Can whoever designed the Ice Ruins dungeon meet me in the alley out back? I just wanna talk.
Peaks and valleys. This game has a lot going for it but manages to constantly stumble upon itself with subpar gameplay decisions and bad plot. The fusing mechanic is so cool and is a blast, and it makes for an excellent tool in Link's arsenal.
Unfortunately, most of the rest of his arsenal is obtained through Ravio's shop, which is absolutely by far the worst item implementation in any Zelda game. Ravio is very annoying, for one, but having the items be solely in his shop (you'll want to buy them for insurance and to be able to upgrade them, which means buying the items at ludicrous prices - at least rupees are plentiful in this game) causes a ripple effect in dungeon design where the only dungeon that centers around the classic Zelda "getting a new item and then using it" is the Desert Palace with the Titan's Mitt. Everything else you're presumed to have immediately to even access the dungeon, which means the dungeons are mostly just key-box design.
That isn't to say they're all boring. Some of them are very good, like the Thieves Town dungeon where you guide an NPC around to help open doors with two button solutions. The Desert Palace is also fun with the use of the Titan's Mitt and the Sand Rod is a fun item (though it's use is kind of limited to that location and finding Lost Maiamais). Some of them are also very bad, like the Ice Palace being a combination of navigating slippery ice platforms and one tile wide platforms without a d-pad, and the Dark Palace's lighting puzzles being genuinely obnoxious.
The plot reveal also doesn't work. There's too much info-dumping on the end. I know Zelda games weren't particularly known for immersive plots as a whole, but leaving crumbs here and there and then having a huge lore dump right at the end of the game makes me feel actually no remorse for Hilda or Ravio with the way it's done -the citizens of Lorule truly deserve better. The sages are also barely introduced or impactful, compared to OoT where several of them had more meaningful impact on the story (Impa, Rauru) or had whole dungeons in the child era based around their struggles (Ruto, Darunia), the sages just completely fall flat when they show up, for the most part say three lines or so once, and then disappear.
Like, it's a Legend of Zelda series game. There's a baseline level of quality here and I can't say ALBW is a bad game or even that I wouldn't recommend it, but I'd definitely place it on a lower rung of Zelda titles. An overhaul of the dungeons/items system would bring this title forward by leaps and bounds.
Peaks and valleys. This game has a lot going for it but manages to constantly stumble upon itself with subpar gameplay decisions and bad plot. The fusing mechanic is so cool and is a blast, and it makes for an excellent tool in Link's arsenal.
Unfortunately, most of the rest of his arsenal is obtained through Ravio's shop, which is absolutely by far the worst item implementation in any Zelda game. Ravio is very annoying, for one, but having the items be solely in his shop (you'll want to buy them for insurance and to be able to upgrade them, which means buying the items at ludicrous prices - at least rupees are plentiful in this game) causes a ripple effect in dungeon design where the only dungeon that centers around the classic Zelda "getting a new item and then using it" is the Desert Palace with the Titan's Mitt. Everything else you're presumed to have immediately to even access the dungeon, which means the dungeons are mostly just key-box design.
That isn't to say they're all boring. Some of them are very good, like the Thieves Town dungeon where you guide an NPC around to help open doors with two button solutions. The Desert Palace is also fun with the use of the Titan's Mitt and the Sand Rod is a fun item (though it's use is kind of limited to that location and finding Lost Maiamais). Some of them are also very bad, like the Ice Palace being a combination of navigating slippery ice platforms and one tile wide platforms without a d-pad, and the Dark Palace's lighting puzzles being genuinely obnoxious.
The plot reveal also doesn't work. There's too much info-dumping on the end. I know Zelda games weren't particularly known for immersive plots as a whole, but leaving crumbs here and there and then having a huge lore dump right at the end of the game makes me feel actually no remorse for Hilda or Ravio with the way it's done -the citizens of Lorule truly deserve better. The sages are also barely introduced or impactful, compared to OoT where several of them had more meaningful impact on the story (Impa, Rauru) or had whole dungeons in the child era based around their struggles (Ruto, Darunia), the sages just completely fall flat when they show up, for the most part say three lines or so once, and then disappear.
Like, it's a Legend of Zelda series game. There's a baseline level of quality here and I can't say ALBW is a bad game or even that I wouldn't recommend it, but I'd definitely place it on a lower rung of Zelda titles. An overhaul of the dungeons/items system would bring this title forward by leaps and bounds.