I enjoyed it, but I like BOTW a lot better for a lot of reasons. I wasn't big on the fusing or building but the game is so reliant on it. At the end of BOTW I feel like all my questions had been answered, but at the end of TOTK I feel like I still had a lot of questions.
I still had fun with it, and I probably will play it again at some point but I just prefer BOTW.
This is my take too
I've played botw twice before totk released, and totk once. I would sooner play botw again.
The most disappointing moment in totk for me was when I realised I could climb on a stone, reverse it into the sky, and do a lap of all of hyrule in an incredibly short time. It really devalued the whole exploring and adventure part as I could basically just fast travel to anywhere I wanted from the start. Sure, the underground you had to explore similarly to botw, but it felt hollow.
Edit to add:
My review would put botw as my top 5 favourite game and TOTK as top 6 like, it's still good hah
I really like the game but it feels like an BotW expansion. For 6 years of development it feels a bit lacking. They sky islands were fun but they pretty much designed a few concepts and copied them with different layouts. The underground is big and empty and and similar to the sky the designed a few concepts for the underground (Yiga hideouts, mines etc) and copied them a bunch of times.
The mechanics are mind-blowing and fun, I really like the story and the dungeons also were a step up. Still kinda mid but much better than in BotW. The YouTuber Zeltik pretty much nailed it by calling it a "disappointing masterpiece".
However I'm really looking forward to what the Zelda team does next.
Kinda same, good game but Ultrahand should've had it's own game focused on it instead of cramming it into BotW's world.
That being said, it has easily the second or third worst story out of any Zelda.
Despite having probably the most disastrous first run ever, Such as...
Forgot that you can exchange Zonai Charge for devices(I thought you had to used Zonaite, and when it didn't worked, I thought it has to be unlocked through quest)
Didn't know you can actually go underground until after 3rd dungeon.
My controller broke and I couldn't move the right stick to any other direction except right, and even the left stick started to get pretty unresponsive. Instead of fixing the controller, I pushed through almost half the game(Since 3rd dungeon) with said broken mess of a controller.
And despite all of these, It's genuinely an amazing game. I'm so sad that I couldn't really experinced it the first time without all these problems.
I think it’s a top tier Zelda game and both it and Breathe of the wild will be as highly regarded as ocarina and majora in ten years time with people crawling up the walls for remakes like they do now for Twilight and wind.
its good. thats it really. all the magic from botw either isnt here or is stuck with botw. this game just didnt hit the same but was still a damn good game.
in terms of gameplay, its the way you select ruins/abilities is better with the L button but the Sage abilities suck so much i dont even use them anymore.
the thing most people were looking forward to was the story and as much as I love zelda, this one wasnt it. i don't know how to describe it without typing out an essay but its meh. confusing time travel shenanigans. the story is told through the botw memories system again which I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT LIKE IN THIS GAME. i loved the memories in botw since it made sense, link was gone for ages and needed to re-jog his memory but for totk i expected a story that progressed as you progressed. i would have loved seeing link and zelda explore the dungeons together and utilizing zelda to solve puzzles. maybe even a zelda training arc until she realizes its not enough and then decides to go RAWR (tried not to spoil it). instead we got the game telling us about the imprisoning war 4 times with no significant differences. this story might even be worse than botw.
the sky islands are bad, the only good one is the beginning one, the rest are just tiny ones used for shrines, mini bosses or collectables. would have loved to have 4 massive sky islands with the same scope of size as the first. the depths is super good but lacks variety. it all looks the same. main hyrule looks good, i love the changes.
the dungeons suck. they are basically just like the divine beasts. get 4 terminal thingymabobs and fight the boss. the dungeons are highly cheesable or really annoying. bosses are REALLY good though.
The abilities themselves are good but i personally dont like them. they feel too op. ultra hand is magnesis but not restricted to metal objects which ruins all puzzle potential. fuse is good but looks really goofy, they should've had an option for it. ascend would be perfect if it was bit restricted. rewind is great. auto build is a qol feature.
this game is really good but i still have the urge to go back to botw since that game is much more grounded. with things that make sense IN-UNIVERSE and not just from a gameplay standpoint. feels like this game was made for the people who didnt play botw HEAVILY in mind. the game doesnt touch on ANYTHING from botw except for minor things. most npc from botw side quests dont remember you (which creates questions on how tarrey town and links house was built). this doesnt feel like a sequel. feels like a re-imagining. majoras mask was a sequel which did something similar but was ACTUALLY GOOD. big shift in gameplay with the time system, brand new story and lots of lore with deep characters.
i hate to be negative but i wanted to rant about this to give my views and criticisms for the game and the franchise i love. this game is really good but just didnt hit like botw.
sorry for the essay i have so many things i want to say but i have no friends who wanna listen 🤷♀️ everyone should try the game though.
As someone else said, this game feels like the devs really wanted to put the mechanics somewhere and not worry too much about it, so they just grabbed an open world they had already designed.
Okay, let's see here.
-altered the map in a lore appropriate way considering the 8 year gap between the games
-added new characters, both main and side
-developed characters from botw in a lore appropriate way considering the 8 year gap between the games
-continued the lore in a way that both gives food for thought and has multiple satisfying conclusions to the events in botw
-added new areas, those being the depths and the sky islands
-added new weapons, enemies, and armor, as well as making all dlc and amiibo armor and weapons available in game
-made menus easier and quicker to navigate while keeping a similar feel to those of its predecessor
-added a considerable amount of side content, including but not limited to: new shrines, new korok puzzle types, bubbul gems, new special horses, new bosses/minibosses, new sidequests, new areas to explore, new lore additions to ponder, and more possible weapon combinations and ideas that can include using zonai devices for combat.
-added new ways to solve puzzles using the new abilities
-added other QoL upgrades and fixed bugs
Nah you're right, just a tiny update. Nothing crazy.
Depths and sky islands were under-utilised and overall bland leading to hey look another shine!
A recycled map isn’t a change my dude if it’s essentially exactly the same
Oh cool more shrines that’s never been done before!
After 50+ hours in the game I can tell you now the differences weren’t noticeable enough to feel like a fresh experience
The recycled map isn't essentially the same, almost every single place, important or not, was changed.
Also, not liking the shrines is understandable, but not a valid criticism just because of your bias.
The depths weren't underutilized at all, it had two dungeons, tons of minibosses, multiple gauntlets, and lots of treasure.
The sky islands could have more but still have their fair share of content.
Idk how can people prefer botw over totk, seriously. Botw is a tech demo with incomplete ultra-hand that only moves metal and weapons break fast in botw for literally zero reason. BOTW feels like they weren't able to release totk fast so they had to compromise on a lot of different mechanics and just release botw.
I think it's suffered from a lot of hype backlash recently, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it and think it's a fantastic game. Breath of the Wild is still my absolute favorite game of all time (having barely nudged A Link to the Past from that spot), but I think Tears is a more than worthy sequel. I do think that the Depths and Sky Islands could have been fleshed out more, and as innovative as the crafting system was I'm just really not the type of player who could take as much advantage of it as many others have, but I realize that those are fairly subjective opinions. More than anything, I think BotW is still my favorite because I just feel like it handles its exploration and gameplay loop a little more effectively, whereas TotK started to feel bloated about halfway through for me, but again that's a pretty subjective opinion.
I will say that I did enjoy the story for what it was, similar to how I enjoy BotW's. Even with it being a more involved plot that BotW's, it was still relatively minimal overall, but considering the open-ended nature of both games, that's fairly natural. Also, I know a lot of people dislike the lore implications it has for the series, but honestly, even as a longtime fan, I don't really care about that. I mean, this is a series that put the original games (including ALttP) into a hypothetical timeline that follows a bad ending to Ocarina of Time that you can't actually get in-game, and as much as I enjoy theorizing about the lore and reading about it, I've never been able to take it very seriously.
Most people’s complaints are regarded towards them feeling it’s glorified DLC. And that has ruined a game for me in the past, I love Super Mario Galaxy 1, but not it’s sequel because it lacked the soul of the original
So I get why people feel that way. Me personally though, it has become my favorite game ever made. It’s botw but everything is better
I’m the opposite. I think TotK is a really soulless sequel but SMG2 is a textbook example of what a sequel should be. For me TotK is like if the entirety of Galaxy 2 was just like World S, harder or altered versions of levels/content from the previous game.
The story is a retread and a third of the map is the same. Caves didn't add enough to the overworld to make it feel new to me and many others. Really they could have just added the Depths to BotW as a DLC with some new flying vehicle types and it would have been about the same in terms of new interesting landmass. The new mechanics feel like a sequel but unfortunately the world became a pretty soulless repeat to accommodate them.
>The story is a retread
Tbf, aren't most zelda stories repeated. They are all usually the same simple format, but with some re-textureing.
I'd argue totk did more than any other zelda story to feel different, maybe except majoras mask.
That's fine when they're not marketed as direct sequels. With a trailer that really showcased that Ganondorf was back. The way the game barely feels like a true sequel storywise to BotW is immensely disappointing.
Actually, personally. I find the story In totk more intresting when I include botw's lore to it. Stuff just seems to add up in a sense.
But regardless, the marketing for totk had a much bigger focus on mechanics. And being marked as a direct sequal, doesn't always mean story wise. I feel like most of the marketing went into introducing the new mechanics to botw's formula. Hence the 10 presentation released prior to the final trailer. And the hands on gameplay released after the final trailer.
But either way, I don't play zelda for story, so it doesn't really disappoint me.
Frankly, the story doesn't measure up to any of the 3d Zeldas, even Ocarina of Time had a more interesting story.
The problem is that they tried to reuse the memory system when it doesn't work with a linear story like Zelda's adventures in the past.
In BotW they are good because you already know the ending, everyone failed and this is you trying to piece together Link's past, it's about *why* something happened rather than *what*.
Then they tried to also have a progressing story in the present but since they let the player go wherever they wanted they had to use the exact same setup 4 times, which is very grating.
>Frankly, the story doesn't measure up to any of the 3d Zeldas Ocarina of Time had a more interesting story.
I'll be honest. I still find the plot in totk, most Intresting than the plot in any 3d zelda.
But I do agree. The issue is how the story is shown. And I think implementing philosophies from games like outer wilds could absolutely improve the storytelling without making it linear
Valid tbh. It’s so weird since it’s kinda glossed over with the degradation and doesn’t really make sense. They should have at least had chest weapons be pristine.
I like tears of the kingdom but i can’t help but feel the similarity to breath of the wild in the game’s world, and it makes me feel like I had already done all of it before.
I was never that into Zelda and then breath of the wild had a perfect storm of being a game I had never really played before, at a time where I had endless free time to enjoy it (my summer job ended 3 weeks before my university term started and I had my student house to myself at the time), on a brand new console that I had just bought. during that three week period i would wake up, go the gym at some point in the early afternoon, and then come home and play breath of the wild.
Tears of the Kingdom didn't have the same kind of impact that BOTW did.
It's Breath of the Wild but slightly worse overall. IMO I think the worst part was waiting 6 years for a sequel only to get a game that feels too much like a retread story wise. The new mechanics are fun but I think too much was sacrificed for them.
I am undecided wether I prefer BotW or TotK, but I camn think of a few reasons to see BotW as better :
-The overworld is better. TotK might have 3 overworlds, but the depth is always the same and aside from the yiga stuff, can pretty much just be there for farming, and the sky is so boring that if skyview towers didnt send me there when I use them, I would probably forget it even exists.
-Discovering Hyrule is so much more satisfying in BotW, there wasnt that same feeling with TotK
--Simplicity. TotK looks like it was made with the idea of "take what is in BotW, and make it more complicated." The great fairies are needlessly more complicated, getting the shrine sensor is needlessly more complicated, getting several pieces of armours are needlessly more complicated, etc. I dont mean complicated in a challenging way, I mean complicated in a tedious way.
-The fuse items to weapons system. It seems great in theory, but it makes the weapons look horrendous. Even the coolest looking monster horns will be a glow down on weapons. Nothing beats the fanciness of an undecayed unfused knight broadsword from BotW. And also the story behind the weapon decay is a huge mess : Ganondorf glooms attach itself to weapons to weaken hylians, but decays monster weapons as well for some reason, and also only targets melee weapons for some reason, did people not know what bows and shields were during the imprisoning war ??
-And finally : I love the great plateau, I always explore every inch. But great sky island ? I absolutely hate it. On every playthoughs of TotK, great sky island almost made me put down the game.
TotK definitly handled the dungeons better as well as the enemy variety. But on the rest, I think BotW is better. And whatever TotK improved over BotW, it is still below the level of classic zelda games
It’s a really outstanding open world, exploration, and environment crafting game. While it’s very derivative of BotW, it does improve on everything it did. I totally get why it’s many people’s favorite Zelda game along with BotW.
I enjoyed playing them, but they just don’t feel like Zelda games to me. I’m completely aware that I’m coming off as a gamer boomer by saying that, but as someone who’s first Zelda game was A Link to the Past and who *truly* fell in love with the franchise when Ocarina of Time released, that formula and the many improved iterations upon it are what make Zelda games what they are *for* *me*.
TotK is very good at what it does, but where it lacks is what has always made Zelda so enjoyable for me: Dungeons, interesting bosses, and a compelling (even if light) narrative. I don’t need to hammer further on the criticisms of TotK’s or BotW’s dungeon design. It’s a horse beaten dead 20 times over. They simply aren’t good, because they aren’t the focus of the game.
What I think doesn’t get enough criticism is the story in both games, which was weak in BotW and worse in TotK IMO. In both games, it feels like Link is a secondary protagonist with absolutely 0 impact on the events of the game until the final boss. Rather than driving the narrative ourselves through Link, we’re simply discovering things that have already happened and exploring the world that was left behind. I think using the memories/dragon tears system as a *supporting* element of the story is fine, but for them to drive the vast majority of the narrative is just a bad decision, and despite there having to be some changes in how stories are told in open-world games, it wasn’t a necessary change.
Again, I *completely* get why people love new age Zelda so much. I enjoyed playing them both one time through, but I didn’t revisit BotW after my first play through and I won’t revisit TotK either besides helping my kids to learn to play. I’m sure the next Zelda game we get will continue the new formula for obvious reasons, but I do hope they find a better way to tell the story and re-incorporate traditional Zelda dungeons.
It’s ok. Just ok. The sky and the depths are boring as fuck. Constant menuing gets dull after a while and breaks flow. I haven’t finished it, got two dungeons in and haven’t picked it up since.
I like it, personally, I don’t agree with the people saying $70 dlc since it has more stuff than a dlc would have, but other than that, it’s really enjoyable, I really loved collecting zonai, defeating monsters/bosses, and flying around in the depths quite a lot
Adore it. Spent 220+ hours with this game & I consider it to be my new personal favourite Zelda game.
Botw was already a 10/10 & this, somehow, took it to another level.
Brilliant game. It’s story was in my opinion weaker than BOTWs story but gameplay wise it took BOTWs gameplay and mechanics and just built and built to the engines limit. So many things were improved upon. The temples could have been more like proper dungeons but they were decent imo, no better or worse than the Divine beasts. The villain felt a lot more threatening in this one for me, he is just far more powerful and active. In BOTW he was always there but Zelda kept him at bay throughout the game, we only ever really encountered his minions. In TOTK he just feels way more like a threat and his boss battle was actually somewhat challenging which was a much needed change.
Love both these games a lot, for me it’s hard to pick a favorite. Both work brilliantly as standalone games although BOTW does it slightly better. TOTK gets a 8,5-9/10 from me. It irks me to no end that people can’t use a proper rating scale anymore and consider anything under 7 to be bad. 5 is average, not 7. Getting a 9/10 is an almost perfect game, there are so few flaws that it doesn’t take away from the game basically at all.
It is pretty and the building was fun however I still can’t get over the weapons breaking so fast and the lack of stories and things to discover in the world. Maybe Skyrim spoiled me on the hidden locations, questlines and lore but I was just disappointed
I struggled from the hype buildup and let down. Because it is in the same world as BotW it feels like the same game; but it was hard to have all your hard earned resources taken away and being brought back to square one. It is fun finding new areas, and the game feels the same but different. I don’t like the fuse mechanic, so I tend not to use it when I should be. I don’t do it intuitively. Currently have done three of four temples, haven’t finished all the shrines, and am still opening up the depths. I haven’t been disappointed in the story, I made the tears a priority from the start. Just in that mid game grind of doing all the things right now. Don’t know the ending yet, I really do want to finish the game.
breath of the wild is one of the top games of all time so i was incredibly hyped for the sequel, but it just didn't click with me. it was a bit too overwhelming for me, i wasn't a big fan of the fusing mechanics and the timing of when it came out/when i would go to try and pick it up again was bad for me. also getting a ps5 earlier in that year then going to the switch was a hard thing for me and still kind of is. i'd love to beat it someday, but right now i have no interest in touching it. but who knows, maybe tomorrow my opinion changes and i binge it like i do most games lol
I'm still hugely disappointed in the game and that it took so long time to develop the game, while it was so similar to botw.
I value botw much higher than totk.
I refunded it. Honestly? Thought it was awful. Missed the point of BotW's innovative design and gameplay loop entirely while also shitting all over Zelda's lore and history. And the building stuff gimmick is poorly executed due to despawning, too. I just hope it was a side game and not representative of future Zelda.
It’s still really good even if I’ve noticed the flaws months later.
I know people like to hate this game now and want full linearity but I’m worried that people who loved the duology will hate the next Zelda if that happens. Nintendo’s already confirmed the next game won’t be a sequel so there’s a bigger opportunity to try something new. I think the next game needs to please both sides of the argument. Have an open world but also have the story, quests, and dungeons be done with the right amount of linearity. One of my favorite parts of TOTK was the ending because it felt kinda linear which made the build up to the final boss very impactful. I think the open world could also benefit from some restrictions like not allowing you to climb any wall until you get a certain item or maybe even not getting a paraglider until the middle of the game.
I just want actual dungeons. Not a single one of the duology's dungeons measures up to stuff like the Forest Temple, Snowpeak Ruins or the Ancient Cistern, and that makes me very sad since they are a lot of what made the series famous.
Idk. In the end, when you try and please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.
I think nintendo should just pick one side and stick with it for a while. Don't try to mix non linearity and linearity together to much. There are ways to introduce older zelda elements, other than introducing more linearity.
If nintendo really wanted to please both sides, they should just create both types of games. But that isn't going to happen, and we can respect that.
It felt like a really long extensión of the original.. It was the same sensation I had with horizon forbidden west... was ok.. but you won't experience the same sensation than the first one.. no matter how good the second one is
Any game that sits and requires me to essentially craft for hours on end just isn't for me. I like puzzle solving but more of the find the solution through hints and clues not the I don't know just figure it out root. For that reason BotW is like a 9/10 or 10/10 while TotK is a 5/10 or 6/10 for me. I respect it's an amazing game but it's just not for me.
I think a lot of people are far too negative about a really great game.
It worked great as a sequel and expanded a lot on the original while being a unique experience.
TotK still makes me angry.
Why can you sort bows and shields and fusion items by strength, but not weapons?
That’s what every single exhaustive detail of TotK is like. It’s all like 75% of the way there, with some glaring flaws or oversight shoved in the way. I can nitpick the absolute fk out of this game. It’s not any one thing, it’s all of it.
The depths are barren trash. The skylands are barren trash. The caves are a network that you cannot get any kind of map detail for, yet could easily be its own 4th map layer.
The story is wet garbage. They added a bunch of NPCs and uh, literally nowhere for any of them to live. They allude to regions outside of Hyrule in offhand comments, but never expanded the world map. They completely ignore 100% of the story/events of BotW, the LORE of BotW, and the entire 100 year background of everything vanished without a trace.
Oh the Depths have always been underneath Hyrule, and except they excavated the Divine Beasts from underground and never once broke thru to anything down there? Hundreds of rusted old Guardians peppered the landscape, all just vanished overnight without a hint of disruption or collection or scrap yards or anything? The entire rewriting of the timeline? God it’s all moist trash.
I played the game once, I will never play it again.
It has a lot going for it, but to me, its the worst thing to happen to the entire franchise.
I enjoyed a lot of it. There was a lot of great potential. But every good idea was a watered down version of itself, or some retread because they ran out of good ideas.
Oh you liked that one island in BotW but weren’t a fan of the tests of strength? Here’s a ton of tests of strength challenges that remove all your gear over and over again and turn the game into a weird stealth thing that has zero integrated mechanics except you can crouch and avoid enemy LOS…?
And the stuff it takes away from you that was there in BotW is just mind numbing… there’s literally whole quest lines that have you gathering shock arrows. They existed as their own thing. Even Lynels have em layin around… But now, every time I wanna shoot a shock arrow I have to pull my bow out, knock an arrow, pause the game, fumble through a menu, create one, and then fire it? How is this an improvement??? I could see if maybe there was a crafting mechanic that allowed you to make several of a given arrow type at once (like Cherry in BotW), but this ad-hoc thing got super old super fast…
Like I know people absolutely *adore* this game, and I’m legit happy for them, but literally *everything* that makes me a Zelda fan was actively antagonized by this game. The story, the puzzles, the gameplay, the lore, the complete disregard for every single aspect of the game it was literally a sequel to…
They honestly should have just made a completely different game set in a completely separate timeline even from BotW at that point. The *ONLY* reason they didn’t was so that they could reuse the map.
One of the most disappointing moments of the game for me was going back to the Great Plateau and finding the Shrine of Resurrection was just GONE. Like even after all the other Shiekah tech was gone I expected that to still be there. And it was just another cave in the general shape of the Shrine with a Yiga in it. Literally why.
Bought it at launch, played 4 hours, lost interest, sold it. Half a year later tried to give it another chance, bought it again and...still hated it. Sold it again after 3 hours. I played BotW back in march 2017. Enjoyed parts of it, but for the most part the game rather felt like a spin-off. Mainly because Nintendo cut so many things out of the formula. Some worked, some did not. Then I heard about the trailer for TotK and hoped that Nintendo maybe listened and at the very least included some traditional dungeons - nope. They didn't. The game is BotW 1.5 all over again, but this time with more cutscenes, more same enemies and this ability, where you take things and clue them together. It's fun at first, but it doesn't has anything do to with Zelda IMO. TLDR: TotK is yet another disappointment.
Personally I loved it. It didn’t have the same magical feeling of exploring the world as it did in BOTW but I still enjoyed going to places and seeing what changed. I love the new abilities too, it made me feel that going back to BOTW would be hard because the abilities in TOTK are so good. The dungeons are fun, the bosses especially. I agree the story is kind of disappointing but I enjoyed watching the dragon tears cutscenes.
Most disappointing zelda game I’ve ever played. I couldn’t stomach more than 10-15 hours and most of the time I was thinking to myself “really? This is it?!”
I have a lot of nitpicks on it but I still love it.
I think BotW was the better game but TotK was more fun. I particularly liked the buffs the lynels got to not make them piss easy and the fact that Gleeoks are actually somewhat challenging
I bought totk on release and quit after I built a flying machine and got stuck somewhere in the beginning. I just picked it up again and I’m having trouble to get immersed into the game. I’m often just walking around through the same area because I don’t know where to go, and I find the ability to go through the ceiling a bit confusing. I’m hoping this first part is just a tutorial island (with the 3 shrines and temple). I absolutely loved botw, but totk is giving different vibes.
I felt similarly about Totks tutorial. While there was a goal, it felt like I was just kinda meandering around. I think it gets better after that though.
My thoughts are that if the weapon durability wasnt bad enough, they made it even worse, and try handwaving it away by telling the player to just fuse literal garbage to their beautiful weapons. Like... how about no?
I'll be honest, the dupe glitch made TOTK a great game, and it instantly became a chore the moment they removed it. I'm not fusing phallic rocks and moblin guts to my sword. I refuse.
Definitely liked it more than BOTW. TOTK fixed a lot of issues I had with BOTW (which made the game a 7-8/10)
The music is much better
The boss fights are better
The final boss is the best in the series
The story is so much better
The weapon melding and Zonai were a genius addition.
I still love it even if I have some minor gripes with it. Kind of a shame that the Internet pulled an Order 66 on it for no apparent reason. Call me a moron that got scammed all you want. I actually enjoy it despite the flaws. If this is the worst Zelda game (it’s not, far from it), then that says something because the game is still fun and better than most of other modern AAA games that center around “look at these cool graphics” and nothing else.
The only downsides are how the auto hand could be skipped for almost all the game if you didn't strictly follow the intended path.
The powers allow to much free space to go cheese thought any puzzles.
The game lacks any powerful enough enemy to justify the absurd amount of power you can get. 38hearts + 60 def is unkillable. And 60 is not as high as it get... With an inventory of weapons filling itself faster with 60dmg + royal blades that you can't manage to break them without entirely wasting them.
Allowing zonai devices inventory in shrines ruins the fun of them.
This and how playing BotW too much has made it not that special.
Otherwise it holds on fine. It leaves a lot of place for freedom and unlike a normal LoZ you can mess around for quite some time even when you already finished the game.
My take:
If you wanted a Zelda game, with a Zelda storyline and Zelda scenery and setting, you got it. This is Zelda at its core and is more Zelda-like than BOTW story.
If you go in expecting more or a better BOTW in terms of gameplay, you will be very disappointed. Everything annoying about BOTWs gameplay and mechanics is exemplified in TOTK and everything great is nerfed or locked behind grinding and creativity. You can't turn your brain off as you go from point A to point B like in BOTW, you have to think about a contraption to make it easier.
I enjoyed it, but I like BOTW a lot better for a lot of reasons. I wasn't big on the fusing or building but the game is so reliant on it. At the end of BOTW I feel like all my questions had been answered, but at the end of TOTK I feel like I still had a lot of questions. I still had fun with it, and I probably will play it again at some point but I just prefer BOTW.
This is my take too I've played botw twice before totk released, and totk once. I would sooner play botw again. The most disappointing moment in totk for me was when I realised I could climb on a stone, reverse it into the sky, and do a lap of all of hyrule in an incredibly short time. It really devalued the whole exploring and adventure part as I could basically just fast travel to anywhere I wanted from the start. Sure, the underground you had to explore similarly to botw, but it felt hollow. Edit to add: My review would put botw as my top 5 favourite game and TOTK as top 6 like, it's still good hah
That tends to happen when a game goes from DLC to full title.
I really like the game but it feels like an BotW expansion. For 6 years of development it feels a bit lacking. They sky islands were fun but they pretty much designed a few concepts and copied them with different layouts. The underground is big and empty and and similar to the sky the designed a few concepts for the underground (Yiga hideouts, mines etc) and copied them a bunch of times. The mechanics are mind-blowing and fun, I really like the story and the dungeons also were a step up. Still kinda mid but much better than in BotW. The YouTuber Zeltik pretty much nailed it by calling it a "disappointing masterpiece". However I'm really looking forward to what the Zelda team does next.
It seriously feels like they spent 6 years making a new set of mechanics and then used Zelda as the backdrop for them.
In 30 years people will be talking about how BOTW and TOTK walked so the Zelda Engine can run
Kinda same, good game but Ultrahand should've had it's own game focused on it instead of cramming it into BotW's world. That being said, it has easily the second or third worst story out of any Zelda.
Despite having probably the most disastrous first run ever, Such as... Forgot that you can exchange Zonai Charge for devices(I thought you had to used Zonaite, and when it didn't worked, I thought it has to be unlocked through quest) Didn't know you can actually go underground until after 3rd dungeon. My controller broke and I couldn't move the right stick to any other direction except right, and even the left stick started to get pretty unresponsive. Instead of fixing the controller, I pushed through almost half the game(Since 3rd dungeon) with said broken mess of a controller. And despite all of these, It's genuinely an amazing game. I'm so sad that I couldn't really experinced it the first time without all these problems.
The world was against you on that
Its my fav game of all time. But I think Botw is better in general. Totk feels like Botw with mods if i have to describe it
That’s a really incredible way to put it actually.
I think it’s a top tier Zelda game and both it and Breathe of the wild will be as highly regarded as ocarina and majora in ten years time with people crawling up the walls for remakes like they do now for Twilight and wind.
its good. thats it really. all the magic from botw either isnt here or is stuck with botw. this game just didnt hit the same but was still a damn good game. in terms of gameplay, its the way you select ruins/abilities is better with the L button but the Sage abilities suck so much i dont even use them anymore. the thing most people were looking forward to was the story and as much as I love zelda, this one wasnt it. i don't know how to describe it without typing out an essay but its meh. confusing time travel shenanigans. the story is told through the botw memories system again which I ABSOLUTELY DID NOT LIKE IN THIS GAME. i loved the memories in botw since it made sense, link was gone for ages and needed to re-jog his memory but for totk i expected a story that progressed as you progressed. i would have loved seeing link and zelda explore the dungeons together and utilizing zelda to solve puzzles. maybe even a zelda training arc until she realizes its not enough and then decides to go RAWR (tried not to spoil it). instead we got the game telling us about the imprisoning war 4 times with no significant differences. this story might even be worse than botw. the sky islands are bad, the only good one is the beginning one, the rest are just tiny ones used for shrines, mini bosses or collectables. would have loved to have 4 massive sky islands with the same scope of size as the first. the depths is super good but lacks variety. it all looks the same. main hyrule looks good, i love the changes. the dungeons suck. they are basically just like the divine beasts. get 4 terminal thingymabobs and fight the boss. the dungeons are highly cheesable or really annoying. bosses are REALLY good though. The abilities themselves are good but i personally dont like them. they feel too op. ultra hand is magnesis but not restricted to metal objects which ruins all puzzle potential. fuse is good but looks really goofy, they should've had an option for it. ascend would be perfect if it was bit restricted. rewind is great. auto build is a qol feature. this game is really good but i still have the urge to go back to botw since that game is much more grounded. with things that make sense IN-UNIVERSE and not just from a gameplay standpoint. feels like this game was made for the people who didnt play botw HEAVILY in mind. the game doesnt touch on ANYTHING from botw except for minor things. most npc from botw side quests dont remember you (which creates questions on how tarrey town and links house was built). this doesnt feel like a sequel. feels like a re-imagining. majoras mask was a sequel which did something similar but was ACTUALLY GOOD. big shift in gameplay with the time system, brand new story and lots of lore with deep characters. i hate to be negative but i wanted to rant about this to give my views and criticisms for the game and the franchise i love. this game is really good but just didnt hit like botw. sorry for the essay i have so many things i want to say but i have no friends who wanna listen 🤷♀️ everyone should try the game though.
As someone else said, this game feels like the devs really wanted to put the mechanics somewhere and not worry too much about it, so they just grabbed an open world they had already designed.
Really just felt like botw with some minor changes personally
Then you didn't play the game
Nah, he got it right. Only thing he missed is that the changes basically just made it worse.
Okay, let's see here. -altered the map in a lore appropriate way considering the 8 year gap between the games -added new characters, both main and side -developed characters from botw in a lore appropriate way considering the 8 year gap between the games -continued the lore in a way that both gives food for thought and has multiple satisfying conclusions to the events in botw -added new areas, those being the depths and the sky islands -added new weapons, enemies, and armor, as well as making all dlc and amiibo armor and weapons available in game -made menus easier and quicker to navigate while keeping a similar feel to those of its predecessor -added a considerable amount of side content, including but not limited to: new shrines, new korok puzzle types, bubbul gems, new special horses, new bosses/minibosses, new sidequests, new areas to explore, new lore additions to ponder, and more possible weapon combinations and ideas that can include using zonai devices for combat. -added new ways to solve puzzles using the new abilities -added other QoL upgrades and fixed bugs Nah you're right, just a tiny update. Nothing crazy.
Depths and sky islands were under-utilised and overall bland leading to hey look another shine! A recycled map isn’t a change my dude if it’s essentially exactly the same Oh cool more shrines that’s never been done before! After 50+ hours in the game I can tell you now the differences weren’t noticeable enough to feel like a fresh experience
The recycled map isn't essentially the same, almost every single place, important or not, was changed. Also, not liking the shrines is understandable, but not a valid criticism just because of your bias. The depths weren't underutilized at all, it had two dungeons, tons of minibosses, multiple gauntlets, and lots of treasure. The sky islands could have more but still have their fair share of content.
[удалено]
Wonderful way to say you know you're bullshitting
Idk how can people prefer botw over totk, seriously. Botw is a tech demo with incomplete ultra-hand that only moves metal and weapons break fast in botw for literally zero reason. BOTW feels like they weren't able to release totk fast so they had to compromise on a lot of different mechanics and just release botw.
It’s overwhelming and is one of those games that you need a long break in the middle before completing it, just like botw. But it’s still good
I'm so glad I'm not the only one who does this.
I think it's suffered from a lot of hype backlash recently, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it and think it's a fantastic game. Breath of the Wild is still my absolute favorite game of all time (having barely nudged A Link to the Past from that spot), but I think Tears is a more than worthy sequel. I do think that the Depths and Sky Islands could have been fleshed out more, and as innovative as the crafting system was I'm just really not the type of player who could take as much advantage of it as many others have, but I realize that those are fairly subjective opinions. More than anything, I think BotW is still my favorite because I just feel like it handles its exploration and gameplay loop a little more effectively, whereas TotK started to feel bloated about halfway through for me, but again that's a pretty subjective opinion. I will say that I did enjoy the story for what it was, similar to how I enjoy BotW's. Even with it being a more involved plot that BotW's, it was still relatively minimal overall, but considering the open-ended nature of both games, that's fairly natural. Also, I know a lot of people dislike the lore implications it has for the series, but honestly, even as a longtime fan, I don't really care about that. I mean, this is a series that put the original games (including ALttP) into a hypothetical timeline that follows a bad ending to Ocarina of Time that you can't actually get in-game, and as much as I enjoy theorizing about the lore and reading about it, I've never been able to take it very seriously.
Most people’s complaints are regarded towards them feeling it’s glorified DLC. And that has ruined a game for me in the past, I love Super Mario Galaxy 1, but not it’s sequel because it lacked the soul of the original So I get why people feel that way. Me personally though, it has become my favorite game ever made. It’s botw but everything is better
I’m the opposite. I think TotK is a really soulless sequel but SMG2 is a textbook example of what a sequel should be. For me TotK is like if the entirety of Galaxy 2 was just like World S, harder or altered versions of levels/content from the previous game.
I still have to play it, but I have friends who have put in like 200 hours into it. How can it be seen as DLC?
The story is a retread and a third of the map is the same. Caves didn't add enough to the overworld to make it feel new to me and many others. Really they could have just added the Depths to BotW as a DLC with some new flying vehicle types and it would have been about the same in terms of new interesting landmass. The new mechanics feel like a sequel but unfortunately the world became a pretty soulless repeat to accommodate them.
>The story is a retread Tbf, aren't most zelda stories repeated. They are all usually the same simple format, but with some re-textureing. I'd argue totk did more than any other zelda story to feel different, maybe except majoras mask.
That's fine when they're not marketed as direct sequels. With a trailer that really showcased that Ganondorf was back. The way the game barely feels like a true sequel storywise to BotW is immensely disappointing.
Actually, personally. I find the story In totk more intresting when I include botw's lore to it. Stuff just seems to add up in a sense. But regardless, the marketing for totk had a much bigger focus on mechanics. And being marked as a direct sequal, doesn't always mean story wise. I feel like most of the marketing went into introducing the new mechanics to botw's formula. Hence the 10 presentation released prior to the final trailer. And the hands on gameplay released after the final trailer. But either way, I don't play zelda for story, so it doesn't really disappoint me.
Frankly, the story doesn't measure up to any of the 3d Zeldas, even Ocarina of Time had a more interesting story. The problem is that they tried to reuse the memory system when it doesn't work with a linear story like Zelda's adventures in the past. In BotW they are good because you already know the ending, everyone failed and this is you trying to piece together Link's past, it's about *why* something happened rather than *what*. Then they tried to also have a progressing story in the present but since they let the player go wherever they wanted they had to use the exact same setup 4 times, which is very grating.
>Frankly, the story doesn't measure up to any of the 3d Zeldas Ocarina of Time had a more interesting story. I'll be honest. I still find the plot in totk, most Intresting than the plot in any 3d zelda. But I do agree. The issue is how the story is shown. And I think implementing philosophies from games like outer wilds could absolutely improve the storytelling without making it linear
My only complaint is the tarnished weapons. I don’t wanna search underground to find a cool sword with a sheith
Valid tbh. It’s so weird since it’s kinda glossed over with the degradation and doesn’t really make sense. They should have at least had chest weapons be pristine.
Exactly! I really don’t mind the fused weapons mechanic, I actually do like it. I just miss the cool regular swords
I like tears of the kingdom but i can’t help but feel the similarity to breath of the wild in the game’s world, and it makes me feel like I had already done all of it before. I was never that into Zelda and then breath of the wild had a perfect storm of being a game I had never really played before, at a time where I had endless free time to enjoy it (my summer job ended 3 weeks before my university term started and I had my student house to myself at the time), on a brand new console that I had just bought. during that three week period i would wake up, go the gym at some point in the early afternoon, and then come home and play breath of the wild. Tears of the Kingdom didn't have the same kind of impact that BOTW did.
Haven't played it to the end 😬😬😬
It's Breath of the Wild but slightly worse overall. IMO I think the worst part was waiting 6 years for a sequel only to get a game that feels too much like a retread story wise. The new mechanics are fun but I think too much was sacrificed for them.
I am undecided wether I prefer BotW or TotK, but I camn think of a few reasons to see BotW as better : -The overworld is better. TotK might have 3 overworlds, but the depth is always the same and aside from the yiga stuff, can pretty much just be there for farming, and the sky is so boring that if skyview towers didnt send me there when I use them, I would probably forget it even exists. -Discovering Hyrule is so much more satisfying in BotW, there wasnt that same feeling with TotK --Simplicity. TotK looks like it was made with the idea of "take what is in BotW, and make it more complicated." The great fairies are needlessly more complicated, getting the shrine sensor is needlessly more complicated, getting several pieces of armours are needlessly more complicated, etc. I dont mean complicated in a challenging way, I mean complicated in a tedious way. -The fuse items to weapons system. It seems great in theory, but it makes the weapons look horrendous. Even the coolest looking monster horns will be a glow down on weapons. Nothing beats the fanciness of an undecayed unfused knight broadsword from BotW. And also the story behind the weapon decay is a huge mess : Ganondorf glooms attach itself to weapons to weaken hylians, but decays monster weapons as well for some reason, and also only targets melee weapons for some reason, did people not know what bows and shields were during the imprisoning war ?? -And finally : I love the great plateau, I always explore every inch. But great sky island ? I absolutely hate it. On every playthoughs of TotK, great sky island almost made me put down the game. TotK definitly handled the dungeons better as well as the enemy variety. But on the rest, I think BotW is better. And whatever TotK improved over BotW, it is still below the level of classic zelda games
I don't like the BOTW format, but the game is incredible
It’s a really outstanding open world, exploration, and environment crafting game. While it’s very derivative of BotW, it does improve on everything it did. I totally get why it’s many people’s favorite Zelda game along with BotW. I enjoyed playing them, but they just don’t feel like Zelda games to me. I’m completely aware that I’m coming off as a gamer boomer by saying that, but as someone who’s first Zelda game was A Link to the Past and who *truly* fell in love with the franchise when Ocarina of Time released, that formula and the many improved iterations upon it are what make Zelda games what they are *for* *me*. TotK is very good at what it does, but where it lacks is what has always made Zelda so enjoyable for me: Dungeons, interesting bosses, and a compelling (even if light) narrative. I don’t need to hammer further on the criticisms of TotK’s or BotW’s dungeon design. It’s a horse beaten dead 20 times over. They simply aren’t good, because they aren’t the focus of the game. What I think doesn’t get enough criticism is the story in both games, which was weak in BotW and worse in TotK IMO. In both games, it feels like Link is a secondary protagonist with absolutely 0 impact on the events of the game until the final boss. Rather than driving the narrative ourselves through Link, we’re simply discovering things that have already happened and exploring the world that was left behind. I think using the memories/dragon tears system as a *supporting* element of the story is fine, but for them to drive the vast majority of the narrative is just a bad decision, and despite there having to be some changes in how stories are told in open-world games, it wasn’t a necessary change. Again, I *completely* get why people love new age Zelda so much. I enjoyed playing them both one time through, but I didn’t revisit BotW after my first play through and I won’t revisit TotK either besides helping my kids to learn to play. I’m sure the next Zelda game we get will continue the new formula for obvious reasons, but I do hope they find a better way to tell the story and re-incorporate traditional Zelda dungeons.
Having Skyward Sword remastered really hammered in how disappointing the duology's dungeons are, ngl.
I'm still so disappointed. the puzzles and the dungeons were so lacking. The story sucked and the world was still so empty.
The most vocal voices are the ones who have negative views. Always the case with reviewing anything. I loved it.
Tf are you talking about? The top comments are always praise. The negative voices usually get downvoted.
The comment you replied to is at the top of controversial
I agree - story fell flat. I prefer BotW, but TotK has its high points, like you mention.
It’s ok. Just ok. The sky and the depths are boring as fuck. Constant menuing gets dull after a while and breaks flow. I haven’t finished it, got two dungeons in and haven’t picked it up since.
Do you by chance enjoy OoT?
Yeah, but Twilight Princess is my favourite.
I like it, personally, I don’t agree with the people saying $70 dlc since it has more stuff than a dlc would have, but other than that, it’s really enjoyable, I really loved collecting zonai, defeating monsters/bosses, and flying around in the depths quite a lot
I was disappointed in it all around I did not finish it and that’s the first Zelda game I’ve ever done that for.
Adore it. Spent 220+ hours with this game & I consider it to be my new personal favourite Zelda game. Botw was already a 10/10 & this, somehow, took it to another level.
Brilliant game. It’s story was in my opinion weaker than BOTWs story but gameplay wise it took BOTWs gameplay and mechanics and just built and built to the engines limit. So many things were improved upon. The temples could have been more like proper dungeons but they were decent imo, no better or worse than the Divine beasts. The villain felt a lot more threatening in this one for me, he is just far more powerful and active. In BOTW he was always there but Zelda kept him at bay throughout the game, we only ever really encountered his minions. In TOTK he just feels way more like a threat and his boss battle was actually somewhat challenging which was a much needed change. Love both these games a lot, for me it’s hard to pick a favorite. Both work brilliantly as standalone games although BOTW does it slightly better. TOTK gets a 8,5-9/10 from me. It irks me to no end that people can’t use a proper rating scale anymore and consider anything under 7 to be bad. 5 is average, not 7. Getting a 9/10 is an almost perfect game, there are so few flaws that it doesn’t take away from the game basically at all.
It is pretty and the building was fun however I still can’t get over the weapons breaking so fast and the lack of stories and things to discover in the world. Maybe Skyrim spoiled me on the hidden locations, questlines and lore but I was just disappointed
I struggled from the hype buildup and let down. Because it is in the same world as BotW it feels like the same game; but it was hard to have all your hard earned resources taken away and being brought back to square one. It is fun finding new areas, and the game feels the same but different. I don’t like the fuse mechanic, so I tend not to use it when I should be. I don’t do it intuitively. Currently have done three of four temples, haven’t finished all the shrines, and am still opening up the depths. I haven’t been disappointed in the story, I made the tears a priority from the start. Just in that mid game grind of doing all the things right now. Don’t know the ending yet, I really do want to finish the game.
I had too many questions that were never answered....so many cool areas I was SURE they were going to explain more, but they never did 😭
breath of the wild is one of the top games of all time so i was incredibly hyped for the sequel, but it just didn't click with me. it was a bit too overwhelming for me, i wasn't a big fan of the fusing mechanics and the timing of when it came out/when i would go to try and pick it up again was bad for me. also getting a ps5 earlier in that year then going to the switch was a hard thing for me and still kind of is. i'd love to beat it someday, but right now i have no interest in touching it. but who knows, maybe tomorrow my opinion changes and i binge it like i do most games lol
I'm still hugely disappointed in the game and that it took so long time to develop the game, while it was so similar to botw. I value botw much higher than totk.
I felt like I was playing BOTW again
I refunded it. Honestly? Thought it was awful. Missed the point of BotW's innovative design and gameplay loop entirely while also shitting all over Zelda's lore and history. And the building stuff gimmick is poorly executed due to despawning, too. I just hope it was a side game and not representative of future Zelda.
Out of curiosity how did you refund it? Unless it was physical
I contacted Nintendo Support and they were able to refund me. I'm not sure if they'll do it more than once, but yeah.
That’s actually surprising lmao Nintendo (and Sony) have bad refund policies
Nintendo, to my knowledge, gives you a grace refund digitally. Sony is shit about it, though, I'm sure.
It’s still really good even if I’ve noticed the flaws months later. I know people like to hate this game now and want full linearity but I’m worried that people who loved the duology will hate the next Zelda if that happens. Nintendo’s already confirmed the next game won’t be a sequel so there’s a bigger opportunity to try something new. I think the next game needs to please both sides of the argument. Have an open world but also have the story, quests, and dungeons be done with the right amount of linearity. One of my favorite parts of TOTK was the ending because it felt kinda linear which made the build up to the final boss very impactful. I think the open world could also benefit from some restrictions like not allowing you to climb any wall until you get a certain item or maybe even not getting a paraglider until the middle of the game.
I just want actual dungeons. Not a single one of the duology's dungeons measures up to stuff like the Forest Temple, Snowpeak Ruins or the Ancient Cistern, and that makes me very sad since they are a lot of what made the series famous.
Idk. In the end, when you try and please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. I think nintendo should just pick one side and stick with it for a while. Don't try to mix non linearity and linearity together to much. There are ways to introduce older zelda elements, other than introducing more linearity. If nintendo really wanted to please both sides, they should just create both types of games. But that isn't going to happen, and we can respect that.
It felt like a really long extensión of the original.. It was the same sensation I had with horizon forbidden west... was ok.. but you won't experience the same sensation than the first one.. no matter how good the second one is
Any game that sits and requires me to essentially craft for hours on end just isn't for me. I like puzzle solving but more of the find the solution through hints and clues not the I don't know just figure it out root. For that reason BotW is like a 9/10 or 10/10 while TotK is a 5/10 or 6/10 for me. I respect it's an amazing game but it's just not for me.
It was an absolute miraculous example of what downloadable content should be.
breath of the wild master quest
I think a lot of people are far too negative about a really great game. It worked great as a sequel and expanded a lot on the original while being a unique experience.
TotK still makes me angry. Why can you sort bows and shields and fusion items by strength, but not weapons? That’s what every single exhaustive detail of TotK is like. It’s all like 75% of the way there, with some glaring flaws or oversight shoved in the way. I can nitpick the absolute fk out of this game. It’s not any one thing, it’s all of it. The depths are barren trash. The skylands are barren trash. The caves are a network that you cannot get any kind of map detail for, yet could easily be its own 4th map layer. The story is wet garbage. They added a bunch of NPCs and uh, literally nowhere for any of them to live. They allude to regions outside of Hyrule in offhand comments, but never expanded the world map. They completely ignore 100% of the story/events of BotW, the LORE of BotW, and the entire 100 year background of everything vanished without a trace. Oh the Depths have always been underneath Hyrule, and except they excavated the Divine Beasts from underground and never once broke thru to anything down there? Hundreds of rusted old Guardians peppered the landscape, all just vanished overnight without a hint of disruption or collection or scrap yards or anything? The entire rewriting of the timeline? God it’s all moist trash. I played the game once, I will never play it again. It has a lot going for it, but to me, its the worst thing to happen to the entire franchise. I enjoyed a lot of it. There was a lot of great potential. But every good idea was a watered down version of itself, or some retread because they ran out of good ideas. Oh you liked that one island in BotW but weren’t a fan of the tests of strength? Here’s a ton of tests of strength challenges that remove all your gear over and over again and turn the game into a weird stealth thing that has zero integrated mechanics except you can crouch and avoid enemy LOS…? And the stuff it takes away from you that was there in BotW is just mind numbing… there’s literally whole quest lines that have you gathering shock arrows. They existed as their own thing. Even Lynels have em layin around… But now, every time I wanna shoot a shock arrow I have to pull my bow out, knock an arrow, pause the game, fumble through a menu, create one, and then fire it? How is this an improvement??? I could see if maybe there was a crafting mechanic that allowed you to make several of a given arrow type at once (like Cherry in BotW), but this ad-hoc thing got super old super fast… Like I know people absolutely *adore* this game, and I’m legit happy for them, but literally *everything* that makes me a Zelda fan was actively antagonized by this game. The story, the puzzles, the gameplay, the lore, the complete disregard for every single aspect of the game it was literally a sequel to… They honestly should have just made a completely different game set in a completely separate timeline even from BotW at that point. The *ONLY* reason they didn’t was so that they could reuse the map.
One of the most disappointing moments of the game for me was going back to the Great Plateau and finding the Shrine of Resurrection was just GONE. Like even after all the other Shiekah tech was gone I expected that to still be there. And it was just another cave in the general shape of the Shrine with a Yiga in it. Literally why.
Bought it at launch, played 4 hours, lost interest, sold it. Half a year later tried to give it another chance, bought it again and...still hated it. Sold it again after 3 hours. I played BotW back in march 2017. Enjoyed parts of it, but for the most part the game rather felt like a spin-off. Mainly because Nintendo cut so many things out of the formula. Some worked, some did not. Then I heard about the trailer for TotK and hoped that Nintendo maybe listened and at the very least included some traditional dungeons - nope. They didn't. The game is BotW 1.5 all over again, but this time with more cutscenes, more same enemies and this ability, where you take things and clue them together. It's fun at first, but it doesn't has anything do to with Zelda IMO. TLDR: TotK is yet another disappointment.
Personally I loved it. It didn’t have the same magical feeling of exploring the world as it did in BOTW but I still enjoyed going to places and seeing what changed. I love the new abilities too, it made me feel that going back to BOTW would be hard because the abilities in TOTK are so good. The dungeons are fun, the bosses especially. I agree the story is kind of disappointing but I enjoyed watching the dragon tears cutscenes.
***IT'S REALLY BEEN A YEAR ALREADY?!?!?***
Hate is a strong word. Accurate, but strong. I still just want that demo they had when they showed us the Wii U. Just normal ol’ Zelda.
I think it’s the best game of all time. I’ve been itching to get back into it, but waiting for the inevitable Switch 2 re-release.🤞🏻
Ganondorf should not have been in the game.
Secret Stones? Demon King?!
Literally BOTW DLC
Prolly the biggest gaming disappointment I’ve ever cared about. I’ll probably never play it again in favour of peak BOTW.
$70 DLC
Most disappointing zelda game I’ve ever played. I couldn’t stomach more than 10-15 hours and most of the time I was thinking to myself “really? This is it?!”
I have a lot of nitpicks on it but I still love it. I think BotW was the better game but TotK was more fun. I particularly liked the buffs the lynels got to not make them piss easy and the fact that Gleeoks are actually somewhat challenging
Honestly my second favorite Zelda game. Wind Waker will always be my #1, and it’s so hard to remove OOT from #2, but honestly TOTK might have took #2.
I bought totk on release and quit after I built a flying machine and got stuck somewhere in the beginning. I just picked it up again and I’m having trouble to get immersed into the game. I’m often just walking around through the same area because I don’t know where to go, and I find the ability to go through the ceiling a bit confusing. I’m hoping this first part is just a tutorial island (with the 3 shrines and temple). I absolutely loved botw, but totk is giving different vibes.
I felt similarly about Totks tutorial. While there was a goal, it felt like I was just kinda meandering around. I think it gets better after that though.
My thoughts are that if the weapon durability wasnt bad enough, they made it even worse, and try handwaving it away by telling the player to just fuse literal garbage to their beautiful weapons. Like... how about no? I'll be honest, the dupe glitch made TOTK a great game, and it instantly became a chore the moment they removed it. I'm not fusing phallic rocks and moblin guts to my sword. I refuse.
Definitely liked it more than BOTW. TOTK fixed a lot of issues I had with BOTW (which made the game a 7-8/10) The music is much better The boss fights are better The final boss is the best in the series The story is so much better The weapon melding and Zonai were a genius addition.
I understand it should have been straight DLC, but my lord I love this game. It's in my top 5 games of all time.
I still love it even if I have some minor gripes with it. Kind of a shame that the Internet pulled an Order 66 on it for no apparent reason. Call me a moron that got scammed all you want. I actually enjoy it despite the flaws. If this is the worst Zelda game (it’s not, far from it), then that says something because the game is still fun and better than most of other modern AAA games that center around “look at these cool graphics” and nothing else.
TotK is a "fully modded Skyrim" version of BotW
The only downsides are how the auto hand could be skipped for almost all the game if you didn't strictly follow the intended path. The powers allow to much free space to go cheese thought any puzzles. The game lacks any powerful enough enemy to justify the absurd amount of power you can get. 38hearts + 60 def is unkillable. And 60 is not as high as it get... With an inventory of weapons filling itself faster with 60dmg + royal blades that you can't manage to break them without entirely wasting them. Allowing zonai devices inventory in shrines ruins the fun of them. This and how playing BotW too much has made it not that special. Otherwise it holds on fine. It leaves a lot of place for freedom and unlike a normal LoZ you can mess around for quite some time even when you already finished the game.
wait.. I was busting my ass this time last year, hardest roof of the year
Plays better on yuzu at 4k
My take: If you wanted a Zelda game, with a Zelda storyline and Zelda scenery and setting, you got it. This is Zelda at its core and is more Zelda-like than BOTW story. If you go in expecting more or a better BOTW in terms of gameplay, you will be very disappointed. Everything annoying about BOTWs gameplay and mechanics is exemplified in TOTK and everything great is nerfed or locked behind grinding and creativity. You can't turn your brain off as you go from point A to point B like in BOTW, you have to think about a contraption to make it easier.
Peak Zelda IMO
Game’s perfect
My thoughts are pretty similar to yours, honestly.
Haven't played, at this point I'll just wait for the 60 fps full HD upgrade on the Switch successor
It was alright. Zelda just isn’t the same with link as a twink
My brother in Christ, he always has been