treefroggy Made in the Abyss was the first thing I thought of too!
I spent the entirety of my weekend sinking my teeth into the game and it is managing to push a lot of satisfaction buttons in my worm brain. The Legend of Zelda: Fuck Around And Find Out / Bob The Builder / Lego Technics side of things is way more engaging than I was expecting and has largely been the biggest appeal to me, especially with the shrines. Over all the shrines have been a major improvement over BotW, the only major chore ones being any battle challenge/training ones. But figuring out how to cheat the shrine, or just even playing it straight for a lot of the building puzzles has been nothing short of complete satisfaction.
The verticality of the game has been nice, especially after a housemate pointed out something I didn’t even think about, which was rewinding time on any blocks that fall out of the sky. Makes for a lot of easy travel, I’ve kind of abandoned my horse again. It’s also especially nice when I reach a high enough altitude to find an island floating around that I can easily glide to. The depths were immediately satisfying to go through, and now hearing that there’s clothing to be had in them has me more eager to explore into them further.
As Connrrr mentioned, it’s furrier and hornier and better for it. Ghost boyfriend in the beginning is great. The person in Kakriko is also great. It’s also been a minute since I played BotW, never completed the DLC despite getting it. But coming back to familiar locations like Hateno Village and Kakriko, there’s a feeling of wanting to say, “I’m home!” after being gone for so long. It’s been neat coming back and seeing what details have changed.
That being said, I do agree that there’s a weird not quite as thought out cluttered feeling to it, not because we now have sky stuff and underground stuff, that’s all been cool, but just Hyrule in general feels somehow smaller because of how much more is in it. The lost koroks are fun, but I do bump into them far too often, and is it me never noticing them as much in BotW, or are there way more forts than the first game?
Fighting is a bit of a slog so far, so I generally avoid it, especially since I’m feeling like glass more than I did in BotW. Rewinding blocks for altitude and gliding is nice, but there is something that feels more dangerous, but not in a fun frightening way like Elden (or BotW when you see a guardian), to just run around and take in everything on the ground level. This gets especially bad, say, when you’re in a cave that might have a hideout in it, and once you successfully clear it, depleting all your resources to do so, you get hit with a blood moon that just brings everyone back. On the flip side of that, however, figuring out what to fuse to my shield and arrows is a blast. Spring shield rules.
