#I complain but I really do love skyward sword but goddamn it can be hard sometimes

[kuwupikaa]

Love playing through skyward sword but the lanayru mining facility was genuinely exhausting omfg.

[2149599]

full botw onion

i can say that without a doubt, breath of the wild has been the weakest 3d zelda. 

like, i don’t think it’s a bad game. i think it’s actually a pretty good game, but it’s not a good zelda game. and maybe it’s because i just expected more from a game that was delayed 2 years to perfect and had such a huge hype built around it that i’m as disappointed as i am idk.

1. it’s too focused on survival mechanics 

the gameplay and sense of exploration was done fairly well, but it seems like nintendo was so focused on that, that they realized they didn’t have much of a story and just quickly cobbled one together and make it seem deeper than it actually is. the important characters are difficult to like because......you only get to see like 2 scenes about them. they had no development. the trailer made it seem like we were going to experience some Epic Heartbreaking Shit, but those were all just memories. the story already happened. we’re just finishing it up. i’ll touch up more on my issues with the story later.

while the trappings are still pretty zelda ortiented, a lot of the mechanics remind me of just another survival game on steam. you die a lot until you collect enough hearts and upgrade your stuff enough to allow you to survive longer. standard enemies can easily kill you in one hit. the beginning of the game is so brutal and relentless which is uncharacteristic with the zelda series. 

2. weapons have terrible durability

I’VE COMPLAINED ABOUT THIS LIKE 20 TIMES but god the weapon durability mechanic is so goddamn annoying. a royal claymore with upped durability breaks in 10 hits. although the master sword doesn’t break, it does “run out of energy” and prevents you from using it for 10 minutes. that alone feels very out place. whats worse is that if all your weapons break you can’t do much of anything. you’re totally shit out of luck until you come across like a stick or something so you can at least try to knock a club out of a bokoblins hand. 

the “special weapons” you receive after completeing a divine beast break pretty easy, too. they can actually be repaired, but it still feels weird for them to break so easily. “yeah here take this Super Special weapon that your friend treasured and used for a long time” breaks after taking down a moblin. 

3. no real dungeons

there.......isn’t really any dungeons in the game. the divine beasts are the closest you get, but they’re ridiculously easy to blow through. while each one does have characteristics unique to itself, they’re still all relatively the same. one of the things i loved about the zelda series was the lengthy dungeons that were all so different from one another. 

the dungeon bosses are pretty simple themselves; the only one that gave me any trouble was thunderblight ganon, but honestly it was more annoying than anything. but they all hold the basic “shoot in the eye, slash with sword, repeat” formula to defeating them. the bosses are pretty much the same in basic design, too. there’s just....no real variety in this game. which feels like such a let down compared to other zelda bosses.

getting into the divine beasts was more fun than the divine beasts themselves.

4. there’s dogs in the game but you can’t pet them

self-explanatory 

5. the game tries to be more poignant than it actually is.

the game is very clearly trying to evoke some sort of emotion from us with the decayed hyrule and Fond Flashbacks— but, the thing is, we were given no buildup to actually feel anything.

this hyrule is a world we are unfamiliar with. we know nearly nothing about the champions. it’s hard to care about a world that we don’t know anything about. and that wouldn’t be bad on it’s own if the game didn’t present these factors as if we are supposed to care; feel wistful.  it feels like they’re relying on player’s knowledge of previous zelda games to draw emotion from us (e.g. the lon lon ranch ruins). but... that’s a pretty bad strategy, as there are plenty of people who’s first zelda game will be botw.

although i think ocarina of time is just an Okay game (despite almost the entire zelda fandom putting it on a pedestal), it actually succeeded where botw failed, imo. after you pull the master sword and step out of the temple of time for the first time, it’s jarring when you see the state castle town is in. that’s because we became familiar with the world— we remember the constant energy and bustle of castle town, and it’s a shock when we see it in ruins and with zombies walking around.

idk, i know i touched on this a bit in the first point, but the story just... feels really weak. almost like they spent all their time perfecting the open world aspect of it and then last minute was like “oh shit we don’t have a story and we can’t delay this another year.” 

i’m not sure if you can even say the game has a story. like i said before, it feels like the story already happened, and the memory system is just a shoddy recap. 

6. voice acting is very subpar 

i was actually looking forward to a voice acted zelda, tbh. the idea seemed cool. but... the voice actors honestly kind of suck. the only voice that i didn’t dislike was revali’s. that said, i listened to the japanese dub and the voice acting there is pretty good tbh. idk why NoA can’t find good voice actors.

but in general, they really should have stuck to having minimal voice acting.

i also don’t like the idea of them speaking in english, i guess? i always like the idea of hylian being it’s own unique language (tbt zelda’s singing in skyward sword). it would have been better imo if they voice acted it in the “hylian language” and just subbed it. and i know something like that can be done well, because the Panzer Dragoon series is voice acted entirely in a made up language, and it’s great. the first Blinx was voice acted in a made up language and it sounded pretty good.

tl;dr botw is a good game, but i just feel like it just doesn’t have that “zelda charm”