[quote=@SleepingSilence]

But I haven't gotten far enough to experience its "boss and length" fatigue, that most Triple A games seem to be guilty of nowadays. 

Then again, after watching someone playing Ragnorok and listening to the obnoxious son blab on and tell you every puzzle solution in ten seconds flat, I've found no such annoyance in Elden Ring.


[/quote]

Elden Ring has the most boss fatigue out of any of the games in its ilk because of how many bosses are not unique or well designed. Over half the bosses are either "normal enemies but slightly spongier" or "I dunno, now there's two of them in an arena not designed for the mechanics of either one, let alone two" or the dreaded "now with gank squad". But if a player doesn't do the crazy thing and do as much of the caves and mines and catacomb mini dungeons then they're less likely to run into the sheer volume of repeat and underwhelming bosses. But because I am a crazy person who did like 95 percent of those, I really found myself liking the game less because of it. Still a totally fine game but I'm Team Bloodborne all the way still. 

Ragnarok doing the Sony thing of having characters spell out the puzzle after ten seconds is made worse because everyone does it, not just Atreus and nothing is more annoying than doing a loop of an area to gather resources and also to see the fuller scope of the puzzle only to have like three people going like "HEY I WONDER IF YOU CAN FREEZE THE WATER AND MAKE IT GO SOMEWHERE ELSE". It's annoying especially because at a conference where devs talked about the 2018 game they basically said that they designed around even the lowest common denominator players can play through the game. Which, like, sure that's fine, but in a game with so many accessibility features how could they not just have a toggle that goes "party hints - reduced/off/normal" or something because goddamn. It was what I liked the least about Forbidden West, a game I loved, and it was even worse in Ragnarok - a game I think is 3/5 at best. 


Jedi Survivor was good but I'm real tired of lightsaber games making the lightsaber feel like a pool noodle. I don't care if beskar is a thing or whatever, I shouldn't have to get a fuckinig bandit or stormtrooper into a stun state to be able to cut his goddamn arms off. The goddamn Wampa on Hoth didn't need to be stunned before Luke cut its goddamn hand off! 

Anyway, I'm only a couple hours into Tears of the Kingdom but I think the starting tutorial island is less good than the BOTW one because of how more blatantly linear it is. It feels like it's designed for people who didn't play BOTW because now there are things that just go "HEY YOU SHOULD COOK SPICY PEPPERS FOR COLD RESISTANCE BECAUSE IT'S COLD" or "HEY IF YOU COOK THINGS YOU GET MORE BENEFIT FROM THEM" rather than it being more of an organic learning experience like in BOTW. It's weird because if someone does play this without playing BOTW then the relationship between Link and the NPCs is rather confusing because it assumes you know all about them from the first game but also the same little issues that I didn't like in BOTW still exist. 

If nothing else it's proving that Banjo Kazooie Nuts n Bolts was ahead of its time.