Dalton Brown Art

- Overall, I think the game is incredible. There’s a reason I’ve barely been able to put the game down all week.

- I do wonder how much replayability it has though. Most of the charm of the game comes from exploring the world, but on repeated playthroughs, that’s going to be lost.

- On the flipside, repeated playthroughs are likely going to be drastically different than your first playthroughs. Unlike most Zelda games, this really is an open-world adventure.

- The world has so much to see in it. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I would be trying to go somewhere, and then get sidetracked for literal hours just cause I wanted to see things that were on the way.

- Weapon Durability: I know this is a bit of a controversial system, but I personally really liked it, along with the other survival elements. It made me approach fights differently, consider what weapons I wanted to keep, and because a lot of treasure chests contained weapons, I always looked forward to opening them. Maybe weapons should have been a little more durable, but I don’t know how much they could adjust that without breaking the balance.

- Voice Acting: I’ve seen complaints about this and... it’s fine. Most of the voices I either really liked or had no problem with. Zelda and Mipha are the two voices I see complaints about the most, but I thought Mipha was fine. Zelda is... tolerable.  I don’t mind her too much in normal cutscenes, but when Link just hears her voice at times, that’s when I don’t like it. It sounds forced.

- On that note, the game should’ve really included some audio options. Voices in cutscenes can be a little quiet compared to the music, and Zelda especially, half the time I can’t hear her.

- I felt like some scenes that should have had voice acting, didn’t. It was reserved solely for cutscenes and dungeons.

- One last voice acting note, based on some of the voice choices in the game, it’s clear they want English accents for the people of Hyrule. If that’s the case... can they just let Nintendo of Europe do the dub, and get people that natively have that accent? This is less a complaint about this game and moreso a hope for future games. Dual Audio would also please some people, but I personally don’t care about that.

- I wish there were more songs while exploring. There’s a lot of times where there’s no music at all, and the couple of tracks that sometimes kick in are unremarkable. The town themes are wonderful though.

- Eventide Island is super cool, one of the best parts of the game. I kind of want a Zelda game with BoTW’s mechanics and Eventide Island’s premise, just on a bigger scale.

- The main bosses in the game all use the same design, which is kind of lazy. Thematically it makes sense, but I wish they looked different. It IS a cool design though.

- I don’t like the music for exploring the desert or snowy areas. It reminds me a bit of the music from Majora’s Mask when you’re exploring an area before you beat the dungeon there, but I just don’t like this track.

- Prince Sidon in the best.

- Daruk is also the best.

- I feel like Hyrule Castle and the surrounding area being so full of Guardians is cool, but it kind of guides you towards staying in the lower parts of the map early on. You’re certainly free to go north if you want, so it’s a non-issue, but I did feel like that was a bit of a wall.

- The cutscene for the Blood Moon is cool, but it shouldn’t play after the first two or three times. It’s really obvious when the blood moon happens, it shouldn’t need a cutscene to explain it every time. It can be skipped, but I still found it obnoxious. Especially since I had a blood moon happen multiple times in the span of 2 minutes

- I love cooking, finding merchants, and overall how rupees and health were handled in this game.

- I wish there was some way to create a cooking pot in the wild. From the trailers, I thought you could do that, so I was bummed to find out you had to rely on pots at stables, enemy camps, or towns.

- I love getting new gear and upgrading it, it’s a nice change of pace from the classic look for Link.

- Upgrading stamina or creating Stamina-boosting food makes exploration in this game fantastic. There’s something really refreshing about seeing something and knowing you CAN climb it. When they say “if you can see it, you can go to it” they’re really not kidding. Climbing something and gliding from it to reach new areas is an amazing feeling.

- I love the difficulty of this game. Zelda games have been a cakewalk for a while now, and this game will kick your ass without being TOO difficult. Despite the challenge, it’s still very manageable.

- I found myself sort of missing the Great Plateau the more I played. It’s such a dense area that I liked being in.

- Shrines are more enjoyable than the standard dungeon from the series. They’re smaller puzzles that often have a number of solutions rather than just having one obvious solution. This means that when you solve one, you feel like you actually accomplished something rather than followed instructions.

- That being said, I wish there was a bit more theming going on. Shrines all look similar, and the main dungeons all look similar as well. The dungeons all have unique mechanics, but the visuals are lacking.

- Based on the complaints I saw about the framerate pre-release, I expected it to be really bad, but it’s not. The Great Plateau and forests have frame drops, but never anything I found to be too bad. I noticed it, but it was made out to be worse than it actually is IMO.

- Gorons with giant anime eyes look really creepy. Thankfully not ALL of them have that.

- As someone that really enjoyed Skyward Sword for it’s additions to the Zelda lore, I’m glad to see those additions are front and center in this game.

- Optional bosses are fantastic. They let you challenge yourself and see your own improvement without the game just telling you “Hey you’re stronger now, cool.”

- I find everything involving Calamity Ganon to be really unsettling. I haven’t found Ganon interesting in a long time, but this game changed that.

- Taking down a Guardian for the first time is incredibly satisfying.

- You can’t pet dogs. That’s dumb.

- Closing thoughts: I don’t know how well this game and it’s mechanics will hold up over time, and I don’t know how much replayability it has. That being said, I’d absolutely rank this as one of my favorite Zelda games of all time, if not my absolute favorite, and here’s why: I don’t know how future playthroughs will go, but the time I’ve spent with my first playthrough has been one of the most gripping experiences I’ve ever had with a game. No other game has ever drawn me in like this, not even other open world games. Maybe the game won’t hold up, maybe it will, but that first experience being so incredible has to mean something.