(1) Yeah, I remembered that after sending a post. I actually moved through a river one time this way. There are even more ways I left out: you could make something you can stand on float through the air and airsail to the destination or you could freeze an object in time and charge it with kinetic energy and at the last moment hop onto it to ride the cannonball.

(2) Yeah, was wondering too why it is annoying for running. I run until my stamina is nearly depleted and keep jogging while my stamina replenishes for another sprint.

Make 7/10 good again.

Great. And? Where does he say you can't skip them? He is annoyed that its the same cutscene over and over, not that he can't skip the same cutscene that appears over and over.

True dat.

AGREED!

But seems to be an UNSPOKEN RULE, that zeldas has to get 9/10 on a bad day. Its supposed to get perfect almost every time because the game is released so rarely. Every 3-5 years average.

the lack of music gets me to...during the huge long walks in silence....and the durability that is OVER sensitive really spins me.  I used to love the fighting in zelda. and I used to bash the enemys shield 100s of times in a battle cuz im so into it and i think i can break his block. good times!

You can skip. You are not forced to see even if the cutscenes are the same or different. What an odd thing to nitpick. But I'm not suprised.

I don't doubt that Jim simply didn't enjoy the game as much as everyone else did. There is certainly a case to be made that criticism gets exaggerated at times to get more attention.  Again, we're a week out from release and another glowing review will get lost in the shuffle. 

A contrarian, "It's pretty good" review with a lot of (overblown IMO) criticism will engeder backlash and he'll probably get an episode out of it. Jim is a clever guy. 

For a concrete example, I feel like whenever he does this, a tell tale sign is that he makes mountains out of molehills. 

From the Zelda (7/10) review:

"the same old fucking cutscenes every time you open, enter, and complete shrines. Frequent interruptions when monsters respawn during a “blood moon” – "

All of the above is skippable, and charicatrizing the blood moon as "frequent" is a bit of a stretch. So the complaint IMO, reduces to a complaint about load times.

Here is Jim addressing the 30-60 second load times from Bloodborne (10/10)

"Perhaps my one notable criticism of the whole thing is the loading times between deaths – not a huge problem if you don’t intend to die a lot"

not a problem if you find maraca babe to do upgrades. Now I have more than enough weapon slots. Looks like the game is "too difficult" or "too frustrating" for people, yet I find it good because there's a new weapon all the time and less frustrating than something like the witcher 3 where you weapon breaks AND "you're carrying too much weight" 

The howlongtobeat isn't yet accurate. Only 81 people were polled. It took me 70 hours to beat the game, and I only have 20% of the content of the game completed after beating it. But in comparison, do you think a review in which all one does is Skyrim's main quest (https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=9859) is accurate? 

In Castlevania II you can't instantly skip the text box. You have to wait for it to finish scrolling, and it happens much more often than the blood moon (every ten minutes rather than every few hours.) The blood moon also serves a proper function (upgrades the strength of all enemies in camps.)  The comparison is flawed, and he is either being intentionally disingenous here or doesn't know anything about it. I am trying to pretend he is not disingenous and is truly ignorant about how the blood moon works. 

Another example is how he tries to chalk up difficulty to enemies being able to one-shot you and not being actually difficult. In every open-world Role Playing game there are enemies that can one-hit kill you in the beginning. BotW is no different. Very early in the game you have access to revivals though, and can be revived as many times as you have fairies and a certain skill from a dungeon. He might have missed this if he rushed through the game, but it is there. Difficulty is instead focused on parrying, dodging, countering telegraphed attacks and enacting a fury rush. The better you are at this the easier it is to kill enemies. This has nothing to do with being oneshotted, although if you rush through the game you can miss this feature. 

Here is a reddit post that summarizes all that is wrong with his review. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/5yzcw5/the_jimquisition_breath_of_the_wild_review_open/

"My two cents, I'm still waiting for a truly great critical review. I like Jim's writing style but the content here is below his usual standard. tl;dr he makes factual mistakes and ignores some genuinely questionable decisions to focus on nitpicks and reaching arguments.

One thing that needs saying, it's fine for Jim to harp on his problems with BotW even if the score is a respectable 7. With dozens of perfect score reviews available Jim doesn't really need to repeat common praise. What matters is whether his criticisms are fair and substantiated.

Factual inaccuracies always damage a review's credibility. Visited but unfinished shrines are marked as such on your map, as others have mentioned. Shrine and blood moon cutscenes can be skipped. Jim shouldn't have wasted time complaining about such non-problems, and framing your critical opinion in relation to "raving 10/10 reviews" just invites speculation about contrarianism.

There's plenty of reaching for things to dislike. The short paragraph about shrines especially annoys me because the criticisms are not only unnecessary (Jim has more substantial issues with the game) but just wrong.

1. Shrines break immersion? Unlike most Zelda dungeons, they were designed by an intelligence for a specific purpose. Puzzles designed by sheikahs to test Link fit with the game world, whereas block/switch puzzles in a fish's belly or convenient key/door placement in enemy territory is harder to justify narratively. This small nitpick actually bothered me in previous Zeldas so it's disappointing to see Jim inconsistently criticize BotW for a positive change.

2. Shrines break flow? On the contrary they are part of the flow. BotW, from its opening moments, establishes a routine of exploration, scavenging, discovery, and puzzle solving. If Jim doesn't like the game's structure he should have said as much instead of criticizing shrines for supposedly breaking flow, when they are a core part of it.

3. Shrines feel like a shoehorned substitute for traditional dungeons? They are totally distinct entities with different goals. Traditional Zelda dungeons are long, labyrinthine, enemy intensive, and typically involve puzzles centered around a dungeon item. Shrines are concise, straightforward, enemy light, and surprising and innovative in puzzle design. Beasts are a closer emulation of traditional dungeons but focus more on spatial reasoning than combat and puzzles.

BotW combat is more similar to the Souls games than Jim acknowledges. Enemies are reasonably durable and very strong, but attacks are telegraphed and success in battle relies on both creativity and systems mastery. I'm sure he knows better than to put "difficulty" in quote marks so I'm not sure why he did anyway. Again it feels like reaching.

His section on stamina makes no mention of stamina extending/restoring foods, odd since Jim praised the utility of life-expanding meals. (/u/ggtsu_00 points out I missed Jim's mention of elixers. I do think Jim should have emphasized this option more because it alleviates many of his concerns, like climbing during rain or having extra stamina for travel.) He also seems not to try and understand why the system exists. If Link could run without limit or started with three stamina circles, travel would be very one-dimensional. The stamina system gives rhythm to standard travel, adds decision making and even some strategy to climbs and swims, and provides incentive for locating stables and horses. And you actually can climb in the rain, it just requires leap timing and stamina food for longer climbs. I expect good reviews to demonstrate thoughtful consideration of mechanics before criticizing them.

Performance issues are fair game of course, but Jim is the first critic I've seen to complain about draw distance specifically for the purpose of scouting out enemies. Also the first I've seen to claim enemies pop in and out of the playing field. In my playthrough the sheikah slate had fantastic range and enemy locations were stable. I'm curious whether and where others experienced these problems.

Durability gets a lot of attention and that's fine, it's a divisive topic and Jim recognizes there's another side of the argument. I also really like his amiibo hate, while not quite a problem with the game itself the whole practice is anti-consumer moneygrubbing dressed up as a line of toys.

But there are more topics critics should be covering. Is food overpowered? Are fairies too easy to farm? Are flurries and parries appropriate rewards for systems mastery or are they imbalanced given how straightforward combat becomes once mastered? Does the unusual difficulty curve work for or against the game and its pacing? Does the dark story premise mesh with the frequently lighthearted tone?

Now I personally would defend BotW here, but I would respect a critical examination that focused on these elements as they're the most questionable design aspects. But they're not usually a topic of conversation and instead detractors focus on nitpicks or non-issues. BotW is in my top five and will probably stay there, but I'm actually hoping a respected Youtube game critic makes a good negative review so we can push the debate forward."

Keese don't have weapons, but they also only have 1 HP, so dispatching them isn't really resource intensive.