It kind of bewilders me that this has attained a kind of mythic status among Nintendo fans as being even better than the first game. It's obviously very solid and has some great level design but it's completely missing the atmosphere and cohesion that elevated the original.

And honestly, outside of a handful, absolutely no galaxy in this game is as enjoyable as the first game. Much more focus is on platforming challenges than making interesting locations to explore and be in. And this is fine - but it makes a game that is much less special than the first, and ends up feeling unfortunately more like "another Mario game," especially when 3D Land and 3D World took this game's design philosophy and ran with it.

Edit: I wrote all that after playing for an hour or so for the first time since release, based on my first impressions of my replay and my thoughts on my initial playthrough ten years ago.

By the time I had beaten it, it had absolutely won me over. The game simply does not stop getting better and better as it goes along all the way up until the final boss (tacked-on postgame not withstanding,) a constant onslaught of new ideas and some of the best 3D platforming of all time.

The biggest points against this game are:
1: Misses the sense of cohesion and grandeur of the first game.
2: Green stars.

While it is a shame that it abandons the first games aesthetics in many ways, it does lend this game a stronger identity of it's own, and it's focus on tightening up the gameplay works extremely well to the point that I didn't particularly mind anymore by the time it ended.

Green stars though... Ugh... these suck. They are 120 extra stars that unlock after you collect all the normal power stars in the game. There's one for every normal mission in every galaxy, and they're hidden within the normal missions. Honestly, these would be fine additions if these were unlocked from the start and didn't kick you out of the level when you get them. So basically, just have them operate exactly like green stars in 3D World, just another collectible to find in each mission in addition to the Comet Medal.

Still, like I said, the game is just so good that this isn't a serious detriment. Just don't try to 240 star this game.

It's so fucked up that Konami just said, "no, we aren't letting you finish the game." This starts out SO strongly (my first 15 or so hours with it back in 2015 were absolutely blissful) and then by the time you hit the midpoint it practically just ends out of nowhere, then makes you replay earlier missions and then randomly throws in context-less cutscenes in between, creating this bizarre dream-like second half where things just happen randomly until it ends again.

It is just such a shame that the core gameplay is so strong and yet just didn't get finished. Forever, discussion of this game will be centered around what could have been.

I don't think there's anything NEW I or anyone else can say about this game. It is, rightfully so, regarded as a pillar of modern game design. It is an absolute master class in its design, stupefying in its depth as the world loops back in on itself over and over, creating confounding connections and new paths forward. If you pay attention, there will be an "aha!" moment so often that it is difficult to keep up, as your arsenal expands rapidly, fundamentally changing your relationship to Zebes every single time you get a new upgrade. And all of that is just speaking on the gameplay loop itself, not even touching upon its excellent art, music, environmental storytelling, replayability, the depth of its many mechanics, the multitude of techniques to perfect, how it teaches the player through its design...

And yet, despite how influential and groundbreaking it is, it still feels extremely fresh and exciting. Plenty of games wear this influence on their sleeves, from Symphony of the Night to Hollow Knight, and although many of them succeed in their own ways, nothing may ever surpass the towering achievement that this game is.

My early childhood was defined by Zelda. I first played A Link to the Past on my father's SNES when I was 3 (somehow, I made it as far as the Water Temple. Looking back, really unsure how I managed that.) the 3D games were a bit harder for me to get a grasp on, but when I did, I spent many, many hours exploring Hyrule in both Ocarina and the Great Sea in Wind Waker. (Though I did not beat either until I was a bit older.) A little bit older, my Dad showed me the now-iconic E3 2004 reveal for Twilight Princess. As time moves so slow for little kids, it felt like an eternity waiting for it. It was all I wanted for Christmas 2006. When my Mom found out the game I wanted so badly was rated T, she told me that I would probably be too young to play it. When she said that, I ran and buried my face into a soft chair in the living room and cried for what might have been hours until my Dad got home and reassured me that yes, I would get Twilight Princess that Christmas.

I got it, and spent a lot of my next few years poring over every nook and cranny of this new version of Hyrule. If you've read some of my other reviews for Zelda games, you might know that I accredited A Link to the Past with kick-starting my life-long love for video games, when I played it as a very, very young child. If that is what kick-started it, then this game helped to solidify it. I was shocked by the scope of it, unlike anything I had played before, stunned by the expanse of Hyrule Field and the sense of weight and tightness of control I had as I explored it, far exceeding it's predecessors in my mind. This was the second game I ever beat. (The first was Minish Cap.)

So it is somewhat difficult for me to really talk about this game (or really, any Zelda game) without my obvious and inherent bias in favor of the series kicking in, but still, I can try.

Considered a return to "what the fans want" after the experimentation of Majora and Wind Waker, it plays it a bit safer with a tone that almost tries too hard to be grim and edgy (in a way unlike the seemingly effortless, surreal psychological darkness of Majora) and a return to a very Ocarina-like structure.

Despite playing it safe a bit too much in some regards, this is still an extremely solid game. Unlike the Zelda games that it's surrounded by, it doesn't really have a fatal flaw I can point to (like Wind Waker being unfinished and Skyward Sword's everything) and is on the whole an extremely solid Zelda game. It has an extremely solid set of dungeons, and combat has been expanded upon significantly, which makes encounters that could be very stale in previous games a lot more interesting.

Unfortunately there are some downsides. The return to a realistic graphical style has ensured that the graphics have aged exceedingly poorly, and the HD rerelease on WiiU had so little effort put into it that it can be difficult to tell which is the original and which is the remaster. The overworld can be a bit sparse, and it would have gone a long way to fill up its size with a bit more meaningful side content. There is still plenty of secrets to be found through exploration, but Hyrule can still feel overly large and at times empty. Additionally, many dungeon items, while unique and interesting at first blush, end up being woefully underutilized in the larger scope of the game.

Like I said, none of these are fatal flaws. The gameplay overall is pristine, the music is consistently excellent, the story tries a bit more than in typical Zelda games, and the dungeon design is probably the best out of the 3D games. It is absolutely still worth playing.

New Vegas is a rare game where "player choice" isn't just a back-of-the-box buzzword but is actually fully delivered on. The game becomes a complex web of decisions and inter-faction relationships wherein it seems like somehow Obsidian has accounted for literally every possible string of choices. This, along with the phenomenal world-building, deep character building, perfect writing and extremely memorable cast of characters makes it one of the best roleplaying experiences of all time.

Though with all the praise I have for it, there's still some things worth noting. Vanilla New Vegas struggles to run without memory leaks and frequent crashes unless you patch it to allow it to use more RAM and mod it with community made stability fixes. Combat is pretty wonky and even after all the official patches it can still be pretty glitchy. None of this really matters because if you manage to look past those flaws you are rewarded with one of the best gaming experiences you might ever have.

so, why's everyone love Joshua Graham so much again? this dlc feels rushed, half hearted and totally unfinished, which is unfortunate. its quests are somehow worse than a typical fo3 quest, where you literally just follow a quest marker to grab a random useless item, and you do that a few times til the storyline is over. it's like they spent too much time making the map and forgot to make any meaningful or interesting quests. whoops.

worth running through if you own the ultimate edition of the game at least. has some cool gear and the survivalist storyline that you piece together through holotapes and terminal entries is by far the best thing here, but nothing that elevates the main game the way the other three dlc packs do.