[Reach]

It was interesting to read your take on the game...I finished the game awhile ago after sinking about 50ish hours into it and getting ~80 shrines, so I finally feel like I can comment properly on it.

Massive life long Zelda fan, and I bought the Switch version, btw.

And while I would give the game a 9 or 9.5 out of 10, I have a lot of the same complaints that you do lol. I guess they just didn't bother me nearly as much as they're bothering you.

First things first, I definitely agree on weapons, I think it was a horrible decision. Ostensibly the logic behind this system is to go hand in hand with the fresh combat system that requires people to take novel approaches to different enemies rather than just hack and slash everything. Supposedly they want you to constantly be using different assortments of weapons to add to the combat diversity, which in and of itself isn't a bad idea. However, the weapons do break far far too quickly, and not having a blacksmith of sorts that allowed weapon upgrades I think was a full retard decision.

The ultimate consequence of their design was to cause me to not want to fight at all and or never use my best weapons (and what is the point of a good weapon if you don't want to use it?). I started looking for the lost woods and the master sword very early on, because I wanted a weapon I could keep using. Jesus christ even their design choice with the master sword pissed me off (yeah it breaks against Ganon too, what a joke!).

So I spent a large portion of the game stealthing. Mind you, steath tactics in the game are extremely viable and I had a lot of fun doing this, but not being able to just tear enemies up without busting my awesome sword was a huge negative for me.


On cooking, yeah, I think it wasn't the best design. Especially once you realize how to cook the best healing items, you can become essentially invincible if you're bored enough to keep cooking the ingredients. The worst part is the menu with respect to cooking, something so essential to the game is made extremely cumbersome. Very annoying.


The world itself though? Loved it. Fantastic world. Reminded me of the original zelda except on a modern scale, the way you can go essentially anywhere and create your own adventure. There is also a surprising amount to do in the world.

Though I think the dungeons are a huge weakpoint. The first one or two dungeons you play are very good, since overall the dungeons are well designed. The problem is they're all a carbon copy of one another in terms of aesthetics and approach. More dungeons and more dungeon variation are IMO necessary for the next entry in the series. Compared to Skyward sword in terms of dungeons, BotW massively disappoints. The shrines are fun but they really don't compensate for the lack of dungeon action you get in this game.

In terms of the story, I enjoyed the bare bones approach because it reminded me a lot of the original Zelda. I thought the ending was extremely disappointing though (won't say much else for spoilers sake).


So I've said a lot of negative things, but I don't feel like I need to talk about the good things since all of the other reviews do it already. I would spend hours at a time playing this game and had a blast, especially after getting over some of the negatives and hurdles early on. I had a really immersive experience and enjoyed myself quite thoroughly. I thought they definitely took the series in the right direction in many ways, and while I would change some things...I had so much fun, and I'm very excited to see where this takes the series.