| curl-6 said: Skyward Sword was a good game, but it did show that the series formula was becoming very stale. Breath of the Wild was exactly what the franchise needed; a bold reinvention. |
It indeed became stale...long before SS. But BotW is, IMO, completely wrong direction.
Instead of just making interesting overworld and retaining great temples of the past, they went with what, in the end, boils down to quite generic open-world overworld (Gerudo Town was only place even remotely interesting for me), which is made even more untinteresting due to how easy is to climb anywhere...yeah, sure, it's somewhat fun for first few hours, but than it's just feels like it's breaking the game (which it really does, I almost completely skipped whole Hyrule Castle). And then on top of that, they gave us shrines, which are mostly Portal on extremely easy and not one single temple that is comparable to anything from previous 3D Zeldas.
I really wanted Zelda to be open-world, some of my favourite games fall into this type (Elite, Might&Magic 6/7, Wizardry 8, Gothic, Morrowind, STALKER), but BotW approach to open-world just broke what was good and replaced it with lot of very flawed mechanisms.
I guess best comparison for me would be if From made another Souls, but completely open-world, and instead of intricate and greatly designed areas (which is actually quite easily achievable in open-world approach) they went with Dan Osman alike skilled freeclimber that wanders fairly generic overworld, fights mostly same enemies over and over again, no matter the region, and solves easy physics based puzzles to enhance the stats without ever having to go through anything like brilliant levels of previous games.
