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Comment by graeme | Hacker News Reader

I'd strongly urge you to at least try Zelda. I am a fan of past Zelda titles.

This one was different, but wonderful. I went in knowing nothing about it, and was blown away. The first seven hours or so gave me a sense of helplessness, wonder and uncertainty that I rarely experience in a video game.

The longer you can go without reading a guide, the better. Eventually it can become a grind, but I got months of play value out of it, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Super Mario Odyssey is also excellent. It's incredibly fun, even if it's easier than other mario games. Incredible attention to detail.

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I already tried it because I owned it. I also wrote a 1,600 blog post explaining my position in French, but I don't feel translating it here in English. But here are my main points: the weapon system and the inventory are (incredibly) frustrating. Getting a new weapon is not a rewarding as it will fade 3 strokes after. Sanctuaries could be labeled as game-designer training, but as a player they lake both fun (heck one time I even gave the console to my girlfriend for her to solve one because it put too much on my nerves) and distinctiveness. The whole world is desperately empty. There is no pressure to complete the game whatsoever (no hostage, no crashing moon). The saving system is crappy as it does not save the game state. What makes the salt of previous games was the story, the feeling of progression, the music, the characters, the distinctiveness of some regions (kokiri forest, zora domain, etc.) and all of that is pretty much non-existent in BotW. Some gameplay mecanism like rain that forbid climbing are hostile to the player by design and really annoying. Monsters: all the same with some color or stat variations.

Basically this "game" is a game engine on top of which a real game could be implemented, but as such I just see it as an empty open world. I'm sure that without Zelda on the title, it would have been judged more objectively, for was it is: an average game to say the least.

The weapon system was very interesting to me. New weapons were incredibly rewarding because they were so fragile. You develop interesting relationships with your inventory cycle. It really is a survival game dressed up as a cartoon, that little joyful Link, so full of hope, repeatedly beat down and made to suffer by an uncaring world.

It seems you have mostly played zelda games from the n64. I have not tried BotW yet, but from what I have seen, it seems to be close from the the first zelda. A big world with no story, no pressure to complete the game quickly, no explicit path to follow. Just a world to explore.

I have played the first zelda, and OoT, MM, and WW. In all of them, what I have really liked was the pleasure to wander into the world, (mounting epona on hyrule field, get lost in the see while discovering new island). In the contrary I have only played the first few hours of skyward sword, because every two minutes a NPC was telling me what I should do and what I should not, and where I should go . Awful! So I am very happy Nintendo choose to go for less story and more discoveries. Could you post a link to your review, I would be interested to read your position with more details.

Yes, I played mostly at Zelda games available on GameCube: Oot, MM (throught a promotional CD) and WW. The game disk also included Zelda one and two, so I tried the first game and I didn't liked it either. But that was for very different reasons, and comparing games with such generational gap makes little sense.

For the review, please send me an email (visible on my profile) so I can send you the link (as the blog use my real name).

> I'm sure that without Zelda on the title, it would have been judged more objectively, for was it is: an average game to say the least.

Without the Zelda title, it would have been treated the same as every good Zelda-like game: as evidence that Nintendo needs to revitalize the Zelda series. Instead it was a Zelda title, and so was the revitalizing that the series definitely needed. The fact that it was an outstanding game on top of that was just icing on the cake.

Ah, I had mistakenly assumed you hadn't. That's fair then. I can actually acknowledge most of your points as fair, but doesn't detract from my own enjoyment. People have different subjective standards for game enjoyment, and that's totally fine.

Personally, I hardly cared about beating the story. Instead, I focussed on specific goals: buying the house and equipping it. Building Tarrey town. Upgrading armor. Expanding weapon slots. Exploring.

As a byproduct of this, I found I had more or less outmatched all the enemies. But it came as a surprise. I was just having fun pursuing some personal goals.

I disagree with every single one of those points. BotW is amazing because of those points. BotW has such a huge sense of exploration and finding the unknown. The quest of better weapons, the open world, the way weather affects players and the world. Honestly I think BotW is one of, if not the best game ever made.

> uper Mario Odyssey is also excellent. It's incredibly fun, even if it's easier than other mario games. Incredible attention to detail.

Super Mario World is one of the easiest games I’ve ever played and also one of the best.

...God Hand is the hardest game I’ve ever played that is still fun. I figured out why: it requires a lot of manual dexterity but is extremely fair. Compare Kaizo Mario et al, which are basically puzzle games in disguise.

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