Is anyone still playing BotW?
My son is currently addicted to the Switch version. He is only 8, so I have to help him with some things and of course I've been playing a bit myself.
I can't stand the weapon/inventory management in this game. Saving weapons for later use because they will break is just completely stupid. A freaking katana broke after ten-ish swings. That is insane.
This has to be the worst combat in any 3D Zelda game. In the beginning, Link is a pushover against almost everyone in this game. Breaking 5 weapons on water Ganon is ridiculous, but, another issue, especially against larger enemies, is the targeting. You have to be right up next to a monster to target them. This is most noticeable during the boss battles. For example, Link has to be so close to the cyclops guy to target his eye that the camera is looking almost vertically up at him. So you end up controlling the camera manually, which just isn't great. Up close, objects pop in and out of view. There are cliffs and other places you can fall off while trying to swing the camera around and/or up to where you need to target. Also, the cyclops kills you when you touch his foot as he's pirouetting like a ballerina on a music box. It's like a bad early 3D game. WTH were the developers at Nintendo thinking?
The next big issue is that link isn't nearly mobile enough while targeting. In previous games, you could move decently quickly while targeting and dodge side to side much more rapidly compared to monster attacks. Now, Link moves incredibly slowly while targeting, and can barely dodge.
Every Zelda game has weaknesses, but the combat in this game is laughable.
Maybe someday a hacker will remove all the crap from this game because there is a lot of amazing stuff, otherwise. The exploration elements are really well done. The graphics are stunning, especially the landscapes and architectural stuff. Having access to several different powers from the beginning really opens up the puzzle design. The world seems to live and breathe more-so than in previous titles. All these are laudable achievements.
The story is threadbare and the flashbacks are a cheap and distracting gimmick, but I believe that story immersion would be less possible in a game that is so open in its design philosophy. Without a linear structure, having Link experience a story told completely through backstory seems like a balance that needed to be struck, but the designers didn't have to sacrifice Link's combat abilities in order to satisfy the other design goals. This was just a failed experiment, made all the more disappointing because in many ways the game is so amazing.
Hopefully, going forward, the next Zelda designers will figure out a way to mix-up the formula without ruining so much of what makes Zelda great: interesting and atmospheric dungeon design, effortless and effective combat controls, and amazing music (the lack of this in BotW is almost unforgivable).
I've played every Zelda game and beaten all the 3D games (with the exception of the end sliding room puzzle of Skyward Sword, so boring) up until this one. I love certain aspects of the game, but the combat and lack of good music really kill the game for me. We'll definitely continue to mess around with it, but I doubt that we will see it through to the end.