This is admittedly not that big of a deal I guess but it drives me nuts how often modern games describe themselves like: a zelda-esque soulsborne roguelike metroidvania- or something equally indecipherable to anyone outside of the entrenched Gamer demographic. I am thoroughly “search action”-pilled…we really gotta use words better!
But games are about gameplay and mechanics, and some games pioneered them. Every first person shooter was a doom clone until people decided to expand on the vocabulary. So far there are phrases or words to describe the mechanics of from software’s games holistically outside of “soulsborne” or “souls like”. Maybe a non English word that sounds intriguing might push it to newer descriptions, similar to “umami”. Or fuck it just create a new word.
Zelda is a bit different because it doesn’t necessarily do anything too notable these days in terms of uniqueness. So describing a game as “Zelda like” is similar to describing an action movie as “mission impossible like”