In spite of how much I loved Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom ended up being quite a disappointment for me. The new mechanics sure are impressive and add a lot of depth to the gameplay, but I'm not the biggest fan of this type of DIY gameplay. I wasn't really interested on building the gigantic robots and contraptions that I was seeing online, and the new toys quickly became old. But hey! It's Zelda, right? There's much more to it than just the main mechanics!
Well, maybe not so much.
For starters, I was really hyped to explore the depths and the sky, but both quickly started to feel empty and repetitive. I love the atmosphere of the depths, but I just can't look forward to spend more time mining and walking around trees and mines that look exactly the same to the ones I've being seeing for hours and hours. Same with the sky: while I love the three or four islands that actually have special content in them (like the diving challenges, which I found particularly fun), the rest are just copy-pastes that end up feeling like a drag. Even getting from one to another starts to lose its joy once you find a system that works for you and realize that there's no variation in how you approach the "challenge".
The world is just as nice as it was in Breath of the Wild, but I couldn't help but think how weird it is for the game to try to sell a mysterious, gloomy tone with its story and, at the same time, be more goofy than ever. The new mechanics encourage you to continously try new stuff and be as creative as you can, which brings a light-hearted tone that doesn't fit well at all with the problems that Hyrule is actually facing.
Ok, but what about the changes that everyone was asking for? For example, we have temples back! Yeah! Fantastic! Now can I ask for some temples that can't be cheesed and provide a more varied goal than "go to the 4 points that appear on your map"? Extra points if they last more than 15 minutes (I'm looking at you, water temple).
I know that I sound extremely critic with the game, but I don't want to soften my problems with it. I will praise and love Breath of the Wild forever, but it's not perfect and there are clear improvements in Tears of the Kingdom. The story is now much more fleshed out (ignoring the disaster of how you can find the tears out of order) and there are many QoL features that add a lot to the experience. But Tears of the Kingdom has too many incoherence problems to overlook, too many issues that seem a rushed decision due to the vast amount of time that must have been dedicated to polishing mechanics. Mechanics that, sadly, are not so satisfying to some of the players.
Well, maybe not so much.
For starters, I was really hyped to explore the depths and the sky, but both quickly started to feel empty and repetitive. I love the atmosphere of the depths, but I just can't look forward to spend more time mining and walking around trees and mines that look exactly the same to the ones I've being seeing for hours and hours. Same with the sky: while I love the three or four islands that actually have special content in them (like the diving challenges, which I found particularly fun), the rest are just copy-pastes that end up feeling like a drag. Even getting from one to another starts to lose its joy once you find a system that works for you and realize that there's no variation in how you approach the "challenge".
The world is just as nice as it was in Breath of the Wild, but I couldn't help but think how weird it is for the game to try to sell a mysterious, gloomy tone with its story and, at the same time, be more goofy than ever. The new mechanics encourage you to continously try new stuff and be as creative as you can, which brings a light-hearted tone that doesn't fit well at all with the problems that Hyrule is actually facing.
Ok, but what about the changes that everyone was asking for? For example, we have temples back! Yeah! Fantastic! Now can I ask for some temples that can't be cheesed and provide a more varied goal than "go to the 4 points that appear on your map"? Extra points if they last more than 15 minutes (I'm looking at you, water temple).
I know that I sound extremely critic with the game, but I don't want to soften my problems with it. I will praise and love Breath of the Wild forever, but it's not perfect and there are clear improvements in Tears of the Kingdom. The story is now much more fleshed out (ignoring the disaster of how you can find the tears out of order) and there are many QoL features that add a lot to the experience. But Tears of the Kingdom has too many incoherence problems to overlook, too many issues that seem a rushed decision due to the vast amount of time that must have been dedicated to polishing mechanics. Mechanics that, sadly, are not so satisfying to some of the players.