Howdy peeps, long time no see.
With Tears of the Kingdom’s release I figured, “Hey, maybe I should play Breath of the Wild, since I’ve owned it for four years, it’s supposed to be one of the best games ever, and it’s basically the standard bearer of the type of game I’ve wanted to exist your whole life.”
But after a few hours of play I’m feeling underwhelmed.
Is this a thing? Are there people who find Breath of the Wild just kind of “meh”? Is it gonna get less meh? Maybe this will come off as deliberately contrarian or something, but I’m making this thread because I’ve literally found myself asking Google things like, “does breath of the wild get less boring” and “do puzzles get harder in breath of the wild”. No one I know has played this game, and I’m craving to have someone put my feeling in context.
So far, I’ve played in two sessions. I finished the first four temples to get out of opening region. I’m currently heading to the first town, but on the way I stopped to climb the twin mountains and completed the two dungeons at the top. I’ve had to do some cooking. I’ve been doing plenty of exploring and mostly avoid combat with stealth/exploration.
The problem is that so far it just all feels so…joyless. I guess, I’m not hooked. I’ve been REALLY disappointed by the first six dungeons I’ve played, four of which were tutorials, while the last two were one-screen puzzles. The dungeon puzzles were always my favorite part of Zelda, though playing Zelda 1 recently the exploration was enough that I didn’t miss them. But in BotW so far it feels like, “Why did they even bother”? They’re kind of insulting, honestly.
Other than that, maybe there’s not enough to fiddle with? With Bloodstained, it really clicked with me how much I love economies and characters customization. It’s always been true, but now I realize it’s one of my favorite things.
But then again, I loved Shadow of the Colossus, even on replay. Though that might indicate another issue I have: Zelda games have always been kind of theme-light, relative to their genre (theme as in the game design term for story/plot/concept; not literary usage). It hasn’t bothered me before, but I do find myself feeling like I’m in kind of blank demo. I don’t roleplay mentally at all when I play games; I play them as systems that I want to exploit. But story, environment, and lore definitely set a mood. And BotW’s mood is pretty vague and insubstantial.
Finally, I’m not really digging the little touches. Lots of little things feel awkward to me. I get the buttons for changing weapons and using abilities wrong a lot. I would really like a roll.* I can’t get over the fact that I have to use the stick to turn inventory pages (every other game I’ve ever played uses shoulders). It would be nice to just click A on a lit pot to go to a dedicated cooking UI. A lot of this stuff feels like alternate takes on the wheel, and it’s not like no one had done this stuff before.
So I dunno. I expect most people to think I’m just looking for reasons to complain or something. There’s this phenomenon in media criticism: when you’re not enjoying something you cast about for explanations. No one can say for sure if you ever diagnose the actual issues that’s affecting you, but you become more confident in your assertions when others have the same perspective. So…am I alone on this stuff?
*At this point, you might start to think I want this to be a Souls game, but actually I’ve never gotten into Souls, because it stimulates my anxiety too much.