[hi19hi19]

Having finally gotten a chance to play it myself, the controls are awkward as FUCK on the Wii U Game Pad (the one with the screen) which is unfortunately all I have to play it with. Having the secondary control stick above the buttons is so fucking weird.

You're sort of forced to claw grip with your right hand to both look around and hit the buttons to do things. Including running or swinging your weapon, which are usually important to be able to do without issue in these kinds of games. The auto-lock feature doesn't fix this for like half the enemies because they're tall as hell or fly and it drags your camera down onto the ground weirdly.

The upgrading/cooking system is cool and stuff but nothing revolutionary after years of Minecraft crafting clone games have done the same thing but better.
The atmosphere and scoring are, as noted, 10/10. Just exploring is so gratifying.
The overall story is as not-interesting as you'd expect from a Zelda game. Ganon did a bad thing. Now you need to go kill him until he dies! Wow!
The sidequest plots are surprisingly mature and interesting, at least the few I have done.
The combat is surprisingly enjoyable for me even despite the camera, but it's not anything novel by any means. Fights play a lot like any other 3d Zelda game.
The puzzles are cool but also usually really cheese-able in dumb ways, which is either a pro or a con depending on how you feel about that.

Overall my impression after 2 divine beasts, a bunch of shrines, and a few sidequests is 8.5/10. Definitely fun and I'm well aware there's 100+ hours of content left in the game for me so it's definitely expansive. Lots recommending it and I don't yet feel like I've wasted my time.



Actually, let me revise that to 8/10. Zelda's voice actor takes a full half point off by herself. Calamity Ganon has nothing on the calamity that is her accent.