*warning for sperging
Because I know BotW is deeply flawed
More that you keep downplaying the game’s strengths and are unable to accept that what doesn’t work for you is seen by others as a breath of fresh air.
I get that you weren’t a fan of the new take the game went with, and that’s fine. But there’s a reason so many others enjoyed it.
This is not flexibility, it's bad design
And again, I ask how? Emergent gameplay is all about allowing the player to experiment with the mechanics and tools given to come up with ways to solve challenges in ways that the devs may not have even thought of.
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 found things such as world building, environmental storytelling, new enemies, and useful items beyond just the breakable weapons.
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.
Well there you go. Those moments were indeed a highlight for me, as the former shed a light on the backstory of the game alongside showing more moments of arguably my favorite incarnation of Princess Zelda, and the latter were not only some of the most majestic and memorable encounters, but also had one of the more thrilling side quests.
Sorry you didn’t stick around long enough.
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.
They aren’t only used as a reward. Heck, the heart containers and stamina upgrades you get after completing the shrines is more of a reward than the weapons are.
The weapons are mainly used as a resource/option to be used in combat to encourage experimentation. A different approach, and I get that it doesn’t work for some.
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.
Confusing is the opposite of fun for me, if it means getting stuck for hours on end. It may be more rewarding to solve sure, but I don’t like overly confusing puzzles. That’s just me. And I was able to get through the dungeons in games like Wind Waker and Twilight Princess no problem.
A good challenge involving puzzles for me at least stems from a fair obstacle that either has solutions that, while a bit obscure, aren’t overly confusing, or allow for multiple solutions.
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.
Again, I’ve played many of the other games in the series before BOTW, and I do like the formula they stuck with. But the new I also feel works great as a Zelda game, in that it still gives you interesting abilities and has you using them to solve puzzles and obstacles, just this time not in dungeons, but rather in the world itself.
For some people, what makes a Zelda game fun is the exploration.
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.
No sense of progression huh? I mean, I was genuinely felt my character getting stronger as I accumulated more health, stamina, and stronger armor, alongside acquiring the Master Sword. So encounters with the Guardians that were at first challenging became easier.
The world itself for me was the highlight, and I treated it as the main dungeon itself, given how it is home to many unique locales, and some of the challenges and puzzles to simply get to the shrines were complicated. Sure the shrines are optional, but you’d be missing out on, well, the character progression and some of the more interesting challenges to access them.
That said, I do think having some more unique dungeons would be pretty nice to see.
don't get me started on the story or music, or lack thereof regarding the latter.
Well the music was a reflection of how the world was broken by the time Link woke up, so I found it fitting for the game, along with the themes for the Champions being memorable.
And the story, while I’m not going to say it’s the best ever, did have memorable characters and such, especially once you pieced all the memory fragments together.
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).
Not sure how Resident Evil fits into the whole debate. That game series definitely was a case of using limitations of the time to create something new and compelling. And the fixed camera is indeed good game design, I agree.
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.
Even if some found the new stuff just as fun and compelling?
I guess the difference is that I can see where you are coming from, just that I disagree, whereas you seem unwilling to do just that.
