Jumpin said:
What balance aspects do you mean? The easier to access stuff in the early parts of the game, on every path are all for the beginners, so basically, that gives you more introduction to the world. I watched my wife play Breath of the Wild, she took a completely different path than I did, had a vastly different experience, and yet it flowed like the game should have. When you explore out more, the shrines and thousands of other points of interest are spread out fairly nicely. There's no such thing as an overpowered weapon since you have a limit to what you can carry and a duration; the more usable tool-type weapons (like the hammer) have a higher durability but are less useful when attacking powerful monsters. Difficulty-wise, Breath of the Wild has the highest challenge since the NES Zelda games, easily, sure it does have some "fall off a cliff" moments, but usually, if you run into a challenge too difficult, you can escape, especially in the areas close to the starting point. But earlier Zelda games, the battles are far easier in general - and it clears out the majority of the BS "hide-n-seek" stuff where you can't progress in the game because what you need is hidden in a large area; and while Breath of the Wild is MUCH MUCH larger than other Zelda games, there's nothing critical that is going to take you hours of wandering to find while achieving nothing else; there's still the "takes hours to find" stuff, but there's LOTS of other stuff you discover to do in the meantime, and that's a major difference with past games. Relative to other open world games? I'm not sure, my experience is limited to Ultima Online, GTA games, Assassin's Creed, Xenoblade, and a few others. Zelda took open world much further than all of those. I can't say I have played a game truly comparable outside of XCX, so I can't compare the balance, but BotW is clearly better balanced than XCX. Unless there's some other element you're referring to? |
When I mentioned balance in earlier post, I was referring to balance between overworld and dungeons. All 3D Zeldas were tilted toward dungeons, and many 2D Zelda fans were/are giving them flak for that. BotW is titled too much toward overworld - and no, for me shrines cannot and will never replace dungeons, they are not only terribly easy and terribly copy-pasted artistically, but from fairly early in the game they start to feel like grinding for orbs. Few environmental ones that were interesting cannot really make up for shitload of "yet another easy Portal puzzle or Test of Strength" shrines.
I could go on for quite a while about what I don't like in BotW's overworld, or in game in general, but it would require quite an effort, since there's a lot of things I didn't like, so, at least for now, I won't do it. I can only hope that some of the bad stuff in BotW will be fixed in the future and that next Zelda feels like Zelda again - and if not, oh well, not the first IP that I really like that got wrecked (though this one has the most chance to recover).
