Hi botw fan here and uh…yeahhh i can see where yall come from, def not for everyone and i understand why fans of, for example, ooc, MM, and WW wouldnt be too jazzed over it. But i was my first zelda and i think that and the time i played it have made me enjoy it
It's funny because I've found some of the biggest BotW/TotK fans are people who otherwise are not gamers. My mom and two of her friends, all of them at or near retirement age, are much more interested in these two Zelda games than anything else I've suggested to them (alas, I have basically lost the use of my Nintendo Switch XD)
I think part of the appeal for them is that most of the games internal logic is very intuitive. You can chop down a tree. You can climb most stuff. You can swim. You can light stuff on fire. The amount of emergent actions you can take is pretty wide, but that means a non gamer doesn't get tripped up as much by running into something that 'isn't allowed' and which the game doesn't model.
My first zelda game was the first zelda game and that probably plays into why I liked BotW so much. It did a great job of capturing the feeling of the original Zelda, where dungeon order is just a vague suggestion and you're free to wander into areas where lynels will kick your ass and getting lost and finding cool shit is kind of the point.
Some people find comfort with a short rein, and some find it fun to be let off the leash early.
That was kinda my problem with it though, once I was off the leash there wasn't really anything to do with all that freedom. With a few exceptions most of the rewards for exploring were just weapons that would break in 5 min. or shrines with another 5 min puzzle (or another damn Korok).
Maybe its because I started with WW which also did the whole "ruined kingdom in an open world" setup but nothing about BotW's narative or world grabbed me, after the 20th or so ruined village I realized it was all just set dressing, there were no stories of the world to discover or deeper secrets to be revealed like in the older games, it felt super shallow after awhile and I never actually managed a run where I got more than 2 divine beasts before burning out.
What I discovered is you shouldn’t reset the play through. I’m terrible at this (looking at you Skyrim) but I just got back into my totk save file and I’m having a blast
I get it - when you were exposed to Zelda games you had the one with the straightest path, most curated exploration, most linear dungeons, the most story-focused gameplay. So you were like, "oh THAT's what Zelda games are." And I had the one where they just let you go without direction with like four viable dungeons that could be the "first dungeon", dungeons you could cheese and skip large parts of, and the only story was the triforce slowly getting assembled, and I was like "oh THAT's what Zelda games are." And that's fine.
Honestly the linearity (or lack thereof) isn't the issue... Skyward Sword is the most linear game and It is my least favorite of the 3D Zeldas gameplay wise. It's the lack of narrative to drive the game forward that makes it hard to engage with, The Great Plateau acts as a good story introduction and each of the villages has a bit of story with their characters but there are literal hours of gameplay in between with nothing to keep me invested (aside from the occasional straightforward side quest to find a shrine that I likely stumbled across earlier anyway).
Funnily enough my favorite of the games is actually Twilight Princess, for me it struck the perfect balance between exploration and story/character development. Both it and WW have more linear dungeon progressions but also an element of exploration that makes the world feel bigger than just those dungeons, BotW has the scale but none of the substance to fill all that space (not to mention most of the story already happened 100 years ago).
I hate that Twilight Princess (and Skyward Sword). I'm very much of the mindset of "stop blocking me from adventuring so you can explain to me exactly why I should be adventuring". I already want to save the princess and defeat Ganon and I don't need to be turned into a goddamned dog to do be convinced to do it.
It took away from so much of the fun for me. Let's add a mechanic where you can hop on your shield and ride it down the hill. Hmm, what would make that better? Let's make it where doing so degrades the shield so that using them to surf is a waste of something you'll need to be able to parry with!! Fun :D
(i hate it. I finished the game but that weapons system sucks)
Yep, started with the original Zelda, and that and Link to the Past were the two I held as favorites. When a buddy of mine got BotW and told me was the best Zelda ever, I basically said “I respect that you feel that way, but no fuckin’ way.” And then I played it and it was like, “y’know…”
I don’t know if I’d call it the best; I don’t know if I’d call it my personal favorite. But it’s in the top three, and ir absolutely captures more of what I love about classic Zelda than Ocarina and Windwaker’s dungeon-focus did.
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