Breath of the Wild is my favorite game of all time. Now of course there is a distinct lack of objectivity with my decision. When I played BotW it was at a point where most of my gaming time was spent slaving away at competitive first person shooters. I had been weaning back into the singeplayer scene when I played Super Metroid earlier that year (2017), and naturally Super Metroid made me realize how much I had been missing out on especially in the "retro" category. BotW went even beyond that, being a big-budget experience that was brimming full of visible passion from its creators, and was the first time I had been truly lost in a world since I played Skyrim 3 years before that. Most of my gaming time these days is spent with singleplayer experiences and I have a deep found appreciation for game design that I barely had before BotW.
That is my explanation for why I can recognize, in an objective sense, the "superiority" of Tears of the Kingdom, yet still view it as mildly inferior. BotW was a NEW sense of freedom and a NEW sense of adventure and a NEW sense of exploration, while TotK isn't new, just MORE or REFINED. I have immense respect for the trailblazers of gaming, even when what came after is by all accounts "better".
On its own merits TotK is a wildly creative experience that relishes in the player "breaking" the game. This seems to be a common consensus and was immediately obvious to me when I was given the ability to phase through any ceiling. All the new abilities are astounding and provide one of the few times where I am impressed by a game technically. There is the minor problem that fusing and ultrahand can be tedious at times compared to the more simplistic abilities found in BotW, and this becomes part of a larger idea I have where BotW still has its own merits partially based on its simplicity.
For the rest of the content, while the sky islands are a fun traversal challenge, and the depths are too, to a lesser extent, neither addition surpasses the quality of the Hyrule surface, which is a mild disappointment but are still additions on top of the game rather than subtractive, especially since both areas are hardly required. The temples are an improvement over the divine beasts in most ways (I still enjoy the creepy atmosphere and the map controls of the divine beats quite a bit) and the bosses are certainly an improvement, though I'm not sure if they are easier or if I just have more experience.
As I mentioned with the divine beasts, I was surprised how atmospherically different TotK and BotW ended up being. BotW has a much more serene and melancholy tone through the whole game as you see the destruction of Hyrule and the problems its last bastions of civilization are facing. TotK is a much busier game and thus lacks the tranquil aspects BotW features. Sure, the landscapes might have more to do in TotK but I fully believe the "empty" areas of BotW are 100% on purpose and I love artistic trade-offs that might be hard for most people to appreciate because it makes me feel smart and pretentious. TotK also ends up being much more of an adventure of preventing a disaster as opposed to BotW's recovering from the disaster. Really I just seriously want people to appreciate BotW's tone and how surprisingly sad (dare I say "dark") it can be if you pay attention.
Most of TotK's aspects I discussed are more so different to BotW than objective downgrades, so I can only imagine that if someone played TotK before BotW it must seem like the greatest God damn game ever made by a mile, but to me it is a highly expansive sequel that addresses most the common complaints people had about BotW but in return lacks some of the more artistic decisions in BotW and in general lacks the shear innovation that made me truly love BotW.
I clearly am not capable of reviewing this game on its own and that is because when I was playing it I couldn't help but compare it to my GOAT the entire time, but I can safely say that I still absolutely love the impressive ideas this game brought to the table and it ultimately brought me more BotW, which is exactly what I wanted.
That is my explanation for why I can recognize, in an objective sense, the "superiority" of Tears of the Kingdom, yet still view it as mildly inferior. BotW was a NEW sense of freedom and a NEW sense of adventure and a NEW sense of exploration, while TotK isn't new, just MORE or REFINED. I have immense respect for the trailblazers of gaming, even when what came after is by all accounts "better".
On its own merits TotK is a wildly creative experience that relishes in the player "breaking" the game. This seems to be a common consensus and was immediately obvious to me when I was given the ability to phase through any ceiling. All the new abilities are astounding and provide one of the few times where I am impressed by a game technically. There is the minor problem that fusing and ultrahand can be tedious at times compared to the more simplistic abilities found in BotW, and this becomes part of a larger idea I have where BotW still has its own merits partially based on its simplicity.
For the rest of the content, while the sky islands are a fun traversal challenge, and the depths are too, to a lesser extent, neither addition surpasses the quality of the Hyrule surface, which is a mild disappointment but are still additions on top of the game rather than subtractive, especially since both areas are hardly required. The temples are an improvement over the divine beasts in most ways (I still enjoy the creepy atmosphere and the map controls of the divine beats quite a bit) and the bosses are certainly an improvement, though I'm not sure if they are easier or if I just have more experience.
As I mentioned with the divine beasts, I was surprised how atmospherically different TotK and BotW ended up being. BotW has a much more serene and melancholy tone through the whole game as you see the destruction of Hyrule and the problems its last bastions of civilization are facing. TotK is a much busier game and thus lacks the tranquil aspects BotW features. Sure, the landscapes might have more to do in TotK but I fully believe the "empty" areas of BotW are 100% on purpose and I love artistic trade-offs that might be hard for most people to appreciate because it makes me feel smart and pretentious. TotK also ends up being much more of an adventure of preventing a disaster as opposed to BotW's recovering from the disaster. Really I just seriously want people to appreciate BotW's tone and how surprisingly sad (dare I say "dark") it can be if you pay attention.
Most of TotK's aspects I discussed are more so different to BotW than objective downgrades, so I can only imagine that if someone played TotK before BotW it must seem like the greatest God damn game ever made by a mile, but to me it is a highly expansive sequel that addresses most the common complaints people had about BotW but in return lacks some of the more artistic decisions in BotW and in general lacks the shear innovation that made me truly love BotW.
I clearly am not capable of reviewing this game on its own and that is because when I was playing it I couldn't help but compare it to my GOAT the entire time, but I can safely say that I still absolutely love the impressive ideas this game brought to the table and it ultimately brought me more BotW, which is exactly what I wanted.