I hadn't played it either, but that's immediately what I thought when seeing bits of the game being advertised to me, especially the weird building mechanics. BotW may have been vaguely interesting but it feels like most big studios now are taking their brands and turning them into these generic open worlds with nothing in them and that's easily my biggest complaint from a pure gaming standpoint.
One of the plus points of the whole streaming craze right now is you can very easily look up gameplay footage and see what a game you're looking at potentially buying is like I do appreciate that about modern internet. Unfortunately you realise how much of it you don't want.
it feels like most big studios now are taking their brands and turning them into these generic open worlds with nothing in them
The funny part is, the king of "generic open worlds" Ubisoft looked at BotW and thought "I can do better." So they created an entirely original IP in Immortals: Fenix Rising, with good VAs with solid writing while still being completely non-linear and then gave the world a shit ton of things to do in it. Basically improving upon all of BotW's flaws.
But it wasn't Nintendo/Zelda, so it completely flopped and was 50% off in a month. Its certainly no 10/10 masterpiece but if people consider BotW 10/10 then Immortals is easily 12/10 relative to it.
I started Immortals probably a couple days after I finally finished BotW. I wish I could explain why but it just didn't grab me. I'm going to give it another chance at some point though, because it took me a long time to really warm on BotW, but once I did I didn't put it down.
It's a shame it flopped though, because I don't think it's a bad game at all, and I'm generally pretty critical of Ubisoft games.
One big flaw of the game that BotW did do much better, is that unlike BotW (which gives you all your traversal skills in the tutorial) is that it locks your various moves to the shop, which requires you reaching the mainland to access. Even then, a lot of "necessary for puzzles" upgrades to those moves also need to be bought means you run into a lot of "need to come back" moments early on. Its an extremely retarded move on their part to do it like that, and is my biggest criticism of the game.
Once you've gotten those is when it reaches its stride, which is probably why it flopped. You need to not be a completionist during the opening for a few hours, which is a bit antithetical to the genre.
Seems like they mixed in one thing too many, then. "I need to come back later when I can X" is a staple of Metroidvania games, and it doesn't really bother me in those.
Of course, putting things in a "shop" instead of making them rewards for completing challenges of one type or another is extra-retarded.
Its included in psn+ and was in humble monthly a while back. It didn't actually have any freedom in the "shrines" compared to botw from what I recall of the few hours I spent with it.
I hadn't played it either, but that's immediately what I thought when seeing bits of the game being advertised to me, especially the weird building mechanics. BotW may have been vaguely interesting but it feels like most big studios now are taking their brands and turning them into these generic open worlds with nothing in them and that's easily my biggest complaint from a pure gaming standpoint.
One of the plus points of the whole streaming craze right now is you can very easily look up gameplay footage and see what a game you're looking at potentially buying is like I do appreciate that about modern internet. Unfortunately you realise how much of it you don't want.
The funny part is, the king of "generic open worlds" Ubisoft looked at BotW and thought "I can do better." So they created an entirely original IP in Immortals: Fenix Rising, with good VAs with solid writing while still being completely non-linear and then gave the world a shit ton of things to do in it. Basically improving upon all of BotW's flaws.
But it wasn't Nintendo/Zelda, so it completely flopped and was 50% off in a month. Its certainly no 10/10 masterpiece but if people consider BotW 10/10 then Immortals is easily 12/10 relative to it.
I started Immortals probably a couple days after I finally finished BotW. I wish I could explain why but it just didn't grab me. I'm going to give it another chance at some point though, because it took me a long time to really warm on BotW, but once I did I didn't put it down.
It's a shame it flopped though, because I don't think it's a bad game at all, and I'm generally pretty critical of Ubisoft games.
One big flaw of the game that BotW did do much better, is that unlike BotW (which gives you all your traversal skills in the tutorial) is that it locks your various moves to the shop, which requires you reaching the mainland to access. Even then, a lot of "necessary for puzzles" upgrades to those moves also need to be bought means you run into a lot of "need to come back" moments early on. Its an extremely retarded move on their part to do it like that, and is my biggest criticism of the game.
Once you've gotten those is when it reaches its stride, which is probably why it flopped. You need to not be a completionist during the opening for a few hours, which is a bit antithetical to the genre.
Seems like they mixed in one thing too many, then. "I need to come back later when I can X" is a staple of Metroidvania games, and it doesn't really bother me in those.
Of course, putting things in a "shop" instead of making them rewards for completing challenges of one type or another is extra-retarded.
It might be worth it then for me to pick that up! What system is that on?
Its included in psn+ and was in humble monthly a while back. It didn't actually have any freedom in the "shrines" compared to botw from what I recall of the few hours I spent with it.
Basically everything. Its Ubisoft, so I'd probably avoid the PC version due to their retarded software they attach to all their games.