Yi June Yap (Lev)

Initially, I'd decided to skip the game after seeing the horrid reviews of its graphical issues. But afterwards I bought it... impulsively... and let me just say I have zero regrets. Went into the game blind. Here are my thoughts. The graphics are definitely not up to par for games of this age but 1) they did not off put me as badly as I thought they would 2) they can be fixed in updates/patches 3) they make for great laughs and meme screenshots I've had 50+ hours of gameplay and have only experienced minor lag during online connection, frame rate drops in 2-3 cutscenes, slight lag when opening boxes. But the game has never crashed. I absolutely love the music/OST for the game. They really grow on you and the bgm of the final area is reminiscent of Pokemon Mystery Dungeons, which I adored. I find the characters pretty well written and if you spend time completing quests, a lot of them get a chance to properly develop, even the side characters. The storyline itself is what got me to give it a high rating. There was a lovely balance of plot twists and pokemon cliches, mixed in with funny, surprising and emotional moments. There is very little hand holding and I love the way they just throw you into the open world. I've seen people complain about the limitations of open world explorations that force you to progress the story and I present to you this: I was able to beat what was supposedly the final gym as my third with pokemon that did not listen as well as limited movement abilities to get there. Its not impossible. You can finish BOTW without all the divine beasts. You just have to be creative, crazy and have fun. All in all I think its a solid game that has bad rep with its, admitedly, terrible graphical and lack of fine tuning details. But those are things that can and will hopefully be fixed. And yet that aside, it was a wonderful journey of a game.