this is probably very obvious to most people, but if you liked breath of the wild or thought that it was flawed but a good jumping off point for a sequel, you will probably enjoy tears of the kingdom. however, if you thought breath of the wild was bad as a game and/or as a direction for the series, tears of the kingdom is not going to make you a fan.
the dungeons are better, but they're still formatted like in breath of the wild. the shrines are better, but they're still shrines. the bosses are much better, but they're still fought with the same combat system. the world is technically bigger, but it's built off of the same world as before. the story is definitely better, but it's still shown and told the same way. the construction gimmick gives you and arguably encourages more avenues to experiment with the game's systems, but they're still the same systems. there's still korok seeds, there's still bad swimming, and the enemy variety still leaves a lot to be desired. it's a game that does a good amount to polish the game that came before it, but it still is adamant about being it's own type of zelda and that won't be for everyone.
for me personally, i enjoy tears of the kingdom as a sequel to breath of the wild and that's how i've chosen to view the game because that's what it was trying to be. the traditional zelda aspects, while improved somewhat, haven't been improved nearly enough for me to see it as a good zelda in the same way i see other zelda games as good zeldas but it wasn't trying to be other zeldas and to some extent that's okay with me, but it won't be for everyone.
not at all worth $70 though (no game is)
the dungeons are better, but they're still formatted like in breath of the wild. the shrines are better, but they're still shrines. the bosses are much better, but they're still fought with the same combat system. the world is technically bigger, but it's built off of the same world as before. the story is definitely better, but it's still shown and told the same way. the construction gimmick gives you and arguably encourages more avenues to experiment with the game's systems, but they're still the same systems. there's still korok seeds, there's still bad swimming, and the enemy variety still leaves a lot to be desired. it's a game that does a good amount to polish the game that came before it, but it still is adamant about being it's own type of zelda and that won't be for everyone.
for me personally, i enjoy tears of the kingdom as a sequel to breath of the wild and that's how i've chosen to view the game because that's what it was trying to be. the traditional zelda aspects, while improved somewhat, haven't been improved nearly enough for me to see it as a good zelda in the same way i see other zelda games as good zeldas but it wasn't trying to be other zeldas and to some extent that's okay with me, but it won't be for everyone.
not at all worth $70 though (no game is)
you can crucify koroks 11/10
Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore will be better
I think it will take awhile for me to fully form my opinions on Tears of the Kingdom, but what I can say right now is that it is the most fun I have had playing a game. There is just so much in it to engage with, and the flexibility and ridiculousness of its mechanics leads to so many amazing player-driven moments. While I do have a long list of criticisms about it, its best bits massively outweigh those issues.
I don't think I'm ever going to get around to finishing this game, so now's as good a time as any to do a write-up.
Breath of the Wild is my favorite game. It got me back into gaming after putting it down for a few years, and back into Nintendo games after not caring for nearly a decade. I was excited as anyone for Tears of the Kingdom. The early marketing was excellent, presenting an ominous, Majora-esque asset flip of the more melancholic BotW. I imagined deep crevices carved into the ground, exhuming all sorts of long-dormant horrors, forever altering the Hyrule with which I was familiar. I had faith that the long development time would be used to add all sorts of interesting content and well-designed dungeons.
My initial impression of the game was good. I enjoyed the tutorial island. Helping the overpacked Korok get to his friend was cute. On the surface, one of the first caves I found was the Majora tree stump cave. I remember feeling excited by the Japanese aesthetic for the shrine housing the piece of Fierce Deity armor, and wondered what other kinds of ancient architecture I'd find. Diving into The Depths for the first time was thrilling.
Disappointments, however, quickly crept in. The oddly specific over-packed Korok scenario quickly became contrived as I found dozens more. The tutorial island turned out to be the most interesting sky island by far, as the others were sparse and often copied multiple times. The tree stump cave turned out to be one of the few interesting caves, with most of the others largely using the same mossy aesthetic, with the same Horriblins and the same Japanese architecture housing the same BotW DLC armor. The Depths turned out to have a dearth of interesting content, my time largely spent stumbling around in the dark, avoiding the same enemy camps that absolutely litter the surface.
My biggest problem with TotK is how much it mindlessly copies from BotW. For BotW, the developers went back to the drawing board, and thoughtfully reconsidered all of the rote Zelda tropes that had accumulated in the series since Majora's Mask, like so many fleas. All of the pieces fit together. Take the memory system, for example. For BotW, the developers smartly crafted a smattering of nonessential vignettes, where the order in which you found them was not important, because it suited the open world structure of the game. Anyone with a brain can see that this structure does not fit the essential, linear story that TotK wants to tell. It felt like watching a movie with its scenes out of order. It also leads to big problems like Link spending all his time "trying to find Zelda," when he already knows exactly where she is, but doesn't bother letting anyone else know.
No one held a gun to Aonuma's head and said he had to use the same damn Korok seed inventory system, or shrine health and stamina system, or combat durability system, or memory-based narrative, or music. BotW was great in part because of how new everything felt. But Aonuma's team is already resting on its laurels, and I fear BotW's revolutionary template is already ossified convention.
The worst is how TotK handles BotW's map. Many previous points of interest are utterly devoid of content, including Thundra Plateau, Gut Check Rock, Hyrule Castle Ruins, and The Forgotten Temple. Areas with affecting environmental storytelling in BotW like Fort Hateno are downgraded to dumps littered with ugly brown-gray sky island slabs. I was baffled and offended when I made my way to Akkala Citadel, only to find an inexplicably generic monster cave where the citadel entrance should have been exposed. They really should have made sure there was enough to do on the surface before bothering with the dull-as-dishwater Depths.
Speaking of environmental storytelling, how bad is TotK's? What's the point of introducing another heretofore unmentioned technologically advanced ancient civilization? What happened to the Shiekah tech from BotW, including the army of laser-spewing spider robots and Divine Beasts that devastated the countryside for 100 years? I don't think they're even mentioned once. It almost feels like The Calamity didn't even happen. This created a huge disconnect from the world for me. All the ruins that felt so meaningful to explore in BotW felt like they belonged in a different game in TotK.
I haven't mentioned Ultrahand until now, because it felt largely superfluous to my experience with the game. On the tutorial island, I learned to my great disappointment that walking more than 50 yards from a boat I'd built to cross the first lake caused it to despawn. I was further let down after my first exhilarating flight on a wing part was cut short by the extremely stingy 30-second use time limit.
Ultrahand is barely integrated into the game. It feels like someone took the building mechanic from Garry's Mod, shoved it into BotW, and dumped a bunch of Lego parts everywhere. The game almost never requires its use outside of scripted events like the Death Mountain approach or boring green crystal sky island shrines; it's often faster and more effective to deal with the game's many enemies using the vanilla BotW combat.
So many elements of the game disincentivize its use. The building mechanic itself is finicky and time-consuming, and the distance and time limits are even more demoralizing. I was lucky to find auto-build early in the game, but the heavy Zonaite cost kept me from using it much. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered if going in to The Depths was fun, but mindlessly mining Zonaite felt like the worst kind of grindy MMO filler. I think the biggest tell is how many people complained when Nintendo removed the duplication glitch from the first build of the game. I normally side with Nintendo in these instances, but here, I think it exposes just how unfun and stingy the game is with resources.
I'm just scratching the surface of TotK's serious flaws. The "dungeons" are lackluster, and their "press these 5 or so buttons in any order" design uninspired. The repetitive sage cutscenes after the fairly enjoyable but too-easy boss fights are pathetic. Shrines are often just tutorials for Zonai parts, and can often be cheesed in unsatisfying ways. Sage powers are horribly implemented.
I'll balance all the negativity I just wrote by saying that I recognize that TotK isn't a bad game. If I hadn't played BotW, I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more. Maybe my expectations for the sequel of my favorite game were too high. And there are truly excellent moments that incentivized me to push through all the middling content, like launching off the roofs of sky ships into the eye of a snow storm, or exploring the super interesting Gerudo underground shelter, or fighting a Boss Bokoblin squad for the first time. But I can't deny that I resented most of the 100+ hour grind I put into this game, and I regret ever buying it.
Breath of the Wild is my favorite game. It got me back into gaming after putting it down for a few years, and back into Nintendo games after not caring for nearly a decade. I was excited as anyone for Tears of the Kingdom. The early marketing was excellent, presenting an ominous, Majora-esque asset flip of the more melancholic BotW. I imagined deep crevices carved into the ground, exhuming all sorts of long-dormant horrors, forever altering the Hyrule with which I was familiar. I had faith that the long development time would be used to add all sorts of interesting content and well-designed dungeons.
My initial impression of the game was good. I enjoyed the tutorial island. Helping the overpacked Korok get to his friend was cute. On the surface, one of the first caves I found was the Majora tree stump cave. I remember feeling excited by the Japanese aesthetic for the shrine housing the piece of Fierce Deity armor, and wondered what other kinds of ancient architecture I'd find. Diving into The Depths for the first time was thrilling.
Disappointments, however, quickly crept in. The oddly specific over-packed Korok scenario quickly became contrived as I found dozens more. The tutorial island turned out to be the most interesting sky island by far, as the others were sparse and often copied multiple times. The tree stump cave turned out to be one of the few interesting caves, with most of the others largely using the same mossy aesthetic, with the same Horriblins and the same Japanese architecture housing the same BotW DLC armor. The Depths turned out to have a dearth of interesting content, my time largely spent stumbling around in the dark, avoiding the same enemy camps that absolutely litter the surface.
My biggest problem with TotK is how much it mindlessly copies from BotW. For BotW, the developers went back to the drawing board, and thoughtfully reconsidered all of the rote Zelda tropes that had accumulated in the series since Majora's Mask, like so many fleas. All of the pieces fit together. Take the memory system, for example. For BotW, the developers smartly crafted a smattering of nonessential vignettes, where the order in which you found them was not important, because it suited the open world structure of the game. Anyone with a brain can see that this structure does not fit the essential, linear story that TotK wants to tell. It felt like watching a movie with its scenes out of order. It also leads to big problems like Link spending all his time "trying to find Zelda," when he already knows exactly where she is, but doesn't bother letting anyone else know.
No one held a gun to Aonuma's head and said he had to use the same damn Korok seed inventory system, or shrine health and stamina system, or combat durability system, or memory-based narrative, or music. BotW was great in part because of how new everything felt. But Aonuma's team is already resting on its laurels, and I fear BotW's revolutionary template is already ossified convention.
The worst is how TotK handles BotW's map. Many previous points of interest are utterly devoid of content, including Thundra Plateau, Gut Check Rock, Hyrule Castle Ruins, and The Forgotten Temple. Areas with affecting environmental storytelling in BotW like Fort Hateno are downgraded to dumps littered with ugly brown-gray sky island slabs. I was baffled and offended when I made my way to Akkala Citadel, only to find an inexplicably generic monster cave where the citadel entrance should have been exposed. They really should have made sure there was enough to do on the surface before bothering with the dull-as-dishwater Depths.
Speaking of environmental storytelling, how bad is TotK's? What's the point of introducing another heretofore unmentioned technologically advanced ancient civilization? What happened to the Shiekah tech from BotW, including the army of laser-spewing spider robots and Divine Beasts that devastated the countryside for 100 years? I don't think they're even mentioned once. It almost feels like The Calamity didn't even happen. This created a huge disconnect from the world for me. All the ruins that felt so meaningful to explore in BotW felt like they belonged in a different game in TotK.
I haven't mentioned Ultrahand until now, because it felt largely superfluous to my experience with the game. On the tutorial island, I learned to my great disappointment that walking more than 50 yards from a boat I'd built to cross the first lake caused it to despawn. I was further let down after my first exhilarating flight on a wing part was cut short by the extremely stingy 30-second use time limit.
Ultrahand is barely integrated into the game. It feels like someone took the building mechanic from Garry's Mod, shoved it into BotW, and dumped a bunch of Lego parts everywhere. The game almost never requires its use outside of scripted events like the Death Mountain approach or boring green crystal sky island shrines; it's often faster and more effective to deal with the game's many enemies using the vanilla BotW combat.
So many elements of the game disincentivize its use. The building mechanic itself is finicky and time-consuming, and the distance and time limits are even more demoralizing. I was lucky to find auto-build early in the game, but the heavy Zonaite cost kept me from using it much. Maybe it wouldn't have mattered if going in to The Depths was fun, but mindlessly mining Zonaite felt like the worst kind of grindy MMO filler. I think the biggest tell is how many people complained when Nintendo removed the duplication glitch from the first build of the game. I normally side with Nintendo in these instances, but here, I think it exposes just how unfun and stingy the game is with resources.
I'm just scratching the surface of TotK's serious flaws. The "dungeons" are lackluster, and their "press these 5 or so buttons in any order" design uninspired. The repetitive sage cutscenes after the fairly enjoyable but too-easy boss fights are pathetic. Shrines are often just tutorials for Zonai parts, and can often be cheesed in unsatisfying ways. Sage powers are horribly implemented.
I'll balance all the negativity I just wrote by saying that I recognize that TotK isn't a bad game. If I hadn't played BotW, I'm sure I would have enjoyed it more. Maybe my expectations for the sequel of my favorite game were too high. And there are truly excellent moments that incentivized me to push through all the middling content, like launching off the roofs of sky ships into the eye of a snow storm, or exploring the super interesting Gerudo underground shelter, or fighting a Boss Bokoblin squad for the first time. But I can't deny that I resented most of the 100+ hour grind I put into this game, and I regret ever buying it.
The praise this game gets confuses me. Breath of the Wild itself was nothing particularly earthshattering, and this game is just Breath of the Wild again. The problem is that what made BOTW novel is not anymore. We've seen this type of expansive open world before. It's not impressive anymore.
Of course, more land was added, but what was added is half as much of what was worth exploring in BOTW. The skylands mostly exist for dungeons and chests, nothing more or less. There isn't enough landmass up there aside from the tutorial zone for it to feel like a whole new second map. The underground zone too is stagnant, introducing an annoying gimmick with an intense difficulty spike that makes exploring it a pain.
I understand that the new building system is technically impressive. I'm a game designer, I see this. However, just because something is impressive does not make it good. The fusing system itself does allow for a bunch of interesting puzzles, but it's the same gimmick reused for every single puzzle. Eventually, this mechanic too has its novelty wear off, and unless you have a degree in engineering or loved Banjo Kazooie Nuts 'n' Bolts too much, you won't be getting a lot out of it. Yes, it is impressive what it can do and that it functions at all, and the possibilities available to players is commendable. It is a feat in design that a lot of these puzzles have more than one solution. Yet the game does not force you to create anything super outside the box. While I said most puzzles have more than one solution, it is made very clear that there is 1 "right" way and every other solution is a player either a: intentionally breaking the game or b: not understanding the signs. Nowhere are you challenged to make an army of inter-continental strike drones. You can, and those who know how will, but this will never cross the mind of the average player. Had this game pushed the bounds of what this system could do perhaps I could find more praise for it. But they don't, it exists as simply a gimmick to justify the long development time and to show off a shiny new tech thing.
With this games announcement we were promised a much heavier story focus. We got slightly more story than BOTW. What we got was quite decent honestly, but it was the same egghunt from before to find all these things. This time, you just couldn't skip the intro story segment. What they gave us simply didn't carry the weight it should.
The intense amount of continuity errors are annoying too. The game hints to why this may be, but it simply does not make sense. This game likes the idea of being a direct sequel while also being too caught up in trying to rewrite it's own history. Where are the Divine Beasts? Where are the Guardians? Where is the fucking Shrine of Resurrection? Things vital to BOTW have vanished without a trace and the game refuses to explain itself. It should have, anyone who played BOTW would have noticed all of this immediately. There needs to be a reason for the sudden disappearance, and I sure would have liked to see it totally explained than just hoping I will take "time travel shenanigans" as an answer.
Tears of the Kingdom looks at what Breath of the Wild did well and misunderstands why it did well. The open world was good because it was so vast and nothing like any game had had before. Now, we have the same open world with minor variance, causing less desire to explore, and the marvel of such a vast world is now lost since it was done before. Of course, following up something like BOTW would prove to be a monolithic task regardless. Instead of improving the things BOTW did wrong, like the dungeons and puzzles, to try and succeed it's predecessor, it simply creates new things that solve nothing. Tears of the Kingdom prays its rehashed world with new zones will be enough to entice the player for the same hundreds of hours we all dumped into BOTW.
This game will forever be shadowed by it's predecessor. Not because the task was too big, but because they did not focus on the right things. Perhaps if Breath of the Wild never released, this game would be far better. Instead, it is a expansion in disguise as a $70 videogame. Shameless.
Just like Polyphia, just because something is hard to do does not immediately justify a perfect score. In a vacuum, the new system is very good, but the game simply does not allow for it to be as good as it can be, and in an attempt to perfect this feat in physics engineering and simulation, Nintendo seemingly forgot about the other aspects that make a Zelda game a Zelda game.
Of course, more land was added, but what was added is half as much of what was worth exploring in BOTW. The skylands mostly exist for dungeons and chests, nothing more or less. There isn't enough landmass up there aside from the tutorial zone for it to feel like a whole new second map. The underground zone too is stagnant, introducing an annoying gimmick with an intense difficulty spike that makes exploring it a pain.
I understand that the new building system is technically impressive. I'm a game designer, I see this. However, just because something is impressive does not make it good. The fusing system itself does allow for a bunch of interesting puzzles, but it's the same gimmick reused for every single puzzle. Eventually, this mechanic too has its novelty wear off, and unless you have a degree in engineering or loved Banjo Kazooie Nuts 'n' Bolts too much, you won't be getting a lot out of it. Yes, it is impressive what it can do and that it functions at all, and the possibilities available to players is commendable. It is a feat in design that a lot of these puzzles have more than one solution. Yet the game does not force you to create anything super outside the box. While I said most puzzles have more than one solution, it is made very clear that there is 1 "right" way and every other solution is a player either a: intentionally breaking the game or b: not understanding the signs. Nowhere are you challenged to make an army of inter-continental strike drones. You can, and those who know how will, but this will never cross the mind of the average player. Had this game pushed the bounds of what this system could do perhaps I could find more praise for it. But they don't, it exists as simply a gimmick to justify the long development time and to show off a shiny new tech thing.
With this games announcement we were promised a much heavier story focus. We got slightly more story than BOTW. What we got was quite decent honestly, but it was the same egghunt from before to find all these things. This time, you just couldn't skip the intro story segment. What they gave us simply didn't carry the weight it should.
The intense amount of continuity errors are annoying too. The game hints to why this may be, but it simply does not make sense. This game likes the idea of being a direct sequel while also being too caught up in trying to rewrite it's own history. Where are the Divine Beasts? Where are the Guardians? Where is the fucking Shrine of Resurrection? Things vital to BOTW have vanished without a trace and the game refuses to explain itself. It should have, anyone who played BOTW would have noticed all of this immediately. There needs to be a reason for the sudden disappearance, and I sure would have liked to see it totally explained than just hoping I will take "time travel shenanigans" as an answer.
Tears of the Kingdom looks at what Breath of the Wild did well and misunderstands why it did well. The open world was good because it was so vast and nothing like any game had had before. Now, we have the same open world with minor variance, causing less desire to explore, and the marvel of such a vast world is now lost since it was done before. Of course, following up something like BOTW would prove to be a monolithic task regardless. Instead of improving the things BOTW did wrong, like the dungeons and puzzles, to try and succeed it's predecessor, it simply creates new things that solve nothing. Tears of the Kingdom prays its rehashed world with new zones will be enough to entice the player for the same hundreds of hours we all dumped into BOTW.
This game will forever be shadowed by it's predecessor. Not because the task was too big, but because they did not focus on the right things. Perhaps if Breath of the Wild never released, this game would be far better. Instead, it is a expansion in disguise as a $70 videogame. Shameless.
Just like Polyphia, just because something is hard to do does not immediately justify a perfect score. In a vacuum, the new system is very good, but the game simply does not allow for it to be as good as it can be, and in an attempt to perfect this feat in physics engineering and simulation, Nintendo seemingly forgot about the other aspects that make a Zelda game a Zelda game.
A few hours into my playthrough of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, I made a comparison in my mind to another Nintendo sequel. Similarly to Tears of the Kingdom, it was the sequel to one of my favourite games. They both reuse the same basic game engine and mechanics, but set out to give players a new experience, without dismissing fans of the original. And both, while not entirely bad, missed the mark in ways. That's not to say that I think Super Mario Galaxy 2 is bad; far from it. I love Galaxy 2! I just had a few complaints with it that slightly lowered my opinion of it, and I still prefer the original. And for the first few hours, I expected Tears of the Kingdom to follow a similar path. I was hooked. While I was still in the first area of the game, it was setting up the new ideas perfectly. I was ready for the rest of the game to hit me with its best shot.
However, that shot never seemed to come. Where Galaxy 2 sought to soar higher than its predecessor, Tears of the Kingdom came crashing down.
I would like to note before going on with my long rambling that I haven't seen 100% of the content of this game, and it's likely that I got something wrong. But a lot of my opinions were inferred to me by the direction the game was going. Remember what I said earlier? How the game had perfectly set up its new ideas? Well, sadly, it set them up, but never aimed to go further.
To put it simply, every new idea introduced in Tears of the Kingdom feels undercooked. During my playthrough, I kept wondering and brainstorming ideas that could help flesh out each mechanic more, but the game feels like it was made in a way that undermines itself. My biggest issue with these comes from the creation mechanic. This is clearly the main thing Nintendo wants customers to take away from this game. It's all over the marketing: "You can use Link's fancy new arm to put together and build pretty much anything! There are endless possibilities!" And technically, the marketing isn't lying. You can build basically anything. Want to build a flying machine that can fly across Hyrule? You can! Want to build a car filled with explosives that can decimate enemies immediately? You can! Want to light a Korok on fire and crucify them? You can! In terms of options, this is an incredibly fleshed-out mechanic. However - and this feels extremely weird to say as someone who has been learning to work as a creative for the past three years - I just could not bring myself to care about the Ultra Hand.
My big issue comes from how the Ultra Hand is actually developed in the required quests for completing the story. And, well, it just isn't. The puzzles in Tears of the Kingdom are some of the most basic, uninteresting, and bland puzzles I've played in a while. Granted, I haven't actually cleared every shrine or every challenge in the game, but out of the 50 or so shrines I completed, I never once felt the difficulty rise at all since the very first tutorial. Most of them just boil down to "Stick this object onto this other object, activate it, and watch it play the game for you". Maybe you'll be putting a fan onto a minecart and watching it push you through a track. That's the whole shrine! It isn't like the game expects players to be purposefully experimental with clearing the shrines either, since each one happens to give you the exact amount of tools you need to go through the intended path, limiting the player more than encouraging them. You can still get away with some interesting stuff, but 30 shrines in I was already so checked out that I couldn't really be bothered. The dungeons do fare better than the shrines in this regard, seeing as how they take place in much more open areas and allow more exploration, but the puzzles in the dungeons actually made me miss the Divine Beasts from the first game. Say what you want about those, but I'd rather take a dungeon that actually requires me to think. The only dungeon that even comes close to the mechanical depth that I want is the one on Death Mountain, seeing as it requires you to use a flying machine in tandem with another (INSERT SPOILER ABILITY HERE) ability, but even then, you don't actually build the machine; it just happens to be lying around when you get there.
As for the shrines that don't utilise the Ultra Hand, those don't fare much better. The time reversal and ascension mechanics are cool ideas, but I can literally count the number of times I found them useful on two hands. In a way, you could argue that the shrines act more like miniature tutorials. Heck, some of them literally only exist to teach players about basic mechanics like shooting your bow and arrows or throwing your weapon - literally using text boxes to explain how each of them works. But I never really felt motivated to build anything in the overworld, either, not only because you can literally only collect the tools in your inventory by using a makeshift gacha mechanic. The Ultra Hand is perfect for players who want to spend hours creating cool vehicles or whatever, but for someone like me? I don't want to spend that much time on a game when I have so many more in my backlog to play. Whenever I walked by a pile of wooden planks and wheels left there by the developers, I just thought, "Why, though? I've already travelled around Hyrule perfectly fine on my own in Breath of the Wild. I could probably just walk to my destination faster than it takes me to build this shitty wooden car."
And therein lies my other huge issue; This game just feels too much like Breath of the Wild. Not enough is different. That might seem like a dumb statement. Like, of course it feels the same. It's a sequel using the same engine. But when this game kept getting delayed for four years straight, I kept thinking, "Woah, if this is taking just as much time to develop as the original game, they must be creating a huge new world for us to explore, alongside the updated Hyrule!". And while I was sort of correct, the new areas in the game are anything but interesting. Going back to what I said earlier, Tears of the Kingdom feels like it's undermining itself. I was so excited when I saw that the game would (supposedly) take place on these vast floating islands in the sky. That's one of my favourite types of settings ever! And the problem isn't that Tears of the Kingdom doesn't execute the idea of floating islands well; it's that it's barely utilised at all. I don't know the exact measurements for this, but from a quick glance at the map, the sky islands look like they take up literally around a 10th of the size of Hyrule. After the tutorial, that's pretty much it. I barely got to spend time on them outside of looking for the shrines they contained, which wasn't that fun either considering what I've already said about the shrines. Despite a gorgeous visual style, I unfortunately didn't get much out of the sky islands, which sucks considering it was probably the setting I was looking forward to most.
The other brand new area does fit into what I'd want a bit better, but also manages to miss the mark. I won't go on for too long about this since I don't actually think it was shown that much pre-release, but while it does have an amazing visual style and also gets to the type of size I'd want for a sequel (it's actually around the same size as Hyrule!), the game, once again, barely utilises it. Maybe I just missed something, but I never saw a reason to even go there after discovering it for the first time. It feels like it just exists to waste your resources by using them to light up the area, as the whole place is completely dark. (Don't you love it when games do that? Make it so you can't see anything and have to slowly make your way through an area? Definitely not aggravating at all.) It only felt necessary to go there close to the very end of the game, a point at which it is far too late for what could have been an amazing new setting.
I'm not entirely sure how to explain this last point. But despite how much I've talked on and on about the issues with gameplay, what killed it for me was the difference in atmosphere and tone. One of my favourite parts of Breath of the Wild was the feeling of solitude. At the start of the original game, when Link wakes up, he is completely alone with no memories in a devastated world. No one really knows him. Everyone from his previous life is either dead or close to it. The only human he sees for the first few hours of gameplay is a mysterious old man. He's thrown into a conflict of which he has no idea he was supposed to be a part of. This melancholy dread stirs all throughout Breath of the Wild, complimented by a minimal musical score as Link traverses through Hyrule. These moments in Breath of the Wild helped to completely sell me on the atmosphere, despite the slightly weak story the game plays out.
Meanwhile, how does Tears of the Kingdom start? With a 15-minute info dump as you slowly walk alongside Zelda as she gives you the exposition for the plot. Practically everyone in Hyrule knows about Link and his heroism, and the events of the first game are barely addressed from what I've seen. There isn't really a good frame for how much time has passed either, since characters like Purah have grown up a lot, while characters like Impa and Paya look the exact same. You revisit the same areas from the original, and the characters automatically agree to help you because you've already saved the world before. Link doesn't feel "alone" to me anymore. The developers have not changed Hyrule enough to accommodate this change in tone, which, in my eyes, ultimately undermines the moments when Link is exploring Hyrule.
This completely represents what Tears of the Kingdom is to me. It's clear the folks at Nintendo knew how successful Breath of the Wild was but didn't really realise why. So when it came time to make the sequel, they threw in ideas without wondering how they would change the original. The tightly designed mechanics from the original have been removed and replaced with what amounts to godmode tools that don't really mesh well with the puzzles they've designed. I haven't talked much about the overall plot, as I don't want to spoil a game that most people are enjoying much more than me. But it feels similarly weak to the original's, and this time, there's no masterfully crafted atmosphere to save it. Breath of the Wild wowed me. Dare I say, it was a breath of fresh air. But Tears of the Kingdom just leaves me feeling nothing. It's not awful; despite my ranting, there are still elements to appreciate. The visual style, as I've said, is phenomenal, Hyrule itself is still slightly fun to explore despite it's lack of a distinct tone, and the soundtrack can be incredible during the endgame. The creativity of the ideas and concepts shown here is fantastic, but that simply isn't enough when the rest of the game doesn't feel interested in expanding on them.
Sometime soon, I want to play through more Zelda games. Not only because I admittedly haven't played that many, but because I want to see what everyone else sees. I want to see how this series became one of the most iconic in history. When I started Tears of the Kingdom, I went in thinking I would get to see it. But when I look at this game, I unfortunately cannot give it the title of "Legend".
However, that shot never seemed to come. Where Galaxy 2 sought to soar higher than its predecessor, Tears of the Kingdom came crashing down.
I would like to note before going on with my long rambling that I haven't seen 100% of the content of this game, and it's likely that I got something wrong. But a lot of my opinions were inferred to me by the direction the game was going. Remember what I said earlier? How the game had perfectly set up its new ideas? Well, sadly, it set them up, but never aimed to go further.
To put it simply, every new idea introduced in Tears of the Kingdom feels undercooked. During my playthrough, I kept wondering and brainstorming ideas that could help flesh out each mechanic more, but the game feels like it was made in a way that undermines itself. My biggest issue with these comes from the creation mechanic. This is clearly the main thing Nintendo wants customers to take away from this game. It's all over the marketing: "You can use Link's fancy new arm to put together and build pretty much anything! There are endless possibilities!" And technically, the marketing isn't lying. You can build basically anything. Want to build a flying machine that can fly across Hyrule? You can! Want to build a car filled with explosives that can decimate enemies immediately? You can! Want to light a Korok on fire and crucify them? You can! In terms of options, this is an incredibly fleshed-out mechanic. However - and this feels extremely weird to say as someone who has been learning to work as a creative for the past three years - I just could not bring myself to care about the Ultra Hand.
My big issue comes from how the Ultra Hand is actually developed in the required quests for completing the story. And, well, it just isn't. The puzzles in Tears of the Kingdom are some of the most basic, uninteresting, and bland puzzles I've played in a while. Granted, I haven't actually cleared every shrine or every challenge in the game, but out of the 50 or so shrines I completed, I never once felt the difficulty rise at all since the very first tutorial. Most of them just boil down to "Stick this object onto this other object, activate it, and watch it play the game for you". Maybe you'll be putting a fan onto a minecart and watching it push you through a track. That's the whole shrine! It isn't like the game expects players to be purposefully experimental with clearing the shrines either, since each one happens to give you the exact amount of tools you need to go through the intended path, limiting the player more than encouraging them. You can still get away with some interesting stuff, but 30 shrines in I was already so checked out that I couldn't really be bothered. The dungeons do fare better than the shrines in this regard, seeing as how they take place in much more open areas and allow more exploration, but the puzzles in the dungeons actually made me miss the Divine Beasts from the first game. Say what you want about those, but I'd rather take a dungeon that actually requires me to think. The only dungeon that even comes close to the mechanical depth that I want is the one on Death Mountain, seeing as it requires you to use a flying machine in tandem with another (INSERT SPOILER ABILITY HERE) ability, but even then, you don't actually build the machine; it just happens to be lying around when you get there.
As for the shrines that don't utilise the Ultra Hand, those don't fare much better. The time reversal and ascension mechanics are cool ideas, but I can literally count the number of times I found them useful on two hands. In a way, you could argue that the shrines act more like miniature tutorials. Heck, some of them literally only exist to teach players about basic mechanics like shooting your bow and arrows or throwing your weapon - literally using text boxes to explain how each of them works. But I never really felt motivated to build anything in the overworld, either, not only because you can literally only collect the tools in your inventory by using a makeshift gacha mechanic. The Ultra Hand is perfect for players who want to spend hours creating cool vehicles or whatever, but for someone like me? I don't want to spend that much time on a game when I have so many more in my backlog to play. Whenever I walked by a pile of wooden planks and wheels left there by the developers, I just thought, "Why, though? I've already travelled around Hyrule perfectly fine on my own in Breath of the Wild. I could probably just walk to my destination faster than it takes me to build this shitty wooden car."
And therein lies my other huge issue; This game just feels too much like Breath of the Wild. Not enough is different. That might seem like a dumb statement. Like, of course it feels the same. It's a sequel using the same engine. But when this game kept getting delayed for four years straight, I kept thinking, "Woah, if this is taking just as much time to develop as the original game, they must be creating a huge new world for us to explore, alongside the updated Hyrule!". And while I was sort of correct, the new areas in the game are anything but interesting. Going back to what I said earlier, Tears of the Kingdom feels like it's undermining itself. I was so excited when I saw that the game would (supposedly) take place on these vast floating islands in the sky. That's one of my favourite types of settings ever! And the problem isn't that Tears of the Kingdom doesn't execute the idea of floating islands well; it's that it's barely utilised at all. I don't know the exact measurements for this, but from a quick glance at the map, the sky islands look like they take up literally around a 10th of the size of Hyrule. After the tutorial, that's pretty much it. I barely got to spend time on them outside of looking for the shrines they contained, which wasn't that fun either considering what I've already said about the shrines. Despite a gorgeous visual style, I unfortunately didn't get much out of the sky islands, which sucks considering it was probably the setting I was looking forward to most.
The other brand new area does fit into what I'd want a bit better, but also manages to miss the mark. I won't go on for too long about this since I don't actually think it was shown that much pre-release, but while it does have an amazing visual style and also gets to the type of size I'd want for a sequel (it's actually around the same size as Hyrule!), the game, once again, barely utilises it. Maybe I just missed something, but I never saw a reason to even go there after discovering it for the first time. It feels like it just exists to waste your resources by using them to light up the area, as the whole place is completely dark. (Don't you love it when games do that? Make it so you can't see anything and have to slowly make your way through an area? Definitely not aggravating at all.) It only felt necessary to go there close to the very end of the game, a point at which it is far too late for what could have been an amazing new setting.
I'm not entirely sure how to explain this last point. But despite how much I've talked on and on about the issues with gameplay, what killed it for me was the difference in atmosphere and tone. One of my favourite parts of Breath of the Wild was the feeling of solitude. At the start of the original game, when Link wakes up, he is completely alone with no memories in a devastated world. No one really knows him. Everyone from his previous life is either dead or close to it. The only human he sees for the first few hours of gameplay is a mysterious old man. He's thrown into a conflict of which he has no idea he was supposed to be a part of. This melancholy dread stirs all throughout Breath of the Wild, complimented by a minimal musical score as Link traverses through Hyrule. These moments in Breath of the Wild helped to completely sell me on the atmosphere, despite the slightly weak story the game plays out.
Meanwhile, how does Tears of the Kingdom start? With a 15-minute info dump as you slowly walk alongside Zelda as she gives you the exposition for the plot. Practically everyone in Hyrule knows about Link and his heroism, and the events of the first game are barely addressed from what I've seen. There isn't really a good frame for how much time has passed either, since characters like Purah have grown up a lot, while characters like Impa and Paya look the exact same. You revisit the same areas from the original, and the characters automatically agree to help you because you've already saved the world before. Link doesn't feel "alone" to me anymore. The developers have not changed Hyrule enough to accommodate this change in tone, which, in my eyes, ultimately undermines the moments when Link is exploring Hyrule.
This completely represents what Tears of the Kingdom is to me. It's clear the folks at Nintendo knew how successful Breath of the Wild was but didn't really realise why. So when it came time to make the sequel, they threw in ideas without wondering how they would change the original. The tightly designed mechanics from the original have been removed and replaced with what amounts to godmode tools that don't really mesh well with the puzzles they've designed. I haven't talked much about the overall plot, as I don't want to spoil a game that most people are enjoying much more than me. But it feels similarly weak to the original's, and this time, there's no masterfully crafted atmosphere to save it. Breath of the Wild wowed me. Dare I say, it was a breath of fresh air. But Tears of the Kingdom just leaves me feeling nothing. It's not awful; despite my ranting, there are still elements to appreciate. The visual style, as I've said, is phenomenal, Hyrule itself is still slightly fun to explore despite it's lack of a distinct tone, and the soundtrack can be incredible during the endgame. The creativity of the ideas and concepts shown here is fantastic, but that simply isn't enough when the rest of the game doesn't feel interested in expanding on them.
Sometime soon, I want to play through more Zelda games. Not only because I admittedly haven't played that many, but because I want to see what everyone else sees. I want to see how this series became one of the most iconic in history. When I started Tears of the Kingdom, I went in thinking I would get to see it. But when I look at this game, I unfortunately cannot give it the title of "Legend".
should've been called death of the wild
Ganon wouldn't have tried that shit if I was there
Now that I beat the main story, I feel like I can finally review this. After the feeling of wonder and awe that I felt with Breath of the Wild, I had high expectations for this game. For the most part, this exceeded my expectations in more ways than one. But I must say, this game didn't give me the same feeling when I began it, it was a good feeling but very different. Maybe it was the beginning sky island or the vibe of the story but it didn't feel the same and that may be no fault of the game; in all honesty, I don't think any game will make me feel the way that BOTW felt. But besides that impossible expectation, this game is near perfect. It is everything I would want in a sequel game. The controls frustrated me to no-end at the beginning but after awhile of playing, it became very familiar. I applaud the amount of new content this game gave with the addition of the sky islands and the depths (it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to discover the depths by the way) and even the new content and flow of the surface. They left a good amount to discover with the additions of the caves and wells. I loved the sages and their powers. They all proved to be very helpful at times, I mostly had Tulin and Yonobo out at all times. As for the story, while it wasn't perfect, I feel satisfied with it. I don't feel like there were any loose ends and there were no questions that went unanswered. I'm planning on returning it to 100% it, I'm at about 70% as of finishing it. (Just need to finish side quests).
My (18F) SO (47M) won't stop shouting BRAVO NINTENDO every time he is able to climb something, AITA for accidentally calling his videogame "Tears of the Child"?
I feel like I'm going insane seeing people everywhere go "WOW ITS ACTUALLY SO GOOD ITS ACTUALLY BETTER" while never pointing out why, as if you're just supposed to accept that "you can do many things = good videogame"
This was never gonna hit very hard for me unless they changed the format from BotW significantly, and lord knows they didn't have the balls to nudge even a single system from that game. For the record I don't have even a single problem with the bricklayers, the carpenters or the painters of this house, I'd just like a word with the architect. What has been crafted within the format and beyond the systems is pretty nuts - plenty of great quests and open world storytelling, great environmental puzzles (outside of shrines - which are a mixed bag), and a much better presentation than before.
There's still very little point in interacting with much of the world, combat - being mostly centered on physics cheese - still feels like a round of TABS, Link still has to run around grinding for food like he's in an early access survival sim, clothes and temperature are still non-systems that basically just make you menu a whole lot more and your path still consists of 80% completely forgettable, mind numbing gliding/climbing from point A to point B.
This time however, you're much less interrupted by discovery and exploration, as you already know what's beyond the horizon, seeing as a large majority of the game takes places on more or less the same map. This was a dumb decision taken by an idiot. There are very little soyface moments to be had if you already played the previous game, and you're also supposed to believe that the new stuff they did add (both world and story) was just uh.. it was just hiding last time okay!! Stop thinking about it!!!
I actually really like the final act or so of the story, at least presentation wise, but the substance of the whole thing is extremely lacking and you can pretty much figure out the entire plot in broad strokes from seeing maybe 10% of it.
Temples are much better looking now and a little bit better gameplay wise - but shrines? Flip a coin man. Sometimes they're way better than anything in BotW and sometimes it's like "hurr duur here is a big stick and a lever with no big stick on it, wonder what to do man haha". Thanks Dora, I'll bring out the notebook see if we can't crack this conumdrum. A lot of the shrine puzzles are solved upon a single glance and then take significant time and fiddling to actually execute, which just feels like you're jerking off with the HL2 gravity gun for several minutes trying to make a plate balance on a stick, and fast solve + long execute = YAWN. In BotW some shrines had "alternative" solutions where you could solve the shrine in other ways than intended - I thought this was neat. In TotK, most shrines can be skipped entirely if you strap a single rocket to any of your backup shields. For a while I tested the limits of this by simply strapping every rocket I found to a shield and skipping around 4-6 shrines in a row by simply flying over the content after doing the solve in my head in 5 seconds and not wanting to bother with the execute. I don't think this is neat.
The Ascend ability in particular legitimately has like one puzzle you can make with it - you go up through roof. Is there a roof? If yes, use ability menu. It sometimes feels like it was made entirely so designers could spend less time making sure every cave had an exit. Rewind is not much better - it's impressive technologically but as an actual level design tool it's insanely one dimensional and when they try to make it not one dimensional by making shit that flips and turns so you can't "just" rewind it in the same angle, it becomes extremely finicky and feels like physics cheese again.
Closing rant:
Little Big Planet cars have zero place in Zelda and I'll never be convinced otherwise. I have been completely unimmersed since the second I saw rockets lying around for no reason. Oh and while I'm at it fuck your Purah pad bullshit ass in-universe Switch too. It's not cute Nintendo!!! It just looks fucking weird!!! No one else has one! Those fantasy creatures would freak the fuck out if they saw a handheld tablet!!! Fuck you!!!!!
Final score: Why is it so empty in the basement
I feel like I'm going insane seeing people everywhere go "WOW ITS ACTUALLY SO GOOD ITS ACTUALLY BETTER" while never pointing out why, as if you're just supposed to accept that "you can do many things = good videogame"
This was never gonna hit very hard for me unless they changed the format from BotW significantly, and lord knows they didn't have the balls to nudge even a single system from that game. For the record I don't have even a single problem with the bricklayers, the carpenters or the painters of this house, I'd just like a word with the architect. What has been crafted within the format and beyond the systems is pretty nuts - plenty of great quests and open world storytelling, great environmental puzzles (outside of shrines - which are a mixed bag), and a much better presentation than before.
There's still very little point in interacting with much of the world, combat - being mostly centered on physics cheese - still feels like a round of TABS, Link still has to run around grinding for food like he's in an early access survival sim, clothes and temperature are still non-systems that basically just make you menu a whole lot more and your path still consists of 80% completely forgettable, mind numbing gliding/climbing from point A to point B.
This time however, you're much less interrupted by discovery and exploration, as you already know what's beyond the horizon, seeing as a large majority of the game takes places on more or less the same map. This was a dumb decision taken by an idiot. There are very little soyface moments to be had if you already played the previous game, and you're also supposed to believe that the new stuff they did add (both world and story) was just uh.. it was just hiding last time okay!! Stop thinking about it!!!
I actually really like the final act or so of the story, at least presentation wise, but the substance of the whole thing is extremely lacking and you can pretty much figure out the entire plot in broad strokes from seeing maybe 10% of it.
Temples are much better looking now and a little bit better gameplay wise - but shrines? Flip a coin man. Sometimes they're way better than anything in BotW and sometimes it's like "hurr duur here is a big stick and a lever with no big stick on it, wonder what to do man haha". Thanks Dora, I'll bring out the notebook see if we can't crack this conumdrum. A lot of the shrine puzzles are solved upon a single glance and then take significant time and fiddling to actually execute, which just feels like you're jerking off with the HL2 gravity gun for several minutes trying to make a plate balance on a stick, and fast solve + long execute = YAWN. In BotW some shrines had "alternative" solutions where you could solve the shrine in other ways than intended - I thought this was neat. In TotK, most shrines can be skipped entirely if you strap a single rocket to any of your backup shields. For a while I tested the limits of this by simply strapping every rocket I found to a shield and skipping around 4-6 shrines in a row by simply flying over the content after doing the solve in my head in 5 seconds and not wanting to bother with the execute. I don't think this is neat.
The Ascend ability in particular legitimately has like one puzzle you can make with it - you go up through roof. Is there a roof? If yes, use ability menu. It sometimes feels like it was made entirely so designers could spend less time making sure every cave had an exit. Rewind is not much better - it's impressive technologically but as an actual level design tool it's insanely one dimensional and when they try to make it not one dimensional by making shit that flips and turns so you can't "just" rewind it in the same angle, it becomes extremely finicky and feels like physics cheese again.
Closing rant:
Little Big Planet cars have zero place in Zelda and I'll never be convinced otherwise. I have been completely unimmersed since the second I saw rockets lying around for no reason. Oh and while I'm at it fuck your Purah pad bullshit ass in-universe Switch too. It's not cute Nintendo!!! It just looks fucking weird!!! No one else has one! Those fantasy creatures would freak the fuck out if they saw a handheld tablet!!! Fuck you!!!!!
Final score: Why is it so empty in the basement
This review contains spoilers
Breath of the Wild was a game I loved and I’m still very fond of. I think its weaknesses are pretty clear-cut and acknowledged by a lot of people, but the reason I still hold it in high regard is because of how cohesive it felt. Without sounding too corny or sycophantic, for a Nintendo who (especially at the time) were increasingly attached to an image of coddling and handholding, a Zelda game starting with the objective to “destroy Ganon” and declaring everything else to be optional felt like an important statement, it felt like a shift away from the streamlined, prescribed experiences of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword and toward a vision of natural discovery, which landed for me because of how much it felt like the game was constructed around it: A breathing, living world, the sound of nature and the swaying of trees, puzzles revolving around non-discrete physics and grounded temperatures, world design intended to accentuate the simple desire to climb on top of things and jump off them, looking at something in the distance and thinking “I want to go there”. They were so committed to this vision that they abandoned the heroic, melodic field themes of the past in favour of something restrained, which was guaranteed to piss some people off. I’m under no illusion that Breath of the Wild was a perfect game, in fact, its an extremely flawed one, but as my tastes in games have aged and (hopefully) matured I’ve come to value thematic completeness over "content" more and more, which Breath of the Wild achieved, despite its flaws.
Make no mistake, Breath of the Wild had a lot of flaws. Arguably outside of that core experience of free exploration, it was a game composed almost entirely of flaws. This seemed to be common knowledge for everyone but Nintendo, who saw the praise and thought it would be sufficient to replicate its core systems verbatim. I think if you asked someone what their wishlist for a BotW 2 would have been, practically nobody would have imagined what Tears of the Kingdom actually ended up actually being: More Koroks? Identical combat? More shrines? Cooking and healing unchanged? Clothing and inventory slots unchanged? Weapon durability? Still no traditional length dungeons? I don’t think many people would ask for that. This isn’t to say that Tears of the Kingdom has improved nothing: Enemy variety is significantly better here and the world in general is much denser and has more to discover - the Elden Ring influence being obvious in the depths and caves. Bosses are also much better and even have multiple ways to defeat them, bringing them in line with the freedom on offer in the rest of the puzzles. These things were “asked for” and they’re good, but they’re very much “more of the same”.
I think the most emphatic success of the game is the new powers. In BotW, powers were rarely useful outside of the shrines that required them, whereas here so much of the experience is curated for them. Caves and ascend create this beautiful continuous flow where exploration never comes to an arbitrary stopping point, and rewind feels like it perfectly accompanies ultrahand as well as being a general programming marvel. Fuse is the one I’m most sceptical of. Doubling down on weapon durability - a mechanic which was almost universally complained about in BotW - is a design decision I respect on paper, but I feel in practice it serves to make a lot of the weapons more interchangeable. If the majority of weapon attack power comes from fused monster parts, then the base weapon barely matters, meaning getting a weapon in a chest is just as shrug-worthy as it was in BotW. That this system hasn’t been fixed by fuse is evident in the late-game, which has the identical problem to BotW in that you have so many weapon slots and so many equally good weapons that each individual weapon becomes meaningless. Ultrahand, however, is easily the star of the show and feels like this inexhaustible source of hijinks which the whole game is constructed to support.
One of my favourite reviews on this website by nrmac, a review I think about frequently, talks about how a lot of great art wasn’t “asked for”. I don’t think this game in general fits that bill but ultrahand feels like it does; something great that nobody asked for. In concept, it feels like a perfect elaboration of the ideas in BotW - drawing attention to the environment as a source of problem-solving and furthering the theme of freedom, the new crystal-fetching shrines that were integrated into the world ended up being consistently my favourites for how they encouraged building hilariously dumb contraptions. At the same time, I do have a problem with ultrahand. It seems likely to me that ultrahand is a mechanic designed with the Twitter clip in mind, something aimed toward the potential limits of play rather than the average situation. I say this because throughout the entire game I only really needed to build about 3 different things to solve these problems: Fanplanes for long horizontal distances, hot air balloons for long vertical distances, “thing with rocket” for everything in-between. Granted, I had fun building these things, it didn’t get old, but it never felt like the game coaxed me into the complex depths of this mechanic, something which the shrines should have done. This is evident in the frequently ignored building materials that litter Hyrule’s roadsides, which might be fun to build with but never actually time-efficient, why build a car when you can just fast-travel?
This creeps into one of my biggest problems with TotK. Not the shrines alone but their connection to the new verticality offered by the floating islands. The paraglider in BotW was a tool that risked breaking a lot of the experience by allowing the player to traverse great distances with little effort, but it was rationed and balanced by high places being a goal. There was this flow to exploration where mountains would invite you to climb them, then once at the top you could paraglide to anywhere you could see, it was core to the exploratory loop. In TotK, however, verticality is cheap, not only because every tower catapults you so far into the sky, but by how you can just fast-travel to a floating island and paraglide wherever you please. This greatly exacerbates the problem that shrines pose. Shrines were disappointing in BotW not just because they offered lacklustre experiences, but because they were one of the only few things in the game which offered permanent rewards, as well as permanent progress in the form of fast-travel points, which put this awkward focus on them which they couldn’t live up to. It was a necessity imposed by this that shrines were obfuscated by the geometry. If it was possible to spot shrines easily, the whole game would just be about running from one shrine to the next, which would only further highlight their problems. In TotK, however, this essentially happened. I frequently found myself jumping off floating islands, paragliding to a shrine, then fast-travelling back to the floating island to jump off to another shrine. The majority of the shrines I completed were found this way. At the end of the game, my “Hero’s Path” was very frequently just straight lines toward shrines.
There’s this point in Matthewmatosis’ BotW video, (starting at 28:28, I recommend you watch these few minutes, it’s incredibly relevant to what I’m saying here.), about how free traversal isn’t actually what leads to memorable encounters. Personally, my most memorable moment from BotW was the path to Zora’s domain, which I did very early on and felt like something special. It’s telling that in TotK, a similar setup occurs with the path to the domain being blocked by mud, trying to encourage the player to find creative ways to clean up the path before them, but whereas in BotW I was forced down that path, in TotK I simply paraglided right into the domain from a nearby sky island, which I knew the location of anyway, and so its effect was completely nullified.
Here’s the moments in TotK which I loved the most and were memorable to me: The buildup to the Wind Temple, finding the entrance to the Korok forest, and the entire Mineru questline (the least spoiler-y way I can put it). I imagine the first of these will find general agreement as the best setpiece from either of these games, but the second, to me, was this amazing eureka moment where I finally figured out how to get there. But imagine for a second if you could just glide into the Korok forest from a sky island. Do this, and it illustrates my problem with the rest of the game.
A lot of this would be alleviated if shrines were better, but they are shockingly just as bad in the exact same way that BotW shrines were bad. The introductory shrines on the Great Sky Island are the same level of complexity as all the rest of the shrines, they mostly start off with an idea that’s “very simple” and iterate on it until it’s “simple”. Many solutions are just “use recall on a thing then jump on it”, or “build something incredibly rudimentary with parts that the game gives you anyway, making it obvious what the solution is”, or “use ascend on one (1) thing”. Practically every “combat training” shrine is insulting, even to the intelligence of young children, and every demeaning jingle that played when I did something incredibly easy had me questioning whether I was in Nintendo’s target age range anymore. While BotW’s premise of “freedom” seemed to be Nintendo letting go of their coddling tendencies, shrines were evidence that they couldn’t let go entirely. I was expecting the sequel, at the very least, to develop this part of the game, or at least skip the shrines dedicated to tutorialising basic mechanics, but it still has the problem that some tutorial shrines will be found dozens of hours into the game. Personally, I found a sneakstrike tutorial and bow-bullet-time tutorial over 30 hours into my game, which would not only be bad on its own, but considering the previous game made the same mistakes 6 years ago, it’s embarrassing. I’m sorry if you like these shrines but I fundamentally think they are a bad idea; a game about discovery and exploration is at odds with the aesthetic homogeneity they offer. It’s still possible to solve them in multiple ways, but when the solutions are this easy, why spend any time experimenting?
Intrinsic motivation was an important concept in BotW, but intrinsic motivation needs to work in conjunction with extrinsic motivation in order to be compelling. A player may wander in a certain direction out of the intrinsic desire to go towards something that looks interesting, and the game may reward them with a shrine, but if an extrinsic reward is easily accessible without doing anything intrinsically interesting, the only thing stopping the player from bypassing it is their own willpower and ability to curate their own experiences. I could build a big mecha car with laser beams on it and roll into a moblin camp to commit war crimes, but when I can jump from a sky island directly to four shrines in the same timeframe, it dramatically challenges the lengths I need to go to “find my own fun”; I could spend 30 minutes experimenting with the most hilarious way to break the solution to a shrine, but when the intended solutions take about 2 minutes, it gets to the point where only the most dedicated players can make the most of the experience (again, why I think this game is designed with the Twitter clip in mind). In short, the intrinsic and extrinsic parts of this game are out of sync with each-other, or to put it in another way, there’s too much freedom.
This is starting to sound incredibly negative, but to be clear, I do think this is a good game, but in many ways it has exacerbated the problems latent in BotW, when many many other problems it hasn’t iterated on at all. It’s easy to ask for “more stuff” in a sequel, but despite BotW’s relative lack of content, it still inspired a sense of wonder in me that lasted throughout the majority of the game, some of which is lost simply by knowing where things are. When I stumbled upon Zora’s domain in BotW, it was magical. When I paraglided my way there in TotK, it was expected. When I found my first dragon, or maze, or the blood moon rose for the first time in BotW, it was special. When I found these same things in TotK I was bitterly disappointed that they reused them.
The story makes this all even more disappointing. Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Link and Zelda have a fatal encounter with Ganon/dorf and some amount of time passes, Link, far into the future, travels around Hyrule enlisting the help of four champions/sages, a Rito, Gerudo, Zora and Goron, he finds the master sword, which Zelda had prepared in advance for him, and collects memories of the past which inform him of what happened. Finally, he travels into the interior/depths of Hyrule castle to confront Ganon/dorf, who turns into a beast and is ultimately defeated by Zelda and Link together in a mechanically dull cinematic final boss. Beneath the Zonai stuff, it's the exact same story, set in the same world.
It’s a good game, how could it not be? but during the marketing cycle, I was hoping it would be to BotW what Majora’s Mask was to Ocarina. Something that, despite using the same assets, offered a different experience and used its direct sequel status as an opportunity to tell a radically different story to the typical Zelda fare. This isn't a Majora's Mask, it’s a Twilight Princess, something with a superficially edgy veneer that ultimately struggles to find an identity distinct from the game it models itself on, something that feels "asked for", despite its parts that definitely weren't. I think I’m self-aware enough to realise that pontificating about the reception of a game is a waste of time, but given the glowing feedback this has received, I think we’re likely going to see the next Zelda game also retread the same ground, here’s hoping that once the new formula becomes stagnant again, we can see another Breath of the Wild, not in its flawed superficial mechanics, but in essence.
Make no mistake, Breath of the Wild had a lot of flaws. Arguably outside of that core experience of free exploration, it was a game composed almost entirely of flaws. This seemed to be common knowledge for everyone but Nintendo, who saw the praise and thought it would be sufficient to replicate its core systems verbatim. I think if you asked someone what their wishlist for a BotW 2 would have been, practically nobody would have imagined what Tears of the Kingdom actually ended up actually being: More Koroks? Identical combat? More shrines? Cooking and healing unchanged? Clothing and inventory slots unchanged? Weapon durability? Still no traditional length dungeons? I don’t think many people would ask for that. This isn’t to say that Tears of the Kingdom has improved nothing: Enemy variety is significantly better here and the world in general is much denser and has more to discover - the Elden Ring influence being obvious in the depths and caves. Bosses are also much better and even have multiple ways to defeat them, bringing them in line with the freedom on offer in the rest of the puzzles. These things were “asked for” and they’re good, but they’re very much “more of the same”.
I think the most emphatic success of the game is the new powers. In BotW, powers were rarely useful outside of the shrines that required them, whereas here so much of the experience is curated for them. Caves and ascend create this beautiful continuous flow where exploration never comes to an arbitrary stopping point, and rewind feels like it perfectly accompanies ultrahand as well as being a general programming marvel. Fuse is the one I’m most sceptical of. Doubling down on weapon durability - a mechanic which was almost universally complained about in BotW - is a design decision I respect on paper, but I feel in practice it serves to make a lot of the weapons more interchangeable. If the majority of weapon attack power comes from fused monster parts, then the base weapon barely matters, meaning getting a weapon in a chest is just as shrug-worthy as it was in BotW. That this system hasn’t been fixed by fuse is evident in the late-game, which has the identical problem to BotW in that you have so many weapon slots and so many equally good weapons that each individual weapon becomes meaningless. Ultrahand, however, is easily the star of the show and feels like this inexhaustible source of hijinks which the whole game is constructed to support.
One of my favourite reviews on this website by nrmac, a review I think about frequently, talks about how a lot of great art wasn’t “asked for”. I don’t think this game in general fits that bill but ultrahand feels like it does; something great that nobody asked for. In concept, it feels like a perfect elaboration of the ideas in BotW - drawing attention to the environment as a source of problem-solving and furthering the theme of freedom, the new crystal-fetching shrines that were integrated into the world ended up being consistently my favourites for how they encouraged building hilariously dumb contraptions. At the same time, I do have a problem with ultrahand. It seems likely to me that ultrahand is a mechanic designed with the Twitter clip in mind, something aimed toward the potential limits of play rather than the average situation. I say this because throughout the entire game I only really needed to build about 3 different things to solve these problems: Fanplanes for long horizontal distances, hot air balloons for long vertical distances, “thing with rocket” for everything in-between. Granted, I had fun building these things, it didn’t get old, but it never felt like the game coaxed me into the complex depths of this mechanic, something which the shrines should have done. This is evident in the frequently ignored building materials that litter Hyrule’s roadsides, which might be fun to build with but never actually time-efficient, why build a car when you can just fast-travel?
This creeps into one of my biggest problems with TotK. Not the shrines alone but their connection to the new verticality offered by the floating islands. The paraglider in BotW was a tool that risked breaking a lot of the experience by allowing the player to traverse great distances with little effort, but it was rationed and balanced by high places being a goal. There was this flow to exploration where mountains would invite you to climb them, then once at the top you could paraglide to anywhere you could see, it was core to the exploratory loop. In TotK, however, verticality is cheap, not only because every tower catapults you so far into the sky, but by how you can just fast-travel to a floating island and paraglide wherever you please. This greatly exacerbates the problem that shrines pose. Shrines were disappointing in BotW not just because they offered lacklustre experiences, but because they were one of the only few things in the game which offered permanent rewards, as well as permanent progress in the form of fast-travel points, which put this awkward focus on them which they couldn’t live up to. It was a necessity imposed by this that shrines were obfuscated by the geometry. If it was possible to spot shrines easily, the whole game would just be about running from one shrine to the next, which would only further highlight their problems. In TotK, however, this essentially happened. I frequently found myself jumping off floating islands, paragliding to a shrine, then fast-travelling back to the floating island to jump off to another shrine. The majority of the shrines I completed were found this way. At the end of the game, my “Hero’s Path” was very frequently just straight lines toward shrines.
There’s this point in Matthewmatosis’ BotW video, (starting at 28:28, I recommend you watch these few minutes, it’s incredibly relevant to what I’m saying here.), about how free traversal isn’t actually what leads to memorable encounters. Personally, my most memorable moment from BotW was the path to Zora’s domain, which I did very early on and felt like something special. It’s telling that in TotK, a similar setup occurs with the path to the domain being blocked by mud, trying to encourage the player to find creative ways to clean up the path before them, but whereas in BotW I was forced down that path, in TotK I simply paraglided right into the domain from a nearby sky island, which I knew the location of anyway, and so its effect was completely nullified.
Here’s the moments in TotK which I loved the most and were memorable to me: The buildup to the Wind Temple, finding the entrance to the Korok forest, and the entire Mineru questline (the least spoiler-y way I can put it). I imagine the first of these will find general agreement as the best setpiece from either of these games, but the second, to me, was this amazing eureka moment where I finally figured out how to get there. But imagine for a second if you could just glide into the Korok forest from a sky island. Do this, and it illustrates my problem with the rest of the game.
A lot of this would be alleviated if shrines were better, but they are shockingly just as bad in the exact same way that BotW shrines were bad. The introductory shrines on the Great Sky Island are the same level of complexity as all the rest of the shrines, they mostly start off with an idea that’s “very simple” and iterate on it until it’s “simple”. Many solutions are just “use recall on a thing then jump on it”, or “build something incredibly rudimentary with parts that the game gives you anyway, making it obvious what the solution is”, or “use ascend on one (1) thing”. Practically every “combat training” shrine is insulting, even to the intelligence of young children, and every demeaning jingle that played when I did something incredibly easy had me questioning whether I was in Nintendo’s target age range anymore. While BotW’s premise of “freedom” seemed to be Nintendo letting go of their coddling tendencies, shrines were evidence that they couldn’t let go entirely. I was expecting the sequel, at the very least, to develop this part of the game, or at least skip the shrines dedicated to tutorialising basic mechanics, but it still has the problem that some tutorial shrines will be found dozens of hours into the game. Personally, I found a sneakstrike tutorial and bow-bullet-time tutorial over 30 hours into my game, which would not only be bad on its own, but considering the previous game made the same mistakes 6 years ago, it’s embarrassing. I’m sorry if you like these shrines but I fundamentally think they are a bad idea; a game about discovery and exploration is at odds with the aesthetic homogeneity they offer. It’s still possible to solve them in multiple ways, but when the solutions are this easy, why spend any time experimenting?
Intrinsic motivation was an important concept in BotW, but intrinsic motivation needs to work in conjunction with extrinsic motivation in order to be compelling. A player may wander in a certain direction out of the intrinsic desire to go towards something that looks interesting, and the game may reward them with a shrine, but if an extrinsic reward is easily accessible without doing anything intrinsically interesting, the only thing stopping the player from bypassing it is their own willpower and ability to curate their own experiences. I could build a big mecha car with laser beams on it and roll into a moblin camp to commit war crimes, but when I can jump from a sky island directly to four shrines in the same timeframe, it dramatically challenges the lengths I need to go to “find my own fun”; I could spend 30 minutes experimenting with the most hilarious way to break the solution to a shrine, but when the intended solutions take about 2 minutes, it gets to the point where only the most dedicated players can make the most of the experience (again, why I think this game is designed with the Twitter clip in mind). In short, the intrinsic and extrinsic parts of this game are out of sync with each-other, or to put it in another way, there’s too much freedom.
This is starting to sound incredibly negative, but to be clear, I do think this is a good game, but in many ways it has exacerbated the problems latent in BotW, when many many other problems it hasn’t iterated on at all. It’s easy to ask for “more stuff” in a sequel, but despite BotW’s relative lack of content, it still inspired a sense of wonder in me that lasted throughout the majority of the game, some of which is lost simply by knowing where things are. When I stumbled upon Zora’s domain in BotW, it was magical. When I paraglided my way there in TotK, it was expected. When I found my first dragon, or maze, or the blood moon rose for the first time in BotW, it was special. When I found these same things in TotK I was bitterly disappointed that they reused them.
The story makes this all even more disappointing. Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Link and Zelda have a fatal encounter with Ganon/dorf and some amount of time passes, Link, far into the future, travels around Hyrule enlisting the help of four champions/sages, a Rito, Gerudo, Zora and Goron, he finds the master sword, which Zelda had prepared in advance for him, and collects memories of the past which inform him of what happened. Finally, he travels into the interior/depths of Hyrule castle to confront Ganon/dorf, who turns into a beast and is ultimately defeated by Zelda and Link together in a mechanically dull cinematic final boss. Beneath the Zonai stuff, it's the exact same story, set in the same world.
It’s a good game, how could it not be? but during the marketing cycle, I was hoping it would be to BotW what Majora’s Mask was to Ocarina. Something that, despite using the same assets, offered a different experience and used its direct sequel status as an opportunity to tell a radically different story to the typical Zelda fare. This isn't a Majora's Mask, it’s a Twilight Princess, something with a superficially edgy veneer that ultimately struggles to find an identity distinct from the game it models itself on, something that feels "asked for", despite its parts that definitely weren't. I think I’m self-aware enough to realise that pontificating about the reception of a game is a waste of time, but given the glowing feedback this has received, I think we’re likely going to see the next Zelda game also retread the same ground, here’s hoping that once the new formula becomes stagnant again, we can see another Breath of the Wild, not in its flawed superficial mechanics, but in essence.
Simultaneously an amazing, mind-boggling game, and one that falls a bit flat. I have no issue with the idea of an "iterative" sequel, i.e. one that just expands on what its predecessor did without trying to reinvent the wheel, but I think with 6+ years of dev time and a game that re-uses the same game world - you're hoping for a little more "new" than Tears Of The Kingdom offers. The Blood Moon still functions (and is still presented) the exact same, the dragons function the exact same, weapon durability and combat - if anything are actually made slightly more tedious and frustrating by virtue of the fact that you basically have to use Fuse every time you wanna get a half-decent weapon, so on and so forth.
For the first 10 or so hours of Tears Of The Kingdom, I think you get taken in by the excitement of diving off Sky Islands, going to The Depths and seeing how Hyrule has changed, but eventually the sameness of it all sets in at that midpoint and you realise how much actually hasn't changed. It's a weird one, because I love this interpretation of Hyrule, but I don't think any world no matter how charming could feel fresh across two full-length games of this size - and especially when you start to realise so many patterns and so much repeating content in The Depths and Sky Islands, Tears Of The Kingdom frequently flirts with feeling repetitive and rote - especially when the plot is as bad as it is, basically just a re-tread of BOTW with some different beats and absolutely fucking non-existent continuity.
Thankfully, Ultrahand and physics come in to save the day and stop this from being an overall disappointment. Single(ultra)handedly, the game's physics systems breathe constant fresh air (of the wild) into this game. The world might be largely be the same, but the way you traverse it and interact with it, the way you solve puzzles and progress through it is fundamentally changed in the most awe-inspiring ways. I rode from Tabantha Stable to Rito Village on a giant fucking unicycle! It's uniquely fun as a sandbox before it is an open world game because you've seen this world before - but playing around with Ultrahand and seeing all the crazy shit you can make happen with physics never gets old and I think it's gonna mean that this is a game you can go back to for a long time - and is likely gonna age pretty well! (Especially for content creators who are gonna be milking this shit for years to come.)
Tears Of The Kingdom is a really good game, but it barely scrapes by in getting that assessment from me. I assume a lot of the dev time went into Ultrahand and Recall and whatnot and making them work and thank god, what a worthwhile investment. All the other "new" stuff like Gleeoks, Caves, Wells, Crystal Shrines are cool the first few times - but their magic was always gonna fade after a while and I think this was a sequel doomed to be a disappointment if they couldn't find a way to shake things up like your abilities do. There's a lot of superficial stuff in Tears Of The Kingdom, and it wears on you more when the world is the same as Breath Of The Wild - as are a lot of the flaws. (Weapon durability, rain, weak story, etc.)
I had a good time! But I'm ready for something else from Zelda. Not gameplay-wise necessarily, but tonally. Let's get out of Hyrule for a bit, let's do something a little weirder and for the love of christ - let's sort out this fucking writing and voice acting lol
For the first 10 or so hours of Tears Of The Kingdom, I think you get taken in by the excitement of diving off Sky Islands, going to The Depths and seeing how Hyrule has changed, but eventually the sameness of it all sets in at that midpoint and you realise how much actually hasn't changed. It's a weird one, because I love this interpretation of Hyrule, but I don't think any world no matter how charming could feel fresh across two full-length games of this size - and especially when you start to realise so many patterns and so much repeating content in The Depths and Sky Islands, Tears Of The Kingdom frequently flirts with feeling repetitive and rote - especially when the plot is as bad as it is, basically just a re-tread of BOTW with some different beats and absolutely fucking non-existent continuity.
Thankfully, Ultrahand and physics come in to save the day and stop this from being an overall disappointment. Single(ultra)handedly, the game's physics systems breathe constant fresh air (of the wild) into this game. The world might be largely be the same, but the way you traverse it and interact with it, the way you solve puzzles and progress through it is fundamentally changed in the most awe-inspiring ways. I rode from Tabantha Stable to Rito Village on a giant fucking unicycle! It's uniquely fun as a sandbox before it is an open world game because you've seen this world before - but playing around with Ultrahand and seeing all the crazy shit you can make happen with physics never gets old and I think it's gonna mean that this is a game you can go back to for a long time - and is likely gonna age pretty well! (Especially for content creators who are gonna be milking this shit for years to come.)
Tears Of The Kingdom is a really good game, but it barely scrapes by in getting that assessment from me. I assume a lot of the dev time went into Ultrahand and Recall and whatnot and making them work and thank god, what a worthwhile investment. All the other "new" stuff like Gleeoks, Caves, Wells, Crystal Shrines are cool the first few times - but their magic was always gonna fade after a while and I think this was a sequel doomed to be a disappointment if they couldn't find a way to shake things up like your abilities do. There's a lot of superficial stuff in Tears Of The Kingdom, and it wears on you more when the world is the same as Breath Of The Wild - as are a lot of the flaws. (Weapon durability, rain, weak story, etc.)
I had a good time! But I'm ready for something else from Zelda. Not gameplay-wise necessarily, but tonally. Let's get out of Hyrule for a bit, let's do something a little weirder and for the love of christ - let's sort out this fucking writing and voice acting lol
Tears of the Kingdom is an evil video game. It is a shallow, meandering homonuculus in the shape of a "critically acclaimed video game." It is sinister in how it slithers along wearing the skin of a game we all liked seven years ago. It is deceptive in how it tricks the player into thinking it's wealth of "content" is fun. It is manipulative in how it attempts to wring tears out from the player despite the story meaning nothing.
It is a game about nothing for everyone. It is formless sludge to keep your fingers busy and your mind vacant. It is the death of art. It loots the corpses of the good Zelda games and uses them for fuel for the content mill.
It's kinda fun to skydive though
I won't call Tears of the Kingdom the worst game I've ever played - that'd be obviously hyperbolic. It's mechanically sound, looks nice, and there is some meager bits of fun to be had. But I think it's absolutely one of the worst pieces of art I've ever experienced. It does nothing to justify it's own existence, seemingly satisfied with just being. It has nothing new to say, nothing interesting to do, nothing cool to see. But hey, there's 900 Korok seeds, 700 locations, 194 caves, 152 shrines, 120 lightroots, 58 wells, 35 chasms, 35 settlements, 60 side adventures, 31 shrine quests, 139 side quests, 18 memories, it's so awesome dude there's so much content the game is great it has content I like this game because it has content I love content
It is a game about nothing for everyone. It is formless sludge to keep your fingers busy and your mind vacant. It is the death of art. It loots the corpses of the good Zelda games and uses them for fuel for the content mill.
It's kinda fun to skydive though
I won't call Tears of the Kingdom the worst game I've ever played - that'd be obviously hyperbolic. It's mechanically sound, looks nice, and there is some meager bits of fun to be had. But I think it's absolutely one of the worst pieces of art I've ever experienced. It does nothing to justify it's own existence, seemingly satisfied with just being. It has nothing new to say, nothing interesting to do, nothing cool to see. But hey, there's 900 Korok seeds, 700 locations, 194 caves, 152 shrines, 120 lightroots, 58 wells, 35 chasms, 35 settlements, 60 side adventures, 31 shrine quests, 139 side quests, 18 memories, it's so awesome dude there's so much content the game is great it has content I like this game because it has content I love content
Pros:
- It’s amazing how much more vast and full of content the game feels due to its verticality, essentially tripling the map size as you can now seamlessly transition from the surface, the sky and its floating islands, and deep underground in the Depths. There are full sized caves now, far more to explore and more enjoyable ways to get around with the addition of Zonai devices, more quests and lively areas, etc
- The new powers (Ultrahand/Recall/Ascend/Fuse) are brilliant and more interesting to use in general, going hand in hand with immensely impressive physics that I’m honestly unsure how they pulled off. Even enjoyed the shrines a lot here compared to what I remember in BotW
- Good story (keeping a similar structure to BotW pretty much). I adored the ending moments especially though, much improved over its predecessor there
- Towers shooting you into the air to scan instead of making you climb them is an excellent change and makes getting around the map much faster
- Actual dungeons (if fairly short and easy by the time I got to them)
- Fantastic music from start to finish
Cons:
- While visually TotK is held up by its art direction, the hardware unsurprisingly lets it down. Image quality is frankly poor, and there are numerous times where the frame rate drops from being decently stable to the 20s if not lower (mainly in denser areas). Load times are fairly quick though
- Combat is basically the same and just alright, Fuse makes it better but I’m still not a fan of durability and constantly scrolling through menus for items much
- Koroks and that guy holding the same Hudson sign everywhere
- It’s amazing how much more vast and full of content the game feels due to its verticality, essentially tripling the map size as you can now seamlessly transition from the surface, the sky and its floating islands, and deep underground in the Depths. There are full sized caves now, far more to explore and more enjoyable ways to get around with the addition of Zonai devices, more quests and lively areas, etc
- The new powers (Ultrahand/Recall/Ascend/Fuse) are brilliant and more interesting to use in general, going hand in hand with immensely impressive physics that I’m honestly unsure how they pulled off. Even enjoyed the shrines a lot here compared to what I remember in BotW
- Good story (keeping a similar structure to BotW pretty much). I adored the ending moments especially though, much improved over its predecessor there
- Towers shooting you into the air to scan instead of making you climb them is an excellent change and makes getting around the map much faster
- Actual dungeons (if fairly short and easy by the time I got to them)
- Fantastic music from start to finish
Cons:
- While visually TotK is held up by its art direction, the hardware unsurprisingly lets it down. Image quality is frankly poor, and there are numerous times where the frame rate drops from being decently stable to the 20s if not lower (mainly in denser areas). Load times are fairly quick though
- Combat is basically the same and just alright, Fuse makes it better but I’m still not a fan of durability and constantly scrolling through menus for items much
- Koroks and that guy holding the same Hudson sign everywhere
Tears of the Kingdom definitely improves upon the gameplay of BotW in terms of crafting and combat. And yet it falls flat on one very big aspect - the exploration.
My problem is not the map being reused here, I'm talking about the changes on how to traverse this map. TotK introduces a lot of (recycled) aerial islands which allow you to glide down to whatever location from the skies. It's cool in theory, but takes away the very core aspect of Breath of the Wild - exploring the map. You no longer need to climb mountains and horses are now completely useless in this game, all thanks to the new verticality introduced. Don't even get me started on the craftable Hoverbikes.
The novelty of the depths also wears off rather fast and navigating in the same dark caves just becomes a pain over time. They suffer from the same problem as the sky islands, they're too much of the same thing and thus come off as recycled and boring.
Despite those flaws, I still had a good time with the game. The cities are way more lively than in BotW and seeing what has changed over time is pretty cool. Hyrule still manages to feel fresh after spending many hours in the previous game. I also liked the new dungeons.
TL;DR: If you're a Zelda fan and liked BotW, you'll have a lot of fun with this game and the new spin on BotW's Hyrule. But don't just buy it for the sky islands and the depths or you'll be disappointed.
My problem is not the map being reused here, I'm talking about the changes on how to traverse this map. TotK introduces a lot of (recycled) aerial islands which allow you to glide down to whatever location from the skies. It's cool in theory, but takes away the very core aspect of Breath of the Wild - exploring the map. You no longer need to climb mountains and horses are now completely useless in this game, all thanks to the new verticality introduced. Don't even get me started on the craftable Hoverbikes.
The novelty of the depths also wears off rather fast and navigating in the same dark caves just becomes a pain over time. They suffer from the same problem as the sky islands, they're too much of the same thing and thus come off as recycled and boring.
Despite those flaws, I still had a good time with the game. The cities are way more lively than in BotW and seeing what has changed over time is pretty cool. Hyrule still manages to feel fresh after spending many hours in the previous game. I also liked the new dungeons.
TL;DR: If you're a Zelda fan and liked BotW, you'll have a lot of fun with this game and the new spin on BotW's Hyrule. But don't just buy it for the sky islands and the depths or you'll be disappointed.
ganondorf when he has to fight the korok i’ve strapped to a faithful recreation of an Evangelion: 😦😦😦
Tears of the Kingdom is radically and unintentionally about intrinsic motivation. All the building blocks are placed right in front of you, but you'll have to assemble them yourself. This is nothing new for pure sandbox games, but TOTK isn't supposed to be a pure sandbox game! In its best moments, it harnesses this: even mundane challenges are an opportunity to spark creativity. In its worst, it resents this, and will fight your agency tooth-and-nail.
Most of the time, the game lands in an awkward middle: not outright controlling you per se, but holding the guiding reins with shocking determination. Say you're on a floating island with a crystal you need to deliver to a nearby shrine. Almost certainly the game will place a wing and fan nearby, reducing the whole situation to a classic Zelda "nuzzle" where the solution is just handed to you directly. I understand tutorialization, but the game refuses to trust the player even after hours and hours and hours of this.
This also undermines any sort of efficiency-driven play, since the optimal solutions (that aren't obtuse speedrun-style tech) are simple and/or universal cheesy tactics (e.g. object + ascend + recall). There also seems to be some sort of aggressive speed cap that gives strong diminishing returns to multiple fans/rockets/etc. which hurts the parts management aspect.
But, with all this said, there's nothing stopping me from simply ignoring the game and coming up with my own wacky idea that's fun and interesting! What if I tried to launch the crystal directly with rockets? What if I dropped something to the surface from the shrine, brought the crystal, and recalled it back up? What if I put it on a really, really, really long stick?
Once I accidentally lifted up a large floating platform too high to grab with my Ultrahand. So I took out all my weapons, glued them in a straight line, and managed to reach up high enough to fuse it to the platform and yank the whole thing back down!
These are some of the most joyous experiences I've had in a game. I can't praise the building system enough (despite some minor control issues) in how deep, intuitive, and polished it is. Much of my time was spent messing around in some random location, seeing what I could build that used the items and landscape around me. It's the only true sequel to Super Metroid that Nintendo has ever made: the world is a kaleidoscope of problems to be both invented and solved.
But what's bizarre to me is how so much of the game either refuses to acknowledge this or even actively resists it! One of the greatest experiences I had with this game was making the climb up to the Water Temple on my own, without any prompting. Finding strange and inventive ways to hop between islands as I climb higher and higher in solitude, listening to the quiet ambience and seeing the imposing structure above creep closer and closer, then finally breaking in to hear the Water Temple's song play. This was by far the most powerful experiential moment I had in both open-world Zeldas, and in retrospect mirrors much of the strengths of Fumito Ueda's work.
And then, I was greeted with a loud "DA-DING" error message from the central console of the temple. So I dropped down, completed a menial fetch quest so Sidon would come up to the island chain, then returned to the console. "DA-DING." I went back, talked to him on a different island so the game would flip the proper flag, then returned again and was finally allowed to progress. It's baffling how the same game can have mechanics that encourage such freedom and a structure that so constricts it.
Mostly though, as with my first example, the game settles for mere apathy. Shrines vary from stiflingly simple lock-and-key tests of specific parts to open-ended challenges that you could feasibly solve without knowing the intended solution. (Sadly, the former are far more common than the latter.) The Fire Temple's skatepark design was my overwhelming favorite, and the Lightning Temple shows glimmers of greatness, but the Water and Wind Temple feel like Divine Beasts, and on the whole it's hard to not be disappointed in the missed potential here.
The Depths has parts lying around everywhere and treacherous terrain to use them on, but is homogenous and bloated. Sky Islands offer small shrine-esque challenges that can be fun, but fall far short of the potential illustrated by the tutorial area. Most of the side quests I tried were fetch quest adjacent, but there might be some really good ones out there! Which speaks to a larger point: there's too much content that's too much like BOTW that's spread across too large an area.
Combat mirrors the rest of the game, and its problems go back to BOTW. The sheer amount of options offered by fusing is breathtaking, and the breadth of interactions in BOTW's chemistry system has been made far more accessible. But the balance is all wrong! You can feel the potential during the combat shrines, where stripping your items away forces a more improvisational style. But the games it's (unconsciously) looking towards have key differences. Halo's two weapon limit prevents you from hoarding ammo in advance, whereas in TOTK (and BOTW for that matter) you will collect random resources without thinking. Traditional roguelikes are stingy with items to incentivize crafty use of each one, but BOTW and TOTK shower you with powerful consumables and fusion materials. Arkane's immersive sims also suffer from these problems to some degree, but in those games the level design is as much your foe as the enemies themselves, while level design is perhaps the single greatest failing of TOTK. All of the above games aspire to differentiate their tools, and TOTK has a lot of ways to produce interesting and unique effects, but the most common and powerful fusion materials are simple damage increases, which scale into the late game far better than the creative ones!
Despite all I've said above, I wouldn't quite call the combat "bad" per se. The swordplay is somewhat entertaining, throwing weapons is a great risk-reward mechanic, and having to scavenge around mid-fight adds a lot. But the most fun thing to do is to play with your food: try weird effects and interactions (of which the Bokoblins are fantastically suited for!) instead of playing efficiently all the time. Freeze things and blow them off cliffs! Bounce enemies around with a mushroom spear! Start Bokoblin-Zonai infighting!
For being so brilliantly realized yet simultaneously sloppily crafted, TOTK earns the title of most bizarre game I've ever played. It almost has a romhack quality to it: making visionary changes in some areas while uncritically accepting so much of its ill-fitting foundation. I had many moments of joy while playing it, but all throughout, the game looked on with a disinterested gaze. No score.
Most of the time, the game lands in an awkward middle: not outright controlling you per se, but holding the guiding reins with shocking determination. Say you're on a floating island with a crystal you need to deliver to a nearby shrine. Almost certainly the game will place a wing and fan nearby, reducing the whole situation to a classic Zelda "nuzzle" where the solution is just handed to you directly. I understand tutorialization, but the game refuses to trust the player even after hours and hours and hours of this.
This also undermines any sort of efficiency-driven play, since the optimal solutions (that aren't obtuse speedrun-style tech) are simple and/or universal cheesy tactics (e.g. object + ascend + recall). There also seems to be some sort of aggressive speed cap that gives strong diminishing returns to multiple fans/rockets/etc. which hurts the parts management aspect.
But, with all this said, there's nothing stopping me from simply ignoring the game and coming up with my own wacky idea that's fun and interesting! What if I tried to launch the crystal directly with rockets? What if I dropped something to the surface from the shrine, brought the crystal, and recalled it back up? What if I put it on a really, really, really long stick?
Once I accidentally lifted up a large floating platform too high to grab with my Ultrahand. So I took out all my weapons, glued them in a straight line, and managed to reach up high enough to fuse it to the platform and yank the whole thing back down!
These are some of the most joyous experiences I've had in a game. I can't praise the building system enough (despite some minor control issues) in how deep, intuitive, and polished it is. Much of my time was spent messing around in some random location, seeing what I could build that used the items and landscape around me. It's the only true sequel to Super Metroid that Nintendo has ever made: the world is a kaleidoscope of problems to be both invented and solved.
But what's bizarre to me is how so much of the game either refuses to acknowledge this or even actively resists it! One of the greatest experiences I had with this game was making the climb up to the Water Temple on my own, without any prompting. Finding strange and inventive ways to hop between islands as I climb higher and higher in solitude, listening to the quiet ambience and seeing the imposing structure above creep closer and closer, then finally breaking in to hear the Water Temple's song play. This was by far the most powerful experiential moment I had in both open-world Zeldas, and in retrospect mirrors much of the strengths of Fumito Ueda's work.
And then, I was greeted with a loud "DA-DING" error message from the central console of the temple. So I dropped down, completed a menial fetch quest so Sidon would come up to the island chain, then returned to the console. "DA-DING." I went back, talked to him on a different island so the game would flip the proper flag, then returned again and was finally allowed to progress. It's baffling how the same game can have mechanics that encourage such freedom and a structure that so constricts it.
Mostly though, as with my first example, the game settles for mere apathy. Shrines vary from stiflingly simple lock-and-key tests of specific parts to open-ended challenges that you could feasibly solve without knowing the intended solution. (Sadly, the former are far more common than the latter.) The Fire Temple's skatepark design was my overwhelming favorite, and the Lightning Temple shows glimmers of greatness, but the Water and Wind Temple feel like Divine Beasts, and on the whole it's hard to not be disappointed in the missed potential here.
The Depths has parts lying around everywhere and treacherous terrain to use them on, but is homogenous and bloated. Sky Islands offer small shrine-esque challenges that can be fun, but fall far short of the potential illustrated by the tutorial area. Most of the side quests I tried were fetch quest adjacent, but there might be some really good ones out there! Which speaks to a larger point: there's too much content that's too much like BOTW that's spread across too large an area.
Combat mirrors the rest of the game, and its problems go back to BOTW. The sheer amount of options offered by fusing is breathtaking, and the breadth of interactions in BOTW's chemistry system has been made far more accessible. But the balance is all wrong! You can feel the potential during the combat shrines, where stripping your items away forces a more improvisational style. But the games it's (unconsciously) looking towards have key differences. Halo's two weapon limit prevents you from hoarding ammo in advance, whereas in TOTK (and BOTW for that matter) you will collect random resources without thinking. Traditional roguelikes are stingy with items to incentivize crafty use of each one, but BOTW and TOTK shower you with powerful consumables and fusion materials. Arkane's immersive sims also suffer from these problems to some degree, but in those games the level design is as much your foe as the enemies themselves, while level design is perhaps the single greatest failing of TOTK. All of the above games aspire to differentiate their tools, and TOTK has a lot of ways to produce interesting and unique effects, but the most common and powerful fusion materials are simple damage increases, which scale into the late game far better than the creative ones!
Despite all I've said above, I wouldn't quite call the combat "bad" per se. The swordplay is somewhat entertaining, throwing weapons is a great risk-reward mechanic, and having to scavenge around mid-fight adds a lot. But the most fun thing to do is to play with your food: try weird effects and interactions (of which the Bokoblins are fantastically suited for!) instead of playing efficiently all the time. Freeze things and blow them off cliffs! Bounce enemies around with a mushroom spear! Start Bokoblin-Zonai infighting!
For being so brilliantly realized yet simultaneously sloppily crafted, TOTK earns the title of most bizarre game I've ever played. It almost has a romhack quality to it: making visionary changes in some areas while uncritically accepting so much of its ill-fitting foundation. I had many moments of joy while playing it, but all throughout, the game looked on with a disinterested gaze. No score.
They call it Tears of the Kingdom because I’m crying from how bad it is
The fact that Nintendo is carrying characters and franchises nostalgic to four generations of gamers, in addition to appealing to a current generation of children pushes them, like most longrunning broad appeal companies, to try and thread the needle between such wide ranges of different people, age demographics, and different investment in mastering video games. While there’s certainly a host of Nintendo titles that lack that appeal amongst older gamers or are too difficult to get a lasting experience out of for those more inexperienced with games, that balance between easy to comprehend design and absolutely fanatical skill curving has led to games like Super Mario 64, Super Smash Bros Melee and sure enough, Breath of the Wild to be both nostalgic and accessible for kids of their era, while having all kinds of insane potential to crack with their game systems.
The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom feels like this philosophy at its absolute apex. In equal turn I can see people make their way through with the bare necessities for strength boosts and paragliding, while you can look online and see the insane mechanical contraptions possible for optimizing combat and traversal to an incredibly efficient degree.
Once again, the ability to trade for Hearts or Stamina throughout the game can allow for a certain level of difficulty modulation, but also tying attack options to weapons, rather than grinding out Link’s character stats, puts more pressure on your ability in the action and less on accidentally outfitting yourself the wrong way. It provides enough extrinsic motivation for a plot that gets you thinking with more involved stops along that narrative, while also intrinsically offering the world as the massive playground for experimentation via a vast assortment of utilitarian approaches. Extrinsic motivators like the Shrines, (even when puzzle ones are often easier than BotW’s) further encourage the possibility to take their ideas further intrinsically using the overworld. Plus of course, elements you would expect from a sequel, like improved enemy variety and more specialized combat scenarios (a sixth of the shrines are no longer one miniboss repeated 20 times over at various difficulties).
Breath of the Wild was a game that made a statement. Its focus was on emergent gameplay and player discovery over an involved narrative and a designated route to setpieces meant to be shown in a specific way. Completing every dungeon gave you powers to make the finale easier, but every payoff was segregated. I would argue though, that Breath of the Wild was so thoroughly committed to this idea that it wasn’t worth trying to top it in this department. We already have the more minimalist take on the thinly populated world with an obvious, straightforward final confrontation but the journey being wholly devoted to what you make of it. Tears of the Kingdom opts not to push this further, and instead to respec itself while simultaneously being both more plot driven AND more free at the same time in different areas. It is absolutely worth noting that in place of the minimal storytelling which predominantly served to justify why Link exists to travel the world at all, Tears presents itself as more story-driven from the jump with the short but more guided preamble. It’s a choice that won’t be for everyone who preferred BotW’s deliberately simple approach in the name of player freedom, but I think it’s one that makes sense with where it was heading and a means to allow this game to stand out as a sequel in other ways.
This is also apparent in game design decisions like having a main central hub of named characters to converse with, and particularly the new spread of the memories.
In BotW, the memories were hidden in very small specific spots in the overworld with little indication of where without a guide, in the hope that you’d run into them while exploring, but not that they played a substantial part in the Defeat Ganon quest. In this game, they ABSOLUTELY want you to get those memories, not only by making it a main quest but also putting them in giant Geoglyphs (marked inside a chamber) that can be seen no matter how high above the ground Link is. Which is good, because the plot contained within those memories is less building your own background as much as a parallel plot involving Zelda and the choices she makes in further understanding herself and considering what’s necessary to help your journey along. For a game series entitled The Legend of Zelda, this installment really presents just how much sway Zelda has upon the entire world while you, in contrast, are the fixer guy. You are the way forward, but not the influence. There are many questlines I discovered over my 120 hours of play devoted to every which way most of the world was very carefully ruined in your absence and your ability to be a problem solver in any which place you choose to.
Back in Ocarina of Time, a seven-year timeskip allowed Ganondorf to turn the entire world on its head through a permanently blackened sky and the world’s central hub being turned abandoned, populated by zombies instead of people. In this game, in far shorter a timeframe he played things more crypto in your absence by outright ruining Hyrule’s infrastructure in numerous smaller ways less obviously noticeable even in a more populated land, but that goes further and further the more you chose to engage with the world. It’s a smart villain move on his end that has a shockingly effective payoff conveyed through story and gameplay together after pursuing the main dungeon tasks.
Reconciling with your past was a main driving force in Breath of the Wild if you chose to pursue story, but just as Link can build all kinds of crazy tech magic machines and bizarre powerful weapons, you’re actively building a more settled world up to a brighter future. In taking a cue from the second half of Wind Waker, you’re guiding partner characters through the dungeons to grow them into who they are. Their abilities are substantially less broken than those from Breath of the Wild, but that ties into the story, since the BotW Champions were experienced, top warriors employed by the castle guard, while the Sages here are being grown into them, made stronger by the concept of exploration in the world they no doubt helped you with. It’s one of several examples of the game willing to respect and not replicate elements when it feels like it would help its own vision. The Divine Beast assault sequences, while formulaic and scripted, could feel very intense in the moment and tiring if repeated too closely in this game, so instead, dungeon buildup is an extension of normal gameplay but varied by region. While one area involved a lot of high-flying platforming, another took on more of a base assault format and this, alongside more distinctive temples and boss fights, helped to make its main story tasks stand apart despite the repeated song and dance upon finishing a dungeon. The ending as well, despite similarities in form to the previous game’s, is given a more distinct function in relation to what makes this game stand out and, in my opinion, greater emotional resonance.
And all this is just in the main intended plot goals! Rarely have I played a game where it’s so easy to constantly be distracted from just HOW MUCH you are able to interact with at any one time. It’s incredibly impressive that for a map so large, almost everywhere you go has optional engagements both present, and out in the visible distance, whether they be character based, combat based, or puzzle based. This is a game where even components that would seem like copy and paste tasks in any other open world game can vary wildly in terms of how you accomplish them. Sign Guy is probably the prime example of this creative thinking on display. Everywhere you see him trying to spread the good word about his boss, trying his best to arrange signs in totally different ways. Usually, you’re given enough tools around his area, but it inspires an incredible creativity to make even tries at a repeated task stand out with your weird creative standing fused structures. Another element that greatly helps with this discovery is the delineation of quest lines, where the instant a quest is started, you’re made aware of whether or not it’s a brief more simplistic quest for a basic reward, or a multi-tiered quest with more story added to it. The repopulation of Hyrule after stopping Calamity Ganon in Breath of the Wild provides the perfect in-universe opportunity for so many more people to exist for sidequests that are more memorable than BotW’s, even if I don’t think any hit the high of the Anju/Kafei quest from Majora’s Mask.
The Depths is admittedly less curated on the whole, but it’s a meaningful venture, providing some of the easiest access to mechanical creation tools, enhancing long term use of these tools, as well as some of the strongest weapons and enemy encounters in the game. It’s a distinct take on the classic Dark World concept from A Link to the Past combined with the Nether from Minecraft. And of course, the Lightroots. These beacons deliberately standout amidst the pitch-black landscapes, but the fact that they mirror Shrine positions is incredibly intuitive for exploration. Once you find a Lightroot where you don’t have a Shrine, or vice versa, it provides another opportunity to say “there’s something on this spot, but how will I find out what it is, how will I reach it, and what on my path would provide the next distraction?”
As sentimental as it may seem saying this, Tears of the Kingdom is also an immaculate representation of gaming as a universal experience where numerous approaches can be lovingly shared. No two players will experience everything the game has to offer in the same way, and the sense of experimentation you could see from the more dedicated Breath of the Wild players is further spread to even casual players, while the insane crowd creating all kinds of mecha and war crime devices is given the opportunity to indulge with a much higher creation ceiling. From something as simple as using a rock weapon to fill a hole when finding a Korok, shield surfing as a means to avoid a rail balancing act, creating a barely held together tower of objects in place of understanding how to work a rowboat, or having fully decked flying death machines to quickly slay the indomitable Gleeoks, there’s an impressive array of possibilities Nintendo allowed for in their massive sandboxes.
There will always be quibbles. I wish you could create your own favorites list when selecting materials. The dungeons, while greatly improved over BotW to the point of being slightly above Wind Waker’s now, are still well open to be made more extensive like the other past 3D Zeldas. I wish the Sage Awakening cutscenes were made distinct for each dungeon, the means to acquire Autobuild made more upfront during the main quest, Mineru’s role in the story a bit more, the cutscenes lip synced to the English dub (although you can switch to original Japanese, so mostly moot point) and it would REALLY help if this game wasn’t limited by 8-year-old hardware regarding occasional performance dips, but the overall vision that this game accomplishes is sublime. It’s rare a video game sequel can be such a monumentally meaningful iteration on what already presented an incredibly robust path forward for explorative freedom and system creation in AAA gaming, but director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, his team, and Monolith Soft managed to top themselves in ways we didn’t even know we wanted. Trying to follow this up will be an incredibly difficult venture I fear for, but I hope that with the promise of improved hardware on the horizon, this team can continue to show that next-gen is more than just graphical leaps, but using mechanics, talent and budget to let the story told from strong design ethos meet the story every player uses the game to create for themselves.
The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom feels like this philosophy at its absolute apex. In equal turn I can see people make their way through with the bare necessities for strength boosts and paragliding, while you can look online and see the insane mechanical contraptions possible for optimizing combat and traversal to an incredibly efficient degree.
Once again, the ability to trade for Hearts or Stamina throughout the game can allow for a certain level of difficulty modulation, but also tying attack options to weapons, rather than grinding out Link’s character stats, puts more pressure on your ability in the action and less on accidentally outfitting yourself the wrong way. It provides enough extrinsic motivation for a plot that gets you thinking with more involved stops along that narrative, while also intrinsically offering the world as the massive playground for experimentation via a vast assortment of utilitarian approaches. Extrinsic motivators like the Shrines, (even when puzzle ones are often easier than BotW’s) further encourage the possibility to take their ideas further intrinsically using the overworld. Plus of course, elements you would expect from a sequel, like improved enemy variety and more specialized combat scenarios (a sixth of the shrines are no longer one miniboss repeated 20 times over at various difficulties).
Breath of the Wild was a game that made a statement. Its focus was on emergent gameplay and player discovery over an involved narrative and a designated route to setpieces meant to be shown in a specific way. Completing every dungeon gave you powers to make the finale easier, but every payoff was segregated. I would argue though, that Breath of the Wild was so thoroughly committed to this idea that it wasn’t worth trying to top it in this department. We already have the more minimalist take on the thinly populated world with an obvious, straightforward final confrontation but the journey being wholly devoted to what you make of it. Tears of the Kingdom opts not to push this further, and instead to respec itself while simultaneously being both more plot driven AND more free at the same time in different areas. It is absolutely worth noting that in place of the minimal storytelling which predominantly served to justify why Link exists to travel the world at all, Tears presents itself as more story-driven from the jump with the short but more guided preamble. It’s a choice that won’t be for everyone who preferred BotW’s deliberately simple approach in the name of player freedom, but I think it’s one that makes sense with where it was heading and a means to allow this game to stand out as a sequel in other ways.
This is also apparent in game design decisions like having a main central hub of named characters to converse with, and particularly the new spread of the memories.
In BotW, the memories were hidden in very small specific spots in the overworld with little indication of where without a guide, in the hope that you’d run into them while exploring, but not that they played a substantial part in the Defeat Ganon quest. In this game, they ABSOLUTELY want you to get those memories, not only by making it a main quest but also putting them in giant Geoglyphs (marked inside a chamber) that can be seen no matter how high above the ground Link is. Which is good, because the plot contained within those memories is less building your own background as much as a parallel plot involving Zelda and the choices she makes in further understanding herself and considering what’s necessary to help your journey along. For a game series entitled The Legend of Zelda, this installment really presents just how much sway Zelda has upon the entire world while you, in contrast, are the fixer guy. You are the way forward, but not the influence. There are many questlines I discovered over my 120 hours of play devoted to every which way most of the world was very carefully ruined in your absence and your ability to be a problem solver in any which place you choose to.
Back in Ocarina of Time, a seven-year timeskip allowed Ganondorf to turn the entire world on its head through a permanently blackened sky and the world’s central hub being turned abandoned, populated by zombies instead of people. In this game, in far shorter a timeframe he played things more crypto in your absence by outright ruining Hyrule’s infrastructure in numerous smaller ways less obviously noticeable even in a more populated land, but that goes further and further the more you chose to engage with the world. It’s a smart villain move on his end that has a shockingly effective payoff conveyed through story and gameplay together after pursuing the main dungeon tasks.
Reconciling with your past was a main driving force in Breath of the Wild if you chose to pursue story, but just as Link can build all kinds of crazy tech magic machines and bizarre powerful weapons, you’re actively building a more settled world up to a brighter future. In taking a cue from the second half of Wind Waker, you’re guiding partner characters through the dungeons to grow them into who they are. Their abilities are substantially less broken than those from Breath of the Wild, but that ties into the story, since the BotW Champions were experienced, top warriors employed by the castle guard, while the Sages here are being grown into them, made stronger by the concept of exploration in the world they no doubt helped you with. It’s one of several examples of the game willing to respect and not replicate elements when it feels like it would help its own vision. The Divine Beast assault sequences, while formulaic and scripted, could feel very intense in the moment and tiring if repeated too closely in this game, so instead, dungeon buildup is an extension of normal gameplay but varied by region. While one area involved a lot of high-flying platforming, another took on more of a base assault format and this, alongside more distinctive temples and boss fights, helped to make its main story tasks stand apart despite the repeated song and dance upon finishing a dungeon. The ending as well, despite similarities in form to the previous game’s, is given a more distinct function in relation to what makes this game stand out and, in my opinion, greater emotional resonance.
And all this is just in the main intended plot goals! Rarely have I played a game where it’s so easy to constantly be distracted from just HOW MUCH you are able to interact with at any one time. It’s incredibly impressive that for a map so large, almost everywhere you go has optional engagements both present, and out in the visible distance, whether they be character based, combat based, or puzzle based. This is a game where even components that would seem like copy and paste tasks in any other open world game can vary wildly in terms of how you accomplish them. Sign Guy is probably the prime example of this creative thinking on display. Everywhere you see him trying to spread the good word about his boss, trying his best to arrange signs in totally different ways. Usually, you’re given enough tools around his area, but it inspires an incredible creativity to make even tries at a repeated task stand out with your weird creative standing fused structures. Another element that greatly helps with this discovery is the delineation of quest lines, where the instant a quest is started, you’re made aware of whether or not it’s a brief more simplistic quest for a basic reward, or a multi-tiered quest with more story added to it. The repopulation of Hyrule after stopping Calamity Ganon in Breath of the Wild provides the perfect in-universe opportunity for so many more people to exist for sidequests that are more memorable than BotW’s, even if I don’t think any hit the high of the Anju/Kafei quest from Majora’s Mask.
The Depths is admittedly less curated on the whole, but it’s a meaningful venture, providing some of the easiest access to mechanical creation tools, enhancing long term use of these tools, as well as some of the strongest weapons and enemy encounters in the game. It’s a distinct take on the classic Dark World concept from A Link to the Past combined with the Nether from Minecraft. And of course, the Lightroots. These beacons deliberately standout amidst the pitch-black landscapes, but the fact that they mirror Shrine positions is incredibly intuitive for exploration. Once you find a Lightroot where you don’t have a Shrine, or vice versa, it provides another opportunity to say “there’s something on this spot, but how will I find out what it is, how will I reach it, and what on my path would provide the next distraction?”
As sentimental as it may seem saying this, Tears of the Kingdom is also an immaculate representation of gaming as a universal experience where numerous approaches can be lovingly shared. No two players will experience everything the game has to offer in the same way, and the sense of experimentation you could see from the more dedicated Breath of the Wild players is further spread to even casual players, while the insane crowd creating all kinds of mecha and war crime devices is given the opportunity to indulge with a much higher creation ceiling. From something as simple as using a rock weapon to fill a hole when finding a Korok, shield surfing as a means to avoid a rail balancing act, creating a barely held together tower of objects in place of understanding how to work a rowboat, or having fully decked flying death machines to quickly slay the indomitable Gleeoks, there’s an impressive array of possibilities Nintendo allowed for in their massive sandboxes.
There will always be quibbles. I wish you could create your own favorites list when selecting materials. The dungeons, while greatly improved over BotW to the point of being slightly above Wind Waker’s now, are still well open to be made more extensive like the other past 3D Zeldas. I wish the Sage Awakening cutscenes were made distinct for each dungeon, the means to acquire Autobuild made more upfront during the main quest, Mineru’s role in the story a bit more, the cutscenes lip synced to the English dub (although you can switch to original Japanese, so mostly moot point) and it would REALLY help if this game wasn’t limited by 8-year-old hardware regarding occasional performance dips, but the overall vision that this game accomplishes is sublime. It’s rare a video game sequel can be such a monumentally meaningful iteration on what already presented an incredibly robust path forward for explorative freedom and system creation in AAA gaming, but director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, his team, and Monolith Soft managed to top themselves in ways we didn’t even know we wanted. Trying to follow this up will be an incredibly difficult venture I fear for, but I hope that with the promise of improved hardware on the horizon, this team can continue to show that next-gen is more than just graphical leaps, but using mechanics, talent and budget to let the story told from strong design ethos meet the story every player uses the game to create for themselves.
This review contains spoilers
Its the Portal 2 to BOTW's Portal 1. There is more of it but it feels somewhat bloated, some faults of the first (or aspects that were perceived as faults, anyways) are remedied whilst adding as many issues of its own. The first 10 hours are great and perhaps surpass the original, but then it goes on and on at a more subdued level of quality.
I loved the original Breath Of The Wild. When I played it around 2019 for the first time it felt like a game that was made specifically for me; every major aspect of it being described to me by a friend once and I could only go : "yes! yes!" at everything he said. When I played it it lived entirely to my expectations and even surpassed them. The microdungeons that kept up the pace, the ability to declare yourself ready to face the final boss at any time, the environmental physics systems organically interacting, the willingness to let you approach puzzles in any way : if you could find a way to cheese it you could.
I didn't have any problems with the weapon durability system and I thought it incentivised getting creative with the various systems to efficiently dispatch the various monsters. Nor did I have all that many issues that series veterans had with the weaker plot and lack of big dungeons; in all honesty that was a selling point for me personally. My first Zelda was Ocarina of Time 3D which I never finished as a kid, I dropped the game after the magic lens dungeon because something else caught my eye and when I came back to finish it my card reader had broken and I didnt have enough money at the time to fix it. I also played some of Oracle of Seasons and maybe Link's Awakening? I wasn't really grabbed by either of those. All design decisions are inherently alienating to someone, but I am not blind to the fact that the design decisions of BOTW were welcoming to me but alienating to others.
There is part of me that wonders if I would have loved TOTK more if I hadn't done 3 full runs (all shrines) of BOTW. As much as there are many new systems and locations and quests and all the things you would expect from a new entry, it is at the end of the day the same map. This does have its benefits from returning players in that going back to areas from the first game and seeing them change is always great : Tarrey Town in particular. It does however somewhat dampen my enthusiasm for exploration, paradoxically because there is also a lot more of it to do with the addition of the Sky Islands and the Depths.
If my Steam library is to be believed, I have 900 hours on Garry's Mod from when I played it religiously as a teen and let me just say, the first few hours playing with the various systems of constructing vehicles was akin to getting new toys for christmas, fond memories of thruster boosted bathtubs around GM_Construct. Unfortunately as I seem to have discovered is the case of most of this game, its burns brighter but burns itself out sooner. This might have worked in its favour if it werent for the expectation and obligation of expanding the game overall meant everything felt a bit more exhausting than it ever had in BOTW. Indeed, having the previous map as base, 6 years of dev time and a 70 dollar pricetag did make it obvious that this would be the case but I hope one day we get a sequel that tightens the game as opposed to overextends it.
The first 20 times you do a combat challenge dungeon or find a crazy new enemy in the overworld its new and refreshing, but not by the 50th time. Its the Elden Ring issue, repetition inherently dampens the mystery, the awe of exploration and discovery. This was also somewhat true in BOTW but didnt feel anywhere near on the level of TOTK.
I didnt have a problem with the Great Plateau in BOTW, I didnt think it was overlong at all but I definitely felt that in TOTK. When I finally got to the overworld it made me wonder : "Is there no paraglider in this game? Maybe they want you to really use the new vehicle stuff to overcome the terrain" and I'm not saying that would have made a better game but I am genuinely curious how TOTK would have turned out if your Paraglider was straight up removed (it wouldnt have worked because of the Sky Islands and the wind dungeon but still these could have been changed).
Another element that might have been excised to improve the game imo was autobuild, which I got very early on but almost entirely removed the fun of the game, you make one or two or three general purpose builds and you never have to think about clever vehicles again outside of shrines. They cost resources to make but it just adds a small unwelcome grind to proceedings really.
I quite like the MrHudson sign sidequests. In general I quite like the setting which includes some of my favourite themes : the PostPostApocalypse. The people of this world are dealing with aggressive armies of demons but are nevertheless rebuilding, using the various new zonai tech to their advantage, a kind of industrial revolution.
The theming is cool, I like the Zen motif of the shrines and Rauru. The ancient hylians have a Mesoamerican thing going on in their design but this is mostly just aesthetics and not used for anything particularly interesting that I found.
This game is so dense and there are so many things to discuss that I think I could go on forever : the champions kind of break the challenge of the game, the voice acting and story continue to be kinda bad, the dungeons are a bit more elaborate and better but thats honestly a negative to me personally, horses are even more useless now, I was annoyed at the final ganondorf fight despite not dying to him at all the combat controls have always been kind of shit and the joycons are terrible so asking me to do two perfect dodges to even touch this Kikuchiyo looking mfer tested my patience; I got a bit annoyed at that fight (more than I have in a while and I did a soul level 1 run of DS1 on that very switch).
At the end of the day the best decision BOTW did was to make fighting Ganon at any point possible. That is still technically the case in TOTK but after I was "done" with the game and finished the 4 main quest and wanted the game to end before I started to dislike it, the game threw me a whole ass sequence of quests that dragged on and started to drain my goodwill and the boss annoying me was the icing on the cake.
A lot of games don't know when to finish. A lot of games in fact do not finish at all like arcade games and the like. New Game+s, HighScores, etc these are all elements to marry two concepts : 1) Unlike other media, Videogames are a lot of the times not dropped by players at "the end" of the game especially in earlier times, rather when the player is "done". Not to say these two necessarily always clash but its definitely something that must be kept in mind when designing a game that isnt a relatively short or cinematic linear game. 2) Games need endings to bring closure and structure to its narrative and mechanical difficulty curve.
The Structure of BOTW was genius in this respect because a 100% obsessive and someone who just wanted to play for 10 hours could both enjoy the game and declare it done so long as they could defeat Ganon. Again, this is still somewhat the case in TOTK but the game doesnt really tell you. The number 1 reason I'll dislike a game is that I will be "done" with it when it has started to outstay its welcome and it simply will NOT end. If a game can speed along to its conclusion when I have reached this point it will look at a great review, if it does not, well, I am liable to either hate it or even drop it (I have never beaten Aria of Sorrow for this very reason, I reached my "done" point near the end and when Soma turns into dracula and youre asked to do some bullshit I just didnt care enough to conclude it). I'll admit I am generally a rather impatient person, but if you've read this far you're probably aware of the fact that this is just my personal perspective at the end of the day.
Tears of The Kingdom is a great game buried in a shell of bloat that didnt quite stick the landing despite still being a good game that I enjoyed for longer than most these days.
I loved the original Breath Of The Wild. When I played it around 2019 for the first time it felt like a game that was made specifically for me; every major aspect of it being described to me by a friend once and I could only go : "yes! yes!" at everything he said. When I played it it lived entirely to my expectations and even surpassed them. The microdungeons that kept up the pace, the ability to declare yourself ready to face the final boss at any time, the environmental physics systems organically interacting, the willingness to let you approach puzzles in any way : if you could find a way to cheese it you could.
I didn't have any problems with the weapon durability system and I thought it incentivised getting creative with the various systems to efficiently dispatch the various monsters. Nor did I have all that many issues that series veterans had with the weaker plot and lack of big dungeons; in all honesty that was a selling point for me personally. My first Zelda was Ocarina of Time 3D which I never finished as a kid, I dropped the game after the magic lens dungeon because something else caught my eye and when I came back to finish it my card reader had broken and I didnt have enough money at the time to fix it. I also played some of Oracle of Seasons and maybe Link's Awakening? I wasn't really grabbed by either of those. All design decisions are inherently alienating to someone, but I am not blind to the fact that the design decisions of BOTW were welcoming to me but alienating to others.
There is part of me that wonders if I would have loved TOTK more if I hadn't done 3 full runs (all shrines) of BOTW. As much as there are many new systems and locations and quests and all the things you would expect from a new entry, it is at the end of the day the same map. This does have its benefits from returning players in that going back to areas from the first game and seeing them change is always great : Tarrey Town in particular. It does however somewhat dampen my enthusiasm for exploration, paradoxically because there is also a lot more of it to do with the addition of the Sky Islands and the Depths.
If my Steam library is to be believed, I have 900 hours on Garry's Mod from when I played it religiously as a teen and let me just say, the first few hours playing with the various systems of constructing vehicles was akin to getting new toys for christmas, fond memories of thruster boosted bathtubs around GM_Construct. Unfortunately as I seem to have discovered is the case of most of this game, its burns brighter but burns itself out sooner. This might have worked in its favour if it werent for the expectation and obligation of expanding the game overall meant everything felt a bit more exhausting than it ever had in BOTW. Indeed, having the previous map as base, 6 years of dev time and a 70 dollar pricetag did make it obvious that this would be the case but I hope one day we get a sequel that tightens the game as opposed to overextends it.
The first 20 times you do a combat challenge dungeon or find a crazy new enemy in the overworld its new and refreshing, but not by the 50th time. Its the Elden Ring issue, repetition inherently dampens the mystery, the awe of exploration and discovery. This was also somewhat true in BOTW but didnt feel anywhere near on the level of TOTK.
I didnt have a problem with the Great Plateau in BOTW, I didnt think it was overlong at all but I definitely felt that in TOTK. When I finally got to the overworld it made me wonder : "Is there no paraglider in this game? Maybe they want you to really use the new vehicle stuff to overcome the terrain" and I'm not saying that would have made a better game but I am genuinely curious how TOTK would have turned out if your Paraglider was straight up removed (it wouldnt have worked because of the Sky Islands and the wind dungeon but still these could have been changed).
Another element that might have been excised to improve the game imo was autobuild, which I got very early on but almost entirely removed the fun of the game, you make one or two or three general purpose builds and you never have to think about clever vehicles again outside of shrines. They cost resources to make but it just adds a small unwelcome grind to proceedings really.
I quite like the MrHudson sign sidequests. In general I quite like the setting which includes some of my favourite themes : the PostPostApocalypse. The people of this world are dealing with aggressive armies of demons but are nevertheless rebuilding, using the various new zonai tech to their advantage, a kind of industrial revolution.
The theming is cool, I like the Zen motif of the shrines and Rauru. The ancient hylians have a Mesoamerican thing going on in their design but this is mostly just aesthetics and not used for anything particularly interesting that I found.
This game is so dense and there are so many things to discuss that I think I could go on forever : the champions kind of break the challenge of the game, the voice acting and story continue to be kinda bad, the dungeons are a bit more elaborate and better but thats honestly a negative to me personally, horses are even more useless now, I was annoyed at the final ganondorf fight despite not dying to him at all the combat controls have always been kind of shit and the joycons are terrible so asking me to do two perfect dodges to even touch this Kikuchiyo looking mfer tested my patience; I got a bit annoyed at that fight (more than I have in a while and I did a soul level 1 run of DS1 on that very switch).
At the end of the day the best decision BOTW did was to make fighting Ganon at any point possible. That is still technically the case in TOTK but after I was "done" with the game and finished the 4 main quest and wanted the game to end before I started to dislike it, the game threw me a whole ass sequence of quests that dragged on and started to drain my goodwill and the boss annoying me was the icing on the cake.
A lot of games don't know when to finish. A lot of games in fact do not finish at all like arcade games and the like. New Game+s, HighScores, etc these are all elements to marry two concepts : 1) Unlike other media, Videogames are a lot of the times not dropped by players at "the end" of the game especially in earlier times, rather when the player is "done". Not to say these two necessarily always clash but its definitely something that must be kept in mind when designing a game that isnt a relatively short or cinematic linear game. 2) Games need endings to bring closure and structure to its narrative and mechanical difficulty curve.
The Structure of BOTW was genius in this respect because a 100% obsessive and someone who just wanted to play for 10 hours could both enjoy the game and declare it done so long as they could defeat Ganon. Again, this is still somewhat the case in TOTK but the game doesnt really tell you. The number 1 reason I'll dislike a game is that I will be "done" with it when it has started to outstay its welcome and it simply will NOT end. If a game can speed along to its conclusion when I have reached this point it will look at a great review, if it does not, well, I am liable to either hate it or even drop it (I have never beaten Aria of Sorrow for this very reason, I reached my "done" point near the end and when Soma turns into dracula and youre asked to do some bullshit I just didnt care enough to conclude it). I'll admit I am generally a rather impatient person, but if you've read this far you're probably aware of the fact that this is just my personal perspective at the end of the day.
Tears of The Kingdom is a great game buried in a shell of bloat that didnt quite stick the landing despite still being a good game that I enjoyed for longer than most these days.
We were so lucky to get Majora's Mask
literally my only problem with this entire game so far is performance (which gets really bad with ultrahand) but i dont even care. might even be greater than breath of the wild
"Even if all the trees return, it won't be his forest anymore. The Great Forest Spirit is dead now"
"Never. He's life itself. He's not dead, San. He's here right now, trying to tell us something, that it's time for us both to live."
- Zelda, apparently.
If I were to describe Tears of the Kingdom with one word, it would probably be... incongruent. Multitudes of new concepts that are more or less at odds with one another, a new experience in some ways and a modded version of botw in others. Borrowing the same story and gameplay structure from its predecessor, I intially assumed they would have the space to create something that functioned very differently from botw, such as how Majora's Mask was not only a wholly unique experience to the series but also had a very strange philosophical edge to it. Tears of the Kingdom does not achieve this...while being fun, it almost shirks off its own originality in favor of adding more unnecessary content. I am someone who appreciates Zelda mostly for its overworld and world building, and throughout my playthrough I would always get the impression that this did not feel like a Zelda game at all. The core presentation wasnt there, even if they slapped some dungeons and sages on top of it. The feeling is off, because the feeling is not organic.
(Spoilers in the image links below)
My biggest issue with totk is just how much it takes from other creations. Nintendo has intelligent people working for them, and all the money in the world. There really is not a reason for such blatant copying of other... certain... franchises. I knew going in that they were absolutely going all in on the Mononoke plagiarism, I mean, one glance at Link's fucked up arm should relay that message to you. But even the gloom itself looks a little familar. Even the music hit certain stings that I could have sworn were one for one with tracks from Mononoke. But then other things started to just look a little bit too familiar to me. And if they can do that whats stopping them from just doing whatever they want? Even the cutscenes feel like theyre trying to act upon that Miyazaki style of directing, but while Ghibli's favorite director actually has meaning behind his words, totk feels like it merely wants to look like its saying something important without saying anything at all. The emotional moments in this game feel plastic. And just when i thought it could not get any worse, they hit me with the double whammy of these scenes. Two setpieces heavily resembling some of the most memorable moments from Spirited Away and Laputa... I really do not see it as a coincidence. And it makes the game feel lesser, because it is not itself. It is not organically creating something through the usual means, it is ripping a thing from its contexts and presenting the empty shell. Its strange, because Zelda doesnt need that. Zelda is a very lush world with a lot to work with... and they already had good original ideas, which they didnt feel like using to its full potential at all.
The Zonai people were something i was every excited about when I first started the game. I absolutely love ancient things and anthropology, their intricate style was very appealing. After beating the game I still believe they are the most interesting aspects added to the botw world, but the sky and the Zonai are not used at all whatsoever. This new, creative race, and there are only 2 of them in the game. Not to mention that the sky is woefully underused, almost exempt from the game excluding the wonderful opening island. They are functioned to be miniature puzzle islands, there is nothing to do with the Zonai besides the devices you can find there and dear god let me complain about the devices.
If it was not bad enough that the thing they advertised the game with was not the focus of the experience, but Zonai materials you all were so excited to build with were actually just one use puzzle-solving contraptions with a fun exterior. Sure, you can spend 3 or 6 or 10 mintes desperately trying to attach a fan to a birdplane and get it to fly, but the game will only let you use things for a certain amount of time. It breaks apart after 30 seconds or so, sometimes shorter. So long to your dreams of flying around Hyrule, have fun trying to get to those niche sky islands when Nintendo decides you have had enough of a good time and breaks it apart 30,000 feet in the air. I have heard complaints about the horses in this game not being useful because of the superiority of the machines, but at least my horse wont explode after an arbitrary amount of time.
I believe they did a fine job of making the game feel different. I did not recognize most of Hyrule, mind for a few specific landmarks. I had a fun time hunting for treasure and scenic spots. The combat was still the best it has been in the series, and unlike others i appreciate the durability on the weapons for allowing me to experience types of gameplay i normally wouldnt gravitate to. The fuse mechanic is very useful and very silly; a fantastic motivator to continually engage in combat to make your armory stronger. The loop in this game of being rewarded for exploring in the form of monster parts and food, then using that to take on a dungeon is generally well thought out but definitely became unbalanced at times as i was stuck consistently without food just trying to get through the story.
I do believe i prefer this game over botw though, contrary to my complaints. Its still a good game for someone who despises Zelda puzzles (though the Mineru dungeon pushed that a lot). The Zonai style is much more preferred to me compared to the Shekiah devices. I love the way the game looks; the world is breathtaking for the switch. The view of the sky is glorious, the world feels open and new. I did have fun exploring what i explored, Link's new outfits were a particularly good motivator for poking around. I generally hate botw's character design and i feel like it alienates itself from the strong art style of the previous games, especially when it comes to its female characters.The new bunch introduced in this game were the best of the best in terms of design for botw, though they are all woefully underused like much of the good things in this game.
But despite how fun the actual game was, this still feels safe. It feels plastic, and afraid to be ugly or weird. It is not Zelda and it isnt whatever its trying to emulate. There is no jumps to administer a completely different experience and it comes off as dissonant. Like im playing an elaborate mod. The bloated content in places it shouldnt have it definitely weighs it down, especially when there was a great potential for a niche of its own that the game goes out of its way to ignore. It was a fun experience as a game but everything outside of my horse and Link in his gay dragon outfit forces itself to be something that isnt wholly theirs and doesnt fit. A fun game, but not a smart one.
"Never. He's life itself. He's not dead, San. He's here right now, trying to tell us something, that it's time for us both to live."
- Zelda, apparently.
If I were to describe Tears of the Kingdom with one word, it would probably be... incongruent. Multitudes of new concepts that are more or less at odds with one another, a new experience in some ways and a modded version of botw in others. Borrowing the same story and gameplay structure from its predecessor, I intially assumed they would have the space to create something that functioned very differently from botw, such as how Majora's Mask was not only a wholly unique experience to the series but also had a very strange philosophical edge to it. Tears of the Kingdom does not achieve this...while being fun, it almost shirks off its own originality in favor of adding more unnecessary content. I am someone who appreciates Zelda mostly for its overworld and world building, and throughout my playthrough I would always get the impression that this did not feel like a Zelda game at all. The core presentation wasnt there, even if they slapped some dungeons and sages on top of it. The feeling is off, because the feeling is not organic.
(Spoilers in the image links below)
My biggest issue with totk is just how much it takes from other creations. Nintendo has intelligent people working for them, and all the money in the world. There really is not a reason for such blatant copying of other... certain... franchises. I knew going in that they were absolutely going all in on the Mononoke plagiarism, I mean, one glance at Link's fucked up arm should relay that message to you. But even the gloom itself looks a little familar. Even the music hit certain stings that I could have sworn were one for one with tracks from Mononoke. But then other things started to just look a little bit too familiar to me. And if they can do that whats stopping them from just doing whatever they want? Even the cutscenes feel like theyre trying to act upon that Miyazaki style of directing, but while Ghibli's favorite director actually has meaning behind his words, totk feels like it merely wants to look like its saying something important without saying anything at all. The emotional moments in this game feel plastic. And just when i thought it could not get any worse, they hit me with the double whammy of these scenes. Two setpieces heavily resembling some of the most memorable moments from Spirited Away and Laputa... I really do not see it as a coincidence. And it makes the game feel lesser, because it is not itself. It is not organically creating something through the usual means, it is ripping a thing from its contexts and presenting the empty shell. Its strange, because Zelda doesnt need that. Zelda is a very lush world with a lot to work with... and they already had good original ideas, which they didnt feel like using to its full potential at all.
The Zonai people were something i was every excited about when I first started the game. I absolutely love ancient things and anthropology, their intricate style was very appealing. After beating the game I still believe they are the most interesting aspects added to the botw world, but the sky and the Zonai are not used at all whatsoever. This new, creative race, and there are only 2 of them in the game. Not to mention that the sky is woefully underused, almost exempt from the game excluding the wonderful opening island. They are functioned to be miniature puzzle islands, there is nothing to do with the Zonai besides the devices you can find there and dear god let me complain about the devices.
If it was not bad enough that the thing they advertised the game with was not the focus of the experience, but Zonai materials you all were so excited to build with were actually just one use puzzle-solving contraptions with a fun exterior. Sure, you can spend 3 or 6 or 10 mintes desperately trying to attach a fan to a birdplane and get it to fly, but the game will only let you use things for a certain amount of time. It breaks apart after 30 seconds or so, sometimes shorter. So long to your dreams of flying around Hyrule, have fun trying to get to those niche sky islands when Nintendo decides you have had enough of a good time and breaks it apart 30,000 feet in the air. I have heard complaints about the horses in this game not being useful because of the superiority of the machines, but at least my horse wont explode after an arbitrary amount of time.
I believe they did a fine job of making the game feel different. I did not recognize most of Hyrule, mind for a few specific landmarks. I had a fun time hunting for treasure and scenic spots. The combat was still the best it has been in the series, and unlike others i appreciate the durability on the weapons for allowing me to experience types of gameplay i normally wouldnt gravitate to. The fuse mechanic is very useful and very silly; a fantastic motivator to continually engage in combat to make your armory stronger. The loop in this game of being rewarded for exploring in the form of monster parts and food, then using that to take on a dungeon is generally well thought out but definitely became unbalanced at times as i was stuck consistently without food just trying to get through the story.
I do believe i prefer this game over botw though, contrary to my complaints. Its still a good game for someone who despises Zelda puzzles (though the Mineru dungeon pushed that a lot). The Zonai style is much more preferred to me compared to the Shekiah devices. I love the way the game looks; the world is breathtaking for the switch. The view of the sky is glorious, the world feels open and new. I did have fun exploring what i explored, Link's new outfits were a particularly good motivator for poking around. I generally hate botw's character design and i feel like it alienates itself from the strong art style of the previous games, especially when it comes to its female characters.The new bunch introduced in this game were the best of the best in terms of design for botw, though they are all woefully underused like much of the good things in this game.
But despite how fun the actual game was, this still feels safe. It feels plastic, and afraid to be ugly or weird. It is not Zelda and it isnt whatever its trying to emulate. There is no jumps to administer a completely different experience and it comes off as dissonant. Like im playing an elaborate mod. The bloated content in places it shouldnt have it definitely weighs it down, especially when there was a great potential for a niche of its own that the game goes out of its way to ignore. It was a fun experience as a game but everything outside of my horse and Link in his gay dragon outfit forces itself to be something that isnt wholly theirs and doesnt fit. A fun game, but not a smart one.
Embraces open-world excess in a way that undercuts Breath of the Wild's more meditative appeal and turns into a far more uneven experience as a result, but all the new shit it does attempt is SO peak that it sorta evens out.
My friend Heather once said about Katamari Damacy that it's a game about interesting sensations rather than interesting obstacles and the way Tears of the Kingdom lets you interact with space, objects and materials is something I promise you've never quite sensed in a video game before.
My friend Heather once said about Katamari Damacy that it's a game about interesting sensations rather than interesting obstacles and the way Tears of the Kingdom lets you interact with space, objects and materials is something I promise you've never quite sensed in a video game before.
congratulations to tears of the kingdom for having the best cutscenes to sleep through
There exists a version of this game that's my favorite ever, but for every genuinely amazing and astonishing thing ToTK does there's gotta be three ways it undermines itself, wearing all the excitement off. For a game where you supposed make your own fun, more oftent than not you have to drag this fun out with tweezers.
Oh so when Banjo-Kazooie does it everyone hates it, but when Zelda does it way clunkier it's considered based
As a nearly 40 year old franchise, It brings me so much joy to know that The Legend of Zelda has never really lost its magic. This is the apex of that. I don't know how they can really make it better than this but, I'm gonna enjoy being surprised all over again when they do.
Before I start this review I need to preface that this game is an extremely good game there's no reason to deny the sheer quality and scope of such a project.
With that said, was it a completely satisfying game to me ? A long time Zelda fan who also happened to have the original BOTW ranked super highly as one of my favorite game of all time ?
Heeeeh not quite
By the time I'm writing this review I have completed every single shrine, gotten every single light roots, gotten every single bubul frog crystals, done a couple of the most important mission, got all the dragon tears and ofc finished the 5 temples as well as defeating the evil Ganondorf.
So I'm confident in saying that while all of this was still a relatively fun and addicting experience, there's a lingering feeling at the back of my head telling me that this wasn't really that great of a sequel to BOTW
But why ? Why did I have this awkward feeling ?
I guess it's because BOTW was such a unique experience on release, one that could be difficult to top even with the best of effort, it's such a unique take on Zelda going back to its roots and giving the series the proper evolution it needed after years of stagnant attempt at recapturing the magic of OOT with more or less good success.
It was an ode to freedom, to adventure, it was a game that had the balls to throw away 20 years of Zelda convention and was making no compromise to deliver the best experience possible.
It's hard to deny how much of an amazing title BOTW was when the only people complaining about it are game design illiterate Zelda fans who thought it wasn't "Zelda enough" (which in my book was a good thing) and personally speaking it was hard to recapture a similar experience.
TOTK feels more like what happens when you're bored of playing Minecraft Vanilla and you want to spice things up with some mods to add more stuff to do and that's how I feel about most of the new features in this game, nothing that truly enhances the original game experience in any significant way but just add more stuff on top of what was already a pretty meaty game.
But in doing so, I don't feel that the new stuff was thought with the same minutia or the same sense of vision that BOTW did.
I start with the big elephant in the room which is the map of the game.
As you may know, the map of TOTK is mostly lifted off of the one from BOTW, the surface world isn't entirely devoid of new stuff but it's still relatively the same world just slightly touched up.
The problem with this is that it completely change the way you experience the world, in BOTW I was discovering the world, I was letting myself go loose and absorb the entirety of the game in all of its scope, in TOTK the exploration feels a bit more processed.
I know these plains, I've climbed these mountains, I've sailed those seas, I've been there so I don't approach the world of TOTK the same way I did the one in BOTW.
BOTW felt like actually exploring a world and creating your own adventure, TOTK feels like checking a list of stuff to revisit to see what's different as well as progressing through the very disjointed story of the game (more on that later).
But TOTK has 2 more layers to its map, the sky and the depths !
These were the main selling point of the game (especially the sky) and the two biggest addition to BOTW's world and what do I think of both of them ?
They're honestly not that amazing, there are very few sky islands and most of them outside of the starting area are just the same copy pasted layout of one island with a rotating platform, a distributor and an empty shrine you have to bring a crystal to either by going to an island with an underground where it lies or going to an island where the same cube boss guards it on its back.
There's only maybe 2 or 3 sky island that are actually different and offer a different set of challenges and going to them is kind of bothersome with no proper way to traverse the sky (unless you decide to create an airbike), at some point the sky islands were becoming a bit too predictable but at least they were better than...
The Depths...
So ok, when I first entered the depths my jaw dropped to the floor, these crazy mf made an entire map under the map ???
But then you actually explore the depth and realize its depressingly void of interest, it's the same biomes and structure repeated infinitely with little to nothing of value to be found in here and the only real appeal of it is making surface shrines easier to find (due to the map being symetrical) and grinding for Zonite Ore to upgrade your battery (and I guess that neat little quest with the Yiga Clan but even that got dull pretty fast), every trip down here ended in disappointment and felt like a massive waste of my time until I decided to make an air bike to skip on most of the cumbersome traversal (because god the geography of the depth coupled with the limited light sources just makes me loose my mind)
The best addition to the world at least to me are the caves and wells, these should've been more advertised because these are awesome ! They're the kind of places that feels like it actually belonged in the original game map, they have unique and interesting layouts and they hold lots of surprises within them without feeling too samey and I wish the Sky Islands and The depths were designed with the same philosophy as them.
Another problem arise when discussing the story of the game. See BOTW structure really doesn't mesh well with a more narratively driven story and it shows, you can feel that there was an intended order in how you're supposed to experience what the game has to offer but if you played BOTW before, you don't wanna do that, you just want to explore the world and do things in whatever order you want !
But TOTK encourages to qualm your drive to explore and go on an adventure because not doing so will lead to a worst narrative experience, sometimes you get cutscenes out of order, you experience story segment out of order and the whole story gets broken because the first memory you get is of Zelda traveling to time and the second could be Ganon transforming into a demon and there's like 15 different step you just skipped.
It's sad because it makes some of the stronger more controlled moment of the story less effective as a result
In conclusion TOTK is a game that I enjoyed but it lacks the cohesiveness of the original game even if its fun to play around with the new ability
With that said, was it a completely satisfying game to me ? A long time Zelda fan who also happened to have the original BOTW ranked super highly as one of my favorite game of all time ?
Heeeeh not quite
By the time I'm writing this review I have completed every single shrine, gotten every single light roots, gotten every single bubul frog crystals, done a couple of the most important mission, got all the dragon tears and ofc finished the 5 temples as well as defeating the evil Ganondorf.
So I'm confident in saying that while all of this was still a relatively fun and addicting experience, there's a lingering feeling at the back of my head telling me that this wasn't really that great of a sequel to BOTW
But why ? Why did I have this awkward feeling ?
I guess it's because BOTW was such a unique experience on release, one that could be difficult to top even with the best of effort, it's such a unique take on Zelda going back to its roots and giving the series the proper evolution it needed after years of stagnant attempt at recapturing the magic of OOT with more or less good success.
It was an ode to freedom, to adventure, it was a game that had the balls to throw away 20 years of Zelda convention and was making no compromise to deliver the best experience possible.
It's hard to deny how much of an amazing title BOTW was when the only people complaining about it are game design illiterate Zelda fans who thought it wasn't "Zelda enough" (which in my book was a good thing) and personally speaking it was hard to recapture a similar experience.
TOTK feels more like what happens when you're bored of playing Minecraft Vanilla and you want to spice things up with some mods to add more stuff to do and that's how I feel about most of the new features in this game, nothing that truly enhances the original game experience in any significant way but just add more stuff on top of what was already a pretty meaty game.
But in doing so, I don't feel that the new stuff was thought with the same minutia or the same sense of vision that BOTW did.
I start with the big elephant in the room which is the map of the game.
As you may know, the map of TOTK is mostly lifted off of the one from BOTW, the surface world isn't entirely devoid of new stuff but it's still relatively the same world just slightly touched up.
The problem with this is that it completely change the way you experience the world, in BOTW I was discovering the world, I was letting myself go loose and absorb the entirety of the game in all of its scope, in TOTK the exploration feels a bit more processed.
I know these plains, I've climbed these mountains, I've sailed those seas, I've been there so I don't approach the world of TOTK the same way I did the one in BOTW.
BOTW felt like actually exploring a world and creating your own adventure, TOTK feels like checking a list of stuff to revisit to see what's different as well as progressing through the very disjointed story of the game (more on that later).
But TOTK has 2 more layers to its map, the sky and the depths !
These were the main selling point of the game (especially the sky) and the two biggest addition to BOTW's world and what do I think of both of them ?
They're honestly not that amazing, there are very few sky islands and most of them outside of the starting area are just the same copy pasted layout of one island with a rotating platform, a distributor and an empty shrine you have to bring a crystal to either by going to an island with an underground where it lies or going to an island where the same cube boss guards it on its back.
There's only maybe 2 or 3 sky island that are actually different and offer a different set of challenges and going to them is kind of bothersome with no proper way to traverse the sky (unless you decide to create an airbike), at some point the sky islands were becoming a bit too predictable but at least they were better than...
The Depths...
So ok, when I first entered the depths my jaw dropped to the floor, these crazy mf made an entire map under the map ???
But then you actually explore the depth and realize its depressingly void of interest, it's the same biomes and structure repeated infinitely with little to nothing of value to be found in here and the only real appeal of it is making surface shrines easier to find (due to the map being symetrical) and grinding for Zonite Ore to upgrade your battery (and I guess that neat little quest with the Yiga Clan but even that got dull pretty fast), every trip down here ended in disappointment and felt like a massive waste of my time until I decided to make an air bike to skip on most of the cumbersome traversal (because god the geography of the depth coupled with the limited light sources just makes me loose my mind)
The best addition to the world at least to me are the caves and wells, these should've been more advertised because these are awesome ! They're the kind of places that feels like it actually belonged in the original game map, they have unique and interesting layouts and they hold lots of surprises within them without feeling too samey and I wish the Sky Islands and The depths were designed with the same philosophy as them.
Another problem arise when discussing the story of the game. See BOTW structure really doesn't mesh well with a more narratively driven story and it shows, you can feel that there was an intended order in how you're supposed to experience what the game has to offer but if you played BOTW before, you don't wanna do that, you just want to explore the world and do things in whatever order you want !
But TOTK encourages to qualm your drive to explore and go on an adventure because not doing so will lead to a worst narrative experience, sometimes you get cutscenes out of order, you experience story segment out of order and the whole story gets broken because the first memory you get is of Zelda traveling to time and the second could be Ganon transforming into a demon and there's like 15 different step you just skipped.
It's sad because it makes some of the stronger more controlled moment of the story less effective as a result
In conclusion TOTK is a game that I enjoyed but it lacks the cohesiveness of the original game even if its fun to play around with the new ability