This Review is based of 3 months of on and off play sessions with all 152 shrines completed and one ganondorf defeated.
Tears of the Kingdom (TOTK) is being renounced as the 'best game of the year' by the millions, placed on the same acclaim as its older brother Breath of the Wild, some would even state this game has made Breath of the Wild (BOTW) "unplayable" or look like "a tech demo by comparison". How true is this? I'm not sure but here are my rambling thoughts on where I view this game with the rest of the series.
After beating the game I'm left utterly conflicted with where I stand on TOTK and BOTW as entries to the 3D Zelda collection. TOTK as a sequel is more focused on adding new ideas than refining the faults of BOTW.
PROS:
• OBJECTIVES: It's progression system is a massive improvement, finding shrines aren't your only side objective since the sky and the depths give a greater variety of keeping you engaged; discovering the world to find better items and upgrades.
• WEAPON DURABILITY: Everyone's favourite thing to nag on about, if you hate it here I don't know what to tell you. There was not a single moment in my time did I ever run out of weapons because the game constantly throws powerful items at you to fuse your shitty weapons with and because of it your getting to see a shit ton of cool weapon combinations that keeps combat feeling fun if a little repetitive. (still fun though)
• SHRINES: Way more challenging and fun to find and I also wanted to go to every last one because the puzzles are a lot more about showing you the capabilities of your new abilities than giving you a dull puzzle in BOTW where there was only one solution to solving them. speaking of...
• THE ABILITES: At first they feel like downgrades (still miss stasis) but as you progress these abilities flow a lot better together in shrines and make you think a lot more with the more tougher puzzles.
• TRAVERSAL: Way better, you're getting to places quicker with ascend and ultrahand vehicles and its a lot less dull than climbing a rock just so you can hang-glide (whilst still giving you the option to play like BOTW if you so choose.
• THE SKY ISLANDS: the most fresh content in the game and the tutorial island is fantastic at setting up the game.
•THE FINALE: great execution even if it feels too similar to BOTW's finale. Ganondorf fight is the best in the game, the most fun and challenging. The soundtrack in that last hour of the game is fantastic and the final action piece although just as piss easy as BOTW, it feels grand and I had goosebumps all over me lolllll.
CONS (oh boy)
•THE SKY ISLANDS: huh again you say? Yep. Easiest the most disappointing aspect of this game is how much Nintendo focussed and marketed towards the sky islands being the new biggest addition to the game and wow does that tutorial not make it any better by leaving me and many other players blue balled into believing the sky islands were going to be a great chunk of the game because man they are my favourite areas of the game AND THERES BARELY ANYTHING UP THERE. When its good, god its good but man there really is not enough content up there, hoping for a dlc to add more of it.
• THE DEPTHS: In contrast, the area Nintendo stayed away from showing any of till the game launched was the depths. I think the depths stink. Bland, repetitive, way too baron, way too much climbing and getting lost, nothing really down there other than a cool yiga chan side quest, its just dull and it feels like there wasn't any real thought put into it. You can practically miss the entire of the depths in till late game when it actually forces you to go down there.
• THE STORY: Thinks its epic in scale when its actually super lame. There's some stand out moments particularly with Zelda's arc. This aspect is something I really wished would be great after BOTW stripped down a lot of the layers that make a good zelda story. Major story beats just don't work, feel forced, forced emotions from characters I haven't built any attachment too. Zelda stories work off their simplicity and implications that make them more interesting the further you read into them. This game just tells you everything in the most boring ways possible.
• THE SCRIPT: Most characters are very one note, dialogue is god awful, spoon feeding the player the same piece of information over and over like I'm baby. The game treats you like an idiot, the game worked for me so well in those first 30/40 hours where I knew very little but as I watched more of the geoglyphs, god this story is so ass.
• THE DUNGEONS: Still not a great, hell I would say most divine beasts were more interesting than the six dungeons (more like four), very repetitive with incredibly easy puzzles and get to the marker objectives.
• REPITITION: The game is twice as big as before, so it was eventual that I would feel some burnout in comparison to the 90 so hours I spent on BOTW. With such a big world comes the consequence of not having enough stuff to fill each area so there a lot of objectives that are reused constantly.
• SIDE QUESTS: Speaking of, searching for odd ball items like get 50 tireless toad just so u can get a shitty reward is not a side quest. Once I knew I had done every form of a side quest, I stopped caring about them, I stopped caring about koroks, I stopped caring about president hudson fanboy, I stopped caring for lightroots.
Conclusion, Tears of the Kingdom is a overall a good sequel to Breath of the Wild. It fixes a lot of the major mechanics and pace complaints but gets too cocky in its size both exploration and narratively. The world is more alive than ever but at a cost of feeling of using the same world and regions it can feel at times been here done that. The story is more involving and wants to come off as one of the more emotional plots but lacks the trust of the audience's maturity and most story beats have swapped out to give this unnatural approach of the story messing with the continuity of Breath of the Wild.
Tears of the Kingdom has its merits but its made me reconsider what I love about Zelda as a series. TOTK and BOTW are two separate entries that I really enjoyed playing but aren't games I see myself going back to anytime soon for their tedious long outdrawn content that doesn't resonate the same emotional immersive experiences I got from the more linear approaches of the older titles. That being said after more some more thinking I now geniuelly consider Breath of the Wild to be the better game because of its impact at the time, its core value of exploration feels more focused than TOTK's attempting to be alot of stuff at once.
Bigger doesn't mean better in this case....
Tears of the Kingdom (TOTK) is being renounced as the 'best game of the year' by the millions, placed on the same acclaim as its older brother Breath of the Wild, some would even state this game has made Breath of the Wild (BOTW) "unplayable" or look like "a tech demo by comparison". How true is this? I'm not sure but here are my rambling thoughts on where I view this game with the rest of the series.
After beating the game I'm left utterly conflicted with where I stand on TOTK and BOTW as entries to the 3D Zelda collection. TOTK as a sequel is more focused on adding new ideas than refining the faults of BOTW.
PROS:
• OBJECTIVES: It's progression system is a massive improvement, finding shrines aren't your only side objective since the sky and the depths give a greater variety of keeping you engaged; discovering the world to find better items and upgrades.
• WEAPON DURABILITY: Everyone's favourite thing to nag on about, if you hate it here I don't know what to tell you. There was not a single moment in my time did I ever run out of weapons because the game constantly throws powerful items at you to fuse your shitty weapons with and because of it your getting to see a shit ton of cool weapon combinations that keeps combat feeling fun if a little repetitive. (still fun though)
• SHRINES: Way more challenging and fun to find and I also wanted to go to every last one because the puzzles are a lot more about showing you the capabilities of your new abilities than giving you a dull puzzle in BOTW where there was only one solution to solving them. speaking of...
• THE ABILITES: At first they feel like downgrades (still miss stasis) but as you progress these abilities flow a lot better together in shrines and make you think a lot more with the more tougher puzzles.
• TRAVERSAL: Way better, you're getting to places quicker with ascend and ultrahand vehicles and its a lot less dull than climbing a rock just so you can hang-glide (whilst still giving you the option to play like BOTW if you so choose.
• THE SKY ISLANDS: the most fresh content in the game and the tutorial island is fantastic at setting up the game.
•THE FINALE: great execution even if it feels too similar to BOTW's finale. Ganondorf fight is the best in the game, the most fun and challenging. The soundtrack in that last hour of the game is fantastic and the final action piece although just as piss easy as BOTW, it feels grand and I had goosebumps all over me lolllll.
CONS (oh boy)
•THE SKY ISLANDS: huh again you say? Yep. Easiest the most disappointing aspect of this game is how much Nintendo focussed and marketed towards the sky islands being the new biggest addition to the game and wow does that tutorial not make it any better by leaving me and many other players blue balled into believing the sky islands were going to be a great chunk of the game because man they are my favourite areas of the game AND THERES BARELY ANYTHING UP THERE. When its good, god its good but man there really is not enough content up there, hoping for a dlc to add more of it.
• THE DEPTHS: In contrast, the area Nintendo stayed away from showing any of till the game launched was the depths. I think the depths stink. Bland, repetitive, way too baron, way too much climbing and getting lost, nothing really down there other than a cool yiga chan side quest, its just dull and it feels like there wasn't any real thought put into it. You can practically miss the entire of the depths in till late game when it actually forces you to go down there.
• THE STORY: Thinks its epic in scale when its actually super lame. There's some stand out moments particularly with Zelda's arc. This aspect is something I really wished would be great after BOTW stripped down a lot of the layers that make a good zelda story. Major story beats just don't work, feel forced, forced emotions from characters I haven't built any attachment too. Zelda stories work off their simplicity and implications that make them more interesting the further you read into them. This game just tells you everything in the most boring ways possible.
• THE SCRIPT: Most characters are very one note, dialogue is god awful, spoon feeding the player the same piece of information over and over like I'm baby. The game treats you like an idiot, the game worked for me so well in those first 30/40 hours where I knew very little but as I watched more of the geoglyphs, god this story is so ass.
• THE DUNGEONS: Still not a great, hell I would say most divine beasts were more interesting than the six dungeons (more like four), very repetitive with incredibly easy puzzles and get to the marker objectives.
• REPITITION: The game is twice as big as before, so it was eventual that I would feel some burnout in comparison to the 90 so hours I spent on BOTW. With such a big world comes the consequence of not having enough stuff to fill each area so there a lot of objectives that are reused constantly.
• SIDE QUESTS: Speaking of, searching for odd ball items like get 50 tireless toad just so u can get a shitty reward is not a side quest. Once I knew I had done every form of a side quest, I stopped caring about them, I stopped caring about koroks, I stopped caring about president hudson fanboy, I stopped caring for lightroots.
Conclusion, Tears of the Kingdom is a overall a good sequel to Breath of the Wild. It fixes a lot of the major mechanics and pace complaints but gets too cocky in its size both exploration and narratively. The world is more alive than ever but at a cost of feeling of using the same world and regions it can feel at times been here done that. The story is more involving and wants to come off as one of the more emotional plots but lacks the trust of the audience's maturity and most story beats have swapped out to give this unnatural approach of the story messing with the continuity of Breath of the Wild.
Tears of the Kingdom has its merits but its made me reconsider what I love about Zelda as a series. TOTK and BOTW are two separate entries that I really enjoyed playing but aren't games I see myself going back to anytime soon for their tedious long outdrawn content that doesn't resonate the same emotional immersive experiences I got from the more linear approaches of the older titles. That being said after more some more thinking I now geniuelly consider Breath of the Wild to be the better game because of its impact at the time, its core value of exploration feels more focused than TOTK's attempting to be alot of stuff at once.
Bigger doesn't mean better in this case....