50%Nintendo Switch

It's not the same but, in Mario 64 or Pseudoregalia, the non linearity aids to what can feel like game breaking achievements. When you get a star, you can go the normal way or commit to some back-flip wall-jump long-jumps and reach it way faster. Now imagine if instead of an area you can navigate to maximize efficiency you've got an instant win button; that's Echoes of Wisdom. And that was really fun for the first 10 hours, but soon after I just felt nothing. I don't remember a majority of my time with this game; most of what I remember is the times I couldn't hit the instant win button. The Deku prison escape and the Lanayru Temple Dungeon were full of really interesting puzzles that you had to think about to solve. While basic, it had been so long since I used anything other than a bed or floating tile, that it had me struggling for a minute. The music rarely hit, the UI is atrocious, terrible quest rewards, useless as fuck mechanics (wind-up and smoothies), most dialog is from lobotomites, and the performance issues made me (who doesn't ever notice that sort of thing) notice. The bosses and map are great, Zelda is a fun and unique character, the graphics are good, and the lore implications are neat. Being honest though it makes me scared to replay Tears of the Kingdom out of ruining a good experience. I didn't discover the "goblin cycle" until late in the game, and did my best to engage with the level designs. But in that fire temple, fighting with the cart mechanics made me feel silly for not constructing a flying machine. And that's what my dissonance and frustration is all about: having an arguably less fun time by breaking it in the same ways the whole game, V.S. the many different ways it might've been planned but not designed.