xdaniel

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πŸ“œ Hobby programmer, ROM hacker, retro computers & consoles, anime & manga fan, sometimes NSFW?

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So I'm fashionably late to the party, as I often am, and finally got myself The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for the Switch a couple of days ago.

It's been an interesting experience so far. With my most recent full playthrough of any of the series' games being replaying Ocarina of Time, thus coming straight from the classic Zelda formula, and then going into BotW knowing that it breaks with many traditions, had me feeling a bit uneasy and wondering if I was going to like the game at all. Skyward Sword put me off within an hour, and I haven't touched it since it originally released back on the Wii. I was worried I'd react the same way here.

After having spent a good while in ruined Hyrule by now, I can confidently say that I didn't need to worry. The formula has definitely changed, but plenty of the ingredients are still just as good as you'd expect, and while the newly added spices might take some time to get used to, they end up meshing rather well with the rest of the dish.

I would not have expected to say this going into it, but it might just end up in my top 3 of Zelda games. Nothing will ever top the original Link's Awakening because there are too many memories, too much nostalgia attached to it for me, but right below there, there's certainly space for an OoT or, eventually, a BotW.


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in reply to @xdaniel's post:

Yeah, I was similarly late to the party because for as much as I loved those first few polygonal games, after I beat Twilight Princess, I was just so incredibly burnt out on that formula and had already heard so exhaustively much about BotW that I didn't know whether I'd be able to appreciate it as a fresh experience all that much. I never did end up beating up (I did beat TotK, though), but I definitely really enjoyed my time with it and admire its approach to open world gameplay a lot. A lot of western games I think are so fixated on providing power fantasies that there's not really any room for players to have a relationship with their environment. But these two Zelda games, because you're doing so much climbing and whatnot, it's a much more measured relationship with that terrain. You can master the mechanics, but you can never truly dominate over the entire game (at least if you're playing casually) because of that push and pull you have with the rest of the game and they're much more memorable games for it, IMO. I sympathize with some of the criticisms people had who wish they kept more of the older games in some ways, but I also just feel like, by Skyward Sword especially, that team had clearly done about as much as they could do without repeating themselves. Those old games will always exist and if this is what it took for them to feel really inspired and find that spark in their work again, then I'm glad they made these two games. I genuinely have no idea what they could possibly do after TotK; it's just nice to feel this passionate about a Zelda again ahaha.

I did come into BotW having heard a lot about it too, but also seen about half of a playthrough on stream(s) before. That was months ago, so luckily, I don't remember much from it on top of my head. I did get to some areas and shrines that were familiar from having seen them there, but in the shrines in particular, still had to think how to solve them myself.

Not sure how many other games I've played that felt especially open world (besides Minecraft's literal, virtually-infinite world), but BotW's take on this type of gameplay is a fun one so far, and really the opposite of providing power fantasies. Things like your equipment breaking and having a stamina meter are examples of that, I think. And those two in particular are gameplay mechanics I didn't think I'd appreciate at all at first, because they just seem very "not Zelda-like". I'm still not 100% sure how I feel about them, but I'm leaning towards them being a positive in this type of game.

As for the older games, I think I remember that even OoT was called a rehash of ALttP by some back in its day, so this trend of repetition was something that seems to have started a long time ago. They did keep experimenting with later titles to some extend (Majora's time mechanics, Wind Waker's style, Skyward's control scheme), but those didn't necessarily pan out in the way they'd hoped - Skyward Sword especially soured me on the franchise or its future as a whole, in a way. BotW was a return to form, and probably the biggest experiment (gamble?) they've done in quite a while, one that did pan out very well.

(Hope that all makes sense, been busy the weekend but still wanted to reply with some thoughts :3)