#38
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
YoY: +1
Breath of the Wild is a weird game to talk about for me, because it is at once an excellent open world game that I thoroughly enjoyed playing, as well as one of the most overrated games I've ever played. It's honestly an odd feeling to have. Almost everything about the game is great, from the fantastically designed world with countless secrets to find and mysteries to unveil, to the wonderful feeling of discovery and wonder the entire game elicits at nearly every moment. Visually BotW looks great, the gameplay
The issues I do have are generally just minor annoyances or otherwise largely inconsequential. The problem is that for each great thing about the game, there's one small issue to go along with it. The battles are a lot of fun, but the weapon durability feels completely pointless from start to finish, the spontaneous and unexpected interactions between different elements like the changing weather, fire, Link's own gear, and other things are a joy to discover, but they can also grind the exploration to a halt when you're trying to get somewhere, and the exploring itself is great fun, but early on you're limited by a pitifully small stamina meter that requires three or four upgrades before it feels like it's at a point where it should have been at the start of the game.
As I said, BotW is an excellent game, and I'm very much looking forward to the sequel when it releases. There are just these minor, insignificant grievances in it, that by themselves wouldn't really matter much, but they all keep constantly chipping away at my enjoyment of what is an otherwise great game. This is, without question a wonderful game, just not the "greatest game of all time" that some people have labeled it as.
