A whole year already? Maybe the wait for the next one won’t be as bad as I thought.
Look, this is up there with the games I’ve talked the most about already, there’s so many things about it that I love and so many things about it that I can’t stress how much I despise. But given this game is still very important to me, I figured it was worth putting my updated thoughts out there (with the caveat that I have not actually played the game since my near-100% playthrough one year ago).
I’m gonna say the quiet part out loud that so many others seem scared to admit: Tears of the Kingdom was a disappointment. It did not live up to Breath of the Wild or its own series legacy, and most disappointingly of all, it is one of the worst sequels I have ever played. None of this is to imply that the game is bad, and honestly, that’s part of what frustrates me about this game so much. It pisses me off so much all while still having the gall to be, almost undeniably, a really good game in its own right. But I think we’re at a point where we just need to admit that this game was not nearly as good as it could have been or as it should have been.
When the game came out, I said that the story was better than Breath of the Wild’s. I no longer agree with this. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I feel that it’s actually quite significantly worse. For as much as I disliked BotW’s story structure, the story was built around that structure, it wouldn’t have made sense any other way. TotK’s story feels retrofitted to that structure, and so nearly every player will watch chronological events completely out of order. It’s got a singular great moment, but even that is completely undone by the time you reach the ending.
The dungeons I still feel pretty similarly about, which is to say that I believe they are better than Breath of the Wild’s but still far below the standard set by Zelda games of the past. I can articulate my disappointment better now though. Every individual puzzle is good, but they all feel incredibly disconnected from each other. There’s no through-line, no consideration of multiple elements working together at the same time, no logical sense of progression, because the developers feel that being able to approach these in whatever way you want is more important than any of that. I have to wholeheartedly disagree.
And this leads into a more general point I have on the design philosophy of this game. Freedom made Breath of the Wild exciting. The exploration and appreciation of Hyrule was front and center, with dungeons being secondary pieces. I wish they had made the dungeons more important, but fine. It fits with the game’s vision. However, the most critical flaw with Tears of the Kingdom is that its priorities are completely unbalanced.
Let me explain: Tears of the Kingdom approaches freedom in a completely different way. Instead of searching out what you want to do, you get to decide how to do it. BotW dipped its toes into this pool but TotK dives in head first. That’s why you have these incredible abilities that I still think are a remarkable technical achievement. However, if they were going to shift directions like that, they needed to change up much more than they did in every other area.
That goes for the dungeons like I mentioned, but more damning to me is the fact that this game is completely toothless in how it handles Breath of the Wild’s world. Everything is damn near identical, with extra additions in the sky and depths coming off as supplementary and relatively unnecessary. Where are the towns? Where are the interesting memorable locations? They’re on the surface level, and nowhere else. So the vast majority of the content is in the same space as it was in the map from the previous game.
Don’t get me wrong, BotW’s Hyrule is incredible, but it is a map built for exploration and discovery. It is NOT a map teeming with unique content or interesting ways to use all the new mechanics in play. So if you try to play TotK like you would BotW, focused on exploring Hyrule, you’ll almost certainly be disappointed by the lack of changes. I think it’s fair to expect more significant changes than a town being covered by mushrooms or sludge this time around.
Because this world was not designed with these mechanics in mind, things get extremely repetitive extremely quickly. Many can attest to giving up on being creative as soon as they discovered the popular hoverbike technique, but even as somebody who never saw that, I also began using the same copy/paste techniques over and over throughout my playthrough. The more time you spend with this game, you realize how little you’re actually encouraged to use the mechanics that everyone loves so much. It’s not even fun in a sandbox sense because there’s no sense of permanence to your creations whatsoever. Why bother being creative when it’ll disappear the moment you want to go do something else?
The game is a lot better when you gun it to each major quest objective and try not to explore much, but that’s insane to me because the vast majority of content in this game is completely optional. In a game that took me 130 hours on my first playthrough, it’s inexcusable that I’m sitting here saying I regret at least 100 of those hours. There is so much unnecessary fluff in this game, more than any other game I’ve ever played. The shrines are admittedly quite fun, but I can only take so many mini-challenges when there’s so few chances to exercise these mechanics in a properly demanding environment.
It’s so frustrating to imagine that all of these problems could have been solved with an entirely new environment. I had so much fun with the opening island because it seemed like it was going to be everything I wanted from this game! But as we all discovered one year ago today, the rest of the game wasn’t like that first island. I don’t mind the Breath of the Wild formula, but I do mind how lazily it was reused here. These games will NEVER work with repeated maps, and this game was the ultimate proof of that.
Tears of the Kingdom is a good game because Breath of the Wild was a good game. It has a great open world, great mechanics, great atmosphere (even if it is a bit worse now that all the towns are uglier), etc. But it is NOT a good sequel. It blatantly reuses elements without considering how they would be recontextualized with the new mechanical focus. Its new additions content wise are lackluster at best. And because of this it is completely unable to separate itself from its predecessor in a way that every Zelda prior has done with flying colors, even the direct sequels. Hearing this game compared to something like Majora’s Mask is legitimately insulting.
Having had my thoughts develop over the course of the last year, I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that this is my least favorite 3D Zelda, despite everything it has going for it. Nintendo should know to do better. We should know that Zelda deserves better.
Look, this is up there with the games I’ve talked the most about already, there’s so many things about it that I love and so many things about it that I can’t stress how much I despise. But given this game is still very important to me, I figured it was worth putting my updated thoughts out there (with the caveat that I have not actually played the game since my near-100% playthrough one year ago).
I’m gonna say the quiet part out loud that so many others seem scared to admit: Tears of the Kingdom was a disappointment. It did not live up to Breath of the Wild or its own series legacy, and most disappointingly of all, it is one of the worst sequels I have ever played. None of this is to imply that the game is bad, and honestly, that’s part of what frustrates me about this game so much. It pisses me off so much all while still having the gall to be, almost undeniably, a really good game in its own right. But I think we’re at a point where we just need to admit that this game was not nearly as good as it could have been or as it should have been.
When the game came out, I said that the story was better than Breath of the Wild’s. I no longer agree with this. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I feel that it’s actually quite significantly worse. For as much as I disliked BotW’s story structure, the story was built around that structure, it wouldn’t have made sense any other way. TotK’s story feels retrofitted to that structure, and so nearly every player will watch chronological events completely out of order. It’s got a singular great moment, but even that is completely undone by the time you reach the ending.
The dungeons I still feel pretty similarly about, which is to say that I believe they are better than Breath of the Wild’s but still far below the standard set by Zelda games of the past. I can articulate my disappointment better now though. Every individual puzzle is good, but they all feel incredibly disconnected from each other. There’s no through-line, no consideration of multiple elements working together at the same time, no logical sense of progression, because the developers feel that being able to approach these in whatever way you want is more important than any of that. I have to wholeheartedly disagree.
And this leads into a more general point I have on the design philosophy of this game. Freedom made Breath of the Wild exciting. The exploration and appreciation of Hyrule was front and center, with dungeons being secondary pieces. I wish they had made the dungeons more important, but fine. It fits with the game’s vision. However, the most critical flaw with Tears of the Kingdom is that its priorities are completely unbalanced.
Let me explain: Tears of the Kingdom approaches freedom in a completely different way. Instead of searching out what you want to do, you get to decide how to do it. BotW dipped its toes into this pool but TotK dives in head first. That’s why you have these incredible abilities that I still think are a remarkable technical achievement. However, if they were going to shift directions like that, they needed to change up much more than they did in every other area.
That goes for the dungeons like I mentioned, but more damning to me is the fact that this game is completely toothless in how it handles Breath of the Wild’s world. Everything is damn near identical, with extra additions in the sky and depths coming off as supplementary and relatively unnecessary. Where are the towns? Where are the interesting memorable locations? They’re on the surface level, and nowhere else. So the vast majority of the content is in the same space as it was in the map from the previous game.
Don’t get me wrong, BotW’s Hyrule is incredible, but it is a map built for exploration and discovery. It is NOT a map teeming with unique content or interesting ways to use all the new mechanics in play. So if you try to play TotK like you would BotW, focused on exploring Hyrule, you’ll almost certainly be disappointed by the lack of changes. I think it’s fair to expect more significant changes than a town being covered by mushrooms or sludge this time around.
Because this world was not designed with these mechanics in mind, things get extremely repetitive extremely quickly. Many can attest to giving up on being creative as soon as they discovered the popular hoverbike technique, but even as somebody who never saw that, I also began using the same copy/paste techniques over and over throughout my playthrough. The more time you spend with this game, you realize how little you’re actually encouraged to use the mechanics that everyone loves so much. It’s not even fun in a sandbox sense because there’s no sense of permanence to your creations whatsoever. Why bother being creative when it’ll disappear the moment you want to go do something else?
The game is a lot better when you gun it to each major quest objective and try not to explore much, but that’s insane to me because the vast majority of content in this game is completely optional. In a game that took me 130 hours on my first playthrough, it’s inexcusable that I’m sitting here saying I regret at least 100 of those hours. There is so much unnecessary fluff in this game, more than any other game I’ve ever played. The shrines are admittedly quite fun, but I can only take so many mini-challenges when there’s so few chances to exercise these mechanics in a properly demanding environment.
It’s so frustrating to imagine that all of these problems could have been solved with an entirely new environment. I had so much fun with the opening island because it seemed like it was going to be everything I wanted from this game! But as we all discovered one year ago today, the rest of the game wasn’t like that first island. I don’t mind the Breath of the Wild formula, but I do mind how lazily it was reused here. These games will NEVER work with repeated maps, and this game was the ultimate proof of that.
Tears of the Kingdom is a good game because Breath of the Wild was a good game. It has a great open world, great mechanics, great atmosphere (even if it is a bit worse now that all the towns are uglier), etc. But it is NOT a good sequel. It blatantly reuses elements without considering how they would be recontextualized with the new mechanical focus. Its new additions content wise are lackluster at best. And because of this it is completely unable to separate itself from its predecessor in a way that every Zelda prior has done with flying colors, even the direct sequels. Hearing this game compared to something like Majora’s Mask is legitimately insulting.
Having had my thoughts develop over the course of the last year, I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that this is my least favorite 3D Zelda, despite everything it has going for it. Nintendo should know to do better. We should know that Zelda deserves better.
2023
Coming from a lifelong Guitar Hero/Rock Band fan, this is incredibly frustrating.
Mechanically the game is just a watered down version of previous titles, the standard instruments don’t have HOPOs, whammying, chords are relegated to exclusively two notes split across a line, and overdrive has been significantly simplified as well. But whatever, it’s a more casual version of the real instrument support that we always knew was coming, and that was supposed to satisfy fans like me.
I am NOT impressed… holy shit how did they fumble this so badly?? It’s only guitar, which is already a big downgrade from any of the Rock Band series. The vast majority of controllers ever produced for the series aren’t compatible. The engine is pretty wonky with awkward strum mechanics. And worst of all, the calibration is damn near unusable. I have no idea what happened but I have NEVER had to spend so long tweaking settings to get a setup that’s even remotely playable in one of these games.
Besides the mechanics, the game is a soulless husk. Fuck Fortnite and its bland ass corporate artstyle, its ugly animations, its total lack of identity aside from sucking up things that people already liked. Fuck this games as a platform bullshit where everything it has to offer is just a lesser version of something else. There’s SO much lost here from the older games in terms of personality, charm, and unique memorable moments.
And I haven’t even mentioned the worst part yet which is this god awful live service bullshit that it forces on you. There is NO base setlist! No modes other than quickplay either! Instead you have a selection of 15-20 songs that rotate like they’re Splatoon maps, making each one frustratingly impermanent. And plenty of those slots will inevitably be taken up by boring picks that aren’t fun to play on any instrument. But don’t worry, take a quick detour to the in game store and you’ll see dozens of songs you’d much rather play, for $5 each!!! Rock Band’s dlc songs were $2 by the way, and that was after an expansive and diverse catalog of fun songs included with the game.
And to whoever wants to tell me “the old games will always be there,” that’s not true!! Rock Band is dead! The servers and music stores for the first three games have been offline for ages, it’s only a matter of time before the same happens to 4, they’ve already stopped adding dlc specifically because they’re focused on Festival now. Any chance I had of getting a real Rock Band 5 is completely gone now.
This would be a 2/10 if the charts weren’t admittedly very good. Nothing else about this game works, it’s a much MUCH worse version of the guitar/bass parts of Rock Band 4 which was already a worse version of Rock Band 2/3. I’m so mad that I had expectations for this at all, I will continue enjoying these charts in Clone Hero.
Mechanically the game is just a watered down version of previous titles, the standard instruments don’t have HOPOs, whammying, chords are relegated to exclusively two notes split across a line, and overdrive has been significantly simplified as well. But whatever, it’s a more casual version of the real instrument support that we always knew was coming, and that was supposed to satisfy fans like me.
I am NOT impressed… holy shit how did they fumble this so badly?? It’s only guitar, which is already a big downgrade from any of the Rock Band series. The vast majority of controllers ever produced for the series aren’t compatible. The engine is pretty wonky with awkward strum mechanics. And worst of all, the calibration is damn near unusable. I have no idea what happened but I have NEVER had to spend so long tweaking settings to get a setup that’s even remotely playable in one of these games.
Besides the mechanics, the game is a soulless husk. Fuck Fortnite and its bland ass corporate artstyle, its ugly animations, its total lack of identity aside from sucking up things that people already liked. Fuck this games as a platform bullshit where everything it has to offer is just a lesser version of something else. There’s SO much lost here from the older games in terms of personality, charm, and unique memorable moments.
And I haven’t even mentioned the worst part yet which is this god awful live service bullshit that it forces on you. There is NO base setlist! No modes other than quickplay either! Instead you have a selection of 15-20 songs that rotate like they’re Splatoon maps, making each one frustratingly impermanent. And plenty of those slots will inevitably be taken up by boring picks that aren’t fun to play on any instrument. But don’t worry, take a quick detour to the in game store and you’ll see dozens of songs you’d much rather play, for $5 each!!! Rock Band’s dlc songs were $2 by the way, and that was after an expansive and diverse catalog of fun songs included with the game.
And to whoever wants to tell me “the old games will always be there,” that’s not true!! Rock Band is dead! The servers and music stores for the first three games have been offline for ages, it’s only a matter of time before the same happens to 4, they’ve already stopped adding dlc specifically because they’re focused on Festival now. Any chance I had of getting a real Rock Band 5 is completely gone now.
This would be a 2/10 if the charts weren’t admittedly very good. Nothing else about this game works, it’s a much MUCH worse version of the guitar/bass parts of Rock Band 4 which was already a worse version of Rock Band 2/3. I’m so mad that I had expectations for this at all, I will continue enjoying these charts in Clone Hero.
2022
Simply put, the best feeling GH-like you will ever play. This engine feels perfect, it’s so easy to set up and calibrate, and so customizable that there’s really nothing to complain about here.
Combine that with the ludicrous amounts of custom content (that’s often better than anything from the official games) available for this game thanks to the incredibly talented and constantly active community, and you have a package that’s damn near impossible to turn down.
I gotta say I still miss the animated backgrounds from the base games (tho there is a workaround using pre-rendered videos, but it’s just not the same imo) and the career modes (no workaround for these as far as I know), and that alone is good enough reason for me to continue to go back to the official games.
If this game were able to mimic those features it would be a 10 for me, at the very least it’s without a doubt the most comprehensive experience for quickplay, and the easiest to slip into on a whim. Extremely accessible and perfectly caters to every level of player, thank god for the fan community
Combine that with the ludicrous amounts of custom content (that’s often better than anything from the official games) available for this game thanks to the incredibly talented and constantly active community, and you have a package that’s damn near impossible to turn down.
I gotta say I still miss the animated backgrounds from the base games (tho there is a workaround using pre-rendered videos, but it’s just not the same imo) and the career modes (no workaround for these as far as I know), and that alone is good enough reason for me to continue to go back to the official games.
If this game were able to mimic those features it would be a 10 for me, at the very least it’s without a doubt the most comprehensive experience for quickplay, and the easiest to slip into on a whim. Extremely accessible and perfectly caters to every level of player, thank god for the fan community
I will never understand why it took Sega so long to let the mobile ports of the classic Sonic games leave mobile phones, but anyways now that this exists it just invalidates Origins even more bc this version is easily superior to that one. Shoutout to the Sonic fan community these guys are so talented it’s the only reason it’s worth actively following the series
It’s still Sonic 1 which is why I’m not rating this as high as 2 Absolute, but as a port I honestly found this better? There’s even more features here they really went all out adding everything you could think of and a decent amount of that isn’t in 2A. The golf mode is crazy lol
This mod really impressed me, this feels far more robust than the Team Forever projects. A new super form, a reworked time travel system, and more polished visuals/animations that are extremely faithful to the original all around make this easily my favorite way to play Sonic CD. Never enjoyed the game more than I did this playthrough, some of that is just me further appreciating the level design (it's much better than I used to claim) but some of it is just because of how great this fan remaster feels.
One snag I have is that after I collected all the Time Stones there was this very strange glitch where dying would softlock the game every single time so I had to manually reset the application. Haven't found anyone else talk about this thoughso it might just be me.
If you want to play this please completely ignore the "prerequisites" section on the GameBanana page and just go off of the "requirements" section later down the page, it's so misleading and way more confusing than the actual install. You'll need a data.rsdk file so keep that in mind but they're not hard to find
One snag I have is that after I collected all the Time Stones there was this very strange glitch where dying would softlock the game every single time so I had to manually reset the application. Haven't found anyone else talk about this thoughso it might just be me.
If you want to play this please completely ignore the "prerequisites" section on the GameBanana page and just go off of the "requirements" section later down the page, it's so misleading and way more confusing than the actual install. You'll need a data.rsdk file so keep that in mind but they're not hard to find
2016
Idk if this is even worth logging but LMAO this feels like a 14-year-old's first attempt at saying something profound