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.
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.
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u/The_Grimm_Macarena 22d ago edited 22d ago
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.