I've just played over 12 hours consecutively of this game. It's really, really great just like - like it or not, this is the closest game to it - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The Prologue, which is basically what I played for 10 hours, the prologue is like 2 hours of story, but before I even set foot on the city, I spent almost 8 hours just running wild and exploring everything I could.

I actually recommend that approach because it feels so much like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in the sense that you can do almost anything in a vast open area, as well as the fact that you will reach a point after the prologue ends, where you will need to rank up your "Adventure Rank" in order to start Chapter 1.

Since I explored for hours and hours, by the time the prologue ended, I was almost at rank Adventure Rank 10, so increasing it by exploring feels natural and easy. While I can see that If one did the main quest and then had to go explore in a mandatory way for hours and hours, it might feel like a completely different experience.

The reason everyone says it resemvles The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is because if you play just like I did, ignoring the main story and just exploring the world, it screams BotW. There are many systems in the game that are extremely similar to BotW, that a comparison is inevitable.

However, this isn't The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, even though it's a free-to-play game, it feels almost completely like a traditional open world Japanese Action-RPG, like Dragon Quest 11, for example. It also has a really strong sense and feel like those old big open world Japanese RPGs from the PS1 and PS2 era, but being very modernized instead of feeling dated.

It's got that kind of magical Japanese medieval fantasy feeling to it. I know the company is Chinese, but that's what it mostly feels like. I haven't unlocked everything and there's still some systems, activities and whole other regions left to be unlocked, but this feels a lot like a single-player traditional Japanese Action-RPG. So that's how I'm playing it and it feels great.

There's micro and macrotransactions, but they're introduced later after you reach Adventure Rank 5, if I'm not mistaken, so they take a long time before appearing. They are also very hidden and the game doesn't remind you they even exist after they explain what they are. It's only for buying new characters, rare weapons and a few rare resources. However, the weapons and resources can all be crafted, as far as I could tell.

And the new characters don't add much. I know this because they give you a lot of the currency to buy two 10 packs, which guarantees 1 character, so that's how I got 2 extra characters. But the whole thing is almost 100% out of your sight unless you actively search for it. So it's truly not an issue. I just mentioned because people will read "free-to-play" and imagine the worst, when it reality it's probably the least push for microtransactions I've even seen in any game that has them. It even makes me wonder how profitable this will be in the long run.

It's just like a single player RPG, even though you will be able to join for dungeons/raids after reaching Adventure Rank 15, which is basically where the rest of almost everything in the game opens up. I keep thinking how they should have just released this game as a standard U$ 60 game and sold it like that, because that's what it feels like.

The game is free and it's great, so anyone interested can just try it for themselves. The install size on PC is really small, like 15 GB. It also doesn't demand a super computer or anything, it runs light as far as I can tell. It's also available for Android and iOS, as well as PC and PS4. Hence why it feels light with resources on PC. Though the game looks gorgeously beautiful. It also has cross-progression, so you can start playing it on PC/PS4, then continue on a smartphone, and then resume on PC/PS4. No need to be glued to a monitor or TV.

I was encouraged to play this game because of these videos. I must say, It looks gorgeous!... like the way I'd expect a Zelda game to look like sometime in the future. Visuals really hit me at first, and also the soundtrack, which can be missed at times when it's not present and all you hear is the sound effects. I've only played it for about an hour and will be playing it more tomorrow. 

The only thing I found annoying is the awkward control mapping on a Xbox One Controller. B for accept and A for cancelling. Is this normal? Is there any way to change it?... I find it pretty annoying and it's the only thing that kept me from playing it longer... that and the mediocre Spanish translation. I guess I'm playing it with English subtitles and Japanese voices. (There are Chinese and Korean voices as well for those interested)

Anyway... the game pleasantly surprised me. Anyone who enjoys the anime style should absolutely try it. It's like watching an anime at 60fps (it runs very smooth) and with proper 4K in place. Some animal models for example, are very detailed, and it's a delight to see them wondering around while you can see every little detail of them, as if they were painted with a very thin brush. I've also red that the battle system is (much) better than BOTW... and since I haven't played the Nintendo game, I'm very curious to test it since I've just faced a handful of low level enemies so far. 

I agree with the above comment. This game doesn't feel at all like a Free 2 Play. I was actually looking for it on Steam and took me a while to find out I could download it for free. Oh btw... the download was painfully slow for me,  most likely because of my location. I download from Steam at full speed though, but good news is that I only had to go through a slow download once. Will probably be the same if a big update lands, but it isn't such a big deal to me.

Played it on a PC with a RTX 2070Super (damn 3080s aren't arriving until December) and AMD 3900x. It's not CPU intensive btw.

I suppose the game works only when you're online?

It isn't a f2p in the western concept of it, its a Gatcha model. If you don't mind the mid-later game grinding and focusing on a main char., to go through the content without investing on the "pay to fill meters", and get to the story, then you'll be fine.

I've only played it for a few minutes but already this game is visually a LOT more appealing than BOTW. For some reason I am getting some micro stuttering on a 2080ti and the pop in is distracting, as if it were catering to mobile devices, but generally the visuals are very appealing. I hope they add graphics options to iron out LOD issues.

There are a few things that keep me from getting into certain games though. I'm not fond of anime art style at all in general, or female anime voices. Also, there are some control issues. A and B are swapped, making my navigation through menus clumsy. I'd like to remap buttons.

The game feels pretty good overall, and generally looks clean and great. I'll continue playing to see what kind of play model I'm coerced into. That will probably determine how far I get into the game.