@brah4ever
Since your thread got locked before I could post this, because you're a complete shitter at making threads, I'm going to post this response here.
For starters your assertion that the world is empty is a bold faced lie. The world has a huge amount of collectibles, unique locations, lots of NPC's walking around, resources to gather, a shitload of monsters and animals, and of course, shrines along the way. The emptiest location is probably the plateau but even then there are plenty of secret treasures and puzzles and it has some of the easiest resource gathering in the game. At best you could argue that there is occasional downtime in the world, but that mostly comes from you yourself not wanting to explore or find things. Likely because you went in wanting to hate the game. And even that's assuming you're playing at all.
Next point I'll make about the soundtrack is that it's muted and quiet in the same way dark souls is, in that only the exploration is quiet. The soundtrack picks up in almost every story beat, every town, every shrine, every boss, the final stage, and each of the four dungeons. Hell there are NPC's and monsters that have their own unique soundtracks, but I don't want to spoil too much on that end. I have enjoyed the soundtrack thoroughly and while I can't say it's as catchy and revolutionary as the soundtrack of certain other Zeldas, it is more than pleasant to listen to, and feels appropriate to this franchise.
The world has an excellent artstyle, using a nice blend between the art of Wind Waker and maybe Skyward Sword. The expanses across the center of Hyrule field aren't the best graphically, sure, but they are a joy to see nonetheless because of how much variety and detail the landscape has. Elements of the world will change based on things you've done, and you can see those changes for miles around. These are small but important notes about the world's design. But back to the art, the characters are all really well designed, likeable and aesthetically pleasing. Indeed it's no wonder why the waifu train is full steam ahead with this one.
Onto the gameplay, which is consistently entertaining. The absolute worst you can say about it is that yes occasionally there are fetch quests, but if you're actually spending time in the world those are almost never more demanding than talking to the person while you already have everything they need. More often the quests are more obscure quests to find a shrine or treasure, which are far more rewarding. You have to use context and clues in the environment to figure out what someone is talking about and where to go. These quests are consistently incredibly satisfying. Side questing in general only very very rarely marks your map, most of the time the game is trusting you to find your own way to the goals.
As far as puzzles are concerned, I wasn't a huge fan initially when I heard dungeons were smaller and more spread out. But I do enjoy it. Instead of rushing to find a dungeon to get to the real meat of every Zelda game, the meat is instead spread in small servings throughout. I wouldn't say it's better or worse than the old structure, it's merely different. While I like more consistent puzzle pacing, I do miss some of the strengths of the lengthier dungeons, like the thematic sense of each dungeon, or finding a cool item that dramatically changes the layout.
At the very least though the puzzle design is consistently excellent. Because the devs know you'll have all your abilities early on, they can get wild and wacky with puzzles and don't have to hold back because you have to learn some new mechanic first like in the old structure of Zelda games. This results in some puzzles that feel more on the level of something like Portal, a dedicated puzzle game based on simple mechanics established early in the game, rather than most Zelda's. While I haven't been majorly challenged by any so far, a couple have held me up, and I would say the puzzles are regularly feeling unique and clever. In many ways it also reminds me of their excellent level design from Mario 3D World. Each level in that game is based on a very specific gimmick, one that doesn't alter the core of the gameplay, and it give you enough time to develop and expand that gimmick, and moves on before it grows too tired. So while I do miss traditional dungeons, I really enjoy this new approach and it makes me wonder where the series will go from here. If they could marry the spread out puzzles with longer and more thematic dungeons, that would be a legitimately perfect game in my eyes.
Combat is deceptively simple. While this game is not a hack n slash and it's swordplay isn't even trying to be Skyward Sword levels of total shit deep interactive sword movement, it more than makes up for it with breadth of options. Again because you have all your movesets early, you are given a wide variety of options that almost never let up and you can approach each area in a huge variety of ways. For instance you could just go in sword swinging, and that's fine, the dodging and core of swordplay has enough going on by itself to be reasonable enjoyable. Or you could jump in from above, or do bombing runs from a glider, or crush enemies with magnets and stasis, or blow them up with their own barrels, or you can avoid them entirely. That's the real joy of the combat in this game, is if you think something's going to be tough or wear you out too much, you can skip almost every encounter available up until the bosses. All of these options and more are available to you, and they all feel like they tie in together very well to each other, which makes combat far deeper than any individual part of it would make you believe.
On the subject of combat, the AI in this game is quite interesting most of the time. I wouldn't say it's amazing, but they have enough cool interactions that each encounter feels different in some way. For instance, enemies who have no weapons will almost always try to run and find a weapon before returning to fight you. If they don't have weapons available, they will resort to the next best thing, which includes throwing barrels, boxes, rocks, and sometimes, other smaller enemies at you. This is just one of many examples of how they can behave in very interesting ways that I've seen. Animals each feel different in certain ways. A fox will whine and look confused for a moment, while a deer just bolts to run, while wolves will circle and attempt to fight you until one of them is killed.
Outside of combat the NPC AI is very good as well. Most of them have daily routines, which isn't that different on it's own from other open worlds, but what makes BOTW stand out is that they go about their routines differently based on what's going on. NPC's that travel on the road will run faster to find shelter if it's raining. They'll run away from enemies if they don't have options to fight back. And they'll go out of their way to avoid harm, such as if you throw things at them or there's a fire.
Lastly I am really enjoying the story. While at the end of the day it's still a traditional Zelda+Link vs Ganon story for the series, it's non-linear storytelling and environmental storytelling are great. In a lot of ways this reminds me of the story I always wanted from Dark Souls. A deep, rich world full of backstory, like that series is famous for, but also a more interpersonal story on top of it. Voice acting is generally off, actors not really fitting parts or talking with shitty fantasy English accents, but it's a small thing. Mostly it's just mediocre and forgettable, which is also a lot like Dark Souls. One of the things I do like about this story compared to some Nintendo or Zelda games is it doesn't completely shy away from mature themes. People die, fall in love, and get drunk a ton in this game. And I have generally enjoyed how each of these is handled. While a little too much of the death end is handled off screen or with puffs of smoke, the other aspects of the story that are more adult feel like they're well handled for a game that appeals to all audiences. Not to the level of say a Pixar for-all-ages story with deeper meaning and adult sophistication, but it pushes into that arena at least, and is more successful than most.
Really I could talk for an age about what I've loved about this game, how climbing is just as good as paint-walking in ALBW, how the game basically has no bugs, or how each system, save maybe the framerate, is up to a level of polish that almost no games could compete with. But I think for now this is more than enough and I eagerly await responses before I continue.
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