I'm not 100% sure how to feel about the whole of this one yet. To get it out of the way, art, music, combat, environments, all bangers. All top tier and it goes without saying. I really liked the new bosses, they did a fantastic job of prodding your imagination to beat them. Even if a Flux Construct isn't hard to kill by any stretch, the feeling I got when I realized I could just Ultrahand the core out of it, or rewind up a block to get to it in its cloud attack is still fresh with me, and it was a great feeling. Or the first time I saw a Gleeok and thought "That's just a fuckin hydra, I'm not fighting that," then killing all the King Gleeok a couple weeks later. Fuse, at first, was really annoying for me. I don't care for the weapon durability, and at first glance, it seemed like this game was just making it even worse. But some of the things you can fuse and combinations you can make are really cool, funny, and satisfying, so I'll give it a pass.

The characters weren't very deep, but I enjoyed Breath of the Wild: The Next Generation. Giving more of a spotlight on the younger ones who will lead their people to glory was nice. I can say that Penn, the reporter Rito is the best character in fiction. This game also pulls off that 'Legend of Zelda Charm', as I think of it. Where the world is coming apart, but the characters you meet, the citizens of the world, everyone, is still so full of wonder and hope. Sure, Hyrule castle is floating in the sky with soul sucking ooze coming out of it, the princess is missing, and every once in a while, the sky turns red and the moon is bloody. BUT you can still have a mayoral election between Toadette and the 30 term incumbent. The residents of Lurelin village may have had their place sacked by pirates, but many remain in high spirits. You can go there, execute the pirates in the town square, then rebuild the homes for the people there! Every time I read "Thanks for letting me help you save Hyrule, Mr. Hero!" my heart melts. You can go across the world, chasing leads with your Ace Reporter partner Penn, who again, is the best character in fiction, and get into wacky hijinks with him. Only for the day to be saved by the unlikely duo, and Penn leaves with a, "Soar Long!" He's a new reporter who already has a pun signoff. And you're telling me you haven't played this game yet. The 'Legend of Zelda Charm' is here in full force.

But some other aspects of this game confuse me or even let me down. I can't help but compare this game to Breath of the Wild, it's a sequel to that game and uses the same map. But even that feels weird. It was nice to explore the same map but a few years later, see what is different. Gave me exploring Kanto in the Pokemon Gen 2 games vibes, of "Oh I remember that! Oh, now this is like that, to show that time has passed. I get it." But in some cases, this game feels more like a different take on Breath of the Wild as opposed to a sequel to it. In my travels, I couldn't help but wonder where some things from Breath of the Wild were, namely the Sheikah Shrines and Divine Beasts are. I get why they aren't here, the shrines were to help with Calamity, and the Divine Beasts were to help with Calamity. Narratively, it would be unsatisfying if, as Dragon Ganon emerged from the Depths, he was hit by 4 tactical nukes, destroying his secret stone and saving the world without any input from Link or Zelda. This story is about the Sages, Link, and Zelda. We already did the Divine Beast stuff. But where the hell are they anyways? Did the gloom scare them off, having already dealt with the whole corruption thing? They saw Corruption 2: Electric Boogaloo coming out of Hyrule Castle and just left before it could get to them? That'd be fine with me but I don't think anyone even mentions the Divine Beasts in the game. This game also made me confused on the relationship between Ganon and Gannondorf. My first game in the series was Ocarina of Time, and so I'm familiar with a Gerudo guy named Gannondorf being all evil, but in that game he turns into Ganon. In Breath of the Wild, Calamity Ganon was shown to be like a force of nature, and that was fine with me. The reoccurring boogeyman across the series kinda has that vibe to begin with. But if this game is a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild, then that would mean while Link is fighting Pighead Ganon on the fields of Hyrule, Demon King Gannondorf is sealed under the castle. So are they separate? Are they evil twins? What's the deal here? I haven't played Skyward Sword, but from what I understand, that game was the first in the series and sorta sets up the baseline of the timeline, and from what I gather, this game contradicts that a lot. I'm not saying the Zelda timeline is immutable law, but when it comes to any coherent timeline stuff, the beginning of it seems pretty easy to not mess with if you want things to be clear. Until told otherwise, I'm just assuming the Breath of the Wild timeline is separate from the other 3, if not the start of a new whole basis entirely. Even with that in mind though, the narrative stuff couldn't leave my mind when playing. And that's stupid, I admit, but they couldn't.

To move away from the most insignificant complaint about a Zelda game one could have, I also didn't care much for the Shrines in this one. There were a ton of Rauru's Blessing shrines, which on one hand, I'm fine with. Most of these were tied to doing something in the overworld, and felt like a fitting reward for a quest chain. But after the 9th or so "Bring the crystal from this sky island to the other sky island that isn't connected to this one," I started to tune out. As for the shrines that weren't a blessing, some were really neat, like the race course one and any that had rewind puzzles felt satisfying to me. But the main tool you have in this game is Ultrahand, and some Shrines just didn't feel interesting or fun. Breath of the Wild certainly had some formulaic Shrines, any time you saw water, you knew ice blocks were on the menu, and only then. But I felt the limited framework lent itself easier to the shrines. The freedom of Ultrahand is really cool, a phenomenal gameplay mechanic, but it didn't see its potential realized in the shrines. I've seen some absolutely insane builds online, so I know and can appreciate how awesome of a tool it can be. But the shrines felt lacking in this one for me. I also wouldn't say no to a version of the game where we have both suites of abilities, just saying.

Getting back to some praise, I did enjoy exploring the new parts of the map, the sky islands and the depths. The sky islands were much more sparse, but some had some really cool parts to them. Any of the spherical observatories were cool to me. The depths could be annoying, having to connect to so many different Lightroots, at the beginning, felt more daunting than exciting. It took me way too long to realize that the Lightroots and Shrines were connected. I thought it was a cute touch that their names were inverse of each other. It also offered a neat little cheat for you, in that if you were having trouble finding a Lightroot or Shrine, but had found its inverse copy, you had a pretty good framework as to where you could find it. The depths, once lit up, I found to be absolutely beautiful, in a haunting way.

To wrap it up, yeah, still not sure how to feel about the whole of the game. It's a masterpiece, but also annoyingly weird at times. I played it for over 100 hours, and enjoyed my time with it. Not a lot of games can do that. I adore many aspects of the game, but some feel off. I do love it, though. I'm not sure if I could even choose between this or Breath of the Wild, but the fact that this one isn't the clear answer does make me a little sad.