Support NeoGAF

[GHG]

This is my first time with a Zelda game and I'm a bit stunned to be honest, not in a good way. I'm 8 hours in and my impressions so far (forgive me, I'm just going to type out my thoughts as I go):

• Ubisoft Towers™
• Old man give me your paraglider
• Oh look a fetch quest
• Repetitive shrines
• Hey old man, just give me your jacket, I don't want to have to throw random shit in a pot in the hope you'll give it to me until I give up
• It's a bit cold up here lads

• Vast open spaces of NOTHING
• Standard minimap & open world map, follow markers system
• Old man was just a troll, he wasn't really old
• Went back to the hut and he left me the jacket there anyway, what a waste of ingredients, thanks buddy
• Limited weapon slots despite your weapons breaking after just farting on them
• WHY CAN THIS LITTLE MAN CHOP DOWN TREES IN A COUPLE OF SWIPES AND COOK CRAZY DISHES BY CHUCKING RANDOM SHIT IN A DIRTY POT BUT CAN'T CRAFT ARROWS?
• A shitty illogical control scheme that you can't fully rebind
• Tedious boat mechanics... an oversized leaf? Really?
• BOTW.insert(features, simplfied RDR horses mod)
• Why is everyone mumbling random noises?
• Standard save the princess, rid the world of evil story
• Lack of notable music, especially when roaming the open world
• More Ubisoft Towers™
• "Don't step on my flowers!!!" crazy lady insta-fail...

Don't get me wrong, it does do some things well:

• The combat is serviceable although the enemies are braindead
• The rune abilities are cool and offer up some interesting combinations
• It can be relaxing just roaming around the world, shame there's not more interesting loot to be found
• Paraglider is cool
• Looks decent enough

Basically it's just a bog standard open world game so far as far as I'm concerned and unfortunately it's an amalgamation of a lot of the worst open world features in recent years.

Where is this revolutionary game of forever that I'm supposed to be seeing?
Was this the first open world game for a lot of people who played this or something?
Is it because it's the first open world Zelda game?
Did I go into this with my expectations being too high?
Did Ubisoft infiltrate Nintendo HQ?

I have so many questions.

I've just spoken to Impa (grandma?) and I'm cleaning up the shrines in the surrounding area of the Cuckariko Village. Is something crazy about to happen that will change my mind completely? Will I get a crazy new ability? Should I just ignore all these repetitive shrines/towers glowing in the distance and head east?

I'm ready to be struck down and have my eyes opened, come at me.

 

[EverydayBeast]

I appreciate the OP's interesting thread in terms of what Breath of the Wild does best is it treats every battle, moment, dungeon etc. like something special, the item/weapon system is win or lose in Zelda fan circles. It's a great game after 8+ hours in, period.

 

[Sybrix]

Like you, this was also my first Zelda game and it turned out to be one of the best games i have ever played and has become one of my most favourite games ever.

I get your points regarding 'Ubi Towers' and open space of nothing etc, however i think it comes down to your playstyle with this open world games, i love exploring game worlds, walking through wilderness and looking at how amazing everything is, one of the reasons why Red Dead Redemption 2 was an awesome game.

What are your thoughts on RDR2?

BOTW was the first game in a long time where i thought to myself wow ive just experienced something amazing here.

 

[ThatStupidLion]

agreed.

it does some neat things, but overall its a very average game.

nothing near as groundbreaking as fans make it out to be.

 

[Moogle11]

I'm not nearly as negative as you on the game, but yeah I wasn't blown away like most. To be expected though as I'm pretty tired of open world games and never liked sandbox, make your own fun, mess around with physics, try different ways of approaching things type of game play. I'm just not and imaginative/creative person and tend to prefer more linear, narrative-driven experiences.

In the case of Zelda, I've always mostly loved the dungeons and been "meh" at best on the overworld stuff. So a game that had few traditional Zelda style dungeons and a strong emphasis on the open world stuff was never something I was going to like as much as games like A Link to the Past or Ocarina of Time. I still enjoyed it and put a ton of time into--though a large part of that was just liking using my new Switch and not having all that many other games engross me until Mario Odyssey came out. I honestly overplayed (and didn't care for the DLC) and probably would have a slightly fonder take on the game if I'd stopped after beating the 4 Divine Beasts and the final boss.

I'm hoping the sequel has more dungeons and I'll spend a lot less time on the exploration stuff and mostly just mainline the dungeons and story missions like I do in other open world games.

 

[The Bloody-Nine]

I thought it was one of the most overrated games I ever played. Almost like the 10/10 reviewers had never played an open world game before.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

I thought it was a much better open-world game than most, but a worse Zelda than most. I still enjoyed it quite a bit, but it lacked focus.

 

[GHG]

Like you, this was also my first Zelda game and it turned out to be one of the best games i have ever played and has become one of my most favourite games ever.

I get your points regarding 'Ubi Towers' and open space of nothing etc, however i think it comes down to your playstyle with this open world games, i love exploring game worlds, walking through wilderness and looking at how amazing everything is, one of the reasons why Red Dead Redemption 2 was an awesome game.

What are your thoughts on RDR2?

BOTW was the first game in a long time where i thought to myself wow ive just experienced something amazing here.

I hated RDR2 when I first played it on PS4 Pro.

But now I have it on the PC and I'm playing it with KB/M at higher framerates with vsync turned off (my display is high refresh rate so minimal tearing) I'm really enjoying my time with it. Turns out it was the crappy controls and input lag that hampered my enjoyment of that game more than anything. It's a slow burn though, I'm just playing a couple of hours here and there in and around other games.

BOTW thankfully controls well, so I have no such issues there. My problems with it are more around the game design choices. It's literally open world design cut&paste. At least RDR2 is doing something different in a lot of cases, its a deep simulation for a lot of aspects.

 

[synchronicity]

I really enjoyed it. If you are prone to wanderlust, it's really absorbing imo.

 

[kunonabi]

There are some core things it does well especially how the world is laid to always have POI organically pop up in your view making for frequent detours and the physics/climbing does lead to lot of variety in taking different paths and creating emergent moments.

Problem is the rest of the game is crippled by recycled, repetitive content with mostly poor rewards for everything.

 

[The Bloody-Nine]

I like how if you spend hours finding the 900 seeds it rewards you with a turd.

 

[Gavin Stevens]

It was an incredible game you are missing out on if you didn’t play. One of the best this generation.

it was NOT a good zelda game, however,

 

[GHG]

I like how if you spend hours finding the 900 seeds it rewards you with a turd.

Pretty apt to be honest. Thanks for wasting your time.

At least I know to not hunt them down and only grab the ones I come across.

 

[Saber]

I thought it was one of the most overrated games I ever played. Almost like the 10/10 reviewers had never played an open world game before.

That basically resumes the entire fanbase behind BoW. Its basically a crappie open-world experience, but hey it has Zelda so its a 10. Believe me, in any other case the game would easly receive a 4~5 for its boringness, unnecessary broken weapon mechanics and open world with basically nothing. Reminds me of Skyword times.

 

[VertigoOA]

It doesn’t have Dungeons, the combat seems far less complex than let’s say Twilight Princess, the weapon durability is the worst implementation of such in any game ever, and the shrines were mostly pointless filler.

However, still the best Zelda game in 20 years. I could shit on it plenty but it still delivered an excellent sense of wonder. I will argue that it felt half baked and rushed to release. It needed content and not just empty environments and a very limited variety of enemies... and it needed some actual fucking dungeons. The initial high I felt while playing it wore off when I realized it had zero fucking dungeons. Fucking Destiny has dungeos. Mass Effect Andromeda has dungeons. Zelda? Nope!

Oddly enough, I followed this with Assasin’s Creed Origins and essentially felt like I was playing the same kind of game. But I’m sure people are claiming it to be the most innovative and refreshing open world game of all time... because Nintendo fanboys have no shame when stating obvious lies. But that’s what happens when you exclusively game on platforms that don’t have any software other than Mario spin-offs and cookie cutter rehashes.

 

[SantaC]

Terrible artstyle
Terrible repetitive quests
Awful rewards

7/10 at best.

Still better than skyward turd, but that isnt a feat.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

I actually agree with the title: my 3-year-old boy has been playing BotW on and off for about 6 months and he is gradually expanding his understanding of the game. He's not making any quest progress, but he can catch horses (he will even sneak and hide in grass to do so), ride horses, use magnesis on certain objects (like the rail-cars), shoot the bow, go to the menu to put items in Link's arms, change equipment, jump, glide, climb, slash with melee weapons, throw bombs (which also moves the rail-car), teleport using the map, lift items, eat food, cook food, chop trees, and other tasks. He cannot read any of the menus but generally understands how to navigate the most basic ones. Surprisingly he can fend off most basic enemies. He even defeated a Hinox after spamming a bunch of bomb arrows (I had ~200 in my quiver) and backpedaling to keep his distance, it was hilarious.

Watching him grow from a complete newcomer with no third-person action game experience to a novice (I mean, he's still only 3 and can't do much) has earned the game an even better positive reputation (in my mind, personally) after watching how kid-friendly most of the game is. This reminds me of the original Legend of Zelda, a game that was too confusing for my very young brain to beat in its entirety, but a very fun and memorable game nonetheless.

 

[GHG]

Also, I almost forgot, why cont you swim properly in this game? Why can't you go underwater?

Why do you instantly drown when the stamina meter runs out? Did this man learn to swim before he could tread water?

 

[jts]

BotW towers are nothing like what makes Ubisoft towers poor, because they don’t give you shit. They’re a vantage point for you to spot whatever the fuck you want on your own - manually. What you see is what you get. Honestly I’ve played the major lot of open world games and BotW broke many of them for me, and it’s hard to go back to them now.

But this thread reminded me that BotW 2 might be on the way this year

 

[DESTROYA]

Not every game is for everyone, if you like it,OK if you don’t that’s OK too.
Personally I enjoyed it and found it very entertaining.

 

[GHG]

BotW towers are nothing like what makes Ubisoft towers poor, because they don’t give you shit. They’re a vantage point for you to spot whatever the fuck you want on your own - manually. What you see is what you get. Honestly I’ve played the major lot of open world games and BotW broke many of them for me, and it’s hard to go back to them now.

But this thread reminded me that BotW 2 might be on the way this year

Is this a joke? It literally unlocks the topography and roads on the map for you when you get to the top and activate them.

You can scout shrines and shit from any vantage point in the game, they are a completely worthless addition (and with the stamina meter being what it is they are tedious to climb).

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

BotW towers are nothing like what makes Ubisoft towers poor, because they don’t give you shit. They’re a vantage point for you to spot whatever the fuck you want on your own - manually. What you see is what you get.

To play devil's advocate, wouldn't that make Zelda's towers even worse? At least Ubi towers highlight areas of interest and give you new quest markers. BotW makes you tag things manually....

That aside, I think the best option would be to remove towers entirely and to base exploration on fog-of-war and line of sight. Nintendo was already halfway there: the towers don't immediately highlight all the points of interest in the area, they just provide a good vantage point. Not only a good vantage point, but a good travel point, because you could use those towers to glide to all sorts of unreachable areas. Unlocking the tower was a nice foothold to push into an even higher, more remote area that was tedious or impossible to reach on foot / on horse. So just go all the way and let the player explore from whatever vantage point looks best.

Honestly I’ve played the major lot of open world games and BotW broke many of them for me, and it’s hard to go back to them now.

I feel the same way. I was pretty soured on open-world games since the late 360/PS3 era, I felt they were flooding everthing. BotW is one of the few modern open-world games I fell in love with.

 

[JimmyJones]

Yes, it was garbage.

 

[jadedm17]

You have no heart OP, sorry. Repetitive shrines? Theyre all unique and challenging.

I dont know, maybe its not for you so just move on? As someone who fell in love with gaming with Gears of War and the X360 era, i found BOTW magical and unique. To each their own?

 

[Vawn]

Most overrated game of the generation. I hate to admit that, because I love Zelda and I love Switch.

And while overrated, it wasn't bad. It was just nowhere near as great as you'd be led to believe.

 

[#Phonepunk#]

it is funny to complain about overreeactions to this game while doing exactly that and overreacting to the game.

you seem to enjoy many parts of the game. you even listed them in your OP. then you ask why people like the game. lol. i don't understand.

you seem to be tilting at windmills. you want to argue with a person who thinks this is the most revolutionary and amazing game ever, a person that probably doesn't exist outside of your mind.

it's ok. just enjoy the game. it looks dope. it's chill. there aren't constantly HUD elements pulling you around, you can do whatever you want. it isn't the second coming of Jesus. nobody said it was.

 

[jts]

Is this a joke? It literally unlocks the topography and roads on the map for you when you get to the top and activate them.

You can scout shrines and shit from any vantage point in the game, they are a completely worthless addition (and with the stamina meter being what it is they are tedious to climb).

Unlocking map pieces is the same mechanic as the fish in TWW and as in many Zelda games before... the stamina meter being scarce is what can make them a fun challenge, but you can also improve stamina/climbing speed etc to make it easier, via clothing, acquiring orbs in shrines (and converting them to stamina), temporary extra stamina via cooked recipes that include stamina-improving ingredients and so on. All of that makes the game fun to me

 

[LordOfChaos]

I was often bored through it tbh. I did get to the end and got all the memories to somewhat have a story to put to it, but all the slow ass climbing I just found frustrating, despite being one of the marquee features.

Also the slow everything really, like shopkeeper dialogue trees if you have to sell a lot of shit, slow text crawl, a lot of it is still made with the assumption of kids playing it I think, despite trying to grow up a bit at the same time.

 

[Ladioss]

Liking BOTW OP comes down to either you like the world of Hyrule pictured in it, or not. Simple as that.

For the record I hate Ubi's open world games, and I loved BOTW.

 

[Terenty]

They run out of money and time and werent able to fill the world with content simple as that. Its an empty sandbox literally

 

[NOLA_Gaffer]

It's okay to not like things.

 

[Redbird]

• Ubisoft Towers done right

FTFY

• Standard minimap & open world map, follow markers system

And the problem here is...?

They run out of money and time and werent able to fill the world with content simple as that. Its an empty sandbox literally

What game have you played? There are enemies, Korok Seeds, chests, and collectibles freakin' everywhere.

 

[Monkeygourmet]

Nah...

It was just another example of Nintendo wading into a genre and pretty much nailing it first time while countless others have have many, many attempts and still manage to screw it up.

1 take, no mistakes - put it in the oven, easy bake.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

I think it is a testament to the ballsiness of the game design that so many people intensely hate it and intensely love it. I rarely see the opinion "eh it was okay". There must be something to the game that makes it stand out in such a way.

The game has a difficulty curve framed almost exactly like Minecraft. You play through an intro area to get your "starting tools" and then the world is open to you, to chop, harvest, cook, catch, kill, float, and navigate how you please. This is new territory for Zelda. This franchise has always been a distillation of what was going on in Western RPGs during the time, giving it the Nintendo / arcade twist. BotW is Nintendo finally doing a twist on the heavier RPG, exploration, and crafting elements of Skyrim and Minecraft.

Moving to the open world in this way was always going to ruffle some Zelda purist feathers, because none of the other games are this open-ended. One of the franchise's "charms" since LttP on SNES is its puzzle-like linearity. There are some freedoms, but the game proceeds along a rail in most circumstances. You acquire certain items to bypass certain obstacles in a prescribed order.

BotW is not that way. 90% of the game's content is open to you right away, including recipes, locations of powerful weapons, and so forth. If you want to cook attack-boosting foods you can do so immediately, there is no recipe to unlock or Cooking skill to invest points into before it becomes available. If you want to explore cold / hot areas but haven't gotten the gear yet, just go find some plants or mushrooms and make a meal that confers cold / hot resistance, nothing stops the player from doing so if they have found the ingredients.. Shield-surfing is 100% optional (as far as I'm aware) but is pretty fun, even just for the fun of it. One of the most powerful enemy types in the game (guardians) can be easily defeated with basic gear once you learn how to properly deflect their beams, a skill that is available from the start. Enemies can be tricked by wearing an oversized mask (bought from a creepy dude only found in certain areas at night) which allows the player to bypass entire camps without issue. The tools given to the player in BotW's first 2-3 hours would typically take 10 - 20 hours to acquire in Skyrim or Minecraft or AssCreed. The tools available to the player in BotW's first 10 hours would typically take 40 hours to acquire in Oblivion or Witcher 3 or whatever.

So in that sense, BotW is like an open-world action RPG which begins halfway through: instead of sluggishly building up a suite of powers, you have access to a lot of useful tools right at the beginning of BotW. Because these tools can be pretty easily abused, the enemies are tougher to match. It's a tough game and the player will suffer from scarcity, this is obviously a part of the design. I think they kept things challenging, discouraging the player from relying on any one item or trick. For those who replay the game, you can always make a beeline for the best stuff immediately after the plateau (you'd be surprised how powerful gear one can get in just 5 or 6 hours after starting).

Not everyone likes every Zelda anyway. It'll be appreciated for its strengths and the weaknesses will feel less important as time goes on. I think the game will be viewed very favorably in the future. It has many layers to peel away.

That said, not everyone is gonna have a good time with this game. I think that is because Nintendo aimed BotW to hit a slightly different target-market than they were aiming at previously. The complaints are valid as far as I'm concerned, even though I'm a mega fan of the game. I feel as though Nintendo aimed the game at idiots like me because I do not care about MUH CONNECTED DUNGEONS or MUH WEAPON DURABILITY

 

[Makoto Niijima]

Nah, it was an incredible game. Sorry it didn't click for you, I guess.

 

[R6Rider]

I started playing it about a month ago now and so far it's been alright. The random loot you find it chest is usually garbage though.

You perilously climb the mountain, avoided the storm, survived the enemies and now raise the chest from the water using the freezing ability. The chest is golden and shimmering as you approach...and what do you get?

Five arrows.

 

[jts]

To play devil's advocate, wouldn't that make Zelda's towers even worse? At least Ubi towers highlight areas of interest and give you new quest markers. BotW makes you tag things manually....

I don’t the game to play itself, I think it’s nice to give that agency to the player with a high vantage point of view and a long draw distance, enabling him to place markers and to glide to places as well.

 

[EDMIX]

• Ubisoft Towers™
• Old man give me your paraglider
• Oh look a fetch quest
• Repetitive shrines

How I feel about this game summed up. The reality is, if this was a Ubisoft game, many would cite those things and give it a bad review. Nintendo does it and its "innovative" and "REVOLUTIONARY". A massive double standard exist that is so bad, you can't even take most game journalist seriously when they start pretending BoTW's copied features are "revolutionary" yet ignored the dozen or so titles that have been doing those exact things for a decade plus.

• Vast open spaces of NOTHING
• Standard minimap & open world map, follow markers system

The game has so much bloat and waste of space its not even funny. I'd rather just have the fucking game 8 times smaller with actually GOOD SHIT to find vs here is a bunch of collect-a-ton shit, I mean "seeds" lol

Basically it's just a bog standard open world game so far as far as I'm concerned and unfortunately it's an amalgamation of a lot of the worst open world features in recent years.

Where is this revolutionary game of forever that I'm supposed to be seeing?
Was this the first open world game for a lot of people who played this or something?

This 1000%. When someone tells me how creative and different the game is cause you can make fire and eat food, I have to question how old that person is and if they actually played ANY open world game prior to this.

Imho, you should play Ocarina of Time or Wind Waker or Links Awaking remake instead. BoTW removes so many core features, I can barely call this crap a Zelda game. Removes actual dungeons for new grounds, facebook flash puzzles, destroys the proven structure of the past games with this Ubisoft rippoff model and fills it with tons of pointless filler fetch quest.

For those that actually like BoTW, might as well put in AC Origins, Odyssey and many more as greatest games of all time as those have just as much fetch quest and HUGE WORLDZ then you can throw a stick at. Don't get me wrong either, BoTW isn't the worst game of all time, but its imho just as good as AC origins, Odyssey etc. None of the games I mentioned I'd put in some greatest games of all time crap or even in the top 20. So people who put BoTW on this hilarious pedestal sound just as crazy as someone arguing AC Origins as being the greatest game of all time....

VertigoOA 'Oddly enough, I followed this with Assasin’s Creed Origins and essentially felt like I was playing the same kind of game. But I’m sure people are claiming it to be the most innovative and refreshing open world game of all time... because Nintendo fanboys have no shame when stating obvious lies. But that’s what happens when you exclusively game on platforms that don’t have any software other than Mario spin-offs and cookie cutter rehashes. " Agreed and agreed.

 

[buizel]

This is my first time with a Zelda game and I'm a bit stunned to be honest, not in a good way. I'm 8 hours in and my impressions so far (forgive me, I'm just going to type out my thoughts as I go):

• Ubisoft Towers™
• Old man give me your paraglider
• Oh look a fetch quest
• Repetitive shrines
• Hey old man, just give me your jacket, I don't want to have to throw random shit in a pot in the hope you'll give it to me until I give up
• It's a bit cold up here lads

• Vast open spaces of NOTHING
• Standard minimap & open world map, follow markers system
• Old man was just a troll, he wasn't really old
• Went back to the hut and he left me the jacket there anyway, what a waste of ingredients, thanks buddy
• Limited weapon slots despite your weapons breaking after just farting on them
• WHY CAN THIS LITTLE MAN CHOP DOWN TREES IN A COUPLE OF SWIPES AND COOK CRAZY DISHES BY CHUCKING RANDOM SHIT IN A DIRTY POT BUT CAN'T CRAFT ARROWS?
• A shitty illogical control scheme that you can't fully rebind
• Tedious boat mechanics... an oversized leaf? Really?
• BOTW.insert(features, simplfied RDR horses mod)
• Why is everyone mumbling random noises?
• Standard save the princess, rid the world of evil story
• Lack of notable music, especially when roaming the open world
• More Ubisoft Towers™
• "Don't step on my flowers!!!" crazy lady insta-fail...

Don't get me wrong, it does do some things well:

• The combat is serviceable although the enemies are braindead
• The rune abilities are cool and offer up some interesting combinations
• It can be relaxing just roaming around the world, shame there's not more interesting loot to be found
• Paraglider is cool
• Looks decent enough

Basically it's just a bog standard open world game so far as far as I'm concerned and unfortunately it's an amalgamation of a lot of the worst open world features in recent years.

Where is this revolutionary game of forever that I'm supposed to be seeing?
Was this the first open world game for a lot of people who played this or something?
Is it because it's the first open world Zelda game?
Did I go into this with my expectations being too high?
Did Ubisoft infiltrate Nintendo HQ?

I have so many questions.

I've just spoken to Impa (grandma?) and I'm cleaning up the shrines in the surrounding area of the Cuckariko Village. Is something crazy about to happen that will change my mind completely? Will I get a crazy new ability? Should I just ignore all these repetitive shrines/towers glowing in the distance and head east?

I'm ready to be struck down and have my eyes opened, come at me.

i felt the same as you for the first time i played it, then maybe around the 5 hour mark, or especially when I started unlocking new areas and getting the high killer weapons and coming across powerful enemies... i found the game infinitely more enjoyable and i loved it to death. then i decided i'd take on ganon and i did, and easily won - then never touched it since. kinda regret going to ganon, shouldve explored more now i feel i have no purpose.

 

[Zog]

I thought it was one of the most overrated games I ever played. Almost like the 10/10 reviewers had never played an open world game before.

Much like many people pretend that the Switch is the first handheld that they ever played. I think many people go out of their way to praise Nintendo.

 

[Elysion]

I think the game‘s biggest weakness is the lack of interesting loot, be it gadgets, weapons or unique items. I never felt rewarded after completing any of the quests or shrines. The rewards for most of the side quests are a joke, usually just a paltry amount of rupees. Other than the Master Sword, there’s never a feeling of accomplishment when you get a new weapon, since they‘ll break after two or three battles anyway (or less). The lack of enemy diversity doesn‘t help either.

I still enjoyed it quite a lot however, mostly because the world itself is beautiful, and fun to explore (even if I wish there was more stuff to find).

 

[Terenty]

What game have you played? There are enemies, Korok Seeds, chests, and collectibles freakin' everywhere.

That's filler copy pasted throughout the whole game. There is unique content only for a fraction of the map

 

[SantaC]

Much like many people pretend that the Switch is the first handheld that they ever played. I think many people go out of their way to praise Nintendo.

For some reason Nintendo gets a lot of free passes in the review media. This isnt the 90s anymore when they killed it with every game.

 

[Fbh]

As a reference OP, what would you consider a good open world game?

Anyway, to me BotW is one of those games where I actually agree with most of the criticism it gets and yet it was still one of the most fun and enjoyable games I played this gen. Yeah the weapon durability sucked, a lot of quests are basic fetch quests, the story was underwhelming and I would have liked some real zelda style dungeons.

But it's one of the few open world games where I had fun exploring and interacting with the world. I really liked the climbing and gliding as I think it really helped you feel like you could go anywhere. You say it's empty but I was consistently finding stuff and I also really enjoyed the Shrines. To me it was pretty much the only truly open world game (so not counting souls) where I got to cool places by exploring rather than just having them be marked on my map or have them be a big waypoint I see or have some character point me to the specific places which then appear on my magic minimap GPS, which is how 99.9 of modern open worlds are designed.

I also liked finding out all the small ways you can interact with the world. Like how equipping a fire based weapon will warm you up a bit in cold areas or how you can cook meat by just throwing it on the floor in really hot areas or how you need to unequip metallic items during a thunderstorm or can use that to your advantage with the right item later on


The defence force for it is ridiculous though. Still remember everyone losing their shit when Jim Sterling gave it a 7 lol.

 

[InterMusketeer]

It's pretty much impossible for this to be anyone's first open world game, because we've been buried with them for at least 15 years now.

Personally I think that in some ways it's a pretty unique take on open world games, and quite standard in others. It does some things well, and some things not so much. It's all pretty subjective though. IMO it really feels like a first attempt at this type of game, and I hope the sequel will improve on things A LOT since it'll be using the same basic map.

Anyway, to enjoy the game more, I recommend going to the next village that Impa told you about, and after that just wander around to places that look interesting. That's basically what this game is. Hanging around one area for too long can be a bit boring because the shrines and everything are going to offer very similar challenges. Best to shake it up by moving around.

 

[buizel]

i also hate nintendo for saying how revolutionary the game is, and how they coined the term 'open-air' because of how free it is. literally suck my crusty chode nintendo fuck you and your arrogance, especially when we've had open world games with actual perfected flight mechanics for fucking ages you arrogant cunts

if youre gunna try coin a new genre at least give it to a game deserving of it

 

[daveonezero]

I’m at the same point and I’m loving it.

I heard the weak points of the game but I’m going to approach it like a survival game. Minimal hud and just sort of poke around

Avoid combat when possible and slowly improve my character and their equipment as I travel.

so far it seems fun.
One note I do agree with is the controls.

like really wtf. It’s taken me this long to just get the hang of them.

I don’t know if they are bad or if they are just different mappings to standard controls that they are annoying.

also miss a dodge or roll button only because of other Zeldas and Dark Souls I think. It’s off jump is dodge. And to cancel actions. Also inventory. I thought there was a way to drop weapons from the quick menu. No?

I think it does enough stuff different and opens things up a bit compared toother open world games it makes it fun and long lasting despite simple systems on the surface. They are very deep and well integrated through out the game.

 

[Neff]

All I know is I was able to play this game for 2 years straight without getting bored.

 

[GHG]

The game can be great artistically though, it has it's moments. A couple of screens from a session I had just now:

As a reference OP, what would you consider a good open world game?

In recent times I would reference games like Kingdom Come Deliverance, Divinity Original sin 1&2 , Nier Automata (but for different reasons, the game is a work of art), The Soulsbonre Series and Sekiro and then hub based open worlds like Prey (2017), the Dishonored series. I tend to like systems heavy sandbox focused open world games where you are given a bunch of tools/abilities and then it's up to you to figure your way around. I'm also getting through RDR2 gradually and I can already tell you it wont get a place on that list despite having some fantastic systems at play, the mission design is a simply a joke and doesn't allow for any creativity. That game is at it's best when it leaves you alone. Death Stranding I also like but it's just... different. I wouldn't even know how to categorize it, it's highly flawed but somehow a lot of it works (that game felt like someone haphazardly trying to cram every crazy idea they've ever had into a single game with no regard for whether any of it is a good fit or makes sense).

I can see why some people might say BOTW is systems heavy, but compared a lot of the aforementioned games it's pretty basic and dare I say obvious. For example I just stumbled across a shrine (yes... yet another shrine...) and on the little island it was on was covered in thorny vines and there were those rock enemies on the island that dropped flint as loot after you kill them. It's like "no shit", you really didn't need to spell it out for me.

I also feel they gave you all the major abilities too soon and in a rapid fire fashion at the start. These rune abilities should have been dished out more gradually across the game, with hints of whats to come next scattered around the environment, like places you can't reach and/or puzzles you can't solve. That provides a bit of suspense and anticipation for the areas that you will be able to go back to with your newly acquired skills. While it's a 2D sidescroller, Hollow Knight does this perfectly (Prey also does this very well). Instead I already feel invincible already. The enemies don't pose a threat since they are dumb as shit, I can already climb most things, if I fall I can glide. To be honest, being stranded in water and having my stamina run out is the only thing I'm worried about at the moment in this game.

For what it's worth, I also enjoyed my time with Days Gone and Assassins Creed Origins this gen despite them not being absolutely top tier, but the key is I knew what I was getting myself into with those two (and was fully in the mood for a stereotypical open world game at the time I decided to play them). Despite this game having more systems in play than either of Days Gone or AC:O, I would still place this game more in the category that those two fall into rather than games like Kingdom Come, Divinity OS or Prey. It's just not stimulating me mentally on the level I thought it would based on what I'd read everywhere prior to giving it a try. I really did not expect (and was not prepared for) shit like towers, NPC's magically placing markers on your minimap/world map, repetitive shrines and a collectathon like the korok seeds.

My GOAT open world games are Morrowind and Gothic. This video summaries my feelings on those two games well:



The problem is they simply don't make games like that anymore. Prey and Kingdom Come are the only two recent games that have given me a similar feeling to Morrowind and Gothic.

Anyway, I will keep going with it for a few more play sessions, see what I uncover and how I feel. I just stumbled across some strange blue water creatures who told me to go somewhere along the river behind a tower (lol) to speak to someone and they didn't plonk a marker on my map. Praise be.

Its not a bad game, I can see it's well made and has had passion go into it so I can respect that. It's not entirely soulless and it is charming, I'll give it that. But my god did they select the wrong open world tropes to build their game world around.

 

[Birdo]

If you changed the names of the characters and places, you wouldn't know it's a Zelda game.

That's why I dislike it. I like the classic Zelda formula and character styles. Not some Ubisoft open world crap.