DerRapha

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Far better than the reviews say. I didn‘t care and bought it anyway. My favorite since Unity (maybe with the exception of Odyssey… I kind of like that one). Love to see the franchise going more back to the roots.

I was really hyped to play this game because of the extraordinary ratings. And in the end I was quite disappointed with this 97/100 „masterpiece“. Good things first: Until the sequel came out this game was the biggest Zelda game ever made: Biggest open world, best combat system, first voices overs, character customization (armor, weapons), crafting/cooking system, weather/climate system etc… those are all the reasons why this game is nothing less than spectacular. Futhermore this was the best open world game on any handheld console at the time (2017). At first I was no fan of the breakable weapons because you would use your good weapons on enemy camps to find worse weapons afterwards. So in the end I kind of found myself ignoring a lot of those camps because of the bad loot that came with them… I would have loved some kind of „The Witcher 3“ system where you just repair often used weapons. But in the end that‘s ok… The things that bothered me the most (light spoilers regarding boss fights): - The shrines are too many and get really repetitive. Just because there is a reward (heart/stamina containers) doesn‘t make them fun. - Exploration is almost only rewarded with korok seeds. It speaks for itself that they had to include 1000 of them so the world wouldn‘t feel empty. I would have loved more diversity there. More interesting side quests or loot in the open world would have been nice. But every time I‘m climbing a mountain to discover what‘s up there it‘s a korok seed 99% of the time. And the same with korok seeds: Doesn’t make them fun just because there is a reward for them (inventory space). - No memorable boss fights/Missing dungeons. The devine beasts play almost the same every time. The boss fights in those are the most forgettable in Zelda games period. All four kind of look the same just with different elements to them. The Ganondorf fight was one of the worst as well in my opinion… - Then the story was one of the weakest Zelda stories for me as well. I didn‘t like the delivery and the pacing. I lost interest in the game after the 3rd devine beast and finished the game just because I didn‘t want to leave it unfinished. - Soundtrack/Score was definitely one of the worst in any Zelda game ever… All those points are the reason why for me it doesn’t deserve the praise it gets. But I mean Mario Odyssey got a 97/100 as well. Which is crazy considering it has the same score as Mario Galaxy 2. Since the Switch era Metascores are getting stupid…

Ni No Kuni is such a fantastic game! Great story, great characters, great gameplay, great graphics, great soundtrack, great art style (thx Ghibli!). I couldn‘t put it down back in the days on my PS3 and bought it for my Switch recently to play it once again. This time on the go. Port is fantastic! I love the world building! One of my favorite games of all time.