what is this place?
known loop #3: this space hosts (very unprofessional) media reviews
known loop #3: this space hosts (very unprofessional) media reviews
i still remember sitting in english class, watching the very first trailer for what was at the time still called botw:2, and crying. my favourite game, getting a sequel? what a dream come true! fast forward, what, five years later? and it has finally released. is it everything i wanted it to be? well, yeah, kinda. the updated mechanics are a natural progression of the runes from botw, movement is even more fluid than before, and the addition of two new layers to explore made the map feel fresh all over again. this is what i love most about totk: the way it encourages the player to explore everywhere and everything, just like we did in botw all those years ago. where it falls short, for me, is that the story (while interesting) doesn't feel as...idk, passionate as botw's? botw had so much emotion that you couldn't escape. at every turn you were being forced to reconcile with the grief of losing a war, your friends dying in vain, the princess sealed away, and the whole weight of the world on your shoulders. now, totk does have a very cool story to work through, but it's lso very avoidable. in fact, my first couple of days playing the game i didnt do any story stuff, because it just didn't interest me as much as exploring what this new hyrule had to offer. honestly, a lot of the middle story stuff felt like it didn't even matter to the bigger plot. the saving grace? THAT. FUCKING. ENDING. god. if i thought botw was a tear jerker at the end, totk had me on the floor a sobbing mess. overall, it was pretty much exactly what i wanted out of a sequel: more botw. i just wish the story had the same punch.
BONUS MINI REVIEW: okay i'm not a huge fan of the 'warriors' genre of games, but obviously with this one being botw themed i HAD to play it. and while the gameplay was kinda tedious and boring, the story was soooo good and so much fan service for me, specifically, that i dont really care. also, the music is amazing and the full themes for the champions go HARD. i also like the redesigns for the blights. they look much cooler than they did in botw. but i dont have much else to say besides that so. onto the next game.
im ngl, botw means so much to me that it's really hard to put into words how much it has affected my life. it's what got me back into gaming, it's what introduced my to my favourite character of all time (revali my love), and it was almost going to be my hs yearbook quote (before covid fucked all that up lol.) it is probably my favourite game, and i know that a lot of people scoff at that opinion bc of course the newest bestest zelda game is going to be my favourite, ugh what a normie, but IDC it truly blows all other zelda titles out of the water. i replay the main story at least once a year and it never gets old. the mechanics were so fresh and interesting, the environment was beautiful, and the story was perfect on all fronts. i mean. what else is there even to say? it won goty for a reason, and it deserves every accolade it got and continues to get. now, totk on the other hand...
i played the danganronpa games in the winter of 2020, and i LOVED them. so, when i heard that the team behind DR was making another game i was really excited to try it out. what resulted was RAINCODE, a mystery detective game where you play as an amnesiac possessed by a death god. the cast of characters all have that wonderful Kodaka and Komatsuzaki charm, and the game has so many of the crazy twists that made the DR series so fun to play. one problem i had with the story, however, is that some parts of it seemed rushed, including parts that were probably supposed to be important. regardless, i can only see this franchise getting better from here, and i'm excited to see where Kodaka's team takes it.
as someone who basically never plays RPGs outside of pkm, i am continually surprised by how much i love the gameplay of the octopath series. it's fast and adaptive and most of all: addicting. also, the characters were already so deep and interesting in 8path1, but this sequel truly has some of the most likable and sympathetic characters i have seen (osvald ilu 4evr) the only reason i rank I lower than II is because the characters dont interact as much, and the story doesnt seem as connected as it does in II. if you like RPGs, play these games. If you don't like RPGs, try out the demos because you might just enjoy this one.