hour or so of playing the game and lets you run free with them. I used all of the game's powers in abundance during my adventure, be it for creating an icy path across the ocean so I could reach an island, freezing an enemy with Stasis or just blowing shit up. I don't even see how your comparison against the items of old holds much water - for example, I can think of a puzzle in the Goron Divine Beast that had you using Stasis and Magnesis in tandem to solve it. Traversing Hyrule Castle had me using all of my runes to survive.

Finally, your point about the world feeling empty... this is the biggest thing I've got to disagree with here. If I climb any of the game's plethora of towers, I can stand on there and spot a multitude of things to do. I can see shrines, or enemy camps, or a plume of smoke, or even signs of civilisation. The world isn't meant to feel "lived in" - it's a world that was basically wiped out a hundred years ago. There are still pockets of civilisation, like villages, camps or stables, but the real world-building comes from the ruined villages or monuments Link discovers. This isn't your traditional open-world that splooges icons on the map to go look at - it's a game about discovery.

I think that's why this game is resonating with so many people and falling flat with others. For those that like objective-based, story driven experiences (like The Witcher 3 which you brought up), then this Zelda isn't going to be for them, much like the 2D Zeldas probably fell flat with them too. But for others, this is going to be one of the best adventures they'll ever experience.

At the end of it all, how you feel about the game is simply just that - it's how you feel about the game. But you mentioned that you didn't know what was so "magical" about this game, so I felt I should write a bit on what made this game magical for me. I came away from my 60 or so hours with the game feeling like I'd live a true adventure. Ten years down the line, I imagine I'll have memories of scaling Death Mountain rushing back if I hear some music from the game, or a memory from any of the countless unscripted moments I experienced traversing the world. A lot of the best bits of other open-world games come from the parts the developers have meticulously designed, like the story missions. In this, Nintendo gave us a world to have our own adventures. And it's the best adventure I've ever had.

10/10.

I'm not a fan of 2D Zeldas, so you may have a point about that but the reasons you like it is why I don't (I do like but not that much) as I've said for years now I'm about story but will still play games about gameplay.

Super Mario Odyssey won't have much of a story but that's a game I go into knowing it won't, where Zelda I went in from the trailers that their would be a story which their isn't unless you go and chase down all the memories.

And why I reckon Persona 5 will be my GOTY due to the story.

Yeah, as I mentioned there, story-driven folks are less likely to come away mind-blown from this than others.

I think because this is much more like the 2D Zeldas in regards to its design, it's become a lot more like those game in how it presents its story. Hell, even Ocarina of Time is a bit bare bones compared to later 3D Zeldas. I'd argue that the later 3D Zeldas took a hit in regards to pure gameplay to better build a story for Link and Zelda.

That's not to say there's not a good story in Breath of the Wild, but as you said it requires you to track down the memories. But that's an excuse for more exploration, so I'm happy enough to track them down!

I can forgive OoT a bit due to when it came out also I didn't play it properly intill after Wind Waker which to me along with Twilight is what I expect from a Zelda.

I didn't want to do more exploration, that I went on YouTube to watch them all. If I had them as objectives, I may have done them but I went pretty much played the game A-B and job done.

But they were objectives - they were part of the main quest. Regardless, as I said, if you're an "A-B job done" kind of gamer then this isn't really the Zelda you're looking for. I see Andy as being similar in his approach to games and that's why it's not dazzled him like the rest of the forum.

Yeah I saw Andys posts in the Zelda thread and thought when I read them, that we would have similar feelings on the game.