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HoloDust on 01 May 2018
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curl-6 said:
HoloDust said:

Broken in a sense, why go to trouble of making such world if you can pretty much bypass anything with a bit of climbing - even things you shouldn't be able to, like path to Zora's or Hyrule Castle. And 20 orbs is potatoes really, especially when you can rearrange health and stamina for very low price whenever you want (another broken stuff that gets you Master Sword early, and I won't even go into ridicilous "breaking weapons as incentive to experiment" koolaid mantra). Like I said, there is good way to implement climbing (I don't intend to elaborate it here, anyone with basic knowledge of something like D&D can figure it out), but BotW's way sure feels quite world breaking to me.

Puzzle shrines are incredibly easy, they all look the same, and, woopdeedo, they all give the same thing - orb. For me they are epitome of lazy design, as if they were given to interns to practice level design and in no way can replace great temples/dungeons from previous games. I never had problems with them in any Zelda, I actually like them, no matter how much I can shit on Aonuma at times, but that's mainly cause of too much focus on them alone in Zeldas, and not enough overworld stuff.

That indeed changed in BotW, but now it's unbalanced the other way around - whole time I was playing the game I had this feeiling they didn't know exactly what they wanted to make, so they've slapped several machanisms that on their own might be somewhat cool, but mixed together just don't work.

It's not a bad game by any means, I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars (I like AdventureGamers scoring system, so 3.5 reads as "A solid adventure that is generally enjoyable, though it lacks enough polish or ambition to recommend without caution"), but I sure do hope they will change plethora of things for next instalment, cause this doesn't feel like Zelda to me anymore, but a mishmash of different popular mainstream mechanisms done with Nintendo flair.

I still don't see how that's "broken" since the world isn't meant to be tackled in a linear fashion. There is no "correct" path through the game, it's designed in such a way that climbing is a viable method of exploring providing the player makes sufficient investment into building up their stamina, so it works much the same as levelling up a skill in an RPG.

Same goes for the Master Sword; it doesn't matter how you get the 13 hearts so long as you get them, that's not "broken", it's simply the game giving you options. To "break" the game implies a violation of the rules; BOTW doesn't do that, it simply make the rules loose and flexible in the first place.

The shrines weren't particularly difficult, that is true, but honestly, I liked that. Nothing kills the fun for me like my progress being ground to a halt by an obtuse puzzle. The ones in BOTW were logical and intuitive enough that I never got stuck, yet every one of them was clever enough that I got a little mental buzz from solving them.

Random thought; if the next Zelda does follow the template of BOTW and does not meet your criteria, might I suggest trying out Darksiders III? That's a series that draws a lot from the Ocarina-Skyward Sword school of Zelda design, maybe that will hit the spot for you.

Not breaking the rules, but it feels to me like broken design - maybe poorly balanced world design would be more appropriate. I don't know, maybe I'm just too old, played too many open-world games and expected much more from such highly acclaimed game - actually, my open-world expectations tend to be quite high, since those are, IMO, most difficult games to pull off properly (hence, for example, I prefer Witcher 2 over 3).
Honestly, if they stick with this formula this will be 3rd IP that got wrecked for me in last 10 years (Fallout and Tomb Raider being other 2, though nowhere nearly as horrendous as Tomb Raider), so I'll just move on I guess...not to Darksiders, mind you, I tried first one, didn't like the setting...maybe I should try 2nd...

Anyway, maybe we can get back to this topic sometime in the future when (and if) From makes fully open world Souls...I think they are capable making that transition without compromising things that Souls games what they are, so that would be good comparison.