From the makers of the best tasting apples, comes the best tasting orange. Lucky for me, I like oranges too.

There are a lot of ways to go on an adventure. You can loosely follow the trail laid before you, you can do everything the helicopter parent of a tour guide tells you to, or, like in 1986’s The Legend of Zelda, you can go wherever you want, however you want, consequences for getting lost be damned.

2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild aims to be like that original Zelda that started it all.

This is one of my favorite Zelda games of all time. It has so much going for it.

Its Hyrule is enormous and exploring its massive expanse is an adventure all its own. It is SO much fun to go from one place to another. The ability to climb and glide is truly what makes exploration so satisfying, if you can climb high enough, you can go anywhere.

And the beautifully rendered places you can go are pocked with civilization. Hylians, Sheikah, Gorons, Gerudo, Koroks, Zoras, and (to the bafflement of people who care about the lore of the series) Rito, all continue to live after the apocalypse that Hyrule suffered a hundred years ago. And these beautifully designed people are as charming and interesting as ever. You can spend an in game day walking around any of the villages and watch a single person’s daily routine. Every creature, every plant, every item is so thoroughly considered that the game has a paragraph of lore for each of them in the Hyrule Compendium. But you only get that lore by taking a picture first, so you’re asked to employ a fair level of scrutiny to all these lush locations you explore. You will be rewarded with people to talk to, plants to learn about, and even plant people to do minor puzzles for. So, so many plant people…

Some of those villages sell armor and clothing to help you traverse Hyrule. There’s clothing for hot weather, cold weather, really hot weather, armor for fights, armor for avoiding fights, it’s great. There’s even a crossdressing outfit, which I feel was a cultural touchstone, if only because it awakened something in so many people. I love customizability and Breath of the Wild gives us that in spades. Everyone’s Link will now look different from each other because it’s YOUR Link wearing your favorite clothes.

You can even take the plants you’ve foraged and used them to dye your armor, further adding to the customizability of your Link. And despite being unable to name your Link, it is more Your Link than ever before.

There is truly so much to see and so much to do.

Exploration is the most important thing in the game, maybe to the detriment of other aspects of it.

It’s entirely possible that my love for this game would not diminish in the slightest if there wasn’t any combat. But, for better or worse, I think the controversial combat system is thematically, a crucial part of it.

Breath of the Wild is a game about how nothing lasts forever. Great kingdoms will fall. Valiant heroes will die. Your weapons will break. You must accept this fact of the world and press on to save it nonetheless, because the here and now is worth saving. Breath of the Wild is a game about letting go.

The weapon degradation is the most poisonous aspect of the goal of letting go. It goes against everything the Zelda series has done before. Every cool elemental weapon you find has an expiration date, which makes some players prefer not to use them, so that they last longer. But the game wants you to learn to let go. Use it and lose it and move on. You’ll find another fire sword, there’s dozens of them and they always come back.

Now personally, I don’t hate the weapon degradation of Breath of the Wild. Every early fight is tense, and the act of throwing an almost-broken weapon at an enemy to deal double damage when the weapon breaks is very satisfying. And since most enemies have a weapon already, you’re always close to a replacement.

My problems with the weapon degradation comes in at the endgame. By this point, enemies have gotten stronger and become serious damage sponges. Even the most minor enemy, the lowly Bokoblin, has a silver variant with enough health to cost you at least one weapon. At the very least, this forces the player to get creative and start killing monsters in more…thrifty ways. Back stabs deal more damage so be sneaky. Enemies that end in “blin” can’t swim, so get them into deep water. Shocking an enemy makes them drop their weapon so you can snatch it and run. You can also just wear a disguise and avoid combat altogether if you want.

Eventually, you’ll start marking down where good weapons are and returning to them whenever there’s a Blood Moon that resets Hyrule to its base state, and you can pick those weapons up again. So now you don’t have to be thrifty, but then you have a steady enough flow of weapons that you might as well just have unbreakable weapons.

The degradation system is fine, but it really only shines in the early game. And Breath of the Wild knows this, because the Eventide Island shrine challenge takes all your weapons and armor away. You’re back to square one, and it’s great. I remember a lot of people rightfully hyping up Eventide Island, but it’s kind of just the Great Plateau again. The system needed something to justify itself in the endgame.

My real problem with the weapon degradation system, the actual beef I have, is something I will not waver on, and it is that the Master Sword degrades too. You have to work hard for the most iconic sword in video games and it still breaks on you? Sure it comes back after a bit but I have to wait? Really? Would making the Master Sword an unbreakable but average damage weapon be such a game changer? Maybe. But I would have liked it more.

But there is so much more to Zelda games than the combat so I will move on.

Unfortunately, the Zelda-ness of Breath of the Wild is perhaps a bit estranged. Four visually indistinct main dungeons and 120 micro-dungeon Shrines make up the main trials of the game and I have no real qualms outside of everything looking samey for the main dungeons, the Divine Beasts. The bite sized shrines peppering the massive world is a pretty genius way to have a Zelda game this big. It’s a great way to get players exploring more of the map, and I respect that. 120 is a little excessive though.

Those shrines test not just combat, but your knowledge of a part the game I haven’t brought up yet, the Runes. Essentially half of the dungeon item equivalents of Breath of the Wild, the Runes are very interesting in how they let you manipulate the world. Magnesis is a particular favorite of mine, but upgrading Stasis to make it freeze enemies turns it into a vital ability. The Cryonis rune is a little less flashy than the others, but the ability to cross rivers with it makes it no less important.

To fill out the arsenal of tools, you get an ability from beating each of the Divine Beasts, and they’re all useful but Revali’s Gale, which can help you get higher faster, is by far the best of them. Revali isn’t my favorite champion but you gotta hand it to him.

I can imagine the complaints that these abilities and runes replace the dungeon item toys from previous Zeldas, and I am absolutely hurting for a hookshot here, but all of these tools are useful in many situations. There is no Spinner equivalent here. There’s no Gust Bellows. Maybe it makes me a bad Zelda fan but I think that’s a fair trade.

I would be an even worse Zelda fan if I said I didn’t like this game’s Princess Zelda. I like just about every character from this game, but Zelda is the mvp. This pouty bookworm with the big eyebrows joins the ranks of all the top tier Princess Zeldas, right up there with the one from Ocarina of Time and the one from Wind Waker and yeah I’ll say it, the one from Spirit Tracks.

I think I like this one best though.

The memory cutscenes in this game flesh Zelda out so much more than we’ve ever gotten before. This game even makes us think of Zelda when we see a certain flower in the wild, a simple collectible item, because we’re told it’s her favorite. It’s a little thing but it goes a long long way. Trust me.

Before I wrap this up, I want to talk about the DLC, which adds a few extra story beats, an upgrade to the Master Sword (but not an unlimited durability), a motorcycle (lmao) and a more classic-style Zelda dungeon (which I ultimately forgot about). It also adds Master Mode, which makes every regular enemy one level stronger than they normally are, as well as adding a new Gold level for the strongest of enemies, and then gives every enemy regenerating health.

On the one hand, I welcome Master Mode’s added challenge and additional replay value to a very long game. On the other hand, Master Mode shows us how ironically fragile the durability system can be. It becomes mathematically unviable to fight large groups of enemies. This is where I learned that campfires are actually your best weapon. Trapping an enemy into standing on a campfire will make them slowly die, saving your weapons for more important fights. I think that’s a cool thing that this game allows, but avoiding combat at all costs is a bit of a problem. Of course, this is Master Mode, and not the base game, where this isn’t quite as necessary. I still would have liked the ability to increase durability at a fairy fountain or blacksmith for a sum of rupees. You CAN do this with a particular Octorok, but it requires a lot of time and luck so I just don’t bother.

I have beaten The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild three times. Once on regular mode and twice in Master Mode, one of which I only used spears as my weapon (it wound up being a lot easier than I was expecting it to be). I never 100%-ed any of those playthroughs because when I found out what the reward for helping all the koroks was, I lost interest. But I can proudly say that first playthrough was a 99% completion playthrough. I played this game so much it ruined my first set of joycons.

I love Breath of the Wild.

And I recommend it to anyone, just learn to let go.

The charm and charisma of this game hold the rest of it up like how Altus holds the weight of the world on his back.

I really like Mega Man Legends. It has a passive peacefulness that could trick you into thinking you’re playing an island life simulator. You run errands for the townspeople of Kattlelox island, you play game shows on tv, you become a local legend for donating money to get better medical equipment at the hospital. Cutely designed characters have funny dialogue, you can tell the lady who runs the junk shop that your name is Hippopotamus. Hippopotamus can look at a magazine rack full of dirty magazines and contemplates reading one. The music that plays while you avoid oncoming traffic downtown sounds like the happiest trip to the mall you’ve ever had. Mega Man Legends is so pleasant.

But then, deep underground beneath the town, lies the Ruins. Eerie mines full of mindless Reaverbots, ready to kill anything they see. Under the silent cover of low draw distance, they wait for you. Some of these robots can drain your health in an instant, while you’re several loading screens away from salvation (and your latest save file). Mega Man Legends can be a little tense. (The hamburger-lookin ass crab Reaverbot, called Kuruguru, was particularly frightening to me and my younger brother when we played this game together.)

The tonal whiplash between the happy town and the harrowing ruins is only further compounded by the hysterical (and I mean that in both that they’re funny and that they’re constantly in hysterics) Bonne family. Between Tron Bonne’s violent and confused feelings towards Mega Man and Tiesel Bonne’s maniacal laughter after he plots a doomed scheme, any time they show up you’re in for a fun time.

That is, when the cutscenes are playing.

Early on, you gradually ease into the combat after a good amount of time hanging out in the town. But then BAM you’re hit with two back to back missions with their own boss fights. I guess the game wanted you to grind in the ruins for a lot longer than I did before starting those missions, because Defending City Hall is a huge difficulty spike.

And that difficulty, of course, comes from the controls.

Everyone hates tank controls. I won’t spend time reiterating what we all know, tank controls aren’t great for 3rd person action adventure games. This game is early enough in the genre’s existence that it was all they could conceive at the time. It’s really hard making two dimensional games as it is, and now you have to make a 3D game work and not completely copy Mario 64.

And besides, it’s not like Mario had a gun he could aim in Mario 64. They had to figure that out with what they had.

It’s a tough job, and I think they did OK with it. Decent enough to play, but not fun enough to where I get excited that a saving issue brought up the possibility of replaying 8 hours worth of the game. I didn’t have to replay those 8 hours, thankfully.

The main problem with Mega Man Legends’ turgid tank controls is half of the game’s loop is long term money grinding for obscenely expensive purchases. If you want to keep up with the dangerous enemies that threaten your life, you’re going to have spend a sickening amount of time grinding for zenny, all while moving around in that awkward and uncomfortable way. You get used to it, but it doesn’t make the grinding fun.

I genuinely recommend looking into cheat codes or something for this game to just give yourself a huge amount of money to mitigate the grinding. I played it “pure” and spent days running around the same spot in the ruins making chump change. Just cheat. Cheat because that half of the game is so lackluster compared to the side quests.

The side quests is what makes this game shine. There’s not enough of them to feel like a substantial Zelda-like adventure, but the amount we get is still satisfying. When you’re not raising money to rebuild the island from collateral damage you could have prevented, you’re helping the citizens with their simple problems. In return, you get an item that goes towards improving Mega Man (which you might need that grinding money to make use of), but more importantly, a fleshed out Kattelox Island. It makes it feel like a real place, and I love it.

However, these side quests have a dark side to them. A problem that could leave a “pure” playthrough completely in the dark.

A lot of these side quests/things to do are not blatantly advertised enough.

Much like the hidden treasures in the ruins beneath Kattlelox Island, Mega Man Legends hides it’s delightful and rewarding supplementary content behind obscurity. While some games with a racing minigame have some kind of eye catching indicator of its existence, or even a cutscene to let you know about it, Mega Man Legends has a nondescript npc in the corner of a building you might not think to go in anymore because you cleared the other two minigames it offered.

There are important npcs who have things for you to do who look like any other npc. Sometimes you have to talk to an obvious quest npc multiple times after you finish their quest to get a second or third quest. And I don’t mean just talk to them again I mean again and again and again. Some of these quests are built around the in-game timer, but it’s never specified exactly how much time it’s built around.

If your Saiyan Pride doesn’t let you cheat or use a guide, I respect that, but understand just how much of your precious time will be spent grinding zenny and talking to every npc multiple times. It is not weakness to save yourself an hour because you know where you have to go.

At the very least, I recommend having a guide handy while you play this game, just so you can give yourself everything it can offer. My first full playthrough was without a guide and I missed half the game and it really felt like it.

That full playthrough completely missed all the quests that went into the most powerful weapon in the game, maybe the entire Mega Man Series: the Shining Laser. The incredibly expensive culmination of several quests and mountains of money, the Shining Laser turns the already easy final boss into a seconds long joke.

Normally I’d be upset at the prospect of being robbed of a good fight, but I think it thematically works. The Shining Laser is everyone you helped on Kattelox returning the favor. It’s the final episode of the anime where everyone opens their hearts to send their energy to the hero. I like it. It’s a reward for players who aren’t good at combat but love the side quests, and it’s a reward for people like me who put too much thought into it.

But anyways,

I’ve played this game three times and rolled credits twice. I got every item on the second full playthrough, but I didn’t upgrade the weapons all the way because I didn’t cheat this time lmao. I fully upgraded the Shining Laser though, which is more than enough for me.

I recommend Mega Man Legends to anyone willing to put up with the few drawbacks it has. They are certainly drawbacks, (though I think the controls are much less of an issue) but the characters and world this game creates are vibrant and endearing and maybe the strongest in the entire Mega Man franchise.

There’s a reason why Tron Bonne shows up in more games as a cameo appearance than Mega Man Volnutt. It’s because she’s the best character in the game.

I absolutely love this game more than many people in my life will ever know. Yes it has a lot of flaws but in my opinion that just made the game more unique to me. Years ago I picked the game up for like $13 not expecting to become so invested in one of the most niche games I’ll ever come across. It has that same feeling as cartoons or anime that were made to sell toys with an incentive on collecting all of them which is pretty charming to me. Unfortunately it didn’t ever become as popular as it was aiming for, nonetheless it has left a significant mark on me. This isn’t a game that I would recommend for anyone freely, but I think everyone should at least see once in case it really strikes a chord with the specific people it was aiming for.

Right off the bat the art direction is captivating. It really does have the style of a Saturday morning anime with all these vibrant colors, intriguing designs, and distinct characters. It has such a strong presentation that it damn well makes me feel like a kid again when I get back to it. The voice acting, holy shit is it bad but honestly that is part of the charm to me. The in-game models and textures are also really simple too but it’s not something that I think clashes with what it’s going for.

As for the game itself, it’s another one where it’s just really easy to pick up and play. Most of the Gotcha Borgs are understandable the second that you put them in your squad and control them. Some of the borgs can feel clunky or janky when controlling them, but it’s something you can adapt to if you would like. There’s so many borgs that you’re bound to find one that controls the way you want it too. Even with the slight awkwardness of their movements at first, they can feel amazing once you learn how to utilize their abilities efficient to start doing combos on your enemies. A lot of the borgs are a bit too similar too each other although there’s also a decent amount of variety that you’ll be interested in seeing how these borgs behave, fight, and move when you come across one that you’ve never seen before. That also helps combat with how repetitive the game is. Within an hour or two it’s noticeable that the game has the same objective for every battle. All you pretty much have to do is use your team of Gotcha Borgs to win every battle. I wish there was a mechanic that let you swap out your borgs mid battle to add a bit more strategy and variety to the game instead of letting them die just so you could get to the one you want. The battles I feel like are carried enough by the vast amount of Gotcha Borgs that you’ll be able to have a few memorable ones even with how easy the game is. Not to mention the fact that you have a chance of collecting more Gotcha Borgs reels you in so that you can try to collect them and experiment with them once you do. It helps combat the games repetitiveness, although for most people I’d recommend playing it in short bursts.

The story itself is also pretty straightforward. There’s not much depth to it but honestly I don’t think it needed it. It’s simple enough in a way that isn’t bothersome. Planet Mega Borg was destroyed by the Death Force, the Gotcha Borgs escaped to Earth and get help from their human friends, and your job is to go kick Galactic Emperor’s ass before he destroys Earth too. That’s the gist of it. The characters themselves, despite their god awful voice acting, all feel distinct enough with their personalities that you may find some of them to be likable. They lack complexity, including Orochi, Sho, and Kou even though they’re given more important roles, but they also aren’t devoid of little interesting traits. Their interactions can be decently intriguing too, except I wish that everyone else interacted with their Gotcha Borgs more. G-Red and the Galactic Emperor are the only ones that talk, which just leaves a lot of room for more dynamic relationships between the Gotcha Borgs and humans that they unfortunately don’t capitalize on. The story had a lot of potential to be much more, but what we have serves it’s purpose well enough.

Gotcha Force is a very specific kind of game that when exposed to the right people, will really resonate with them. There’s a lot of issues, and realistically I’d say that most will think the game is just decent or good. This is a game too unique and rare to see that you can’t pass it up if you have the chance to play it at least once to develop your own opinion on it. A lot of fun can be had with the game if you were to invest a decent amount of your time to it. Which isn’t a lot either, the game is fairly short. There was so much potential for Gotcha Force; I really wish Capcom could bring it back or acknowledge it because it’s a very special game. What we got though is something that I still believe is wonderful and unforgettable.

Second GOTM finished for January 2024. There were some bright spots here and there, and the depth of content available in this game was surprising and likely would've captivated me for days as a child. However, the core gameplay felt awful. Not being able to reliably target enemy parts (or enemies as a whole) left nearly every battle feeling like complete chance. This, coupled with a decent encounter rate, made for a painful slog. I'd smoke bosses, and get one-shot by scrubs. I'd get crushed by an enemy, fight them again with the same loadout, and obliterate them. Sometimes that process was 20 times in a row before it worked out. What's the point of spending all this time on collecting parts and building out an ideal unit if every time you use them you have no idea if they'll actually do what you want!? Arbitrary story checkpoints that lead to (or detract from) multiple endings isn't fun either. Apparently has some good postgame content, but I put this down as soon as the credits rolled.