That's not to discount the criticisms or "feel" you get from the game, but it's worth noting that nothing lives up to our childhood favorites.
I don't replay old games like this (the ones that have you solve and explore). It's effectively a security blanket, with no thrill - the opposite of the first experience. I find it bittersweet and it dulls feelings I associate with those games.
You can never go back, is the thing.
This can apply to a trip we went on, or a TV series we watched, or music I listened to, or a video game I played (e.g. I really experience this when playing Factorio again after it’s been a while).
So maybe YMMV, but I can still have things that (at least almost) live up to “feels” I had from childhood.
Sometimes when the follow-on content is bad... it's because the follow-on content is bad.
Contrast that with Elden Ring which had over 100 different enemies, as many bosses. Forced player exploration by having no insulting UI or navigation features and then rewarded that with endless variety of weapons, armor, abilities, spells you could build your character with. The soundtrack felt grand from the title screen. And every single area of it's map felt purposefully hand crafted. I never once felt like I was wandering around an empty map, just wasting my time.
I didn't care about the bosses or dungeons because I was, well, exploring. I didn't care about the story because I was, well, exploring. The mobs were really only there for me to find new and inventive ways to interact with the world.
The original Zelda was open-world.
I will agree that the game world felt sparse and underpopulated, but given the minimalist tone (as evidenced by so many other game elements, like the music or lack of hand-holding) it felt on-brand.
> Weapon durability is literal cancer.
They did this to discourage player min-maxing and to force some variety. I didn't like it either but appreciate the additional layer of dynamism it added to the game.
BotW didn't feel like a Zelda game because everything else that I mentioned.
> lack of hand-holding
The game puts a bright glowing dot on your map pointing to where you need to go.
> They did this to discourage player min-maxing and to force some variety.
Funny how Elden Ring didn't need to do that to offer 100x more variety. Seems more like they were too lazy to just come up with a better way of balancing things.
> I didn't like it either but appreciate the additional layer of dynamism it added to the game.
Stockholm syndrome.
> Hardly a good comparison, for one there are several years between the two releases and for two
As though anything Elden Ring did wasn't possible in 2017? What happened in the several years between that suddenly allowed for developers to put more effort into crafting their open-world map?
> I for one am sick of roguelike/soulslike mechanics infiltrating everything, this idea that you have to zerg everything over and over again to progress is cancer. And slow ass movement. And bosses that are massive difficulty ramps up from the rest of the level.
Just sounds like a skill issue. You're having a hard time because either A) you expect everything to be easy, and/or B) you don't want to put the effort into learning how each new enemy/boss fights.
If you just want to mash the attack button to win, BotW is definitely made for you.
I'd like to see somebody beat Thunderblight Ganon by mashing the attack button.
So what if it is? Some people want to play games that allow them to progress a certain amount without establishing skill mastery and there’s nothing objectively wrong with that.
My main gripe was not that BotW isn't Elden Ring, its that with as much money and resources as Nintendo has, they released a mediocore game. And then they did it again with TotK.
I found exploration very rewarding. I had a lot of fun finding my way on the island where I lost all my items. I remember seeing a Dragon flying through the sky which I thought was delightful. I found certain vistas to be rewarding as well. It's not rewarding in the sense that you're not going to be finding permanent upgrades to your character much, but it's definitely rewarding.
> Weapon durability is literal cancer.
This is a common sentiment but i feel like it's because it challenge's peoples normal expectations, not because it's a bad mechanic. Weapon durability in the game lead to a lot of interesting gameplay scenarios for me, where I lost a weapon and had to look for creative solutions. Altering the environment, using unideal weapons, or finding another way were all options rather than just trying to brute force it with weapons in every situation.
To me the weapon durability was a core mechanic to Breath of the Wild and it wouldn't have been nearly as enjoyable without it. There's too many memorable moments for me where a weapon broke and I had to scramble to think of another solution. I think for people that like hoarding items and collecting better and better weapons it's obviously going to be frustrating when you're forced to be creative in the moment. Elden Ring's creativity comes with how you build out your character, while Breath of the Wild's systems encourage/force you to think of solutions to problems on the fly.
I couldn't disagree more about the soundtrack, though. Breath of the Wild's soundtrack is a masterclass in how to best take advantage of the medium. It blends in with the foley sounds and perfectly encapsulates the mood of the world. It can be at times desolate, but that's the point. It matches the themes of the game itself.
Seemingly oblivious to how these two systems are deeply related: weapon durability allows the game to give you powerful items in random places without either permanently breaking the game’s difficulty or strongly incentivizing/requiring every player to visit some particular random spot.
The height of BoTW was the 4 tiny animal fortresses. And even they felt kinda shallow.
[spends a few minutes on a mental inventory]
Well, okay: I watched all the SW eps with my son. (His words after seeing Ep1 were "Daddy, that wasn't a very good movie.")
Still, I rest my case. Andor is the first content that I would actually miss if it went away.
Clone Wars & Rebels both suffer at first from being a bit too kid-oriented, but both wind up getting pretty serious over time.
Andor comes with the distinct advantage that you don't have to slog through hours of questionable content to get to the good stuff.
Rebels is harder because they had a habit of sneaking key storyline bits into the meh episodes.
X is a masterpiece Some person doesn’t enjoy X
When I was a kid I gobbled up all movies, good, bad, ... Whatever I watched it all. Last decade I haven't watched that much movies anymore. I am in the middle if it is me not being a kid anymore or it is quality.
The difference is that I still put significant time in gaming although it doesn't make me immerse into it like I did as a Kid. Movies I just quit on most of them and watch a couple of good ones.
Maybe it is unfair. A good movie you watch once but even if in a year only 1 good game comes out you can still rack up a big amount of time ;)
My son never finished BOTW, but I did. But I have a feeling he’s going to try to play Ocarina of Time before the summer is through. (And yes, I’ve already put in some time in TOTK).
I guarantee you that if Nintendo released "A Zelda in the mold of OoT but with a new set of dungeons and items and such" people who love OoT would go nuts for it. Look at what happened with Sonic Mania. For some reason, though, publishers/developers are very wary of doing this. Nintendo refuses to make a new Zelda that just reapplies the winning formula. Sega refuses to make Sonic Mania 2 - honestly, I was very pleasantly surprised they made the first one! I blame the late 2000s mantra of "innovation" and its presence/absence that seemed to be all the rage in critic circles.
That just seems tautological to me. Of course things that are deliberately trying to tug on your nostalgia will "live up" to it.
Of course, you're entirely correct but other entries in the series, even Skyward Sword with all its flaws, has managed to capture some of that spirit. BOTW to me is just an entirely different game.
It's a damned shame civ II is so hard to get properly running (dosbox, win3.1, etc, sound drivers, etc)
Meanwhile, Elden Ring drew me in like no other game in recent memory.
It's the best game. As a kid I liked Marathon and Mario but never played Zelda for some reason. OOT is just a perfect game.
How would you compare it to MM? I think MM is better.
Interesting. Opposite for me. Playing BotW reignited the feeling of playing OOT and MM for me.
I think I might have beaten one or two of the beasts and probably about half the shrines. And most of that came in the tail end of my many hours of gameplay. Yet I'd been all over the world, and had all kinds of fun adventures.
I also grew up with OoT, absolutely obsessed and life defining in many ways. Now I’m a certified Old, and while BotW didn’t click for me initially, I grew to love it and soon understood it to be one of the greatest games I’ve ever played. That did require me to consider the context, and force myself to play it with a type of ‘beginner’s mind’.
Then, a few months ago, I decided to give Ocarina a play via the Nintendo Switch Online N64 emulator and—I couldn’t do it. With modern makes you compare it to, the graphics, the frame rate, the controls, etc. was just not a good experience and I had to stop.
Same thing happened with Goldeneye. I can’t believe this was tolerable way back when.
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
The kids growing up on BotW/TotK will have the same rose colored glasses for those games as many of us have for OoT.
I can’t wait to get off work today and fire up TotK.
I played dozens of hours of Goldeneye back in the day (a friend had it, and I spent a lot of time at his house) but it very nearly wasn't tolerable to PC gamers. Its sole redeeming feature was that it was far more social than PC shooters. Playing it felt like going backwards 5-10 years in graphics, level design, gameplay, et c., plus the controls were astonishingly terrible (unless played in dual-controller mode, but that was no good for multiplayer). About the only feature it had going on that was up-to-date for the time were the multiple hit-zones on enemies (different animations and amount of damage depending on where you hit them).
Perfect Dark was a huge improvement in every way (and in many ways is still unsurpassed), and with modern controls on the XBox 360 port, I still play it to this day. Going back to Goldeneye from Perfect Dark, though? Oof. Even at the time, Perfect Dark's release seemed like it straight-up obsoleted Goldeneye, aided by the fact that it included renamed clones of some of the best Goldeneye multiplayer levels and many of the weapons (though, why would you play with them when you have Perfect Dark weapons available? They're so bland)
[EDIT] I mean, I was just nostalgia-playing a little Goldeneye on the Switch like last week for the first time in years, and checked the mappings because my god is the default bad, and if you know one that can put look + turn on the stick, and forward/back/strafe on the c-pad... that'd be great. It didn't look to me like any did that, so I just stuck with the default.
And then I played BotW. Since the late 90s there were only 2 other games that I put in more playtime than it and those were Ultima Online and WoW. And this was a single player game. It was the most amazing experience for me.
For me Zelda was always more of a puzzle game than an adventure game, and I feel like those puzzle aspects are much more amplified in the last two entries, though in a much more "freeform" way.
Maybe it's an age thing? My first Zelda was the original Legend of Zelda, and while I absolutely love the whole series (except for Tri Force Heroes), Breath of the Wild brought me back to the feeling of playing the original like nothing has since. Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask were huge, but I was already in college at that point.
I was fortunately able to takeoff my nostalgia glasses for Breath of the Wild, and similarly it blew me away. Haven’t felt that kind of emotional connection in a very long time.
I almost want to write a book: ‘Zelda Mind, Beginners Mind’
I'd read that :-)
Part of it is just controls. BotW is nice and responsive, and Geralt feels incredibly sluggish in comparison because of all the presumably mocapped animations that have to play for every single little thing you do. Try running forward and turning around to run backwards in both games. Gerald has a hell of a time coping, but Link just does it.
Part of it though was definitely the design of the open world. The Witcher 3 just feels claustrophobic. You can't walk two steps without having to collect herbs or fight drowners or talk to NPCs. BotW spaces things out more, and I feel the pacing is improved by this.
However, I’m with you on the claustrophobia regarding the map. I guess that’s due to resource constraints of the previous console generations, and I have high hopes for future Witcher games. Glad the series isn’t dead yet.
I'm fine with lore, but as soon as I have to sit down and listen to video game writing while losing control of my character, I'm instantly bored.
In theory they sound great. In reality it seems to work against every open-world game I've played. Elden Ring is almost an exception, but the side quests are completely broken in this format without following a guide.
I hated the Witcher 3. Much like RDR 2 it has great presentation, writing and VA - and everything else suffers. But it seems the new generation of gamers have spoken, and they like glorified interactive television with a low bar for gameplay.
Open world games need the open world to work with how players explore and interact. Interesting sites should be visually distinct from each other and the environment, and frequent. They should not all be visible at once, to avoid players being overwhelmed with unclear choices. They should all be rewarding so players are confident they aren’t wasting their time visiting. There shouldn’t be important content hidden from visibility because then the game is teaching the player that looking at the world is futile. And the world should be navigable without the UI, i.e. the players are focused on the world and not the UI.
Similar things hold about minimaps and teleportation. They make things easier, but also less immersive, and therefore probably less fun for most players.
Not in FromSoftware games. They relented somewhat in Elden Ring by adding NPC markers for last-known-location, but otherwise there is zero hand-holding for quests. In the other games it's more trivial since you tend to come across everything if you explore enough anyway, but Elden Ring is so absurdly huge that it's easy to miss a lot of content.
It also just wasn't that creative.. a very safe Zelda. Majora's Mask was much better though.
> It also just wasn't that creative.. a very safe Zelda.
It was the first 3d installment of the franchise. I think that it was unbelievably creative in how it approached the game design because it translated the ideas from 2D titles and took them 3D and found ways to make them new.
Majora's Mask got to be as creative as it was because it was just building on top of all the work that Ocarina of Time did to bring Zelda to 3D. In my case, I think it's a worse game, even if it is more "creative."
I recommend the video essay called OCARINA OF TIME - A Masterclass In Subtext "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyUcwsjyd8Q"
Interestingly, Breath of the Wild is the first modern game I can remember that brought back that sense of wonder I had as a kid.
My interest in video games declined greatly as the trend in the video game industry shifted toward heavy violence and more realistic graphics. Fast forward to last year, I decided to pick up the Switch as I found one for a really good deal. I wanted to try the new (to me) Zelda. I felt pretty unimpressed, decent not great. As it turned out, I had mistaken the much hyped BoTW release with the Zelda release that I bought. I was playing Skyward Sword.
Once I realized my error, I picked up BoTW and took it for spin. I now think the hype is totally justified. I got all the feelings I felt with OoT. It's been wonderful so far. I'm only about halfway through and stocked for Tears of the Kingdom.
Compare that with the "old" Zelda formula: you have to do dungeons in order, because the item you get in each dungeon unlocks the way forward on the overworked or in the dungeon. There are few to no side quests that aren't actually necessary to beat the game. Each dungeon (and overworld region) has a completely different visual aesthetic.
I think a middle ground would lead to a much better experience. Talking just about BOTW, imagine if 2 of the dungeons had to be done first, but each of those gave some item or ability that allowed you to complete one of the other ones. Or if the game was divided in half like most Zelda games are (light/dark world, young/old link), this makes you feel like you've accomplished something and are moving into a new chapter of the story.
This is exactly why it was one of my top 2-3 games of all time.
The Shrines were a huge part of why I was so unimpressed with BotW, because they were all so transparently made piecemeal. "Open World" doesn't mean a whole lot when you're expected to complete random identically flavored puzzles every 15 minutes.
I can also picture how Shrines were engineered a fast-food style assembly line: "Nintendo Engineering Team 46-b, you're being assigned Shrines 5-23, complete them in x weeks."
Even barring Shrines, the "Open World" itself was fairly devoid of interesting things.
My biggest criticism was how much like it felt like you were canonically in a game. Link with his iPad complete with selfie camera, and the clearly computer-generated matrix-y shrines, and if you went too far towards the mountains a "You can't go further that way" message, the strongest feeling I got playing that game is that in truth Link is being observed in a simulated fishbowl environment. A cool idea for a game to lean into, maybe, but not in this case.
Good observation. Compare with Ocarina's temples which felt genuinely scary.
How could the OP be enjoying the feeling of Witcher 3 if they have childhood blinders on? Someone could draw roots of W3 & BotW back to Ocarina. It is reasonable to wish they made a modern Zelda that went down more of the W3 open world path instead of BotW style.
I am very similar to you in that Ocarina of Time was a game that blew my mind and converted me from "kid who plays some video games" into "video gamer". I couldn't get enough of it. And while I also yearn for that older style of Zelda adventure, I find that because I always loved the puzzles, that experimenting in the shrines and around the world with BOTW brings me some level of enjoyment. However, I agree that I am not as "over the moon" with this style of game like some others are.
BOTW is certainly different regarding its core game design, but then again Majora's Mask and OOT are incredibly different in design as well. Look at the contrast between the first NES Zelda and Zelda II. Compare the SNES/N64 titles to 4 Swords on GameCube as well.
My point is there is incredible gameplay variation in the Zelda franchise historically. While they've often come back to release more "classic" Zelda games, Nintendo has _always_ tried new mechanics and gameplay loops. Some of these titles that deviate from the core/classic design have major flaws, but I think it is important for a game development studio to branch out and deviate from their "winning" formula.
There was something fun about getting Nintendo Power and the guidebooks which sticks with me as well. Super nostalgic
Good game, but seems to be a fair amount of herding/rose colored glasses with reviewers.
I also don't like replaying games - I've tried this a few times but once the nostalgia wears off I don't find it fun. Maybe my brain knows I did it already so it feels like chores? I don't know what it is but I just don't really replay things at all. This means I pretty much don't play Nintendo titles because they are all revivals/remakes of the same IP. Its-a-me Mario, again.
Majora's mask is hugely underrated IMO. It's on par with OOT for me.
TOTK is just bigger and better than BOTW in every conceivable way. It's the perfect video game sequel.
When I played Breath of the Wild, I felt ... nothing. It's not that I hated the game, it was even enjoyable up to a point, but I just can't seem to get as excited about it as many others, and it seems to be missing everything I loved about Zelda. I'm also not a huge fan of open world games in general and to this date, the only one that I think pulled this of well is IMHO Witcher 3 where every side quest feels meaningful.
So I wish everyone a ton of fun with Tears of the Kingdom, but I feel no particular urge to play it right now, given that it appears to largely copy BotW's formula from what I've read. Maybe I will pick it up at some later point.