spencer see

It’s very frustrating that it could be a wonderful game and by all means it’s decent, but truly it’s stuck between being a multi pack dlc or it’s own game which makes the whole time playing it feel… off. For one, the graphics on botw worked with the color palette, but it doesn’t work here on a gameplay level. I’ve freaked out thinking that a cloud shadow was mist or thought something weird was powering up my horse because the light was shining harshly as a glow on it. It’s really jarring how the effects layer in this darker tone that creates hard lines as apposed to soft light lines which makes the environment read as objects or events. The mechanics are very jarring because they are relied on heavily but the overall tone of the game is still survival scavenged based. An easy solution would be just over saturation of materials and islands and holes to fall into. Maybe where the last game was a survival and resource management game, this game could have used the same map but over saturated it with dulled weapons and useless sky islands and empty low event underground zones. That way relying on the mechanics would be a lot more fluid and the gameplay would focus on “tinkering in the junkyard” or give you the option to travel mostly between sky islands or underground puzzles. Here it feels like the same off the cusp style survival combat breath of the wild used but the mechanics get in your way. There, in fact, seems to be less resources and harder fights right off the bat and given you have to combine two of anything to actually get a decent weapon which requires sub menus, combat can feel abysmal. The story and guidance is rigid and loose at the same time, meaning that there are very clear pathed objectives by hard enemies or terrain but zero descriptors or landscape reads to warn you of it. You essentially are navigating brick walls you can’t see till you die. The assets are way to similar to the old game and even progression and play style. Hence, this would have been a really great multi dlc pack that added to the already established grounding of the original game. If you could use this as an expansion to breath of the wild, then optional interaction with it would feel good. The other route would be if the feel of the game was completely changed to make it play differently than breath of the wild, then it would have been an awesome follow up that changed enough to feel like a new game completely. This current game lies somewhere in an uncomfortable middle where I can’t tell if I’m wishing for more radical investment in the new concepts that changes how I play even more, or to go back to breath of the wild as a break from this system. It’s still a good game, and it is pretty enjoyable at times. But when it hits rough spots it hits them hard where all the mechanics are more jarring than functional. The story starts strong but wanes quickly. Rehashing shrines in the same spots and format sucks to be real honest. I really don’t think the game deserves less than three stars. By all means it’s enjoyable enough and there are cool moments when it works. It just doesn’t work sometimes at a gameplay level (why on earth was I able to figure out how to get to a sky island before I got a paraglider with no water around it, which was the only safe way off mechanic explained to that point?). It will be worth it to most people who liked breath of the wild, but if you were iffy on that game this is a hard pass