It’s a bit awkward, because I liked HZD, I completed it, DLC and all, but I don’t consider it a good open world. I learned after a few hours that exploring is almost never rewarded, and you’d way better follow the few very obvious threads the game is setting up for you.

Going into a hidden path before you’re sent there by a quest is just wasting time, you’re going to struggle a lot, you’ll get nothing at the end and you’ll often even have to go back the way you came. Going outright off-road, even a little, spams you with “turn back now or I reload your save” messages. Which is baffling, I’ve never seen a game trying such a bad way to keep you inside the playing area. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game border that’s such a mess to begin with.

Great story, great characters, fun battle mechanics. But as an open-world game, I don’t think it works.

Thinking about those I’ve played, I don’t think remakes have ever detracted from the original to me.

The first time I finally completed Metroid 1 was shortly after Zero Mission (which had the cool effect that the locations of some power ups was still fresh in my mind).

I also enjoyed Samus Returns despite it missing the point of Metroid 2, and that didn’t make Metroid 2 worse in retrospect.

Kind of similar with Majora’s Mask 3D, Mario 64 DS…

I’ve never hold up a first play because of a potential remaster, especially not if it was not announced.

I have hold up a few replays when rumours of a remake are floating around though (like I did with Skyward Sword). I stopped a halfway through replay of Xenoblade Chronicles when they announced Definitive Edition. With how long XC games get if you try to do everything… Yeah.

Still lacking a definitive version in English of the original, Tales of Phantasia, as far as I know. The playstation version with skits and stuff was Japanese only.

The only officially localized version was GBA… and its epic tale of the legendary war :

“Kangaroo.”

(8:18:48 if the timestamp didn’t work)

That’s honestly what I am worrying it would be, and what I meant by a huge part of the game being “impersonal”.

Daggerfall has parts that are fascinating, even long after its time.

Its custom class creator is rather fun. Its magic effect system too… despite some of the most intriguing effects not even working at all. Seriously. You can craft those spells, they just don’t do anything.

Its dungeons are intimidating in scale, and the 3D automap is both a feat and almost no help at all.

There are freaking linguistic skills, plural because there are like 8 different languages or so. They are mostly useless, because they just add a slight chance a monster won’t attack you, but since you don’t know when it works you’ll murder them anyway.

And then there’s the undistinguishable random quests and the grind.

Oh, kind of like the Sorcerer default class in Daggerfall and the Atronach sign in Morrowind and Oblivion then (and sort of Atronach stone in Skyrim too, though this one is just less regen, not no regen at all).

Yeah, those are fun. You’re basically a magic sponge.

Honestly I have played only a little of Arena (very late, around the time Bethesda started to give it for free on their site). I think the farthest I went was the second staff piece dungeon.

Since most of Elder Scrolls nostalgia today is around Morrowind, it’s always interesting (and a bit funny) to find people (involved or not) who think the series started to derail with Morrowind.

I am not mocking them at all, I get it, Daggerfall and Morrowind are very different games with a different scale and focus. Daggerfall is also… quite overwhelming, and rather impersonal for 99% of its gameplay. I really don’t know what a “modern” Daggerfall would look like.