900 Korok Seeds? Sounds like the 999 Moons you can get in Mario Odyssey. You CAN do it, but why would you want to? Maybe if I were ten and it was the only game I had to play, like Link's Awakening was for me back in the day (got all the seashells).
Yeah, pretty much. I like the version of Zelda that it has, at least.
Sad thing is, much like Twilight Princess, it was THIS close to being a great successor to Ocarina of Time. The dungeons are good, the weapons/tools are fun, the bosses are inspired, and the world is intriguing.
However, in both cases (TP and SS), Nintendo couldn't get out of their own way and had to shoehorn in stupid things. In TP's case it was mostly making you play as a wolf for large portions of the game, and in SS's case it was mostly the flight sequences and the unreliable Waggle Motion controls.
This is where comparing BOTW to Elden Ring comes in. I like having 180 weapons to try out, each with unlimited durability and movesets and special abilities. Find something you like and it becomes an extension of your character, like how I was wielding two Rivers of Blood katanas for ages. Then eventually find something new that's appealing. Like the DLC has three different weapons that I'm super into and can't settle on which to stick with (the dancing sword, Renalla's fire/ice twin blades, twin Backhand Blades).
Meanwhile BOTW is all "pick things up off the ground and smash 'em and find other things and smash 'em"
Just feels like ER does everything BOTW does, only better, while other Zelda games are more of the "Zelda experience" than BOTW is. Like Skyward Sword is more appealing to me than BOTW when I think about wanting to play a Zelda game, then I remember how annoying the controls can be.
In any case, I'll get to all four of them, just a question of when/what order. BOTW's probably coming up first. I'll keep in mind not to worry about weapons too much.
From experience I can tell you the 999 moons in Mario Odyssey are a piece of cake compared to the 900 Korok Seeds in BOTW and TOTK. I actually got all the moons in Odyssey and while there's a modicum of grinding coins or finding all the secret stuffs to get some of them, it's definitely not really difficult or too time-consuming. I never attempted the 900 Korok seeds which in itself says something about it.
You're probably right about Elden Ring being superior in a lot of aspects to BOTW, even if of course Elden Ring came out 5 years later but even when BOTW came out, there were other open-world sandboxy games that were doing ARPG fantasy better probably. I think a lot of that comes from the fact Myamoto wanted to make a Skryrim'esque Zelda (as per his own admission), and as such it kind of lost itself in something that's not inherently Zelda gameplay (thematic dungeons, franchise-recurring items, etc..). BOTW is a great game IF you really like Zelda already. If you're just looking for an adventure semi-RPG, there's probably a lot better out by now.
However I'd argue BOTW lets you be very creative with combat because you can use various abilities (time-stop, explosions, fire, the weather, momentum) to wipe camps of enemies in hilarious ways. The game came out 8 years ago and there's still people finding new ways to do things in the game thanks to the creative freedom and physics engine of the game.
I've yet to play Elden Ring (I will), I'm certain I'm going to love it but the thing is, for me when I've finished it and even if I loved it, I may buy an artbook about that universe if I really enjoyed it, but it will eventually be filed away into the part of my brain that stores good games, but it's not going on that golden shrine that is Zelda, simply because Zelda goes back to my early childhood, memories with my parents trying to figure out dungeons, or what to do in some spots, or even translating some stuff for me because the game wasn't in my native language back then. I'll often forgive some flaws in Zelda games because I'm just happy for more Zelda content, though I can recognize the problems with each game, and I tend to not replay the ones I enjoyed the least, but I liked playing all of them.
TOTK is a slightly different beast because it has a lot of gameplay similar to BOTW but it also added some gimmicks that aren't usually in ARPG games and it kind of does its own thing so it's not really easily comparable to most games.
But really, if I could decide the direction of the Zelda franchise as a whole, I'd prefer they went back to the roots of Zelda, even if they make some remasters/remakes of old games to make some money, I'd really love a remake of A Link to the Past similar to what they did for Link's Awakening, or even a HD port of Link Between Worlds that was only on 3DS, on Switch 1/2. I think they also would make a TON of money from a strong full remake of Ocarina of Time / Majora's Mask, and I am probably in the minority but I'd buy the shit out of a Zelda 2 remake, in 2D with 3D graphics like they did for Metroid 2 (Samus Returns) on 3DS. I prefer to play "smaller" Zelda games, they can be open a bit (like Ocarina/Majora were) but have clear direction and to-the-point, not endless aimless wandering because you can climb everything, run everywhere, fly and such.. it's not how I prefer my Zelda. I like dungeons and bosses and classic items.
