This review contains spoilers
A HUGELY disappointing sequel. I couldn't even be bothered to finish this one.
What makes Breath of the Wild special and one of my favorite games of all time is the exploration. Exploring the world is in-and-of-itself enjoyable and rewarding.
What makes Breath of the Wild difficult to replay is everything else. The asinine armor upgrade system, weapon durability and combat simplicity, and the inconsistency of the main content (shrines and dungeons). When the world is no longer new to you, these other issues make the game truly difficult to stomach, and is the main reason the game continues to decline in my estimation. So you'd think with a sequel, they'd double down on what made the game so great that first time and resolve the glaring issues that plagued follow-up playthroughs, right?
Nope. Instead, Nintendo decides to try and shoe-horn the Breath of the Wild template into their older Zelda format, with a much higher emphasis on story, condescending accessibility, and linearity. Now, the story wasn't great in Breath, but it had the good sense to be almost entirely optional and mostly second-fiddle to the gameplay. In Tears of the Kingdom, I just wanted to play the game, but was forced to suffer through a linear, story-heavy section on boot-up, without even an options menu where I could change the voice acting language to something less ear-grating. Seriously, the English voice acting is abysmal. I played around with a few options, but ultimately decided on using the original Japanese, which I can't really judge because I don't know Japanese.
This opening section is essentially a replacement of the Great Plateau in meta-ludological terms, but with greater importance placed upon the story, and a far less compelling distribution vehicle. There's no "cutting down a tree to use as a make-shift bridge in order to cross a chasm" here. In its place is the contrived placement of logs and a pre-made sail you can utilize to create a boat. It feels less like you've found a solution to the problem and more like you found THE solution the developers wanted you to encounter. There are a few moments in the game that echo this experience for me.
The problem with this opening however, and the greater game at large, is not the gameplay. As much as I might not enjoy it, it's serviceable. It's everything else I dislike.
The story is generic and predictable, and receives far too much focus, relative to its quality. None of the issues, except for MAYBE weapon durability [debatably], were addressed. Armor upgrades are still tantamount to brainless fetch quests, combat is mostly unchanged in that it's shallow and lacking the quality-of-life features other games of its type employ -- such as the ability to swap enemies while targeting. I will say that the renewed emphasis on story lead to some much more interesting regional plots, and the decision to make them centered around characters we can interact with was far more compelling than Breath of the Wild's solution of having the champions already be dead. More than that, I'm partial to themes of resolving imbalances in nature, which is the case for at least 3 of the regional plots. Additionally, all the dungeons are unique and fun, albeit short and pretty easy, topped-off with different and memorable bosses of varying quality, all of which are easily better than the X-blight Ganon from Breath. I think the dungeons' mechanical designs were superior in Breath, but the varying approach, bosses, and aesthetics of the temples in Tears do enough for me to say that the overall experience is better here than it was in the previous entry. The biggest issue with the temples is the game's obsession with spoon-feeding you the solutions. In every temple, the player will try to activate the main contraption, only for it to be made clear that the player is missing a few components of the solution to pass to the next area. Great. But then the game stops, the voice of the champion echoes in your head and explains to you in pain-staking detail what exactly you need to do, as if the game didn't just show you what your objective is. It's pointless and condescending. Then when you finally complete the temple, a variation of the same cutscene plays out regardless of what number temple this is for Link. I respect and want a non-linear story for Zelda going forward, but more consideration needed to be afforded stuff like this. If Link is on his third temple, literally none of the information given by the champion is new, yet the game has to assume the player knows nothing because it could be their first temple. I suppose you could say that the champion is explaining it to the regional character and not the player, but then more effort needed to be made to make these even a little interesting. The champions don't even have faces, and their dialogue is altered only slightly to reflect their "personalities".
The main advertising for the game makes the sky seem like the main draw of the game, and it's unfortunate this turns out to be a fake-out, because the overworld is almost entirely unchanged from Breath of the Wild. That feeling of exploration is almost entirely gone for me, and the sky world isn't large enough or as considered to fill that void. The fake-out comes from the underworld, the Abyss I believe it's called, receiving far greater focus and effort, but personally I found this to be really uncompelling to explore. I think it's a cool idea to light up the terrain, but it sucks the wind out of the sails a bit when you can only see where you're going after having gone there. Breath of the Wild felt so carefully considered with every single hill, mountain, or cliff, and that seems totally absent for me here.
I stopped playing before completing the Fire Temple. I'd done everything else except the Lost Woods. I just didn't care enough to go back since I knew the only thing waiting for me was the conclusion to a story I just didn't care about. I don't think this game is for me, and maybe I'll appreciate it more if in the future Nintendo makes an actual successor to Breath, but as of right now it's one of the more disappointing games I've played in a minute.
P.S.: having a dragon fly around in the TUTORIAL area pissed me off so much because the existence of dragons in Breath and their varied reveals across playthroughs is legitimately a magical gaming moment, and here it just kinda feels cheap and underwhelming. A nitpick, I know.
What makes Breath of the Wild special and one of my favorite games of all time is the exploration. Exploring the world is in-and-of-itself enjoyable and rewarding.
What makes Breath of the Wild difficult to replay is everything else. The asinine armor upgrade system, weapon durability and combat simplicity, and the inconsistency of the main content (shrines and dungeons). When the world is no longer new to you, these other issues make the game truly difficult to stomach, and is the main reason the game continues to decline in my estimation. So you'd think with a sequel, they'd double down on what made the game so great that first time and resolve the glaring issues that plagued follow-up playthroughs, right?
Nope. Instead, Nintendo decides to try and shoe-horn the Breath of the Wild template into their older Zelda format, with a much higher emphasis on story, condescending accessibility, and linearity. Now, the story wasn't great in Breath, but it had the good sense to be almost entirely optional and mostly second-fiddle to the gameplay. In Tears of the Kingdom, I just wanted to play the game, but was forced to suffer through a linear, story-heavy section on boot-up, without even an options menu where I could change the voice acting language to something less ear-grating. Seriously, the English voice acting is abysmal. I played around with a few options, but ultimately decided on using the original Japanese, which I can't really judge because I don't know Japanese.
This opening section is essentially a replacement of the Great Plateau in meta-ludological terms, but with greater importance placed upon the story, and a far less compelling distribution vehicle. There's no "cutting down a tree to use as a make-shift bridge in order to cross a chasm" here. In its place is the contrived placement of logs and a pre-made sail you can utilize to create a boat. It feels less like you've found a solution to the problem and more like you found THE solution the developers wanted you to encounter. There are a few moments in the game that echo this experience for me.
The problem with this opening however, and the greater game at large, is not the gameplay. As much as I might not enjoy it, it's serviceable. It's everything else I dislike.
The story is generic and predictable, and receives far too much focus, relative to its quality. None of the issues, except for MAYBE weapon durability [debatably], were addressed. Armor upgrades are still tantamount to brainless fetch quests, combat is mostly unchanged in that it's shallow and lacking the quality-of-life features other games of its type employ -- such as the ability to swap enemies while targeting. I will say that the renewed emphasis on story lead to some much more interesting regional plots, and the decision to make them centered around characters we can interact with was far more compelling than Breath of the Wild's solution of having the champions already be dead. More than that, I'm partial to themes of resolving imbalances in nature, which is the case for at least 3 of the regional plots. Additionally, all the dungeons are unique and fun, albeit short and pretty easy, topped-off with different and memorable bosses of varying quality, all of which are easily better than the X-blight Ganon from Breath. I think the dungeons' mechanical designs were superior in Breath, but the varying approach, bosses, and aesthetics of the temples in Tears do enough for me to say that the overall experience is better here than it was in the previous entry. The biggest issue with the temples is the game's obsession with spoon-feeding you the solutions. In every temple, the player will try to activate the main contraption, only for it to be made clear that the player is missing a few components of the solution to pass to the next area. Great. But then the game stops, the voice of the champion echoes in your head and explains to you in pain-staking detail what exactly you need to do, as if the game didn't just show you what your objective is. It's pointless and condescending. Then when you finally complete the temple, a variation of the same cutscene plays out regardless of what number temple this is for Link. I respect and want a non-linear story for Zelda going forward, but more consideration needed to be afforded stuff like this. If Link is on his third temple, literally none of the information given by the champion is new, yet the game has to assume the player knows nothing because it could be their first temple. I suppose you could say that the champion is explaining it to the regional character and not the player, but then more effort needed to be made to make these even a little interesting. The champions don't even have faces, and their dialogue is altered only slightly to reflect their "personalities".
The main advertising for the game makes the sky seem like the main draw of the game, and it's unfortunate this turns out to be a fake-out, because the overworld is almost entirely unchanged from Breath of the Wild. That feeling of exploration is almost entirely gone for me, and the sky world isn't large enough or as considered to fill that void. The fake-out comes from the underworld, the Abyss I believe it's called, receiving far greater focus and effort, but personally I found this to be really uncompelling to explore. I think it's a cool idea to light up the terrain, but it sucks the wind out of the sails a bit when you can only see where you're going after having gone there. Breath of the Wild felt so carefully considered with every single hill, mountain, or cliff, and that seems totally absent for me here.
I stopped playing before completing the Fire Temple. I'd done everything else except the Lost Woods. I just didn't care enough to go back since I knew the only thing waiting for me was the conclusion to a story I just didn't care about. I don't think this game is for me, and maybe I'll appreciate it more if in the future Nintendo makes an actual successor to Breath, but as of right now it's one of the more disappointing games I've played in a minute.
P.S.: having a dragon fly around in the TUTORIAL area pissed me off so much because the existence of dragons in Breath and their varied reveals across playthroughs is legitimately a magical gaming moment, and here it just kinda feels cheap and underwhelming. A nitpick, I know.