According to MetaCritic, Zelda: Breath of the Wild topped “best games of the 2010s” lists, appearing in 1st place in 17 of these lists. In 2030, what game of the 2020s decade will appear on the 1st place in most of these lists? (It should be noted that we are in the middle of the 2020s decade so this may change as new games get released).
BotW completely changed the open world landscape. Yes it was a bad Zelda game, it was by no means a mediocre game. That first experience is fucking magical, and has been recreated to great effect in Elden Ring and Genshin Impact (I shouldn’t need to point out how popular both of those games are).
You can dislike that it was a bad Zelda game. Calling it mediocre is just patently false. Granted, yes - I’ve called the game ‘Horizon: Zero Awards’ because it definitely should have won at least something. It was not more impactful than BotW.
Fine, let’s go with BotW was a bad Zelda game and I strongly disliked it. I tried to like it and played all the way through because I was stubborn, but in the end I think it sucked as did my friends (they all quit long before I did). I wish I hadn’t bought it or spent time in it.
Also, I disagree that it changed the open world landscape. H:ZD released before BoTW did, did the open world stuff better (IMO), and still doesn’t seem like it was radically novel at the time other than the story/setting. The only truly novel thing about BotW was that it was open world in a Zelda game.
All I have to say is that I sincerely doubt that From Software and MiHoYo were looking at H:ZD when they made their very successful open world games. That’s my only point, you are allowed to have your opinions about H:ZD - I’m not saying that you’re wrong.