Some of my collected thoughts on the game after finishing it earlier today. I'm a bad writer so it's of course too long.
This spin on the Zelda formula with more packed non-dungeon areas is great and long overdue. Traversing huge fields with a few enemy patrols or a vast ocean doesn't compare in any way to these smaller, tighter areas with enemies and light puzzling elements. It feels more like adventuring in an unknown environment than it has for a long time and I love that feeling. They get extra points for the vignettes of Link entering the dungeons, first staring into the darkness a few moments with dust rolling off walls or sparks hitting him in the face before slowly descending, it's a small but great touch.
The dungeons are also good, very pretty and with a lot of interesting central mechanics like the
(a fantastic addition to the series!) and
. Also, when I replayed TP and WW a few months ago I got very tired of the usual order of finding things, first the map, then the compass and two-thirds through the temple the new item which would be used for the remaining puzzles. Here you could get the map or the item first and often very early on in the dungeon instead of dragging stuff out. They also finally got rid of the compass which has been a shitty and unnecessary item since at least MM. Finally the final dungeon, and the rest of the end game, is some of the most fun I've had in the series ever. Superb stuff.
Combat is better than ever in the series, I didn't really think that motion controls would be this good but they are. It's not that most enemies are hard to figure out or beat, but except for the simplest ones all of them make you think of how you aim your blows. The better enemies even require you to use a small amount of tactics and there's a lot of interesting encounters. The combat works so well that they can even throw non-gimmick bosses into your face, bosses which are all about fighting instead of aiming for a weak spot with your newly acquired item (tm) or hitting that QTE button when it lights up. What I mean is that in comparison to TP, which had a lot of moves to learn, and WW, which had a lot of weapons you could pick up and use from the environment, you're actually required to learn how to fight here and that's a great change. Even if they go back to non-motion controls in the future I hope they keep that aspect since there's nothing worse than uninteresting combat in a game so full of enemies (hi there KotOR).
There are the things I didn't like about the game. Dowsing to collect the items required to get to the next area is boring. I understand that it's there to give you a few more challenges before moving on (and some of these were good) but in itself it's boring and finding a few parts to make a whole before several dungeons in a row just screams lazy. The later half of the game varies these challenges much better and I wish that variety was there the whole game. When you had to dowse for even more stuff before hitting the fourth dungeon, even having to do it several times at one made it feel like it was never going to stop (which it mostly did, thank fuck). I think that part was the worst pacing offender in the game. The harp also feels very poorly thought out, all songs were identical to play and sounded
like shit, I can't remember how any of them went since it didn't really feel like music at all. More like noise.
But besides those early parts were the pacing was very on and off most issues I have are nitpicks. Like, I didn't enjoy flying between areas and the sky overworld was almost totally empty, but though I see room for improvement (or cutting) it didn't bother me much. Sidequests are a bit simple, but they're not a large part of the game and let you get to know some NPC's a bit (helped by solid though clichéd writing). They fixed TP's rupee messages but are now repeating it for every collectable after restart instead. Sprinting drains stamina too quickly.
These failures just pale beside good adventuring, the best cast since MM, jokes that finally don't fall flat and small touches like sitting down on chairs and suddenly getting an unexpected life story from your table mate. The game feels alive. I had a ton of fun with it and it finally gives me real hope for the future of the series. Whether that turns out to be more or less linear they've finally for the first time since MM shown that they can switch it up and that's all I could ever ask for.
Rating (3D): MM > OOT ~ SS > TP > WW
(well also those who thinks the TP controls are only 90% shit while SS is 95% shit, but that's another debate...)
