This review contains spoilers
This review is not for everybody (Zelda 1 reference)
If you like Breath of the Wild, you will like Tears of the Kingdom. If your favorite game is BotW then do yourself a favor and do not read this or any other review and do not watch any videos about it. Go completely blind and you will have a great time!
However,
If you did not like BotW then this is the review for you. I'm gonna compare both games and list the most common issues people have with the first one to see if Nintendo fixed or improved in those areas. Finally, you can find all the spoilers at the end. Let's get started.
-Combat
BotW: too simple for a huge game, you get all the combat options from the beginning and you don’t get to learn any skills along the way, which makes the combat loop feel stale and repetitive in the long run. Also, there’s no real reason to fight enemies because the rewards are not worth the resources you will spend thanks to the break mechanic.
TotK: the combat remains almost the same, no new weapon styles. However, thanks to the fuse ability, fighting enemies is actually worth it, because you will get materials that will make your weapons stronger, so the bigger the enemy, the bigger the reward. Also there is a Spoiler#1 that can change the combat a little bit.
-World and Exploration
BotW: the map is so big that it feels empty in some areas, and there’s no motivation to explore it after a while because you will only find shrines or koroks.
TotK: The map no longer feels empty, there’s always something to do in most areas, and this time there’s more collectables and things to find. See list in Spoiler#2
-Enemies
BotW: only has 12 different enemies which is too low for a map that large. Just as a small comparison, the original Zelda for NES had 26 different enemies not counting bosses.
TotK: there’s 9 new enemies and 11 returning enemies for a total of 20 enemies, the one missing are the guardians. For a full list check Spoiler #3
-Dungeons
BotW: all 4 Divine Beast were too short, too easy and all of them look the same; a letdown for a franchise that is known for its great dungeon designs.
TotK: the dungeons are way better than the Divine Beasts but not as good as the traditional dungeons. They look different from each other, have different themes and mechanics. However, they are still too short,there are no maps, compass or small or big keys, no classic items inside, no minibosses, and they all follow the same structure: hit 4 or 5 switches to open the boss room. For more info check Spoiler#4
-Bosses
BotW: all the main bosses look so similar that it feels that you are fighting the same thing 4 times. Even the final boss has this same look and feel.
TotK: actually one of the highlights of the game so I don’t want to say too much. If you want to see the names check Spoiler#5
-Music
BotW: the music of this game is subtle and minimalistic, it’s not bad but it’s not as memorable as the music in past entries.
TotK: it reuses a lot of tracks from the previous game but it has a lot of new music as well. The music from the dungeons and the Depths is good, there’s great new arrangements of past locations from BotW like Hyrule Castle, and the shrines have a new song that is better for puzzle solving. Finally, the new combat music is amazing. Overall the music is more noticeable this time around.
-Story
BotW: one of the weakest points of the game. The player's actions do not affect the main quest in a meaningful way because all the important bits are memories of things that have already happened. All the player can do is beat the bad guy and rescue the princess. All the important characters are already gone so you can’t interact with them. Also, the characters in the present do not add anything to the story.
TotK: the story is a little better but it’s not great. There is a lot of wasted potential and a lot of unanswered questions about the lore and the connection with the previous game. Also, for those internet theorists: no. There is no mention of Skyward Sword events, no mention of the Twili, no mentions of Hylia or the Triforce, no timelines merge. It's all self-contained. For more, check Spoiler#7
Finally some FAQs and comments
Is it really just the same map from Breath of the Wild?
No, the game has three maps: the sky, the surface, and the depths. The Sky is very small, there’s not much to do and the isles look very similar to each other. The Surface, even if it uses the same map as BotW, has a lot of new things to do and new places to explore like caves. Finally the Depths is a huge underworld map that is in complete darkness and it’s difficult to traverse. Definitely one of the best parts of the game, so I don’t know why they never mentioned it in any trailer. This alone would have made a lot of indecisive people preorder the game.
How long is the main quest?
It is very long, longer than the previous game. You have multiple main quests and also something new called side adventures, which are bigger than sidequests and help the world-building a lot. Took me 36 hours to finish the game and I still have a lot of side adventures to do.
Is there any content in BotW that is no longer in TotK?
All of the Sheikah tech is gone, but everything is pretty much replaced by Zonai tech.
The bomb runes are gone, but the game has bomb flowers which you can attach to your shield for bomb jumping, or simply throw them to open paths in caves. The stasis and cryonis runes are also gone, and there's no real replacement for those. However, the new tools give you way more options to tackle puzzles, so you won’t be missing them too much.
There is one armor set that was cut and that is the Gerudo Outfit, so you can no longer dress as a girl.
Any new issues?
Yes, the game has so many options that sometimes it is hard to navigate through so many menus. While using a bow, you have the choice to fuse your arrows with materials. However, to do so you will have to go to a menu with more than 100 materials if you are already very deep into the game, so selecting the one you need is a chore. This disrupts the flow of some battles so much that you might prefer to just not use it at all, which shows a big design flaw.
Another issue might be the complexity of the Ultrahand skill. It gives the player total freedom and creativity, but setting all the pieces in the right spot and the right angle is very time consuming. It drags the answers to some puzzles more than you want to. That's why the game has another skill called Autobuild, that lets you save your build for future use so you don't have to go through all that again. However Autobuild is not available in shrines.
Finally there’s one more issue but it is related to a new ability so check Spoiler#6 for that.
SPOILERS
Spoiler#1
After beating a dungeon, you will get a companion that will fight alongside you and you can have multiple companions at the same time. Which makes fighting easier because they will get the enemies’ attention, can take hits from you, and attack. Also, the final companion is a mecha that you can ride and has its own combat mechanics. However, it’s kinda sluggish and it uses energy cells to move. Finally, you can learn a new combat skill with the Yiga Clan.
Spoiler#2
New things to collect:
Sage’s Will: makes your companions stronger
Poes: trade them for items
Bubbul Gems: trade them for items
Crystallized Charge: to make more Energy Cells
Schema Stone: blueprints for the ultrahand builds
Paraglider Fabrics
Old Maps
12 new Armor sets and 5 new armor pieces
Spoiler#3
New enemies:
Like Like (doesn’t move or eat your shield, but they drop chests when defeated,) Evermean (trees that attack, don’t have an original design, it just a regular tree that moves,) Aerocuda (new flying creature,) Gibdo (looks like ReDeads, there’s a variant with wings,) Boss Bokoblin (just a big bokoblin,) Horriblin (found in caves, they can climb walls and ceilings,) Construct, Little Frox (small creatures of the Depths,) Gloom Hands (looks like a Floormaster from Wind Waker, but doesn’t take you to other places, just attacks)
Spoiler#4
List of Dungeons
Wind Temple, Fire Temple, Water Temple and Lighting Temple.
Hyrule Castle is also a dungeon but it’s smaller than the one from BotW.
There’s also a Spirit Temple in the Depths but it doesn’t have its own map.
Spoiler#5
New bosses:
-Dungeon bosses: Colgera, Marbled Gohma, Mucktorok, Queen Gibdo, Phantom Ganon and Seized Construct.
-Mini bosses: Gleeok, Frox, Moragia, Flux Construct.
Spoiler#6
The companions that you get after beating a dungeon are a big help, and everyone has a special skill that lets you do different things. However, in order to use this skill you have to be by the companion’s side and then press the A button. The issue with this is that your companions move on their own and sometimes when you need them and they are very far away, so you have to go and get them. And when you have multiple companions at once sometimes it’s very difficult to interact with the one you want because everyone is moving, especially in battles. Overall, it is a great idea in theory but with a very chaotic execution. It would have been way better to have another menu that will use the selected skill no matter the position of the companion. But then again, another menu on top of the other tons of menus.
Spoiler#7
The game story goes like this:
Link and Zelda find Ganondorf sealed below the castle, the seal is broken and Ganondorf awakens and destroys the Master Sword, the floor crumbles and Zelda transport herself to the past by accident to avoid death and Link is saved by the Spirit of Rauru, the first King of Hyrule and the one that sealed Ganondorf. It seems a lot of time has passed between this incident and the moment Link wakes up in the sky but it’s never mentioned how much. When Link returns to the surface he discovers that Hyrule has a lot of problems in each region, and that those troubles started with Zelda. Later, Link finds out that Zelda was actually Phantom Ganon. So when Link saves a region by clearing a dungeon, the characters that help him will awaken as a sage and they will see a memory of the real Zelda in the past telling the sage of that time to help Link fight Ganondorf in the future. So the more sages you awaken the easier the fight with Ganondorf will be. There are 5 sages in total. And this is one of the main quests.
The second main quest is to find all of Zelda’s memories. When Zelda transports herself to the past, she reaches the time when Hyrule was created and she meets Rauru and Sonia, the first King and Queen of Hyrule. She also meets Ganondorf, when he swears loyalty to the King, but later he disguises himself as Zelda to kill Sonia and to steal her Secret Stone. With this stone, Ganondorf turns himself into the Demon King. Rauru gives all the sages a Sacred Stone to fight Ganondorf but he is too strong, so Rauru sacrifices his own life to seal him. Zelda tries to find a way to defeat Ganondorf knowing that the seal with break in the future, so she uses her time travel powers to bring the remains of the Master Sword to the past and performs a forbidden ritual to turn herself into a dragon to gain immortality so that she can be with the Master Sword for thousands of years repairing its powers. After this you see all that by gathering all the memories you can get about Zelda’s dragon form and get the Master Sword.
With that done, all that is left is to find Ganondorf’s location, which you can get by exploring the Depths and fighting against Master Koga and the Yiga Clan. You will learn that Ganondorf is still in the same place he was at the beginning of the game: below Hyrule’s Castle. You go there, you beat Ganondorf, he gets mad and he performs the same forbidden ritual as Zelda to turn himself into a dragon taking Link with him into the sky. Dragon Zelda joins the fight and they defeat Ganondorf. The spirit of Rauru and Sonia appear and they turn Zelda back into human form and the game ends.
So, same thing with the previous game, Zelda is not an active character, all the things she can do are already done so it doesn’t have real weight and we just get to see flashbacks of it. At the beginning of the game we can see how Zelda interacts with Link and it is honestly one of the best parts so it’s a shame that there isn’t more of it in the game. Also, turning Zelda back to her human form just for the sake of a happy ending makes her sacrifice meaningless, losing all the emotional setup of that scene.
Link is also just there. He was asleep while the world was changing at the beginning of the game, so he didn’t get to be part of that, he doesn’t interact with important characters like Sonia (not even once.) And he beats Ganondorf fairly easily with no real build up or emotional tension, there's no mention of the Master Sword being better this time because of Zelda’s sacrifice, it's just a very flat moment.
Ganondorf is such a wasted potential. His design and voice acting make him a very intimidating character. However, he does nothing, he’s just waiting below the castle for Link to arrive, and there’s no explanation why. Is he wounded? Is he resting to regain his power? Is he able to transform back and forth into the Demon King? Can he go to the surface? The game never answers this. Also, his motivation is really weak, he is just bad and wants to rule the world just because. There is also the big question, is he related to Calamity Ganon? Is malice the same thing as gloom? Why does no one mention any of this? And speaking of Breath of the Wild, where are all the Sheikah Towers or the Sheikah technology? Where are the Divine beasts? Why is a game that was called “The Sequel to Breath of the Wild” for so many years not actually a sequel?
So yeah, the narrative of this game is the point that bothers me the most. I was actually having a good time with the game but after watching the ending I can’t help but to feel disappointment, so it’s kinda difficult for me to keep playing and going for a 100%.
How can they put so much work into the gameplay and the world and so little into the story?
So this was my review. I hope I helped you make a decision about whether or not you should spend $70 on this game.
If you like Breath of the Wild, you will like Tears of the Kingdom. If your favorite game is BotW then do yourself a favor and do not read this or any other review and do not watch any videos about it. Go completely blind and you will have a great time!
However,
If you did not like BotW then this is the review for you. I'm gonna compare both games and list the most common issues people have with the first one to see if Nintendo fixed or improved in those areas. Finally, you can find all the spoilers at the end. Let's get started.
-Combat
BotW: too simple for a huge game, you get all the combat options from the beginning and you don’t get to learn any skills along the way, which makes the combat loop feel stale and repetitive in the long run. Also, there’s no real reason to fight enemies because the rewards are not worth the resources you will spend thanks to the break mechanic.
TotK: the combat remains almost the same, no new weapon styles. However, thanks to the fuse ability, fighting enemies is actually worth it, because you will get materials that will make your weapons stronger, so the bigger the enemy, the bigger the reward. Also there is a Spoiler#1 that can change the combat a little bit.
-World and Exploration
BotW: the map is so big that it feels empty in some areas, and there’s no motivation to explore it after a while because you will only find shrines or koroks.
TotK: The map no longer feels empty, there’s always something to do in most areas, and this time there’s more collectables and things to find. See list in Spoiler#2
-Enemies
BotW: only has 12 different enemies which is too low for a map that large. Just as a small comparison, the original Zelda for NES had 26 different enemies not counting bosses.
TotK: there’s 9 new enemies and 11 returning enemies for a total of 20 enemies, the one missing are the guardians. For a full list check Spoiler #3
-Dungeons
BotW: all 4 Divine Beast were too short, too easy and all of them look the same; a letdown for a franchise that is known for its great dungeon designs.
TotK: the dungeons are way better than the Divine Beasts but not as good as the traditional dungeons. They look different from each other, have different themes and mechanics. However, they are still too short,there are no maps, compass or small or big keys, no classic items inside, no minibosses, and they all follow the same structure: hit 4 or 5 switches to open the boss room. For more info check Spoiler#4
-Bosses
BotW: all the main bosses look so similar that it feels that you are fighting the same thing 4 times. Even the final boss has this same look and feel.
TotK: actually one of the highlights of the game so I don’t want to say too much. If you want to see the names check Spoiler#5
-Music
BotW: the music of this game is subtle and minimalistic, it’s not bad but it’s not as memorable as the music in past entries.
TotK: it reuses a lot of tracks from the previous game but it has a lot of new music as well. The music from the dungeons and the Depths is good, there’s great new arrangements of past locations from BotW like Hyrule Castle, and the shrines have a new song that is better for puzzle solving. Finally, the new combat music is amazing. Overall the music is more noticeable this time around.
-Story
BotW: one of the weakest points of the game. The player's actions do not affect the main quest in a meaningful way because all the important bits are memories of things that have already happened. All the player can do is beat the bad guy and rescue the princess. All the important characters are already gone so you can’t interact with them. Also, the characters in the present do not add anything to the story.
TotK: the story is a little better but it’s not great. There is a lot of wasted potential and a lot of unanswered questions about the lore and the connection with the previous game. Also, for those internet theorists: no. There is no mention of Skyward Sword events, no mention of the Twili, no mentions of Hylia or the Triforce, no timelines merge. It's all self-contained. For more, check Spoiler#7
Finally some FAQs and comments
Is it really just the same map from Breath of the Wild?
No, the game has three maps: the sky, the surface, and the depths. The Sky is very small, there’s not much to do and the isles look very similar to each other. The Surface, even if it uses the same map as BotW, has a lot of new things to do and new places to explore like caves. Finally the Depths is a huge underworld map that is in complete darkness and it’s difficult to traverse. Definitely one of the best parts of the game, so I don’t know why they never mentioned it in any trailer. This alone would have made a lot of indecisive people preorder the game.
How long is the main quest?
It is very long, longer than the previous game. You have multiple main quests and also something new called side adventures, which are bigger than sidequests and help the world-building a lot. Took me 36 hours to finish the game and I still have a lot of side adventures to do.
Is there any content in BotW that is no longer in TotK?
All of the Sheikah tech is gone, but everything is pretty much replaced by Zonai tech.
The bomb runes are gone, but the game has bomb flowers which you can attach to your shield for bomb jumping, or simply throw them to open paths in caves. The stasis and cryonis runes are also gone, and there's no real replacement for those. However, the new tools give you way more options to tackle puzzles, so you won’t be missing them too much.
There is one armor set that was cut and that is the Gerudo Outfit, so you can no longer dress as a girl.
Any new issues?
Yes, the game has so many options that sometimes it is hard to navigate through so many menus. While using a bow, you have the choice to fuse your arrows with materials. However, to do so you will have to go to a menu with more than 100 materials if you are already very deep into the game, so selecting the one you need is a chore. This disrupts the flow of some battles so much that you might prefer to just not use it at all, which shows a big design flaw.
Another issue might be the complexity of the Ultrahand skill. It gives the player total freedom and creativity, but setting all the pieces in the right spot and the right angle is very time consuming. It drags the answers to some puzzles more than you want to. That's why the game has another skill called Autobuild, that lets you save your build for future use so you don't have to go through all that again. However Autobuild is not available in shrines.
Finally there’s one more issue but it is related to a new ability so check Spoiler#6 for that.
SPOILERS
Spoiler#1
After beating a dungeon, you will get a companion that will fight alongside you and you can have multiple companions at the same time. Which makes fighting easier because they will get the enemies’ attention, can take hits from you, and attack. Also, the final companion is a mecha that you can ride and has its own combat mechanics. However, it’s kinda sluggish and it uses energy cells to move. Finally, you can learn a new combat skill with the Yiga Clan.
Spoiler#2
New things to collect:
Sage’s Will: makes your companions stronger
Poes: trade them for items
Bubbul Gems: trade them for items
Crystallized Charge: to make more Energy Cells
Schema Stone: blueprints for the ultrahand builds
Paraglider Fabrics
Old Maps
12 new Armor sets and 5 new armor pieces
Spoiler#3
New enemies:
Like Like (doesn’t move or eat your shield, but they drop chests when defeated,) Evermean (trees that attack, don’t have an original design, it just a regular tree that moves,) Aerocuda (new flying creature,) Gibdo (looks like ReDeads, there’s a variant with wings,) Boss Bokoblin (just a big bokoblin,) Horriblin (found in caves, they can climb walls and ceilings,) Construct, Little Frox (small creatures of the Depths,) Gloom Hands (looks like a Floormaster from Wind Waker, but doesn’t take you to other places, just attacks)
Spoiler#4
List of Dungeons
Wind Temple, Fire Temple, Water Temple and Lighting Temple.
Hyrule Castle is also a dungeon but it’s smaller than the one from BotW.
There’s also a Spirit Temple in the Depths but it doesn’t have its own map.
Spoiler#5
New bosses:
-Dungeon bosses: Colgera, Marbled Gohma, Mucktorok, Queen Gibdo, Phantom Ganon and Seized Construct.
-Mini bosses: Gleeok, Frox, Moragia, Flux Construct.
Spoiler#6
The companions that you get after beating a dungeon are a big help, and everyone has a special skill that lets you do different things. However, in order to use this skill you have to be by the companion’s side and then press the A button. The issue with this is that your companions move on their own and sometimes when you need them and they are very far away, so you have to go and get them. And when you have multiple companions at once sometimes it’s very difficult to interact with the one you want because everyone is moving, especially in battles. Overall, it is a great idea in theory but with a very chaotic execution. It would have been way better to have another menu that will use the selected skill no matter the position of the companion. But then again, another menu on top of the other tons of menus.
Spoiler#7
The game story goes like this:
Link and Zelda find Ganondorf sealed below the castle, the seal is broken and Ganondorf awakens and destroys the Master Sword, the floor crumbles and Zelda transport herself to the past by accident to avoid death and Link is saved by the Spirit of Rauru, the first King of Hyrule and the one that sealed Ganondorf. It seems a lot of time has passed between this incident and the moment Link wakes up in the sky but it’s never mentioned how much. When Link returns to the surface he discovers that Hyrule has a lot of problems in each region, and that those troubles started with Zelda. Later, Link finds out that Zelda was actually Phantom Ganon. So when Link saves a region by clearing a dungeon, the characters that help him will awaken as a sage and they will see a memory of the real Zelda in the past telling the sage of that time to help Link fight Ganondorf in the future. So the more sages you awaken the easier the fight with Ganondorf will be. There are 5 sages in total. And this is one of the main quests.
The second main quest is to find all of Zelda’s memories. When Zelda transports herself to the past, she reaches the time when Hyrule was created and she meets Rauru and Sonia, the first King and Queen of Hyrule. She also meets Ganondorf, when he swears loyalty to the King, but later he disguises himself as Zelda to kill Sonia and to steal her Secret Stone. With this stone, Ganondorf turns himself into the Demon King. Rauru gives all the sages a Sacred Stone to fight Ganondorf but he is too strong, so Rauru sacrifices his own life to seal him. Zelda tries to find a way to defeat Ganondorf knowing that the seal with break in the future, so she uses her time travel powers to bring the remains of the Master Sword to the past and performs a forbidden ritual to turn herself into a dragon to gain immortality so that she can be with the Master Sword for thousands of years repairing its powers. After this you see all that by gathering all the memories you can get about Zelda’s dragon form and get the Master Sword.
With that done, all that is left is to find Ganondorf’s location, which you can get by exploring the Depths and fighting against Master Koga and the Yiga Clan. You will learn that Ganondorf is still in the same place he was at the beginning of the game: below Hyrule’s Castle. You go there, you beat Ganondorf, he gets mad and he performs the same forbidden ritual as Zelda to turn himself into a dragon taking Link with him into the sky. Dragon Zelda joins the fight and they defeat Ganondorf. The spirit of Rauru and Sonia appear and they turn Zelda back into human form and the game ends.
So, same thing with the previous game, Zelda is not an active character, all the things she can do are already done so it doesn’t have real weight and we just get to see flashbacks of it. At the beginning of the game we can see how Zelda interacts with Link and it is honestly one of the best parts so it’s a shame that there isn’t more of it in the game. Also, turning Zelda back to her human form just for the sake of a happy ending makes her sacrifice meaningless, losing all the emotional setup of that scene.
Link is also just there. He was asleep while the world was changing at the beginning of the game, so he didn’t get to be part of that, he doesn’t interact with important characters like Sonia (not even once.) And he beats Ganondorf fairly easily with no real build up or emotional tension, there's no mention of the Master Sword being better this time because of Zelda’s sacrifice, it's just a very flat moment.
Ganondorf is such a wasted potential. His design and voice acting make him a very intimidating character. However, he does nothing, he’s just waiting below the castle for Link to arrive, and there’s no explanation why. Is he wounded? Is he resting to regain his power? Is he able to transform back and forth into the Demon King? Can he go to the surface? The game never answers this. Also, his motivation is really weak, he is just bad and wants to rule the world just because. There is also the big question, is he related to Calamity Ganon? Is malice the same thing as gloom? Why does no one mention any of this? And speaking of Breath of the Wild, where are all the Sheikah Towers or the Sheikah technology? Where are the Divine beasts? Why is a game that was called “The Sequel to Breath of the Wild” for so many years not actually a sequel?
So yeah, the narrative of this game is the point that bothers me the most. I was actually having a good time with the game but after watching the ending I can’t help but to feel disappointment, so it’s kinda difficult for me to keep playing and going for a 100%.
How can they put so much work into the gameplay and the world and so little into the story?
So this was my review. I hope I helped you make a decision about whether or not you should spend $70 on this game.
NOWITSREYNTIME17
1 year ago