#and like two major world quests tied to specifically to her lore and is even MENTIONED of being present in fontaine

[clouvu]

Save me french yuri... Save me

[krouserthehero]

And here is my personal favorite character out of Klaus's band of misfits! One-eyed gunslinging mercenary, Cole Fawkes!

(Click read more for Lore!)

Delta-94, “The Timberwolves” , A special forces unit of the ERA military forces that were formed specifically for the purpose of fighting the Confederacy of Earth's Liberation, "CEL" as they are more commonly known, and stopping their conquest in their tracks. These brave soldiers took to the frontlines against these insurgents for years, keeping them behind their borders in Fordahl by any means necessary. The Timberwolves weren’t bound by the rules of engagement that ERA forces followed strictly. As such, they would use unconventional methods of warfare to fight off their enemies, forcing many marines and commanding officers to raise eyebrows at them. This unit, while unpredictable, was highly effective against ERA’s enemies. But no member of the unit was more unpredictable than their second-in-command… Sergeant Major Colson Fawkes.

An orphaned slum dweller of the colonies turned soldier of fortune, Cole was the very thing the Timberwolves were missing early on in their career, a man who wasn't afraid to take risks to get the job done. His survival instincts and quick thinking would soon earn him the respect of his comrades, scoring them one victory after the next against ERA's enemies, especially CEL. They gave him the codename "Cyclops" due to his missing left eye, which he lost when he was only thirteen, and despite offering to install a bionic eye into his empty socket, he politely refused, feeling cybernetics would only bring further complications to their operations. As his tour of duty progressed, Cole would soon find himself falling in love with his own CO, Captain Ashlynn “Red-Eye” Hart. The two shared many of their days off duty together, having a drink at the local bar and listening to old world rock'n'roll. Balancing out their duties in ERA with the time they spent together off duty wasn't easy, but they always seemed to make it work, which finally led up to Cole getting down on one knee and popping her the question.

The day of their marriage, however, would be the day the Timberwolves' career would finally come to end. The unit, and all present at the wedding, found themselves attacked by an unknown group of assassins sent to kill Captain Hart and Sergeant Fawkes, as well as any witnesses to their mission. It was on that day that Delta-94 made its final stand against these mysterious enemies, determined to bring as many of them down to hell with them as possible! Though it seemed they would be able to make it out alive, Captain Hart was, unfortunately, assassinated by the attackers successfully, leaving a heartbroken Cole to fly into a mad rage and kill every last one of the assassins that remained, not even giving them a chance to escape or regroup. The attack left Cole, Lupin “Wolfman” O’Donnell, and Sandra “Nightingale” Cohen as the only survivors, resulting in the unit being disbanded and the survivors going their separate ways.

Cutting ties with his former military comrades, Cole soon took on a career as a mercenary, completing jobs with everything his tour of duty taught him along with his own flare of cruel and unusual tactics to outsmart his enemies. Despite his brutal methods, Cole's work earned him a reputation as a highly respected gun for hire, known by many as "The One-Eyed Wolf" . He would've likely spent his whole life working alone in the mercenary business, if not for Goddess Zephym. Becoming the only god he trusts on Terrene, Cole would later help Zephym in her quest to find a new disciple, which in turn would lead her to train a young Colonist from Emerald city named Klaus Bardawulf. Unfortunately, their initial encounter led to Cole nearly killing him before Zephym had the chance to induct him into her Tutorage. Had she not stepped in and chased him off, he would have likely have caused great harm to the boy...

In spite of his recklessness, Klaus and Cole would grow to become good friends and partners in the adventuring business, with Cole acting almost as a second father figure to the boy as they progressed further into their journey. And though his careless behavior and snarky remarks do tend to cause trouble for the group, Cole's instincts have saved the party from certain death on many occasions, implementing tactics that quickly turn the battle in favor of Klaus and his friends. Since his battle with Klaus, He has been an invaluable asset to the party, acquiring a multitude of curiosities to aid in their journey as well as safeguarding Zephym's disciple from harm while he makes his mark on Terrene, perhaps heralding the Soldier of Fortune's luck finally turning around after his misfortunate tour of duty.

[yasuda-yoshiya]

I haven't delved much into KH lore, but I think there's something wrong when the main character is shoehorned into a plot that's essentially the same from the previous arcs repetitively along with a character that seems to be the love interest, while several others you never got to play as (or very temporarily playable), gets much further characterization and their new resolutions. The only ones that are interesting in Sora's party is Donald and Goofy btw. Anything about Riku and Mickey though?

Hmm, well, strictly from a storytelling perspective, I think I basically agree with you! Pretty much all the really interesting plot developments and character moments in KH3 are completely divorced from the person whose PoV you’re stuck inhabiting for most of the game, and Sora pretty much spends the whole game doing absolutely nothing of any importance while all the actual plot progression happens away from him. And in terms of what makes a good story, yeah, that’s basically terrible, but I honestly feel like I can basically understand why they did it because frankly, Kingdom Hearts as a series is in a very weird position at this point. The main appeal of the series to the vast majority of the casual audience is its supposed “Disney magic” and getting to explore the worlds from various Disney movies, but the actual main plot of the series at this point is an absolutely impenetrable and convoluted mess of original characters and plot threads that’s about as far away from any kind of “Disney magic” as you could possibly get.

With that in mind, it pretty much makes sense to me that they’d want to just shove the main plot out of the way entirely for most of the game and just focus on Sora’s random adventures in Disney worlds, because it’s honestly gotten to the point where the presence of the main plot actively detracts from the supposed central appeal of the game for most people. It allows KH3 to be enjoyable as a stand-alone experience to the average person who doesn’t give a crap about the overarching mess of the Kingdom Hearts plot and just wants to enjoy some Disney fanservice (and let’s be real, this probably describes at least 80% of the people who actually bought the game). Games like KH1, Days and BBS could manage to do a passable job of integrating some characterisation and plot development into the Disney stuff without being too jarring to the casual audience, because those games told basically self-contained stories. You don’t need to be a KH Lore Maniac to follow, say, Ven’s character arc through BBS. But KH3? KH3′s plot is all about tying up loose ends and resolving the stories of various characters from other games. Nothing about KH3′s plot makes any sense or has any real impact as a standalone, and it would probably be a fool’s errand to even try to make it work as one, because it just has way too much baggage from the ongoing series-wide plot that it has to resolve. So rather than trying to give Sora a quest that actually ties into the main plot in some way, they just decided to put the plot to one side and lean into unapologetic filler instead. I can sort of respect that.

The way I see it is… well, let’s put it this way. As a Kingdom Hearts fan, I could totally draw up an alternative outline for KH3 that has Sora making more of a meaningful journey and progress throughout the game, and integrates the main plot into the Disney stuff better. The focus of KH3 is about Sora saving the hearts and healing the pain of the people connected to him, the people whose pain was forgotten until now. So why not make the plots of the Disney worlds focus more on having him come to understand these people better, to get more of a focus on why it’s so important to bring them back? Let’s have the Olympus Coliseum chapter involve a subplot where, say, Sora finds out from Phil about the time Roxas spent training there in Days, and Phil talks about how much potential he showed and how he really misses the kid. Let’s spend more time explicitly drawing a connection between the toys having hearts in Toy Story and the way Xion developed her own heart despite being an artificially created puppet. Let’s parallel Rapunzel’s situation in Tangled with Namine’s in CoM, and make the plot of that world about Sora regaining the memories he lost from CoM (heck, Marluxia’s even right there and briefly brings this up in the actual game already!), reminding him of just how much Namine suffered and how much she deserves to be saved. And so on, and so on.

And that would probably make for a much more solid and cohesive game, and give the overall plot a lot more weight… but could you actually realistically present that kind of plot in a way that wasn’t totally alienating to the casual audience? Are you really going to be able to give enough emotional context for the average uninitiated player to grasp and care about all these different plotlines just through flashbacks and exposition? Are there really that many people who actually want to see the plot of Tangled used as a vehicle to revisit the plot of a 2004 GBA game, or are people just going to be frustrated at these hugely popular Disney movies being taken over by weird anime OCs they don’t care about? Professional reviewers are quite understandably panning the game already just for the very minimal intrusions of the convoluted main plot into the Disney stuff “breaking the magic” as it is, so it’s hard for me to imagine that any more of that would really be well-received by and large, however much the story might technically benefit from it. This is the sort of problem we run into when a game has to try and simultaneously appease two distinct audiences with entirely different priorities. Giving the main plot a very minimal presence for most of the game and then shoving the entire resolution into the last few hours is an imperfect solution, but I’m also not really sure what else they could realistically have done, given the setup KH3 had to work with.

In the end, I’m basically content with the compromise. I think they did a decent job of making a game that stays mostly enjoyable and accessible as a wacky Disney adventure for the casual audience, while still tying up most of the big overall plot threads that needed to be tied up in a reasonably satisfying way (a few very questionable writing choices aside… but it’s Kingdom Hearts, what else is new). It would have been nice to have had more build-up and substance to these characters’ resolutions, and to actively focus more of the game on them, as you suggest - but the more time the game spends pandering to overall series fans, the more time it also spends alienating everyone else. I think in the end we just have to accept that the build-up and context for their resolutions was in the previous games, that the people who really care about the series’ story will have played those games already, and for the people who haven’t, it just probably wasn’t worth devoting too much effort to trying to make them care within KH3 itself. That’s my take on it, at least.

On Riku and Mickey... hm, well, aside from them obviously being OTP material as always, neither of them really got to do much in this game? So I don’t really have much to say about them in particular. I thought the idea of Riku feeling a personal connection to Aqua’s plight as someone trapped in the darkness was sweet, but then they didn’t really do anything with that or let them actually interact at all in the end, so it felt like wasted potential. The BBS characters in this game were just a big disappointment in general, really! They could easily have done much more with them than they did, without even changing the structure of the story much... but, uh, I’m talking about Riku, sorry. I feel like Riku’s never really done much for me as a character, beyond like, KH1 and maybe CoM. I can see the outline of his arc on paper, and it seems fine and potentially interesting, but the execution has always felt pretty by-the-book and lacking in nuance to me. They talk very generally about him “falling to darkness” and such, but they don’t ever get beyond that into actually having him wrestle with his guilt over specific things, like his time working with DiZ or kidnapping the princesses or contributing to Roxas and Xion’s sacrifices, so it all feels a bit too broad to particularly connect with - and it’s sort of hard for me to really give weight to things like “I wore a blindfold for a whole year because I couldn’t stand looking at myself”, when that’s juxtaposed with him flipping right back to being a perfectly functional and confident hero without much apparent struggle or lasting difficulty after just a few platitudes from Sora. It’s sort of like they flip between being broadly melodramatic about his issues and shrugging them off completely? So he’s never really clicked with me, personally.

Meanwhile, Mickey is kind of hard for me to take all that seriously as a character beyond the memes, since... I mean, he’s Mickey Mouse, so there’s a big mental block there, lol. But even if I put that aside and look at his writing in KH in isolation, he never really felt like a particularly deep or interesting character or anything, I think? His relationship with Riku is very sweet, though!

[spoilsoflore]

For the Groove of the Game, pt. 2 (Final)

Stories Untold (2017)

Stories Untold, much like the '80s sci-fi/supernatural horror it's influenced by, hides subtle complexities behind novelty. The throwback main theme was frequently praised and compared to TV series Stranger Things (which has similar inspirations), yet it was just the tip of the iceberg. The game features no direct contact with any characters, thus most of the story is told through environmental context and interaction.

Most of the background music consists of low, droning notes, and the majority of audio is idiosyncratic with technology from the time. For “The House Abandon,” this combination emphasizes a domestic, ideally mundane, setting. However, as the story progresses, small shifts in scenery accompanied by audio cues draws players into the game's written narrative and ultimately provoke the question of who the player as the main character is.

SU then expands upon the concept in “Lab Conduct”: The player character is given a name, Mr. Aition, and audio is presented in stereo, multi-directional; so, players become a concrete individual in a defined space. Although the nature of horror and tension changes between these first two chapters, the sound design maintains a theme of small audio details belying larger impacts. For instance, did you notice the shuffling (or is it breathing) toward the end of “House Abandon”? Or the clicking at the end of “Lab Conduct”? As for “Station Process,” the introduction and final dialogue of the female character is painfully distant and chilling. SU's world is crafted of elaborate facades concealing the devastation of innocuous behaviors, and its sound design magnifies the intensity and gravity of these implications.

Observer (2017)

Rutger Hauer might have been chosen for Observer due to his ties to Blade Runner; but, his voice also immediately sets the tone for the game's sound design. His accent, stilted patter, and the occasional quality manipulation create a mechanical undertone. The effect is one of an organic voice still in the process of undergoing a digital transformation, a concept that echoes Observer's grander premise.

In fact, the majority of dialogue in the game is done either through radio or intercom with human interaction primarily limited to dreams. Even a dying victim who Daniel comes upon only speaks via a device akin to an electrolarynx. The exception is the landlord, Janus (voiced by famed Polish actor Arkadiusz Jakubik), who suffers speech disfluencies, likely a product of his own cyborgian transformation and the mental impact of the war that demanded it.

The main soundtrack is cyberpunk oriented; but, a seqeunce with a surprisingly peaceful interlude of classical music appears to be a nod to developer Blooper's previous game, Layers of Fear. The sequence breaks up the persistent parade of disconcerting and unpleasant sounds inhabiting the Stacks. Rather than using discordance, Observer's sound design seems to focus on abject noises with mechanical and organic sounds that hover distressingly at the edge of familiar—an aural cracked door with all its tantalizing and foreboding possibilities.

Dark Souls III (2016)

While the Souls franchise has often been praised for its soundtracks, fan revelations and speculations suggest the music of Dark Souls III to be more instrumental to the game than merely providing ambience. The theory proposes that DSIII's boss battles are essentially choreographed to their respective background tracks. Although the idea has gained traction across the internet, developer FromSoftware has yet to confirm whether this subtle rhythm-action gameplay was intentional. The evidence is tantalizing nonetheless:

Most of the boss soundtracks in DSIII are predominantly 4/4 time, the most common time signature. The time signature is the count of beats into a measure and typically a good indicator of how often downbeats (beats that emphasize the rhythm) fall. Vordt of the Boreal Valley is a good example of 4/4 time.

However, Dark Souls' downbeats are misleading: Many downbeats, including Vordt's, are used for movement and/or wind-up while attacks occur in the remaining counts. So, if a player anticipates an attack on the strongest or most defined beat of a measure and dodges or guards, they're likely to dodge directly into the actual attack or prematurely guard and fail to maintain it through the duration of the attack—aka “get bodied.” While the base formula of attacks avoiding the downbeat is decently reliable across the game, the time signatures change. A number of bosses are in alternate time signatures, and at least one seems to change in the middle of his battle.

The Dancer of the Boreal Valley has been one of the driving forces behind the rhythm-action theory. Furious internet consensus is she breaks all the rules. However, it might be more she breaks the aforementioned ones: Her fight appears to be in 6/8 time (which is different from 3/4—but that has its own place and time), and many of her attacks actually strike on the downbeat. The lack of an easily discernible bass line coupled with the Dancer's echoing steps also serves to disrupt the player's rhythm. These incongruencies can easily throw off an Ashen One conditioned by hours of gameplay. Oddly enough, although the quest narrative might suggest otherwise, the Dancer can be challenged at almost any point in the game after gaining access to the High Wall of Lothric. The early opportunity potentially says a lot about Dark Souls' lore and design. While the Dancer most blatantly breaks the mold, she's not the only boss in 6/8 time; and, the boss purportedly responsible for her title and swords is a phenomenal example of this musical theory overall.

The Abyss Watchers appear in 6/8 time; and, while they're tendency to spawn as a trio might follow gaming's “rule of threes,” it possibly also makes it easier to coordinate attacks to the unique time signature. Others have suggested that the Abyss Watchers move in 4/4 time, which might be true when each Watcher is viewed individually. In fact, each Watcher moving in 4/4 time within a 6/8 measure would likely ensure attacks would persistently overlap, i.e. as long as two Watchers are standing, better watch your back—It's basically the world's deadliest round.

Some have compared DSIII's music-based tactics to a lyrical “call and response,” which nails the coordinated aspect of the boss fights but suggests more mimicking or a predictable response on the player's part. An alternate analogy is that the DSIII bosses are the leaders in couples' dances, which share a few concepts with conventional fight choreography. Pontiff Sulyvahn not only demonstrates this idea well, but he is aesthetically and narratively tied to the Dancer, and it's strongly suspected his music changes time signatures and tempo mid-battle.

Most of the Pontiff's fight is in 4/4 time, but it doesn't start that way. His battle likely begins in 3/4 time—a signature often confused with 6/8. The change occurs when he generates his shadow half, and the tempo increases.

A key point is that the Pontiff has a home stance in which he withdraws his swords toward his body. This lapse of attack is often equated with formal training and appears to be an intentional pause in which the Pontiff is anticipating the player's response. Whether the reply is aggression or evasion, ideally the home stance would prepare him to guard, move in pursuit, or wind up for a strike. Like the leader in a dance, the Pontiff can hope to provoke a specific reaction (ideally aggression—the “run into my fist” tactic); but, it's not guaranteed, and he's forced to accommodate his partner's, the player's, response regardless. Identifying these openings in which the boss is awaiting the player's response as per their choreography is a vital key to Dark Souls strategy.

Rhythm-action elements in action games and RPGs aren't revolutionary, appearing in popular titles such as Super Mario RPG (reprised in Paper Mario) and Bayonetta; thus, its subtle execution in DSIII possibly contributes to its surprisingly accessible gameplay. While this design choice might grant the game wider appeal, it doesn't detract from its difficulty and cultivates another layer of complexity. The correlation of fighting styles to choreography, near-fluid application of choreography to music, and the subtle transition between world-building ambience and rhythm-oriented boss battles places Dark Souls III at a pinnacle of current video game sound design. Now, an important question is: Does this theory apply to other Souls titles as well?

These recent titles clearly demonstrate the importance of sound design in creating immersive games. Do you have a favorite on the list? And, since this just scratches the surface, what other games of the last five years do you feel contribute to the industry's innovation? How does a game's sound design, be it the atmospheric effects or soundtrack, influence how you play or interpret the story? Whether you play on mute to avoid the jump scares or pump the directional audio to track digital denizens, let us know!

[rudyskatopianiii]

Breath of the Wild Review (long AF)

So, as the title says, this is a review of the game Breath of the Wild and it is exceedingly long (TLDR at the end). THUS there are going to be some major huge spoilers for the game both lore-wise and gameplay-wise. If spoilers are not in your best interest, GO NO FURTHER THAN THIS CAPS LOCKED SENTANCE! Seriously, I’m going into some major important stuff both in the main story AND in sidequests. You have been warned.

First the review. 3 days before writing this I finished the very amazing game LOZ: Breath of the Wild and I will admit, it was pretty awesome. However, I was recently asked what my final thoughts on the game were and I had to stop and think a pretty long time. I was forced to review all of what I had experienced within this massive game and condense it into a single concise explanation of my overall emotion and thoughts about the staggering 150+ hours I spent in the land of Hyrule. It took some time as I relived every mountain I climbed, every guardian I destroyed, every secret I dug up, and all the various emotions I felt during the entire journey. And then I found an answer. The one thing that could possibly encompass all of the thoughts I had about Breath and the adventure I had been involved in for an entire cumulative 6 and a quarter days. “Meh”.

Now I know that "meh" is not the most glowing of reviews but it was the only thing I could say to completely sum up my entire Breath experiance. But why was the game so meh? Well, when I look back on everything I liked and didn't like, the game is terribly balanced. Everything that brings the score up is countered by something that brings the score right back down. The diverse and varied weapon style and techniques is brought down by the horridly low weapon durability. The characters are well designed but some lack depth and others have so little screentime I didn't feel any emotion for them. Even the main villain and major conflict, though epic in scale and interesting in the story, was little more than a blurry low-res shadowy wallpaper that I forgot it was there half the time. So many good things have been counteracted by bad things that I am left with a truly neutral ruling.

Now lets start with the story. Specifically, the characters. Link is devoid of any memory at the beginning of his adventure and is tasked by Impa to seek out those memories. There are a total of ten memories including the secret one Impa points you to and they are supposed to include all the information you need on all the main characters of the past that you are supposed to care about. But the main problem I have is that it's not enough. Only three out of the ten memories have to do with the other characters other than Zelda and the rest focus solely on Zelda and her relationship with her father and Link. There seem to have been more thought given to the character of Zelda than there is to the other characters who you actually need to save the souls of from the divine beasts. There's no incentive to go through with that as I am not in any way motivated to like or care for those characters. Rivali is a pompous ass, Urbosa is slightly amusing, Daruk is like a drunk uncle, and Mipha is in love with Link. Each of them have very compelling personalities but it is never expanded upon to the point where I want to save them. Even Link in almost all cutscenes is a deadeyed straight faced machine who does what he's told and has no real expression in reaction to things happening around him.

Now the past isn't the only place the game tries to gain your motivation, there is another motive for completing the divine beasts. That is for the sake of the people in immediate danger of their rampage. Nabooris is threatening the Gerudo, Medoh is oppressing the Rito, Ruta is drowning the Zora, and Rudania is attacking the Gorons. So, as a good hero must, you are expected to save those races from the rampaging colossi. However, if I were a first comer to the Zelda series, I wouldn't be that motivated to save these races as I don't really care for much of the characters. The ones you interact with are either super one-dimensional or they are interacted with so shortly you don't have time to get to know them.

Take everyone's favorite at the moment, Prince Sidon. Memes aside, this was the worst case of a missed opportunity in the entire game. Mipha, the Zora champion, is not only the Zora King's daughter, but Sidon's sister as well. A very compelling and intriguing story would've been to have the two of them immediately angry with Link or be an obstacle to the objective to begin with. I mean, losing a family member is the extremely traumatizing and it would make sense for those closest to the deceased to be the most affected. But instead, the King is all too happy to help you, Sidon is all "I believe in you!" right from the very start, and the only obstacle between you and Ruta is some crotchety old Zora who is quickly convinced to help by a set of armor and a memory. Yeah, its cute and unexpected that Mipha's armor is like a Zora wedding ring but that's the most you get in the direction of meaningful connections. In the end there is only one reason to do any of the divine beasts and its just for an easier endgame.

Speaking of endgame, Ganon is also a point that kills the score I gave this game and not just because of the anticlimactic final fight. @blueganon has said this already but I'll add it here because it is so true. Ganon is supposed to be the main villain in this game with the Yiga Clan as his devoted disciples. You'd think after games like Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time that Nintendo would know how to make a overbearing evil that looms upon you from every angle or goads you forward with each step. But the team missed the mark with this game. Ganon is locked in place as a hazy smoke rolling around Hyrule Castle that is obstructed from view as soon as you go past a mountain and the Yiga clan, though more active after defeating their master, is more a nuisance than an active threat. It is such a passive thing that you could easily forget that there is even a Ganon at all. The final fight is depressingly simple as well. The first round is actually pretty active and very well designed (see my theory post coming after this) and incorporates all the techniques and equipment you've been collecting on your adventure. But then the fight devolves into a shoot-the-weak-point generic 3D Zelda boss that this game had done so well trying to avoid.

Even the side quests are shallow and not that fun to do. They're either a "get this thing(s) and bring it here" quest or a "kill this thing(s)" quest with few deviating from that formula and they all have either common or uncommon rewards that are easily found in abundance in the overworld. The only quest that even comes close to being worth the chore is the Tarrey Town questline where you build an entire settlement and populate it with people from all over the map. But even that is comprised of multiple fetch quests. I mean, I know they're just side quests and those characters don't really matter in the grand scheme of things but Majora's Mask is chocked full of side quests that are not tied to the main objective but the majority of which have memorable characters with great stories spanning before, during, and after their completion. It's that attention to detail and good storytelling that give the world its own voice and each and every NPC their own special place in not just your memory but your heart (god what a cliché...).

Then there's the music. The game has only 3 memorable pieces in it (at least for me), the song that plays at Rito Village, the song at Tarrey Town, and the final assault orchestration that plays at Hyrule Castle. Rito Village is the melody on Dragon Roost Island from Wing Waker but much more mellow, Tarrey Town is an amazing melding of each theme across Hyrule and is a real calming melody, and Hyrule Castle's music really does feel like a final assault with its epic orchestra and the weaving of Ganon's theme and Zelda's lullaby together along with an original theme for the Castle itself is so fulfilling especially when your there to finish the game. But that's it. Other than some of the mini-boss themes like fighting a Hinox or Molduga, which are good but... fleeting to put it mildly, there are no other really memorable melodies or compositions even for the overworld witch is eerily silent except for the once in a while piano piece that only serves as ambiance. Even Kass' song, though very recognizable and a great example of good open world design, is just a loop that gets old pretty quickly. The final boss' theme was so forgettable that even a few days after completing the game I've already forgotten it. That. Is. Not. Good. My last thoughts on the game should not be "welp... that's done".

There was just so much missed potential in this game that could've made it so much better. And it's those multiple shortcomings that are ultimately holding it back. I want to be exceedingly enthusiastic about the game. I want to give it a perfect score. Hell, I WANT to be excited about every part of this game. But I just can't. And it kills me that I can't have it on that level of esteem.

TLDR: Breath of the Wild counters itself so well its just an "ok" game. Ganondorf theory post coming soon.