I'm on the first steps of my journey with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I think it's worth noting, in the interest of full disclosure, that I am not a seasoned Zelda veteran. There are two games in this series on which I've spent any notable amount of time and those are Link to the Past for Super Nintendo and Ocarina of Time for Nintendo 64. I've played some of the others very briefly but OoT is still the only one I've finished. It is the entry that resonated with me most when I was a kid, but none of the others grabbed me enough to convince me to play more of the series.
It's pretty clear based on the content of this blog that I'm a big fan of Japanese games, and turn-based RPGs in particular are the games I tend to enjoy the most. I like action RPGs too, but for whatever reason, action-adventure games (with more of an emphasis on adventure) never struck a chord with me in quite the same way. There's this sense of progression that for me is missing in these games, even when I'm finding new artifacts and maybe even more heart pieces and things like that. I became so ensconced in the tradition of turn-based RPGs that I found myself always craving the ability to level up and perhaps more importantly, to build my character in some way. I'm also a big fan of fielding a party of adventurers! There is something lonely about spending an entire game with only one solitary character.
I think that my tastes for video games have really expanded in recent years, particularly in the last five or so. I've spent a lot more time writing about and critically analyzing the games that I play and have come to some realizations about what I like about video games in general and how unwilling I've been to explore other genres. As a result, I've discovered some really amazing games that I might have otherwise never given a second look. Five years ago, I probably wouldn't have dreamed of playing a shooter, for instance, first-person or otherwise. I was missing out on a lot of really good games just because I had a distaste for the format. I think the same is true for pretty much any genre.
I think action/adventure games in particular are tough for me to enjoy because there is that emphasis on puzzle-solving as a mechanic of progression, both optional and otherwise. Breath of the Wild certainly embodies this, with its massive series of mini-dungeons littered throughout the huge expanse of Hyrule. I tend to find puzzles frustrating, unless for some reason they are designed in a really clever and interesting way. My first impulse when approaching a puzzle in a standard RPG or maybe an action game is to try it once or twice and then look it up so I can move on to the fun parts. I'm typically much more invested in the gameplay itself or the narrative than something like a puzzle. I've never found them to be an interesting gameplay mechanic or something that personally resonates with me.
At the same time, though, I find myself thinking back to games where I've enjoyed puzzles and found the way they're weaved into the gameplay to be really engaging and interesting. I can't help but immediately think of Lufia 2, a turn-based RPG I very much enjoyed which features a huge variety of great puzzles. These are pretty similar to puzzles you might find in Link to the Past. Lufia 2 was pretty much a hybrid of turn-based RPG and classic Zelda gameplay. Why were those not frustrating but others are? What about Golden Sun? Again, it's a turn-based RPG that features puzzles solvable with the use of characters' psynergy powers. These are really interesting too, and not altogether dissimilar from the kind of physics puzzles on display in Breath of the Wild, although of course there's a huge gap in graphical fidelity there.
What about adventure games? And in this case, I mean point-and-click like The Longest Journey or even something more contemporary like Ace Attorney. Picking the right items and combining them in the correct ways or locating the right areas can essentially be described as an act of solving puzzles and I absolutely love those games. I think the narrative is really the main thing I like about those games but I still feel that the puzzles enhance the experience.
I think what really differentiates these games is that there's always something I can fall back on after conquering a puzzle. In the case of something like Lufia 2 or Golden Sun, solving the puzzle means I might uncover treasure, discover new aspects of the narrative, or maybe fight a boss. In the case of adventure games, it means I'm progressing to the next area or solving a mystery. That's rewarding. It makes me feel accomplished. In Zelda I feel like its puzzles maybe serve a different purpose. To me, they seem like a pretty core component of the gameplay, to the point that the act of doing the puzzle and completing it is its own reward. Sure, these puzzles often unlock new items or mechanics, but it so often feels that these new items exist only to assist in completing additional puzzles. And maybe this doesn't apply to Breath of the Wild so much because the shrines you complete allow you to increase your health and stamina, meaning you can not only more effectively explore the game's massive world, but you are more hardy in combat as well.
I think I have a Lot To Say about Breath of the Wild and probably my feelings on Zelda as a series and will continue to do so over time. Some of my opinions are pretty prototypical and kind of complicated. I think it's helpful to analyze how I feel here because I want to enjoy Zelda more than I actually do. I know that Breath of the Wild is a huge paradigm shift for the series and whether or not I enjoy it doesn't necessarily relate to how I feel about the series as a whole, but I think it's worth analyzing even so.
No comments:
Post a Comment