The poor little fuck.  I feel lucky to not suffer from the bitterness half of nostalgia.  Enjoy the classics, respect them even.  But know when their time has passed and they've been dethroned.  It's a good thing!

agreed

I myself have my own BOTW story.

The first Zelda I "played" was Wind Waker HD, and let me just say, I hated it (gasp). The formulaic puzzles, the real lack of knowing where you needed to go, it confused me way too much. It never felt like I was learning about the game. Wind Waker can be straight forward in knowing where to go, but that's where the HD comes in. From what I hear the HD version tries to be a little more open ended in the world, so I ended up getting lost half the time even though like it feels you can go anywhere when you can't or shouldn't (same story with Fallout 4).

When I picked up my Switch I reluctantly got Zelda, remembering my experience with WWHD. That being said, I have put over 50 hours into BOTW, and I set in down for a while once I got Deluxe, Arms, and Splatoon 2 (I unfortunately haven't finished the campaign yet). That being said, in terms of pure video games I have played in my life, BOTW is probably the greatest game I've ever played. My problem with Wind Waker's lack of true open world was gone, giving away to a true open world. Not once did I feel lost, because there was something at every corner. It felt like things I did had a purpose and affected the game around me, and I loved it. As someone who never liked open world RPG-like games (Fallout) and was never into the original Zelda series, I consider it to be a great entrance point for a new generation such as myself.

Are there imperfections? Yeah, but every game has them. BOTW took the problems I had with two things and turned it into something that has affected me in the way I see gaming forever, and for that I couldn't be happier to say in my eyes, it's a 10/10.

I've always tried getting into Zelda, just never could. My only concern in trying Skyward Sword is the game being repetitive and the controls. I like Skyward Sword's straightforward approach, I just don't know if I could get over the other obstacles present.

I agree with most of this. Don't get me wrong, I'm having fun with the game, but it's easily my least favorite 3D Zelda. It's a good proof-of-concept for this new formula, but it's a game that I have no desire to ever replay after I'm done with it.

My favorite aspects of the franchise have always been dungeons, music and story (I don't care how "simplistic" the stories are, they've always been very charming to me) and BotW lacks in all of those to me. I'd rather have padding like the silent realms and tadtone collecting which only last 20min each at best than have most of my playtime be just walking in a huge overworld filled with nothing. Koroks are a lame reward for exploring imo, and shrines usually are underwhelming as well, with puzzles that you already know the answer before even trying to solve them (Looking at you, "twin" shrines on that mountain).

By the way, why did they make the main menu so soulless? Really bothers me that there's no title screen or music (Not even the Fairy Fountain theme!). I also really miss Link holding an item up after opening a chest.

@ bold: Yes, but the overworld was also way smaller, so it didn't feel like a chore to search for that stuff. BotW has content but what's there just doesn't do it for me, there's just too much repetition.

The only time exploration ever felt rewarding to me was at the beginning when I had to activate the towers to reveal the map. After that it just became a "Seen it before" or "Oh, that's a Korok". No matter what you do, there's only 2 rewards that you'll ever get, so why bother? If you find exploring fun you're obviously not going to mind it, but I do. My favorite gaming genre is 3D platformers so I much prefer tighter, content-packed worlds than huge ones where the content is spread apart with a lot of walking in between. The game is great, but it just isn't for me and I admit that. I just wish Nintendo could have both styles of Zelda coexist, rather than replace what I liked with something I don't. Zelda is my favorite franchise, so it really hurts to not be able to enjoy it as much as used to anymore.

By the way, if anyone wants a better written article on this matter (At least imo), I think this one does a better job at explaning it:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/olliebarder/2017/03/15/after-thoroughly-playing-breath-of-the-wild-it-is-clearly-not-the-best-zelda-game-ever-made/#752a575c7735

^ Aside from the Sheikah Tower part, I agree with everything else on that article.

The only way you can be sure that a game (or film) really are superb is if they're soon accompanied by a surly wave of contrarians attempting to rewrite the narrative lol

The game had some flaws (I can certainly think of a few), and a greater diversity of enemies would certainly suit the game, but this is a game that most people played waaaay beyond 40 hours before getting bored of it, and those 40+ hours were incredible.

I don't mind the criticism as it introduces some ideas that might make for an even better Zelda next time, but it's ridiculous to try and claim this game was anything but a masterpiece; after all, there's never been a "masterpiece" that couldn't be improved.

That's actually why I'm so excited for the next game, as Miyamoto said they'd be able to turn one around faster as they'd re-use the engine. This game was very clearly an introductory attempt to enter a genre that they'd never dabbled in, and they managed to stick the landing unlike just about anyone outside of GTA III. The pieces and framework are all well established, and I fully expect the next sequel to be more focused on additional content and details.

Well, I do have to say that after the whole BOTW review debacle, it is easy for me to say that Nintendo fanatics are actually the most fanatical of the fanatics of either console.  I've never seen a fanbase flip their collective shit from someone saying, "Yea, it's still a really good game, but I definitely don't think it is deserving of a 9 or 10 out of 10."  Or because they dared to score it just a good rating, and not near perfect, which brought down the Metacritic score down by a meager 1 point.

I heavily agree with this statement.