Amazing game with some significant flaws. The game's greatest strengths, much like and far more so than BOTW, are it's exploration and emergent gameplay systems. Hyrule is still amazing to explore and the depths and sky islands add some new content to differ the map more from how it was in BOTW. The new Zonai tech and rune abilities are great and I enjoyed using them far more than their BOTW counterparts, mostly due to how they lend themselves far better to an expansive open-world environment. The game's general art direction is once again amazing with audio and visuals causing me to somewhat frequently stop to appreciate them.
However, the degree of greatness the aforementioned aspects of the game achieve make the places where the game lacks stand out more than they would otherwise. TOTK focuses far more on it's plot than the previous entry but fails to have a story that can stand on its own feet. The dialogue writing is quite flat and the game's plot developments are sometimes very questionable. Another area the game could have used some more polish in, much like its predecessor, is the lack of the gameplay loop changing much past the first ~10 hours. Towards the end of my playthrough I was beginning to grow tired of fighting the same mobs with the same weapons over and over again and the somewhat bland dungeon design did little to alleviate my growing boredom with the system.
Overall, while I did drop quite a bit of criticism on this title, I still loved playing it much more often than I did not. The sheer amount of content in this game is astounding and I will likely revisit this title in the future to dig deeper. I am very excited to see what the next chapter of The Legend of Zelda series will be.
However, the degree of greatness the aforementioned aspects of the game achieve make the places where the game lacks stand out more than they would otherwise. TOTK focuses far more on it's plot than the previous entry but fails to have a story that can stand on its own feet. The dialogue writing is quite flat and the game's plot developments are sometimes very questionable. Another area the game could have used some more polish in, much like its predecessor, is the lack of the gameplay loop changing much past the first ~10 hours. Towards the end of my playthrough I was beginning to grow tired of fighting the same mobs with the same weapons over and over again and the somewhat bland dungeon design did little to alleviate my growing boredom with the system.
Overall, while I did drop quite a bit of criticism on this title, I still loved playing it much more often than I did not. The sheer amount of content in this game is astounding and I will likely revisit this title in the future to dig deeper. I am very excited to see what the next chapter of The Legend of Zelda series will be.