Agreed that the dungeons have room for improvement. Twilight Princess is one of my favourite Zelda games precisely because of the dungeons, despite having a mediocre overworld.
But then again, Majora’s Mask was my favourite before BOTW, and that was all about everything else.
With BOTW though, I respect the **** out of their design. They had to come up with a way to make all
Dungeons beatable in any order, at any time, regardless of your status , inventory or experience.
That’s where I really started to appreciate the design and the sheer amount of possibilities they had to consider to bring them all to life. It’s very impressive.
As a side note despite some lacklustre shrines, there’s some seriously clever ones in the game and the sheer abundance of them is staggering. There’s ultimately more puzzles in BOTW than the last several instalments combined.
This is the thing with BOTW. and this is why I consider it to be the greatest game ever made. Every decision that can be analyzed from weapons degrading, to the use of Korok seeds, to stamina... can be brought back to the inherent cohesive vision that the developers wanted to create. It’s a game who’s purpose never gets lost in its grand ambition.
Personally that’s exciting. Because there’s STILL room for improvement....
Zelda definitely has flaws. But it also has the most impressive blend of ambition, polish and sheer fun I’ve seen in my 30+ years of gaming.
The flaws come at the expense of what it sets out to do. When Zelda soars it creates new heights and BOTW soars much more often than it hiccups.
I feel like the nitpicks have been parroted to such an extent that it affects the game like no other before it. It’s a game that begs you to get lost in its world. A game that begs you to turn off any waypoints and take in the sheer amount of design prowess and dedication that went into crafting said world. The implementation of verticality and landmarks that always give you a sense of place and purpose without beginning to consult a map is on a level of its own. La creme de la creme.
And yet new players are going in thinking “well, I heard weapons break easy”, or “yeah it does rain a lot here”... taking what they’ve heard and spoiling a game that deserves to be played blind. With no distractions or presumptions.
Personally, it is without a doubt the game of the year and among the greatest of all time. I find it sad that some can’t shake “the dirt” as Jeff put it and enjoy it for everything that it does exceedingly well. It’s THE benchmark.
All for sexy picks and bringing attention to lesser known games but 2017 was dominated hard by Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey to such an extent where both should have been excluded from the list and crowned as runaway champs.
They are among the best games of all time let alone 2017.
And Steamworld Dig 2 deserves a spot. Well ahead of most of these. Impeccable design and smashing fun.
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