recent: tears of the kingdom, or as i like to call it botw 1.2, its the same thing all over again just with one or two added gimicks, the open world is dead, npcs are boring and nintendo just got away with it like that
not so recent: i cant stand persona 5, joker and his entourage are annoying teenagers, the time management is a horrible gameplay addition and the artstyle is just a visual overstimulation
with that being said,~~ plz dont kill me~~
Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West. Game is so empty and has an open world for having an open world’s sake. Couldn’t stand it for longer than 3 hours.
I think being more hub-based would’ve served it better (e.g. the new Tomb Raider games).
This. I really liked the visuals but the gameplay and the empty open world make it seem like a cheap AC reskin.
I think the super detailed graphics ended up doing it a disservice because it makes the contrast between this beautiful world you see, and the fact you can’t really interact with it in any way beyond a tiny set of things, feel jarring. It feels like I’m in a wax copy of a forest or something instead of a real forest.
I think, if it had leaned more into its dino mechanics, with more variety (and more need to actually use the variety! I shouldn’t be able to use the same strategy all the time!), and left the graphics more simplistic I might have enjoyed it more. Maybe.
I liked the intro area quite a lot, but then as soon as I left that it was like the world just exploded into a giant empty puddle. The side characters lost their personalities in favor of the usual MMO sidequest garbage lines, the world has huge areas to traverse and the same monsters to fight over and over, the cool tall dino robots are just map towers, and so on. They should’ve just kept it small.
I’ve not played Forbidden West. Probably won’t, though.