Same, I just feel it’s nostalgia, the brand name, hype and that it’s Nintendo, even these developers over praising it when a few of them have created better open world games or just better games in general. It just comes off like either “I remember growing up with Nintendo, they have a place in my heart” or “Am I allowed to say this isn’t amazing or flawless, just a solid game, people are saying it’s innovative or revolutionary…that one guy is being slaughtered for giving it a 7/10…yeah I think I’ll just go along with others”
No one can say it’s a shit game or bad because it’s not, it’s solid, Nintendo makes those games which bugs/glitches and the like are either non existent or not common, but it doesn’t push the open world genre forward like people make out. There are certain elements in games like Elder Scrolls, Witcher, or Horizon Zero Dawn which did things better. All this game was is an open world Zelda game.
As a main Zelda game it was lacking and wasn’t that good, it had a lot of features which were a step back, these features which made past main Zelda games so good.
Past main Zelda games had great Dungeons with their own overall themes, epic boss fights, an actual story, side quests, memorable NPCs, a variety of enemies, environments which felt unique to that area. All that was missing in this game and even though there were pros, it was outweighed by the scaled back or missing elements.
So yeah, I don’t get people over praising it trying to make out it revolutionised the open world genre when it didn’t, if that was released on the Nintendo Switch by a third party developer it wouldn’t have done that well. I just find it funny how these journalists have nit picked so many open world games yet some of the same things BotW is guilty of gets a free pass, even mentioning faults like the awful weapon breakage system like a month or so after launch but didn’t mention it in their review. Personally if we are going for open world games, then that year Horizon Zero Dawn was my GOTY, maybe that didn’t push the open world genre but at least the concept of robot dinosaurs was fresh and the game actually had a cinematic overall story, even the dungeons (cauldrons) were better,
