This review contains spoilers
I'm really such a narrative bitch.
BotW has plenty of flaws, but it sings for me because it has such a solid emotional core. Link and Zelda's partial failure 100 years prior drives the emotions of exploring the world, trying to remember a memory that just barely eludes you. It's melancholy, even if it ends in triumph.
Tears of the Kingdom makes similar moves with Zelda's disappearance as well as her ultimate fate. But it's a dramatic retread, we already had a game where Zelda was trapped somewhere else. I truly do not expect Zelda to ever be a completely active agent, but TotK invents new novel ways to be misogynistic (perhaps turning her into an animal that resources can be gathered from was uh... ill-advised). It's also completely bizarre how much this feels like a reboot, with barely any mention of the events of BotW and all the signs of that game's calamity completely gone. I don't feel like I'm asking for a lot when I think several characters should maybe just recognize Link? It gives exploring towns and cities a strange flatness.
There's plenty positive to talk about too. It's incredibly technically impressive and the dungeon and enemy designs are a massive improvement over BotW. The underground areas add some much needed texture. BotW was a world of surfaces and TotK does some cool work accounting for that. It's just a few steps closer to the traditional open world, contraptions aside, and feels all the busier and un-emotive for it.
BotW has plenty of flaws, but it sings for me because it has such a solid emotional core. Link and Zelda's partial failure 100 years prior drives the emotions of exploring the world, trying to remember a memory that just barely eludes you. It's melancholy, even if it ends in triumph.
Tears of the Kingdom makes similar moves with Zelda's disappearance as well as her ultimate fate. But it's a dramatic retread, we already had a game where Zelda was trapped somewhere else. I truly do not expect Zelda to ever be a completely active agent, but TotK invents new novel ways to be misogynistic (perhaps turning her into an animal that resources can be gathered from was uh... ill-advised). It's also completely bizarre how much this feels like a reboot, with barely any mention of the events of BotW and all the signs of that game's calamity completely gone. I don't feel like I'm asking for a lot when I think several characters should maybe just recognize Link? It gives exploring towns and cities a strange flatness.
There's plenty positive to talk about too. It's incredibly technically impressive and the dungeon and enemy designs are a massive improvement over BotW. The underground areas add some much needed texture. BotW was a world of surfaces and TotK does some cool work accounting for that. It's just a few steps closer to the traditional open world, contraptions aside, and feels all the busier and un-emotive for it.
vlntnegrl
1 month ago