I'd imagine it's great for casual gamers and/or big time Nintendo/Zelda fans, but if you've sunk a lot of hours into heavier highly acclaimed RPGs like Mass Effect, Witcher, Skyrim, etc. it just feels so bland. Most of the characters are flat, the storyline is pretty standard, and the action quickly gets repetitive.
It's not a bad game but it's far from the must-play experience it was made out to be.
Interesting, I feel kind of the opposite. BotW was my first open-world RPG so I of course loved it. But when I went to try other titles like Witcher 3 and Skyrim, I could never really get into them. I loved the worlds and stories but the gameplay never hooked me the same way BotW did.
When I tried Elden Ring though I absolutely loved it, which makes sense given that BotW was such a big inspiration for its gameplay.
I strongly disagree as someone who’s played a lot of Skyrim, Elden ring, Witcher and mass effect. The game has so much great atmosphere and exciting exploration. The harder difficulty is more challenging and there is a lot to do and collect and secret bosses to fight. - they really expanded on the gameplay in TOTK too which is superior imo. I’d say Witcher and mass effect are slightly more linear also and more comparable to older semi open Zelda titles. Combat is also way better than Witcher and Skyrim imo although I’d say the story is slightly behind those others.
Y'see, I'm actually of the opposite opinion. I think BotW is a very good sandbox game with a lot of emergent complexity. But if you're looking for an actual RPG, I can agree that it seems relatively simple. In no small part because it wears most of its mechanics on its sleeve.
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u/that_one_bunny Aug 19 '26
Absolutely, put about a dozen hours into it but never felt hooked. It seemed like an intro RPG for kids and lacked a lot of depth.