A great man is able to admit when he is wrong. And I am one such man. Tears of the Kingdom is, in fact, a very good game.
However, it's not a masterpiece. I would even go so far as to say that it's not even great. Here's why:
WEAK PROGRESSION. Between the lack of RPG-style XP and a weapon break system which imposes a cost on every encounter (and a limit on its rewards), fighting mobs feels pointless.
MINDLESS DIALOG FOR BABIES. The dialog in this game is mostly devoid of any charm or humor. It's also ultra-repetitive. Nintendo seems to think that every NPC encounter needs to begin with an inane conversation, which almost universally involves a summary of the game's plot up to that point, and end with an advertisement for a fetch quest somewhere on the other side of the map. Please, I just want to check out my horse.
WEAPON FUSING. The lame weapon inventory management gameplay from the first game, now with additional inventory management. Fusing with Zonai devices seemed promising, but the resulting weapons are weaker than you'd expect and end up being impractical.
APPALLING ACTING. The voice acting on some characters is jarringly bad and the face capture technology is straight out of 2006.
BORING COMBAT. I think Nintendo could have taken this game as an opportunity to tune up Breath of the Wild's combat and make it more satisfying and weighty. Instead, you can now glue a rock to your sword.
BAD CONTROLS. After playing this game for something like 50 hours, I still find myself second guessing which button is the jump button. The horseback riding controls also deserve a special call out for being dreadful.
THE DEPTHS. I've seen reviews of this game breathlessly hailing the Depths as Zelda's answer to Elden Ring's underworld. I think that's a stretch. Though the Depths helps somewhat with this game's sense of progression, the gameplay on offer here is less interesting that the content above. Nintendo is getting a lot of credit for this addition, but it looks to me like they cloned the map of Hyrule, added some antagonistic terrain, turned out the lights, and copy pasted some boss encounters and camps. Compared to Elden Ring's breathtakingly beautiful underground areas, the Depths falls way short.
ANNOYING MECHANICS. Climbing slippage. Idiotic horse stabling system. Stingy vehicle de-spawn rules. Inconsistent auto-save. Spectacularly, ludicrously tedious cooking system.
GRAPHICS & PERFORMANCE. It fucking sucks. Low resolution textures betray the game's strong art direction. Ultrahand and crowded environments constantly drop-kick the framerate. Fast travel means your playthrough is peppered with long load times. I understand the game console this game runs on has less processing power than a modern refrigerator, but at the end of the day it's 2023 and this is just not acceptable anymore.
Still beats Breath of the Wild by a mile though.
However, it's not a masterpiece. I would even go so far as to say that it's not even great. Here's why:
WEAK PROGRESSION. Between the lack of RPG-style XP and a weapon break system which imposes a cost on every encounter (and a limit on its rewards), fighting mobs feels pointless.
MINDLESS DIALOG FOR BABIES. The dialog in this game is mostly devoid of any charm or humor. It's also ultra-repetitive. Nintendo seems to think that every NPC encounter needs to begin with an inane conversation, which almost universally involves a summary of the game's plot up to that point, and end with an advertisement for a fetch quest somewhere on the other side of the map. Please, I just want to check out my horse.
WEAPON FUSING. The lame weapon inventory management gameplay from the first game, now with additional inventory management. Fusing with Zonai devices seemed promising, but the resulting weapons are weaker than you'd expect and end up being impractical.
APPALLING ACTING. The voice acting on some characters is jarringly bad and the face capture technology is straight out of 2006.
BORING COMBAT. I think Nintendo could have taken this game as an opportunity to tune up Breath of the Wild's combat and make it more satisfying and weighty. Instead, you can now glue a rock to your sword.
BAD CONTROLS. After playing this game for something like 50 hours, I still find myself second guessing which button is the jump button. The horseback riding controls also deserve a special call out for being dreadful.
THE DEPTHS. I've seen reviews of this game breathlessly hailing the Depths as Zelda's answer to Elden Ring's underworld. I think that's a stretch. Though the Depths helps somewhat with this game's sense of progression, the gameplay on offer here is less interesting that the content above. Nintendo is getting a lot of credit for this addition, but it looks to me like they cloned the map of Hyrule, added some antagonistic terrain, turned out the lights, and copy pasted some boss encounters and camps. Compared to Elden Ring's breathtakingly beautiful underground areas, the Depths falls way short.
ANNOYING MECHANICS. Climbing slippage. Idiotic horse stabling system. Stingy vehicle de-spawn rules. Inconsistent auto-save. Spectacularly, ludicrously tedious cooking system.
GRAPHICS & PERFORMANCE. It fucking sucks. Low resolution textures betray the game's strong art direction. Ultrahand and crowded environments constantly drop-kick the framerate. Fast travel means your playthrough is peppered with long load times. I understand the game console this game runs on has less processing power than a modern refrigerator, but at the end of the day it's 2023 and this is just not acceptable anymore.
Still beats Breath of the Wild by a mile though.
SuccessfulTroll
9 months ago