>>749004201
>All I see is everything that the game ISN'T doing.
Weird take, you could just go play a different game at that rate.

>>749004201
How did I know you were immediately gonna start bitching about dungeons? No matter what 8 year olds in 1998 tell themselves 30 years later, pushing crates and lighting torches to open locked doors is not riveting gameplay. It's boring as shit and they had no other ideas at the time and just coasted on their giant first party brand name existing in 3d space. They could have shat out a turd with OoT and tendies cultists would have gobbled it up. And in certain ways they did.

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>>749004201
>All I see is everything that the game ISN'T doing.
>>Dungeons aren't part of the self-discovery aspect
>>There's really nothing secret to find anywhere
>>If something seems secret, it's tracked with quest logs and leads to a Shrine or Korok Seed
>>It makes the whole game feel like a list of "Content" to exhaust.
>>The story is borderline non-existent
>>Still somehow has more words than older and better narratives in the same series.
>>Probably three times the amount of meandering text than Twilight Princess.
>Underneath the "mind-blowningness" of THIS being a "Zelda" game, the continued decline of the franchise was still happening. Especially Hidemaro Fujibayashi's weaker direction as seen with Skyward Sword. Had someone else directed an "Open World Zelda" and given the budget, and Tech support from MonolithSoft for this gargantuan project, they'd have made a Zelda game that actually felt like one, or at the very least a game just as large and open, but with content that feels like it's not a net-zero experience. This has more Mario 64 appeal than Zelda appeal. I similarly thought Skyward Sword sometimes felt like a 'Marioofication of Zelda'. You're not supposed to treat the outdoor regions like Dungeon "Levels", and likewise you're not meant to treat an entire Zelda game as a Bing Bing Wahoo sandbox either.
>A good Zelda game is one that's perfectly balanced between bespoke and offering the player a sense of being in a wide-open world full of secrets. Every game kinda got the balance right until the DS games and Skyward Sword IMO. But this feels like it's not actually a Zelda-experience.

>>749004201
>Marioofication of Zelda
What the fuck does that even mean? There's not a single Mario game that plays remotely like BOTW. Odyssey is probably the closest with the open world levels but even then, it's not similar.

>>749004201
Fujibayashi could have made something better given what he had to work with, yes, but conceptually BotW was Aonuma's baby through and through. He wanted Nintendo's Skyrim. Likewise with Skyward Sword, the motion controls were Miyamoto's idea. Fujibayashi is just the yes-man. Though it is still head-scratching how he went from the dungeon-focused Oracle games to this.

>>749004201
>the continued decline
A Link Between Worlds was the first game in years that had things looking up.

>>749004542
Real talk, I don't get why people obsess over those older dungeons. I can count on one hand the ones that impressed me, from all of the games. I would 100% prefer there being hundreds and hundreds of shrines in an even bigger game world next.

>>749005123
The Zelda team couldn't even come up with 120 halfway decent shrines and you want them to make HUNDREDS? Good lord some of you guys are retarded.

>>749005209

Meanwhile ALL classic Zelda fags are retarded.

>>749004980
>>749004201
The story is the same one thats been used since Skyward Sword (Minish Cap and Phantom Hourglass if you wanna stretch things too) where Zelda gets sealed off in someway and you do all the busy work.

>>749005123
Actually I wanna ask something: What were dungeons like before Aonuma joined Zelda because I feel like you could still make decent dungeons with him gone at this point.

>>749004980
No. Fujibayashi's input is clear as day. Everything is more soiboi (avoiding 4chan censorship) and fanfictiony. Think of Oracle's opening where the sages from OoT are just anime girls sitting in a circle singing with happy animals. Or the cheesyness of the DS games. Or all the lame extra species from Skyward Sword.
Fujibayashi is the problem. He was nice as a secondary outside-director for handhelds and spinoffs. He fucking sucks as the guy to spearhead the creative direction of the whole series. I'm glad Aonuma is still involved with non-main titles in this regard and I enjoyed Echoes of Wisdom more than BotW/TotK in the end, because it felt a bit more classical and had a story structure. I literally wasted 215 hours in TotK pretending I was enjoying the game, and trying to convince myself that it was "kino" and all this shit, only to find that the story really had died halfway through it. The smile Ganon makes ruined it for me, and you literally spend 60 hours between doing a thing in the connective tissue of its story, because you're trying to do things in a certain order of choosing but get distracted by millions of little incentives along the way.

It's all the same shit from Ubisoft games, Nintendo just found a way to make it less in-your-face, but they're still using telemitry and algorithmic "spreadsheet" game design patterns to trick the player into wasting our god damn time on meandering in their empty ahh world.

i thought BOTW was just decent but got super into TOTK

>>749005092
It was the first game after a series of consistent successes that made me doubt where the series was headed. It's got great dungeons and the story is actually pretty cool, but the rental system is not it, and the game only exacerbated the old issue of ruppees being borderline meaningless, but now using even more of the side-content as empty Rupee rewards. I struggled to keep the rupee-count under 9999 in ALBW and I also 100%'ed the game in only 19 hours on my very first playthrough, and I remember the sense of disappointment hitting me like a truck. I've often 100%'ed Zelda games, but typically not in the first run, and typically not under at least 20 hours. It's a handheld game so maybe that's okay, but it was the first time I felt like we were getting a Zelda game that was just less than the sum of its parts.

This game is a spin off not a real zelda game

>>749006717
I would absolutely not say all that in light of the multiplayer and DS Zeldas through the back end of the 00s, to say nothing of Skyward Sword predating it by 2 years, but you do you.

>>749006669
I played BotW the week it came out in 2017 on my Wii U and dropped it after 10 hours. I just really didn't find it impressive, and I didn't have the Switch 1 honeymoon to fool me into thinking it was anything better. 2017 was already 2 years into a post-Witcher 3 world, and while the difference in design philosophy is night and day, Witcher 3 is much more my speed when it comes to the Open World fantasy: Being a character in the fantasy, with a cool story to it, but also plenty of sort of "realistic freedom" to feel like the world is actually a real place, and not get disappointed by what's in a lot of its nooks and crannys. BotW felt simpler and less convincing to me. The world feels empty and barren, and on top of that it also doesn't feel like a true Zelda game. It's like Zelda but with 60% of the formula missing.

Then I think 3 years later I decided I must at least finish BotW to be part of any conversation about it, so I picked it up and almost dropped it again, but powered through. I liked it more, but still eh. The ending also really disappointed me, even though I already heard Ganon was "weird" in this game. The final cutscenes are fucking atrocious, and the trick of 50%'ing Calamity Ganon's health by clearingi the story beforehand has the complete opposite effect of making the player feel hyped for an epic showdown. Like Hyrule Castle's "waterfall route", it just feels like you're skipping almost the whole thing by accident, and not in a good way. A lot of Shrines also felt like this and I don't get why people like that.

TotK I psyoped myself into believing I was enjoying more, but honestly the more I think back, and especially replaying both games when I got Switch 2, I think TotK is actually not even an improvement. It has bloat and bloat. The dichotomy is the same as Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. Neither are really "True Zelda" experiences, but PH ended up winning in its simplicity and charm factor alone.

Stopped caring as soon as Mario got mentioned.
Not even AI can come up with a post this retarded

>>749006914
The DS games were nonoffensive to me, and at least very innovative. I have fond memories of getting stuck in places and realizing you had to blow the DS microphone to put out a torch. I also got a bit of a gut punch when it shows Linebeck at the end even when I thought it was a very so-so story otherwise. Spirit Tracks I don't love but I was a happy camper. Both games felt very original to me. Skyward Sword I loved. Not in the same way as an OoT or TP, but midway through the game I caught myself, during the sandship part where you double-hookshot through a canyon, just thinking "It's almost christmas, and I'm playing Zelda. And it goes on and on, and I'm FUCKING enjoying this!" and that's kinda the feeling SS left me with, even though it's got a few dubious aspects. It was a very long 50 hour experience, jam-packed with stuff to do and see, and that's how I like Zelda. Jam-packed, not spread thin, because even though SS starts to reuse the 3 environments, I thought it got creative with the underwater forest and how every part had its own dungeon regardless. I did not like the modified "Tear Collection" shit from TP but that was already a complaint from TP that I felt they got lazy with a second time.

So we get to 2013 and ALBW comes out and like... I don't hate it, but the whole time it feels like they're just pandering or something, and I didn't like that feeling. I really liked Hilda's story but otherwise I found the story a little dull desu, and I fucking hate Ravio and the zany anime cutesy bullshit with the Saturday Anime Cartoon OST in the house, and the rental system ruins the whole progressive design of Zelda games.

OoT->SS had some issues with item-progression I always wanted to see them fix, but instead of ever getting there, reviewers started complaining that Zelda was still Zelda, and instead of admitting they weren't into that, they acted as if it had to change its roots or something, so that's what they did and now it's ruined.

I was hoping it would play similar to Dragon's Dogma, just without the various classes and combat magic.
Disappointed to realize it has worse combat and platforming than the original Ratchet & Clank trilogy. Story is pretty fucking embarrassing as well, all the characters suck.

>>749007071
Fujibayashi himself actually said it in Iwata Asks, that they thought about breaking conventions during Skyward Sword, so they thought about Super Mario and how it did its Levels, and decided you could treat every part of Skyward Sword as a Zelda Dungeon and thus essentially "a level if it was a Mario game." The same philosophy is basically applied to BotW and TotK where Fujibayashi is only ever thinking about where the immdiate "fun" is, and how everything has to be fun and enjoyable, but the whole fucking point of Zelda how it used to be was that your'e gonna suffer through the Water Temple and be fucking happy you finally conquered it, and then think back and go "actually... that made me feel like I went on a real adventure." or something like this. If everything is just sort of nice and fun all the time Zelda just feels like a buffet of boring shit.

>>749007332
Sometimes I legitimately wonder if people even knew what Zelda ever was... when you post shit like this.
Do you also buy a Crash Bandicoot game expecting it to come with corridor shooting in first person?

You need to understand BOTW was a game made for Japanese first. The japs have casualized themselves to the max in recent years and this was an appeal to that. They don't want to be challenged or be bewildered or leave their comfort zone, they want easily digestible adventures with extremely soft colors and non-aggressive designs.

>>749005123
The real appeal of dungeons is the inherent structure and replayability that comes with them. Doing a dungeon is an event. It's prolonged encounter with big setpieces, puzzles, thematic identity, and story significance. You want to experience it again for the same reason you re-read a book or hit replay on a song. A 5 minute shrine puzzle does not hit the same. In fact, I'd say the overwhelming vast majority of people never bother doing shrines more than once, beyond the bare minimum needed for the master sword, for the same reason you never bother collecting both full rows of heart pieces twice. It's fun once, exactly once, for the experience, and then only for super completionist autists and challenge runners. Meanwhile, the dungeons are something to look forward to as pieces of standalone content. Like, in TOTK, the quests to get into the wind temple and water temple are 100x better dungeons than the actual dungeons themselves. Everyone remembers climbing the floating boats and navigating the maze of floaty water rocks. And then, at the end of these quests, the dungeons themselves are super fucking lame. Barely bigger than shrines, basically a formality, and a complete letdown given the buildup. An open world is not an excuse to NOT have big structured setpieces inside it. Elden Ring would be unfathomably boring if those giant legacy dungeons weren't in every zone.

>>749007234
I kind of feel like that's looking at things one way and putting a blinder to another. Sure, ALBW took its risks with the rental system (and technically, it wasn't the first Zelda to try that but the first one's functionally unplayable so whatever) but it also brought a sense of open exploration back to the series that the first handful of games had and that the series was increasingly losing since the first half of Wind Waker put the player on a leash. At the same time, it didn't completely lose the plot with said exploration like BotW did - it still had a sense of structure and intentional narrative direction to it. It's for the same reason that I also like EoW more than BotW or TotK, even though that one's well was poisoned by those games it was still a half step back towards the structure and exploration of ALBW.

>>749007332
Half the reason I liked Dragon's Dogma was because it felt like it took the overworld/caves of Twilight Princess and fleshed that shit out. Didn't have the dungeons, polish or charm of that game, to say nothing of the foundational gameplay as it's much more of an RPG, but what it did better it was incredible at.

>>749006228
Play A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening.

>>749007542
I did like some of the things it did, but the writing/script bothered me, even playing the less shitted NoE localization, because it just feels... idk, a Zelda game has never felt as bleh before as that game did to me. They used to feel like they oozed with charm and a sort of warmth and that just doesn't feel like it's there in ALBW and the one thing I do prefer about BotW is that it has the uhhh... the fucking... not soul, that's a generic statement, but the warmth. It has the "magic" feeling superficially that ALBW doesn't have in my book.

I did like that it brought back the ALttP style but it went too far with the Rental System because it spoils the whole... THING, of a Zelda experience. Even including Zelda 1. The whole "thing" of Zelda games as far back as its roots, and then perfected with ALttP and OoT, is this feeling that the world holds many things you have yet to see, in the first hours of it, and as you keep playing Link's items expand, and every item is a surprise, and part of the surprise comes from where you had to go, and where you couldn't go, and how you can finally proceed and then see even more things you've been anticipating. And on top of this world-gating, there's an inherent excitement about opening the chests or finding the caves containing the item you've never seen before and going "ooh, what is THAT?"

This was lost for the very first time in the franchise's history in ALBW and then BotW fully abandoned it.

And to me that IS where Zelda lost its way.

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>it's another "yeah well dungeons were always bad anyway" switchbaby thread

>>749006228
This is an ironic statement given as OoT or TP are most widely seen as the best dungeons in the series, along with ALttP, and Aonuma was literally the guy who architected every dungeon in OoT. Like, that was literally his entire job on that game.

>>749007903
Interesting. I would say WW is where things started going south for me with its dodgy dungeons and restricted first half, and really it's only been TP and ALBW since that's really done a lot for me. Some games were alright - MC, SS, EoW, arguably even PH - but for where the series started to fall apart for me, ALBW's one of the few breaths of air I've had in the last 25 years with the series. I think a big thing for me is that the rental system doesn't bother me at all, so long as I can have that mix of overworld exploration and dungeon navigation that a good Zelda leaves me with. I agree that item acquisition is its own event, but where I get the items has never especially mattered to me. ALBW challenged that convention and I was fine with the experiment.

>>749004201
yeah I don't know why they insist on ruining things when they could just make a new thing and still be praised for it.
>make the first (?) open world game where moving around the map is fun and rewarding
>could make it a new IP and have a new tent pole franchise everyone loves (like Splatoon)
>decide to make it a Zelda game, even though it's missing half the things a zelda game needs
and now
>make a kinda neat japanese doll aesthetic
>could make this a new entry in the Zelda series, maybe one where the theme is that everyone are puppets pulled by the strings of destiny, but despite that, you can choose to have courage
>nah, let's slap it on the remake of the most popular Zelda game, even though it totally doesn't fit
>and let's only go half way with the doll thing, make the other half generic UE5 slop
so close but they bungle it

>saves a dying franchise
>original fans hate it for it

>>749007373
What was Zelda?

>>749009309
something something dying a hero or living long enough to become the villain

>>749009664
How is it the villain when most people like it

>>749009917
Let's just turn everything into the thing that people statistically like the most with that logic.

>>749004201
nigger we fucking know you are 10 years late

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>>749006228
>What were dungeons like before Aonuma
Absurdly simplistic samey looking rooms with a lot of combat. Like seriously, that's your question?? the Zelda games before they actually made thematic dungeons??

>>749007515
You bet your ass I enjoyed a lot of the shrines, and when I replay the games I replay those shrines.

I don't get people who say they like BOTW but don't like the shrines, when the shrines are literally the only interesting content in the game.

>>749011636
They like to jack off to the physics engine and environmental interactions to "solve problems their way". Tech demo shit, but apparently it's placating.

>>749004201
I was really hoping for giant sprawling dungeons with multiple solutions

>>749007373
>Crash Bandicoot game expecting it to come with corridor shooting
That's pretty much what Jak & Daxter ended up turning into.

>>749008797
Japanese puppet/doll aesthetic shit was never real, it's all speculation only because character' faces in official render look off.
Ingame models look fine.

>>749004354
>STOP PLAYING NINTENDO GAMES!
Thanks, i will

>>749012339
the doll look was the only thing interesting about it. Otherwise, it's just slop. I assumed they were playing with a doll style but then pivoted away to make it more generic. Modern nintendo artists are even worse than I thought if that's not the case

>>749007976
I know i shouldn't have standards for pedophiles but it genuinely blew me away seeing tendies switch from worshipping oot as the greatest of all time to calling it overrated trash just because a newer version is getting demade. The tendies that post on 4chan genuinely hate all their games