1. Ring Fit Adventure (new game plus plus)
Honestly I’m at the point where I need a new one. I love this game for what it did to get me started on a serious exercise routine, but the limitations of the level reuse are so apparent, even accounting for the fact that this is my third playthrough.
2.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (5/5)
Between Breath of the Wild and this I have now spent over 300 hours on this iteration of Zelda. I think the new open-world formula hits the right appeal of the franchise. We are now seeing l voices clamoring for a return to the precious formula, but I think the ship has already sailed on that. When I first played Ocarina in 98 I didn’t care about the linearity, because it perfectly sold the illusion of adventure. It’s why I am so fond of Wind Waker in spite of its obvious content shortcomings.
What these two games do is give you all the freedom in the world to actually engage at your own pace, and as such Hyrule feels like a living place. I have my issues with the map reuse here, but I still found myself enthralled by what was around the corner.
Ultrahand is a game changer. I know Aonuma has already spoken of doing away with it for the next game, but I think that’s a mistake. It allows for so much flexibility and creativity that it would be a mistake to do away with it like they did with the wolf or the motion controls.
The main issue here is the map reuse. I understand there’s limitations in modern game development, but it’s so obvious that the surface was made with BotW in mind. There’s a lot of empty space in there that they paper over with caves and wells that simply feel out of place. Hyrule in BotW may have had a lot of negative space, but this was done purposefully. That game had myriads of world building in every crevice, and every pond and meadow served a purpose, particularly in relation with how shrines and Sheikah Towers were laid out.
Ironically enough, I think the sky feels the most full in that aspect. Yes, the locations are spread around, but all have something of interest. In contrast, the Depths are almost barren. Narratively it makes sense, but making it the same size as the surface was overkill. As much as I enjoyed shrine and root hunting, the repetitive biomes didn’t do it any favors. If I were Aonuma/Fujibayashi, I would have somehow merged both the sky and depths together. It’s not like this series is foreign to the concept of a dark world, it’s just that this particular version is too much.
Too much is also my main complaint about the crafting. TotK added way more things to do, way more things to craft, way more things to upgrade. And while I see how that aids extend playtime, I don’t think encouraging that sort of behavior behooves this type of game. It’s one thing to find enough diamonds and star fragments across 200 hours to then upgrade your shirt. It’s another thing to ask a player to farm dozens of Lynels and Molduga if they care about using the cool looking armors and not be at a disadvantage. Zelda combat is serviceable, but it doesn’t have the level of depth of something like MonHun, where this kind of grinding would make sense since that is the whole point of the game. Combat in Zelda is more a means to an end.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed this game a lot. I thought I would burn out of it quickly since I had just completed BotW barely a few months back, but open word Zelda is still compelling. I just don’t know whether revisiting this version of Hyrule for a third time will work again.
One last thing: if they’re gonna make open world Zelda the mainstay focus, they need to be more careful with their story telling. The critical path is so dumb for the people who get distracted with every shiny thing. It’s not a question of seeing things coming, it’s about Link looking stupid when characters react to stuff he should already know. This is one aspect of the game that BotW did much better, on top of Zelda being a much fuller deuteragonist in terms of her character arc.
Can’t wait to play the next one in 2030!
