I can't watch the review due to the sever being overloaded (DOS or Otherwise), so take what I am about to say with a grain of salt. From what I gathered reading discussions of the reviews, it wasn't so much that he gave it a low score it was that his review was inaccurate and contradictory in places.
I am going on what other people claims he said (mostly from the Zelda subbreddit), so if he didn't claim or say any of these things I apologize ahead of time.
- The game paints you into a corner rather than encourage varied play-style
- If this is true that he said this then I don't even know where to begin. The variation in your ability to overcome obstacles in BotW is, without a doubt, the thing that sets this game leagues ahead of its open-world peers. The layer upon layer of gameplay systems both encourages and enables you to make interesting decisions about how you approach the variety of problems you are presented with.
Zelda especially contains systems that are designed to specifically confound a "usual" or straight forward approach under certain conditions so that you must consider the environment and your initial instincts to approach obstacles in creative and unusual ways.
- The proper way of dealing with shrines is to complete them on sight lest lose track of them
- This is just patently false. The map clearly indicates 3 pieces of critical information about a shrine. It indicates when the shrine has been found opened (blue border), the spirit orb has been obtained (the center icon turns from orange to blue), and all of the chests have been taken (chest icon next to the name). Neatly enough the outside of the shrine shows this as well, the top will stay orange if it still has the orb. The game is full of these subtle and clever touches.
Furthermore you can return to any shrine absolutely at will from anywhere in the game at any time. There have been several shrines that I couldn't figure out at the moment where I later had a light bulb go off because the solution presented itself to me through the course of other gameplay. Also you can stamp a shrine to indicate other important information, I usually stamp a shrine with weapons or bows to indicate what I left behind so I know that I found the chests but didn't take them.
- General Complaints about Durability, Stamina, and Weather
- We've talked about this a little so I won't go into detail here, but I just wanted to reiterate that these elements of the game are critical to make the many layers of systems shine the way they should. It is ironic that he falsely claims the game paints you into a corner while at the same time complaining about the very elements that encourage player creativity. I understand why most people don't see these things but a professional game reviewer should know better.
For example I think they balanced the game on the easy side. I personally would prefer a game where the various gameplay mechanics were tuned to be much more punishing and force failure far more often, but I know that is inappropriate for a Zelda game and the target audience
The game isn't perfect, but I would consider it the best open world adventure sandbox game I've played (in the same genre as GTA, AC, Saint's Row, Shadow of Mordor, etc) by a noticeable margin. Should a not perfect game ever get a perfect score? Maybe. Should BotW get a perfect score? I'd probably say no based primarily on the performance issues, but it is damn close due to the core game design.
