Hey everybody! Just want to say - if you think everything I said is completely stupid and wrong, that's totally cool! I just like talking about games and giving my perspective on them, but this is in no way an indictment of your taste if you like Tears of the Kingdom. We might just have different preferences, and the opinions stated in the video are completely subjective. Thanks for the support and I'll catch you guys in the next one :)
As someone who has over 200 hours in TOTK and loves the game and story to death (100 percented and everything), I honestly agree with a lot of what you said. I'm able to look past the bad parts (which there are many) and enjoy the game anyway, which is a tendency I understand a lot of people just don't have, which makes total sense.
I've beaten every Zelda game that's come out. It's been my favorite series since I was a kid and Botw was the least fun I've had with Zelda. I beat it, put it down, and never touched it again. It felt so repetitive... Every shrine felt the same and the "dungeon" were just bigger shrines. Totk was the first Zelda game I've ever just stopped playing. I don't even feel like I'm playing Zelda. The only rewards you get are cosmetic. Probably 90% of the time I open a chest and go nah I'll pass on whatever was in it. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned but I'd rather play Skyward Sword than any of the new "Zeldas".
@@MrKlarc19 I feel bad for old school Zelda fans who miss the formula of the old games. The widespread acclaim and hype around the new titles pretty much guarantees that Zelda will continue down this path for the foreseeable future and for fans like you that's such a shame!
@@Command_B Yeah, it is what it is I guess. The funny thing is the older games aren't open-world but still feel so much bigger than the new games. I can't get past the time I spent quite a while climbing a mountain in Botw and nothing was up there.... fun....
I hate making goofy weapons, and I hate them breaking, so I end up hoarding the best looking ones and then warping back to Eldin whenever one is close to breaking to magically heal it with an octopus - which just breaks all my immersion and ruins the experience. Even if you go by the "use the stuff you find" method, there aren't enough rusty swords and boulders in a given cave to explore the whole thing; you can't get through all of the rock with just what's in the cave, so you're forced to sacrifice one of your curated weapons just to find a Bubble frog and an opal, or leave the cave and never explore the whole thing. It ended up doing the same thing BotW did which was convince me to avoid fights to save my weapons, which, again, breaks immersion and ruins the game for me. Link wouldn't leave an enemy there, but I have to because it's not worth breaking one or more of my weapons when I can just run on by.
I had a similar experience. Whenever I fused a material to a weapon I wanted to break it if it looked ugly (vast majority of cases) and keep it forever if it was cool. It's frustrating too because the coolest looking weapon fuses were very weak, so if I would use them to defeat an enemy they would quickly break
One of the most disappointing things about TotK is how most of the weapon look horrible... I loved the weapon design in BotW, even low tier weapons looked incredible, and they even removed the beautifully designed scabbards in the sequel
@@mccoy7083 especially because the game is all about experimenting and combining, ultimately finding your own preferred way to play. But if the weapons look terrible and break all the time, this doesn't give me the incentive to do that. Tears of the kingdom is a sandbox-type game so experimenting should be worthwhile. But most fusions don't have any special effect to offer, which makes it even worse. I think this sandbox approach just doesn't work well with the survival approach from the breath of the wild foundation, or at least it was not well executed by the Zelda team
There was absolutely no reason to reuse the same world map, it made exploration so boring. I could not finish totk also, because everything felt so the same. Same world map, same korack seeds, same weapons and armour. And this game was in developmemt for 6years.
Yes exactly, my thoughts when i first playing botw i was like wow this game awesome can't wait for the sequel. Then i played this totk, man this game boring 😂 that's why im here.
Something doesn't have to win an award for the company to still sell that product. Botw before it had won GOTY, and they are the two best selling games in the franchise. So I don't see where the wake-up call is.
@@GenkiStarLeaf I guess Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, A Link Between Worlds, Skyward Sword (mostly) and Triforce Heroes( when with friends) weren’t that good. (I guess the point is people need to respect top-down Zeldas other than A Link to the Past a lot more than they do.) It seems not many people got that this was a sarcastic comment.
I first got into Zelda in 2017 with Twilight Princess, and immediately understood what made it a good game. Was it linear? Yes. It also had a great story, great characters, great puzzles and dungeons, along with decently entertaining combat. My second game was Breath of the Wild. All the characters were already dead, you had to actively look for the story, the dungeons were all the same, and the open world was all it had going for it. You know, the open world? As in, the empty barren one? Old Zelda was better because it tried. It didn't use freedom as a crutch. Linearity is what makes Zelda. Nintendo forgot that Zelda is about exploration, story, and dungeons. Focusing more on exploring a reused/boring world hurts the two other pillars and ruins the game.
Twilight Princess is still the best Zelda game made IMO, and I've played through them all, a lot. OOT and MM are great too. Botw is okay, ToTK is awful.
My favorite is majora’s mask followed closely by my first ocarina of time but I loved every zelda… until botw… I even appreciated 2 for being frustrating but still enjoyable but botw/totk just has nothing substantial to progress towards
My only issue with tp was it needed harder enemy encounters to use hidden moves on. Darknuts were awesome but few and far between and most bosses while spectacly fantastic were way too easy. Argarok was amazing though, and I liked blizzeta but the tarantula was pathetic,( neat concept with cool mechanics but nearly impossible to get hurt by and its late game.)
I'm a New Yorker and among the many buildings sometimes I'll walk past a vacant storefront and wonder, "Didn't that used to be a [restaurant, bank, clothing store, etc.]?" The exploration in Tears of the Kingdom mostly felt like that to me.
Also, don't listen to the 5ish people calling you a hater. Your opinion was expressed very reasonably and the positives you mentioned about the game didn't go unnoticed. If they can't pick up on that, they're probably projecting their negative attributes onto others.
I am sure there were good moments...but yeah overall I had a feeling there wouldn't be anything late game that would change my overall outlook on the game.
It's almost like "open world" isn't some EZ Bake move that breathes new life into a franchise for free. It's almost like stretching the map out and putting more items and enemies in a game aren't really that engaging if they don't have a purpose of being there other than to fill the area up. It's almost like "open world" doesn't do a franchise any service at all if you don't know how to make that open world fun and invigorating.
It's almost like some people are such ignorant, sociopathic morons, that they can't comprehend the simple fact that different people enjoy different things, and that - luckily - game companies don't care about the opinions of ignorant, sociopathic morons, which is why this is the best time in history to be a gamer. Having said that, and having played video games since the 1970's, I no longer call myself a gamer, because I don't want to be associated with the whinging, whining little clueless bitches that gamers have become.
No joke. I would've liked BOTW and ToTK a lot more if it WAS NOT open world. The fact that you have to use a menu to teleport 80% of the time is just proof that Nintendo had no idea wtf thwy were doing, and couldn't even make the environment enjoyable to walk through in both games. Just long stretches of nothing, and no one. Or one of two annoying idiots: Koroks, or Yiga. That got old after the first encounter.
@@ZeranZeran One year! Majora's Mask is a timeless masterpiece, and I've loved doing all of the side quests dozens of times over the years - I can't bring myself to finish TotK, and with Tears being better than BotW I don't see myself ever playing BotW again. That's sad 😂
when banjo kazooie released a game where you build stuff and run around a big empty environment instead of doing the normal stuff the series was known for, we all hated it
@@agreedboarart3188 it was hated at the time, now it’s seen as one of ahead of its time. But it was definitely NOT what the Banjo fanbase wanted or what was advertised to players prior to release
I know I am in the minority but I loved N&B. And I played the first Banjo Kazooie growing up. So I was familiar with the franchise. But in N&B there is a reason to build and experiment with builds, there is an objective behind building that is a core part of the game. In TotK you can, and most likely most of the player base will, play through the entire game without building much at all. There is no other reason to build other than if one just feels like being creative. But building consumes resources, which partially hinders me from ever building. I did enjoy some of my time with TotK but I have to admit it was a let down compared to BotW. I haven't even finished TotK yet. I stopped playing after about 40-60 hours in. At some point I tried getting back into it, logged in a few more hours and stopped again. I still want to try to finish the game but there is a slight possibility that I won't finish.
@@sadshyguygaming125Don't. Replay one of the older titles instead. Actually, I would really recommend playing Ship of Harkinian (OOT) with hyper-enemies and hyper-bosses modes enabled, and with a damage multiplier. Made the game feel brand new to me.
It's not that 'more puzzles is a bad thing', but that nintendo just refused to make them interesting or challenging; partially from reusing the same setups thanks to the mass copy&paste, and partially from disregarding what the player is capable of despite it being literally in their game design. When they've given the player gmod powers in a minecraft simulator, it's only a matter of time until the puzzles get subverted to the point of being a nonissue, again unless you're willingly handicapping yourself.
If anything Zelda is BUILT UPON puzzle box design in dungeons, of something who has subtle hints and solutions. But TotK pretends that every solution is valid like bad teachers who give awards to everyone.
@@N12015 Yeah that's a way of looking at it, I'd disagree on the earlier games when they expected you to go outside the dungeon for various reasons, but yeah the last decade has very much been a boxed design before the switch entries.
The depths were so exhausting, I was so unsatisfied with an incomplete map so I grinded every single lightroot and it took forever and was unbelievably tedious. Every part of the map looks the exact same, the enemies are bland, repetitive, ugly, and boring, the repeat boss fights are such a cop-out and all of the coliseums other than the lynel one were completely not worth my time. It made me so sad because I honestly was pretty happy with going through the story and finding the memories and stuff and I would've probably been fine just being done after that but I couldn't stand the unfinished map, it just felt so wrong. The game really disappointed me after botw. There were definitely some things I enjoyed a lot but I definitely think they went much more for quantity over quality
I was so hyped, initially, at the prospect of three layers of world to explore, but the Depths were ugly and annoying to wander around in, and the sky was tedious to keep building air ships that break before you get anywhere - and when you DO get anywhere in the sky, it's just another copy pasted chunk of land that leads to another Shrine. Honestly, the sky islands in Skyward Sword were much more fun to explore.
best switch era zelda game was links awakening and its not even close tbh, the new mainline games have way to many problems for me to praise either of them and the skyward sword hd remaster was just ok
Bro links awakening is garbage compared to this. I beat the og gameboy version in about 10-12 hours of gameplay at most, and a solid half of that time is spent back tracking across the map to trade an item in the trade sequence to get the next trade item etc.. the switch version is the exact same only adding a picture taking side quest which is pointless.
Instead of feeling like a Skyrim and Zelda Hybrid like it was advertised; both BotW and ToTK felt like a Minecraft survival mod with Zelda assets thrown in terms of gameplay mechanics and it just bored me to play.
I played these games called Dragon Quest Builders 1 & 2; which is kinda an mix between Minecraft, an farming games & many Zelda formulas from Ocarina of Time to Breath of the Wild, with the charm of Dragon Quest that's known for and I had way more fun with those games than either Minecraft or the Breath of the Wild games.
Absolutely. I was so underwhelmed after my 1st playthrough, I immediately tried a second playthrough getting the Zoanite battery increasing armour first, just to see if it will improve the experience - especially with the early confusion of not knowing how to enhance your battery. It's sad for me because I went all in with TOTK... Bought the OLED, pro controller, collectors edition, amiibo... Expecting this to be an undoubtedly great Zelda game. It wasnt. I don't believe it deserves goty with all the cut and paste and the trickery that was the trailers - especially the last - which made the game look vastly unfamiliar and new
That final trailer was the worst! I was so engrossed and excited about the game that I was biting my fingernails in anticipation. Now its like, well you can't trust the trailers- and apparently you can't trust game critics because they're going to give the next game 10 out of 10s regardless of the games content. I guess I'm just not buying the next Zelda game(which probably won't come out in at least 7 years in the attempt to sweep this game into the memory hole)
Breathe of The Wild is the last thing I bought from Nintendo, or ever will. When my PC can run the game at a higher FPS and resolution? Nintendo has gotten incredibly lazy, and even the gameplay / story has gotten worse. They've stopped caring because idiots will keep paying them. Just like with Pokemon. Every game gets worse. yet people continue buying them.
@@RP-mp4ow The fact that OoT, MM, TWW, and TP all came out within roughly the same amount of time as BotW and TotK is really sad lmao They made several unique masterpieces in the time it took them to make the same boring game twice
Zelda was always a puzzle game, hell even oot is more puzzle focused than combat. If your considering the greatest games of all time, both oot and especially majoras mask are largely puzzle based games. Zelda hasnt been mainly combat focused since zelda 2, and really shouldnt hover towards being another generic character action game like the others. The main focus of zelda games are exploration and puzzle solving, combat is just there because it has to be as per tradition with games
Ill be honest. I wasnt the biggest fan of BotW, it didnt offer the same excitement or reward that older Zeldas did, but it was a very relaxing play. TotK tho...i am violently disappointed in it and i gave the game away shortly after beating it. If it were marketed as another relaxing play, then i might have enjoyed it more- since gliding was the most cathartic part of BotW, should have been good. But nothing in this game felt worth doing, which negates any catharsis
@@FrommerJacobsnumberonefangirl I preferred TotK, but neither of the Wild games are my cup of tea, to be honest - I've loved almost every Zelda game I've played EXCEPT for the new ones, but I still enjoyed the new ones despite having a ton of issues with them.
I finished Botw half a dozen times, I absolutely loved it, it felt like a cohesive experience, things flowed nicely into eachother. Sure, tears has like 3X more stuff to do, but it felt.. broken. The presence of humans in every corner of Hyrule kinda killed the "you and nature, alone" connection you had in Botw. But the thing that pissed me the MOST, happened precisely because I loved Botw so much. I hated that I couldn't have some of the sheika slate runes back (I specially missed stasis and bomb runes), I hated they deleted Kass out of the game (despite keeping his family in Rito village), and i HATED that they deleted every single vestige of sheika tech, I missed finding and killing guardians, no more ancient bow, ancient armor set is basically useless, no master cycle, and so on. Yes, they had to focus on the new mechanics, but just IMAGINE if while you were exploring a ruin or cave you came across a single gloom-infected guardian, and it attacked you with a completely different attack pattern, it was stronger or had better defences, etc. I get it, new game, blablabla, but they could at least consider it for late or post game content! Yes, the final battle is epic, but I don't feel like I'll want to play Tears ever again, while I'm already missing Botw and will probably play it again for the 7th time before 2024 ends. lol By confirming Tears won't have any DLC, Nintendo basically killed any hope I have to see these things addressed, thus killing the game for good for me.
For me personally I stopped playing the game after about 18 hours because I realised I wasn't having fun I was only still playing it to finish what I had started and that's not a good reason to be playing a game. All I wanted was for lack of a better way to phrase it "good dungeons" I very quickly learned I would not find what I wanted anywhere in the game. There are plenty of ways I can see how they could easily improve the game and it's not like there aren't aspects of the game that I did like but after about 5 hours I felt like I had experienced all the game had to offer and after 5 more it became a tedious chore and cycle of false hope and disappointment. Honestly the closest thing I got to what I wanted was the cave under the road leading to Hyrule Castle and even that was still missing a lot and also just sort of fizzled out and ended without ceremony just as it was starting to get good. And that's not even getting into any of the serious flaws the game has that's just one aspect that I wanted that I didn't get. I had all the personality traits and philosophies that should have lead me to enjoy this game; I am patient, I am open minded, I am logical, I am not easily distracted, I have a flexible mindset, I learn new skills quickly, I am initially optimistic, I am forgiving, I don't have loss aversion, I don't easily get stuck, I notice things that are easy to miss ( I actually look upwards for example ) and I can't believe I even have to say this one but I don't try to prolong my time with a game doing trivial tasks just to avoid having it be over. All this and I still didn't like the game past the 5 hour mark. I know I am being a bit narcissistic describing myself in such a way but I also know that for most things these characteristics are important to have to maximise your chances at enjoyment and things like "open minded" "forgiving" some people actively try to avoid having and will bully others including me for having so I know that at least to some extent what I say is true.
I feel you man. I really really want to love Tears. I just don’t and I am not enjoying the game as much as I did BOTW. I hate leaving a game unfinished but at the same time I hate forcing myself to play a game that doesn’t excite me to turn on. It’s like, I’m only playing so I can finish the game not because I am having fun. It seems Nintendo didn’t listen to gamers/fans. I don’t like the crafting or the layers of maps. It’s like everyone had an idea and they just put them all in and didn’t consider if it was to much. The game is overwhelming without being interesting. Very disappointed and I hate that 😔
I agree with some of your points here, although I liked the game enough to finish the story. I even found the introductory area overwhelming and tedious to get through. Overall, it often felt like they had a bunch of random, disjointed ideas that they felt they had to cram into the game.
@@SlowAside5 I will finish the game for nothing else but for the story. I do want to know what happens. I really feel very strongly that the depths should have been a DLC. That I feel would have helped. But from the interviews I have seen from Nintendo. The next Zelda will be different from BOTW & TEARS. And they are not reusing the current Hyrule map or Zelda and Link. We will get a new Hyrule and Zelda & Link. And I am looking forward to what is next.
What I hear from people who love BotW and TotK boils down to two things: they love exploration for the sake of exploration, and they love being able to make their own fun. They’re talking about intrinsic motivation. I don’t have that in me. I need clear structure, clear goals, and clear, meaningful rewards. Previous Zelda games gave that to me in spades. Even the original Zelda (the game people say BotW was going back to the roots of), gave you meaningful rewards for your exploration in the form of equipment that had specific use cases and also changed the way you played the game in general. You weren’t given carte blanche freedom to do whatever you wanted and go wherever you wanted. The game still had structure to it.
And that's why BotW and TotK speak so much to the Minecraft generation. There is nothing wrong in enjoying games like Minecraft, but Zelda originally wasn't Minecraft. And with the beloved franchise going down the route, they lost me as a fan (who's been playing Zelda since the late 90s).
There has been a ton of ink spilled comparing botw and totk to Skyrim, Witcher 3, and lately Elden Ring, so much so that it makes me wonder if critics actually understood what made those games good. Skyrim, Witcher 3 and Elden Ring, while each possessing their own strengths and weaknesses, are each deliberately crafted to deliver an experience that feels like an organic adventure. You start off with a goal and as you work toward it there's a myriad of breadcrumbs laying in wait to spin you off on a completely unexpected adventures for the next 2 hours. BOTW and TOTK, with their maps bereft of markers and their see-something, go-there vibe, promise that you're in for a similar experience. However, after a couple dozen hours you realize that they're much more similar to Ubisoft games where the content is a checklist of variations on the same small handful of ideas obscured by the fact that they make you find the check boxes instead if placing them in your map. I've thoroughly enjoyed multiple play throughs of each of the afforementioned open world RPGs as they're all designed to provide players with at least a handful of unique playthroughs. On the otherhand, like the typical Ubisoft game, I felt botw overstayed its welcome, was relieved when it finished and have had no interest in replaying the game. Despite this, I liked the game well enough to think the playthrough was worthwhile over all and was looking forward to totk after it was announced. I went in to totk with more measured expectations, expecting an experience similar to what botw delivered, but instead it felt like they just created a new checklist for the same game, only this time they increased the tedium. Within 20 hours the veneer was worn thin and I was ready to play something else. I saw a youtube poll the other day asking which game was going to win goty: totk or Baldur's Gate , and to my shock 59% of people answered totk. I couldn't wrap my head sround it. I still can't. Imo, BG3 exceeds the expectations set by the best in the genre, delivering an unparalleled sense of adventure where each conversation, or solution to an obstacle, can potentially send you off on an entirely different trajectory. TOTK, on the other hand, doesn't live up to the expectations set by it's predecessor. Is totk a bad game? No. Its fine. I can understand why people would like it. Is it among the best of it's genre? No. Is it the best game of the year? Its not even the best Nintendo game of the year. While I felt totk was tedious and uninspired that I struggled to find the motivation to play, Super Mario Wonder was exceedingly charming and stuffed full of creative and suprising design decisions that made it difficult to put down.
Those three games suck too, though. In fact, witcher 3 is the single worst implementation of an open world I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. Not only is it worse than totk, it's worse than ubisoft games. Criticizing totk is good and proper; it's a bad game. But doing so by elevating games that are also bad for most of the same reasons is not the way to go about it.
Witcher 3’s open world is even more Ubisoft-esque. It’s the quests that make Witcher 3 what they are. But the open world portion isn’t nearly as good as ToTK or BoTW.
@@dathunderman4 lolwut? The vast majority of Witcher 3's content is handcrafted quest content or combat encounters. Botw and totk is full Ubi-style copy and paste content: climb towers, clear enemy outposts, collect korak seeds and do shrines. It is so much like an Ubisoft game, and shrines fit so well into Ubí's copy and paste busywork approach to game design, that Ubi took the concept, paired it with AC Odyssey combat and loot system, and published their own Botw clone, albeit with better combat. The only meaningful distinction between botw/totk and an Ubisoft game is the removal of map markers and emphasis on discovering content through exploration. Unfortunately that's only compelling for as long as you can convince yourself that there's content worth discovering, which becomes increasingly more difficult to do the more you play these games. Elden Ring, on the other hand, uses the concept to much greater effect by making exploration intrinsically rewarding. You are compelled to explore every nook and cranny of the map because you never know what you'll encounter; the game is stuff with surprises, secrets, interesting combat encounters and loot that doesn't just give marginal stat increases but can fundamentally alter how you play the game. Even ER's most repetitive content, it's caves and catacombs, remain more compelling than shrines as the rewards are, more often than not, much more tangible to the roleplaying character building fantasy, than yet another marginal health or stamina upgrade. Again, botw and totk aren't bad games. They're fine. I understand why people like them, I liked them well enough to beat Botw and sink more hours in to totk than I do most games. My issue isn't with people enjoying the games, it's with the mass delusion among fanboys that these aren't just good games but among the best games ever created. As someone who has played through the entire franchise, I wouldn't even consider them among the best Zelda games.
I played for a little while, but after going back to BotW, I just found it more fun. If I wanted a slow building simulator, I would boot up minecraft. Also some of the narrative and design decisions are baffling, like, I love Tulin, but was it necessary to make him the sage instead of Teba, who is both an ADULT and was already given a reckless personality in BotW??? Riju is also the chief and that ain't stopping her. Also, why did they move away from button presses, why on earth do I have to walk up to and talk to a companion to use their ability???? And, well, I honestly prefer the first set of runes to this one. As useless as cryonis was, it's less time consuming than trying to build a boat. Also, their puzzles are getting better, but... barely. I'm extremely confused as to why the puzzle solving took such a huge dip, Zelda's never had so many bad puzzles before BotW, and this is only made worse by inflating the number of shrines unnecessarily. Just.... give us chests??? Instead of blessings??? Like, it's kinda annoying to have a ton of cutscenes just to get a chest, and do you REALLY need 150 teleport points? It's an open world game, and there are horses and vehicles - it isn't the end of the world as long as the most important areas (towns, stables, castle) have teleport points.
I share all of your criticisms and I, too, could not complete this game. I am happy to see folks finally being honest about TOTK because when it first came out everyone, it seemed, immediately declared it as GOTY and I'm like...did we actually play the same game?!
BOTW and TOTK really turned me away from Zelda games. I struggled to finish BOTW. I've been feeling the burn out on open worlds for awhile now and BOTW just didn't offer enough in the environment for me to care about the setting and world. I miss the old top down, dungeon games where you collected weapons that aided you in your journey to more dungeons.
Breath of the Wild, was a big disapointment. Big open world, yes, but containing none of the elements that makes a Legend of Zelda game. Got bored with it real soon, even if I spent some time looking for seeds and shrines. Eventually stopped playing, and ever completed it. Didn't even bother with Tears of the Kingdom.
I wanted Zelda, I got crafting, towers, breakable weapons, copy pasted blue dungeons, those damn seeds. When I hear, open world, I think mostly empty world, but pretty.
I’ve never related to a review more, I downloaded and played it at day 1 on midnight and the first impression was pretty good, I spent a lot of time exploring, did the wind temple, did all the geoglyphs and got the master sword, some sidequests etc etc, but it got to the point that I just wasn’t having fun, which mainly started when I first set foot on the wind temple and found out it was the same thing as the divine beasts, go to 5 locations, each hidden behind 1 or 2 completely detached easy puzzles and then come back to the start. That was the beginning of the end for my enjoyment.
Honestly. I modded botw to not break my weapons and it instantly jumped several tiers in my fave zelda rankings. All these other issues still persist but my god the weapon durability is the absolute most glaring one that makes yah mad enough to find all the other issues. Just fixing that one aspect has IMMENSELY blurred all of the other issues from view
Lmao same, made my weapons unbreakable and started ignoring certain mechanics and the game became more fun. I still swap out my weapons for new stuff frequently, but its nice that I'm not forced to after 2 enemies.
@SeltdaBeast422 Cemu emulator. It's the wii u version of the game. And it has built in community mods menu for botw. You literally tick a box. And if you don't want to make them entirely unbreakable you can even adjust it from 2x to 10x durability
I played 17 hours of totk when it first came out on the first day straight and for the first week I got so burned out for it that I genuinely have not touched the game since. I was so excited by it and then I just stopped having fun 💀
If it was like a sequel like Majora mask i would of loved it more because using the same overworld made it feel less exciting to me as i already explored hyrule in this universe technically 3 times with age of calamity being in the picture.
Majora's Mask was sequel to OoT like US Super Mario Brothers 2 (doki doki panic) was a sequel to Super Mario Brothers... as in it really wasn't, at all.
I think the main issue of TOTK is the fact that its labelled as Zelda. Its well known that BOTW was just a desperate grasp from nintendo to get more people to buy the Wii u by absolutely overclocking it which then spiralled into them giving up and just making it for an entirely new console in general-and the desperation is obviously seen with how non-zelda it is and how much they grasped for the ‘oh guys!! Look at this its entirely new tech!!! We innovated stuff!!’ Excuse. Theres no need to continue the franchise with more open worlds after that, i feel-especially not in the botw formula. The least they couldve done was make totk a dlc and not an entirely new game itself because it honestly just wrecks the illusion of botw, makes it feel unoriginal and lose its worth. Zelda is and has always been a linear game franchise-whether it be majoras mask or twillight princess, they all hold some form of linearity.. so why would you just break it??? I genuinely dont understand. The appeal of zelda had always been how ridiculously linear it was-the timelines, for gods sake! No unlinear fandom would have such an intense hyperfixation on three separate timelines! It almost feels like a slap in the face, honestly. Nintendo has been slowly stripping Zelda of what it is and its never really ended up well, but they still do it to appease to masses like the masses would even want an honest zelda game. First, it was the musical instruments-wasnt that bad, everyone could deal with that. Second, it was Ganondorf-a well needed change. I think most of everyone liked ghirahim… and then the dungeons? AND linear timelines? AND??? Actually interesting enemy fights? For gods sake, it just feels like they’re trying to come up with a new franchise in general. To ruin the only thing nintendo has going for them is INSANE.
I think semi-open world with a linear story and linear dungeons is best. The stuff in-between the dungeons, that is to say the overworld, should be largely open world. Mostly focused on giving the feeling that there is a world, people, to save. Side quests are very useful for this engagement and immersion.
I mean….if a game sucks, it would still suck if it had a different name. It just wouldn’t have the same level of expectation. I thought it was an awful game and very boring game. The Zelda name doesn’t help or hurt that for me.
Was pregnant when TOTK came out and finished all of the main sidequests when my baby was over a year old. Although I loved the open world (ex. Being able to run around to any part of the map freely) from BOTW & TOTK, I feel like things just became repetitive. Enemy camps became easy to spot and take over since they were almost all alike, caves and wells were the same short maze (even later in the game with larger or more expansive caves), and I found the larger enemies to lack any new moves (like the Hinox or Talus.) For example, I used to be hesistant to fight Talus' and thats what made it fun, but the ability to go through ceilings made fighting them so easy and eventually boring. My Dad, whos been playing Zelda since the first game came out, wouldnt even touch the game and said he would be done playing the LOZ series if it didnt go back to its roots in some way or another. I couldn't bring myself to finish all the sidequests (especially the Korok seed one) in my TOTK playthrough and found finding all of the lightroots and shrines to be painfully boring. I also found it incredibly frustrating to spend half an hour sometimes doing a sidequest for a shrine (ex. The Yiga Clan one) just to get a shrine that gives me a chest with a large battery 🫠🙃🙃 Despite liking the open world approach, Im ready for Echoes of Wisdom and hope it provides some linearity and better storytelling.
No way TOTK is a puzzle game with combat because none of the 'puzzles' require using any of your brain cells at all Me personally don't mind the lack of combat cus I don't see TOTK as an action game in the first place but the puzzle part is just as disappointing if not more, I am offended if anyone says that totk is a puzzle game.
I'm a massive Zelda fan and BotW crushed my spirit. Did Ubisoft secretly make it? With all the tower climbing etc... I tried so hard to like that game but I just couldn't get into it. I got maybe a fourth of the way through the game and just gave up and literally forgot about it for over a year. I then proceeded to beat the game but I can't help but feel that this was trash. TotK is just long overdue DLC.
NOPE Thats Monolifsoft Their The Team Behind XENOBLADE And No Totk Is NOT Trash Nor Its DLC And Its ALOT More Tragic Then BOTW If You Played Skyward Sword Then Your Gonna Find A Certain Character In The Story
@@haileeraestout5567 First, Ubisoft making the game was a joke, as it has similar map reveal mechanics to the typical game formula that Ubisoft tends to use. Second, I said BotW was trash and I stand by that statement. Third, I haven't played Skyward Sword for various reasons so a cameo from it would mean nothing to me personally. Finally, TotK, regardless of its story etc has been widely panned for offering little that BotW didn't; hence the DLC remark. I might give the games another shot with the inevitable Switch 2 ports but honestly, I just completed Zelda: Links Awakening (remake) and (despite its lack of difficulty) had a much better time than with BotW.
I played TOTK a few times… then put it down and did an entire Elden Ring playthrough (including Malenia, for the first time, and all of Ranni’s quest events) before I picked this game up again.
@@darrenklein6090 Yeah i did. Crazy because I also did ranni ending (mainly because I didn’t want to go through the long quest again) and went out of my way to find Malenia. Hope you maybe somewhat enjoy tears of the kingdom!
@@heraclesn yah thanks for checking - I do actually think TOTK is great game and obviously an amazing achievement on many levels, but my interest in it waned for a lot of the reasons detailed in this video. My friend and I were talking about it the other day and we decided that it was "the best game we don't ever feel like playing". I've definitely had some incredible moments with it, though, so I hope I didn't completely give the impression like I haven't enjoyed it. Hey best wishes to you on your ER/TOTK/anything else adventures.
Ive been looking for criticism like this since BOTW first came out!! Honestly, like you said, everything you discover is the same thing. Every enemy you fight is one of like 5 enemies. Every shrine looks the same. The landscape is huge, but what really is there? Now, Zelda is just a physics game. Ive been wanting to finally get TOTK recently in hopes that it improved on what I disliked about its predecessor, but seeing this just kind of confirms what I already feared. That again, it's just more of the same, same, same. It is kind of vindicating to see someone else with feelings like this toward what everyone tries to gaslight me into believing is the 'best, most difinitive Zelda game'. Personally, I cant wait to wash this flavor of Zelda out of my mouth.
Nintendo failed to materialize a good open world game because they don't get open world design at all, they failed to understand its principles and what makes it desirable and enjoyable in other games, and it seems like nobody wants to admit it. The point of open world game design is to give players the agency of directing their own experience, by choosing the order with which they will go do the dungeons / quests, and the agency of having action or downtime the moment they want, without the game forcing them an action or downtime part when they don't want to. Open World Design is about giving players agency, it's not about world size nor about forcing the player to traverse long empty distances where nothing happens, before getting to the fun parts of the gane. Nintendo thought that "open world" is just to stretch the world to the point it takes you forever to get from one point of interest to the next, forcing players long downtime sessions before they can get to the parts with action, while you must still play the dungeons of the game in a particular order, as there are huge difficulty spikes from one to the next one. That's just bad design, and completely misses the whole point of making a game open world. It's so bad design in fact, that Tears of the Kingdom fails to offer the two fundamental pros of open world game design: 1. You can't decide the order you will play the dungeons, because they have huge difficulty spikes. 2. You can't direct your game experience by jumping straight into action whenever you want to, because the points on the map where the action happens are so far away from each other, you are forced to have prolonged downtime before getting into action. So as you see, the problem of Tears of the Kingdom isn't Open World as a design formula itself, but that Nintendo completely failed to understand what the principles of Open World Game Design are, which resulted to a fundamentally flawed game. Yes, a game where you have to spend 15 minutes without anything interesting happening at it, like you do when you have to get from one place on the map to the one next to it on foot, with all the space in between being empty, is bad design. It's a design that demands from the player to do a chore for 15 minutes before getting to the fun part, every time.
you've saved me some $ and even more importantly, time. I'd have played this thing for hours, figuring I just wasn't "doing it right." much appreciated :)
Totk gives tools to the player and tells them to have fun . Why didn’t they fully commit to this idea then? Why didn’t they make a Mario maker dungeon system ? Incentive in this game is completely intrinsic
This review perfectly mirrors everything I felt about this game! I especially appreciated your well articulated counters to the aggressive gaslighting that “you’re just not creative enough/it’s your fault if you’re not having fun” many avid defenders of the game default to whenever TotK is criticised, I can’t stand the way people try to offload the guilt/responsibility of bad game design onto the players. TotK was a MASSIVE disappointment and with the additional insight offered by recent Nintendo interviews about their game design philosophy, the future of the Zelda franchise is looking unbelievably grim.
Dude I'm so biased when it comes to Zelda and I absolutely love this game, and I'm sorry you didn't like it. No ill will to your opinion, youre definitely not the only one that felt this way I just wish you guys could have had as much fun as I did.
@@personman5156hey no need for the insults. Some people enjoyed the game, others didn’t. They only said they wished they could have had fun with it, not that their opinion was invalid.
I have to say, I really did find the build mechanic tedious, which also made shrines tedious. This is fundamentally why I stopped playing despite having 100 or 120 or 140 hours in breath of the wild. I honestly just wanted to play skyrim with curated puzzles and zelda dungeons. That's all I wanted. Skyward Sword had satisfying puzzles, especially if you ignored the hints.
I've played most Zelda games, which had a better story? The story is roughly always the same. But TOTK went as far as to give certain characters their own religions that you can learn about. Just a small example. I wanna know how many people it took to make this.
@@amandaslough125 you guys are all still being too nice , that's saying there's still half of the game that works as a good game , but that can only be true if you rate it as a sandbox , where as as a game with a franchise of established lore it's more like a 3/10.....
I just wish link’s green tunic wasn’t thrown away along with the formula, it’s like post botw zelda doesn’t even want to be Zelda anymore. Link just looks like any other generic jrpg protagonist now. The hat and tunic were iconic
99% of the game is busy work. Collecting Koroks Finishing Shrines Finding Lightroots Doing side quests What are the rewards? More hearts, more weapon space... and.... a few rupees, maybe an armour set and a brighter underground? Which has nothing in it anyway..... There's no reason to actually do anything, because you know the reward no matter what offers very little to the experience.
There are games that you simply cannot critisize or you will be avalanched by a blind fan-base. BotW and TotK are 2 such games. People pretend like it's flawless.
I played both games for hundreds of hours and really enjoyed my time, and I also enjoyed your video. You explained your perspective well and I totally see where you're coming from. Respect!
I agree with you, and you've pretty much addressed just about every reason why I wasn't having fun playing this game. The way weapons break so easily, and how enemies either do like 2 hearts of damage or one-shot/two-shot you with no in between just made me want to avoid most fights(It's not like the combat has changed at all, it has the same issues as before). The puzzles being unfulfilling with how they're solved was probably the most annoying thing in the game to me, aside from the lackluster story. When building, all I want to make is a hover bike anyway, it isn't very fun or nearly as rewarding to build anything else. So like what is even here for me in this game?
Even though I ultimately love Tears of the Kingdom, and have beaten it three times, I still liked your video because you presented your points clearly, gave examples and feedback on how to improve, and didn't do a bunch of hate speech and "Nintendo fanboys are entitled", like we usually hear. I don't want to write an essay in the comments, but I'd like to bring up two factors that might give a new perspective to two of your points (sorry if it's too long) 1) In Breath of the Wild, the first terminal in Vah Ruta was hidden behind a gate. What you're supposed to do is use Cryonis to make an ice block to lift up the gate, but my best friend didn't notice the water underneath and instead used Stasis to force the gate open. The fact that the game allowed both solutions to work blew our minds, and Tears of the Kingdom allowed me to further expand on seeing how much I could break the game, and feeling accomplished that, through limited resources, I solved a challenge using a harder method than the game intended. Ultimately, the intrinsic reward of simply moving through the world was worth it! 2) Familiarity can be a detriment, but it can also be an incredible feeling of returning home or seeing an old friend after several years apart. When I rediscovered the Great Plateau in Tears of the Kingdom, I felt an incredible wave of nostalgia and joy in returning to an old location and seeing how it changed! This is the first Zelda game since A Link Between Worlds that let me say, "Oh, wow! It's been a long time, old friend! How have you been?" Sure, innovation is great, but there can be just as much enjoyment from returning to something you love. That's probably the main reason why people have stuff like vacation homes and keep going to cons; even though it's the same location again, revisiting it with new context can give it a new purpose.
THANK YOU! While I did enjoy BotW (though your critique of it is absolutely fair), TotK fell absolutely flat for me. I think I bowed out of the game even before you did and just watched my wife play. And she, despite completing the game, said it wasn't particularly good.
Fair points! I loved the game but I absolutely see where you're coming from, especially regarding the lack of incentive to get the player to engage with the creativity of its new systems. I also don't get why they didn't overhaul the control scheme & menu system. The improvements they made from BotW didn't go far enough to keep things from feeling clunky. My muscle memory shouldn't still be confused about which button combos pull up which menu after 300 hours of gameplay. I will say though, it might just be me but I had way more fun with ToTK's combat than BotW. I barely engaged in optional combat in BotW because in the late game, I wasn't guaranteed to get good weapons to replace my 20 royal broad swords or w/e, lol. In ToTK though, having Gerudo Weapons be glass canons, Zora weapons do double damage when wet, Forest weapons allow fused consumables to be reused, etc, actually made me want to use a variety of weapons in the game and have fun doing so. Plus, fusion meant I could make anything an elemental weapon, or a hammer vs slashing, etc on the fly if I needed one, and/or make any lower powered weapon decently powerful just by slapping a powerful horn on it, so few weapons felt useless/not worth picking up even in the late game. It made going into the depths more worthwhile for me as well, since there are non decayed weapons down there. Muddle buds and puff shrooms added a lot to the fun of combat for me as well, which also gave me a reason to go resource collecting in the depths. Maybe those systems weren't as appealing to other ppl since I haven't seen as much chatter about them, but it made all the difference in the world to me combat-wise.
I watched the entire review. Very well put together and thoughts are genuine. I personally could not find myself playing much of TotK either. Even for someone who isn’t much of an open world kinda guy, I still find myself genuinely enjoying and getting more fulfillment out of other titles like Spider-Man or Genshin. They’re just far more fun, immersive, and captivating for me personally
Yeah, I play TotK and would honestly just boot up some other game entirely after half an hour. Usually Genshin for the open world/combat or a Fire Emblem title for the strategy (please zelda just make me use strategy). I honestly go back to BotW more than I do TotK.
Nintendo limes to double down on features people hate. Skyward sword had stamina for sprinting and such and now all of them have it. Breakable weapons in BotW. TotK has more of them. While I love TotK because my ADHD ass keeps finding g new stuff and the final boss is great. I also understand that if I want good fight mechanics on the switch I play monster hunter.
I absolutely agree, except i would tell people unless they enjoy a more minecraft type experience to play BOTW. I do not like having to build stuff. I absolutely hate my weapons breaking all the time. Neither of these games feel like a Zelda game. No real dungeons, missing usual weapons (hookshot was always my favorite), repetitive enemies everywhere. I am hoping the next Zelda game brings back more of the old Zelda style.
@@dreadfultwerp It's basically like Minecraft, with farming and Zelda mixed in it, but with the Dragon Quest style that's known for. I would say it's better than Zelda: Breath of the Wild & Tears of the Kingdom.
I have the same problem. And I'm surprised myself this is the very first Zelda game that I dont want to finish. It is all big empty soulless repetetive shit. Only fun for a few hours. I also think BotW is overrated. I own almost every Zelda game. IMO both games feel like gimmicky playgrounds instead of a Zelda game.. IMO Twilight princess is the last good 3D Zelda game. And if you compare BotW & TotK with OoT & MM it really tells you what a masterpiece Majora's Mask was with only devloped within a years time.
Twilight Princess was the true sequel to Ocarina of Time and last true Zelda game. Even though I enjoyed Skyward Sword, it was the beginning of the downfall of the series.
Same as an old zelda fan tears. Made me sad excuse the pun I got too garudo desert then just couldn't do it anymore lately I've gotten into classic tomb raider very different but still give me a Bit of that old zelda itch ^~^
Recommend BotW or TotK flow chart: Do you like solving puzzles? No -> Tears If yes, Do you like using a variety of cheats and shortcuts over and over to solve puzzles? Yes -> Tears If No, do you like slow crafting mechanics that later can be automated and flying over large open worlds for 100+ hours? Yes -> Tears If No, Do you prefer having companions aid you, or being overpowered battling on your own? Companions -> Tears Overpowered -> Breath Alternative flow chart: Do you want to play both games? Yes -> BotW If no, return to first flow chart
@@H-TownGamer Kids and dumb whale adults will continue dumping money into Nintendo no matter what they do. This is why I have 0 shame pirating and playng their older (Good) games
Yea because Skyward Sword was so amazing. Zelda 1 on NES designed and intended as an 'open world' game, but zelda fanbois are still obsessed with OoT and TP, adorable.
Same. I wasn't even going to get TotK, but my gf bought it for herself so I gave it a go and only made it about 1 hr in before getting absolutely bored of it. She also only made it about 10-15 hrs before giving up due to the controls and excessive menus.
@@adamk-paxlogan7330Sucks when you love and have played through a series like Zelda, I think it’s pretty fair to be honest about how the game gets old quick. Botw and totk are not the high points in Zelda history for me for many reasons. Frankly I think Zelda fans deserve better.
I consistently played BoTW since release day until ToTK was released. They nerfed enough things in ToTK that the grind actually had me just stop playing for a solid month and a half. There's just so much to do that, when I finally started up again a few weeks ago, my focus was only on upgrading armor and getting the weapons upgrades. I had already beaten 4 temples and not having set bonuses/upgrades just made it so tedious when fighting high level enemies. Now, it's like an entirely different game once you can defeat the high end mini bosses, etc., more quickly. It's also a lot more fun just building stuff to mess with the monsters. It absolutely takes a lot of time to reach that point in this game for a casual player - and I can certainly see where people would walk away from it - for sure.
I have a little criticism of the game and I agree with some of your points, but they mostly just didn't bother me that much. I liked some of the grind, knowing that the treasure chests would give me items to help upgrade my armor and such. I like finding koroks. But it got tedious enough that I eventually just turned to the final boss and haven't looked back since. That said, the ending sequence is incredible. The way the music and story and action collide is beautiful and it takes that patience from doing the hard things and all of that dragging action and turns it into something emotional and wonderful. Rewards mean nothing without suffering. And totk plays the long game (no pun intended) with a huge, satisfying ending after a very long and arduous journey.
As someone who just finished the game, I have to say I agree with 99% of this. I almost didn't complete it and, unlike Breath of the Wild, I have had no motivation to play through the game again, engage in creative challenges, or further complete the save file. I will say that the final fight was genuinely fun though.
I like your takes on the new Zeldas, I agree to most of them. I can see how great the new formula can be, but Nintendo really needs to work on the dungeon and puzzle designs more. That being said: call me old fashioned or pessimistic, but I don't think Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom will age well. At all. I hope time proves me wrong tho
Tear of the kingdom was supposed to be dlc for botw the developers even said as much, but they though to expand it into its own game and this was the result.
First of all, this was a very well presented video, so props for that. I'll be keeping an eye on your channel. That cut from Rykard to the grass-cutting was god-tier (and apologies in advance for the thesis-length comment). Your thoughts closely echo the ones I've been having since release, and I totally agree that the game's lack of purpose is its critical flaw. What bugged me the most was how disconnected the different aspects of the game felt. For example, I thought the new abilities were all really cool on their own, but they're so rarely used in boss fights. No real spoilers, but the final boss left such a sour taste in my mouth because of this. Surely a game that otherwise relies so heavily on "puzzles" should have Link ascending through the floating rubble of Hyrule Castle to follow a teleporting Ganondorf around the boss arena, or slapping together a quick bike to chase him around Hyrule Field. Maybe even reimagine Zelda's classic "tennis match" using Recall? But no, instead we just get another flurry-rushing-hearty-stew-chugging slugfest. And the new mechanics' lack of involvement in the story is even more egregious. They made a game about rebuilding Hyrule, and yet we don't use Ultrahand to help build houses? They made a game about the land being devastated by falling rubble, and yet we don't have to Recall any of it back into the sky? The Fuse ability wasn't even used in the repairing of the Master Sword, which would be the most obvious, natural story-development in history. The abilities and story had fantastic potential to resonate with each other, so much so that it had to be intentional, but I think somewhere early in development they made the decision to switch focus to grindy, immediately satisfying tasks like Zonaite mining and Korok-launching. The Zelda team are great developers, they didn't mess up when making TotK; they were just making a mobile game while we expected an adventure.
Thanks for the kind words! Those are definitely great points, I didn't make it long enough to really feel the impact of what you are saying but it makes total sense. I especially like the idea of using ascend to get through falling debris - that would have been super cool.
I think most of the people that heavily dislike this game are those that put ungodly hours into botw most of the videos I've seen like this have in "I've put hundreds of hours into this game" or something very similar to that Just something I've noticed but yes this game has alot of flaws
I hate how zelda has become, it’s a snoozefest now. Literally just play any of the xenoblade games (even the worst one xc2) and you will find better expleoation combat and story than what the botw games have offered. I miss old zelda
My God the enemy variety was abysmal and ruined the game for me. The Gleeok was the only thing I liked about the game. How did they not reimagine the Darknut and have him as a mini-boss on the floating islands where he can knock you off with one swing of a giant sword....how did they turn Poes into a collectible item instead of creepy ghosts hiding in the pitch black darkness of the depths? How did they turn Dodongos into a friendly animal that are in 1 location in the game and do absolutely nothing but stand there? Come on Nintendo.
I find it funny that you said that the final fight looks kinda cool. It is one of the worst parts of the game. I was literally laughing throughout the entire thing. Ganondorf can be killed instantly with rockets, wheels, lasers, any kind of recalled object really. Plus all the champions that you recruit are downed in the second phase which makes recruiting them a completely fucking useless quest. But also helps because they stop getting in the way when you're trying to attack. Also, they did the cinematic final phase thing again which just sucks imo. It ruins all tension because you can't lose now. It's practically a cutscene. Also Ganondorf taking away your hearts for good was the only really good thing. Now I wish that happened in the depths but temporarily until you go in sunlight. Rather than being able to just eat some sunlight food to get your hearts back anyway. Seriously, who designed that. The whole point of the gloom was to have a harder challenge for those who were asking for one and they fucked it all up. TLDR: OH FOR FUCKS SAKE. YOU DONE FUCKED IT UP.
To each, their own. I loved TOTK and plowed through it in 11 days... while BOTW took me 6 years (release date, till 2 weeks before TOTK release) to finish.
Lol I love it too. Been playing since like august and still at it. I like just wandering around and discovering everything. Could've beaten Ganon ages ago, but I still have yet to meet him face to face lol.
16:40 Wait so is he actually admitting that the melee weapons are a spam Y fest? "Of course you aren't having fun. You need to solve the problem by interacting with the boring system less." For the love of god, I know these people are smart enough to realize why that argument is garbage. Why are so many people so afraid to say "yeah alright, it could be better"? They end up defaulting to "Your experience is wrong and not real, and I'm not going to even try to realistically understand how you came to that conclusion."
for both botw and totk, i set a personal rule of "if i wouldn't eat it, Link doesn't have to" and that made the otherwise ho-hum cooking mechanic a lot more engaging. Like I'm not eating unsalted fish skewers with the eyes still in, gross. But the lil fish pies and fruit cakes and curries n stuff were super cute! I was much more motivated to look at the recipes on the walls in stables, cut grass for hylian rice, and go back to town shops for tabantha wheat, cane sugar, milk, goat butter, and goron spice, rather than just buying arrows from beedle and thats it That said i HATED the building and vehicles GOD so frustrating, never worth it, and it took forever. it felt like nintendo saw all the silly botw vehicles and went "yes lets make that ridculousness part of the next game" NO IT WAS ONLY FUNNY TO WATCH OTHER PEOPLE DO IT
Wanna know what I think is the worst part? The ONE benefit that reusing the world could have had, is by having meaningful connections between the two games. You (Link) stopped Ganon and saved Hyrule! So everyone will recognize and treat you like a hero, right? And you'll see the rebuilding that took place in the years between. Maybe explore the new castle town! Right? ...No. There's none of that. None. Every NPC is just like 'durrr who are you?' and there are only TINY changes to the map. It's unacceptable.
I’m trying to force myself to finish it but it’s hard. Finished SM2 and BG3. Couldn’t put those games down. But feel guilty for not finishing Tears. One of my main hang ups other than what you said is the 30fps graphics. I want to like this game.
If Tears could at least maintain a LOCKED 30fps in 95% of the game's scenarios, it would've been passable for me. As it stands, though, the game shits itself during casual Ultrahand use. The Switch can barely handle it. When I was younger (currently in my 40s), I probably would've overlooked the stuttering performance, but now I just don't have the patience to deal with Nintendo's crappy hardware.
The long awaited sequel!!...Oh yeah, and TotK. Still love the game, but I was very happy to hear your criticisms. Even as a BotW superfan, I can admit that this new era of Zelda has overall been a uniquely incredible disappointment. The first game was incomplete, and experimental to its own detriment. Age of Calamity is bogged down by BotW's meh narrative to the point of contradiction, as well as generally being a slog to play through. And TotK is in some ways the game BotW should've been from the start, while also doubling down on its worst aspects with nothing to show for in the way of gameplay evolution. I love these games artistically, musically, etc., and have had my fair share of fun, but as monuments to this new era of a supposedly grander Zelda...they're sorely lacking.
Ok so this comment is about BOTW not TOTK, but I think the point still stands. I've been watching 'BOTW is overrated/missing something' vids after that feeling of burnout I got playing it. Got really burnt out, didn't play it for about 4 to 6 months, returned to it just so I can finish the game. On a side note, I finished it just a couple of days after finishing Hollow Knight, and HK is literally one of the best experiences I had in gaming. Looking back, having played just 2 Zelda games before BOTW, which are Twilight Princess and Minish Cap, it made me realize how memorable and fun those games were. There's just something about those games that made it stick to me more than BOTW.
2:05 Gotta disagree with this. I missed multiple parts of the tutorial including the cold weather pants(causing me to have to rush out of the cold zone), the Zonai gumball machine explanation, and I just avoided the glider because I didn't expect them to do anything without a power source. This caused further issues on the ground because I missed Lookout Landing as I was looking for pants and I didn't get the glider for about 20 hours since my quest log got switched along the way and I didn't know I wasn't on the main quest line.
There is these games called Dragon Quest Builders 1 & 2; which is kinda an mixed between Minecraft, an farmers game and Zelda games; especially with Breath of the Wild & Tears of the Kingdom formulas, and I had way more fun with DQB 1&2 than I do with Zelda BotW & TotK.
Hey everybody! Just want to say - if you think everything I said is completely stupid and wrong, that's totally cool! I just like talking about games and giving my perspective on them, but this is in no way an indictment of your taste if you like Tears of the Kingdom. We might just have different preferences, and the opinions stated in the video are completely subjective. Thanks for the support and I'll catch you guys in the next one :)
As someone who has over 200 hours in TOTK and loves the game and story to death (100 percented and everything), I honestly agree with a lot of what you said. I'm able to look past the bad parts (which there are many) and enjoy the game anyway, which is a tendency I understand a lot of people just don't have, which makes total sense.
I've beaten every Zelda game that's come out. It's been my favorite series since I was a kid and Botw was the least fun I've had with Zelda. I beat it, put it down, and never touched it again. It felt so repetitive... Every shrine felt the same and the "dungeon" were just bigger shrines. Totk was the first Zelda game I've ever just stopped playing. I don't even feel like I'm playing Zelda. The only rewards you get are cosmetic. Probably 90% of the time I open a chest and go nah I'll pass on whatever was in it. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned but I'd rather play Skyward Sword than any of the new "Zeldas".
@@MrKlarc19 I feel bad for old school Zelda fans who miss the formula of the old games. The widespread acclaim and hype around the new titles pretty much guarantees that Zelda will continue down this path for the foreseeable future and for fans like you that's such a shame!
@@Command_B Yeah, it is what it is I guess. The funny thing is the older games aren't open-world but still feel so much bigger than the new games. I can't get past the time I spent quite a while climbing a mountain in Botw and nothing was up there.... fun....
I’ve never seen so many bad takes. It’s blatantly obvious that your own incompetence is the reason why you don’t value this game.
"Making them so goofy that you won't care when they break"
Fair point, I've never looked at it in that light lol
I hate making goofy weapons, and I hate them breaking, so I end up hoarding the best looking ones and then warping back to Eldin whenever one is close to breaking to magically heal it with an octopus - which just breaks all my immersion and ruins the experience. Even if you go by the "use the stuff you find" method, there aren't enough rusty swords and boulders in a given cave to explore the whole thing; you can't get through all of the rock with just what's in the cave, so you're forced to sacrifice one of your curated weapons just to find a Bubble frog and an opal, or leave the cave and never explore the whole thing. It ended up doing the same thing BotW did which was convince me to avoid fights to save my weapons, which, again, breaks immersion and ruins the game for me. Link wouldn't leave an enemy there, but I have to because it's not worth breaking one or more of my weapons when I can just run on by.
I had a similar experience. Whenever I fused a material to a weapon I wanted to break it if it looked ugly (vast majority of cases) and keep it forever if it was cool. It's frustrating too because the coolest looking weapon fuses were very weak, so if I would use them to defeat an enemy they would quickly break
One of the most disappointing things about TotK is how most of the weapon look horrible... I loved the weapon design in BotW, even low tier weapons looked incredible, and they even removed the beautifully designed scabbards in the sequel
@@mccoy7083 especially because the game is all about experimenting and combining, ultimately finding your own preferred way to play. But if the weapons look terrible and break all the time, this doesn't give me the incentive to do that. Tears of the kingdom is a sandbox-type game so experimenting should be worthwhile. But most fusions don't have any special effect to offer, which makes it even worse. I think this sandbox approach just doesn't work well with the survival approach from the breath of the wild foundation, or at least it was not well executed by the Zelda team
There was absolutely no reason to reuse the same world map, it made exploration so boring. I could not finish totk also, because everything felt so the same. Same world map, same korack seeds, same weapons and armour. And this game was in developmemt for 6years.
Yes exactly, my thoughts when i first playing botw i was like wow this game awesome can't wait for the sequel. Then i played this totk, man this game boring 😂 that's why im here.
it's a sequel
I think it actually a good thing TOTK didn't win an award because this will be a wake up call for Nintendo that maybe their game was not that good.
it won best action adventure
@@ramen3643 Yes but still
Something doesn't have to win an award for the company to still sell that product. Botw before it had won GOTY, and they are the two best selling games in the franchise. So I don't see where the wake-up call is.
The game sold over 22 million copies I doubt they care about a reward
awards mean nothing , sales mean everything , and tokt is the best selling switch game sadly , and i regrettably contributed to it....
This game made me go, "I miss Zelda: Twilight Princess." multiple times.
ME TOO
For me personally the franchise peaked with Twilight Princess. It’s just been going downhill since then.
@@GenkiStarLeaf for Real
@@GenkiStarLeaf I guess Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, A Link Between Worlds, Skyward Sword (mostly) and Triforce Heroes( when with friends) weren’t that good.
(I guess the point is people need to respect top-down Zeldas other than A Link to the Past a lot more than they do.)
It seems not many people got that this was a sarcastic comment.
@@veebot75 I went back and did a second playthrough of SS after getting bored playing TOTK. Had much more fun playing SS. Dungeons are amazing.
I first got into Zelda in 2017 with Twilight Princess, and immediately understood what made it a good game. Was it linear? Yes. It also had a great story, great characters, great puzzles and dungeons, along with decently entertaining combat. My second game was Breath of the Wild. All the characters were already dead, you had to actively look for the story, the dungeons were all the same, and the open world was all it had going for it. You know, the open world? As in, the empty barren one? Old Zelda was better because it tried. It didn't use freedom as a crutch. Linearity is what makes Zelda. Nintendo forgot that Zelda is about exploration, story, and dungeons. Focusing more on exploring a reused/boring world hurts the two other pillars and ruins the game.
Twilight Princess is still the best Zelda game made IMO, and I've played through them all, a lot.
OOT and MM are great too. Botw is okay, ToTK is awful.
Twilight Princess is what Zelda should strive to be
My favorite is majora’s mask followed closely by my first ocarina of time but I loved every zelda… until botw…
I even appreciated 2 for being frustrating but still enjoyable but botw/totk just has nothing substantial to progress towards
My only issue with tp was it needed harder enemy encounters to use hidden moves on.
Darknuts were awesome but few and far between and most bosses while spectacly fantastic were way too easy.
Argarok was amazing though, and I liked blizzeta but the tarantula was pathetic,( neat concept with cool mechanics but nearly impossible to get hurt by and its late game.)
@@firenze6478 Yeah Armogohma could've been better, since early footage shows it chasing Link through a tunnel.
I'm a New Yorker and among the many buildings sometimes I'll walk past a vacant storefront and wonder, "Didn't that used to be a [restaurant, bank, clothing store, etc.]?" The exploration in Tears of the Kingdom mostly felt like that to me.
Also, don't listen to the 5ish people calling you a hater. Your opinion was expressed very reasonably and the positives you mentioned about the game didn't go unnoticed. If they can't pick up on that, they're probably projecting their negative attributes onto others.
The implication that this experience is somehow specific to New York is pretty funny
@@spacefacecadet No implication that it's specific to there, but the way the city's designed makes it much more common than most places.
Walking by BotW and TotK and thinking "didn't that used to be a good series?"
Just American. Poor country with a parasitoid upper 1%
I wish I was as strong as you, being willing to quit. It didn't get better... It really didn't.
I am sure there were good moments...but yeah overall I had a feeling there wouldn't be anything late game that would change my overall outlook on the game.
If it makes you feel any better, I'm likely worse since I sank 350 hours into this game despite thinking it was just alright.
That’s because you stink at games that require creative thinking.
omg i know you
Based "why BotW sucks" documentary maker
It's almost like "open world" isn't some EZ Bake move that breathes new life into a franchise for free.
It's almost like stretching the map out and putting more items and enemies in a game aren't really that engaging if they don't have a purpose of being there other than to fill the area up.
It's almost like "open world" doesn't do a franchise any service at all if you don't know how to make that open world fun and invigorating.
It's almost like some people are such ignorant, sociopathic morons, that they can't comprehend the simple fact that different people enjoy different things, and that - luckily - game companies don't care about the opinions of ignorant, sociopathic morons, which is why this is the best time in history to be a gamer. Having said that, and having played video games since the 1970's, I no longer call myself a gamer, because I don't want to be associated with the whinging, whining little clueless bitches that gamers have become.
No joke. I would've liked BOTW and ToTK a lot more if it WAS NOT open world. The fact that you have to use a menu to teleport 80% of the time is just proof that Nintendo had no idea wtf thwy were doing, and couldn't even make the environment enjoyable to walk through in both games. Just long stretches of nothing, and no one. Or one of two annoying idiots: Koroks, or Yiga. That got old after the first encounter.
The fact that Majora's mask was made in 1-2 years is insane looking back
ToTK is a horrible sequel
@@ZeranZeran
One year! Majora's Mask is a timeless masterpiece, and I've loved doing all of the side quests dozens of times over the years - I can't bring myself to finish TotK, and with Tears being better than BotW I don't see myself ever playing BotW again. That's sad 😂
@@ZeranZeranmy main problem with TOTK is that it has BARELY any connection to BOTW in terms of story
when banjo kazooie released a game where you build stuff and run around a big empty environment instead of doing the normal stuff the series was known for, we all hated it
It must have been really bad because the only Banjo Kazooies I even know of are the original two.
@@agreedboarart3188 it was hated at the time, now it’s seen as one of ahead of its time. But it was definitely NOT what the Banjo fanbase wanted or what was advertised to players prior to release
I know I am in the minority but I loved N&B. And I played the first Banjo Kazooie growing up. So I was familiar with the franchise. But in N&B there is a reason to build and experiment with builds, there is an objective behind building that is a core part of the game.
In TotK you can, and most likely most of the player base will, play through the entire game without building much at all. There is no other reason to build other than if one just feels like being creative. But building consumes resources, which partially hinders me from ever building. I did enjoy some of my time with TotK but I have to admit it was a let down compared to BotW. I haven't even finished TotK yet. I stopped playing after about 40-60 hours in. At some point I tried getting back into it, logged in a few more hours and stopped again. I still want to try to finish the game but there is a slight possibility that I won't finish.
@@sadshyguygaming125Don't. Replay one of the older titles instead.
Actually, I would really recommend playing Ship of Harkinian (OOT) with hyper-enemies and hyper-bosses modes enabled, and with a damage multiplier. Made the game feel brand new to me.
Don't compare Tears to that game.
It's not that 'more puzzles is a bad thing', but that nintendo just refused to make them interesting or challenging; partially from reusing the same setups thanks to the mass copy&paste, and partially from disregarding what the player is capable of despite it being literally in their game design. When they've given the player gmod powers in a minecraft simulator, it's only a matter of time until the puzzles get subverted to the point of being a nonissue, again unless you're willingly handicapping yourself.
If anything Zelda is BUILT UPON puzzle box design in dungeons, of something who has subtle hints and solutions. But TotK pretends that every solution is valid like bad teachers who give awards to everyone.
@@N12015 Yeah that's a way of looking at it, I'd disagree on the earlier games when they expected you to go outside the dungeon for various reasons, but yeah the last decade has very much been a boxed design before the switch entries.
The depths were so exhausting, I was so unsatisfied with an incomplete map so I grinded every single lightroot and it took forever and was unbelievably tedious. Every part of the map looks the exact same, the enemies are bland, repetitive, ugly, and boring, the repeat boss fights are such a cop-out and all of the coliseums other than the lynel one were completely not worth my time. It made me so sad because I honestly was pretty happy with going through the story and finding the memories and stuff and I would've probably been fine just being done after that but I couldn't stand the unfinished map, it just felt so wrong. The game really disappointed me after botw. There were definitely some things I enjoyed a lot but I definitely think they went much more for quantity over quality
I was so hyped, initially, at the prospect of three layers of world to explore, but the Depths were ugly and annoying to wander around in, and the sky was tedious to keep building air ships that break before you get anywhere - and when you DO get anywhere in the sky, it's just another copy pasted chunk of land that leads to another Shrine. Honestly, the sky islands in Skyward Sword were much more fun to explore.
best switch era zelda game was links awakening and its not even close tbh, the new mainline games have way to many problems for me to praise either of them and the skyward sword hd remaster was just ok
Bro links awakening is garbage compared to this. I beat the og gameboy version in about 10-12 hours of gameplay at most, and a solid half of that time is spent back tracking across the map to trade an item in the trade sequence to get the next trade item etc.. the switch version is the exact same only adding a picture taking side quest which is pointless.
It's amazing really, both Tears and Breath aren't even in the top 3 of the Switch era Zelda games if we count Skyward Sword HD.
@@JP-zg3vothe photo quest was from the DX port for Gameboy Color.
Instead of feeling like a Skyrim and Zelda Hybrid like it was advertised; both BotW and ToTK felt like a Minecraft survival mod with Zelda assets thrown in terms of gameplay mechanics and it just bored me to play.
Yep
I played these games called Dragon Quest Builders 1 & 2; which is kinda an mix between Minecraft, an farming games & many Zelda formulas from Ocarina of Time to Breath of the Wild, with the charm of Dragon Quest that's known for and I had way more fun with those games than either Minecraft or the Breath of the Wild games.
Absolutely. I was so underwhelmed after my 1st playthrough, I immediately tried a second playthrough getting the Zoanite battery increasing armour first, just to see if it will improve the experience - especially with the early confusion of not knowing how to enhance your battery.
It's sad for me because I went all in with TOTK... Bought the OLED, pro controller, collectors edition, amiibo... Expecting this to be an undoubtedly great Zelda game. It wasnt. I don't believe it deserves goty with all the cut and paste and the trickery that was the trailers - especially the last - which made the game look vastly unfamiliar and new
That final trailer was the worst! I was so engrossed and excited about the game that I was biting my fingernails in anticipation.
Now its like, well you can't trust the trailers- and apparently you can't trust game critics because they're going to give the next game 10 out of 10s regardless of the games content.
I guess I'm just not buying the next Zelda game(which probably won't come out in at least 7 years in the attempt to sweep this game into the memory hole)
Breathe of The Wild is the last thing I bought from Nintendo, or ever will.
When my PC can run the game at a higher FPS and resolution? Nintendo has gotten incredibly lazy, and even the gameplay / story has gotten worse. They've stopped caring because idiots will keep paying them. Just like with Pokemon. Every game gets worse. yet people continue buying them.
Lol same man, damn near broke the bank buying that oled in australia, most anticipated and most dissapointing game in my life
@@RP-mp4ow
The fact that OoT, MM, TWW, and TP all came out within roughly the same amount of time as BotW and TotK is really sad lmao They made several unique masterpieces in the time it took them to make the same boring game twice
It's like Nintendo decided mid-way to build a survival game without the survival.
i'm so happy they didn't. I can't stand survival games.
@@dxcSOULyeah instead they made the worst game ever. I’d rather play minesweeper than this
@@dxcSOUL In other words, handholding intestifies.
Zelda was always a puzzle game, hell even oot is more puzzle focused than combat. If your considering the greatest games of all time, both oot and especially majoras mask are largely puzzle based games. Zelda hasnt been mainly combat focused since zelda 2, and really shouldnt hover towards being another generic character action game like the others. The main focus of zelda games are exploration and puzzle solving, combat is just there because it has to be as per tradition with games
Ill be honest. I wasnt the biggest fan of BotW, it didnt offer the same excitement or reward that older Zeldas did, but it was a very relaxing play.
TotK tho...i am violently disappointed in it and i gave the game away shortly after beating it.
If it were marketed as another relaxing play, then i might have enjoyed it more- since gliding was the most cathartic part of BotW, should have been good.
But nothing in this game felt worth doing, which negates any catharsis
Same...same.
I literally couldn’t finish the game either.
I played through the four main Temples then got too bored and haven't played it in months.
@@hanburgundy4317 botw and totk feel the exact same. Botw is better imo.
@@FrommerJacobsnumberonefangirl
I preferred TotK, but neither of the Wild games are my cup of tea, to be honest - I've loved almost every Zelda game I've played EXCEPT for the new ones, but I still enjoyed the new ones despite having a ton of issues with them.
@@FrommerJacobsnumberonefangirlI agree I prefer BOTW over TOTK
@@johnnyknadler1157 You Get To Be MEAN To Koroks In Totk
Its such a good feeling to know that I am not alone with not liking the new zelda games.
Twilight Princess is still the peak of the series.
Skyward Sword is the peak imo
I finished Botw half a dozen times, I absolutely loved it, it felt like a cohesive experience, things flowed nicely into eachother. Sure, tears has like 3X more stuff to do, but it felt.. broken. The presence of humans in every corner of Hyrule kinda killed the "you and nature, alone" connection you had in Botw.
But the thing that pissed me the MOST, happened precisely because I loved Botw so much. I hated that I couldn't have some of the sheika slate runes back (I specially missed stasis and bomb runes), I hated they deleted Kass out of the game (despite keeping his family in Rito village), and i HATED that they deleted every single vestige of sheika tech, I missed finding and killing guardians, no more ancient bow, ancient armor set is basically useless, no master cycle, and so on. Yes, they had to focus on the new mechanics, but just IMAGINE if while you were exploring a ruin or cave you came across a single gloom-infected guardian, and it attacked you with a completely different attack pattern, it was stronger or had better defences, etc. I get it, new game, blablabla, but they could at least consider it for late or post game content!
Yes, the final battle is epic, but I don't feel like I'll want to play Tears ever again, while I'm already missing Botw and will probably play it again for the 7th time before 2024 ends. lol
By confirming Tears won't have any DLC, Nintendo basically killed any hope I have to see these things addressed, thus killing the game for good for me.
How you play such an empty and repetitive slogfest of a game is beyond me. Maybe you just lack experience with better games?
@@personman5156is there really any need for insults, some people enjoyed the game and they're not stupid for doing so
@@personman5156 imagine feeling the need to insult other people for their personal tastes
For me personally I stopped playing the game after about 18 hours because I realised I wasn't having fun I was only still playing it to finish what I had started and that's not a good reason to be playing a game.
All I wanted was for lack of a better way to phrase it "good dungeons" I very quickly learned I would not find what I wanted anywhere in the game. There are plenty of ways I can see how they could easily improve the game and it's not like there aren't aspects of the game that I did like but after about 5 hours I felt like I had experienced all the game had to offer and after 5 more it became a tedious chore and cycle of false hope and disappointment.
Honestly the closest thing I got to what I wanted was the cave under the road leading to Hyrule Castle and even that was still missing a lot and also just sort of fizzled out and ended without ceremony just as it was starting to get good.
And that's not even getting into any of the serious flaws the game has that's just one aspect that I wanted that I didn't get.
I had all the personality traits and philosophies that should have lead me to enjoy this game; I am patient, I am open minded, I am logical, I am not easily distracted, I have a flexible mindset, I learn new skills quickly, I am initially optimistic, I am forgiving, I don't have loss aversion, I don't easily get stuck, I notice things that are easy to miss ( I actually look upwards for example ) and I can't believe I even have to say this one but I don't try to prolong my time with a game doing trivial tasks just to avoid having it be over.
All this and I still didn't like the game past the 5 hour mark. I know I am being a bit narcissistic describing myself in such a way but I also know that for most things these characteristics are important to have to maximise your chances at enjoyment and things like "open minded" "forgiving" some people actively try to avoid having and will bully others including me for having so I know that at least to some extent what I say is true.
I feel you man. I really really want to love Tears. I just don’t and I am not enjoying the game as much as I did BOTW. I hate leaving a game unfinished but at the same time I hate forcing myself to play a game that doesn’t excite me to turn on. It’s like, I’m only playing so I can finish the game not because I am having fun. It seems Nintendo didn’t listen to gamers/fans. I don’t like the crafting or the layers of maps. It’s like everyone had an idea and they just put them all in and didn’t consider if it was to much. The game is overwhelming without being interesting. Very disappointed and I hate that 😔
I agree with some of your points here, although I liked the game enough to finish the story. I even found the introductory area overwhelming and tedious to get through. Overall, it often felt like they had a bunch of random, disjointed ideas that they felt they had to cram into the game.
@@SlowAside5 I will finish the game for nothing else but for the story. I do want to know what happens. I really feel very strongly that the depths should have been a DLC. That I feel would have helped. But from the interviews I have seen from Nintendo. The next Zelda will be different from BOTW & TEARS. And they are not reusing the current Hyrule map or Zelda and Link. We will get a new Hyrule and Zelda & Link. And I am looking forward to what is next.
@@AmeliasArcade I would welcome that! I honestly prefer the traditional Zelda formula and hope they go back to it.
@@SlowAside5they’re not going to do that… they’re going to stick to open world like Pokemon
@@johnnyknadler1157yeah this gonna be next formula for 10 years just like how classic Zelda did it
What I hear from people who love BotW and TotK boils down to two things: they love exploration for the sake of exploration, and they love being able to make their own fun. They’re talking about intrinsic motivation.
I don’t have that in me. I need clear structure, clear goals, and clear, meaningful rewards. Previous Zelda games gave that to me in spades. Even the original Zelda (the game people say BotW was going back to the roots of), gave you meaningful rewards for your exploration in the form of equipment that had specific use cases and also changed the way you played the game in general. You weren’t given carte blanche freedom to do whatever you wanted and go wherever you wanted. The game still had structure to it.
And that's why BotW and TotK speak so much to the Minecraft generation. There is nothing wrong in enjoying games like Minecraft, but Zelda originally wasn't Minecraft. And with the beloved franchise going down the route, they lost me as a fan (who's been playing Zelda since the late 90s).
There has been a ton of ink spilled comparing botw and totk to Skyrim, Witcher 3, and lately Elden Ring, so much so that it makes me wonder if critics actually understood what made those games good.
Skyrim, Witcher 3 and Elden Ring, while each possessing their own strengths and weaknesses, are each deliberately crafted to deliver an experience that feels like an organic adventure. You start off with a goal and as you work toward it there's a myriad of breadcrumbs laying in wait to spin you off on a completely unexpected adventures for the next 2 hours.
BOTW and TOTK, with their maps bereft of markers and their see-something, go-there vibe, promise that you're in for a similar experience. However, after a couple dozen hours you realize that they're much more similar to Ubisoft games where the content is a checklist of variations on the same small handful of ideas obscured by the fact that they make you find the check boxes instead if placing them in your map.
I've thoroughly enjoyed multiple play throughs of each of the afforementioned open world RPGs as they're all designed to provide players with at least a handful of unique playthroughs. On the otherhand, like the typical Ubisoft game, I felt botw overstayed its welcome, was relieved when it finished and have had no interest in replaying the game. Despite this, I liked the game well enough to think the playthrough was worthwhile over all and was looking forward to totk after it was announced.
I went in to totk with more measured expectations, expecting an experience similar to what botw delivered, but instead it felt like they just created a new checklist for the same game, only this time they increased the tedium. Within 20 hours the veneer was worn thin and I was ready to play something else.
I saw a youtube poll the other day asking which game was going to win goty: totk or Baldur's Gate , and to my shock 59% of people answered totk. I couldn't wrap my head sround it. I still can't. Imo, BG3 exceeds the expectations set by the best in the genre, delivering an unparalleled sense of adventure where each conversation, or solution to an obstacle, can potentially send you off on an entirely different trajectory. TOTK, on the other hand, doesn't live up to the expectations set by it's predecessor.
Is totk a bad game? No. Its fine. I can understand why people would like it. Is it among the best of it's genre? No. Is it the best game of the year? Its not even the best Nintendo game of the year. While I felt totk was tedious and uninspired that I struggled to find the motivation to play, Super Mario Wonder was exceedingly charming and stuffed full of creative and suprising design decisions that made it difficult to put down.
Those three games suck too, though. In fact, witcher 3 is the single worst implementation of an open world I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. Not only is it worse than totk, it's worse than ubisoft games.
Criticizing totk is good and proper; it's a bad game. But doing so by elevating games that are also bad for most of the same reasons is not the way to go about it.
Witcher 3’s open world is even more Ubisoft-esque. It’s the quests that make Witcher 3 what they are. But the open world portion isn’t nearly as good as ToTK or BoTW.
@@dathunderman4 lolwut? The vast majority of Witcher 3's content is handcrafted quest content or combat encounters. Botw and totk is full Ubi-style copy and paste content: climb towers, clear enemy outposts, collect korak seeds and do shrines. It is so much like an Ubisoft game, and shrines fit so well into Ubí's copy and paste busywork approach to game design, that Ubi took the concept, paired it with AC Odyssey combat and loot system, and published their own Botw clone, albeit with better combat.
The only meaningful distinction between botw/totk and an Ubisoft game is the removal of map markers and emphasis on discovering content through exploration. Unfortunately that's only compelling for as long as you can convince yourself that there's content worth discovering, which becomes increasingly more difficult to do the more you play these games.
Elden Ring, on the other hand, uses the concept to much greater effect by making exploration intrinsically rewarding. You are compelled to explore every nook and cranny of the map because you never know what you'll encounter; the game is stuff with surprises, secrets, interesting combat encounters and loot that doesn't just give marginal stat increases but can fundamentally alter how you play the game. Even ER's most repetitive content, it's caves and catacombs, remain more compelling than shrines as the rewards are, more often than not, much more tangible to the roleplaying character building fantasy, than yet another marginal health or stamina upgrade.
Again, botw and totk aren't bad games. They're fine. I understand why people like them, I liked them well enough to beat Botw and sink more hours in to totk than I do most games. My issue isn't with people enjoying the games, it's with the mass delusion among fanboys that these aren't just good games but among the best games ever created. As someone who has played through the entire franchise, I wouldn't even consider them among the best Zelda games.
The grass cutting to Astel's meteorite cut was amazing
Thanks haha, that was probably the most fun section of the video to edit
I played for a little while, but after going back to BotW, I just found it more fun. If I wanted a slow building simulator, I would boot up minecraft. Also some of the narrative and design decisions are baffling, like, I love Tulin, but was it necessary to make him the sage instead of Teba, who is both an ADULT and was already given a reckless personality in BotW??? Riju is also the chief and that ain't stopping her. Also, why did they move away from button presses, why on earth do I have to walk up to and talk to a companion to use their ability???? And, well, I honestly prefer the first set of runes to this one. As useless as cryonis was, it's less time consuming than trying to build a boat.
Also, their puzzles are getting better, but... barely. I'm extremely confused as to why the puzzle solving took such a huge dip, Zelda's never had so many bad puzzles before BotW, and this is only made worse by inflating the number of shrines unnecessarily. Just.... give us chests??? Instead of blessings??? Like, it's kinda annoying to have a ton of cutscenes just to get a chest, and do you REALLY need 150 teleport points? It's an open world game, and there are horses and vehicles - it isn't the end of the world as long as the most important areas (towns, stables, castle) have teleport points.
Teba not being the sage of wind is Nintendo looking both ways and still getting hit by a plane, he'd look perfect alongside Sidon and Yunobo
I share all of your criticisms and I, too, could not complete this game. I am happy to see folks finally being honest about TOTK because when it first came out everyone, it seemed, immediately declared it as GOTY and I'm like...did we actually play the same game?!
BOTW and TOTK really turned me away from Zelda games. I struggled to finish BOTW. I've been feeling the burn out on open worlds for awhile now and BOTW just didn't offer enough in the environment for me to care about the setting and world. I miss the old top down, dungeon games where you collected weapons that aided you in your journey to more dungeons.
Breath of the Wild, was a big disapointment. Big open world, yes, but containing none of the elements that makes a Legend of Zelda game. Got bored with it real soon, even if I spent some time looking for seeds and shrines. Eventually stopped playing, and ever completed it. Didn't even bother with Tears of the Kingdom.
I wanted Zelda, I got crafting, towers, breakable weapons, copy pasted blue dungeons, those damn seeds. When I hear, open world, I think mostly empty world, but pretty.
You Get To BEAT UP KOROKS XD
I'm struggling so so hard to get through the game, i either get sleepy, or checking my phone, i just can't get excited about anything in the game
I’ve never related to a review more, I downloaded and played it at day 1 on midnight and the first impression was pretty good, I spent a lot of time exploring, did the wind temple, did all the geoglyphs and got the master sword, some sidequests etc etc, but it got to the point that I just wasn’t having fun, which mainly started when I first set foot on the wind temple and found out it was the same thing as the divine beasts, go to 5 locations, each hidden behind 1 or 2 completely detached easy puzzles and then come back to the start. That was the beginning of the end for my enjoyment.
Honestly. I modded botw to not break my weapons and it instantly jumped several tiers in my fave zelda rankings. All these other issues still persist but my god the weapon durability is the absolute most glaring one that makes yah mad enough to find all the other issues. Just fixing that one aspect has IMMENSELY blurred all of the other issues from view
Lmao same, made my weapons unbreakable and started ignoring certain mechanics and the game became more fun. I still swap out my weapons for new stuff frequently, but its nice that I'm not forced to after 2 enemies.
Omg How? I want to know. That's literally the biggest thing I hated with these games was the constant weapons breaking.
@SeltdaBeast422 Cemu emulator. It's the wii u version of the game. And it has built in community mods menu for botw. You literally tick a box. And if you don't want to make them entirely unbreakable you can even adjust it from 2x to 10x durability
@@takagimorisato9021 Interesting... I'll need to look more into this. Thank you.
I played 17 hours of totk when it first came out on the first day straight and for the first week I got so burned out for it that I genuinely have not touched the game since. I was so excited by it and then I just stopped having fun 💀
If it was like a sequel like Majora mask i would of loved it more because using the same overworld made it feel less exciting to me as i already explored hyrule in this universe technically 3 times with age of calamity being in the picture.
Majora's Mask was sequel to OoT like US Super Mario Brothers 2 (doki doki panic) was a sequel to Super Mario Brothers... as in it really wasn't, at all.
@@s4mpson What's the reasoning behind that analogy?
@@robinthrush9672 nothing it was just a fucking shit ass analogy with no base to sound smart and be cool
I think the main issue of TOTK is the fact that its labelled as Zelda. Its well known that BOTW was just a desperate grasp from nintendo to get more people to buy the Wii u by absolutely overclocking it which then spiralled into them giving up and just making it for an entirely new console in general-and the desperation is obviously seen with how non-zelda it is and how much they grasped for the ‘oh guys!! Look at this its entirely new tech!!! We innovated stuff!!’ Excuse.
Theres no need to continue the franchise with more open worlds after that, i feel-especially not in the botw formula. The least they couldve done was make totk a dlc and not an entirely new game itself because it honestly just wrecks the illusion of botw, makes it feel unoriginal and lose its worth. Zelda is and has always been a linear game franchise-whether it be majoras mask or twillight princess, they all hold some form of linearity.. so why would you just break it??? I genuinely dont understand. The appeal of zelda had always been how ridiculously linear it was-the timelines, for gods sake! No unlinear fandom would have such an intense hyperfixation on three separate timelines!
It almost feels like a slap in the face, honestly. Nintendo has been slowly stripping Zelda of what it is and its never really ended up well, but they still do it to appease to masses like the masses would even want an honest zelda game. First, it was the musical instruments-wasnt that bad, everyone could deal with that. Second, it was Ganondorf-a well needed change. I think most of everyone liked ghirahim… and then the dungeons? AND linear timelines? AND??? Actually interesting enemy fights? For gods sake, it just feels like they’re trying to come up with a new franchise in general. To ruin the only thing nintendo has going for them is INSANE.
I think semi-open world with a linear story and linear dungeons is best. The stuff in-between the dungeons, that is to say the overworld, should be largely open world. Mostly focused on giving the feeling that there is a world, people, to save. Side quests are very useful for this engagement and immersion.
I mean….if a game sucks, it would still suck if it had a different name. It just wouldn’t have the same level of expectation. I thought it was an awful game and very boring game. The Zelda name doesn’t help or hurt that for me.
Where did you get that information?
Was pregnant when TOTK came out and finished all of the main sidequests when my baby was over a year old. Although I loved the open world (ex. Being able to run around to any part of the map freely) from BOTW & TOTK, I feel like things just became repetitive. Enemy camps became easy to spot and take over since they were almost all alike, caves and wells were the same short maze (even later in the game with larger or more expansive caves), and I found the larger enemies to lack any new moves (like the Hinox or Talus.) For example, I used to be hesistant to fight Talus' and thats what made it fun, but the ability to go through ceilings made fighting them so easy and eventually boring. My Dad, whos been playing Zelda since the first game came out, wouldnt even touch the game and said he would be done playing the LOZ series if it didnt go back to its roots in some way or another. I couldn't bring myself to finish all the sidequests (especially the Korok seed one) in my TOTK playthrough and found finding all of the lightroots and shrines to be painfully boring. I also found it incredibly frustrating to spend half an hour sometimes doing a sidequest for a shrine (ex. The Yiga Clan one) just to get a shrine that gives me a chest with a large battery 🫠🙃🙃 Despite liking the open world approach, Im ready for Echoes of Wisdom and hope it provides some linearity and better storytelling.
No way TOTK is a puzzle game with combat because none of the 'puzzles' require using any of your brain cells at all
Me personally don't mind the lack of combat cus I don't see TOTK as an action game in the first place but the puzzle part is just as disappointing if not more, I am offended if anyone says that totk is a puzzle game.
I'm a massive Zelda fan and BotW crushed my spirit. Did Ubisoft secretly make it? With all the tower climbing etc... I tried so hard to like that game but I just couldn't get into it. I got maybe a fourth of the way through the game and just gave up and literally forgot about it for over a year. I then proceeded to beat the game but I can't help but feel that this was trash. TotK is just long overdue DLC.
NOPE Thats Monolifsoft Their The Team Behind XENOBLADE And No Totk Is NOT Trash Nor Its DLC And Its ALOT More Tragic Then BOTW If You Played Skyward Sword Then Your Gonna Find A Certain Character In The Story
@@haileeraestout5567 First, Ubisoft making the game was a joke, as it has similar map reveal mechanics to the typical game formula that Ubisoft tends to use.
Second, I said BotW was trash and I stand by that statement.
Third, I haven't played Skyward Sword for various reasons so a cameo from it would mean nothing to me personally.
Finally, TotK, regardless of its story etc has been widely panned for offering little that BotW didn't; hence the DLC remark. I might give the games another shot with the inevitable Switch 2 ports but honestly, I just completed Zelda: Links Awakening (remake) and (despite its lack of difficulty) had a much better time than with BotW.
I played TOTK a few times… then put it down and did an entire Elden Ring playthrough (including Malenia, for the first time, and all of Ranni’s quest events) before I picked this game up again.
Bro? Literally the exact same thing happened to me???
@@heraclesn yep, no joke. Hey hope you enjoyed ER, I know I did!
@@darrenklein6090 Yeah i did. Crazy because I also did ranni ending (mainly because I didn’t want to go through the long quest again) and went out of my way to find Malenia. Hope you maybe somewhat enjoy tears of the kingdom!
@@heraclesn yah thanks for checking - I do actually think TOTK is great game and obviously an amazing achievement on many levels, but my interest in it waned for a lot of the reasons detailed in this video. My friend and I were talking about it the other day and we decided that it was "the best game we don't ever feel like playing". I've definitely had some incredible moments with it, though, so I hope I didn't completely give the impression like I haven't enjoyed it. Hey best wishes to you on your ER/TOTK/anything else adventures.
It felt like a chore for me
Ive been looking for criticism like this since BOTW first came out!! Honestly, like you said, everything you discover is the same thing. Every enemy you fight is one of like 5 enemies. Every shrine looks the same. The landscape is huge, but what really is there? Now, Zelda is just a physics game. Ive been wanting to finally get TOTK recently in hopes that it improved on what I disliked about its predecessor, but seeing this just kind of confirms what I already feared. That again, it's just more of the same, same, same. It is kind of vindicating to see someone else with feelings like this toward what everyone tries to gaslight me into believing is the 'best, most difinitive Zelda game'. Personally, I cant wait to wash this flavor of Zelda out of my mouth.
If you want several hours of pure criticism to these two, I recommend looking up Orion C.
Nois trying to gaslight you. What nonsense.
Nintendo failed to materialize a good open world game because they don't get open world design at all, they failed to understand its principles and what makes it desirable and enjoyable in other games, and it seems like nobody wants to admit it.
The point of open world game design is to give players the agency of directing their own experience, by choosing the order with which they will go do the dungeons / quests, and the agency of having action or downtime the moment they want, without the game forcing them an action or downtime part when they don't want to.
Open World Design is about giving players agency, it's not about world size nor about forcing the player to traverse long empty distances where nothing happens, before getting to the fun parts of the gane.
Nintendo thought that "open world" is just to stretch the world to the point it takes you forever to get from one point of interest to the next, forcing players long downtime sessions before they can get to the parts with action, while you must still play the dungeons of the game in a particular order, as there are huge difficulty spikes from one to the next one. That's just bad design, and completely misses the whole point of making a game open world.
It's so bad design in fact, that Tears of the Kingdom fails to offer the two fundamental pros of open world game design:
1. You can't decide the order you will play the dungeons, because they have huge difficulty spikes.
2. You can't direct your game experience by jumping straight into action whenever you want to, because the points on the map where the action happens are so far away from each other, you are forced to have prolonged downtime before getting into action.
So as you see, the problem of Tears of the Kingdom isn't Open World as a design formula itself, but that Nintendo completely failed to understand what the principles of Open World Game Design are, which resulted to a fundamentally flawed game.
Yes, a game where you have to spend 15 minutes without anything interesting happening at it, like you do when you have to get from one place on the map to the one next to it on foot, with all the space in between being empty, is bad design. It's a design that demands from the player to do a chore for 15 minutes before getting to the fun part, every time.
you've saved me some $ and even more importantly, time. I'd have played this thing for hours, figuring I just wasn't "doing it right." much appreciated :)
Totk gives tools to the player and tells them to have fun . Why didn’t they fully commit to this idea then? Why didn’t they make a Mario maker dungeon system ? Incentive in this game is completely intrinsic
This review perfectly mirrors everything I felt about this game! I especially appreciated your well articulated counters to the aggressive gaslighting that “you’re just not creative enough/it’s your fault if you’re not having fun” many avid defenders of the game default to whenever TotK is criticised, I can’t stand the way people try to offload the guilt/responsibility of bad game design onto the players.
TotK was a MASSIVE disappointment and with the additional insight offered by recent Nintendo interviews about their game design philosophy, the future of the Zelda franchise is looking unbelievably grim.
Great review! Thanks, looking forward to more
Nice vid. I stoped playing after a week. Zelda needs to be better. Idk who is making these calls at Nintendo but it needs to change
Dude I'm so biased when it comes to Zelda and I absolutely love this game, and I'm sorry you didn't like it. No ill will to your opinion, youre definitely not the only one that felt this way I just wish you guys could have had as much fun as I did.
Its not a Zelda game so a Zelda bias isn't the issue, you just enjoy mediocrity and mundane gameplay.
@@personman5156hey no need for the insults. Some people enjoyed the game, others didn’t. They only said they wished they could have had fun with it, not that their opinion was invalid.
I have to say, I really did find the build mechanic tedious, which also made shrines tedious. This is fundamentally why I stopped playing despite having 100 or 120 or 140 hours in breath of the wild. I honestly just wanted to play skyrim with curated puzzles and zelda dungeons. That's all I wanted. Skyward Sword had satisfying puzzles, especially if you ignored the hints.
This game has literally no story line and I feel like it’s just a money grab
And it cost SEVENTY dollars! For something so outrageously expensive it should’ve been worth it but wow it was not
Real af
I've played most Zelda games, which had a better story? The story is roughly always the same. But TOTK went as far as to give certain characters their own religions that you can learn about. Just a small example. I wanna know how many people it took to make this.
No story line... what?
Because it is...... I saw it coming 100 miles away
Tears of the Kingdom is a 6/10 game
Still too high tbh
6/10 if I'm being nice. I personally rate it a 4.
@@amandaslough125 you guys are all still being too nice , that's saying there's still half of the game that works as a good game , but that can only be true if you rate it as a sandbox , where as as a game with a franchise of established lore it's more like a 3/10.....
I say an 5/10 is more fitting.
I say an 5/10 is more fitting.
Could not agree more with all of this!
I just wish link’s green tunic wasn’t thrown away along with the formula, it’s like post botw zelda doesn’t even want to be Zelda anymore. Link just looks like any other generic jrpg protagonist now. The hat and tunic were iconic
99% of the game is busy work.
Collecting Koroks
Finishing Shrines
Finding Lightroots
Doing side quests
What are the rewards? More hearts, more weapon space... and.... a few rupees, maybe an armour set and a brighter underground? Which has nothing in it anyway.....
There's no reason to actually do anything, because you know the reward no matter what offers very little to the experience.
There are games that you simply cannot critisize or you will be avalanched by a blind fan-base.
BotW and TotK are 2 such games.
People pretend like it's flawless.
I played both games for hundreds of hours and really enjoyed my time, and I also enjoyed your video. You explained your perspective well and I totally see where you're coming from. Respect!
Great job on another video. Looking forward to the “Team-Based” focused multiplayer games.
Much appreciated :)
I agree with you, and you've pretty much addressed just about every reason why I wasn't having fun playing this game.
The way weapons break so easily, and how enemies either do like 2 hearts of damage or one-shot/two-shot you with no in between just made me want to avoid most fights(It's not like the combat has changed at all, it has the same issues as before). The puzzles being unfulfilling with how they're solved was probably the most annoying thing in the game to me, aside from the lackluster story.
When building, all I want to make is a hover bike anyway, it isn't very fun or nearly as rewarding to build anything else. So like what is even here for me in this game?
Even though I ultimately love Tears of the Kingdom, and have beaten it three times, I still liked your video because you presented your points clearly, gave examples and feedback on how to improve, and didn't do a bunch of hate speech and "Nintendo fanboys are entitled", like we usually hear. I don't want to write an essay in the comments, but I'd like to bring up two factors that might give a new perspective to two of your points (sorry if it's too long)
1) In Breath of the Wild, the first terminal in Vah Ruta was hidden behind a gate. What you're supposed to do is use Cryonis to make an ice block to lift up the gate, but my best friend didn't notice the water underneath and instead used Stasis to force the gate open. The fact that the game allowed both solutions to work blew our minds, and Tears of the Kingdom allowed me to further expand on seeing how much I could break the game, and feeling accomplished that, through limited resources, I solved a challenge using a harder method than the game intended. Ultimately, the intrinsic reward of simply moving through the world was worth it!
2) Familiarity can be a detriment, but it can also be an incredible feeling of returning home or seeing an old friend after several years apart. When I rediscovered the Great Plateau in Tears of the Kingdom, I felt an incredible wave of nostalgia and joy in returning to an old location and seeing how it changed! This is the first Zelda game since A Link Between Worlds that let me say, "Oh, wow! It's been a long time, old friend! How have you been?" Sure, innovation is great, but there can be just as much enjoyment from returning to something you love. That's probably the main reason why people have stuff like vacation homes and keep going to cons; even though it's the same location again, revisiting it with new context can give it a new purpose.
THANK YOU! While I did enjoy BotW (though your critique of it is absolutely fair), TotK fell absolutely flat for me. I think I bowed out of the game even before you did and just watched my wife play. And she, despite completing the game, said it wasn't particularly good.
Fair points! I loved the game but I absolutely see where you're coming from, especially regarding the lack of incentive to get the player to engage with the creativity of its new systems. I also don't get why they didn't overhaul the control scheme & menu system. The improvements they made from BotW didn't go far enough to keep things from feeling clunky. My muscle memory shouldn't still be confused about which button combos pull up which menu after 300 hours of gameplay.
I will say though, it might just be me but I had way more fun with ToTK's combat than BotW. I barely engaged in optional combat in BotW because in the late game, I wasn't guaranteed to get good weapons to replace my 20 royal broad swords or w/e, lol. In ToTK though, having Gerudo Weapons be glass canons, Zora weapons do double damage when wet, Forest weapons allow fused consumables to be reused, etc, actually made me want to use a variety of weapons in the game and have fun doing so. Plus, fusion meant I could make anything an elemental weapon, or a hammer vs slashing, etc on the fly if I needed one, and/or make any lower powered weapon decently powerful just by slapping a powerful horn on it, so few weapons felt useless/not worth picking up even in the late game. It made going into the depths more worthwhile for me as well, since there are non decayed weapons down there. Muddle buds and puff shrooms added a lot to the fun of combat for me as well, which also gave me a reason to go resource collecting in the depths. Maybe those systems weren't as appealing to other ppl since I haven't seen as much chatter about them, but it made all the difference in the world to me combat-wise.
I watched the entire review. Very well put together and thoughts are genuine. I personally could not find myself playing much of TotK either. Even for someone who isn’t much of an open world kinda guy, I still find myself genuinely enjoying and getting more fulfillment out of other titles like Spider-Man or Genshin. They’re just far more fun, immersive, and captivating for me personally
Even though I love Elden Ring and other open world games I do find myself becoming more tired of the genre lately.
Yeah, I play TotK and would honestly just boot up some other game entirely after half an hour. Usually Genshin for the open world/combat or a Fire Emblem title for the strategy (please zelda just make me use strategy). I honestly go back to BotW more than I do TotK.
I finally finished it but it was a chore. I’m not a fan of the new BOTW Zelda style.
Nintendo limes to double down on features people hate. Skyward sword had stamina for sprinting and such and now all of them have it. Breakable weapons in BotW. TotK has more of them. While I love TotK because my ADHD ass keeps finding g new stuff and the final boss is great. I also understand that if I want good fight mechanics on the switch I play monster hunter.
I absolutely agree, except i would tell people unless they enjoy a more minecraft type experience to play BOTW. I do not like having to build stuff. I absolutely hate my weapons breaking all the time. Neither of these games feel like a Zelda game. No real dungeons, missing usual weapons (hookshot was always my favorite), repetitive enemies everywhere. I am hoping the next Zelda game brings back more of the old Zelda style.
Have you ever played Dragon Quest Builders 1 & 2?
@@jaretco6423 No. I have never even heard of them.
@@dreadfultwerp It's basically like Minecraft, with farming and Zelda mixed in it, but with the Dragon Quest style that's known for. I would say it's better than Zelda: Breath of the Wild & Tears of the Kingdom.
I have already explored the world and I've heard that the depths are boring and the sky islands are disappointing.
I truly believe totk and botw are not games, they're just play time.
I have the same problem. And I'm surprised myself this is the very first Zelda game that I dont want to finish. It is all big empty soulless repetetive shit. Only fun for a few hours. I also think BotW is overrated. I own almost every Zelda game. IMO both games feel like gimmicky playgrounds instead of a Zelda game.. IMO Twilight princess is the last good 3D Zelda game. And if you compare BotW & TotK with OoT & MM it really tells you what a masterpiece Majora's Mask was with only devloped within a years time.
I agree
Twilight Princess was the true sequel to Ocarina of Time and last true Zelda game. Even though I enjoyed Skyward Sword, it was the beginning of the downfall of the series.
Totk makes me realize how great Botw was
I absolutely agree.
Same as an old zelda fan tears. Made me sad excuse the pun I got too garudo desert then just couldn't do it anymore lately I've gotten into classic tomb raider very different but still give me a Bit of that old zelda itch ^~^
Recommend BotW or TotK flow chart:
Do you like solving puzzles? No -> Tears
If yes, Do you like using a variety of cheats and shortcuts over and over to solve puzzles? Yes -> Tears
If No, do you like slow crafting mechanics that later can be automated and flying over large open worlds for 100+ hours? Yes -> Tears
If No, Do you prefer having companions aid you, or being overpowered battling on your own? Companions -> Tears
Overpowered -> Breath
Alternative flow chart:
Do you want to play both games? Yes -> BotW
If no, return to first flow chart
BotW killed Zelda, TotK is just the wakeup call for anyone still in denial. Fantastic video!
Fans need to wake Nintendo up, this is not good
@@H-TownGamer Kids and dumb whale adults will continue dumping money into Nintendo no matter what they do.
This is why I have 0 shame pirating and playng their older (Good) games
Yea because Skyward Sword was so amazing. Zelda 1 on NES designed and intended as an 'open world' game, but zelda fanbois are still obsessed with OoT and TP, adorable.
@@s4mpson "BotW is just like Zelda 1"
🥱🥱🥱
@@pitshoster401 Skyward. Sword. Please bud.
I actually never finished it either. It was good but not great
i did love botw and totk a lot, but ive definitely been itching to replay twilight or skyward.
I stopped playing this game an hour in. Had my criticism about botw and this felt like more of the same
such a game hater
@@adamk-paxlogan7330Sucks He kinda right
I liked a botw a lot but after so long it gets kinda stale. There just isn’t enough new stuff to make it more enjoyable.
Same. I wasn't even going to get TotK, but my gf bought it for herself so I gave it a go and only made it about 1 hr in before getting absolutely bored of it. She also only made it about 10-15 hrs before giving up due to the controls and excessive menus.
@@adamk-paxlogan7330Sucks when you love and have played through a series like Zelda, I think it’s pretty fair to be honest about how the game gets old quick. Botw and totk are not the high points in Zelda history for me for many reasons. Frankly I think Zelda fans deserve better.
I consistently played BoTW since release day until ToTK was released. They nerfed enough things in ToTK that the grind actually had me just stop playing for a solid month and a half. There's just so much to do that, when I finally started up again a few weeks ago, my focus was only on upgrading armor and getting the weapons upgrades. I had already beaten 4 temples and not having set bonuses/upgrades just made it so tedious when fighting high level enemies. Now, it's like an entirely different game once you can defeat the high end mini bosses, etc., more quickly. It's also a lot more fun just building stuff to mess with the monsters. It absolutely takes a lot of time to reach that point in this game for a casual player - and I can certainly see where people would walk away from it - for sure.
I have a little criticism of the game and I agree with some of your points, but they mostly just didn't bother me that much. I liked some of the grind, knowing that the treasure chests would give me items to help upgrade my armor and such. I like finding koroks.
But it got tedious enough that I eventually just turned to the final boss and haven't looked back since.
That said, the ending sequence is incredible. The way the music and story and action collide is beautiful and it takes that patience from doing the hard things and all of that dragging action and turns it into something emotional and wonderful.
Rewards mean nothing without suffering. And totk plays the long game (no pun intended) with a huge, satisfying ending after a very long and arduous journey.
Just use the duplicate glitch and there is no grind
As someone who just finished the game, I have to say I agree with 99% of this. I almost didn't complete it and, unlike Breath of the Wild, I have had no motivation to play through the game again, engage in creative challenges, or further complete the save file.
I will say that the final fight was genuinely fun though.
I like your takes on the new Zeldas, I agree to most of them. I can see how great the new formula can be, but Nintendo really needs to work on the dungeon and puzzle designs more.
That being said: call me old fashioned or pessimistic, but I don't think Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom will age well. At all. I hope time proves me wrong tho
Tear of the kingdom was supposed to be dlc for botw the developers even said as much, but they though to expand it into its own game and this was the result.
First of all, this was a very well presented video, so props for that. I'll be keeping an eye on your channel. That cut from Rykard to the grass-cutting was god-tier (and apologies in advance for the thesis-length comment).
Your thoughts closely echo the ones I've been having since release, and I totally agree that the game's lack of purpose is its critical flaw. What bugged me the most was how disconnected the different aspects of the game felt.
For example, I thought the new abilities were all really cool on their own, but they're so rarely used in boss fights. No real spoilers, but the final boss left such a sour taste in my mouth because of this. Surely a game that otherwise relies so heavily on "puzzles" should have Link ascending through the floating rubble of Hyrule Castle to follow a teleporting Ganondorf around the boss arena, or slapping together a quick bike to chase him around Hyrule Field. Maybe even reimagine Zelda's classic "tennis match" using Recall? But no, instead we just get another flurry-rushing-hearty-stew-chugging slugfest.
And the new mechanics' lack of involvement in the story is even more egregious. They made a game about rebuilding Hyrule, and yet we don't use Ultrahand to help build houses? They made a game about the land being devastated by falling rubble, and yet we don't have to Recall any of it back into the sky? The Fuse ability wasn't even used in the repairing of the Master Sword, which would be the most obvious, natural story-development in history.
The abilities and story had fantastic potential to resonate with each other, so much so that it had to be intentional, but I think somewhere early in development they made the decision to switch focus to grindy, immediately satisfying tasks like Zonaite mining and Korok-launching. The Zelda team are great developers, they didn't mess up when making TotK; they were just making a mobile game while we expected an adventure.
Thanks for the kind words! Those are definitely great points, I didn't make it long enough to really feel the impact of what you are saying but it makes total sense. I especially like the idea of using ascend to get through falling debris - that would have been super cool.
To be fair, you did use the ability to help repair a village, though I wouldn't say the process was gratifying. The cutscene afterward was though.
Too many times I died to get a chest that had rock salt in it. Is Nintendo just fking with us? lol 😂
The depths suck! Its a vast world of NOTHING!
No not really
I read recently that the devs originally intended this to be DLC for BotW and it shows.
I think most of the people that heavily dislike this game are those that put ungodly hours into botw most of the videos I've seen like this have in "I've put hundreds of hours into this game" or something very similar to that
Just something I've noticed but yes this game has alot of flaws
I hate how zelda has become, it’s a snoozefest now. Literally just play any of the xenoblade games (even the worst one xc2) and you will find better expleoation combat and story than what the botw games have offered. I miss old zelda
It’s really not that bad though
Just say it’s not for you I’ve enjoyed it a lot
Heck there’s even creativity to be had in Xenoblade 2 and 3 with the blade and class systems for combat
My God the enemy variety was abysmal and ruined the game for me. The Gleeok was the only thing I liked about the game. How did they not reimagine the Darknut and have him as a mini-boss on the floating islands where he can knock you off with one swing of a giant sword....how did they turn Poes into a collectible item instead of creepy ghosts hiding in the pitch black darkness of the depths? How did they turn Dodongos into a friendly animal that are in 1 location in the game and do absolutely nothing but stand there? Come on Nintendo.
I find it funny that you said that the final fight looks kinda cool. It is one of the worst parts of the game. I was literally laughing throughout the entire thing. Ganondorf can be killed instantly with rockets, wheels, lasers, any kind of recalled object really. Plus all the champions that you recruit are downed in the second phase which makes recruiting them a completely fucking useless quest. But also helps because they stop getting in the way when you're trying to attack. Also, they did the cinematic final phase thing again which just sucks imo. It ruins all tension because you can't lose now. It's practically a cutscene.
Also Ganondorf taking away your hearts for good was the only really good thing. Now I wish that happened in the depths but temporarily until you go in sunlight. Rather than being able to just eat some sunlight food to get your hearts back anyway. Seriously, who designed that. The whole point of the gloom was to have a harder challenge for those who were asking for one and they fucked it all up.
TLDR: OH FOR FUCKS SAKE. YOU DONE FUCKED IT UP.
Wait Did You Get Minaru??????????????????
To each, their own. I loved TOTK and plowed through it in 11 days... while BOTW took me 6 years (release date, till 2 weeks before TOTK release) to finish.
HOW?!? IM AT LIKE 300 HOURS AND HAVE 2 OUT OF 4 OF THE MAIN SAGES. 🤦♂️ LOL
@@gromeka really? i beat the game after a while but because i wanted to finished the whole storyline and i wanted to see the whole game
Lol I love it too. Been playing since like august and still at it. I like just wandering around and discovering everything. Could've beaten Ganon ages ago, but I still have yet to meet him face to face lol.
@@grossartus I'll go back and play it some more. I just completed the main story.
@@gromeka I played 90+ hours... just the main story but, I'll go back to it.
16:40
Wait so is he actually admitting that the melee weapons are a spam Y fest?
"Of course you aren't having fun. You need to solve the problem by interacting with the boring system less."
For the love of god, I know these people are smart enough to realize why that argument is garbage. Why are so many people so afraid to say "yeah alright, it could be better"?
They end up defaulting to "Your experience is wrong and not real, and I'm not going to even try to realistically understand how you came to that conclusion."
for both botw and totk, i set a personal rule of "if i wouldn't eat it, Link doesn't have to" and that made the otherwise ho-hum cooking mechanic a lot more engaging. Like I'm not eating unsalted fish skewers with the eyes still in, gross. But the lil fish pies and fruit cakes and curries n stuff were super cute! I was much more motivated to look at the recipes on the walls in stables, cut grass for hylian rice, and go back to town shops for tabantha wheat, cane sugar, milk, goat butter, and goron spice, rather than just buying arrows from beedle and thats it
That said i HATED the building and vehicles GOD so frustrating, never worth it, and it took forever. it felt like nintendo saw all the silly botw vehicles and went "yes lets make that ridculousness part of the next game" NO IT WAS ONLY FUNNY TO WATCH OTHER PEOPLE DO IT
If I weren't streaming for a friend who enjoyed herself a lot more than me, I probably would've quit 20 hours in.
Also the fact they don't care about good story or storytelling anymore feels like such a betrayal I may be done with the series entirely
Totk is way better than botw reason why most ppl don’t like totk is bc they burnout by botw. Both of these games are overrated af
Wanna know what I think is the worst part? The ONE benefit that reusing the world could have had, is by having meaningful connections between the two games. You (Link) stopped Ganon and saved Hyrule! So everyone will recognize and treat you like a hero, right? And you'll see the rebuilding that took place in the years between. Maybe explore the new castle town! Right?
...No. There's none of that. None. Every NPC is just like 'durrr who are you?' and there are only TINY changes to the map. It's unacceptable.
I’m trying to force myself to finish it but it’s hard. Finished SM2 and BG3. Couldn’t put those games down. But feel guilty for not finishing Tears. One of my main hang ups other than what you said is the 30fps graphics. I want to like this game.
If Tears could at least maintain a LOCKED 30fps in 95% of the game's scenarios, it would've been passable for me. As it stands, though, the game shits itself during casual Ultrahand use. The Switch can barely handle it. When I was younger (currently in my 40s), I probably would've overlooked the stuttering performance, but now I just don't have the patience to deal with Nintendo's crappy hardware.
The long awaited sequel!!...Oh yeah, and TotK. Still love the game, but I was very happy to hear your criticisms. Even as a BotW superfan, I can admit that this new era of Zelda has overall been a uniquely incredible disappointment. The first game was incomplete, and experimental to its own detriment. Age of Calamity is bogged down by BotW's meh narrative to the point of contradiction, as well as generally being a slog to play through. And TotK is in some ways the game BotW should've been from the start, while also doubling down on its worst aspects with nothing to show for in the way of gameplay evolution. I love these games artistically, musically, etc., and have had my fair share of fun, but as monuments to this new era of a supposedly grander Zelda...they're sorely lacking.
Ok so this comment is about BOTW not TOTK, but I think the point still stands. I've been watching 'BOTW is overrated/missing something' vids after that feeling of burnout I got playing it. Got really burnt out, didn't play it for about 4 to 6 months, returned to it just so I can finish the game. On a side note, I finished it just a couple of days after finishing Hollow Knight, and HK is literally one of the best experiences I had in gaming.
Looking back, having played just 2 Zelda games before BOTW, which are Twilight Princess and Minish Cap, it made me realize how memorable and fun those games were. There's just something about those games that made it stick to me more than BOTW.
2:05 Gotta disagree with this. I missed multiple parts of the tutorial including the cold weather pants(causing me to have to rush out of the cold zone), the Zonai gumball machine explanation, and I just avoided the glider because I didn't expect them to do anything without a power source. This caused further issues on the ground because I missed Lookout Landing as I was looking for pants and I didn't get the glider for about 20 hours since my quest log got switched along the way and I didn't know I wasn't on the main quest line.
This 😂 I got up in the air with Impa and had to reload to my last saved point because I had no glider and no way to descend in the balloon.
@@hanburgundy4317 I used the closest shrine, I think.
@@hanburgundy4317 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 LOL You Forgot To Meet Purah
I recall that I used recall to clear most of the shrines. Those makeshift elevators sure were fun to look at
There is these games called Dragon Quest Builders 1 & 2; which is kinda an mixed between Minecraft, an farmers game and Zelda games; especially with Breath of the Wild & Tears of the Kingdom formulas, and I had way more fun with DQB 1&2 than I do with Zelda BotW & TotK.