The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

 

I get why people love this and I will preface this, before my bitching begins, by saying the game is decent. But most of the reasons for people loving this are not my thing and I have issues with the presentation, world building, exploration and progression. 

 

Majora's Mask and Wind Waker are my favorite Zelda games, that might speak for itself. I am probably harsher on BotW because it is a Zelda game and I have certain expectations, or rather there are elements I liked in previous games that are just not here. I forced myself finishing this, not because it's bad but there isn't really anything that made me want to come back to it everyday. 

 

It feels uninspired and empty for a Zelda game, the english voice acting is bad and in general VA should never have been added to a Zelda game. The unique sounds, visual designs, textures, landscape designs and all the other quirky stuff that made my favorite Zelda games so memorable and made them stand out from most other video games, even today.
Replacing proper items with some magic phone gadget that has no style and "dungeons" that are copy paste looking void rooms with all the same visual styles really speak for this generation of games and game developers. 

Bombs being just a conjured explosion item with the help of your Zoomer phone device is the definite lack of soul. These might be nitpicky parts but the sum of all these creative elements, visuals, audio, level design, progression, characters and the quest itself used to give me some of the most unique video game experience I had in OoT, MM and Wind Waker.

 

The puzzles in those "trial" rooms are essentially all the same just escalating on how to utilize the very same gadgets you had pretty much the entire time. There isn't really an excitement of exploring a new uniquely themed dungeon and its own unique dungeon, that reward a completely new item that can be used for combat or exploration. No, you just keep doing the same Mario Sunshine type of challenge rooms, with your magic soulless, flat water flavored Zoomer phone gadget and that's about it.

 

And I haven't even gotten into the weapon system. It's basically all just consumable with random stats on them. You constantly have to bring up the pop menu and scroll through your weapons, or rather consumables, and pick one that you want to use due or safe for later due to the durability on each of them. You are basically just picking up unrecognizable and unmemorable trash to throw at your enemies the entire time. 

It doesn't make the game better in any way. it doesn't add anything other than making the combat more cumbersome, which is already extremely easy and simplistic to begin with. In Wind Waker you could pick up items to change up your combat a little bit but it was mostly a fun gimmick to disarm enemies and built into some environmental puzzles.
In this this game, it is a main feature, improving absolutely nothing about the combat experience. The opposite even, I felt like playing FF14 trying to avoid enemies as they feel more like open world traps to waste your time and fill space.

 

This game is the equivalent of Oscar bait for video games, just sticking all the most safe current trends into a game and "making them work". Nothing stands out to me. And yes, this game is supposed to be for the N64 Zelda haters, the redditors that keep quoting Game Grumps, including the wrong factoids, video essayist that make their videos longer than the games they cover and the people who pretend this is like the OG Zelda and A Link to the Past.
But it really isn't. Those games have more in common with N64/Gamecube Zeldas than this. Yeah you can run straight to the final boss, bravo. 

Granted, compared to the games of the last decade, primarly from the West, this is a masterpiece. And I don't claim this is bad to begin with, I get why people enjoy this. It's not insufferable to play, it was fine and I do like certain aspects despite my whining. 

 

I would definitely play this anyway over whatever most of these western AAA are trying to shill and Breath of the Wild at least doesn't fall into the common trappings of those open world games, especially the kind that applies Ubisoft's formula. Which even Elden Ring fell victim to an extremely minor amount.