You have become a parody of this thread's userbase.
Because I know BotW is deeply flawed?
People actually play GTA for the missions instead of causing havoc until you're finally taken down?
How the heck does that make sense? A puzzle can be as strict as a Rubix Cube, but it can also be as flexible as an Infinity Jigsaw Puzzle.
Again, one way isn’t the end-all-be-all when it comes to this sort of design.
This is not flexibility, it's bad design;
I also found interesting locations, challenging side quests, memory fragments, the dragons, and bits of environmental storytelling.
What was in the interesting locations, breakable weapons and Korok seeds? The side quests that mostly amount to fetch quests and reward you with worthless shit like arrows and rupees?
I don't remember what memory fragments or dragons even are, maybe something interesting I never got to. I'm sure there's something fun buried in BotW, somewhere beneath the tedium, but it wasn't worth digging through.
I mean, I worked within the limitations and mechanics to the point that all that was generally a non-issue. It all depends on how much you put into it. And I did find plenty of artistically pleasing areas, with many of the main sections feeling different to one another.
If the best you can say about a mechanic is it's a non-issue then you've got a problem. Even if you never had a problem with breakable weapons they ruin the game by being used as a reward.
I'm not saying BotW looks bad, just not as good as many previous games.
That dungeon I honestly feel is a rather poor choice if you’re talking about ones that are open to navigation, if only because of how utterly confusing and tedious it is if you don’t follow the prescribed path and exact water levels. It got to the point where I just threw up my hands and looked up a walkthrough.
I get that it has its fans, and I also like the interesting g dungeons as well. But I just prefer the freer and less restrictive openness of BOTW. For that matter, I approached said world as if it were just a massive dungeon.
I didn't find it tedious, but it was confusing, which was fun figuring out. You'll never get that experience from a fucking shrine or dicking around in the open world. It sounds like you just need to git gud (I'm not denying it was hard, but that's a good thing). BotW is much easier aside from combat, and therefore less interesting.
It's okay to prefer the freedom of BotW but you can't downplay the effect it has on the game or deny it could be done better. This formula has failed as a Zelda game unless your only experience with the series is literally LoZ and maybe AoL.
So the fact that the abilities the game gave you and how exactly they allowed you to interact with the world, much of which was highly encouraged by the game, isn’t that?
No sense of progression, no complicated puzzles, no aesthetically unique dungeons, this is what is missing. If you're satisfied with a bunch of optional mini puzzles in samey sterile environments that don't reward you sufficiently for bothering is your idea of a good replacement for dungeons then you're just flat-out wrong.
That's just the gameplay, don't get me started on the story or music, or lack thereof regarding the latter.
I swear, we’ve been going back and forth on this for years at this point. That said, if you prefer the older style, more power to you.
You jump to BotW's defense any time it's criticized, so if course we'll debate this each time. I do the same thing for classics Resident Evil, I defend it whenever I see the fixed camera or tank controls shit on (especially the former, it's an objectively good design decision).
Same to you, I'm glad you enjoy these new Zelda games but I'm gonna lose it if we get another BotW DLC masquerading as a new game.
Ok this discourse again.... so does anyone remember the constant over complaining about how samey zelda was until breath of the wild? People say Zelda was too linear, Zelda was too handholdy, It certainly couldn't have just been on the american side if Aonuma went with Breath of the Wild. The game existed for a reason, regardless if said reasons had any good justifcations to them in retrospect
I don't remember anybody saying they hated dungeons or progression. They didn't have to throw out the good stuff just to mix things up.
