Topic: Please explain me why Breath of the Wild got so many high scores

I quite honestly could have done without the climbing. I would be fine with it if there wasn't supposed to be a challenge in front of certain places (like those statue things) before you could actually get there, but like Octane said, it ruins the challenge of getting to places if you don't approach them from the right direction, and slowly climbing up stuff is mind-numbingly boring, especially if it's a really tall thing like a mountain. They should have brought back the grappling hook and let you climb with that. At least then it would be faster and a lot more interesting.

Besides, being forced to approach an area from one direction isn't always a bad thing. Sure, it's linear, which some people really hate for some reason, but at least you're doing SOMETHING while you're trying to get there. Since we can now approach any area from any direction, all we have to do is just run there.

You could try playing the game without investing in the stamina gauge- that's an option.

Every area has multiple roads to it, if you want to cheese it and climb the mountain behind it, then that's great.

If you want to play it safe and use majora's mask to walk by the hordes of enemies, then that's fine.

If you want to use cryonis to jump your way through the water, that's good.

If you want to waste three hours going to death mountain, get two wagon-things and fly your way to your objective with magnesis, that's... Interesting.

But nothing is stopping you from using the regular roads.

@Meowpheel It's not so much the climbing that I dislike, it's the fact that because the devs knew everyone would climb all over the place and generally would approach from any direction, they removed any challenge or thought behind reaching places. The climbing would be fine if it were utilized in a thoughtful manner.

@gcunit @spizzamarozzi @Haru17 @Octane As Haru17 said the Zelda games do get easier. It's partly because you get used to the puzzle-solving mentality, and partly because they often reuse the same tired puzzle mechanics over and over again (until BotW). Wind Waker was a bit disappointing because the puzzles felt like something I played from Ocarina or Majora with not much variation. So I do agree that the games become easier.

That being said gcunit has a good point, Ocarina was my first non-handheld Zelda and I depended on a walkthrough for virtually every aspect of the game except for combat/defeating bosses. Part of that was because it was my first non-handheld Zelda but it was also because of one of Ocarina's few major flaws — the game tells the obvious stuff (go to this mountain now!) but expects you to figure out the most obtuse stuff somehow. My go-to example of this is getting into Jabu Jabu's belly (playing this on N64 original). When I got there there was no hint whatsoever as to how to get into it. Only through the walkthrough did I find out that the game somehow expected me to A) get a bottle (after never mentioning how to get a bottle or what it's used for before) B) realize that those 2D orange specks in the shallow pool in Zora's Domain were fish (I was playing this on Wii VC so I wasn't quite used to the graphics yet) C) Realize that those fish weren't window dressing and could actually be captured with a bottle D) Realize Jabu Jabu liked fish and would open its mouth if you dropped the fish in front of it. A little explanation or hints would've gone a long way, although I think they improved on this in future Zelda games.

Another frustrating aspect of Ocarina that is fixed in BotW (and is one of my favorite parts of BotW) is that there are multiple solutions to the same puzzle. Towards the end of Ocarina I felt like I was finally getting the hang of the puzzles, and (I think in the Shadow temple?) was surrounded by some webbing I had to destroy. I thought it could be defeated by fire, but when I fired a fire arrow ... Nothing happened. I was pretty let down (especially cause I thought I finally understood how to solve Zelda puzzles) so I looked online and the solution was Din's Fire. Really? I know it's because of N64 limitations, but it's incredibly infuriating that fire arrows didn't do ANYTHING, not even a hint of burning to show you may need Din's Fire to completely burn off the webs. BotW skillfully solves this issue; you no longer have to figure out the one solution that the game creators thought should be the one and only solution to the puzzle, no matter how unclear it is, but you could instead solve puzzles your own way. That's one of the things I love about BotW.

Before I end this rant, I just want to note that Ocarina is one of my top 5 favorite games of all time (along with BotW), if not #1. But that aspect was one of the few things that irritated me a lot about Ocarina, which BotW remedied.

One thing that might help is having less exploitable powers in future games. For example, even though you can do something like cut a tree down to make a bridge to get across a freezing river, you only ever really need to do that once: when you're in the plateau, on your way to the cryonis shrine. After that, you can just spam ice pillars to get across bodies of water. I could see natural obstacles that you have to use the physics engine and more limited tools at your disposal to circumvent being quite interesting.

With that said, I think Nintendo should just focus on creating things that are challenging from any angle. There is definitely a lot of interesting directions they could go if they really embrace the open air approach.

I wish there was a way to pin this onto this thread; this perfectly summarizes the reason IMHO why many people disliked BotW and complain about its open world nature and taking forever to get somewhere (sorry about the caps, didn't know how to bold words in the text editor). Cause I know this firsthand; when I tried to go through the game constantly to finish objectives and beat the main story, it not only felt like a job, but was pretty grueling, and I really wished the game's world was smaller because I wanted to get to a destination and cross it off the checklist. Once I realized I was treating the game as a job, I took a two week break, then came back to it just looking to enjoy the game and the environment and complete the main game whenever and at whatever pace I want to. I started having a blast again. This might be why some of you disliked the game; spacing out play sessions is necessary to enjoy many games but especially an open world game like BotW to avoid fatigue.

@Ralizah What many people often forget, including myself many times, is that there are many ways to do a particular task. Just because you have Cryonisis doesn't mean you can't chop down a tree to use as a bridge in the future; you could use Cryonisis or perhaps you might want to cross faster by chopping down a tree. It's all up to the player, though it is hard to remember that at times (I certainly forget that often).

Rivers were often too wide anyway, or there weren't any trees nearby, usable trees at least (pine trees). Or you could simply swim.

@shadow-wolf The weapon breakage system kinda discouraged that, though. And besides, the trees in BoTW aren't all that tall, so if you're crossing a river that's wide enough to be crossed with a tree, you might as well just swim. Crossing gaps with trees could have been a more
prominent part of the game, but there are barely any gaps like that, and you'd be better off just jumping off and climbing up or gliding across.

I only used a tree to cross a gap once, and that was on the Plateau when I didn't have my glider yet.

It seems the lizalfos (and water octoroks) take the place an enemy zora would have in this game.

This is both untrue and not actually praise towards Other M.

Zelda 1's far from my favorite Zelda but it is significantly better than Metroid 1. Without a doubt.

I'd say out of those two, prime is more similar in concept to the original Metroid than other m.

And yeah when it comes to the originals, zelda>>>>>>metroid.

Zelda 1 is challenging but rewarding, whereas the original Metroid is pure frustration in video game form.

You guys are crazy lol. Metroid Other M is much closer to the original Metroids than the Prime series, which is why I think I liked it. I grew up on Metroid, Super Metroid, Metroid II (Gameboy), etc. Prime series was an entirely different game. Then Other M came out, and it felt like it started right where Super Metroid ended.

Having similar gameplay and being similar games are not entirely the same thing.

Both Metroid and Metroid Prime are games where you go around in a large place finding upgrades to open more of that place. Which involves lots of backtracking and running around.

Metroid Other M is a bit more like Fusion. You have a set path through the game and can't really do much outside of it.

Didn't mean to turn this thread into a Metroid discussion, but guys, play Prime and Other M back to back. Gameplay-wise they're very similar. Both have only one way to progress, you can't go running around willy-nilly in Prime in any direction and explore. If you want to progress, there's one clear path. Same is true for Other M, and there's plenty of backtracking in that game too. The difference is the perspective, and it that regard Other M plays a lot more like the originals. It's a bit like 3D World, a 2D game turned 3D.

Other M relied often on gimmicks that would have been very fun and interesting in a different game, something comical like Paper Mario, but were completely out of place in a more serious game like that. Some power ups for example were placed to be hidden from the player view but Samus should have been perfectly able to see them from her point of view for example. This is something that can work well in a comical game but in a game like Metroid should be just feel out of place. This is the main problem of Other M in my opinion and one thing that makes it very different (in the worst way) not only from the original games but from every other game in this genre.

We don't need to revive every thread about this game.

Let's use the other one that's basically about the same thing.