What is the point of calling a tried but true formula "too restrictive" whenever the gameplay in the modern interpretation is complete and utter jank? BotW tried to reinvent the wheel by becoming Assassin's Creed with a stamina wheel, and now TotK lets the player essentially put Legos together with extraordinary building options. All of the collective mechanics are truly impressive when applied to an openworld setting--launching Link straight into the skybox, for instance--but then all of the fun is sucked right out of it with one aspect in particular: traversal. Getting anywhere in this game is an utter joke, and that includes with all of the crazy builds, because let's face it, the vehicle controls play like something out of the Gamecube era.
Want to make something that's fast and can take you anywhere easily? Too bad, drain your battery in 5 seconds. Want to easily explore the Depths without worrying about the gloom? Might as well run straight into a wall that you can't turn out of because either the devs were too lazy, or Yunobutt's fatso self got stuck on it. Point is, if the mechanics of a "sandbox" don't allow you to have fun due to clunky gameplay, then why even bother immersing in them? Just give us the Master Cycle back, because even though it was an absolute resource drain, at least it was fast and behaved competently (discounting the idiotic eviction from high places, of course).
But surely the crafting was well done, right? After all, it's such a highly venerated part of the game, garnering universal praise from esteemed journalists across the globe, that nothing could possibly be wrong. Nope, turns out that the journos are paid hacks who wish to remain in Nintendo's good graces, blissfully unaware of the ironic incompetence between the two. Basic crafting controls are inverted, an unintuitive move that takes up more time than it should. Trying to position a log to a plank only for it to veer diagonally because of the pisspoor controls is exactly the kind of bass-ackwards thing you'd expect from "modern Zelda". Nintenstilldon't know how to keep up with the times.
Putting that aside for a moment, does the traversal from Breath of the Wild now extract bursts of sheer joy when ascending a cliffside? Has Aonuma finally resolved to tweak the gameplay so that it's not as much of a chore? The answer is of course a big fat Nope because quantity over quality. Climbing still sucks, rain still sucks, horse controls still suck, combat still sucks, the world continues to turn on its axis, and naturally weapon degredation is still a thing. What would you expect, Mr. Eiji?
The majority of these gripes could be resolved by connecting what made the past games so great with the contemporary setting. Items used to be a huge part of the adventure; nevertheless they were mainly relegated to puzzle solving or progressing in dungeons. Imagine taking that same principle and applying it to the overworld: A revised spin on the Hook/Clawshot that attached to vines on cliffs, cutting down on tedious climbing considerably. The Bunny Hood that could make Link run faster at the cost of slightly more stamina. A Lens of Truth that could reveal nearby secrets in the world if the player got lost looking for certain items. All of these are leaps and bounds better than the scarcity of originality that fusing random materials to your gear does not cure. Is it worth mentioning here that half the playtime might as well be menuing to find a certain material that isn't grouped properly? Put all the Keese eyeballs together, ffs.
Two games in and modern Zelda has fallen to the wayside. I'd rather take 6-8 formulaic dungeons over an entire field of unengaging puzzles affixed to a crappy crafting system, not to mention the poopy rewards of certain forest-dwellers. Make a world that's actually full of substance, one that is worth exploring with plenty of stuff to discover and interesting stories to partake in...instead of the rehash of a world that is still empty and lackluster. Third time will either be the charm or strike that places the series out of favor. And stop using a half-baked Mii creator to drop some of the worst turds [ie. Bolson] into existence. It's getting old.
