Board 8 > I still don't get why BotW is so damn popular

(+) Yeah! (+)

With all the GotD discussion going on it just got me thinking about BotW and how I still don't get all the hype.

It was a great game and all, but there were far too many flaws for me to even consider it as best of the decade. So I guess I'm just wondering what others see in this game that I don't.

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it's fun

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Bird people.

I am probably the foremost "Zelda isn't that great of a series" user on Board 8

Breath of the Wild is great

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It's a decent open world game set in the Zelda universe. It has so many problems people overlook because its zelda

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I started trying to play through it for the first time about a week ago, and it's a chore. I'm not very far in, but I can only play it for 20-30 minutes before I get so bored that I have to turn it off. A friend of mine whose opinion on games I trust (he's only been wrong once on a game recommendation in the last 20 years) swears it's amazing, so I'm just waiting for it to get better and hoping it does soon.

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RaidenGarai posted...

I started trying to play through it for the first time about a week ago, and it's a chore. I'm not very far in, but I can only play it for 20-30 minutes before I get so bored that I have to turn it off. A friend of mine whose opinion on games I trust (he's only been wrong once on a game recommendation in the last 20 years) swears it's amazing, so I'm just waiting for it to get better and hoping it does soon.

What would you say causes the boredom? If its lack of direction, its not gonna change for you.

If you dont like the combat, its not gonna change for you, unless maybe you arent aware of all the moves.

If you dont like the story, its not gonna change for you.

If you like exploration, and to have that exploration consistently validated, it should continue to get better and better.
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it's a radical departure from a series that plays it relatively safe and launched alongside the most popular console since the Wii. the ball started rolling downhill and just never stopped.

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I basically feel the same. I started out liking it quite a bit, but then you realize just how boring it is overall. How few monsters there are in the world despite its massive size, how little there really is to find or do in said giant sandbox, how boring and similar all the dungeons and bosses in them are, etc. On top of that it also has some atrocious voice acting somehow as if Nintendo cant afford actual top quality voice actors or something. If not for the LoZ factor I dont think it wouldve been a big deal.

Jakyl25 posted...

What would you say causes the boredom? If its lack of direction, its not gonna change for you.

If you dont like the combat, its not gonna change for you, unless maybe you arent aware of all the moves.

If you dont like the story, its not gonna change for you.

If you like exploration, and to have that exploration consistently validated, it should continue to get better and better.

I've never been a fan of 3D Zelda games, to be honest. ALttP is one of my favorite games ever, but the only 3D one I've been able to play more than 6 hours is Ocarina of Time, and I stoped enjoying that after the Young Link portion was done, and put it down at the Water Temple.

The lack of direction may be an issue. Huge, open world games tend to be more miss than hit for me. I loved Skyrim, Horizon Zero Dawn, and a few others, but more often than not I end up disliking that style of game.

The combat is probably at least part of it, but at this point I don't think I'm far enough into the game to make an accurate judgement there. I'm hoping there's more depth to it as the game picks up.

Don't know enough about the story yet, so I don't think that's it.

I love exploration in games, and really like that I can just climb any random mountain (barring stamina). I've wasted a lot of time just trying to climb things to get to where the next objective should be because that's not something most games let you do.

It's hard to really put my finger on one specific thing that bothers me with it. I had a similar issue with Twilight Princess, but there I knew I was in trouble as soon as the goat herding tutorial started. I'm surprised I put another 5 hours into it after that.

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I'm really interested to see how BotW2 is going to affect public opinion on the first one. If it delivers on what a lot of people are hoping for I could really see a big shift in what people think.

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I think the key to its success is the climbing mechanic.

You can just go wherever you want in any direction you want as long as you have the skills or the prep work to survive
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Climbing would be ok if raining didnt exist. Fuck whoever thought it raining constantly was a good idea. I saw rain and even thunderstorms more than clear weather in my playthrough and it was so damn annoying Id have micro-payed to turn weather off

RaidenGarai posted...

The combat is probably at least part of it, but at this point I don't think I'm far enough into the game to make an accurate judgement there. I'm hoping there's more depth to it as the game picks up.

AFAIK you have access to basically all the combat options as soon as you find 1 sword, 1 bow, and 1 shield, but you may not know what all those options are unless you accidentally discover them in battle, or find the Combat Tutorial shrine in Kakariko Village
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swordz9 posted...

Climbing would be ok if raining didnt exist. Fuck whoever thought it raining constantly was a good idea. I saw rain and even thunderstorms more than clear weather in my playthrough and it was so damn annoying Id have micro-payed to turn weather off

You can cheese the rain but yeah, its frequency is a problem that should have been able to be overcome with an armor set or an elixir, yeah
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You can still climb in the rain if you have enough stamina, it's just a lot slower. I agree they should have added some non-slip gloves or something gated behind story progress.

It's hard to explain why the exploration is so much better in BOTW compared to other open world games. It's a very small thing but honestly I think it comes down to draw distance. Being able to climb really high and then see something cool in the distance and head over to it just doesn't happen in other games. The sense of scale is much greater than a game like Skyrim just because of the vertical aspect.

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It was literally a breath of fresh air >_> for an above average series that was getting rather stale.

It's not without shortcomings and honestly its a solid 8/10 imo. I'm guessing the sequel will polish out the turds and will be much better overall ala Majoras Mask

BotW is one of those games that made me feel like I did when I first booted up the n64 as a kid.

There are so many things to try and play around with, and there's really no rule on what you need to do or how much of it, you play around for a good 10-100 hours and then when you feel like you've done enough, you go beat the game.

Playing it once as myself and then watching my wife play through it was a complete world shatterer too, because I was playing through it with "video game rules" and she would solve puzzles completely differently than me. There were puzzles I straight up couldn't figure out, so I tried another "cheating" way and that way could work too. (my favorite example was using all my metal items to create a circuit from one electric switch to another)

I'd be interested to hear about open world games that people prefer over BotW from the people who were underwhelmed because it is my favorite genre and this game leaves others in the dust.

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I definitely enjoy Fallout 3 and New Vegas way more than BotW. Their worlds feel lived in and unique. There's a wide variety of interesting characters, side quests, locations, weapons, enemies, lore, etc. They feel like complete games.

BotW has a little bit of that, but a lot of the places wind up just feeling kind of empty and disappointing.

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SantaRPidgey posted...

I'd be interested to hear about open world games that people prefer over BotW from the people who were underwhelmed because it is my favorite genre and this game leaves others in the dust.

honestly the only open world games I prefer are ones that focus on other strengths, like The Witcher 3 and its fully fleshed out world told through morality plays in sidestories. I think Breath of the Wild is the current gold standard for exploration and discovery in open world games. There's things it could do better (expanding on dungeons, adding more variety to combat encounters, add even more environmental activity) but nothing competes with Breath of the Wild's strengths, like-for-like. And I say this as a big fan of other similar games (Far Cry 2, Xenoblade Chronicles X).

BetrayedTangy posted...

I definitely enjoy Fallout 3 and New Vegas way more than BotW. Their worlds feel lived in and unique. There's a wide variety of interesting characters, side quests, locations, weapons, enemies, lore, etc. They feel like complete games.

Oh yeah I agree I like New Vegas more, but similar to Witcher 3 that preference comes from New Vegas having different strengths.

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