Tears of the Kingdom puts me in the rather unconfortable position of having to be the party pooper even through, when you get down to it, I enjoyed the game quite a lot.
I don't mind that people like the game, but.....highest rated game on this site? 10s on every big website? Come on.
This game is hugely flawed, and honnestly, not even really an improvement on Breath of the Wild. The non linearity is nowhere near as well as done. The tutorial is pretty long and dosent actually give you everything you need to explore the world properly (paraglider, autobuild). Main Quests regularly come off as weird if you do stuff early like getting the master sword. Getting to the final boss is now uber unfriendly to speedrunners. The story is just clearing up loose threads from BOTW like, what happened to Ganondorf.
I didnt think i'd mind the reuse of the map, but I actually did. BOTW's appeal was discovering an uncharted world, kinda like Zelda 1. Thats just not gonna have the same appeal the second time around. Yakuza games get away with it because not only is the story of most of these games much stronger than TOTK, traversal isnt a core of Yakuza's gameplay, while it absolutely is for Zelda, so you cant help but feel the reuse of the same map when youre going tower to tower to discover the entire map.
The zonai tech is a really cool mechanic for those creative people, the same people who love using redstone in Minecraft, but I am not a creative person, and to be fair, the game largely lets you off easy on the things you need to create so that people like me can enjoy the game. But that so means that people like me will be largely ignoring the main thing setting this game apart from BOTW.
So what is good about TOTK then?
The main quest honnestly. The dungeons were pretty good, people say they still arent on par with classic zelda dungeons, and I disagree, sure, theyre not on par with the excellent selections in the adult section of OOT and of TP, but theyre good enough and make great use of TOTK's mechanics to provide good challenges. I wish there were more, so thats a good sign. Ganondorf is absolutely fantastic is this, he is menacing and the fight with him is the right kind of hard. Side characters are enjoyable and memorable, the world feels lived in. All in all, its a fun world to be in, even if it is a rethread.
TOTK is a fun junk food open world game, and the Zelda world it takes place in helps it a lot. But I admit, the overpraise the game recieved had left a sour taste in my mouth. As much as I love Zelda, I dont want it to get a free pass because of its legacy. And you know what, even through I think its very far from a masterpiece, I will look back positivly on Tears of the Kingdom, its okay to enjoy junk food once in a while.
I don't mind that people like the game, but.....highest rated game on this site? 10s on every big website? Come on.
This game is hugely flawed, and honnestly, not even really an improvement on Breath of the Wild. The non linearity is nowhere near as well as done. The tutorial is pretty long and dosent actually give you everything you need to explore the world properly (paraglider, autobuild). Main Quests regularly come off as weird if you do stuff early like getting the master sword. Getting to the final boss is now uber unfriendly to speedrunners. The story is just clearing up loose threads from BOTW like, what happened to Ganondorf.
I didnt think i'd mind the reuse of the map, but I actually did. BOTW's appeal was discovering an uncharted world, kinda like Zelda 1. Thats just not gonna have the same appeal the second time around. Yakuza games get away with it because not only is the story of most of these games much stronger than TOTK, traversal isnt a core of Yakuza's gameplay, while it absolutely is for Zelda, so you cant help but feel the reuse of the same map when youre going tower to tower to discover the entire map.
The zonai tech is a really cool mechanic for those creative people, the same people who love using redstone in Minecraft, but I am not a creative person, and to be fair, the game largely lets you off easy on the things you need to create so that people like me can enjoy the game. But that so means that people like me will be largely ignoring the main thing setting this game apart from BOTW.
So what is good about TOTK then?
The main quest honnestly. The dungeons were pretty good, people say they still arent on par with classic zelda dungeons, and I disagree, sure, theyre not on par with the excellent selections in the adult section of OOT and of TP, but theyre good enough and make great use of TOTK's mechanics to provide good challenges. I wish there were more, so thats a good sign. Ganondorf is absolutely fantastic is this, he is menacing and the fight with him is the right kind of hard. Side characters are enjoyable and memorable, the world feels lived in. All in all, its a fun world to be in, even if it is a rethread.
TOTK is a fun junk food open world game, and the Zelda world it takes place in helps it a lot. But I admit, the overpraise the game recieved had left a sour taste in my mouth. As much as I love Zelda, I dont want it to get a free pass because of its legacy. And you know what, even through I think its very far from a masterpiece, I will look back positivly on Tears of the Kingdom, its okay to enjoy junk food once in a while.