Far Harbor is fine. The island is a nice change of pace from from the Commonwealth and the actually nuanced factional politics called to mind New Vegas in a nice way. That being said, the island is pretty homogenous and samey all over, and aside from a pretty neat Vault quest, a lot of the quest design outside of the main quest falls into the same trappings of "go here, clear the enemies, return." Additionally the more complicated dialogue-heavy quests in the critical path really expose how flawed the dialogue system is in 4.

Overall, it's just kinda fine.

Each game in the Pikmin series feels like an alternate universe take on the core premise of "use Pikmin to carry objects back to your ship." Pikmin 2 focuses on combat, Pikmin 3 is very concerned with multitasking and tight linear missions, and Pikmin 4 is a collectathon. Levels are too wide for days to be planned down to the minute as they could be in 1 or 3, and the slow progression of abilities and types make it so you can't mulitask as hard as you could either. Instead it's a slower paced game where you explore and gather as you go. When you're in that flow of clearing out a level and carrying everything back, it feels great. It's not as stressful as the other games, but it's an understandable concession to make the games more accessible to the core Nintendo fans and casual players.

While the core gameplay is very solid, the problems lie in the little things. The controls are atrocious, with a hideous lock on system that yanks control of your cursor from you and onto any corpse, pellet or treasure, no matter what, even in combat. This makes encounters with groups far more headache inducing than they need to be. I just wish I was fighting the enemies or even the Pikmin AI instead of something as basic as the cursor controls. Whoever decided this utterly horrible lock on mechanic should be mandatory instead of a menu toggle is insane and I hope they never work on a game ever again. Beyond the basic controls, the menu and overall interface is a slog to use and looks downright amateur compared to the GameCube games. I truly don't understand how the general user experience is such a tremendous downgrade. The music is also significantly worse. There's really no memorable melodies outside of the main menu theme. It's also very, very easy, with a noticeable lack of boss fights. Characters also never shut the fuck up, and even all of them combined don't have a tenth of the personality of any of the captains from the first three games.

All that being said I can't complain too much because all things considered these are minor grievances and taken hollistically this game is very good, but with some tweaking it could've been a lot better. There's a lot to love here, some of the new levels are great, Dandori challenges are uniformly fantastic, and it's the longest game in the series by far. But there's still a nagging sense of "why the hell is it like this?!" around some of the decisions.

Tears of the Kingdom is an evil video game. It is a shallow, meandering homonuculus in the shape of a "critically acclaimed video game." It is sinister in how it slithers along wearing the skin of a game we all liked seven years ago. It is deceptive in how it tricks the player into thinking it's wealth of "content" is fun. It is manipulative in how it attempts to wring tears out from the player despite the story meaning nothing.

It is a game about nothing for everyone. It is formless sludge to keep your fingers busy and your mind vacant. It is the death of art. It loots the corpses of the good Zelda games and uses them for fuel for the content mill.

It's kinda fun to skydive though

I won't call Tears of the Kingdom the worst game I've ever played - that'd be obviously hyperbolic. It's mechanically sound, looks nice, and there is some meager bits of fun to be had. But I think it's absolutely one of the worst pieces of art I've ever experienced. It does nothing to justify it's own existence, seemingly satisfied with just being. It has nothing new to say, nothing interesting to do, nothing cool to see. But hey, there's 900 Korok seeds, 700 locations, 194 caves, 152 shrines, 120 lightroots, 58 wells, 35 chasms, 35 settlements, 60 side adventures, 31 shrine quests, 139 side quests, 18 memories, it's so awesome dude there's so much content the game is great it has content I like this game because it has content I love content

I thought that getting into this series with 4 would make the fixed camera angle games seem obtuse and difficult to get into, but I'm pleasantly surprised to say that this game is probably even better than 4! The oppressive mood and atmosphere is overwhelming, it's genuinely scary and I feel so tense when playing, and peeling away at the INCREDIBLY designed mansion through Metroidvania-esque progression is so satisfying. Immaculately designed game, I absolutely adored it and can't wait to play the original version of 2 next.

There's something so delightful about this game after playing Tears of the Kingdom. The new open world Zelda games are completely overstuffed in a world that's incredibly vast. In contrast, A Link Between Worlds takes about 2 minutes to get from one side of one of it's maps to the other. It's a compact, cozy open world that respects your time and isn't littered with repetition. You get the joys of doing things in your own order and striking out on your own path to do whatever objective strikes your fancy, while still having well-crafted linear dungeons as well as an engaging story. See, Nintendo? You can do an open world and still have a game that satisfies someone wanting a traditional Zelda, the blueprint was here all along!

I went my whole life hearing that this game is one of the very best SNES games and the best Mario RPG. I never seriously tried to sit down and play it until the remake and found that it's um, boring?

You walk forward and fight the most braindead simple and easy JRPG battles I've ever experienced. Locations are generic and bland, and I thought that the villains being a sort of other worldly force was neat but there's so little personality anywhere that I'm just so bored with the game that I'm putting it down for a while after Booster Tower. Genuinely gobsmacked at how many people say this is better than The Thousand Year Door.

the music is amazing though obviously