The more that I think about this game, the more that this score goes down for me. I’ve literally been thinking about how disappointed I am with this game FOR MONTHS. I can’t believe that I’m saying this about a Zelda game, which I’ve loved pretty much all of them up until this game. I WISH I didn’t feel this way because of how much I loved Breath of the Wild.

This game is full of missed opportunities, pretty bad continuity (and writing) issues that distract from the world unlike BOTW, and a non-linear experience that isn’t very satisfying compared to the previous game.

Minor spoilers for the game:

I don’t really consider myself a traditional Zelda fan where I say stuff like “We need the old dungeons again!”
I wanted Tears of the Kingdom to follow up with a decent story like Breath of the Wild did, in a new innovative way. Instead, they underdevelop a lot of concepts. The Zonai aren’t very fleshed out, and seem to use them as some type of retcon to the entire franchise… which depresses me. It also just feels so cliche that the Zonai are also another sophisticated civilization like the Sheikah, and then replacing them in significance. The Zonai could’ve been so much more, with the concepts in Creating a Champion I expected them to be more warlike and barbaric. It would’ve made for a much more interesting concept.

I don’t really want to get into the timeline stuff, but yeah this game vastly fucked up the lore and continuity with other games by incorporating certain ideas. I’m not super into the timeline but, yknow it is what it is I guess. I’m hoping Tears of the Kingdom isn’t a soft reboot of the series, but I’d like to treat Breath of the Wild and this game as if it’s in a different universe or something because of how much the story interferes with other games.

The Secret Stones seem to replace the Triforce or are I guess similar to the Sage Medallions in Ocarina of Time, but I felt like the whole plot of draconification just never had any weight to it. I wasn’t really upset when I found out that Zelda was going to turn into a dragon, it was predictable that she would do that.

Zelda’s character in this game seemed to be assassinated because all the progress about being her own independent person separate from her powers just never really exists in this game. All the personality she had in BOTW that made her intriguing is just… not there. I understand people had issues with her in the first game too, but at least she was different in terms of personality when it comes to other iterations of her in the franchise.

Ganon is not a good villain in this game. I didn’t expect much from him, but it would’ve been cool to see a more interesting Ganon considering how significant he is in the lore and not having a redesign since like 2008. There was nothing memorable about him, and I would’ve preferred he stayed as a draugr as that would’ve made for a more interesting iteration.

The biggest problem with this game is its non linearity to me. Breath of the Wild benefits from the non linearity of memories because of how Link’s character is portrayed and the environment he’s set in. You’re picking the pieces up while exploring through the desolate and broken world of Hyrule. While in Tears of the Kingdom, everything is rebuilding, there’s not really any benefit to showing shattered memories of Zelda in random areas of the map. It would’ve been so much better if you could play through the memories of Zelda and experience them yourself in a linear fashion.

Some good stuff about this game though is the side quests, they were so much better in this game than Breath of the Wild. I thoroughly enjoyed the side quests more than the story. I do not like that some of the NPCs just have no idea who you are despite some of them you spend a lot of time with in the previous game.

I’m sure I’m missing something about the story concepts, but I think that’s a general idea of what I disliked about the story and continuity.

While I believe that this game vastly improves on BOTW visually and mechanically, it is just filled with so much missed potential and glaring problems. The underground is repetitive and the sky islands lose its luster by the time you’re going to get the Master Sword. The only time I ever went back up to the Sky islands was for armor upgrades and nothing else.

Don’t get me started with the Koroks, holy shit who thought it was a good idea to include them again? 1000 of them at that? The rewards and collectibles don’t feel rewarding at all, and exploring the depths for rehashed Amiibo items is just not worth it to me. The only collectibles I did was for the Bubbelfrogs and shrines, and even the Shrine’s final reward was a hideous aspect.

The boss fights just aren’t as endearing to me either, I don’t have much relationship or care for Ganon so I didn’t care for the bosses at all and that they were his “pawns.” The boss fights in BOTW felt personal, you were slaying the things that killed your friends. There was just no creativity there with the boss fights in TOTK other than the final boss and the dragon boss fight.
The dungeons too, were really uninspiring to me. I thought that the Water Temple was the coolest one but the rest just were really not interesting design wise. I think that the introductions to the dungeon areas were cool, how the Rito were snowed in and such. But that’s just it, the design wasn’t… I’m not sure.

The Sage abilities become useless other than Tulin after fifty hours. They become clogged and I’ve barely used much of them for anything other than flying around the map. But it’s still less necessary to use them because of the Zonai building after a certain point in time.

I also believe that, after playing more of the game, the controls of this game can get really really clogged with many abilities being the same buttons as others.

I looked forward to this game since the first trailer, and I just don’t think it delivered as great or memorable of a game in the series. Other than the new abilities, this is the least inspiring Zelda game to date.

I want to like this game more, I really do. But I just can’t. Maybe I have some type of rose-tinted lens on Breath of the Wild but it’s just not the same and I’d prefer going back to BOTW than this game. This game was disappointing to me and could’ve been so much more than what we got. I don’t think this game deserves GOTY, but I know people will regardless let it win.