Playing Ocarina of Time for the first time after loving Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is such a joyful experience. Those are my all-time favorite games, so it’s incredibly satisfying to finally see where so many of their references come from.

One small example: I only just realized that the stable music in the newer games is based on the soundtrack from the milk farm where Link meets Epona for the first time. What? How cool is that?

The Pokémon franchise lost me at some point. The games felt repetitive and I wasn’t interested in the grind anymore. That’s why I didn’t care about Pokopia when it was announced. Why would I want to play a knock-off Animal Crossing?

This quickly changed when the first reviews came out and were over-the-moon positive. And what can I say? I finished the main story yesterday and had a blast. I can’t remember the last time a video game had me in its grips like that.

I can’t wait to jump back in and start really working on my towns and making everything pretty.