Luke Percy

I'm not even close to done yet, but here are some thoughts: - Unlike the previous game, every ability you acquire has a bevy of uses that encourage you to think outside of the box and find all kinds of solutions to even the simplest problems. (For the life of me I still can't figure out what they were thinking with BOTW's cryonis) - Fuse is genius because it incentivizes players to seek out fights to get materials to make better weapons with. BOTW couldn't guarantee that you would get anything worthwhile out of any fight, but here, you can get something worthwhile (weapon materials) out of even the lowest level enemies. -That said, fusing things to arrows one at a time can definitely be frustrating; there is a lot of menu-ing in general in this game, and it can get tedious at times. - Enemy/Boss variety has been upped considerably from BOTW, which was nice to see. - It is the same map as BOTW, which is offensive to some, but I have found that the excitement in exploration comes more from finding what is different, rather than what is there; I know this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but for me, places like Lurelin Village, the Great Plateau, and Typhlo Ruins, to name a few, are all *substantially* different from how they were in the previous game, and those differences made revisiting them rewarding and exciting. - This isn't even to mention the entirely new map and a half above and below the previous one, each with their own unique bosses, environments, flora, fauna, and content, and ripe for exploration and discovery. Plus they don't even need loading screens, you can seamlessly jump from the sky into a hole on the surface that leads directly to the depths, it's awesome. - Ultrahand building can be awkward and finnicky, and definitely feels geared toward a specific crowd. However, once you get past the learning curve, experimentation can be really fun. There are lots of places horses cannot get to that ultrahand can help you out in. - Korok seeds are now more fun to collect. I wish I could explain it, but I can't. - Dungeons appear to be structured the same as they were in BOTW, which is a shame, because I miss the hookshot dearly, but the different themes, locales and bosses are certainly a step up from BOTW's divine beasts. - This game is as wide as an ocean and definitely as deep. I literally couldn't go three feet in any direction without getting distracted by some new mini-game, sidequest, enemy encampment, cave, or activity. The sheer amount of unique interactions in this game is legitimately staggering compared to Breath of the Wild, you will not run out of things to do. - God bless Nintendo for believing in the Switch as a piece of hardware, but this game can get framey as hell. If you are sensitive to frame dips from a 30 fps game, you will not have a good time. People say the visuals are also doggy, but I personally find the art style makes up for the lower quality, and is quite aesthetically pleasing. It's like playing a Studio Ghibli film. - Shrines are back, which is less than pleasing, but the aforementioned surplus of unique interactions definitely helps soften the grind of shrine-hunting the previous game suffered from. Plus, I like the theming and colors of these new ones way more. There's a ton of stuff I haven't even mentioned but 1: it'd be spoilers and 2: if I haven't convinced you this game is good with this wall of text then it probably isn't worth continuing anyway. This game has its problems, I won't pretend some of these 1 star reviewers aren't spitting at least a little, but I honestly can't remember that last game I played that I had this much fun with. I hope this helps!