didn't buy a switch till a few months ago lol, guess I'm never buying a console at launch. finally got into botw a week ago. so far I really appreciate how they fixed the problem of open world games being a bunch of wide empty space dotted with dungeons and little places to explore like an amusement park where there's a bunch of space inbetween all the attractions. none of the land in botw feels random, every little bit is designed to be interesting and worth exploring no matter what direction you come in from. they took a lot of what made the overworld sections of skyward sword good and made that the whole game. but in exchange the dungeons are barely there. you get a bunch of tiny brain teasers that all have the same visual design, and then four giant robots you walk around in, and are surprisingly small on the inside. they don't make for much dungeoning either. I hear hyrule castle is like a real dungeon but that's just ONE area.
in a lot of ways it's lacking as a zelda title, since they focused so hard on the open world. it might be one of the best open world games ever made, and least good zelda games ever made. at the same time it's fairly zelda-ey in surprising ways. the way time stops when you open a chest somehow feels even more zelda-ey than it did in other games. it's such a minor thing but it really affects the experience. I'm getting vibes from damn near every game in the series at different points too. really specific ones too, the first area where you're on a plateau feels a lot like the first zelda game where you dont have a specific direction to go in and there's literally one other human in the whole place. dredging up treasure chests, parasailing from area to area, and letting the horse take you across trails feels wind waker as fuck. and the movement and overworld design is clearly an evolution of what they were doing in skyward word, which I'm glad they did. though as well crafted as this is, I feel like this game is just experimentation and buildup to whatever the next zelda game is gonna be mechanically. you combine this sort of open world with real dungeons and normal zelda gameplay and you'd have the best title in the series. perhaps one of the best games ever in general.
basically, playing breath of the wild is filling up on bread at a restaurant and barely being able to eat your dinner. except it's really fucking good bread. the kind you don't mind filling up on and want to take some home with you. but you still kinda wish you could have had more of your entree. the bread is the overworld exploration and the entree is literally everything else about zelda. this ams the metaphor.
tl:dr: great open world gameplay, could be more zeldaey, 7 or 8 out of 10 on the universal flounderman scale of games being pretty good.
oh also kirby looks disappointing after how creative planet robobot was, visually and mechanically. here's some generic kirby levels with less visual flair than either 3ds game with some hectic multiplayer. you liked all those new super mario bros sequels right? here's more of that but kirby. probably not gonna pick it up. not for 60 bucks at least. if they're gonna push multiplayer kirby they should bring back air ride, that shit was incredible and nobody played it because they only advertised the mario kart mode, which was nothing compared to town mode. there is still no multiplayer title even vaguely similar to kirby air ride's town mode. that shit would be perfect for the switch too.
alsoalso the people who make heart and slash need to hurry the fuck up on the patch for the switch version. it's one of the best indie games I've ever played and the robots all have that boxy lowpoly look ps1 robots had. mega man legends reaverbots and such. I love it. and it doesn't start crashing until you've had exactly enough time to get good at it and really start to enjoy it. that's just evil.
also also also is celeste any good? I love the chunky pixel art style. some of those screenshots are just woah. but the character portraits and regularly drawn art look awful, and I hear the controls aren't really responsive either. also I inherently distrust flavor of the month indie darlings.
