I still remember the first night this game was out, watching a friend play it and both coming up with insane ideas that the other of us would say "No, no way. That would never be possible." And it then it actually worked. That feeling of discovering the ways you can work within the game's systems is the main draw of Breath of the Wild. And that night is still one of my favorite of all the games I've played. For that it will always hold a special place in my games library.

The problem comes when you move beyond being initially impressed by those things. Then you think "okay time to do side quests," but the quests are all boring fetch tasks with very little thought/plot.

"Okay, then I'll do shrines," but there are so many and they all look so samey it's hard to stay engaged with them for too long.

"Okay then I'll just do the main story," but the story is pretty boring this time around, and legacy dungeons, the divine beasts, and their bosses are so similar I genuinely can't remember which is which or in what region it was in.

BoTW is a good proof of concept that loses steam when you go "Okay I realize I can roll a rock down a hill to buldoze over a group of moblins, that's a great physics engine. What else U got???" And unfortunately the answer is not much.

And FUCK this weapons durability system. How are you going to tell me the fucking MASTER SWORD breaks??? At least there's no chance they'll repeat that little mistake in the sequel. 👁️👁️