It's really hard for me to form a judgement on a game like this, because this has been one of the single most (honestly if not THE most) rewarding gaming experiences of my life, yet I know that at least half of it comes from bad game design.
The UI design is nothing short of dumb, throwing so much information at you as the player and explaining almost none of it. It took me so long to figure out literally how to level up my character, and even longer to figure out what each stat meant and what it did and how to figure out how my stats affected my weapon choices. The other massive problem is the enemy placements being just, bad. A lot of the areas in this game can be chocked up to "throw as many enemies in one area as we can and just force the player to figure out what to do," and it's frustrating especially in areas like Blighttown and New Londo Ruins which are just, so cool thematically and structurally.
But similar to BOTW, I honestly just do not care! The feeling I got from slowly learning the way the game worked and constantly feeling like I was getting better as opposed to just stumbling my way through is unrivaled in this genre of game for me. It weird how so much of this game felt like a puzzle game, where I was treating areas like puzzles and my solutions being optimal paths and enemy encounters, to where reaching a new bonfire felt like actual progress was being made every time. It also helps a lot that the environment and level design is almost bar none in its genre. Very few games outside of the platformer genre manage to use all three axes to the fullest advantage, and Dark Souls does that with flying colors. The world is so perfectly interconnected and seeing how each area of the game stacks on top of each other is just fascinating from a design perspective.
To the part of the game that got this game so much notoriety, I absolutely adore the boss fights in this game. Some of them are very much on the weaker end, like the Moonlight Butterfly, Seath the Scaleless, Gaping Dragon, to where beating them felt more like a chore than anything else, but when it hits, it HITS. Manus is probably the single hardest boss fight I've ever beaten in a game, and its simultaneously one of the most satisfying and exhilarating to learn and slowly conquer. Orenstein and Smough completely deserve the clout they have and are easily among one of the best boss fights in any game for me. I could go on about most of the bosses in this game really, but that's for a place that isn't my backloggd review.
If I had to sum up the way I'm feeling after completing this game, its melancholic. The time I spent with this game is some that I'll never forget, I'm honestly kind of sad. The final fight with Gwyn, as easy as it is, is a perfect sendoff for this title, with one of the single greatest final boss tracks playing in the background as you finally defeat the final foe of the game. I absolutely adore this game and am so excited to dip my toes into the sequel, no matter how the reputation of that game may be.

Love with this keeping the consistency of every zelda game I beat this year make me cry in some capacity. The ending of this game never fails to fuck with me for reasons I want to expand on but am too mentally exhausted to.
Outside of that, this is EXACTLY the game I wanted it to be. I already adore link's awakening both in its original and dx formats and this version is about the exact same but with the obvious visual overhaul. I absolutely adore this new style and the cartoony almost toylike nature of the look only accentuates how bonkers and weird this little game is. Tarin is and will ALWAYS be the funniest zelda character (master kogha you're a close second dont worry) and yea Marin is really cute im not delusiounal, but even outside of them, all the characters are so full of fun and charm in a way no other Zelda really replicates. I could go into the nitty gritty and talk about how its somehow too open ended and too linear at the same time, or how I wish more dungeons tackled 3D puzzle solving like Eagle's Tower did, but frankly the game being the way it is is still a technical marvel for the gameboy and this remake knows not to fix what isn't broken. Cried when I saw the initial reveal trailer, and cried again as I rolled credits.

For the longest time, I didn't understand the point of representation in media. I didn't get why it was such a big deal for POC to get their spotlight, spewing the same falsities like, "if they were more talented, they would get the parts." I realized soon that a big reason I was turned off by the idea of representation was because I never felt represented by media almost ever. Seeing Black, East Asian, Hispanic, among many, many other cultures slowly get their limelight in western content is beautiful, but I started to feel a little sad by the lack of good Indian representation in media, ever. The closest we've gotten until this year was Hasan Minhaj's presence in comedy and that's, pretty much it for anything in terms of positive representation. That's not the same this year.

Firstly, we had Across the Spider-verse, and Pavitr Prabhakar. It was beautiful to see someone who clearly inspired by the culture of my country and embodies it in a way that shows reverence to that culture play such a major role in a massively popular film. His dialogue was clearly written by someone that was Indian (proven by the fact that Karan Soni, his VA, oversaw the writing of his character) and it shows in the jokes he makes and the way he talks. It made me feel really happy seeing him on the big screen.

Then we have this, which is about the best thing I could ever ask for. It's a celebration of the food I grew up eating (albeit in this case with meat but it's not too different) and my Tamil heritage. It's a love letter to the experience that so many parents and their children face; moving to the west in search for a better life for their kids, only for the children to feel a culture shock and not know what they want to be. I, personally, struggled a lot (and still do) with my identity and my culture, whether it be me having to learn to be more open about the Indian food I brought to school every day, or how I still struggle to get people to pronounce my name right and default to the "white" way to say it. Seeing that story (one that is absolutely not unique to me) told in a game made me tear up multiple times. Seeing the struggle that both Venba and Paavalan go through just to raise their kid in the best way possible reminded me of my own parents and the struggles I imagine they have to go through in raising me. It's a deeply personal story that I connected with on every level and makes me so happy that a story like this is being brought to wider audiences.

Do I have gripes with the game? Yes. It's simply too short for the $15 price tag, and I think the game could have benefited with more meat on its bones. Does that change the fact that this game in the way it exists right now means a lot to me and will be one I cherish for the foreseeable future and hopefully the rest of my life? No, not at all. I'm thankful for this game existing, and hope that it can serve as proof that the stories of my people deserve to be told.

Time to go eat some god damn dosa.

I'm going to need a little bit to be able to actually process my full thoughts on this massive experience (that im most certainly not finished with, this just means I've gotten the ending), so I'll just say that Nintendo has sucessfully made their best game.

This is their best game.

The best one.

This is the best game.

A culmination of fantastic storytelling, engaging and challenging gameplay, a beautiful soundtrack, great visuals (atleast on the PC version), all tied together to make a game thats fundamentally changed the way I view the world around me.

I've had this as my backloggd favorite mostly because I couldn't pick between my 3 favorite games but I think I'm solid on this one being my favorite of the 3. The amount of hype I have for the sequel is unreal.

This is not a perfect game. A good 60% of the shrines are not very good, the divine beasts all are really boring, the final boss is a bit underwhelming, the random yiga clan fights get really annoying after a while, etc etc. I could go on about the little nitpicky things that bother me about this game, but I dont care anymore. It may have bothered me at hour 10 of playing the game, but at hour 35 at the time of me beating the game for the first time, I feel nothing but pure joy. In fact I'm crying writing this right now because the epilogue rendition of the LOZ main theme decided to go so incredibly hard.

This is one of the most immersive worlds I've ever experienced, and one of very few where I can derive enjoyment just from running around doing literally nothing. Everything from the way the weather affects you based on your currently equipped item to how you move slower in certain terrain, everything is hand crafted to make this world feel as real as possible, and it works. Its clear where the vision of this game lies and with that idea in mind the game passes with flying colors. Its unmatched in its worldbuilding only really beaten by Shadow of the Colossus for me which I can barely compare because the vibe of the world in the 2 games are so drastically different.

The way the story is told here is also magnificent. Theres not much story actively happening, you spend most of your time piecing together what happened, figuring out what got the world to the state it is in. All 4 of the champions and especially the memories do such a good job of telling the story of what happened to Hyrule and I was wholely invested.

All in all, when a game is this good at doing what its setting out to do, I can set aside the few flaws it may have. Its such a drastically different experience for a Zelda game and an experience I've never had with pretty much any game. I may prefer the 2 N64 Zelda titles to this but this is pure mastery of the craft of game design right here and I'm kind of mad it took me so long for it to finally click for me. 10 out of fucking 10.