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This review contains spoilers
An amazing must-play title for the Nintendo Switch. I can't add anything positive that hasn't already been said countless times, so I will try to explain why some of it's flaws hold it back from being a perfect game for me and is in some cases actually worse than BotW:
- The Depths: The first time you descend down and discover another world the size of Hyrule will be one of my favourite gaming memories of all time. But I felt disappointed by them the more time I spent down there. Almost no variation in the environment, almost no worthwhile items or collectibles, the same enemies as the overworld, it even pulls an Elden Ring and reuses main bosses as in-world minibosses. We complain about too large worlds with repetitive content a lot but why did Nintendo get a pass for this one here? Trying to fight your way through the darkness to find a lightroot is really fun, but I honestly couldn't be bothered to do all 100+ of them when you have to go through the ever-same terrain.
- The four main quests: TotK has some amazing cutscenes and story-bits but the four main questlines are not among them. We see essentially the same 6-10 minute cutscene more than four times: "here's a flashback to the fight against Ganondorf. And...oh my.... this girl looks like.... Zelda?!?!?!?! No.... could she really be.... the princess?!?!?!" these are agonizing to watch honestly.
While the questlines themselves have about the same structure and depth as the BotW ones, they vary wildly in length and quality in my opinion: The Gerudo questline (desert) is long, high quality and epic throughout. The Goro questline (volcano) is short and even the temple feels more like cut content and doesn't compare to the other ones.
- The "secret" fifth sage/questline: It's too long filled with bad puzzles (especially those in the jungle), the sky islands you have to go through during a thunderstorm is a cool gimmick that overstays it's welcome as you try to find the exit. Then you go into the depths to do four shrine-tier puzzles to unlock: a mech! The mech is awesome. Only problem is that the mech is totally useless: you do no damage and any damage you recieve goes straight at your health. How can you add a mech to a game and not make it fun??
- Controls: The control layout is way too overloaded. The buttons do so many different things that you often freeze up for a couple seconds and think "how do I do that again?"
I don't know why but I constantly threw away my weapon by accident. The ability wheel is laggy and slow to respond, rotating things with Ultrahand is a pain, you have to go into the inventory to toggle the sages and attaching something to your bow is a one row list of every item in your inventory making it take forever to select something.
I also have my problems with how the final area and boss rush are way too long without any way to return or save or prepare but it probably sounds like I hate this game now already but I don't. I love Tears of the Kingdom, I just don't think it's a flawless masterpiece 10 our of 10. More like a 9 out of 10 and that's an amazing score as well.
- The Depths: The first time you descend down and discover another world the size of Hyrule will be one of my favourite gaming memories of all time. But I felt disappointed by them the more time I spent down there. Almost no variation in the environment, almost no worthwhile items or collectibles, the same enemies as the overworld, it even pulls an Elden Ring and reuses main bosses as in-world minibosses. We complain about too large worlds with repetitive content a lot but why did Nintendo get a pass for this one here? Trying to fight your way through the darkness to find a lightroot is really fun, but I honestly couldn't be bothered to do all 100+ of them when you have to go through the ever-same terrain.
- The four main quests: TotK has some amazing cutscenes and story-bits but the four main questlines are not among them. We see essentially the same 6-10 minute cutscene more than four times: "here's a flashback to the fight against Ganondorf. And...oh my.... this girl looks like.... Zelda?!?!?!?! No.... could she really be.... the princess?!?!?!" these are agonizing to watch honestly.
While the questlines themselves have about the same structure and depth as the BotW ones, they vary wildly in length and quality in my opinion: The Gerudo questline (desert) is long, high quality and epic throughout. The Goro questline (volcano) is short and even the temple feels more like cut content and doesn't compare to the other ones.
- The "secret" fifth sage/questline: It's too long filled with bad puzzles (especially those in the jungle), the sky islands you have to go through during a thunderstorm is a cool gimmick that overstays it's welcome as you try to find the exit. Then you go into the depths to do four shrine-tier puzzles to unlock: a mech! The mech is awesome. Only problem is that the mech is totally useless: you do no damage and any damage you recieve goes straight at your health. How can you add a mech to a game and not make it fun??
- Controls: The control layout is way too overloaded. The buttons do so many different things that you often freeze up for a couple seconds and think "how do I do that again?"
I don't know why but I constantly threw away my weapon by accident. The ability wheel is laggy and slow to respond, rotating things with Ultrahand is a pain, you have to go into the inventory to toggle the sages and attaching something to your bow is a one row list of every item in your inventory making it take forever to select something.
I also have my problems with how the final area and boss rush are way too long without any way to return or save or prepare but it probably sounds like I hate this game now already but I don't. I love Tears of the Kingdom, I just don't think it's a flawless masterpiece 10 our of 10. More like a 9 out of 10 and that's an amazing score as well.
I like both Neptunia and Senran Kagura, so for me this is like the biggest crossover event since The Avengers but better! Story-wise this is a full-on Neptunia game with a couple Senran Kagura cameos, which is fine by me. You either really like or really hate Neptunia games and it's stories, though I was a bit disappointed with the Visual Novel cutscenes. Even the ReBirth games for the PSVita had character models that moved and reacted with lots of expressions, here it's really just a couple jpegs with many lengthy transitions between them.
Combat wise it was fine. Funnily enough this is not the first Neptunia game with Senran Kagura like combat. They already did that with Neptunia U Action Unleashed but there the combat was terrible imo. Here it's competent and actually fun to play. Because here they made a new combat system from the ground up instead of trying to fit RPG elements into existing Senran Kagura combat like in Neptunia U. This sadly also means that pretty much all of the fan-service stuff from the SK games are missing here. No clothes ripping, no questionable camera angles, nothing. This might actually be the most prudent game of both franchises to date!
The game is not that hard, not that deep and not that long but I like it when games know when to call it quits and not overstay it's welcome. This is a 2/5 or 3/5 game for most people but because I'm insane it gets the Neptune bonus to 4/5.
Combat wise it was fine. Funnily enough this is not the first Neptunia game with Senran Kagura like combat. They already did that with Neptunia U Action Unleashed but there the combat was terrible imo. Here it's competent and actually fun to play. Because here they made a new combat system from the ground up instead of trying to fit RPG elements into existing Senran Kagura combat like in Neptunia U. This sadly also means that pretty much all of the fan-service stuff from the SK games are missing here. No clothes ripping, no questionable camera angles, nothing. This might actually be the most prudent game of both franchises to date!
The game is not that hard, not that deep and not that long but I like it when games know when to call it quits and not overstay it's welcome. This is a 2/5 or 3/5 game for most people but because I'm insane it gets the Neptune bonus to 4/5.