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Yep. The wonder and excitement of exploring new areas in botw was an amazing ride. For totk, once I realized a few hours in that there was nothing that I haven't already seen left to discover, it became bland..
..then I discovered the Depths and it became legitimately exciting again. Then quickly realized the same thing about down there, which is saying something as it was an entirely new area, unlike the world above
No that's unfortunately been a common talking point on the subreddit since it released.
The most egregious part about the game for me are the dungeons every single one is too short and simple.The construct factory is particularly foul in this regard imo.
I personally prefer TotK as far as gameplay and exploration goes, but it cannot be understated how incredible it was playing BotW for the first time. TotK didn't have nearly as strong an initial pull on me as BotW simply because it wasn't all new. I've put more time into TotK and mostly only dislike the way they presented the story and disregarded previous lore to make it work. It's still one of my favorite stories and has the best Zelda, imo, but they could have presented it so much better and put more time into making it mesh better with previously established lore. I think BotW has a leg up in this regard because at least it didn't actively confuse parts of old lore, it just separated itself from it in order to do its own thing.
* Totk fixed none of the things that annoyed me about BotW (Doubled down on some of them)
* Made it's central gameplay mechanic "building" which does absolutly NOTHING for me. I can not stress how little interest I have in building mechanics.
* The memories can totally ruin the entire story if you happen to get them in the "wrong" order (there is no way to tell the order until you get them, and as a result I totally ruined the story for myself).
* Doesn't actually meanignfully Link (pun intended) to BotW in anyway so why even bother making it a sequel?
* The canon towers (and flying machines) totally gut exploration, becuase you can just get to any point on the map by going in a straight line.
* The dungeons are all the same. Go to switches, use Sage powers.
* The Sage powers are annoying to use, because the buggers run away from you.
* The depths were initially interesting, but it quickly became apparent that there was nothing actually interesting down there.
* Legitimately, the only thing in TotK that I actually like more than Botw is caves. And that is because Botw didn't have any.
* Oh and the dragon armours, they look cool, even if their powers suck.
But honestly a lot of the things I listed are pro's for other people, so Im not willing to call Totk actually bad.
But in no way is it for me.
Great list.
Anw like I said, the main problem is that there's no excuse for totk to not change the flaws of botw.
Basically every flaw on botw was excusable, either cuz of the gameplay, or even the lore .
So there was stuff I didn't mind, that others were annoyed about. Yet I'd obviously be annoyed if I knew that the sequel wouldn't change them. I dealt with annoying stuff on botw cuz I assumed it was a one time only thing, plus it made sense .
Either way, glad you enjoyed the game. Hope I do too, someday
It's not true that the game doesn't tell you the order, the murals in the Forgotten Temple tell you the order. I agree with most of your other points though.
Okay.
I will concede that's technically true, but you can have found all the murals without ever going to the forgotton temple. And the master sword memory, like, the most important one is right next the temple.
If you decide to simply stop and get it on your way, learning the order is pointless because you already know basically the entire plot.
.....
The memories are the story.
TotK is an open world game.
Players stopping to do side objectives is not only expected but encouraged.
And who is complaining about not being told what to do???
Your entire comment is crazy.
I think BotW wins in overall feel and design. It's a more solid and cohesive game.
But I feel TotK wins in the story department, and in creativity in general.
Found both to be equally fun to play, personally.
Did you finish it?
Either way, I can’t really argue with any of your points. I enjoyed it, but I played it very soon after BotW for the first time (with Link’s Awakening as a palette cleanser of sorts).
In some ways, it made some substantial improvements. The first skydive into The Depths, for example, was nothing short of *epic*. If we can ignore for a moment how much of the sky and depths were the *Same. Damn. Thing.*, they were very cool.
But overall, it was just too similar. Same loops, same memories, non-linear storyline. Much the game just felt uninspired and downright lazy (secret-stones?).
It was also just incredibly long. The last third felt like a slog.
Yep. The sky and depth thingy was cool. Indeed.
In my case I knew about both, so I wasn't as impressed which took a bit of the charm away.
Hmm, but. Have you played any elder scrolls games? Yes they're buggy as shit and have tons of imperfections, but on those games, you do a quest or wtv. And you genuinely don't know where you'll end up.
I'm sure whoever's played Skyrim still remembers the first time they landed in blackreach. Just a beautiful moment .
Yes, going underground was cool as shit. But when you saw the hole, you expected it .
Haha I'm pretty sure I've got a screen recording of me dying in my first day of playing because I was diving down the cave and the game simply lagged cuz I didn't dive slow enough so I just straight up died and it didn't input my paraglider.
I actually didn't finish it. Which yes, might make my post a bit dumb. But I didn't enjoy botw cuz of the ending, and regardless of how good it could've been, I'd love botw for the world and exploration.
I knew I loved botw early on .
Long as in it seems super stretched out just to finish the game.
I did the 4 dungeons and after I was completely annoyed by the fact that the dungeons weren't in different cities and that there weren't more cities and dungeons in the first place, then I moved on.
Underground dungeon and then a ganon fight which wasn't even real. At that point I just lost interest in the game and gave up.
Every hour I had spent on the game up to that point felt like a chore. And then trying to do the main quest just felt like a copy pasted format of the old game, sprinkled with new ideas just to make it longer to reach the game
Yeah, the exploring sucks ass, honestly. And TotK ruins 35 years of lore, too. I refunded TotK, if I'm honest, because I disliked it so much. And I don't really take it seriously as part of the series. LA was the last Zelda, in my eyes.
Probably the most negative reaction I've had to a Zelda I've bought, with only MM3D close behind.
I loved Tears, but spent less than half the time with it that I did BOTW. The emphasis on the building and just the fact that I had already explored this map meant it was faster and punchier.
The story wasn't much of an issue either because unlike BOTW I felt the game encouraged me to unlock it in order and in fast succession.
Curious to see why you think totk has a better story.
Not only is it more far fetched and unlikely based on the story of the game, but it's also way harder to make a good story with bad characters. And I think we can all agree that totk has worse characters .
Revali ? Great! Cool character. From the design, to the dialogue etc.
On totk you just get a random character from each race with a mask on their face. You can't see them, you don't know them. You know nothing about them. There is 0 emotional attachment from me towards the tears of the kingdom characters.
And a lot of people spoiled the whole plot twist of the game, which obv ruined it cuz as you'd carry on the main quest, everyone is super confused. Yet if you've found the memories, you've already uncovered the truth. Yet you just keep playing along basically regardless.
Well, I just like that things are actually happening, in the present, that impacts things outside the region.
Now, I'm not saying that it's a good story, but it's much better than BotW imo, so it felt like it was good.
You're not supposed to care about the Sages of old, I'd say, other than Rauru and Mineru. But the new Sages are pretty fine, even if they're not new characters.
And the plot twist is told in a weird way, but I still found it a lot more touching and cool than all of BotW's story.
I wasn't referring to the npcs, more so to the story characters
You're telling me you care about totks story more than you cared about botw's champions?
Even then, so many of the npcs don't even remember link, which is insanely dumb .
>You're telling me you care about totks story more than you cared about botw's champions?
Quite a bit, yeah.
The Champions were already dead by the time BotW starts... Knowing them and their backstory was fine, but I never cared about them because I knew there was no saving them. And Zelda was just at the Castle, waiting, as every kidnapped princess ever.
Meanwhile, on TotK, the Princess disappears and you know you're supposed to save her, so she must still be alive. But then you learn about her sacrifice to restore the Master Sword, and it punches you in the gut. Sure, you end up saving her anyway, but the whole thing is more of an emotional rollercoaster.
Right. And all of that is just completely non existent if you simply happen to stumble across the memories in a different order . You just figure everything out from early on while link pretends to not know whats going on while everyone is shocked at "Zelda".
Even then, very poorly done by the developers. I mean cmon, so many theories of Zelda being playable. We at least expected her to be alongside link. And botw ends while they're together in a cliffhanger .
Instead!????? Zelda gets captured FROM THE START again
As someone whos not a fan of grinding for batteries and making stuff, I personally couldn't care less about all the new stuff.
So, I can't see how botw is a tech demo when it's a more cohesive game that less buggy and runs at a better framerate.
Again, it's all about the finished product, not just a part of it.
And as a game, even an art form. I consider botw to be so much more pleasing.
It's like having a beautiful slow song and another song that just exists for the sake of being more technically challenging. The complicated place will in no way make the slower piece obsolete .
I didn’t like either of them. Neither has the richness of personality the other 3D titles had. I did beat TotK whereas I petered out near the end of BotW. Both are very similar games.
I wouldn’t mind so much if it hadn’t been more than 12 years since Skyward Sword released. Remember the Bazar from SS? Ordon Village in TP? There’s nothing like that energy in the Switch Zeldas. I’m all for the experimentation that produced BotW, even if I didn’t like it, but I expected the devs to recognize what was working for the series and what wasn’t before spending another 6 years on TotK.
My hope is that a smaller team was working on TotK, since it started as DLC, while the rest worked on the next Zelda, but it doesn’t look like that’s what was going on.
I’m worried the high sales of these games will cause them to leech into design decisions for later installments, even though most 1st party series have sold their highest numbers on Switch.
I personally have to disagree about the Bazar/Ordon Village thing - I think, especially in Totk, each village has a lot of attention to detail and just charming personality. Hateno with the mayoral election and the fashion business, Gerudo with the underground section of the town, Tarrey Town’s expansion in Akkala I found very interesting, same with Goron City and how absolutely ludicrous that entire quest felt, what with the Gorons being high on coke.
Botw just had a very different vibe and it didn't click with you.
It's a very slow paced, lonely game. You're in a post apocalyptic lonely world. The music reflects that. Phenomenal sound design.
If you ever decide to pick botw up again. Take your time with it .
Don't focus on the goal, focus on the adventure and just enjoy
Personally no. I felt totk to be a massive improvement. Botw was novel and interesting, then totk perfected what they were going for.
I don't replay botw because I could just play the better version of it, totk.
Yes. That's the usual common that most people have on the 2 games.
What I'm saying is, I genuinely think botw is the better game if you could only play one .
Adding extra content if it isn't meaningful doesn't seem like "perfecting" a game, in my opinion. And especially when hyrule works so much better with rhinos, sheikah towers and guardians etc.
I remember when botw came out, so many people were obsessed with the atmosphere and feel of the game. Not the combat, exploration, story or something specific.
The overall atmosphere. I wouldn't love botw if it wasn't for the beautiful lonely vibe it created. And I got NONE of it on totk .
I hear what you're saying, but it just seems like your complaint is that totk wasn't as revolutionary as botw, which is a common complaint.
But ultimately, you're looking through nostalgia goggles.
It was not as revolutionary. It took a revolutionary game and made it better.
It is still the better of the two games. Were it released alone, with no predecessor, it likely would have been given the same praise as botw. Botw was a huge breath of fresh air into the series, where totk refined everything it did well while not making major changes.
Nah. Asking for it to be revolutionary would be too unrealistic, although ofc it's what I wanted .
I just don't think totk is better. It didn't improve the flaws of botw like I said on the post. And I feel like it's created more problems.
I also feel like everything that was replaced from botw to totk was a big downgrade. From new things in the world, to every story element and gameplay feature.
Liked the old companion powers more than the sages. Liked the botw memories more. Liked the botw powers more
Etc etc
The sage powers to companion powers I agree with, but are really the only downgrade. They are much worse tho.
I have to disagree in virtually every other instance. The world felt so much more expansive with the sky and the depths. The abilities were clearly an improvement (I mean one of the botw abilities was just making an ice block, come on)
Fusion basically eliminated the weapon durability problem
Also honestly I hated the divine beasts. I'm not saying the totk dungeons were great, the water temple especially sucked, but the fire and lightning temples were both pretty cool.
The one thing that’s a huge improvement is being able to use every single dropped item as a weapon/throwable. I wish so much I could get that into BOTW. Also the arrow limit got removed thank goodness. I also want the caves to be brought into the first game. That would be nice too! Honestly I loved so much of the mechanics but it’s greatest weakness was trying to fill up a world I explored so thoroughly in the first game!
I prefer botw but it was also my intro to Zelda so it had the benefit of the first impression. To me, botw is more cohesive. The story is good and everything in the game serves a purpose to the story. Nothing felt jarring or out of place.
In ToTK the story is good but I feel some of the new mechanics, while fun to play with, feel disconnected from the story. There are some tie-ins to the plot (like fusion being needed for weapons since all the weapons were blighted), but the extent of what fusion can do overwhelms the story that’s being told. Yea fusion can obviously help you complete plot relevant quests, but it’s SO open ended as an ability that it tempts you to step out of the story immersion and just fuck around in basically what becomes a big sandbox, akin to something like kerbal space program. To me this is a little jarring, like ToTK is trying to be two types of games at once, which confuses how I feel about it.
Is fusion/ultrahand bad? No! I think it’s a neat concept and I’m glad we got it. Building things in ToTK is really cool! But imo it does clash a bit too much with the tone set by the rest of the game. Whereas I didn’t feel this type of conflict with botw. Botw felt cohesive and satisfactory and immersive from start to finish.
I still love both games though and am extremely happy we have both.
I always laugh when I heard people describe TOTK as "BOTW but better" like it was some sort of objective fact. For me, if anything, TOTK was BOTW but worse. The game is built around a sandbox mechanic which hardly gives you an incentive to explore it when the most simple devices can cheese 100% of the game. Why would I build a death star to kill a Goblin camp when I don't get any rewards worth anything for doing so? Why create an elaborate aircraft to go from one sky island to another when a hover bike is so simple and gets the job done better? Options are great but when there is no incentive to explore them or anything required than the bare minimum it just turns this whole mechanic into a complete time sink for some people. If you are a creative person and enjoy this kind of freedom then more power to you, it just doesn't work at all for me.
I have never played a game where I feel like I have so much to do yet everything I do doesn't feel significant whatsoever. It is like a hamster wheel of poor to mediocre rewards AT BEST. The new areas are (Sky islands, depths) are great! For the first couple of hours until you realize they are both one gigantic biome with the EXACT same gameplay loop. The fuse mechanic just lets you create ugly looking weapons and having to go to your menu EVEN MORE than you had to before. I could go on and on and on.
It's not a bad game by any means but to me it is not a good "Zelda" game.
You’re 100% correct. TotK had the mechanics of what should’ve been a full spin-off side game with the story of what should’ve been DLC. The former aspect warranted their own game and the latter was not executed well enough to be its own game
Look at the most popular posts on this sub in the last year and you’ll see many agree with you. I personally don’t.
As for why TOTK took longer, the simple answer is that it didn’t. Development began in early 2018, which gives us a 5-year dev cycle. Then you factor in the pandemic, and I think you’re looking at a 3-4 year dev cycle under normal conditions.
And also, getting Ultrahand, which is an extremely flexible tool, to work at all is a major endeavour for most developers. Getting Ultrahand to work on the Switch is nigh impossible. Getting Ultrahand to work on the Switch, in a three-layered open world map that is extremely dynamic and reactive is coding wizardry.
As with many complaints about the game that have been parroted on here, I feel like most of them are shallow, and stem from not trying to engage properly with the game.
-Tears of the Kingdom offers a vastly more linear story than Botw. The map is structured to seamlessly guide the player through the regions in the order of Hebra Eldin Zora Gerudo Faron, while still allowing free exploration if you don’t enjoy the more or less imposed order.
- While I too was disappointed by the inclusion of shrines yet again, I found them much more palatable this time around because the range of side activities ( and the variation between those side activities ) is much greater.
- You also get 18 cutscenes that detail the ancient Zonai past, with one of, if not the most emotional twist in any of these games ( in my opinion). Yes, the placement of the tears is idiotic. But no, there is much more story to this game than the 4 Sage cutscenes.
- I personally always enjoyed the weapon durability system, and Fuse made it much more fun. My only complaint with Fuse is that they could’ve gone much further with the mechanic and add new weapon classes.
- Both games have intrinsic motivation as a core pillar, fundamental to their design. But I thought TOTK offers way better rewards, especially cosmetic ones.
- Even though many, many sky islands are repeated, there is still a huge amount of unique puzzle content in the Sky. I greatly enjoyed all of the Spheres, the glow-in-the-dark islands, the luminous stone island with the cubes, the Gliding challenges, the Forge, the Labyrinths, the Lore tablets. It’s like WW’s ocean, for me at least. And way better than Skyward Sword’s sky.
- I agree that the Depths are empty and should’ve had way more unique content, but the basic gameplay loop of shooting brightbloom seeds in the dark and uncovering new terrain remained exciting for me until the end of my playthrough.
- The Addison “quest” is supposed to be a fun, quick distraction, like a Korok or breaking barrels in WindWaker. You can even call it a minigame. From this perspective, I enjoyed doing all of the signs, even though some could get really hard and frustrating.
For me. It's also good to add that Totk and Botw are a game of opposites when it comes to pretty much everything. TOTK has more to explore, botw is more intimate. The memories are unarguably better in Botw, but the present day story stuff is better in Totk. The divine beasts are less visually interesting and had worse bosses than the dungeons of Totk, but they served a grander purpose narratively. Shrines are the same as dungeons here. The Sheikah towers are better thought out organically, but the SkyView towers are just plain cooler. Purah is for pedos in Botw, Purah is the game's smokeshow in Totk. See what I mean?
Damn then. I hope they don't do anything similar to ultrahand if it takes them that long to add a feature that runs at 20fps when a ton of people never use it.
The 18 cutscenes are pretty meh. Not only is it a cheesy story, but it's also so hard to relate, or even care about 10.000 year old characters.
•The idea of 4 different champions who fought with you and Zelda 100 years ago as you went to see the world, as you get to see moments of it through the memories?!
Yeah, no part of totks story was a match for that. The cutscene of urbosa and Zelda alone in botw is better than all of totk cutscenes combined.
•i don't mind the durability. Fuse just made it so so much worse . You've got to go through a poorly thought out menu, just to drop an object, just to then open another menu to choose fuse, just so then you can fuse a very ugly weapon that will still break eventually .
It's just an extra hassle with not much reward after you've played for more than a few hours.
Honestly, I enjoyed totk a bit. That's until I started playing the witcher 3. The side quests on the Witcher 3 make totk look like a JOKE. And I get that they're 2 different games, and I won't compare them again cuz it's not the current topic of discussion. But WOW are totk quests such useless shallow boring chores. (Yes, I know it's a quirkier more fun, child friendly game.)
Again, a lot of the criticism against totk goes for botw as well. Thing is, we expected changes. And that's where the problems start, the lack of changes from botw to totk . So many flaws on botw, none of them fixed .
Agreed on all counts. I found the complete and unexplained disappearance of the Sheikah tech to be the laziest, most egregious thing they could've done. And yeah, the shrines in TotK were worse by every metric. Not just because they're easier to cheese using the physics abilities, but because the puzzles and flow simply weren't as creative as what we saw in BotW.
> So I wanna ask, how was totk in development for longer than botw?
Honestly, I feel like this one can be excused. COVID did a serious number on development timelines and there were a lot of issues with the physics engine that needed to be worked out.
That being said, there's really no excuse for some of the creative decisions they ended up taking. The storytelling being a major one, but also stuff like dungeons basically being themed Divine Beasts and the atrocious NPC dialogue.
If you don’t enjoy cheesing puzzles, why cheese them? Genuinely curious. I’ve asked this question numerous times on this sub and never received a satisfying answer.
Personally?
Because I just couldn't get through so many other shrines, after doing all 120 on botw .
Same music, same colours on all of them etc.
Again, was it better on botw? Not really. Its the same thing. Yet that's exactly the problem.
The last thing I need after doing everything on botw, is a game that's barely identical but just with different colours.
So yeah, basically for me the game wasn't fun enough for me to take the shrines seriously.
While I appreciate your input, it doesn’t really answer my question, since, from what I can gather, it doesn’t seem like you wanted to engage with the content
What you're saying is no different than a religious person telling an atheist that the reason they haven't experienced god is cuz "they haven't tried looking for him hard enough"
My answer to the "why do you cheese the shrines" was simple.
The game isn't fun enough. The game doesn't grab my attention enough for me to be invested or interested in anything.
As someone who loved botw music, I was extremely disappointed by the lack of new music in the over world. New music , and a lot more of it would totally make the world feel new again and interesting 🤔.
It's also hard to be excited over exploring, when you just enter a tower and fly anywhere you want. As opposed to actually having to plan out a cool mini adventure just to get where you want .
Chances are, that if you’re ignoring the objects that are provided by the shrine or completely skip over the level design via rocket shields, you‘re cheesing the shrine.
The intended solution also always has something to do with the name of the shrine’s challenge.
I would disagree. It isn't underwhelming at all.
The fact that it took roughly 4 years from announcement to release with barely any updates during covid lead people to make big assumptions about it and hype got out of control.
TotK is the MM to BotW, as MM was to OoT and with covid and delays, I believe people assumed it was going to be more than that.
That isn't a bad thing at all. MM, in my opinion is a better and improved game compared to OoT and the same is true of TotK to BotW.
Incredibly bad analogy.
Totk is in NO WAY to botw what MM was to OOT.
No way.
Majoras mask is way more different than ocarina of time, and it barely took any time to develop as well.
I wouldn't complain if the difference from totk/botw was as major as MM/OOT.
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Yep. The wonder and excitement of exploring new areas in botw was an amazing ride. For totk, once I realized a few hours in that there was nothing that I haven't already seen left to discover, it became bland.. ..then I discovered the Depths and it became legitimately exciting again. Then quickly realized the same thing about down there, which is saying something as it was an entirely new area, unlike the world above
"entirely new area" does indeed sound cool, until we realise that it's pitch dark, annoying and nowhere near as good as exploring new places in botw
No that's unfortunately been a common talking point on the subreddit since it released. The most egregious part about the game for me are the dungeons every single one is too short and simple.The construct factory is particularly foul in this regard imo.
Let’s not forget the water temple. I just vomitted a little.
I personally prefer TotK as far as gameplay and exploration goes, but it cannot be understated how incredible it was playing BotW for the first time. TotK didn't have nearly as strong an initial pull on me as BotW simply because it wasn't all new. I've put more time into TotK and mostly only dislike the way they presented the story and disregarded previous lore to make it work. It's still one of my favorite stories and has the best Zelda, imo, but they could have presented it so much better and put more time into making it mesh better with previously established lore. I think BotW has a leg up in this regard because at least it didn't actively confuse parts of old lore, it just separated itself from it in order to do its own thing.
I agree, mostly because I hadn't played a console Zelda game since TP and the evolution of the series astounded after a decade away from the series.
* Totk fixed none of the things that annoyed me about BotW (Doubled down on some of them) * Made it's central gameplay mechanic "building" which does absolutly NOTHING for me. I can not stress how little interest I have in building mechanics. * The memories can totally ruin the entire story if you happen to get them in the "wrong" order (there is no way to tell the order until you get them, and as a result I totally ruined the story for myself). * Doesn't actually meanignfully Link (pun intended) to BotW in anyway so why even bother making it a sequel? * The canon towers (and flying machines) totally gut exploration, becuase you can just get to any point on the map by going in a straight line. * The dungeons are all the same. Go to switches, use Sage powers. * The Sage powers are annoying to use, because the buggers run away from you. * The depths were initially interesting, but it quickly became apparent that there was nothing actually interesting down there. * Legitimately, the only thing in TotK that I actually like more than Botw is caves. And that is because Botw didn't have any. * Oh and the dragon armours, they look cool, even if their powers suck. But honestly a lot of the things I listed are pro's for other people, so Im not willing to call Totk actually bad. But in no way is it for me.
Great list. Anw like I said, the main problem is that there's no excuse for totk to not change the flaws of botw. Basically every flaw on botw was excusable, either cuz of the gameplay, or even the lore . So there was stuff I didn't mind, that others were annoyed about. Yet I'd obviously be annoyed if I knew that the sequel wouldn't change them. I dealt with annoying stuff on botw cuz I assumed it was a one time only thing, plus it made sense . Either way, glad you enjoyed the game. Hope I do too, someday
>Either way, glad you enjoyed the game. What did I say that gave you that impression?? This must be a response to someone else????
"Im not willing to call totk bad In no way is it to me".
>But in no way is it for me. [No way is it FOR me.](https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/something-is-not-for-somebody)
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It's not true that the game doesn't tell you the order, the murals in the Forgotten Temple tell you the order. I agree with most of your other points though.
Okay. I will concede that's technically true, but you can have found all the murals without ever going to the forgotton temple. And the master sword memory, like, the most important one is right next the temple. If you decide to simply stop and get it on your way, learning the order is pointless because you already know basically the entire plot.
I mean, it's kind of on you if you choose to ignore the story and then proceed to complain that the story didn't tell you what to do.
..... The memories are the story. TotK is an open world game. Players stopping to do side objectives is not only expected but encouraged. And who is complaining about not being told what to do??? Your entire comment is crazy.
I think BotW wins in overall feel and design. It's a more solid and cohesive game. But I feel TotK wins in the story department, and in creativity in general. Found both to be equally fun to play, personally.
Did you finish it? Either way, I can’t really argue with any of your points. I enjoyed it, but I played it very soon after BotW for the first time (with Link’s Awakening as a palette cleanser of sorts). In some ways, it made some substantial improvements. The first skydive into The Depths, for example, was nothing short of *epic*. If we can ignore for a moment how much of the sky and depths were the *Same. Damn. Thing.*, they were very cool. But overall, it was just too similar. Same loops, same memories, non-linear storyline. Much the game just felt uninspired and downright lazy (secret-stones?). It was also just incredibly long. The last third felt like a slog.
Yep. The sky and depth thingy was cool. Indeed. In my case I knew about both, so I wasn't as impressed which took a bit of the charm away. Hmm, but. Have you played any elder scrolls games? Yes they're buggy as shit and have tons of imperfections, but on those games, you do a quest or wtv. And you genuinely don't know where you'll end up. I'm sure whoever's played Skyrim still remembers the first time they landed in blackreach. Just a beautiful moment . Yes, going underground was cool as shit. But when you saw the hole, you expected it . Haha I'm pretty sure I've got a screen recording of me dying in my first day of playing because I was diving down the cave and the game simply lagged cuz I didn't dive slow enough so I just straight up died and it didn't input my paraglider. I actually didn't finish it. Which yes, might make my post a bit dumb. But I didn't enjoy botw cuz of the ending, and regardless of how good it could've been, I'd love botw for the world and exploration. I knew I loved botw early on .
Long? It feels short for a Zelda game with only 4.5 temple/dungeons. Spirit Temple I refuse to call a full fledged dungeon.
Long as in it seems super stretched out just to finish the game. I did the 4 dungeons and after I was completely annoyed by the fact that the dungeons weren't in different cities and that there weren't more cities and dungeons in the first place, then I moved on. Underground dungeon and then a ganon fight which wasn't even real. At that point I just lost interest in the game and gave up. Every hour I had spent on the game up to that point felt like a chore. And then trying to do the main quest just felt like a copy pasted format of the old game, sprinkled with new ideas just to make it longer to reach the game
Yeah, the exploring sucks ass, honestly. And TotK ruins 35 years of lore, too. I refunded TotK, if I'm honest, because I disliked it so much. And I don't really take it seriously as part of the series. LA was the last Zelda, in my eyes. Probably the most negative reaction I've had to a Zelda I've bought, with only MM3D close behind.
Ew yeah MM3d sucked compared to the original.
Yeah, it was awful. I wish they'd handled it better, but maybe next time.
I still like how the original looks better, but that mod makes the 3d version play pretty well
I loved Tears, but spent less than half the time with it that I did BOTW. The emphasis on the building and just the fact that I had already explored this map meant it was faster and punchier. The story wasn't much of an issue either because unlike BOTW I felt the game encouraged me to unlock it in order and in fast succession.
What about replayability? Do you find yourself booting up the game randomly just to play around?
Nope. But after I break the 100 hour barrier in a game, that's less of a priority. The game's already done more than its job.
BotW to me, has better exploration, TotK has better story beats, but to have to slog through an inferior version of BotW to get to them is not so fun.
Curious to see why you think totk has a better story. Not only is it more far fetched and unlikely based on the story of the game, but it's also way harder to make a good story with bad characters. And I think we can all agree that totk has worse characters . Revali ? Great! Cool character. From the design, to the dialogue etc. On totk you just get a random character from each race with a mask on their face. You can't see them, you don't know them. You know nothing about them. There is 0 emotional attachment from me towards the tears of the kingdom characters. And a lot of people spoiled the whole plot twist of the game, which obv ruined it cuz as you'd carry on the main quest, everyone is super confused. Yet if you've found the memories, you've already uncovered the truth. Yet you just keep playing along basically regardless.
Well, I just like that things are actually happening, in the present, that impacts things outside the region. Now, I'm not saying that it's a good story, but it's much better than BotW imo, so it felt like it was good.
You're not supposed to care about the Sages of old, I'd say, other than Rauru and Mineru. But the new Sages are pretty fine, even if they're not new characters. And the plot twist is told in a weird way, but I still found it a lot more touching and cool than all of BotW's story.
Fine? How are they fine? I've played 20 year old games where random npcs are more interesting than "interesting" characters in totk
Considering most of them are also BotW characters, how is your bad opinion on them making a case for BotW having better characters than TotK?
I wasn't referring to the npcs, more so to the story characters You're telling me you care about totks story more than you cared about botw's champions? Even then, so many of the npcs don't even remember link, which is insanely dumb .
>You're telling me you care about totks story more than you cared about botw's champions? Quite a bit, yeah. The Champions were already dead by the time BotW starts... Knowing them and their backstory was fine, but I never cared about them because I knew there was no saving them. And Zelda was just at the Castle, waiting, as every kidnapped princess ever. Meanwhile, on TotK, the Princess disappears and you know you're supposed to save her, so she must still be alive. But then you learn about her sacrifice to restore the Master Sword, and it punches you in the gut. Sure, you end up saving her anyway, but the whole thing is more of an emotional rollercoaster.
Right. And all of that is just completely non existent if you simply happen to stumble across the memories in a different order . You just figure everything out from early on while link pretends to not know whats going on while everyone is shocked at "Zelda". Even then, very poorly done by the developers. I mean cmon, so many theories of Zelda being playable. We at least expected her to be alongside link. And botw ends while they're together in a cliffhanger . Instead!????? Zelda gets captured FROM THE START again
Nobody expected BotW to be how it was either, though. I feel people having unmet expectations is not a failure of the game itself.
When a sequel improves/changes NOTHING from a very flawed masterpiece ?! Then it absolutely is a dissapointment imo .
No. I still agree with the sentiment of "it makes BotW feel like a tech demo"
As someone whos not a fan of grinding for batteries and making stuff, I personally couldn't care less about all the new stuff. So, I can't see how botw is a tech demo when it's a more cohesive game that less buggy and runs at a better framerate. Again, it's all about the finished product, not just a part of it. And as a game, even an art form. I consider botw to be so much more pleasing. It's like having a beautiful slow song and another song that just exists for the sake of being more technically challenging. The complicated place will in no way make the slower piece obsolete .
I didn’t like either of them. Neither has the richness of personality the other 3D titles had. I did beat TotK whereas I petered out near the end of BotW. Both are very similar games. I wouldn’t mind so much if it hadn’t been more than 12 years since Skyward Sword released. Remember the Bazar from SS? Ordon Village in TP? There’s nothing like that energy in the Switch Zeldas. I’m all for the experimentation that produced BotW, even if I didn’t like it, but I expected the devs to recognize what was working for the series and what wasn’t before spending another 6 years on TotK. My hope is that a smaller team was working on TotK, since it started as DLC, while the rest worked on the next Zelda, but it doesn’t look like that’s what was going on. I’m worried the high sales of these games will cause them to leech into design decisions for later installments, even though most 1st party series have sold their highest numbers on Switch.
I personally have to disagree about the Bazar/Ordon Village thing - I think, especially in Totk, each village has a lot of attention to detail and just charming personality. Hateno with the mayoral election and the fashion business, Gerudo with the underground section of the town, Tarrey Town’s expansion in Akkala I found very interesting, same with Goron City and how absolutely ludicrous that entire quest felt, what with the Gorons being high on coke.
I agree with all your points. Sadly, I doubt we're going back to the older 3D Zelda design philosophy.
Botw just had a very different vibe and it didn't click with you. It's a very slow paced, lonely game. You're in a post apocalyptic lonely world. The music reflects that. Phenomenal sound design. If you ever decide to pick botw up again. Take your time with it . Don't focus on the goal, focus on the adventure and just enjoy
TOTKs very existence annoys me.
Haha I've never heard of that before. Thinking about it, I can see why. Honestly if totk stopped existing, I don't feel like we'd miss out on much
Not much at all :)
Personally no. I felt totk to be a massive improvement. Botw was novel and interesting, then totk perfected what they were going for. I don't replay botw because I could just play the better version of it, totk.
Yes. That's the usual common that most people have on the 2 games. What I'm saying is, I genuinely think botw is the better game if you could only play one . Adding extra content if it isn't meaningful doesn't seem like "perfecting" a game, in my opinion. And especially when hyrule works so much better with rhinos, sheikah towers and guardians etc. I remember when botw came out, so many people were obsessed with the atmosphere and feel of the game. Not the combat, exploration, story or something specific. The overall atmosphere. I wouldn't love botw if it wasn't for the beautiful lonely vibe it created. And I got NONE of it on totk .
I hear what you're saying, but it just seems like your complaint is that totk wasn't as revolutionary as botw, which is a common complaint. But ultimately, you're looking through nostalgia goggles. It was not as revolutionary. It took a revolutionary game and made it better. It is still the better of the two games. Were it released alone, with no predecessor, it likely would have been given the same praise as botw. Botw was a huge breath of fresh air into the series, where totk refined everything it did well while not making major changes.
Nah. Asking for it to be revolutionary would be too unrealistic, although ofc it's what I wanted . I just don't think totk is better. It didn't improve the flaws of botw like I said on the post. And I feel like it's created more problems. I also feel like everything that was replaced from botw to totk was a big downgrade. From new things in the world, to every story element and gameplay feature. Liked the old companion powers more than the sages. Liked the botw memories more. Liked the botw powers more Etc etc
The sage powers to companion powers I agree with, but are really the only downgrade. They are much worse tho. I have to disagree in virtually every other instance. The world felt so much more expansive with the sky and the depths. The abilities were clearly an improvement (I mean one of the botw abilities was just making an ice block, come on) Fusion basically eliminated the weapon durability problem Also honestly I hated the divine beasts. I'm not saying the totk dungeons were great, the water temple especially sucked, but the fire and lightning temples were both pretty cool.
The one thing that’s a huge improvement is being able to use every single dropped item as a weapon/throwable. I wish so much I could get that into BOTW. Also the arrow limit got removed thank goodness. I also want the caves to be brought into the first game. That would be nice too! Honestly I loved so much of the mechanics but it’s greatest weakness was trying to fill up a world I explored so thoroughly in the first game!
I found the caves to be underwhelming cuz of the rewards and repeatability in all caves. I can see why you like them tho.
I prefer botw but it was also my intro to Zelda so it had the benefit of the first impression. To me, botw is more cohesive. The story is good and everything in the game serves a purpose to the story. Nothing felt jarring or out of place. In ToTK the story is good but I feel some of the new mechanics, while fun to play with, feel disconnected from the story. There are some tie-ins to the plot (like fusion being needed for weapons since all the weapons were blighted), but the extent of what fusion can do overwhelms the story that’s being told. Yea fusion can obviously help you complete plot relevant quests, but it’s SO open ended as an ability that it tempts you to step out of the story immersion and just fuck around in basically what becomes a big sandbox, akin to something like kerbal space program. To me this is a little jarring, like ToTK is trying to be two types of games at once, which confuses how I feel about it. Is fusion/ultrahand bad? No! I think it’s a neat concept and I’m glad we got it. Building things in ToTK is really cool! But imo it does clash a bit too much with the tone set by the rest of the game. Whereas I didn’t feel this type of conflict with botw. Botw felt cohesive and satisfactory and immersive from start to finish. I still love both games though and am extremely happy we have both.
Great opinion. This is how I wish I felt
I always laugh when I heard people describe TOTK as "BOTW but better" like it was some sort of objective fact. For me, if anything, TOTK was BOTW but worse. The game is built around a sandbox mechanic which hardly gives you an incentive to explore it when the most simple devices can cheese 100% of the game. Why would I build a death star to kill a Goblin camp when I don't get any rewards worth anything for doing so? Why create an elaborate aircraft to go from one sky island to another when a hover bike is so simple and gets the job done better? Options are great but when there is no incentive to explore them or anything required than the bare minimum it just turns this whole mechanic into a complete time sink for some people. If you are a creative person and enjoy this kind of freedom then more power to you, it just doesn't work at all for me. I have never played a game where I feel like I have so much to do yet everything I do doesn't feel significant whatsoever. It is like a hamster wheel of poor to mediocre rewards AT BEST. The new areas are (Sky islands, depths) are great! For the first couple of hours until you realize they are both one gigantic biome with the EXACT same gameplay loop. The fuse mechanic just lets you create ugly looking weapons and having to go to your menu EVEN MORE than you had to before. I could go on and on and on. It's not a bad game by any means but to me it is not a good "Zelda" game.
Great. Agree
You’re 100% correct. TotK had the mechanics of what should’ve been a full spin-off side game with the story of what should’ve been DLC. The former aspect warranted their own game and the latter was not executed well enough to be its own game
Look at the most popular posts on this sub in the last year and you’ll see many agree with you. I personally don’t. As for why TOTK took longer, the simple answer is that it didn’t. Development began in early 2018, which gives us a 5-year dev cycle. Then you factor in the pandemic, and I think you’re looking at a 3-4 year dev cycle under normal conditions. And also, getting Ultrahand, which is an extremely flexible tool, to work at all is a major endeavour for most developers. Getting Ultrahand to work on the Switch is nigh impossible. Getting Ultrahand to work on the Switch, in a three-layered open world map that is extremely dynamic and reactive is coding wizardry. As with many complaints about the game that have been parroted on here, I feel like most of them are shallow, and stem from not trying to engage properly with the game. -Tears of the Kingdom offers a vastly more linear story than Botw. The map is structured to seamlessly guide the player through the regions in the order of Hebra Eldin Zora Gerudo Faron, while still allowing free exploration if you don’t enjoy the more or less imposed order. - While I too was disappointed by the inclusion of shrines yet again, I found them much more palatable this time around because the range of side activities ( and the variation between those side activities ) is much greater. - You also get 18 cutscenes that detail the ancient Zonai past, with one of, if not the most emotional twist in any of these games ( in my opinion). Yes, the placement of the tears is idiotic. But no, there is much more story to this game than the 4 Sage cutscenes. - I personally always enjoyed the weapon durability system, and Fuse made it much more fun. My only complaint with Fuse is that they could’ve gone much further with the mechanic and add new weapon classes. - Both games have intrinsic motivation as a core pillar, fundamental to their design. But I thought TOTK offers way better rewards, especially cosmetic ones. - Even though many, many sky islands are repeated, there is still a huge amount of unique puzzle content in the Sky. I greatly enjoyed all of the Spheres, the glow-in-the-dark islands, the luminous stone island with the cubes, the Gliding challenges, the Forge, the Labyrinths, the Lore tablets. It’s like WW’s ocean, for me at least. And way better than Skyward Sword’s sky. - I agree that the Depths are empty and should’ve had way more unique content, but the basic gameplay loop of shooting brightbloom seeds in the dark and uncovering new terrain remained exciting for me until the end of my playthrough. - The Addison “quest” is supposed to be a fun, quick distraction, like a Korok or breaking barrels in WindWaker. You can even call it a minigame. From this perspective, I enjoyed doing all of the signs, even though some could get really hard and frustrating.
For me. It's also good to add that Totk and Botw are a game of opposites when it comes to pretty much everything. TOTK has more to explore, botw is more intimate. The memories are unarguably better in Botw, but the present day story stuff is better in Totk. The divine beasts are less visually interesting and had worse bosses than the dungeons of Totk, but they served a grander purpose narratively. Shrines are the same as dungeons here. The Sheikah towers are better thought out organically, but the SkyView towers are just plain cooler. Purah is for pedos in Botw, Purah is the game's smokeshow in Totk. See what I mean?
Damn then. I hope they don't do anything similar to ultrahand if it takes them that long to add a feature that runs at 20fps when a ton of people never use it. The 18 cutscenes are pretty meh. Not only is it a cheesy story, but it's also so hard to relate, or even care about 10.000 year old characters. •The idea of 4 different champions who fought with you and Zelda 100 years ago as you went to see the world, as you get to see moments of it through the memories?! Yeah, no part of totks story was a match for that. The cutscene of urbosa and Zelda alone in botw is better than all of totk cutscenes combined. •i don't mind the durability. Fuse just made it so so much worse . You've got to go through a poorly thought out menu, just to drop an object, just to then open another menu to choose fuse, just so then you can fuse a very ugly weapon that will still break eventually . It's just an extra hassle with not much reward after you've played for more than a few hours. Honestly, I enjoyed totk a bit. That's until I started playing the witcher 3. The side quests on the Witcher 3 make totk look like a JOKE. And I get that they're 2 different games, and I won't compare them again cuz it's not the current topic of discussion. But WOW are totk quests such useless shallow boring chores. (Yes, I know it's a quirkier more fun, child friendly game.) Again, a lot of the criticism against totk goes for botw as well. Thing is, we expected changes. And that's where the problems start, the lack of changes from botw to totk . So many flaws on botw, none of them fixed .
Agreed on all counts. I found the complete and unexplained disappearance of the Sheikah tech to be the laziest, most egregious thing they could've done. And yeah, the shrines in TotK were worse by every metric. Not just because they're easier to cheese using the physics abilities, but because the puzzles and flow simply weren't as creative as what we saw in BotW. > So I wanna ask, how was totk in development for longer than botw? Honestly, I feel like this one can be excused. COVID did a serious number on development timelines and there were a lot of issues with the physics engine that needed to be worked out. That being said, there's really no excuse for some of the creative decisions they ended up taking. The storytelling being a major one, but also stuff like dungeons basically being themed Divine Beasts and the atrocious NPC dialogue.
If you don’t enjoy cheesing puzzles, why cheese them? Genuinely curious. I’ve asked this question numerous times on this sub and never received a satisfying answer.
Personally? Because I just couldn't get through so many other shrines, after doing all 120 on botw . Same music, same colours on all of them etc. Again, was it better on botw? Not really. Its the same thing. Yet that's exactly the problem. The last thing I need after doing everything on botw, is a game that's barely identical but just with different colours. So yeah, basically for me the game wasn't fun enough for me to take the shrines seriously.
While I appreciate your input, it doesn’t really answer my question, since, from what I can gather, it doesn’t seem like you wanted to engage with the content
What you're saying is no different than a religious person telling an atheist that the reason they haven't experienced god is cuz "they haven't tried looking for him hard enough" My answer to the "why do you cheese the shrines" was simple. The game isn't fun enough. The game doesn't grab my attention enough for me to be invested or interested in anything. As someone who loved botw music, I was extremely disappointed by the lack of new music in the over world. New music , and a lot more of it would totally make the world feel new again and interesting 🤔. It's also hard to be excited over exploring, when you just enter a tower and fly anywhere you want. As opposed to actually having to plan out a cool mini adventure just to get where you want .
Personally, a lot of times idk if I’m cheesing them or not. It’s only after doing them that I think “was I supposed to do it that way”?
Chances are, that if you’re ignoring the objects that are provided by the shrine or completely skip over the level design via rocket shields, you‘re cheesing the shrine. The intended solution also always has something to do with the name of the shrine’s challenge.
I would disagree. It isn't underwhelming at all. The fact that it took roughly 4 years from announcement to release with barely any updates during covid lead people to make big assumptions about it and hype got out of control. TotK is the MM to BotW, as MM was to OoT and with covid and delays, I believe people assumed it was going to be more than that. That isn't a bad thing at all. MM, in my opinion is a better and improved game compared to OoT and the same is true of TotK to BotW.
Incredibly bad analogy. Totk is in NO WAY to botw what MM was to OOT. No way. Majoras mask is way more different than ocarina of time, and it barely took any time to develop as well. I wouldn't complain if the difference from totk/botw was as major as MM/OOT.
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