Beat it today after 48 hours and a nice even 96 shrines. My overall thoughts: the game feels a lot like Breath of the Wild 2.0. This has its advantages and disadvantages.
On one hand, the gameplay is a better version of BOTW; more creative and more mature. It'll be hard to go back to magnesis after ultrahand for instance. Or not count with recall to cheese the hell out of most shrines and temples. Building new things and seeing them working is fun, though usually you'll spend more time building than actually using them.
On the other hand, the plot and the story beats feel like the same thing you've done before. You got beat up hard, need to recover your power through shrines, the four regions are ailing, go help your local teammate, gain new power after a small dungeon, a relative from the past gives them a pep talk, etc.
The sky islands are nice. The procedurally generated depths, though, get tiresome after a very short while. The temples are just like Divine Beasts, which was disappointing but the quests involving them were for the most part great.
Also, despite the little nods here and there, this feels like an alternate universe to BOTW. Almost no one even mentions it in-game which makes sense for new players I suppose, but still a bit disappointing.
I'll give a nice 8 out of 10: solid gameplay, the artstyle is great, weak story with some repetition from BOTW. Truly the Gold/Silver versions to BOTW's Red/Blue.
Last edited by haxxiy - on 21 May 2023
