So this game is such a disappointment, it essentially ruined saints row for me and so many others, essentially everything this game does saints row 1 and 2 done way better, in saying that this game isn’t bad, it’s just ok, had its moments for sure, I see what they where going for but what they already had with saints row 2 was something special, somehow they messed that up, still I don’t like this game, but I can’t call it bad, it’s an ok game overall but I do NOT like it and I HATE the humour in this game, it is legitimately like 12 year olds wrote this, it genuinely makes me angry.

Ocarina of Time stands in the class of games that will receive ultimate praise until the end of time, and rightfully so. Hailed as an almost perfect game for the time of its release, I would like to believe that is close to the truth. Ocarina of Time feels as if it's the foundation for how to make an RPG-esque adventure game. The worthwhile and lengthy narrative brings life to the standard hero's tale with a great cast of characters and world-building. By the time I finished the game, the many sunken hours felt worth it. The game's progression and climactic build had me attached to every play session. I knew what was coming, but I still itched to see it all happen. Although much of the layout of Hyrule is dated by today's standards, it still felt fluid and exciting to explore with fresh eyes. In classic Zelda fashion, there are hidden secrets everywhere. So, even if im staring at low-poly textures, it's with a fun purpose. The downfalls to Hyrule start to arise once you have had your fair share of the game. Land starts to feel a little bare or sluggish to traverse. At the point of scouting for all the heart pieces and gold skulltullas, the game also loses some flavor. Finding them all is a cryptic hassle, and there's little reward to even doing so outside of personal satisfaction. Cryptic hassles are also the main reason I couldn't edge this score to a 9/10. There are specific points of progression in a main or side quest where the game will throw a one-liner riddle at you to solve. If you wanted, you could spend hours mashing every button with every item or talking to every NPC in the game just to get an idea of what to do. Most of the riddles are fun to solve, but without a guide or already knowing answers from experience, solving a couple here or there can spoil some parts of the game. Learning to bottle the blue fire broke my brain for the worst. Honestly, my favorite puzzle/riddle was figuring out the entirety of the water temple, as it's one giant integrated puzzle box. Outside of the obvious metal boots dilemma, the Water Temple has received way too much hate over the years. It's also dripping in atmosphere, pun intended. Gameplay-wise, all I can say is it plays pretty darn well. Everything is pretty simple and intuitive, and for an early beta of a fully fleshed-out targeting system, the z-targeting does a fine enough job. Only in select moments with many enemies or multiple points of focus does the z-targeting become a hindrance. I'm talking about you Bongo-Bongo!!! For a first dip into 3D Zelda, they pretty much hit the controls and handling on the head. And what can be said that hasn't been about the music and its integration into the narrative of the game? Hot diggity, this game is pretty good.

Quite disappointing. Going in totally blind and as a big fan of the original, I was initially excited by the greatly expanded scope of the story, the NPCs, and the world. But that faded quickly as the story bored, the puzzles proved weirdly easy, and the massive areas revealed themselves to be hollow, immensely frustrating to navigate, and totally pointless to explore.

That last one made me the most crestfallen. The first game had relatively small, dense levels that were absolutely packed with Easter eggs and ingenious secrets, constantly challenging you to leave the beaten path and rewarding every stray thought of, "I wonder if ..." with the confirmation that, yep, the devs did think of that, and they put something there just for you. Sometimes a silly something; sometimes an important something! I love games like that. I feel like that used to be Croteam's thing. But TTPII almost feels like a deliberate and direct refutation of that design ethos, with every area very rigidly and lamely having the same types and amounts of collectibles and "secrets" (now obvious riddles that a ten-year-old could decipher) signposted and marked on your compass. It's possible that there are a ton of awesome other secrets and eggs out there somewhere, but with how stupidly large and overstuffed with meaningless decoration the areas are, digging around for any amount of time only to be consistently rewarded with jack shit doesn't exactly make you want to continue looking. Compounding this problem (and creating lots of others) is the navigation. You'll notice I said "marked on your compass" earlier, not "marked on your map" ... yeah. I'll happily admit that I am worse at directions/navigation/orienteering than lots of people, but running around these giant, empty-ass yet topographically complex areas is fucking maddening, and the fact that they didn't give you any kind of overhead map option (and even only added the compass when people bitched!!) is absolutely unthinkable. I understand that the idea of exploring the areas is important to the story and the thematic content therein, but you're playing as a group of fucking robot intellectuals. They would MAKE MAPS. I don't like calling devs lazy, but it's either that or stupid in this case, so, take your pick, I guess.

That stuff is just the most glaring problem, but as I said, there are other significant ones. The story is exceptionally long and long-winded. All of the optional puzzles in every area are weirdly gated behind doing EVERY "secret" thingy in the ENTIRE GAME first, which makes them all amount to a kind of almost-post-game sidequest that you unlock that you have to do all of right in a row before the finale, which is dumb. The massive alien structures dominating each area that you need to get into are totally meaningless from a gameplay perspective, essentially being large 3D sculptures that house a single room with a cutscene and a switch, so what's the fucking point of them. The same goes for the showstopping central pyramid that you keep returning to - just (long) hallways connecting (very easy) puzzles and nothing to explore and no mystique whatsoever. There is no difficulty curve to speak of and almost every puzzle in the game is easier than the stuff in the back half of its predecessor. And, oh yeah, the entire build is a mess with game-breaking glitches and softlocks absolutely everywhere.

So, yeah. It's a shame. Bigger isn't always better in games. Again. Still love the spirit of the original, which this one definitely lost.