HolyPastrami The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Review

Yes, i am serious. I know this is a hot take, but i do not enjoy this game, and have yet to figure out why anyone else does. The game has a solid technical foundation, but that's about it. The open world is an empty timewaster, there is zero direction, and it's filled with pointless, repetitive, uninteresting content that you are forced to engage with for progression. The shrines and Korok seeds exist for no discernable reason other than to give content to an otherwise empty, uninteresting world that seems to exist only to waste the player's time. How do they waste my time? Well, to get the Master Sword, you need to have at least 13 hearts, as trying to pull it out of its stone causes you to lose health. 13 hearts is the minimum number you need to pull it successfully. The problem is that unlike traditional Zelda games, which increase your health with heart containers, this one requires you to beat shrines to the same effect. So if you want to have a weapon that won't break, you'll be wasting your time beating them. Furthermore, you are forced to engage with the shrines if you ever actually want a weapon that doesn't break the instance an enemy looks at you funny. Speaking of which, prepare for a LOT of inventory management, because lemme tell ya - the only design decision that is worse than the fact they made weapons break is the decision to give you a limited inventory, so that you cannot even carry enough weapons to actually kill anything. The game also provides you with very little in the way of direction how you are supposed to progress. Sure, the entire point is to do so at your own pace, but please, at least tell me in which direction i am supposed to do so! Oh yeah, and the legendary beasts have an entire menu that you need to interact with to beat them. Why do i tell you this? Because the game sure doesn't! It never tells you that the menu in question even exists. Which is kind of frustrating, when this is literally necessary information to beat the four main dungeons. The physics engine is interesting, but besides the occasional shrine (most of which are copy pasted combat challenges with minor variations as to the enemies you fight or copy pasted variations on puzzles that exist elsewhere), the game never uses it in any interesting ways. The game has zero respect for your time as a consequence of all this. And that, to me, is one of the gravest sins a video game can commit. I don't want a video game to waste my time, not when the developer expects me to pay 60 bucks for it.