That is fair and true.  Plus a nice 60 fps makes gameplay buttery smooth.  Having said that WWHD is the prettiest game I've played... and RDR2 was uninteresting.  Just my opinion.  

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I enjoyed both greatly. RDR2's art style fits the game just as much as WindWaker.


The best marriage of gameplay and terrain goes to Death Stranding though. The way you tame your surroundings to make bigger and more efficient deliveries is brilliant. The only way fast travel should work: (not counting the teleport option between rest hubs)

Death stranding also did the best job at selling the scale of the landscape.

What I miss in TotK is music to enhance the landscape. Matching the environments with music is a powerful way to have a place make an impression. I just got back last night, too tired to play. Tonight I'll explore more of the depths. It's great, but can't deny some good music while exploring, fading in and out now and then would enhance the landscape. It's not for nothing that the original Mario games are so recognizable with just a few notes heard nowadays.

Anyway that's not a limitation of the hardware. But I do kinda feel less effort is being put in to music for handheld games. But that migh just be my perseption as I generally don't play on a handheld. It's just that BotW and also Mario Odessey didn't leave any music impressions on me.

I agree that they could have done more with the music in Tears of the Kingdom. It just doesn't appear to have been a big focus for the developers.  Or, maybe they thought it was better this way.  I feel like I would prefer some cool music in appropriate circumstances, but I can't really judge something that doesn't exist. So, maybe the developers made a good choice. I don't know. 

One thing I do know is that I don't love the sound of Link's footsteps. That's an issue I have with many Japanese games though. They often sound like the character is wearing wooden shoes and walking on a hard surface, when they appear to be wearing something soft and walking in grass.  I find it to be very immersion breaking in some games. It is not that big of a deal in TTOK, but it ain't great.

I don't think any of this sound stuff has anything to do with limitations of the hardware though.  They are either conscious design choices, or areas that the developers decided not to worry about. 

Yeah at first I was wondering what that loud noise was, didn't sound like foot steps but obviously were synced up with Link moving. Hence I suspect it's more tuned for handheld play, easier to hear those loud steps when using the internal speakers in a loud ambient environment. Stomp stomp stomp, at least you're aware you're making noise and stuff can hear you!

Back to exploring the depths I ran into a Giant Grove, can't deal with that yet. I tried to take down a Stalnox, possible but it was taking all my bows and weapons and nearly all my arrows and attachments. I reloaded as there were many more of them roaming around. Not worth depleting my entire inventory on :/ I guess I'll get better weapons later or stuff breaks less easily later when I level up? The weapons I have do well against the Bokoblins, yet the Stalnox quickly breaks the construct bows and crappy weapons I have.

Anyway that seems to be BotW / TotK's way of gatekeeping areas, make weapons break faster if you engage higher level stuff too early? Basically the same as TW3 where damage dealt drops of fast when hitting above your level. TotK just hides the level numbers (or perhaps color of the names like Everquest did? Dunno need to look closer. A direct eye hit with an arrow only did a pixel of damage anyway and each spear with arm attachment broke after 2 hits)

My Switch might be dying, the fan has started making this ungodly grinding noise off an on. I watched a video on how to replace the fan yet those super tiny screws are beyond my old eyes' ability to see. Plus you need a tiny triangle screw driver and take parts of the motherboard off, then replace thermal paste. Not an easy fix with old shaky hands and eyes that can't see the screw heads :/ So praying it keeps working long enough to finish or get bored of TotK. Turn up the sound higher to drown out the fan noise...