Because, for Eldin, the source of the areas heat, comes from below, so naturally it be the same in the depths, the other areas are basically based on the weather and climate above, which in the depth would have 0 influence.
@@TerranigmaQuintet They should have still found some ways to vary them up to make them more original looking. That's one of my biggest disappointments with the Depths. I think the complaints are overrated, I like the Depths a lot, but the environments is a problem I can't argue against.
@@TerranigmaQuintetbut it’s a video game, not real life. They had any excuse to put whatever biome they wanted underneath the depths of it made the game more fun and interesting, which it would have. Given that the godlike Zonai lived down there, they could’ve had purple rain biome beneath hebra and said “welp, Zonai magic”.
It feels like "The Imprisoning War" was A fight, not so much a war. They could have shown the WAR from each of the sages perspective. With the ruin that happens to their homes and people. Instead of the same cut scene from the same simgle fight.
Yeah, it definitely was a war, with the entire nation of hyrule fighting off monsters. But we don't get to see it. Its just the imprisoning battle for us
I definitely think the depths and the caves should have been combined. A maze of endless tunnels which seem to just go deeper and deeper, occasional pockets of open space just revealing how far under the earth you really are. It would make exploring it a real challenge, both of your skill and ability to navigate. It would also be fun to drop into a well only to realize after minutes that there isnt going to be an end.
@@amilisom mhm. Add rope, hooks, and complex cave structures and you have one of the best traversal puzzle you could ever design. Realistic caves are an amazing setting for a game but I havent seen any exploring it well, the closest is something like deep rock and even that doesnt do it justice.
@@chinstion Celeste is a really good game, but its a platformer and 2d. A 3d game like breath of the wild with more grounded movement works better for the narrow cave environment, which we almost got for a lot of the caves, my problem is they suffer because they're designed to be really small and simple.
Honestly, why aren't the Rito in ANY of the sky islands or at least exploring them? They're flying creatures. Not to mention the new Zonai tech would clearly allow Hylians to reach these sky islands with devices as well. I was really excited when I got to my first sky Island, only to be absolutely let down when I realized none of them had anything worthwhile exploring.
@@blizzfreak245think you got to remember that half of the people in Hyrule are scared of visiting the sky islands because they don't know if it's dangerous or not.
@@blizzfreak245 I'm glad someone else noticed. The fact we don't find a single living person, not even one curious Rito up there, is odd, especially considering how close some of the islands are to some mountain tops.
The fundamental problem with the story, is that the Zelda team's policy of making stand-alone games clashes with the concept of a direct sequel in the same world.
I feel the same with how they seem to want to grow out of the timelines because I guess they're too complicated for newcomers to follow. Yet at the same time they can't stop alluding to past names and events. It feels like a cheap way to keep people theorising about a greater story than the one they actually delivered.
@@Chicken_Done Oh, I think the problem is the opposite. There are callbacks, but they do absolutely nothing with them or outright answer the questions themselves. So it feels moot to bother theorizing about things like the Gerudo pyramid having so many answers or the Depths having no answers.
I think they could've actually gotten away with using the same hyrule map if they had only made link be the one that goes back in time instead. We would still explore what essentially is hyrule but way in the past with different pre evolved enemies, different weapons armor and lootable items throughout the world. That i think could've fundamentally changed the game and made it stand out more. I would've loved to play that game
That could have really been interesting... Link with his amnesia kinda got to dodge a lot of the losses that Zelda experienced in BOTW. Link trying to resolve some of Hyrules past problems only to have to watch them fall, and then Link (and the player) ultimately having to be the one to realize what they have to do and sacrifice and press that button themselves would have been really compelling. You could also have had glimpses of Zelda going princess mode and trying to command the forces of Hyrule in the present to prepare to fight and protect themselves, to remind you of what you're trying to preserve in the future, then glimpses of her trying to reach you before she figures out a way to turn you back (maybe by somehow swapping who's the dragon? then resolving it like the regular ending with Rauru and Sonia) and you get that last fight.
@@rebellemuria It would have been cool to go back as link to JUST before Rauru showed up. Imagine you're thrown into a Hyrule before it was a kingdom, when it was truly wild and free, especially with how it's implied by Ganondorf that it was a savage land where the only way to survive was to be strong. You can still have the monsters with the horns and just explain them away as past versions of the monsters, you can still have the new monsters like the Gleeocks and explain them away as having gone extinct. You can explore this wild Hyrule for a bit, which seems like Link's dream world, get new weapons, new clothes, then you start seeing the visions of future Zelda, and that's what drives the story. You see a vision of her with the whole Hylian army behind her, and you realize that in order for this to happen, you must unify Hylians into a single kingdom so they can survive and build settlements, as opposed to the mostly nomadic people in the past version. So you go around and do some quests and fight some bosses and maybe a dungeon, and you unify the Hylians. Rauru, having lost his people, thus, having lost his community, sees you doing this and decides to come and help you in any way he can, and he gives you the Zonai powers. The next glimpse is Sidon saving Zelda's life, and you go and solve whatever problem the Zora's have in the past and establish a peaceful relationship between them and the Hylians, and so on until you've unified all the races. Last up is the Gerudo, who you see helping Zelda, so you must convince them to join Hyrule and live in peace, but unbeknownst to you, Ganondorf has just returned from a war campaign in a faraway land, and he does not accept your offer, and resents what you've done with his world. This starts the imprisoning war, you can still find the strongest warriors of each race and form the sages, Rauru still gives everyone the stones, by know you can have Zelda imply that she's found a way to bring you back, so you entrust Rauru, your closest friend, to be the first king of Hyrule, instead of taking that title yourself as the rightful unifier of the land. In your final fight with Ganondorf, you're about to lose (scripted) when you're able to take something from him, and in that moment Zelda brings you back to the present, where you find out that adding the item you took from him to the Mastersword unlocks it's full power, and you fight Ganondorf for the last time in the present, Zelda can still sacrifice herself to become a dragon using a stone you brought back with you from the past, and she can do this in order to defeat the draconified Demon King, and the epilogue can still be Rauru and Sonia turning her back.
To this day, I’m still salty that almost no one in the world seems to recognize Link and what he did for them. It felt like my journey in BotW was completely invalidated.
What do you mean almost nobody? Most of the characters do. There's literally only a few that should, but don't for whatever reason... those being Hestu, Bolson, and- maybe- Beetle. He's largely recognized almost everywhere else.
@@WindMageMaster I mean almost nobody because I MEAN almost nobody outside of “important” characters. It’s been six(?) years in-game since BotW, and Link should be a goddamn celebrity. How is it that after all that time, especially with the invention of the PRINTING PRESS, Link just seems to be another random face to the general populace?? And don’t even get me started on the fact that Link seems to be a stranger in Hateno Village, despite the fact that he LIVES THERE.
@@Hanakin-Sidewalker Even many NPCs that weren't in BotW recognize him and celebrate him, so I'm not sure what you mean. It's not literally every NPC, but it's quite a few. There's even a statue of him in Zora's domain with Sidon and the random NPC Zora's even react to him when he's by the statue. He also did not live in Hateno- he gave the house to Zelda.
@@WindMageMasterIt’s very much implied (to me and many others, anyway) that Link and Zelda shared the house. Where else would Link live if he just gave the house solely for Zelda to live in? (Okay, there’s many places, but still)
@@WindMageMaster Pretty sure they're living together there, for what little time they don't spend traveling. You don't just unlock the power of the goddess from your affection for someone and then take their house. She's got Link's spare scrunchie there, and it's decorated by Zelda because she's clearly more of a nester as is common in hetero relationships.
This might be a shallow criticism, but between the initial trailer with mummified Ganon and reveal of the depths, I thought the game was going to be creepier. Like TOTK would be the Majora of the Wild duo. This isn’t really a valid criticism because I acknowledge it’s my own preconceptions that sway me, but that’s all I can really add to the conversation. You already covered everything else so well!
Nah its a valid criticism. The first teaser used creepy sounding music, creepy reversed voice clips, implied that Zelda almost died, used Ganondorf’s moving corpse as a climax…. I could go on. I walked away from that first look with chills that wouldn’t go away, that BOTW’s world would be so wildly subverted. They built so much tension… then did… nothing with it?
I’d say it definitely was in certain areas, ganon straight up braking the hylian queens back was sick. His corruption of the korok forest and the phantom Ganons were super creepy. I played majoras mask as a teen not a kid and it wasn’t very creepy to me. Definitely creepier in some areas like the moon and majora as a concept but they’re equal in my opinion. Twilight princess was the creepiest one to me ganon was on straight demon time in that
I decided early to find all the dragon tears, this caused several story problems. Link knows what happened to Zelda and where she is, yet: He'll continue to chase rumors around the kingdom. He refuses to tell Paya the "Zelda" that warned her about the ring ruins was false. He acts surprised at Hyrule castle. At the very least, the final memory should of been locked behind certain story progression. Before that, even with every other memory, you could argue that while Link (and the player) has pieced together what happened. He doesn't definitively know, and is desperate for it not to be true, so would be willing to chase any lead.
It's such a mess. they commit so hard to giving players complete freedom of choice that they neglect to even attempt steering them towards any sort of remotely optimal path. even noticing the correct order of the tears is basically an easter egg that's never once pointed out.
ToTK seems incredibly slapped together last minute, which confuses me so much. They had Seven years, and this is what they did? I think I would've preferred the DLC of Breathe of the Wild. ToTK is just an awful game, gameplay, and story-wise. The build system is really cool... However, does nothing but replace the paraglider and bullet time. It's not better, it's forced and annoying. BOTW is way better still.
The sad part for a game that supposedly focuses on the Zonai.... Is that we learned almost NOTHING about them! Hell, they're barely even shown in the game! We still have just as many if not more questions about the Zonai as we did before we played the game.... I expected to be steeped in the lore of the Zonai, only to be left grossly disappointed with the Narrative of this game as a whole. I absolutely LOVE the gameplay iself, but man... The story & how poorly it's both presented and written really takes the experience down for me.
Yeah, I agree on that. We learnt practically nothing about their culture, only about their technology (and not even that was explained properly). "Magic genius scientists" has to be one of my least favorite tropes ever.
right? everything in the game is about them, from the sky to the depths to everything in hyrule's past, yet we know about as much about them as we did before the game came out, except now we know they're weird goat-looking mfs lmao
They did the same with the Sheikah in BOTW. There were Sheikah symbols everywhere but nothing was really added to the lore. Unfortunately, BOTW was the game that made me give up on the Zelda lore
@Dairunt1 Agreed. It really is sad how lacking the narrative is in these games. I honestly think the entire thing is rather poorly written.... Some scenes feel more like a bad fanfic than a professional narrative! For example, the scene of Rauru saying he prefers to keep Ganon close... That was so cliche. When I saw that I immediately knew what would happen next. He just "accepts his fealty" & gets Sonya killed. It was so bad. It all happens so quick, with little way of development. It's like they had to quickly come up with some reason for Ganon to get his power, and THIS was the best they could come up with? There simply isn't enough of a story here! And what's here is just so badly presented... with short, out of order cutscenes. The premise of the story is solid, but the way it's presented is just plain bad. I thought that MAYBE, just maybe... They would have learned their lesson from BOTW, but they ended up doing the EXACT same thing! I just don't get why they thought that was a good idea... And worse yet, the fact that hardly anyone in Hyrule even recognizes Link in this game! After he spent all that time with them in BOTW, everyone acts like he's a total stranger. That alone took me completely out of the narrative. Yet another baffling narrative choice by Nintendo. They truly need to hire better writers, cus this was just bad in my humble opinion. The gameplay was amazing, but the story was by far the weakest part of both these games.
They destroyed the Zonai imo. They made them too personal, and didn't expand on their story enough, complete antithesis of the Sheika. We met hundreds of Sheika yet they were as mysterious by the end as they were at the beginning, they really sold the idea of this god-like culture, and adding a living one in the DLC only enhanced it. Whereas with the Zonai they were just reskinned Hylians, I couldn't even really appreciate the fact that they're meant to be moon rabbits because it feels more like a design gimmick than an interesting aspect of their story.
You have summed up my feelings exactly. The game is so much bigger, but in weird ways feels smaller and repeats so many of the main beats from BotW. One of my main complaints is, for a direct sequel, how little it references the first game. All the Sheikah tech is mysteriously gone, replaced by identical Purah tech and Zonai shrines. Malice is no more, but is replaced with the almost identical Gloom. Very few of the NPCs even reference the events of the first game. Even Ganondorf seems to say "Calamity Ganon? What's that? I've been stuck down here." I was looking forward to a continuation of the story, but the developers seemed more interested in making it stand alone for those who hadn't played BotW.
The fact that they didn't directly continue on the story in many places left so much on the table, it really is such a huge missed opportunity. This iteration of Link and Zelda have been though so much and most certainly evolved as individuals, in their relationship, and in the greater world of Hyrule. Much of this goes unacknowledged. Unfortunate since the combined story of TOTK + BOTW has a lot of great material to work with, even in its current form, so it could have been even better had they acknowledged the connection between TOTK and BOTW.
I think they tried to wipe the slate clean for newcomers while keeping the BOTW feel while taking commentary from fans and rectyfying their mistakes... which leads to tonal mismatch and why they just didn't send link to the past... they could have re use map and all and avoid all the 'bUt WheRe is SheIkAh TeCh?" questions (which fair, but where the hell is sheikah tech?).
@@knp01 my personal head cannon was - they simply just destroyed it. (which is better than their saying "Oh yeah it just disappeared poof). like if it were me, even knowing that "Ganon was gone" i wouldn't really want any kind of tech (that was intact), to simply exist and be taken over and possibly kill everyone again so they just tore it all down. the new towers etc were similarly based on it -(You can even see some of the pieces) - but probably not to the degree of being completely. the same as the ones in BoTW
The annoying part is a number of these issues can fixed with a little bit of dialogue. The Sheikah tech was buried/destroyed because it was too dangerous. Or gloom is reminds me of a stronger malice, etc.
@@lapniappe I have issues with this explanation- they destroyed it it with whom exactly, there are total 20 people living in hyrule and contrary to people's idea, proper destruction of builts like sheikah shrines would take time. Two- they destroyed it, but left exactly enough of Sheikah tech for the towers and enerfy grid to power the towers, including 11 extra teleport pads from divine beast that Robbie had laying in his lab. Sorry, but no explanation just cuts it in game world even. We can have headcanons and come up with explanations, but the truth is that devs didn't care enough to make even the most basic explanation realistic and coherent in-game. And this kind of incoherence is on the devs and their "gameplay first, sorry later" approach to designning games in general. The tell just how they didn't care about storytelling is the fact that they didn't have proper script writer position while developing totk and instead they said the story was influenced by all the lead designer and they included actual writers into that pool. It tells me that there was no one effectively responsible for the coherence of the script and story and there were simply to many people who had that influence and they lost track of it while concentrating at the same time on coding the new abilities.
The reasons I dislike the game: 1. Too many things feel like a redo of BOTW's story, rather than a sequel. Same plot structure with Ganon taking over Hyrule Castle, and his minions tormenting the four major cities. All the Sheikah tech, which played a huge part in BOTW, is inexplicably gone, and is replaced by Zonai tech. All the Koroks decide to hide around the world again. Instead of the Calamity we now have the Upheaval, which sounds much less threatening. It just doesn't feel like a sequel. 2. Fusing is cool, but it kills your momentum, and too much of the game focuses on fusing stuff. Fusing is slow and clunky, and parts often don't attach the way you want them to. 3. The Sage abilities are a pain to activate, while the ones from BOTW were so easy to use. There, they were added to abilities you already have. (Urbosa's Fury = spin attack, Daruk's Protection = Guarding, Revali's Gale = Jumping, Mipha's Grace =dying). In TOTK, you have to find the right blue spirit among four of them, tap a button before they run off again, and in Riju's case wait an eternity for her area of effect to widen. AND GOD FORBID if you miss with Riju's ability. Wait, and do it all again! 4. Fused weapons break too easily and look ugly. There were breakable weapons in BOTW too, but they weren't as punishing as in TOTK. I also hate seeing green glue on all my weapons. Why can't we just have fusable weapons as an option, rather than a necessity? 5. Remote Bombs were super convenient in BOTW. Why couldn't we have them in TOTK too? 6. Why can't you buy elemental arrows anymore? Did every storeowner in Hyrule just forget how to make them? I hate fusing an item to EVERY SINGLE ARROW! Either let me buy elemental arrows from shops, or allow me to fuse multiple arrows at once. 7. "Let me tell you of the Imprisoning War and the Demon King for the fourth time..." Speaking of the previous sages, why couldn't they just have names and faces?
@@MutedGrowl So you see this comment with a bunch of very well laid out critiques. It is written by a man who clearly played the entirety of the game and gave a real effort towards trying to enjoy it. You then say to yourself "I'm gonna reply to that comment not with any sort of intelligent reply, but saying that he's wrong and the game is objectively good" (with no reasoning to show for it or response to any single part of the comment) I cannot fathom this sort of mindset man 😭 people can dislike or like the same things and this is the point of conversation. If your goal is just to say "you're objectively wrong" and have zero dialogue, why comment at all?
One thing that would have been REALLY cool as late sidequests would have been finding lore about how the 3 other Dragons became dragons! To hear their story of the people who swallowed a Tear to become a Dragon. That would have been neat!
My biggest issue was that it didn’t really feel like a sequel. They chose to accommodate for new players instead of rewarding the older players with the familiar atmosphere. Including several npcs not recognising Link, in Breath Of The Wild, I don’t think many players took much notice of the Zonai, as there was so much focus on the Sheikah and the calamity of 10000 years ago. Now, you have “Zonai research teams” and the same feeling of mystery isn’t there anymore. Also they created an Ancient Hero’s aspect, but didn’t really address the ancient calamity, which in the end had no bearing whatsoever on the story. The game is a technical marvel though.
I feel the exact same way. If Tears of the Kingdom moved a couple things around, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see it as a standalone game away from sequel territory. Yet it's not. These NPCs *ARE* meant for this Link and they *HAVE* met him. To be honest, I'm sad they cared so much about being fully and 100% story accessible for new players. So many of these changes to familiarize yourself with the world just seem cheap to someone who's already played, and it just isn't cohesive at all.
@@ToadstoolFilms I can't remember any NPC mentioning Zonai, we only knew of the Zonai because of the Zonai Ruins in Faron. There is one NPC in Lurelin, whose Shrine Quest involves an unknown ancient language that isn't ancient Sheikah and could be of Zonai origin, but the NPC himself never mentions this
That's just Nintendo's design philosophy. In every game they make; they want the individual games to be able to stand on their own. It's a double edged sword.
Ngl, I legit bursted out laughing when you showed the 4 sages cutscenes playing at once. I knew those scenes were redundant and repetitive but jeez that just makes them seem even worse. What you said is true though. The only highlight of that part of the story is Mineru's take of it. Every other sage has the exact same bland retelling with ZERO new info learned. I get Nintendo thinking any region of the game could be a player's first but this is ridiculous.
God, I seriously almost skipped the last two in my very first playthrough. That's not a good sign. I'm usually not very analytical in the middle of a blind excited playthrough, so if something takes me out long enough to recognize this is kinda shit, it's bad.
It goes to show that this game didn’t take 6 years to make, that was a lie. They were rushing this story evidently. Could pick up any drunk guy off the street who’s never even heard of Zelda to write better cutscene dialogue than that bs.
Yeah being called a tourist in Haetno is really weird...I mean its still Links House...I remember that in Zeldas Diarys there was a mention about Link so I would assume they lived there both?
@@Pmarlon231 IDK where else he would live fhdsjka i'm sure he still protects her since the sheikah tribe didn't mention that they took care of her while link went off and did other things, so idk why link wouldn't live in that house too. it's not like we see him actually having a house... or anywhere else he stayed. i'd even understand him sleeping outside by a campfire bc he did that most of the time in my botw save anyway, but, he'd still do it near zelda, otherwise, why the hell else is he always with her whenever we do manage to see them together 😭
I was glad to get every root node the first time. That way, I knew I would never have to do it again. But frankly, I wouldn’t want to do it again moreso because there’s fucking no reason to, rather than it simply being a slog.
It’s a big problem with the reward structure of the depths vs the surface. Complete a shrine? You get what is essentially a piece of heart, tangible power that is of direct immediate use to you. Complete every shrine? You get an incredibly unique armor set, and subconsciously that set represents all of the puzzles and trials you overcame on the way there, you will have a favourite one, you’ll have a hated one, you’ll have one that made you feel clever for understanding it, one that made you feel dumb for not understanding it. You’ll probably have at least one memory of finding the shrine or making your way to it, engaging with the world in the process. Contrast that with lightroots: You find one lightroot, you get a bit of map revealed and the area is lit up without needing to use lightblooms. Find all of them? You get an icon in your key items. That’s it. Lighting a single lightroot is underwhelming because all it does is light the area, an area that you probably lit when navigating TO the lightroot, and afterwards means that you have to engage with the depths mechanics less. Lighting them all? Lightseeds are now a dead mechanic to you, you can see the entirety of the grey identical biome, and you get a menu icon that reminds you of… all the times you walked up to a lightroot and hit A. Like, say what you want about korok seeds and the golden turd at the end of it all, but at least the turd had a bit of entertaining meta commentary (doing all this for a literal shiny poo), you had to engage with the mechanics of Koroks, you’ll probably be able to reflect on your journey and draw SOME emotions from it (amusement at korok torture, bewilderment at how Koroks were in some places, surprise at an innocuous thing granting a reward, relief at being able to hold more), and for the first third they had a benefit to collecting them for inventory size Reflecting on the reward the lightroots give you just serves as a reminder of how ultimately hollow the depths are. The lightroot reward actually managed to be worse than the golden poo.
When I saw the sky islands for the first time, one of my first ideas for more was the north and western world barrier canyon being a large sky island. Not all still connected, but in the approximate shape so you know what it was. Varying heights and sizes of all the bits that made it up would have made exploring it so fun
@@harrylane4 As a Skyward Sword lover; real. God, how I would’ve loved if Skyward Sword got some room to build up the sky islands a bit more. But, I get why they didn’t. Still, while I LOVE the linear storytelling, (I like games that almost feel like books or movies, maybe I just don’t like games much 💀-), I also wish the world could’ve had a little more time to be fleshed out. It’s almost why it makes it MORE disappointing because while SS at least had story, the whole point of TOTK was to flesh out the _world._
My biggest complaint for TotK was seriously it’s absolute lack of connection with BotW. It feels more like an entirely different Zelda game with a different story that was never supposed to be a sequel to BotW, that happens to have all the same characters and the same Hyrule
The entire land is a connection to BotW. It is being rebuilt for years and the characters grew too with their own stories. How is that not a connection?
@@Oliveiraverde Except literally nothing is connected. Everything Sheikah, which made up the entireity of BOTWs 'culture', is gone and replaced with Zonai, including shit that couldn't be moved without scarring the land, no one remembers anything from the last game, and nothing has really changed. Up to and including you doing the exact same shit you did in the last game.
@@TheDapperDragon How come it is not remembered? Just and example, there is a memorial outside of the Hyrule's Castle dedicated to the people who were lost during the Calamity.
Despite marketing saying otherwise, the game is probably the most light-hearted Zelda game out there. I wouldn't even have a problem with it, if it wasn't advertised as a darker experience.
I think it would've been super cool if the past zelda cutscenes were playable bits. Making us play as Zelda, being linear, to scratch that old 3D zelda itch, each one ending with a cutscene and unlocking the next one
Yea no thanks. Literally 0 point in letting us play a cutscene as a player, and given the context there likely would have been little gameplay actually involved outside of mashing the skip dialogue button. Thank god they didnt make them "playable"
A piece of frustration I have is that what you did in BoTW has no effects on the world of ToTK. Now the system to read the save is there, because your horses are transported between games...
Yeah that was my biggest issue too. It's a direct sequel and yet no one knew who Link was. In Hateno village when everyone was like who are you, I was like ???????.
I do feel anything more substantial than carrying over horses would’ve been unfair to the Wii U players. (Though I’m likely biased since I’m one of them.)
The amount of effort that would take isn't remotely worth the payoff. The small things like horses and the champions picture is enough. Doing that would need to remove Tarrey town if you didn't do it, and that would just be a loss for players
@@infinitecurliethink about it a little more though. For the majority of hylians, Link was just some dude who came through. Even for Bolson, Link was a client, not much more. The ones who remember you, the races and people like Hudson, all had their lives greatly affected by Link. Given the school in Hateno, not a ton of people even knew about the calamity being finished, much less knowing Link was involved.
1:58:09 This is actually incorrect! A single Rito that resides in Rito Village will refer to the top of the town as "Vah Medoh's Perch"! Which makes it even WEIRDER that the Divine Beasts just vanished.
@Jonnyrc18 well, the shrines and towers went back underground, and that makes good sense since Ganon was defeated. The Guardians were obviously scavenged for parts, which we can see in several places, especially the Skyview Towers. The only real mystery that doesn't make much sense is the Divine Beasts
What they should have done was keep them as deactivated pieces in the world, something you can't interact with but stones near them each for the champion that lost their lifes(like the ones all over hyrule)
While I definitely enjoyed TOTK and don't think it sucks (still a 7/10 for me) the thing I think the most regarding the game is just the potential it had. Imagine if the story was lore-friendly, properly developed and wasn't sugar-coated. Imagine if they had made new weapon types (including the field of shields and bows) and not just the same things with shiny cosmetics. Imagine if the combat was better and faster. Imagine if they hadn't prioritised quantity over quality and had a fantastic and new surface and sky map as well as cool caves. Imagine if the dungeons were longer and more traditional. Imagine if it cared about continuity and coherence. It's just... Damn, man. This game could have been AWESOME...
Exactly, looking at how much potential this game had always hurts, it’s tragic that they did nothing with the combat and weapons even tho it’s such a fundamental part of the game Weapons are still more like ammo then actual weapons
...why do you care? they are barely mentioned in botw, and serve their purpose in totk after two games on the n64 we still knew next to nothing about literally anything in those games, but im certain youll tell me its the best thing youve ever played. The zonai are fujibayashi wanting an explaination for highly advanced magitech, they dont need some sort of deep backstory, they serve as a simple origin point. Thankfully, because the zelda team has decided to stop listening to manchildren sending death threats to them on the internet, youll have plenty more zelda games that will talk about that race.
@@daniel8181I care because I know they could have done so much more with the concept. It just feels like all the theorizing prior to the launch of TotK led to something completely underwhelming and underdeveloped.
@@daniel8181what a bizzare rant. In any sort of media I want to know more about how the world works, and that includes ancient civilizations and how they affect the world you play in.
I think the point is that the Zelda team just does that. They build up new races and then give you very little information about them. Because Nintendo isn't interested in having a grand cohesive world history spanning 12k years. They just write a little story every five years that may or may not directly connect to one other story. And then the fans go nuts over "tHe TiMeLiNe" when Nintendo never actually cared for it, beyond the bare minimum to sell you the "Hyrule Historia" book
I remember when I was so excited while I was exploring the Great Plateau in TotK when I found the place where the Shrine of Resurrection had been. When all I found was a little cave with a couple of Yiga in it, it felt like the game was telling me that I was stupid for caring about the world I had spent dozens of hours exploring in the last game.
@foxhoundslug Except that there's literally no evidence of that whatsoever. Given the game's general habit of pretnending BotW never happened, it feels more like a cute little nod to BotW than any actual attempt at continuity (like how you get a motorcycle-esque schematic under where the Shrine of Resurrection used to be), which just feels like rubbing salt in the wound. It doesn't even make sense if you think about it at all. Why only those shrines, specifically? It's not like the other chasms correspond to shrines in the last game. Hell, why those shrines at all? Those four are literally the only shrines Link is guaranteed to have already gotten the Spirit Orbs from and he no longer has the Sheikah Slate, he wouldn't have been able gain anything from them anyway. Hell, how would Ganondorf even have known about those shrines? He's been sealed away for at least several millenia and only knew about Link's existence at all because Rauru mentioned Link's name once. Why wouldn't he destroy the Shrines of Light instead, things that he would probably recognize from his time as a mortal? Where the hell did the rest of the shrines go? This is just like the "Oh they must just have dismantled the Divine Beasts" theory. It's headcanon that tries to paper over TotK's bad storytelling with a theory that almost certainly wasn't intended by the devs (official dev statement was that all the Shiekah tech just... vanished, and apparently nobody cared for some reason), and doesn't even make any sense if you think about it for five seconds.
Since it would have been literally much easier to not change anything at all rather than strip out all the shrines, towers and Sheikah technology - I have to believe it was done on purpose to try to hint at a particular change in this world’s history.
@@DeadDancers not in terms of writing. instead of making a continuous story and building upon what was set up in the previous game, they tore it all down and only put some cute nods to it. i don't think it's that deep, they just wanted to change it enough to justify it being a new game imo lol
Right? Caves where interiors should have been was a recurring theme. I mean I was really excited to see Akkala Citadel had an opening at the front, only to sigh, "Oh, of course." When I realized it was another cave.
@kiptheott5932 it wouldn't have been hard to explain the dismantling of the divine beasts either if they wanted. "We didn't want them to be corrupted again and used against us" simple as pie, but they didn't really mention them at all.
it would've been so cool if the whole game had just taken place in the distant past. we could've explored the earliest version of Hyrule - they could've used the same map, but changed it drastically - it would've made having Zonai technology and vanished Sheikah tech make sense, and Link and Zelda could've had their adventure together or in tandem, something I've been wishing for for a long time.
All of the lightroots in the depths correspond to a shrine on the surface. I have no idea why they didn't make the surface shrines hidden/concealed until activate their corresponding lightroots in the depths. It would have given the perfect explanation why they were hidden in BotW and incentivized exploring the depths.
What if Rauru acted as a sort of Navi throughout Totk? Instead of vanishing for no stated reason, he could've stayed in links arm, giving backstory to the sky islands and depths locations since he would have knowledge of them, which would greatly flesh out the new content, and this wouldn't affect the plot too much, since he wouldn't know about zelda's transformation or anything involving the sky islands being lifted. it would've provided so much depth to gain the backstory of new locations and depth to rauru as he reacts to the changes from his hyrule to the current one. You would need to rework sonia's death and the imprisoning war to preserve those mysteries, but I think that this would've greatly added to this game.
Or even if not Rauru, then Mineru, she's literally also a spirit inside of A RING ON HIS FINGER AND CAN CALL ON HER AT ANY TIME ONCE FOUND. HOW DID WE NOT CAPITLISE AND HAVE HER ACT AS FI :(
Nah, he definitely would have known Zelda was the light dragon. He was there when Mineru told Zelda about Draconification, and he would probably notice how odd it is that there is a golden haired dragon flying about. Failing that, he would probably be able to sense his light energy within the dragon like he did when he first met Zelda…
Fun fact, the Ascend Ability was actually originally a dev tool, used for quick escapes during betas, and they ended up enjoying it so much that they wanted to share it with us! I'm very grateful for that choice, i absolutely LOVE ascend
@@created3612 thats kinda fair honestly, i think maybe if it had some sort of limit other than the distance from the roof or the flat surface. if it had some sort of cap on exactly how far through things you could ascend, it might be better, for example i always found it weird asf when i would try to ascend through a wall in the depths and link would pop up all the way on the surface. maybe it will return, maybe it wont, with the series moving on from this era its definitely impossible to tell right now.
@nox1233 there are only like 5 areas you can ascend from the depths to the surface. And they're meant to be there, because some people don't want to fast travel so it's not good to limit that. It already was limited in the depths lol
I was so excited for this game, and the first few hours were amazing. It felt like there was so much new stuff to explore, and I couldn't wait for real dungeons this time. After a few hours of playing and exploring, the honeymoon phase wore off. I noticed that once I've seen a bit of the depths, caves, sky islands, etc. I've seen it all. Everything felt so copy pasted and samey even with new enemies and places to explore. My first temple was the wind temple, and it was super exciting at first. The ascent to a legendary ark in the sky was a cool concept, and the music as I got closer to it was incredible. The moment I learned it was basically a divine beast again (go to all terminals then fight boss), it felt like a kick in the gut. I genuinely had more fun and excitement getting there than I did completing it. The cutscene with the sage was cool the first time, but I quickly realized they're all the same, but with different sages/ companions. They have to be, because every temple could be your first. The whole experience feels cheapened as a result. I'm a longtime Zelda fan that's played since the late 90s, and the last two installments have been great in terms of exploration and gameplay, but heavily lacking in other areas such as dungeons and story. With Eiji Aonuma's statement, I began to worry that this is it from now on; this is the new Zelda, and the elements of the Zelda I knew and loved the series for in the first place weren't ever coming back. You're not alone in your opinion about combining the classic and new elements to make something even better, and your point about the way they've adapted each game based on reviews/ feedback gives me newfound hope that this is still a possibility in the future.
yea the beginning really fooled us into thinking this would be different lol. idk why they couldn't at least make more regional enemies. the gibdos gave me so much hope lol
To counter your point on the Sage cutscenes all being the same: no, they DON'T have to be. We've seen this in games before. We can absolutely tailor events around a player-chosen order.
@@swishfish8858 In that case, the fact that they could have executed it in a better fashion seems like a major oversight on their part. The game would have greatly benefited from that simple addition.
I felt similarly while I enjoyed the game the whole way through after I had beaten it I looked back like a week later and thought I am never going to play that game again whereas in botw I did replay it and kept on thinking about all the other opportunities would have had if they had more time to iron out issues in a potential sequel such as monotonous dungeons and mediocre storytelling this game kind've felt like the devs weren't holding back their ideas because of a lack of time to fully explore the potential of the world but instead because they felt like there was no more potential
For me the greatest sin was the total disregard for the established lore: No triforce, No goddesses, King Rauru? So what happened to the events of Skyward sword? The game game itself is good but the story doesn't make any sense from a lore perspective
There’s a video that really hammers home that if you put these games as after skyward sword but before everything else, then it fixes almost everything in the timeline. Although there is some flaws.
Right!!!!! Out of all the characters from BOTW they brought back, why didn’t they bring back Kass? He could’ve been the chief of the Rito. Would’ve been far better then what’s his name
@@jessedellross3245 His name is Teba and he was the one teased as the new "Champion" of the Rito after Revali's death in Breath of the Wild. Funnily enough Kass does seem way more fitting as chief of the Rito given his skills as a knowledgeable traveler and bard rather than a simple archer.
One thing I noticed about how I explored the game differently is I never walked anywhere in TotK, I always flew down from above. To get to new areas of the map, I'd usually just fly down. By the end of the game, I realized there was so much of the surface I hadn't explored yet, while in BotW I made a point to go everywhere I could. I think the familiarity with the map and the ability to cheese it by flying actually took away from my exploration of the surface.
there was no new fresh adventure feeling. I think using the same engine and same fucking map with same armor, same monsters and same everything wasn't a good choice
There's also no real puzzle in the game, everything can be solved by using you inventory and abilities in a non-intended way which kinda ruins the whole point of a puzzle, shrines and puzzles are suppose to be a change of pace from the free open world design. I don't understand why they allowed players to use their inventory so freely inside shrines, I get that the whole theme of the game is creativity but when you give the player too much freedom it kinda ruins the whole fun of figuring out a puzzle the way the developer intended.
@@notoriousclam3382 That's not the point, if you don't enforce game design onto the player the game can become a disconnected experience regardless of choice because you know at the back of your head that you're handicapping yourself from completing a task.
Should mention that Zelda not being present in the main story and being imprisoned for hundreds/ thousands of years to beat Ganon is a repeat of the exact same plot points of Breath of the Wild. When people saw the Tears of the Kingdom teaser a lot were hoping for a story with Zelda as a companion this time and not just a damsel, and this game actually has a companion system (ngl, when playing I initially thought Zelda would be the fifth Sage not Mineru). Not to mention the fact that Zelda's now over hundred's of thousands of years old and was obviously suffering during her imprisonment, yet is exactly the same by the end of both games like nothing has happened.
Yeahh Zeltik is more positive to the story the game tried to tell than I. In theory Zelda getting stuck in the past and going on her own parallel journey to Link is very cool. In practice it wasn't the right story to tell at this point in the franchise. It's just BoTW AND Skyward Sword again. I'm sick of saving the princess. Zelda is a cool character, let me hang out with her. On top of that retreading BoTW's plot points so closely but even higher stakes and even longer periods of time really sours BoTW's story, as well. It makes all the suffering Link and Zelda both went through feel pointless knowing they would get even more fucked up shortly after. Not to mention how it wastes the potential of getting to see the most fleshed out iteration of Link and Zelda's relationship actually interact with each other. Aside from like three phenomenal cutscenes, ToTK's story is hot garbage in concept and in execution, imo.
Except, id argue they made it clear that when she turned into a dragon, her human memories halted in place, and when she transformed back, it had the opposite effect. She didnt remember anything about being a dragon, but remembered her hylian past like yesterday. Kinda like blacking out or that split personality thing lmao. But i 100% agree with you that her not being a companion felt like a big missed opportunity. A rehash of many past games where shes just ultimately waiting to be saved. Hopefully we get a playable or companion zelda in the next one.
@@shadowbunny7892 hot garbage? it's far from perfect without question. but hot garbage sounds like you're saying it's worse than BOTW's story, which was super weak, despite the amazing gameplay and evolution of the series (still LOVE the game). I agree saving the princess AGAIN, is so fucking tiring. But disagree about the BOTW rehashing and higher stakes. It's a sequel. It's meant to continue plot points from the previous game lol and no sequel that has smaller stakes has been any better than its predecessor. Id argue there were plenty of new elements to make the game feel like a sequel but also a brand new game, including those storylines. Agree to disagree. Hopefully the next game makes zelda the companion we want and an even better fleshed out, new, fully developed story. And one note i want to mention about the story that i would agree held it back, as much as i LOVE ganondorf, he was a little dull in this game. He's bad just because lol. At least wind waker ganondorf showed he had more depth than just "im evil, so what".
@@KingFRB0310 Yeah it's definitely worse than BoTW's story. BoTW's story was sparse. It was weird, it was definitely not the direction I would have chosen for a Zelda game and it's far from the strongest story in the franchise. But it knew what it wanted to do and it accomplished it. BoTW's story had two goals, get you invested in Link and Zelda's relationship so you care about saving her and making you feel the profound loss of the calamity. It does this by focusing on the characters of Zelda and the champions to the exclusion of anything else, and while, again, I think this was a weird choice, I also think it totally works. The brief glimpses we get of the champions were likable and interesting and they're effective as a stand in for civilization as a whole and their deaths are sad. The progression of Link and Zelda's relationship in the flashbacks is excellent and I REALLY care about her by the end. Most importantly though, BoTW's story was made to support BoTW's gameplay. The focus on character means it can be experienced in any order without really losing anything and there isn't a ticking clock that feels dissonant with the slow pace of the gameplay. In contrast, ToTK's story does not at all jive with the game that it's in. While sequels often have higher stakes than their predecessors I wouldn't say it's necessary and you can definitely do it incorrectly. BoTW and ToTK both boil down to "Zelda uses her cool powers to make a big sacrifice to save the kingdom and now we have to use ancient advanced technology to save her." It's just way too close to being the same thing a second time and, at least to me, it trivializes BoTW. I WISH ToTK actually continued BoTW's story instead of just rehashing it but ToTK is worse as a sequel than it is in isolation. It actually continues very little from BoTW's story. No progression in Link and Zelda's relationship, no further exploration of Calamity Ganon and how it relates to Ganondorf, no Sheikah stuff. ToTK's Zonai are entirely unrelated to BoTW's Zonai. I wish this game WASN'T a direct sequel, then all it's redundancies or weird omissions wouldn't be a problem. In terms of themes and world building I sincerely believe that BoTW is a better sequel to SS than ToTK is to BoTW. The extremely pressing threat also doesn't work with the gameplay. Every city is having an active crisis and evil doppleganger Zelda is running around causing problems. I do not feel like I have time to be picking mushrooms and helping Koroks. And I know it's already been said so many times, but I'm saying it again because it's true. Delivering this very linear story nonlinearly purely because that's how BoTW did it is one of the most insane game design decisions I've seen in a while. That, on top of everything else, just makes ToTK's story feel thoughtless and cheap. An afterthought that accidentally has a few moments of brilliance instead of the carefully crafted experience that was BoTW. Sorry for the wall of text. This is me being succinct. Lol
@freddyb56220 @bunny7892 The totk story makes even less sense, because they gave Zelda an entirely new, unnecessary but relevant TIME power and then started acting like her only option TO GET TO THE FUTURE was an immortal dragon lobotomy rather than say the TIME TRAVEL that SHE USED TO GET HER THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?? And if it was restoring the master swords power and making it stronger that was the problem then did she ever think about rewinding the master sword till before it broke?? I legitimately cried watching the dragon cutscene begging, pleading to whatever deity exists that the plot writers were not that unbelievably stupid that they wrote in such a huge plot point (with so many implications)JUST FOR SHOCK VALUE and to specifically remove zelda from the relevant plot. Then they completely removed the stakes by turning her back with like no fucking explanation and its just like WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DO IT IN THE FIRST PLACE? It was such a disappointment on so many levels, she was my fav character and this game just buried her for no reason istg.
I won't lie, I hated the building mechanics in this game. When I discovered how to make a hoverbike for the first time I sighed a huge breath of relief.
The freedom of Tears of the Kingdom inadvertently highlighting the value of the linearity and restriction seen in the rest of the series is almost tragic
I just don't think it does justice to its freedom in a way that feels satisfying to the player after only a dozen hours of playtime. You start to realize their isn't much to the story and that everything else you do, the gameplay loop, is nothing more than a loop itself where you're constantly meant to do the same things over and over again. Its a problem because not only do I think this gameplay style CAN work, it seems it will never happen because of the insane backlash AND the fact the Zelda team seem completely blind to those problems in order to make any corrections.
@therealgirl3295BINGO. That’s honestly why I’m not too much a fan of the newer Zelda games, specifically TotK, and BotW a smaller bit. These games lack depth in their side quests and narrative. Insomuch that beyond first experiencing the exciting exploration-the experience is worthless to me on a repeat play-through. I know I’m not like most people but I really need a grand story to find renewed interest and enjoyment in another play-through. And TotK’s pandering to those who didn’t play BotW (which was like nobody) killed the game for me.
They took people's gripes about the extreme linearity of Skyward Sword and went too hard in the other direction. It's like if you told a cook that pouring an entire shaker of salt is too much so they stopped using it all together. Even The Legend of Zelda on NES isn't nearly as open and nonlinear as people make it out to be.
@Czah5 Yeah too true which is why I get tired of these new games being a "return to the original game" like Miyamoto and Aonuma keep describing it to being. It isn't. Like, really, WHAT is being borrowed from the original game when making these? Little to nothing. Even the NES had much better dungeons than the new. And I'd much rather play the original NES game over these new ones. I'm serious. They are so damn boring, I just can't make myself go back and finish Tears of the Kingdom after dedicating the ungodly amount of hours I did on the 2017 game. I feel like I already wasted my time with that one given how little substance it really has. Tears of the Kingdom is just more of the same but build a bear mechanics.
I'd actually just describe it as nintendo turned zelda into a ubisoft clone... think about that for a second man that's really what the modern interpretation of NES zelda has become. Reminds me of a video: Zelda fake fun, aged like a fine wine made by a guy named Strat-edgy highly reccomend
The power left Zelda when she draconified and went to Rauru, Sonia, and Link, each representing power, wisdom, and courage, respectively. This is also proven as Rauru turns Link's arm back to normal. Something he couldn't do at first, hence why Link has his arm.
@@mr.awesome6011 that is complete speculation that is not acknowledged by the game nor intentional. The Triforce never manifests in game, is never mentioned and none of the characters touch it to make a wish. Also how could the Triforce be given to a ghost?
@@richardbean1707 Quite possibly the game I’ve replayed the most number of times in my life. How could I forget one of the the most prominent uses of the Triforce in the whole series, god damn I’m stupid lol
Love how the designers scolded those in the team for mess and clutter. Meanwhile, the sky island debris cluttered all over the surface like a hot mess and it’s just ugly
I wish they hadn't done the same layout with the story as breath of the wild with the whole memory thing, I wanted to know more about all the zonai not just rauru, wanted it to dive into the history of all of the zonai, and how they died out. Instead that's just an unsolved mystery never to be found out.
Not only that but the layout actually hurts the general narrative as each story has to be isolated (since the player can do it in any order). It straight up prevents characters from being able to actually interact with one another so their impact feels far weaker in the story. Only time this isn’t an issue is ironically with a more linear structured game aka age of calamity. Tbh they should have made the story and even dungeon progression linear while still keeping the open world as that can allow things like the zoni to be explored and more importantly have the cast more presence in the journey and synergy with one another rather than just them only being relevant to their isolated stories and having false zoni shades of said characters
not just the memory thing. you wake up on a stranded area after a coma, a dead king tells you to activate 4 shrines then you pick up the paraglider. you activate shrines and get korok seeds while going to the exact same 4 regions to progress the story as botw, until you find and kill ganon. it really feels like a rip-off how identical the plot structure is
Breath of the Wild’s story actually had substance because it was about living with tragedy, and the characters were well fleshed out. Tears of the Kingdom’s story is about nothing, because its characters are bland.
Imagine being the designer for TOTK and telling people "no, too many islands, reduce them" only for even the most supportive fans to be like "too little sky islands, make more" To me a big part of totk's hype was the sky islands, I wanted to do quests up there, meet NPC's, find creative ways to get to other sky islands, imagine wind waker but instead of water you had air and that's how you got to the next island. Remember how in skyward sword people hated how empty the sky was? You'd think they would've learned that a sky island can never be too cluttered. I also dislike how there are no indents on the ground from where the islands rose
@@daniel8181what's impossible in adding Loftwing, pegasus or even flying boat? Why couldn't NPCs live in the sky? What's so ridiculous to you? Get a grip
I started the game by first, collecting all the dragon tears, discovering Zelda went to the past, and finding Zelda in the present as a dragon with the master sword. Now I’m stuck playing through hundreds of hours of game where every single in game character is carrying on as if no one knows what happened to Zelda. I did the quest. I’m literally holding the master sword in front of you and everyone carries on like an idiot not knowing what happened to Zelda. Did I miss something? Is my game glitching out? I am very confused and have never been so bored and frustrated with something so beautiful.
On a similar note regarding Mineru: I have an actual zonai robot right here, with the functional, conscious soul of an actual ancient zonai who personally experienced, and in some cases directly caused, the history every researcher is obsessed with. Also, via dragon tears, I have experienced the memories of Zelda personally experiencing ancient zonai history. Yet I and Mineru somehow can't share any of this with the many characters trying to figure out who the zonai were and what happened in the past at all, and instead just watch them guess what barely legible ancient tablets were trying to say and generally grasp at straws. ARGH.
I also discovered Zelda relatively early and was baffled that the game kept acting like no one knew what happened. BoTW wouldn't have had that problem...
The game actually will comment on this after you beat the Phantom Ganons in Hyrule Castle. Purah will be like "We deciphered some Zonai text, and it makes mention of a 5th Sage! We need to-...What's that Link? You say you already found the 5th Sage, gotren Master Sword, and that Zelda is actually the Light Dragon?!?! Why didn't you tell anyone?!" Like bruh...
@bigamateur9055 The entire Depths is big and empty, it's just a copy-pasted "upside down" version of the surface, but less interesting because everything looks exactly the same too. No deviation in textures, extremely repetitive to try to explore, and no reward from lightroots or anything of the like. There's a handful of rare-ish monsters there but truly nothing really worthwhile.
It's crazy to me that Aonuma would say something like, "How can you want the old Zelda when its so restrictive compared to the freedom of the new Zelda". Its like saying, "How can you want any other toy when you have Legos? You have unlimited freedom to make whatever you want with Legos!" Legos are only as fun as the creativity you want to pour into them. Sometimes I dont want to play with Legos, I want a curated experience! Like you said, restriction and context are sometimes more fun than being able to break every puzzle with a rocket shield. Otherwise we'd play every game in debug mode and just fly around and wall clip and be unkillable. Sometimes that makes stuff fun, but mostly it gets boring really fast.
The most beloved areas of BotW are ones that are restricted by design: The Great Plateau, Eventide Island, and the Trial of the Sword. Similarly, the best sky island is the initial one, when your abilities are restricted.
THIS. Every time I try to play TotK, I groan a little inside because it leans so heavily into the building mechanic, and I still don't understand how half the machines work because I actively shy away from using them. I don't WANT to build a dozen structures in order to engage with the game. It's exhausting. Even when I really want to explore more of TotK and actually complete the story, I always end up just going back to BotW because its gameplay is more accessible.
I think a similar alagory is my experience while playing Minecraft. If I decide to build in an unrestrictive biome, like the Plains biomes, my house is almost always a box of some sort. Occasionally I have a creative home idea that requires a large expanse of flat land so I will build in the Plains then, but if I'm just building a home to build a home? You'll get an efficient rectangle. I adventure to find oddly shaped landmasses that give me restrictions I have to find creative solutions around. A tall pillar might require a way to access the top, a stone archway provided defense but leaves me a small landmass to build on, a small bay gives me access to the ocean but also restricts the directions I can build. TOTK gives me tons of freedom, so I build a rectangle as it is the most efficient shape, and occasionally get creative for the sake of it, knowing a rectangle would be a much better use of my material and time.
One thing that struck me as extremely odd for me personally is that I never finished the game, and I can’t get the motivation to get back into the game. I’m pretty sure I even beat the four main dungeons. It’s so extremely weird because I had such a huge amount of fun exploring this world and getting distracted by each and every thing that I saw, but one day I just logged off and never came back to it. I will finish it someday but the motivation is just not there, I wonder if I’m just burnt out of this formula already
YEAH. I did this with BotW too. Finished most of the dungeons, got bored, came back to it and finished the rest of the main story later, and then just... gave up again. To this day I haven't beaten either game. There's no more motivation.
Same, finished all the dungeons and got all 5 sages did most of the shrines and like yourself just lost all passion to complete it.. I’m probably just a few hours from doing so but nope…
I’ve beaten the game and like with BOTW I planned to do all the rest of the shrines in the game and explore more, but I lost any motivation for doing so. Maybe because it’s just more of the same and I’ve been there done that in the previous title. With all the new vehicle potential I’ve still put less time into TOTK than I did BOTW.
Imagine if your actions as Link were necessary for undoing the draconification. Temples would have contained relics or powers that Link would need to reach through time to bring her back as a Hylian. You could have even done this with the existing temples/dungeons. Three more places to quest for… so disappointing
You are aware that both BotW and TotK are games that let you play how you want and therefore don't require you to get x amount of items to see the finale through?
This would actually be huge!! There could be two different endings, one where you didn’t complete all the temples/memories and Zelda stays a dragon, and another that rewards you for completing all the dungeons/memories by restoring Zelda to her true form
@@NuiYabuko Nintendo already did a mechanic like this in BotW where you had 2 endings/cutscenes. One where you unlocked all the memories, and one where you didnt.
Drakenwild has a video on exactly this topic, and how the de-dragonification could be explained by fairly minor adjustments to existing questlines. ruclips.net/video/XyDeL8UxrCA/видео.htmlsi=vVOBB2loP4VK2Fry
I know this will be an unpopular opinion but... I truly believe that the ending wasted zeldas sacrifice and made it so her action was ultimately without any sort of downside. They could have used zeldas removal from the timeline in much the way at the end of oot where link is gone and now a new hero had to prove himself. this could have been a similar situation where a new noble bloodline or perhaps a new role for the wisdom representative
that could be an interesting thematic tie in with hyrule being destroying in BotW, they would really have to start from scratch and invent a new system
In my opinion, ToTK had much more noticeable shrine fatigue than BoTW. In total, 48/152 shrines are Rauru's blessing, the worst of which being those found in a cave with zero other challenge. If you include the 7 combat tutorials, 55/152 (36%) of ToTK's shrines end up feeling like filler. To be clear, blessing shrines are not inherently bad. After a while their frequency just gets old, especially when your reward is often just a Large Zonai Energy.
I wish they did less of the stone puzzles in the sky , but I also like that more puzzles were in the overworld, making them blessings. I wish they did more blessings like the unlit blessing ( it was such a witty way to break the monotony without having to make another puzzle )
I hated blessings already in BotW, but TotK was much worse on that front. I still loved the game, but, like, I'd take a bad or easy-to-cheese puzzle over that BS. (Though the fake blessing was pretty great. Would still have been great if there were half as many blessings, but still great.)
@@lukyoung702 Still disappointing, though. At least for me, it's the cutscene into the shrine that primes me for the puzzle, which is then a disappointment if it's a blessing. And there are a handful of shrines that need puzzles to enter that are also not blessings, as well as a handful that are and take no puzzles to enter. It's just inconsistent, and so it kills the excitement of entering a new shrine every time it's just a freebie. Not like finding a lot of these shrines isn't already a lot of work anyway, even if it's not a puzzle.
Reaching Akkala Citadel was where I physically took damage from the game's missed opportunities. Like what. 100 years ago all this dirt accumulated and it's now a cave? Sure. Prime dungeon material right there and we got horriblins in a cave.
@@anonosandwich7473 and that's why people should play age of calamity, the maps were designed by zelda team so the areas 100 years before BOTW are canon in that game.
The two most distinct memories I have of playing TotK were: 1) the end of the story when Link reaches out to Zelda, feeling the full poetry of the story in that moment. That made me cry. 2) getting on my first horse at the stables near kakirko and hearing the same music from when I did the exact same thing in BotW. That made me sigh
@@highdefinition450 That's just a universal issue with open world games. Linear games made for better storytelling. Twilight Princess is the best example of that.
@@asraarradon4115red dead 2 has a liner story in an open world format. I think totk could do something like that too where there are no memories and a greater emphasis on the story of the questline
@@reyhan2006-g5l Yeah, some companies are better at solving the problem than others, but universal problem still exists. Rockstar has been making gritty, dark, realistic open world titles for over 20 years. So they have a lot of experience doing that. And if you look at the absolute ocean of open world titles we have nowadays, some of their games rise to the top because of that. Most just fill their worlds with collectables to pad "content" but it still feels empty.
@@asraarradon4115 Of course. I just think that the Zelda team should look at games like that for inspiration. Hell I think they already do it to a certain extent with the regional phenomena quests they just need to expand those a lot more and limit the use of memories.
My biggest issue with Tears of the Kingdom is the absolute fucking emptiness of the Depths. It was genuinely saddening to me how they literally made this entire second world with a grand total of like two things to do in it. 1 is that there were a couple chests to find with like 2 new armor sets and bunch of DLC items from BoTW (including the poe stuff, which aren't even really poes. They could've been called spirits or tears or something, because calling them poes involves some fun involved in fighting them) And 2 is just a bunch of Zonite to find. The hardest part about the Depths was accepting how fucking boring it is, and accepting that I should just stop looking around for more things to do, because there isn’t anything more to find
A sequal that pretends botw doesnt exist and acts like none of the events that occurred in that game actually happened. This is my biggest irk with totk.
@@frostycane5134 There are some npcs like Bolson that really should recognize you. But aside from that, the game doesn't pretend that BOTW doesn't exist. Sure, it's weird that nobody mentions what happened to the sheikah tech. But it's still clear that BOTW happened. Not only from the overall state of the world, but the Hateno school lessons, a statue referencing Link and Sidon against the divine beast etc. I think it mostly just boils down to a few things. 1. Nobody mentioning where the Sheikah tech went, not even a throw away line that 'it all just vanished, it was weird.' 2. Some npcs don't recognize you. Though most of the important ones do. The important story NPCs all know you. Bolson and Hetsu are the weird ones that really should have but aside form those two this is ultimately fairly minor. 3. The baffling decision to make the villain another Ganon, and not wanting to elaborate on what exactly Calamity Ganon is in relation to TOTK Ganondorf. The best we get is a vague one off line from Impa that's easy to miss. For the most part it feels to me not that they want to ignore BOTW/pretend it's not a sequel to it, but more they wanted to minimize references to it as not to alienate people who DIDN'T play BOTW and make sure TOTK could stand on its own as an individual game and not just a sequel. EDIT: Add the people of Hateno. I think this is the one area where it does start to feel weird that people don't know Link. If Zelda was living there, that means Link would be there, and the people ought to have seen a good deal of him over the last few years even if Link didn't leave much of an impression on them in BOTW proper buying the house.
@@frostycane5134 i just wanna dd, in totk at the shringe of resurrection, i hate that they just deleted the sheikah 3d models, they didnt even fell the gaps rightly, they just deleted it and left teh rectangle hole D:
You hit the nail on the head with most of my criticisms as well. My biggest gripes are how the Sheikah tech vanishes with no real explanation and how we just get the same cutscene after all the major dungeons. So much potential that fell short of perfection. Still a good game but had room for so much more.
The continuity issues in TOTK are really bad. It barely even acknowledged it’s own direct predecessor, and it spits on the rest of the series. Imprisoning war/Rauru my ass.
Also how we OBVIOUSLY know Zelda is an evil puppet or something but we have to spend time with each Sage NPC going “wait… th-that’s Zelda! Wait! W-w- what’s she doing?!?! Zelda come backkkkkkkk 😫” It’s like link doesn’t coordinate his findings with anyone, and YEAH, why is it the same damn cutscene??? I’d rather the game have linearly taken us to each area to uncover the story piece by piece.
This obsession of them with "every single game MUST be completely disconnected from all of the others!!" really got out of hand and IMHO it's actually hurting the franchise more than anything. Also, there's nothing wrong with some linear progression here and there, if it's done right. For instance, the ONE thing Skyward Sword absolutely nailed was... well, the dungeons, wasn't it? Open world just for the sake of open world gets quite boring after around 10/20% of the game.
main problem with skyward sword to me is to GET to the dungeons you basically had to go through a dungeon. The open locations did not feel like a fun place to explore like previous zelda's (twilight princess and basically ANY main zelda game before it) it was just a bunch of chores. And many of the dungeons didn't even have a miniboss, it was the standard to have a cool miniboss and a boss in every dungeon. Also, they had two lava dungeons that look basically the same - at least when ocarina of time had two fire dungeons they were totally different in appearance (dodongo cavern and the fire temple)
The Wind Temple buildup gave me CHILSSSSSSSSS, and I would go as far as saying that it’s one of the best in the entire franchise. That “wow” factor hit SO hard, and I was convinced right then that this game could actually get the dungeons right. I really enjoyed them with the exception of the Water Temple.
It was my first temple and my favorite one. The excitement and anticipation for what I would find and how far I had to go was amazing. It was the best out of all the rest
@@rugeramerican308 it definitely had the hardest puzzles but that's not saying much :S basically 4 shrines stapled to each other. I liked the lead up to it though well enough, the ancient waterworks were pretty cool.
You're asking too much from current day nintendo. They have to make a whole new town? That's too tiring for them. next thing people will be asking mario games to have a different antagonist other than bowser for a change. that would require a tiny bit of imagination. Nintendo is an extremely overrated company.
@@Vaquix000 it wouldnt make sense for there to be a town. just because they dont care about the timeline doesnt mean they dont care about the story. also, have you even watched the full video?
I was hoping there'd be a zonai sanctuary of some kind that they used to watch over Hyrule, a sort of intermediary between Hyrule and whatever higher plain the zonai live on. Would've been a great chance to give the zonai more interesting lore and a chance to properly interact with them, plus the architecture could've linked to some of the surface ruins
I have lots of gripes about TOTK some of which you mentioned - but I think the biggest thing is they just copy pasted the plot from BOTW but with a different context. Something happens to Link, he wakes up, princess is gone, everything that matters happened in the past, big evil scary Ganon in Hyrule castle, collecting memories again to peace the past together…you get the gist. It was not new or interesting. Even more infuriating was then recycling the OOT narrative plot of Ganondorf’s betrayal. I think Nintendo’s aim for TOTK was to focus on the game mechanics they couldn’t introduce in BOTW. And then they slapped a half baked plot and same map relatively on it. The care and attention that the team gave to the beauty of BOTW - TOTK did not receive.
Facts, and it definitely shows in the game. Compare Majoras Mask, and TOTK that came out 1 year and 6 years respectively, and i can tell way more effort and care was put into Ocarina if Time's sequel than BOTW's. And MM didnt even have the luxury of using the literal same world.
@@Diesalot-sc9qz What deep storytelling? In Dark Souls you have to fill in enormous gaps with your imagination so it can be as terrible or "grand" as you can imagine. Not really good storytelling that. It's like writing a book with most of the pages missing.
21:08 I feel like one of the greatest missed opportunities of Totk would be to have the upheaval lift sections of the map into the air. Destroy the surface and create a new map underneath it. cave systems could be made from the remains both in the air and through the new craters of missing land. That way you'd be able to reshape/purpose the surface in the air, and manage to create a new surface so the identity of the map isn't just a 1-1 asset shift of BOTW. There's also the thought that sheikah tech could be present in the new game, and having it be ripped apart, deactivated and out of the ground to reveal some remains of those shrines could be extremely cool. I'm not sure how the lore or story would play into that. But it's a cool thought regardless. And regarding the depths, a quick opinion is that it just feels way too difficult to navigate simply because there's just so much of the same environment. It doesn't feel like an exploration, rather a highway drive through a cornfield. Occassionally you'll find something cool to look at or have to stop for lunch, (boss rematches/zonai gear/lightroots) but nothing else really happens. Sections defined by their heat or cold alone would do wonders if applied aesthetically. Or crystal caves under the desert to give it natural light. You could even create some funky mechanics based on the biome alike to the low gravity in certain areas in the sky. The vision of the game just probably wasn't fully realized and it just sucks because it had way too much potential. And the fact it's phenomenal despite this really speaks to how much more it could have become.
yea that's what everyone thought it would be since you see the castle rising in the trailers lol. would have made exploring the same places feel fresh again without having to design a completely new map
Speaking of NPC's not knowing Link anymore, it's more than a little frustrating that the people in Hateno village don't seem to know Link at all. Even if you ignore Link's involvement in Hateno village in BotW, Link is the personal body guard of Zelda, who has been living in Hateno village for a while. The people there clearly know and even miss the princess, so how they don't know Link, I don't know. Tarrey town was also frustrating. Hudson and Rhodson know Link, but the other residents of the town act like they don't know him at all, despite the fact that many of them were recruited to live there by Link, worked with Link on building the town, and even all attended Hudson and Rhodson's wedding together. Bolson should remember Link. . . Come on. Not only did Link make an impression on him, but they both attended a mutual friend's wedding together. Heck, Link is the one who sent him the invite to the wedding. Same with Hetsu. He's probably a long-lived being, so there's no way his memory is so short.
Don’t forget the Zora Priest. He knew Link when Mipha was still alive. Edit: Also considering how important it was for the Zora to remember Link since y’know he’d go to Zora’s Domain as a kid, I think I almost rage quitted when Kapson didn’t remember in TOTK.
@@northproductions6104 Yep. Kapson is the member of Hateno Village that makes the least sense. BotW proved not only that Zora have long lives, but also long memories. Many Zora in Zora's Domain remembered Link even though they thought he'd been dead for a century. So, for Kapson to treat Link like a stranger in TotK after only maybe 5 years or so is ridiculous.
It's implied Zelda has taken his home over and Link likely went out to do errands for her/be a poster boy and diplomatic royal microphone for her words. Which honestly is so much worse considering Hateno would then know EXACTLY that he is the royal dog.
The worst part of collecting the memories/tears was that the entire plot, including the heartbreaking scene with Zeldas draconification, was behind literally the easiest mechanic in the game. Find giant glowing picture and go to it. Meaning I unlocked the entire plot before I did much of anything else
This, and just like in BotW, chances are most players discovered them out of order. The second one is clearly visible from the first, but requires entering Hebra Mountains so you could possibly freeze to death if you tried going there too early. Some players likely discovered a few of the later story ones before finding some of the middle ones.
This is exactly why I ignored them until I was pretty much done with the main missions. I jumped into the Castle Chasm early and, after hours of barely surviving, I finally reached the ruins from the start of the game and bombed the mural. Learning the rest of the story this way felt incredibly rewarding, so imagine my disappointment when I saw that most people would realize the plot twist after Mineru all but spells it out in the second memory.
@@Dark_Mishrain botw it was way harder to find them. You needed to line up pictures. You just... walk to a place here. There's even a map of all the locations
36:40 im so happy you called this out. It's so disappointing how little new enemies there actually sre in comparison to other Zelda games. its baffling too, like the Zelda series has entire compendiums of all sorts of monsters idk why they chickened out on making more and just resorted to Bokoblin/Moblin/Lizalfos again
My main issue is that I wanted a robust counterpart in the return of Ganondorf. Plotting, ambushing, impacting the world. Maybe going for a coup in Gerudo. But we just got the same Calamity sleeping ghost in the dephts dressed as Ganondorf.
This was a big thing for me too. Ganondorf finally returned but it was easily my least favorite depiction of him yet; absolutely nothing interesting to his character.
I was disappointed that the elemental weapons were removed because I wanted to create elemental fusions. I was so excited to create an electric ice weapon.
I'm fairly early into the game with little spoilers so far(somehow. And no I haven't watched this video yet I just jumped to teh comments.) I eventually realized there are just no elemental weapons anymore which was very disappointing. My question is, am I basically just fusing things go rusty swords the whoke game? There were many strong attack weapons in BOTW that had power well into the 20s-40s.
@@rajko15 yeah u have to fuse the new rusty weapons with monster parts. there is pretty much no base weapon in this game with an attack power higher than 15
@@rajko15 New weapons? Fuyabashi gave us new ones in the form of the rusted swords. With the horns, he even gave us the same enemies, mostly. If he could, he'd even give us the same story... oh wait...
@@rajko15You will eventually gain access to regular, non 'rusted' / decayed base weapons, nearly every weapon from BOTW returns albeit not so readily available. No matter how 'good' your base weapon is, you'll still want to use fuse regardless as it will only make a good weapon better. Rest assured, there are weapons / weapon combinations in this game that are substantially more powerful than anything that was available in BOTW.
I was really upset with what happened to Zelda, I wanted to see her grow and rebuild her kingdom alongside Link but instead I watched her have to be alone again this time for 10,000 years.
*OH YES* - wasted character development potential. But hey it could have been worse. If Zelda would have stayed the Dragon of Light, no matter how cute, no matter how fluffy, I would have been devastated. 😞 Imagine what for a sad life that would have been. A kind Maiden watches her whole Kingdom fall appart, thinking it was all just due to her own lack of adequacy. She knows that tons of people have died because of it, she loses her sworn Knight and all other Champions and rises to fight the Calamity itself for 100 long years all by herself, with no chance of truly winning. And when things look like they are finally taking a turn for the better and things get finally better, she almost dies in what should have been a _"normal"_ cave exploration, gets teleported to the past and must throw away herself everything that she is, to become a Dragon who does not remember her Hylian life, basically killing her as the person that she was. What for a lowblow this would have been. 😑 At least Rauru & Sonia could return her to her Hylian self, powerful as those two are. But the development we wanted to see and what we had in mind, did not take place. Instead Link & Zelda were tormented once more. Link never speaks, due to self-insertive reasons for the player. But imagine how HE must feel also! He is unable to truly protect the one Woman he is sworn to basically live for whenever it matters. He could not protect Hyrule either back then and now Zelda would have almost died forever. He is *'the'* Hero but how powerless & by this nature, sinful & pathetic he must feel. Link did his best and he knows that. Probably. But if I would be in his skin, I would go all Anakin in the last Movie right before he became Vader. *_" I want more, but I know I shouldn't. I am not the all powerful Jedi I should be. I 'want' to be. "_* Would drive me nuts. I wield the Sword but I am just a glorified Icon that cannot deliever when it matters. And the only reason the Princess is safe is because of powers far beyond my control. _" Well at least I could slay the Calamity. Again. "_ But my innitial mission was fulfilled only by luck more as by skill. _" Oh well... at least Riju gave me her seal on my ringfinger huh? At least she loves me! 😆 ... not knowing what for an unreliable mess I am. "_
My thoughts exactly. It almost felt like Nintendo had to one-up BotW for some reason Zelda’s mother passed away at a very young age for the princess. This is extra lore you can read up on in Hyrule Castle. Zelda meets her ancestors Sonia & Rauru, the closest figures she has to parents. She watches Sonia die with her own eyes by the hand of Ganondorf. Let the girl have a damn mom Zelda sacrificed herself to seal Calamity Ganon, and this goes on for 100 years. Now Zelda risks it all again to fix the Master Sword, and this takes her _10,000_ years. Now during the events of BotW there are two Master Swords existing at the same time. Was this sacrifice worth the time convolution?? Idk man, the more you think about each game, the more TotK’s storybeats feel like a shoddy rehash
One of the worst things was Ganondorf himself, we're supposed to think he was the origin of Ganon, the source of all evil in both BOTW and TOTK, and when we got to know him we got a little next to nothing really, a sort of "remake" of OOT storyline with no depth, I mean, there's a Gerudo sage who surly knew him personally as Ganondorf was her king, but she tells you nothing about him but "he was our king, we feel sorry he turned out to be bad", wasted potential there.
I wish that it had been more of an ocarina of time vs majoras mask situation, where the similarities are obvious but the differences were still massive. It made them feel connected, but provided very different tones and experiences. When there were rumors comparing totk to majora during development, it made me excited, but ultimately I dont think that comparison was accurate.
Can we please talk about how disappointing the "pirate" attack was on Lurelin? I was so excited when I heard pirates invaded Lurelin, I thought it was going to be Gerudo or entirely new characters. But Instead all we got is the same old monsters we've already battled a dozens of times already. The pirate ships were not even moving, just static. Kinda speaks how low effort the game was, aside from the building mechanic of course.
Yeah, I remember hearing someone say they were afraid of the monsters there, thinking they're some new kind of particularly savage creature, but they didn't even include the relatively new Horriblins. .... also wtf was with the random single enemy hiding in the well? Like what was the point of that? I was under the impression this event was an active battle against invaders, not a scavenger hunt for critters hiding out in weird places. How did the villagers telepathically know he was still there? Why did they only think it was safe when that one random dude finally died? It seems like a random developer choice just to annoy people.
It feels really nice to hear a number of my thoughts on this game echoed. TOTK as a video game is an absolute masterpiece, and the things it managed to accomplish, especially on the switch, are nothing short of groundbreaking. But as a ZELDA game, and one that was supposed to be a sequel, it just feels like they slapped a weak band aid on the problems with the first game and somehow making them even more pronounced.
It's the whole "power of friendship" that plagues most games and shows. Like "well, we have this unsolvable issue (Zelda being a Dragon and Link having an weird arm), let's just solve it by friendship" - which doesn't really explains anything, feels cheap, is cheap, and shows how little writers are willing to put effort into _some explanation_, not even one that makes sense...
That Colgera theme still gives me CHILLS man, it just hits me like a brick everytime that even as I breach 30 I can't help but to remember all those years ago and shed a tear while fighting such a cinematically perfect boss
@reddemon_6408 I don't care that it was easy, nothing will ever beat how cool it was DIVING THROUGH a boss to attack ot while that theme was blaring. Highly disappointing game but they absolutely nailed that part.
Finally finished the game and came here first after avoiding your channel for 11 months to avoid spoilers. I agree with pretty much everything you said, and came to many of the same conclusions on my own while playing the game. I think tears of the Kingdom was just a little bit too big in scope. As a player it's overwhelming, and as for the developer, it seems to be a case of quantity over quality.
All thats needed is for them to strike a balance between what we have now and the traditional Zelda roots that we know the series for. Its world wouldn't be just wide, but would also have a lot more substance in my opinion.
The substance part is what bothers me about this game. It's like they were so focused on quantity in terms of explorable areas that they didn't think to add much to do in those vast areas. The game is too empty
What's rough is that they need to actually acknowledge that and do it. All we've heard so far is that they don't understand what people liked about the older games in the first place. Can't fix something when you don't see the problem.
@@Flaris What's worse is Aonuma questioning why people would want to go to more traditional games and thinking the new formula is everything the series should be going forward...
I defended this game from every naysayer until I realised one simple truth. I couldn't put BoTW down when I first got it until I 100% it. ToTK I dropped after 30 hours for Metroid Dread and couldn't put that down until I 100% that as well. Proof is in the pudding. ToTK naysayers were right, the story is meh, the continuity is shit and the world is just not dense enough to justify the adventure.
@@alswanathan maybe. Not so sure. I played Horizon when it came out DLC and all 100% and when I finally got down to Forbidden West I couldn't help but play that as well without being swayed to other games. Sure I didn't 100% it but I finished the campaign after getting all the upgrades and missions minus some collectibles. ToTk just didn't have enough outside of the main mechanic, plot wise especially. Felt like so much effort was put into UltraHand that everything else was an afterthought. Barren sky islands. Copy pasted underworld. Same old hyrule map. After so many years? They could've done way way better. I admit. It was overhyped. It doesn't survive scrutiny upon replay once the rose tinted glasses wear off
One of the main problems - lack of connection with botw. What happened with divine beasts? "They just served their purpose".... yeeeeeaaaaah.... 4 gigantic machines just disappeared and NOBODY remembers them. 5 gigantic columns around castle... just disappeared... Guardians also just disappeared. Shiikah technology like a blue fire furnace disappeared... IMHO I'd preffer the same world but more connection with previous game... bcs this is DIRECT SEQUEL!!!!!
My biggest gripe with this game was that it was sooo FRONT LOADED. The Great Sky island is NOTHING like the rest of the sky and i would go so far as to say it’s the only interesting island to explore (although there was that one with the mirror puzzles). Having played Botw meant i was curious to rediscover old zones! I decided to go check the great plateau FIRST, before even going to lookout and before getting the paraglider. This was the BEST and WORST decision i made that playthrough! With nothing in hand the Plateau was an amazing challenge in terms of combat and that really felt like getting kicked in the ass back in Botw! I also had the chance of discoveting the stone eyes without knowing about the depth. I used falling platforms to elevator myself deep into each chasm! The first time i discovered the underground was incredible. The PITCH BLACK depth and the eerie music were the greatest moments of my playthrough, i loved how complexed the great central mines were. Like a huge complex of minecarts and verticality. This was the BEST the depth had to offer. Nothing would ever come close for the nest 200hours. I Also had the idea of going to Gerudo desert first! Before any other region. That was once again a huge mistake but also made for some of the best content in the game! The gerudo region was the only one who had an interesting questline before the dungeon! And the Lightning Temple who felt even close to what a true “Zelda Dungeon” looks like. No other dungeon even came close! All these made for an incredible 20 hours and a dissapointing 200 hours of missed potential. I can’t beleive they spent 6 years making barely any changes to the world. The abilities are nice and the story is pitifully bland and repetitive but BOTW and TOTK thrive in their Worlds! But TOTK’s is just THE SAME exacly the same with nothing to find underground and ABSOLUTE NOTHINGNESS in the sky. Sorry for the long comment but i needed to vent.
My experience with BotW ended in disappointment. The game felt unfinished, and there was no depth to any of the exploration. I regrettably forced myself to beat it, but I will never waste my time with a video game again. I went back to playing Skyrim and Minecraft, games that had actual things to do and encouraged exploration and creativity.
I wish the Depths had more friendly NPCs instead of the same damn Zonai Survey Team disguised Yiga. Like supposedly the ZST is all about studying the depths yet you never meet a single friendly face down there.
I think it would’ve been nice if you could save some of the monsters that were friendly like a gentle lynel or a wayward bokoblin I agree with you it would’ve been nice to see villages down in the depths it would’ve been interesting to see lake helping those in the depths that aren’t for violence come to the surface
@@1Akarikotsu I think that idea ignores the fact that the monsters are only there cause of Ganon. They aren't good creatures turned bad. They're demons
Seems weird that in the space of a few years that all the dormant Guardians have been completely removed, except one in Hateno. Really enjoyed the Guardians, all types.
@@marzgirl99Are you kidding? Skyward Sword is so underrated! The orchestral music, the origin of the beginning of the world, the romance, and the story’s overall structure was what made the game so impactful and amazing
This game came out the day i got into a nearly life ending car accident. I played it for nearly two weeks straight proceeding that and i like to think this game helped me heal.
@@SaberRexZealotI feel you there, I had a friend for over a decade, we basically burned bridges for good just a week before TotK. Still hurts to this day, but it is what it is
The weird part is that they nailed it with the Great Sky Island, but then fumbled it with every other island. I personally think they should've picked either the Sky or the Depths to include in the game and focused development on one of them. As it is, both of them feel pretty undercooked.
Presumably they already had a prince/princess. It's another missed opportunity for a memory: Zelda meeting the young heir could have made the assassination scene so much more impactful
During my playthrough of TOTK, whenever I was looting a chest in the depths, I felt like I was getting placeholder loot. Especially when you get to the point where you got most armor pieces and all the chests are batteries. It just didn't feel like a reward most of the time
This pissed me off too. I get that they need to reuse assets and stuff to save on time, but come on, using all the same armor pieces as in BotW was lame. At a certain point you have more battery levels than some “vehicles” can handle.
@@melisjevisje save on time my ass, they took six years to make this game. They could've easily diversified loot, let alone the sky and depths content wise. They simply chose not to
Am I the only one that was never crazy about all the building stuff in this game? I mean it all became irrelevant as soon as someone made that hover bike popular. Other than that I really wish they would’ve spent more time fixing some of the game’s issues like the horrible champion abilities, the empty sky islands and the boring depths. They could’ve at least made a village in the sky with Rito villagers and added some interesting side quests or something like that. Perhaps even have Kass there with some of the other Rito as part of the Lucky Clover Gazette quests. I’m sure it would’ve been relatively easy to do.
I never was. The worst part about the building mechanics inclusion is the opportunity cost. As you said, how much was sacrificed in development in favor of this dumb ass building mechanic that most long time Zelda fans don't care about at all... I appreciate Nintendo's creativity and focus on innovation most of the time but bro dedicating so much to building was such a flop.
I was open to it. I just hoped it wasn’t going to be the focal point of the game. And then I learned the whole game was built around 1) exploration and 2) building. I never enjoyed building in ToTK. It would be fine if building was the game. Instead ToTK has a so many mechanics, it’s hard to make any of them seamless.
I was very excited about all the building stuff and was also let down by how irrelevant it became once the 9 zonaite get-anywhere-fast machine was discovered. It's really impressive how well all the pieces work together, but it's also really disappointing how close it got to perfection without achieving it. All I wanted was one interactive button on the steering stick, so I could have a "fire" button or a "jump" button or a "transform" button depending on which piece is activated by it. Just a little more direct control over my contraptions. Instead of engineering cool solutions to problems in the world, a good 90% of my time with Ultrahand was spent engineering solutions to problems presented *by* my tools.
The building mechanics seem like a way to extend play time to me. Like I can see the puzzle aspect of it but I don't like having to spend 10 minutes angling and fiddling with parts to get to the next island/ point of interest. I just wanna ride my horse around a medieval fantasy world.
Biggest question for me is: Why couldn't we have played in the ancient past? They did such a good job of setting up the environment and atmosphere with new characters and an engaging plot where lots of battles take place and many quests could have occurred. It would solve the problem of being the same overworld Hyrule and NPCs. I think it would've been a refreshing move.
That would've been incredible. Instead of just fighting monsters and a formerly sealed embodiment of Evil, you instead fight Ganondorfs' army as he's in the process of attacking Hyrule, then again after his 'surrender' and oath of fealty turns out to be fake, with Ganondorf this time joined by a monstrous force and due to it, you get conflicted loyalty moments from the Gerudo who ultimately end up betraying Ganondorf and help seal the man. Then there could be an (expensive) DLC where you play as Zelda in modern times, working to bring Link back to defeat Ganondorf once and for all. For her, it'd actually make sense to be building all sorts of machines to help you as well as that intelligence and engineering knowhow is established as part of her character. A final DLC could then be Link OR Zelda, traversing the Underground area to strengthen the Master Sword for that final battle. Said Underground - and the final Sage that is hidden there - could be something both the main game and the DLC hinted towards in their stories as well for it to be a proper culmination of the entire three-story set of the Sealing War, Breath Of The Wild and Zelda's Journey. Would be more interesting AND more profitable.
Because corporations have video games down to simple math. Tears of The Kingdom is completely substandard, because that's all it had to be. The sales numbers don't lie. They'll sell the same game one more time, then make a big announcement about "shaking up" the formula.
I think your ending comment on the story not leading Link to where he needs to be, leading him throughout the game, is exactly why I stopped playing ToTk. The story felt like it wasn't there. Like at all. So it just felt like I was free-roaming in BoTW with a few new toys. It's hard for me to remember that I have the Ultra Hand abilities vs the Sheikah Slate, I kept forgetting I had Ascend, when you mentioned using recall I felt like an absolutely idiot for not thinking about that for so many dungeons. I agree that it's an expansion pack and probably should've been. Such a shame.
After receiving the paraglider, I headed straight for the giant cloud above Faron. Navigating the stormy sky islands was tricky, but after a short while I found myself at the door that requires 8 or 10 hearts (can't remember) to access the Mineru quest. Having just come from the Great Sky Island, I assumed these heart doors were a new way of barring certain events behind progression. As I completed shrines and worked on the Gerudo quest, each time I gained a new heart I would teleport back and try the door again, curious as to what could be important enough to lock behind such a barrier. I was excited to find similar doors throughout the world, but alas, that was the only one.
yes, that would have been such a good way of restricting the player without taking too much of their freedom to navigate the world... I love this games, I'm excited to see what they'll do next, when untied from the laid out pre-conceptions of BotW
Why was there like 2 shrines in the entire game that made use of keys and that’s it. They could’ve had keys in dungeons and made more complex dungeon puzzles
When Light Dragon comes to aid Link in the final battle, I’d asked myself a question during the 3rd phase: “Did she come back and maybe Draconification hasn’t removed everything that is Zelda?” I would strongly believed it is her love for her knight is what drove her dragon instinct/consciousness in saving Link from falling and aiding him against the Demon Dragoon. And we all seen that when her powers is activated when the one she loves is threaten in Breath of the Wild’s final memory.
The Demon Dragon, also shows it has not lost everything in the dragonification process, you can clearly tell it still recognises Link and Zelda as dragon, as is still evil.
@@TerranigmaQuintet I thought the reason why both the "Light Dragon" and "Demon Dragon" began to fight eachother was because they both sensed they _had to_ due to what the other represented in terms of their respective personalities and motivations: Order and good in the case of the Light Dragon, Chaos and evil in the case of the Demon Dragon hence their seemingly instinctive desire to fight one another. It was less that they were both conscious and more so that their "animal senses" sort of speak were forcing them to fight one another. PS: I SO love your account name omg. Terranigma and Quintet are both gems from the good ol' days of introspective videogame storytelling from the 90s. Here's to hoping Terranigma gets a well deserved remake for the Switch 2 someday.
@@Mysticgamer The other 3 dragons are only concerned with watching over their respective springs which is why they couldn't care less about the giant Demon Dragon rampaging through the sky and destroying everything around it.
Honestly we have no proof thet the hole "Loosing onself" is acually correct. Its not like the Dragons can acually talk. So most likley Zelda was still fully herself when turned into a Dragon. Thats how she knew to stay above the cloud barrier until the Upheavel and as to why she fights against Link pulling out the sword...well...she had a Sword stuck in her nogging, that probably hurt like hell having it pulled out. Ore she was testing Link, making sure he had regained enough strenght
I hated the dungeons man they had such good potential but they were repetitive and no mini bosses at least the dungeons could have been more linear like twilight princess
One thing I find interesting is that for all previous Zelda's, it is the central gameplay concept that is finalized first, and that in turn informs the game's central setting, themes, story, and characters. The main concept of sailing as the main means of exploration in a Zelda title in turn led to the concepts of a flooded Hyrule, bite-sized islands to explore, and Zelda being a pirate. The main concept of playing as a child and an adult in one game led to the concepts of Ganondorf taking over for 7 years, Zelda going into hiding as Sheik during that time, and OoT's major theme of the inevitability of growing up and leaving your childhood innocence behind. In Tears though, the developers tied their own hands by choosing to graft their central mechanic of Ultrahand into a world that wasn't designed with it in mind, into a setting that already had its own story, lore, and characters. They limited their own freedom to create, and limited the fact that one good idea can spawn several more, simply by choosing to reuse the same overworld, and it shows in the end product. Out of all the Zelda's I've played, I feel the least passion from the developers in this one.
I don't think limiting creative freedom is necessarily the big thing that did them in here - Majora's Mask, which although not everyone's favorite, is quite a fews', and that was created quite a bit out of imposed limitations, both technologically and creatively. I agree wholeheartedly about a lack of passion felt in the game, but I don't think it's from being lack of options or possible paths to walk, I think it's born from a confused development philosophy and pressure of the games being Nintendo's big IP's, forced into more bland, streamlined forms. I guess I mean to say, it feels more like they're following a recipe now with specific ingredients vs cooking up something new with limited ones (maybe that's a bit too pedantic, which would totally be fair haha) Similar to how Pokemon used to have a ton of variety in tone, with different aesthetics and (relatively) different ages being appealed to - Pokemon Colosseum and Pokemon Stadium back then are quite different, while both being essentially just batting on repeat. Now, Pokemon is essentially just the same formula for every game (minus the indie-esque spinoffs that they don't talk about aside from launch days, and Legends, which kinda proves the point from how much just shaking things up on an average level proved successful). I don't think this is the perfect analogy as Zelda never had as large differences, and obvs the Pokemon Company/Nintendo dynamic is slightly different than the Zelda/Nintendo but I think it's still applicable to the change in design philosophy. Or, somewhat similar to the modernization/minimalism of modern logos, that kind of overly-smooth corporatized feel once they've somehow revamped a hand drawn mascot into two different colored circles - "well designed" but emotionless
Oh, quickly realized - I mentioned I didn't think Zelda has as large differences, which might seem odd when talking about Zelda, but I mean purely in the sense that the series has mostly always been an adventure game made for ~the same ages, whereas Pokemon had many different forms of media and pretty varied central game mechanics - puzzles, catching, battling, etc... in addition to the differences in tone.
I don't think their comment was intended to be negative or anything, they seem to be just airing their thoughts, as am I - plus, who cares if someone likes/dislikes the game, if they voice it politely? Have a good one! @@NuiYabuko
@@NuiYabuko He's right though. And its not just Zelda. Its kind of the core design philosophy behind many Nintendo games, like Mario. Design extremely fun mechanics first, then design the rest of the game around those mechanics.
I had the same frustration regarding the geoglyph memories ... As I was watching, it occurred to me that a simple fix would have been to have each geoglyph appear separately over time, perhaps as each previous geoglyph was completed or with a story progression mechanic. Would have still made the world open and allowed plenty of freedom to explore while keeping that particular story thread linear.
I think it whould have been a cool idea if the game took place in the past. They could still use the same hyrule but we get to experience it 10000+ years in the past
@@philspaghet No it wouldn't, the Hyrule that the Zonai formed isn't the same Hyrule the first Link and Zelda formed. BotW Zelda didn't go to Skyward Sword Era, she just went to the start of this new Hyrule.
After the GDC presentation Nintendo did on Tears of the Kingdom's development, I think we now know why the game ended up as it did. I think it's safe to say most of us were expecting Nintendo to build on top of Breath of the Wild's world and physics; to take that and add classic dungeons and such. Nintendo's goal with this game, however, was instead to *double down* on BotW's open world and physics. This explains why the game reaches greater heights than BotW while also reaching greater lows.
The shortcomings I felt BotW had were all forgiven by what it achieved and by accepting what is was. So you noted exactly what I felt with TotK- it’s much harder to forgive the shortcomings when they were repeated from the last.
@@NuiYabuko I don't see your point? A deliberate design choice can still be a shortcoming? I still wish the divine beasts were something different when I play BotW, but I don't look down on the developers for making those choices and trying something new. But I do look down on the same things in TotK that I let slide in BotW because there was an opportunity to course correct.
When Ganondorf knew Link and Zelda's names at the beginning of the game I was so impressed, thinking he was acknowledging versions of them from the older games. It was therefore a huge disappointment that he only knew who they were because of Zelda going back in time.
Then when he mentioned "Rauru" I was like "HOLY SHIT! THEY'RE GOING THERE, TO OOT!" ... ... .... Then we learn that, no, its just a totally new and unrelated Rauru... That deflated me greatly early on.
thats a very weird thing to be disappointed in. especially because demise reincarnates just like link and zelda, so hes just as un aware about the past as they are. just because YOU are disappointed doesnt mean its actually disappointing.
You nailed everything I've thought about the game for some time now. The game really needed more enemy types. Hearing about the pirates at lurelin was magical only to find the same moblins -- no eyepatch or peg leg in sight. They needed more threats in the air while you were flying around, and more threats in the ocean while you were sailing away. That would have helped it feel more fresh being in the same world and all.
My Zelda motivation is still, even now, in shambles from this game. It was so disappointing. What a waste of 6 years. So unfortunate. There was good about it, but it was such, such a waste. I wish we could have just had the fucking dlc after a year or two, not this dogshit.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
The depths under Eldin was actually very exciting because the biome was different, i don't know why each region wasn't different like Eldin.
You are 100% right
Because, for Eldin, the source of the areas heat, comes from below, so naturally it be the same in the depths, the other areas are basically based on the weather and climate above, which in the depth would have 0 influence.
@@TerranigmaQuintet They should have still found some ways to vary them up to make them more original looking. That's one of my biggest disappointments with the Depths. I think the complaints are overrated, I like the Depths a lot, but the environments is a problem I can't argue against.
@@TerranigmaQuintetbut it’s a video game, not real life. They had any excuse to put whatever biome they wanted underneath the depths of it made the game more fun and interesting, which it would have. Given that the godlike Zonai lived down there, they could’ve had purple rain biome beneath hebra and said “welp, Zonai magic”.
@@APsGTGhell, a purple rain biome sounds sick, so.. why not?
It feels like "The Imprisoning War" was A fight, not so much a war. They could have shown the WAR from each of the sages perspective. With the ruin that happens to their homes and people. Instead of the same cut scene from the same simgle fight.
No no-that would have taken away from that one ambiguous scene that happens 4 times :)
Or at least make another DLC for HW:AoC, where we don't see, but play said war.
Yeah, it definitely was a war, with the entire nation of hyrule fighting off monsters. But we don't get to see it. Its just the imprisoning battle for us
@@greenmenace9666 "demon king? secret stone?" 😮
@@sonicsillies 2nd floor basement? psycho mantis???
I definitely think the depths and the caves should have been combined.
A maze of endless tunnels which seem to just go deeper and deeper, occasional pockets of open space just revealing how far under the earth you really are. It would make exploring it a real challenge, both of your skill and ability to navigate. It would also be fun to drop into a well only to realize after minutes that there isnt going to be an end.
Oh my gosh that's an incredible idea. Like Journey to the Center of the Earth type stuff
@@amilisom mhm. Add rope, hooks, and complex cave structures and you have one of the best traversal puzzle you could ever design. Realistic caves are an amazing setting for a game but I havent seen any exploring it well, the closest is something like deep rock and even that doesnt do it justice.
lore-wise this gives a great chance to allude to the bottom of the well in oot (and deadhands, which is already similar to the gloom hands)
@@Ivel1ossbro just want celeste
@@chinstion Celeste is a really good game, but its a platformer and 2d. A 3d game like breath of the wild with more grounded movement works better for the narrow cave environment, which we almost got for a lot of the caves, my problem is they suffer because they're designed to be really small and simple.
I was so bummed to see the sky island had no society living among all those islands. Litterally just a bunch of bots.
Truly is castle in the sky
Honestly, why aren't the Rito in ANY of the sky islands or at least exploring them? They're flying creatures. Not to mention the new Zonai tech would clearly allow Hylians to reach these sky islands with devices as well. I was really excited when I got to my first sky Island, only to be absolutely let down when I realized none of them had anything worthwhile exploring.
@@blizzfreak245think you got to remember that half of the people in Hyrule are scared of visiting the sky islands because they don't know if it's dangerous or not.
@@blizzfreak245 I'm glad someone else noticed. The fact we don't find a single living person, not even one curious Rito up there, is odd, especially considering how close some of the islands are to some mountain tops.
@@GooberBoi6000 Yet you got people in depths?
I'm not buying that lol
The fundamental problem with the story, is that the Zelda team's policy of making stand-alone games clashes with the concept of a direct sequel in the same world.
Not to mention how bad sonia and rauru are as characters. EDIT: YEP I SAID IT. THEY ARE OVERRATED GARBAGE AND DO NOT DESERVE THE PRAISE THEY GET
It's at its worst when even characters that should canonically know you don't, like Bolson...
I feel the same with how they seem to want to grow out of the timelines because I guess they're too complicated for newcomers to follow. Yet at the same time they can't stop alluding to past names and events. It feels like a cheap way to keep people theorising about a greater story than the one they actually delivered.
@@Chicken_Done
Oh, I think the problem is the opposite. There are callbacks, but they do absolutely nothing with them or outright answer the questions themselves. So it feels moot to bother theorizing about things like the Gerudo pyramid having so many answers or the Depths having no answers.
@@Chicken_DoneIt also doesn't help that "Rauru" is also the name of one of the sages in OOT
I think they could've actually gotten away with using the same hyrule map if they had only made link be the one that goes back in time instead. We would still explore what essentially is hyrule but way in the past with different pre evolved enemies, different weapons armor and lootable items throughout the world. That i think could've fundamentally changed the game and made it stand out more. I would've loved to play that game
That could have really been interesting... Link with his amnesia kinda got to dodge a lot of the losses that Zelda experienced in BOTW. Link trying to resolve some of Hyrules past problems only to have to watch them fall, and then Link (and the player) ultimately having to be the one to realize what they have to do and sacrifice and press that button themselves would have been really compelling. You could also have had glimpses of Zelda going princess mode and trying to command the forces of Hyrule in the present to prepare to fight and protect themselves, to remind you of what you're trying to preserve in the future, then glimpses of her trying to reach you before she figures out a way to turn you back (maybe by somehow swapping who's the dragon? then resolving it like the regular ending with Rauru and Sonia) and you get that last fight.
@@rebellemuria It would have been cool to go back as link to JUST before Rauru showed up. Imagine you're thrown into a Hyrule before it was a kingdom, when it was truly wild and free, especially with how it's implied by Ganondorf that it was a savage land where the only way to survive was to be strong. You can still have the monsters with the horns and just explain them away as past versions of the monsters, you can still have the new monsters like the Gleeocks and explain them away as having gone extinct.
You can explore this wild Hyrule for a bit, which seems like Link's dream world, get new weapons, new clothes, then you start seeing the visions of future Zelda, and that's what drives the story. You see a vision of her with the whole Hylian army behind her, and you realize that in order for this to happen, you must unify Hylians into a single kingdom so they can survive and build settlements, as opposed to the mostly nomadic people in the past version. So you go around and do some quests and fight some bosses and maybe a dungeon, and you unify the Hylians.
Rauru, having lost his people, thus, having lost his community, sees you doing this and decides to come and help you in any way he can, and he gives you the Zonai powers. The next glimpse is Sidon saving Zelda's life, and you go and solve whatever problem the Zora's have in the past and establish a peaceful relationship between them and the Hylians, and so on until you've unified all the races. Last up is the Gerudo, who you see helping Zelda, so you must convince them to join Hyrule and live in peace, but unbeknownst to you, Ganondorf has just returned from a war campaign in a faraway land, and he does not accept your offer, and resents what you've done with his world.
This starts the imprisoning war, you can still find the strongest warriors of each race and form the sages, Rauru still gives everyone the stones, by know you can have Zelda imply that she's found a way to bring you back, so you entrust Rauru, your closest friend, to be the first king of Hyrule, instead of taking that title yourself as the rightful unifier of the land. In your final fight with Ganondorf, you're about to lose (scripted) when you're able to take something from him, and in that moment Zelda brings you back to the present, where you find out that adding the item you took from him to the Mastersword unlocks it's full power, and you fight Ganondorf for the last time in the present, Zelda can still sacrifice herself to become a dragon using a stone you brought back with you from the past, and she can do this in order to defeat the draconified Demon King, and the epilogue can still be Rauru and Sonia turning her back.
Yes this is would’ve been a lot more interesting
but then no pristine royal guard's weapon :/
@@manofhealingthis would have been a brilliant idea
To this day, I’m still salty that almost no one in the world seems to recognize Link and what he did for them. It felt like my journey in BotW was completely invalidated.
What do you mean almost nobody? Most of the characters do. There's literally only a few that should, but don't for whatever reason... those being Hestu, Bolson, and- maybe- Beetle. He's largely recognized almost everywhere else.
@@WindMageMaster I mean almost nobody because I MEAN almost nobody outside of “important” characters. It’s been six(?) years in-game since BotW, and Link should be a goddamn celebrity. How is it that after all that time, especially with the invention of the PRINTING PRESS, Link just seems to be another random face to the general populace?? And don’t even get me started on the fact that Link seems to be a stranger in Hateno Village, despite the fact that he LIVES THERE.
@@Hanakin-Sidewalker Even many NPCs that weren't in BotW recognize him and celebrate him, so I'm not sure what you mean. It's not literally every NPC, but it's quite a few. There's even a statue of him in Zora's domain with Sidon and the random NPC Zora's even react to him when he's by the statue. He also did not live in Hateno- he gave the house to Zelda.
@@WindMageMasterIt’s very much implied (to me and many others, anyway) that Link and Zelda shared the house. Where else would Link live if he just gave the house solely for Zelda to live in? (Okay, there’s many places, but still)
@@WindMageMaster Pretty sure they're living together there, for what little time they don't spend traveling. You don't just unlock the power of the goddess from your affection for someone and then take their house. She's got Link's spare scrunchie there, and it's decorated by Zelda because she's clearly more of a nester as is common in hetero relationships.
This might be a shallow criticism, but between the initial trailer with mummified Ganon and reveal of the depths, I thought the game was going to be creepier. Like TOTK would be the Majora of the Wild duo. This isn’t really a valid criticism because I acknowledge it’s my own preconceptions that sway me, but that’s all I can really add to the conversation. You already covered everything else so well!
Same
IIRC they flat-out said it was going to be dark like Majora's Mask. It wasn't even an implication, they might have scrapped all of the creepy content
Nah its a valid criticism. The first teaser used creepy sounding music, creepy reversed voice clips, implied that Zelda almost died, used Ganondorf’s moving corpse as a climax…. I could go on. I walked away from that first look with chills that wouldn’t go away, that BOTW’s world would be so wildly subverted. They built so much tension… then did… nothing with it?
@@Beth-td6vj Reduced Ganondorf to a basement dwelling edgelord who calls people weenies for liking light.
I’d say it definitely was in certain areas, ganon straight up braking the hylian queens back was sick. His corruption of the korok forest and the phantom Ganons were super creepy. I played majoras mask as a teen not a kid and it wasn’t very creepy to me. Definitely creepier in some areas like the moon and majora as a concept but they’re equal in my opinion. Twilight princess was the creepiest one to me ganon was on straight demon time in that
I decided early to find all the dragon tears, this caused several story problems. Link knows what happened to Zelda and where she is, yet:
He'll continue to chase rumors around the kingdom.
He refuses to tell Paya the "Zelda" that warned her about the ring ruins was false.
He acts surprised at Hyrule castle.
At the very least, the final memory should of been locked behind certain story progression. Before that, even with every other memory, you could argue that while Link (and the player) has pieced together what happened. He doesn't definitively know, and is desperate for it not to be true, so would be willing to chase any lead.
they should have just made the cutscenes unlock in chronological order so it doesn't matter what tear you find, the story's pacing wont break
@@Cajun_SeasoningYES!
It's such a mess. they commit so hard to giving players complete freedom of choice that they neglect to even attempt steering them towards any sort of remotely optimal path. even noticing the correct order of the tears is basically an easter egg that's never once pointed out.
ToTK seems incredibly slapped together last minute, which confuses me so much.
They had Seven years, and this is what they did? I think I would've preferred the DLC of Breathe of the Wild. ToTK is just an awful game, gameplay, and story-wise.
The build system is really cool... However, does nothing but replace the paraglider and bullet time. It's not better, it's forced and annoying. BOTW is way better still.
@@ZeranZeran Not 7 years bro. The 7 years before 2023 was 2016... and BotW didn't even released...
The sad part for a game that supposedly focuses on the Zonai.... Is that we learned almost NOTHING about them! Hell, they're barely even shown in the game! We still have just as many if not more questions about the Zonai as we did before we played the game....
I expected to be steeped in the lore of the Zonai, only to be left grossly disappointed with the Narrative of this game as a whole. I absolutely LOVE the gameplay iself, but man... The story & how poorly it's both presented and written really takes the experience down for me.
Yeah, I agree on that. We learnt practically nothing about their culture, only about their technology (and not even that was explained properly). "Magic genius scientists" has to be one of my least favorite tropes ever.
right? everything in the game is about them, from the sky to the depths to everything in hyrule's past, yet we know about as much about them as we did before the game came out, except now we know they're weird goat-looking mfs lmao
They did the same with the Sheikah in BOTW. There were Sheikah symbols everywhere but nothing was really added to the lore.
Unfortunately, BOTW was the game that made me give up on the Zelda lore
@Dairunt1 Agreed. It really is sad how lacking the narrative is in these games. I honestly think the entire thing is rather poorly written.... Some scenes feel more like a bad fanfic than a professional narrative!
For example, the scene of Rauru saying he prefers to keep Ganon close... That was so cliche. When I saw that I immediately knew what would happen next. He just "accepts his fealty" & gets Sonya killed. It was so bad.
It all happens so quick, with little way of development. It's like they had to quickly come up with some reason for Ganon to get his power, and THIS was the best they could come up with?
There simply isn't enough of a story here! And what's here is just so badly presented... with short, out of order cutscenes. The premise of the story is solid, but the way it's presented is just plain bad.
I thought that MAYBE, just maybe... They would have learned their lesson from BOTW, but they ended up doing the EXACT same thing! I just don't get why they thought that was a good idea...
And worse yet, the fact that hardly anyone in Hyrule even recognizes Link in this game! After he spent all that time with them in BOTW, everyone acts like he's a total stranger. That alone took me completely out of the narrative. Yet another baffling narrative choice by Nintendo.
They truly need to hire better writers, cus this was just bad in my humble opinion. The gameplay was amazing, but the story was by far the weakest part of both these games.
They destroyed the Zonai imo. They made them too personal, and didn't expand on their story enough, complete antithesis of the Sheika. We met hundreds of Sheika yet they were as mysterious by the end as they were at the beginning, they really sold the idea of this god-like culture, and adding a living one in the DLC only enhanced it. Whereas with the Zonai they were just reskinned Hylians, I couldn't even really appreciate the fact that they're meant to be moon rabbits because it feels more like a design gimmick than an interesting aspect of their story.
You have summed up my feelings exactly. The game is so much bigger, but in weird ways feels smaller and repeats so many of the main beats from BotW. One of my main complaints is, for a direct sequel, how little it references the first game. All the Sheikah tech is mysteriously gone, replaced by identical Purah tech and Zonai shrines. Malice is no more, but is replaced with the almost identical Gloom. Very few of the NPCs even reference the events of the first game. Even Ganondorf seems to say "Calamity Ganon? What's that? I've been stuck down here." I was looking forward to a continuation of the story, but the developers seemed more interested in making it stand alone for those who hadn't played BotW.
The fact that they didn't directly continue on the story in many places left so much on the table, it really is such a huge missed opportunity. This iteration of Link and Zelda have been though so much and most certainly evolved as individuals, in their relationship, and in the greater world of Hyrule. Much of this goes unacknowledged. Unfortunate since the combined story of TOTK + BOTW has a lot of great material to work with, even in its current form, so it could have been even better had they acknowledged the connection between TOTK and BOTW.
I think they tried to wipe the slate clean for newcomers while keeping the BOTW feel while taking commentary from fans and rectyfying their mistakes... which leads to tonal mismatch and why they just didn't send link to the past... they could have re use map and all and avoid all the 'bUt WheRe is SheIkAh TeCh?" questions (which fair, but where the hell is sheikah tech?).
@@knp01 my personal head cannon was - they simply just destroyed it. (which is better than their saying "Oh yeah it just disappeared poof). like if it were me, even knowing that "Ganon was gone" i wouldn't really want any kind of tech (that was intact), to simply exist and be taken over and possibly kill everyone again so they just tore it all down. the new towers etc were similarly based on it -(You can even see some of the pieces) - but probably not to the degree of being completely. the same as the ones in BoTW
The annoying part is a number of these issues can fixed with a little bit of dialogue. The Sheikah tech was buried/destroyed because it was too dangerous. Or gloom is reminds me of a stronger malice, etc.
@@lapniappe I have issues with this explanation- they destroyed it it with whom exactly, there are total 20 people living in hyrule and contrary to people's idea, proper destruction of builts like sheikah shrines would take time. Two- they destroyed it, but left exactly enough of Sheikah tech for the towers and enerfy grid to power the towers, including 11 extra teleport pads from divine beast that Robbie had laying in his lab. Sorry, but no explanation just cuts it in game world even. We can have headcanons and come up with explanations, but the truth is that devs didn't care enough to make even the most basic explanation realistic and coherent in-game. And this kind of incoherence is on the devs and their "gameplay first, sorry later" approach to designning games in general.
The tell just how they didn't care about storytelling is the fact that they didn't have proper script writer position while developing totk and instead they said the story was influenced by all the lead designer and they included actual writers into that pool. It tells me that there was no one effectively responsible for the coherence of the script and story and there were simply to many people who had that influence and they lost track of it while concentrating at the same time on coding the new abilities.
The reasons I dislike the game:
1. Too many things feel like a redo of BOTW's story, rather than a sequel. Same plot structure with Ganon taking over Hyrule Castle, and his minions tormenting the four major cities. All the Sheikah tech, which played a huge part in BOTW, is inexplicably gone, and is replaced by Zonai tech. All the Koroks decide to hide around the world again. Instead of the Calamity we now have the Upheaval, which sounds much less threatening. It just doesn't feel like a sequel.
2. Fusing is cool, but it kills your momentum, and too much of the game focuses on fusing stuff. Fusing is slow and clunky, and parts often don't attach the way you want them to.
3. The Sage abilities are a pain to activate, while the ones from BOTW were so easy to use. There, they were added to abilities you already have. (Urbosa's Fury = spin attack, Daruk's Protection = Guarding, Revali's Gale = Jumping, Mipha's Grace =dying). In TOTK, you have to find the right blue spirit among four of them, tap a button before they run off again, and in Riju's case wait an eternity for her area of effect to widen. AND GOD FORBID if you miss with Riju's ability. Wait, and do it all again!
4. Fused weapons break too easily and look ugly. There were breakable weapons in BOTW too, but they weren't as punishing as in TOTK. I also hate seeing green glue on all my weapons. Why can't we just have fusable weapons as an option, rather than a necessity?
5. Remote Bombs were super convenient in BOTW. Why couldn't we have them in TOTK too?
6. Why can't you buy elemental arrows anymore? Did every storeowner in Hyrule just forget how to make them? I hate fusing an item to EVERY SINGLE ARROW! Either let me buy elemental arrows from shops, or allow me to fuse multiple arrows at once.
7. "Let me tell you of the Imprisoning War and the Demon King for the fourth time..." Speaking of the previous sages, why couldn't they just have names and faces?
i hate nintendo i like supeheros better but i play the detcetive music bye alan tew and je$$$king off looking at princess Zelda pictures
Your opinions are objectively correct.
well said , BOTW best game, so much fun . i havent finished TOTK and im going to sell it. everythinf you said , is the same frustration i have .
Ya’ll are nuts, this is a great game…objectively
@@MutedGrowl So you see this comment with a bunch of very well laid out critiques. It is written by a man who clearly played the entirety of the game and gave a real effort towards trying to enjoy it. You then say to yourself "I'm gonna reply to that comment not with any sort of intelligent reply, but saying that he's wrong and the game is objectively good" (with no reasoning to show for it or response to any single part of the comment)
I cannot fathom this sort of mindset man 😭 people can dislike or like the same things and this is the point of conversation. If your goal is just to say "you're objectively wrong" and have zero dialogue, why comment at all?
One thing that would have been REALLY cool as late sidequests would have been finding lore about how the 3 other Dragons became dragons! To hear their story of the people who swallowed a Tear to become a Dragon. That would have been neat!
That would’ve been amazing!
I thought the ill fated dlc would do that…
Tbh I kinda assumed those were just naturally dragons and not ones created from secret stones.
@@roadjcat same here
Shouldve been a main mission to do so
My biggest issue was that it didn’t really feel like a sequel. They chose to accommodate for new players instead of rewarding the older players with the familiar atmosphere. Including several npcs not recognising Link, in Breath Of The Wild, I don’t think many players took much notice of the Zonai, as there was so much focus on the Sheikah and the calamity of 10000 years ago. Now, you have “Zonai research teams” and the same feeling of mystery isn’t there anymore. Also they created an Ancient Hero’s aspect, but didn’t really address the ancient calamity, which in the end had no bearing whatsoever on the story.
The game is a technical marvel though.
I feel the exact same way. If Tears of the Kingdom moved a couple things around, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see it as a standalone game away from sequel territory. Yet it's not. These NPCs *ARE* meant for this Link and they *HAVE* met him.
To be honest, I'm sad they cared so much about being fully and 100% story accessible for new players. So many of these changes to familiarize yourself with the world just seem cheap to someone who's already played, and it just isn't cohesive at all.
I didn't even realise that Zonai was in BotW, did anyone mention it in game?
@@stayf0rtea_939it’s funny they’d do it this way too, to accommodate for all 4 of the players who own a switch and never played BotW 🤦♂️
@@ToadstoolFilms I can't remember any NPC mentioning Zonai, we only knew of the Zonai because of the Zonai Ruins in Faron. There is one NPC in Lurelin, whose Shrine Quest involves an unknown ancient language that isn't ancient Sheikah and could be of Zonai origin, but the NPC himself never mentions this
That's just Nintendo's design philosophy. In every game they make; they want the individual games to be able to stand on their own. It's a double edged sword.
Ngl, I legit bursted out laughing when you showed the 4 sages cutscenes playing at once. I knew those scenes were redundant and repetitive but jeez that just makes them seem even worse. What you said is true though. The only highlight of that part of the story is Mineru's take of it. Every other sage has the exact same bland retelling with ZERO new info learned. I get Nintendo thinking any region of the game could be a player's first but this is ridiculous.
OTHER open narritive games have done better. Simply make 4 different cutscenes for each sage that plays in order so a complete story is told.
God, I seriously almost skipped the last two in my very first playthrough. That's not a good sign. I'm usually not very analytical in the middle of a blind excited playthrough, so if something takes me out long enough to recognize this is kinda shit, it's bad.
😭😭😭😭😭 wahhhh
It goes to show that this game didn’t take 6 years to make, that was a lie. They were rushing this story evidently.
Could pick up any drunk guy off the street who’s never even heard of Zelda to write better cutscene dialogue than that bs.
@@Aybrix I actually did skip the last two cutscenes. I couldn't be arsed to sit through that two more times.
I too was disappointed that no one remembers my heroics and that I was called a tourist in Hateno
Yeah being called a tourist in Haetno is really weird...I mean its still Links House...I remember that in Zeldas Diarys there was a mention about Link so I would assume they lived there both?
@@Pmarlon231 IDK where else he would live fhdsjka i'm sure he still protects her since the sheikah tribe didn't mention that they took care of her while link went off and did other things, so idk why link wouldn't live in that house too. it's not like we see him actually having a house... or anywhere else he stayed. i'd even understand him sleeping outside by a campfire bc he did that most of the time in my botw save anyway, but, he'd still do it near zelda, otherwise, why the hell else is he always with her whenever we do manage to see them together 😭
the town link was born and raised in, and had a house w zelda for like 5 years. a tourist T-T
I enjoyed exploring the depths so much, and when I finished activating all light roots, I felt so empty and I realized the entire depths is the same
SAMEE AND THE REWARD WAS SO ASS😭😭
When I realized the depths were literally a mirror world of the surface, I lost all interest.
@@ozvoid1245 EXACTLYY
I was glad to get every root node the first time. That way, I knew I would never have to do it again. But frankly, I wouldn’t want to do it again moreso because there’s fucking no reason to, rather than it simply being a slog.
It’s a big problem with the reward structure of the depths vs the surface.
Complete a shrine? You get what is essentially a piece of heart, tangible power that is of direct immediate use to you.
Complete every shrine? You get an incredibly unique armor set, and subconsciously that set represents all of the puzzles and trials you overcame on the way there, you will have a favourite one, you’ll have a hated one, you’ll have one that made you feel clever for understanding it, one that made you feel dumb for not understanding it. You’ll probably have at least one memory of finding the shrine or making your way to it, engaging with the world in the process.
Contrast that with lightroots:
You find one lightroot, you get a bit of map revealed and the area is lit up without needing to use lightblooms.
Find all of them? You get an icon in your key items. That’s it.
Lighting a single lightroot is underwhelming because all it does is light the area, an area that you probably lit when navigating TO the lightroot, and afterwards means that you have to engage with the depths mechanics less.
Lighting them all? Lightseeds are now a dead mechanic to you, you can see the entirety of the grey identical biome, and you get a menu icon that reminds you of… all the times you walked up to a lightroot and hit A.
Like, say what you want about korok seeds and the golden turd at the end of it all, but at least the turd had a bit of entertaining meta commentary (doing all this for a literal shiny poo), you had to engage with the mechanics of Koroks, you’ll probably be able to reflect on your journey and draw SOME emotions from it (amusement at korok torture, bewilderment at how Koroks were in some places, surprise at an innocuous thing granting a reward, relief at being able to hold more), and for the first third they had a benefit to collecting them for inventory size
Reflecting on the reward the lightroots give you just serves as a reminder of how ultimately hollow the depths are.
The lightroot reward actually managed to be worse than the golden poo.
Honestly we were all so hyped for the Sky Islands and the best one was the tutorial island.
Ouch.
🤣
When I saw the sky islands for the first time, one of my first ideas for more was the north and western world barrier canyon being a large sky island. Not all still connected, but in the approximate shape so you know what it was. Varying heights and sizes of all the bits that made it up would have made exploring it so fun
TBF, having one good sky island and a bunch of little disappointing ones tracks for what we know about the sky islands from skyward sword
@@harrylane4
As a Skyward Sword lover; real. God, how I would’ve loved if Skyward Sword got some room to build up the sky islands a bit more. But, I get why they didn’t. Still, while I LOVE the linear storytelling, (I like games that almost feel like books or movies, maybe I just don’t like games much 💀-), I also wish the world could’ve had a little more time to be fleshed out. It’s almost why it makes it MORE disappointing because while SS at least had story, the whole point of TOTK was to flesh out the _world._
Where is the lie?!
My biggest complaint for TotK was seriously it’s absolute lack of connection with BotW. It feels more like an entirely different Zelda game with a different story that was never supposed to be a sequel to BotW, that happens to have all the same characters and the same Hyrule
The entire land is a connection to BotW. It is being rebuilt for years and the characters grew too with their own stories. How is that not a connection?
@@Oliveiraverde Except literally nothing is connected. Everything Sheikah, which made up the entireity of BOTWs 'culture', is gone and replaced with Zonai, including shit that couldn't be moved without scarring the land, no one remembers anything from the last game, and nothing has really changed. Up to and including you doing the exact same shit you did in the last game.
@@TheDapperDragonDon’t lie to yourself, everyone who actually experienced what happened in BOTW actually remembers except Bolson
@@chillswany Except, you know, any of the gorons, Zelda, Hetsu, any of the Shiekah, any of the NPCs, Link himself.
@@TheDapperDragon How come it is not remembered? Just and example, there is a memorial outside of the Hyrule's Castle dedicated to the people who were lost during the Calamity.
This game is not darker than Majoras mask and I will die on this hill.
Could’ve, should’ve, but isn’t.
For sure it isn't !
I don't think TOTK is dark at all... even OOT is darker .
Despite marketing saying otherwise, the game is probably the most light-hearted Zelda game out there. I wouldn't even have a problem with it, if it wasn't advertised as a darker experience.
obviously
@@PlumpProductions-wj3jp windwaker, phantom hourglass, and spirit tracks are the most light hearted lol
I think it would've been super cool if the past zelda cutscenes were playable bits. Making us play as Zelda, being linear, to scratch that old 3D zelda itch, each one ending with a cutscene and unlocking the next one
Would extremely improve game play but it would be hard and weird to do since it's out of order.
Yea no thanks. Literally 0 point in letting us play a cutscene as a player, and given the context there likely would have been little gameplay actually involved outside of mashing the skip dialogue button. Thank god they didnt make them "playable"
@@_AriseChicken I also don't understand what we would even play.
And have the game release 3 years later? Not to mention the game also has to run.
Maybe change it so the light dragon drops a tear each time you complete one.@@tumultuousv
A piece of frustration I have is that what you did in BoTW has no effects on the world of ToTK. Now the system to read the save is there, because your horses are transported between games...
The only thing I noticed is the champions portrait from BOTW. If you got it in BOTW, it will also appear in Lin... I mean Zelda's 🙄house.
Yeah that was my biggest issue too. It's a direct sequel and yet no one knew who Link was. In Hateno village when everyone was like who are you, I was like ???????.
I do feel anything more substantial than carrying over horses would’ve been unfair to the Wii U players. (Though I’m likely biased since I’m one of them.)
The amount of effort that would take isn't remotely worth the payoff. The small things like horses and the champions picture is enough. Doing that would need to remove Tarrey town if you didn't do it, and that would just be a loss for players
@@infinitecurliethink about it a little more though. For the majority of hylians, Link was just some dude who came through. Even for Bolson, Link was a client, not much more. The ones who remember you, the races and people like Hudson, all had their lives greatly affected by Link. Given the school in Hateno, not a ton of people even knew about the calamity being finished, much less knowing Link was involved.
1:58:09 This is actually incorrect! A single Rito that resides in Rito Village will refer to the top of the town as "Vah Medoh's Perch"! Which makes it even WEIRDER that the Divine Beasts just vanished.
It probably just flew into a warmer region for the winter lol
Yeah. I never really understood how all of the ancient tech and divine beasts are nowhere to be found
@Jonnyrc18 well, the shrines and towers went back underground, and that makes good sense since Ganon was defeated. The Guardians were obviously scavenged for parts, which we can see in several places, especially the Skyview Towers. The only real mystery that doesn't make much sense is the Divine Beasts
What they should have done was keep them as deactivated pieces in the world, something you can't interact with but stones near them each for the champion that lost their lifes(like the ones all over hyrule)
Divine beast was probably named after the perch
While I definitely enjoyed TOTK and don't think it sucks (still a 7/10 for me) the thing I think the most regarding the game is just the potential it had. Imagine if the story was lore-friendly, properly developed and wasn't sugar-coated. Imagine if they had made new weapon types (including the field of shields and bows) and not just the same things with shiny cosmetics. Imagine if the combat was better and faster. Imagine if they hadn't prioritised quantity over quality and had a fantastic and new surface and sky map as well as cool caves. Imagine if the dungeons were longer and more traditional. Imagine if it cared about continuity and coherence. It's just... Damn, man. This game could have been AWESOME...
Exactly, looking at how much potential this game had always hurts, it’s tragic that they did nothing with the combat and weapons even tho it’s such a fundamental part of the game
Weapons are still more like ammo then actual weapons
I hate that even after two entire games, we still know next to nothing about the Zonai and what happened to them.
...why do you care? they are barely mentioned in botw, and serve their purpose in totk
after two games on the n64 we still knew next to nothing about literally anything in those games, but im certain youll tell me its the best thing youve ever played.
The zonai are fujibayashi wanting an explaination for highly advanced magitech, they dont need some sort of deep backstory, they serve as a simple origin point. Thankfully, because the zelda team has decided to stop listening to manchildren sending death threats to them on the internet, youll have plenty more zelda games that will talk about that race.
@@daniel8181I care because I know they could have done so much more with the concept. It just feels like all the theorizing prior to the launch of TotK led to something completely underwhelming and underdeveloped.
@@daniel8181what a bizzare rant. In any sort of media I want to know more about how the world works, and that includes ancient civilizations and how they affect the world you play in.
@Infindox I agree I want to know everything but I also like how there is mystery almost everywhere you go.
I think the point is that the Zelda team just does that. They build up new races and then give you very little information about them. Because Nintendo isn't interested in having a grand cohesive world history spanning 12k years. They just write a little story every five years that may or may not directly connect to one other story. And then the fans go nuts over "tHe TiMeLiNe" when Nintendo never actually cared for it, beyond the bare minimum to sell you the "Hyrule Historia" book
I remember when I was so excited while I was exploring the Great Plateau in TotK when I found the place where the Shrine of Resurrection had been. When all I found was a little cave with a couple of Yiga in it, it felt like the game was telling me that I was stupid for caring about the world I had spent dozens of hours exploring in the last game.
@foxhoundslug Except that there's literally no evidence of that whatsoever. Given the game's general habit of pretnending BotW never happened, it feels more like a cute little nod to BotW than any actual attempt at continuity (like how you get a motorcycle-esque schematic under where the Shrine of Resurrection used to be), which just feels like rubbing salt in the wound.
It doesn't even make sense if you think about it at all. Why only those shrines, specifically? It's not like the other chasms correspond to shrines in the last game. Hell, why those shrines at all? Those four are literally the only shrines Link is guaranteed to have already gotten the Spirit Orbs from and he no longer has the Sheikah Slate, he wouldn't have been able gain anything from them anyway. Hell, how would Ganondorf even have known about those shrines? He's been sealed away for at least several millenia and only knew about Link's existence at all because Rauru mentioned Link's name once. Why wouldn't he destroy the Shrines of Light instead, things that he would probably recognize from his time as a mortal? Where the hell did the rest of the shrines go?
This is just like the "Oh they must just have dismantled the Divine Beasts" theory. It's headcanon that tries to paper over TotK's bad storytelling with a theory that almost certainly wasn't intended by the devs (official dev statement was that all the Shiekah tech just... vanished, and apparently nobody cared for some reason), and doesn't even make any sense if you think about it for five seconds.
Since it would have been literally much easier to not change anything at all rather than strip out all the shrines, towers and Sheikah technology - I have to believe it was done on purpose to try to hint at a particular change in this world’s history.
@@DeadDancers not in terms of writing. instead of making a continuous story and building upon what was set up in the previous game, they tore it all down and only put some cute nods to it. i don't think it's that deep, they just wanted to change it enough to justify it being a new game imo lol
Right? Caves where interiors should have been was a recurring theme.
I mean I was really excited to see Akkala Citadel had an opening at the front, only to sigh, "Oh, of course." When I realized it was another cave.
@kiptheott5932 it wouldn't have been hard to explain the dismantling of the divine beasts either if they wanted. "We didn't want them to be corrupted again and used against us" simple as pie, but they didn't really mention them at all.
it would've been so cool if the whole game had just taken place in the distant past. we could've explored the earliest version of Hyrule - they could've used the same map, but changed it drastically - it would've made having Zonai technology and vanished Sheikah tech make sense, and Link and Zelda could've had their adventure together or in tandem, something I've been wishing for for a long time.
Lol that'd just be Far Cry Primal
Isn’t that skyword sword’s purpose?
I think we've established that the old timeline has been thrown out entirely besides maybe Fi specifically. @@raedenjay
@@Casino220nah, it’s a dragon break.
THAT would have been so awesome
All of the lightroots in the depths correspond to a shrine on the surface. I have no idea why they didn't make the surface shrines hidden/concealed until activate their corresponding lightroots in the depths. It would have given the perfect explanation why they were hidden in BotW and incentivized exploring the depths.
What if Rauru acted as a sort of Navi throughout Totk? Instead of vanishing for no stated reason, he could've stayed in links arm, giving backstory to the sky islands and depths locations since he would have knowledge of them, which would greatly flesh out the new content, and this wouldn't affect the plot too much, since he wouldn't know about zelda's transformation or anything involving the sky islands being lifted. it would've provided so much depth to gain the backstory of new locations and depth to rauru as he reacts to the changes from his hyrule to the current one. You would need to rework sonia's death and the imprisoning war to preserve those mysteries, but I think that this would've greatly added to this game.
Or even if not Rauru, then Mineru, she's literally also a spirit inside of A RING ON HIS FINGER AND CAN CALL ON HER AT ANY TIME ONCE FOUND. HOW DID WE NOT CAPITLISE AND HAVE HER ACT AS FI :(
Please not another Fi
I think the commenter imagines this concept as more like Atreus from God of War 4 than Fi.
This! I would have loved more Rauru. Such a cool design and interesting character delegated to an hour or so of screen time.
Nah, he definitely would have known Zelda was the light dragon. He was there when Mineru told Zelda about Draconification, and he would probably notice how odd it is that there is a golden haired dragon flying about. Failing that, he would probably be able to sense his light energy within the dragon like he did when he first met Zelda…
Fun fact, the Ascend Ability was actually originally a dev tool, used for quick escapes during betas, and they ended up enjoying it so much that they wanted to share it with us! I'm very grateful for that choice, i absolutely LOVE ascend
That’s the best ability IMO!
Fun ability for sure. Would not like to see it return though lol. I think it’s too game-breaking.
@@created3612 thats kinda fair honestly, i think maybe if it had some sort of limit other than the distance from the roof or the flat surface. if it had some sort of cap on exactly how far through things you could ascend, it might be better, for example i always found it weird asf when i would try to ascend through a wall in the depths and link would pop up all the way on the surface. maybe it will return, maybe it wont, with the series moving on from this era its definitely impossible to tell right now.
@created3162 it should only return on games where you've explored the world already. Aka sequels
@nox1233 there are only like 5 areas you can ascend from the depths to the surface. And they're meant to be there, because some people don't want to fast travel so it's not good to limit that. It already was limited in the depths lol
I was so excited for this game, and the first few hours were amazing. It felt like there was so much new stuff to explore, and I couldn't wait for real dungeons this time. After a few hours of playing and exploring, the honeymoon phase wore off. I noticed that once I've seen a bit of the depths, caves, sky islands, etc. I've seen it all. Everything felt so copy pasted and samey even with new enemies and places to explore.
My first temple was the wind temple, and it was super exciting at first. The ascent to a legendary ark in the sky was a cool concept, and the music as I got closer to it was incredible. The moment I learned it was basically a divine beast again (go to all terminals then fight boss), it felt like a kick in the gut. I genuinely had more fun and excitement getting there than I did completing it. The cutscene with the sage was cool the first time, but I quickly realized they're all the same, but with different sages/ companions. They have to be, because every temple could be your first. The whole experience feels cheapened as a result.
I'm a longtime Zelda fan that's played since the late 90s, and the last two installments have been great in terms of exploration and gameplay, but heavily lacking in other areas such as dungeons and story. With Eiji Aonuma's statement, I began to worry that this is it from now on; this is the new Zelda, and the elements of the Zelda I knew and loved the series for in the first place weren't ever coming back.
You're not alone in your opinion about combining the classic and new elements to make something even better, and your point about the way they've adapted each game based on reviews/ feedback gives me newfound hope that this is still a possibility in the future.
yea the beginning really fooled us into thinking this would be different lol. idk why they couldn't at least make more regional enemies. the gibdos gave me so much hope lol
To counter your point on the Sage cutscenes all being the same: no, they DON'T have to be. We've seen this in games before. We can absolutely tailor events around a player-chosen order.
@@swishfish8858 In that case, the fact that they could have executed it in a better fashion seems like a major oversight on their part. The game would have greatly benefited from that simple addition.
I felt similarly while I enjoyed the game the whole way through after I had beaten it I looked back like a week later and thought I am never going to play that game again whereas in botw I did replay it and kept on thinking about all the other opportunities would have had if they had more time to iron out issues in a potential sequel such as monotonous dungeons and mediocre storytelling this game kind've felt like the devs weren't holding back their ideas because of a lack of time to fully explore the potential of the world but instead because they felt like there was no more potential
I’m not a “totk/botw aren’t Zelda games!” Type person, but I really do miss old Zelda.
For me the greatest sin was the total disregard for the established lore: No triforce, No goddesses, King Rauru? So what happened to the events of Skyward sword? The game game itself is good but the story doesn't make any sense from a lore perspective
There’s a video that really hammers home that if you put these games as after skyward sword but before everything else, then it fixes almost everything in the timeline. Although there is some flaws.
My biggest disappointment with TOTK is that we don't know where is Kass :(
In a DLC pack they cancelled for...some reason, based on what the newspaper bird says after you finish all the newspaper stories
Right!!!!! Out of all the characters from BOTW they brought back, why didn’t they bring back Kass?
He could’ve been the chief of the Rito. Would’ve been far better then what’s his name
@@jessedellross3245 His name is Teba and he was the one teased as the new "Champion" of the Rito after Revali's death in Breath of the Wild. Funnily enough Kass does seem way more fitting as chief of the Rito given his skills as a knowledgeable traveler and bard rather than a simple archer.
I'll never forgive Nintendo for replacing the beloved Kass with some sketchy pelican that won't show his eyes.
Worst trade off ever.
@@AS-fu1kdIn a perfect world we would have had them both :(
One thing I noticed about how I explored the game differently is I never walked anywhere in TotK, I always flew down from above. To get to new areas of the map, I'd usually just fly down.
By the end of the game, I realized there was so much of the surface I hadn't explored yet, while in BotW I made a point to go everywhere I could.
I think the familiarity with the map and the ability to cheese it by flying actually took away from my exploration of the surface.
there was no new fresh adventure feeling. I think using the same engine and same fucking map with same armor, same monsters and same everything wasn't a good choice
tbf a lot of people who really really played a lot of both just used that bomb glitch to travel around so it had a similar issue
There's also no real puzzle in the game, everything can be solved by using you inventory and abilities in a non-intended way which kinda ruins the whole point of a puzzle, shrines and puzzles are suppose to be a change of pace from the free open world design. I don't understand why they allowed players to use their inventory so freely inside shrines, I get that the whole theme of the game is creativity but when you give the player too much freedom it kinda ruins the whole fun of figuring out a puzzle the way the developer intended.
@riahisama you cheesing shrines is a YOU issue. I made it a point not to cheese them my first play through. You are in control of your adventure
@@notoriousclam3382 That's not the point, if you don't enforce game design onto the player the game can become a disconnected experience regardless of choice because you know at the back of your head that you're handicapping yourself from completing a task.
Should mention that Zelda not being present in the main story and being imprisoned for hundreds/ thousands of years to beat Ganon is a repeat of the exact same plot points of Breath of the Wild. When people saw the Tears of the Kingdom teaser a lot were hoping for a story with Zelda as a companion this time and not just a damsel, and this game actually has a companion system (ngl, when playing I initially thought Zelda would be the fifth Sage not Mineru). Not to mention the fact that Zelda's now over hundred's of thousands of years old and was obviously suffering during her imprisonment, yet is exactly the same by the end of both games like nothing has happened.
Yeahh Zeltik is more positive to the story the game tried to tell than I. In theory Zelda getting stuck in the past and going on her own parallel journey to Link is very cool. In practice it wasn't the right story to tell at this point in the franchise. It's just BoTW AND Skyward Sword again. I'm sick of saving the princess. Zelda is a cool character, let me hang out with her. On top of that retreading BoTW's plot points so closely but even higher stakes and even longer periods of time really sours BoTW's story, as well. It makes all the suffering Link and Zelda both went through feel pointless knowing they would get even more fucked up shortly after. Not to mention how it wastes the potential of getting to see the most fleshed out iteration of Link and Zelda's relationship actually interact with each other. Aside from like three phenomenal cutscenes, ToTK's story is hot garbage in concept and in execution, imo.
Except, id argue they made it clear that when she turned into a dragon, her human memories halted in place, and when she transformed back, it had the opposite effect. She didnt remember anything about being a dragon, but remembered her hylian past like yesterday. Kinda like blacking out or that split personality thing lmao. But i 100% agree with you that her not being a companion felt like a big missed opportunity. A rehash of many past games where shes just ultimately waiting to be saved. Hopefully we get a playable or companion zelda in the next one.
@@shadowbunny7892 hot garbage? it's far from perfect without question. but hot garbage sounds like you're saying it's worse than BOTW's story, which was super weak, despite the amazing gameplay and evolution of the series (still LOVE the game). I agree saving the princess AGAIN, is so fucking tiring. But disagree about the BOTW rehashing and higher stakes. It's a sequel. It's meant to continue plot points from the previous game lol and no sequel that has smaller stakes has been any better than its predecessor. Id argue there were plenty of new elements to make the game feel like a sequel but also a brand new game, including those storylines. Agree to disagree. Hopefully the next game makes zelda the companion we want and an even better fleshed out, new, fully developed story.
And one note i want to mention about the story that i would agree held it back, as much as i LOVE ganondorf, he was a little dull in this game. He's bad just because lol. At least wind waker ganondorf showed he had more depth than just "im evil, so what".
@@KingFRB0310 Yeah it's definitely worse than BoTW's story. BoTW's story was sparse. It was weird, it was definitely not the direction I would have chosen for a Zelda game and it's far from the strongest story in the franchise. But it knew what it wanted to do and it accomplished it. BoTW's story had two goals, get you invested in Link and Zelda's relationship so you care about saving her and making you feel the profound loss of the calamity. It does this by focusing on the characters of Zelda and the champions to the exclusion of anything else, and while, again, I think this was a weird choice, I also think it totally works. The brief glimpses we get of the champions were likable and interesting and they're effective as a stand in for civilization as a whole and their deaths are sad. The progression of Link and Zelda's relationship in the flashbacks is excellent and I REALLY care about her by the end. Most importantly though, BoTW's story was made to support BoTW's gameplay. The focus on character means it can be experienced in any order without really losing anything and there isn't a ticking clock that feels dissonant with the slow pace of the gameplay.
In contrast, ToTK's story does not at all jive with the game that it's in. While sequels often have higher stakes than their predecessors I wouldn't say it's necessary and you can definitely do it incorrectly. BoTW and ToTK both boil down to "Zelda uses her cool powers to make a big sacrifice to save the kingdom and now we have to use ancient advanced technology to save her." It's just way too close to being the same thing a second time and, at least to me, it trivializes BoTW. I WISH ToTK actually continued BoTW's story instead of just rehashing it but ToTK is worse as a sequel than it is in isolation. It actually continues very little from BoTW's story. No progression in Link and Zelda's relationship, no further exploration of Calamity Ganon and how it relates to Ganondorf, no Sheikah stuff. ToTK's Zonai are entirely unrelated to BoTW's Zonai. I wish this game WASN'T a direct sequel, then all it's redundancies or weird omissions wouldn't be a problem. In terms of themes and world building I sincerely believe that BoTW is a better sequel to SS than ToTK is to BoTW.
The extremely pressing threat also doesn't work with the gameplay. Every city is having an active crisis and evil doppleganger Zelda is running around causing problems. I do not feel like I have time to be picking mushrooms and helping Koroks. And I know it's already been said so many times, but I'm saying it again because it's true. Delivering this very linear story nonlinearly purely because that's how BoTW did it is one of the most insane game design decisions I've seen in a while. That, on top of everything else, just makes ToTK's story feel thoughtless and cheap. An afterthought that accidentally has a few moments of brilliance instead of the carefully crafted experience that was BoTW.
Sorry for the wall of text. This is me being succinct. Lol
@freddyb56220 @bunny7892 The totk story makes even less sense, because they gave Zelda an entirely new, unnecessary but relevant TIME power and then started acting like her only option TO GET TO THE FUTURE was an immortal dragon lobotomy rather than say the TIME TRAVEL that SHE USED TO GET HER THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?? And if it was restoring the master swords power and making it stronger that was the problem then did she ever think about rewinding the master sword till before it broke?? I legitimately cried watching the dragon cutscene begging, pleading to whatever deity exists that the plot writers were not that unbelievably stupid that they wrote in such a huge plot point (with so many implications)JUST FOR SHOCK VALUE and to specifically remove zelda from the relevant plot. Then they completely removed the stakes by turning her back with like no fucking explanation and its just like WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DO IT IN THE FIRST PLACE? It was such a disappointment on so many levels, she was my fav character and this game just buried her for no reason istg.
I won't lie, I hated the building mechanics in this game. When I discovered how to make a hoverbike for the first time I sighed a huge breath of relief.
The freedom of Tears of the Kingdom inadvertently highlighting the value of the linearity and restriction seen in the rest of the series is almost tragic
I just don't think it does justice to its freedom in a way that feels satisfying to the player after only a dozen hours of playtime. You start to realize their isn't much to the story and that everything else you do, the gameplay loop, is nothing more than a loop itself where you're constantly meant to do the same things over and over again. Its a problem because not only do I think this gameplay style CAN work, it seems it will never happen because of the insane backlash AND the fact the Zelda team seem completely blind to those problems in order to make any corrections.
@therealgirl3295BINGO. That’s honestly why I’m not too much a fan of the newer Zelda games, specifically TotK, and BotW a smaller bit. These games lack depth in their side quests and narrative. Insomuch that beyond first experiencing the exciting exploration-the experience is worthless to me on a repeat play-through. I know I’m not like most people but I really need a grand story to find renewed interest and enjoyment in another play-through. And TotK’s pandering to those who didn’t play BotW (which was like nobody) killed the game for me.
They took people's gripes about the extreme linearity of Skyward Sword and went too hard in the other direction. It's like if you told a cook that pouring an entire shaker of salt is too much so they stopped using it all together.
Even The Legend of Zelda on NES isn't nearly as open and nonlinear as people make it out to be.
@Czah5 Yeah too true which is why I get tired of these new games being a "return to the original game" like Miyamoto and Aonuma keep describing it to being. It isn't. Like, really, WHAT is being borrowed from the original game when making these? Little to nothing. Even the NES had much better dungeons than the new.
And I'd much rather play the original NES game over these new ones. I'm serious. They are so damn boring, I just can't make myself go back and finish Tears of the Kingdom after dedicating the ungodly amount of hours I did on the 2017 game. I feel like I already wasted my time with that one given how little substance it really has. Tears of the Kingdom is just more of the same but build a bear mechanics.
I'd actually just describe it as nintendo turned zelda into a ubisoft clone... think about that for a second man that's really what the modern interpretation of NES zelda has become.
Reminds me of a video: Zelda fake fun, aged like a fine wine made by a guy named Strat-edgy highly reccomend
One thing I love about totk is, Botw starts with Link alone, Totk ends with Link surrounded by friends.
BotW you wake up with amnesia and learn that you had amazing friends which all died horribly 😅
Accurate for both of you @rafaynoman1180 and @Broockle
You would love JRPGs
@@jojimpyeah 100% the genre is right up their alley
They could have had a good explanation for transforming Zelda back.
The triforce.
Remember that thing?
The power left Zelda when she draconified and went to Rauru, Sonia, and Link, each representing power, wisdom, and courage, respectively. This is also proven as Rauru turns Link's arm back to normal. Something he couldn't do at first, hence why Link has his arm.
@@mr.awesome6011 that is complete speculation that is not acknowledged by the game nor intentional. The Triforce never manifests in game, is never mentioned and none of the characters touch it to make a wish. Also how could the Triforce be given to a ghost?
@@Bertiboy....never played Windwaker?
@@richardbean1707 Quite possibly the game I’ve replayed the most number of times in my life. How could I forget one of the the most prominent uses of the Triforce in the whole series, god damn I’m stupid lol
The Triforce can only be used in good Zelda games. Glad they don't use it anymore.
Love how the designers scolded those in the team for mess and clutter.
Meanwhile, the sky island debris cluttered all over the surface like a hot mess and it’s just ugly
I wish they hadn't done the same layout with the story as breath of the wild with the whole memory thing, I wanted to know more about all the zonai not just rauru, wanted it to dive into the history of all of the zonai, and how they died out. Instead that's just an unsolved mystery never to be found out.
That would be a fantastic hook for another game set between Rauru's time and the Calamity.
Maybe the next one!
Not only that but the layout actually hurts the general narrative as each story has to be isolated (since the player can do it in any order). It straight up prevents characters from being able to actually interact with one another so their impact feels far weaker in the story. Only time this isn’t an issue is ironically with a more linear structured game aka age of calamity.
Tbh they should have made the story and even dungeon progression linear while still keeping the open world as that can allow things like the zoni to be explored and more importantly have the cast more presence in the journey and synergy with one another rather than just them only being relevant to their isolated stories and having false zoni shades of said characters
not just the memory thing.
you wake up on a stranded area after a coma, a dead king tells you to activate 4 shrines then you pick up the paraglider. you activate shrines and get korok seeds while going to the exact same 4 regions to progress the story as botw, until you find and kill ganon.
it really feels like a rip-off how identical the plot structure is
Breath of the Wild’s story actually had substance because it was about living with tragedy, and the characters were well fleshed out. Tears of the Kingdom’s story is about nothing, because its characters are bland.
Imagine being the designer for TOTK and telling people "no, too many islands, reduce them" only for even the most supportive fans to be like "too little sky islands, make more"
To me a big part of totk's hype was the sky islands, I wanted to do quests up there, meet NPC's, find creative ways to get to other sky islands, imagine wind waker but instead of water you had air and that's how you got to the next island.
Remember how in skyward sword people hated how empty the sky was? You'd think they would've learned that a sky island can never be too cluttered.
I also dislike how there are no indents on the ground from where the islands rose
Uh dude the islands did not rise from the ground...
Rip Jim's hypecanon fantheory 6-year impossible expectations.
@@mbii7667 Shhh, youre interrupting his headcanon.
@@daniel8181what's impossible in adding Loftwing, pegasus or even flying boat? Why couldn't NPCs live in the sky? What's so ridiculous to you? Get a grip
Thing that people seem to forget a lot: The switch can barely run this game, they had to cut out content because it just didn’t fit anymore sadly!
I started the game by first, collecting all the dragon tears, discovering Zelda went to the past, and finding Zelda in the present as a dragon with the master sword. Now I’m stuck playing through hundreds of hours of game where every single in game character is carrying on as if no one knows what happened to Zelda. I did the quest. I’m literally holding the master sword in front of you and everyone carries on like an idiot not knowing what happened to Zelda. Did I miss something? Is my game glitching out? I am very confused and have never been so bored and frustrated with something so beautiful.
Sorry, for some reason Nintendo never thought that way of playing, that was my first play through and it just sours the play through.
On a similar note regarding Mineru: I have an actual zonai robot right here, with the functional, conscious soul of an actual ancient zonai who personally experienced, and in some cases directly caused, the history every researcher is obsessed with. Also, via dragon tears, I have experienced the memories of Zelda personally experiencing ancient zonai history. Yet I and Mineru somehow can't share any of this with the many characters trying to figure out who the zonai were and what happened in the past at all, and instead just watch them guess what barely legible ancient tablets were trying to say and generally grasp at straws. ARGH.
I also discovered Zelda relatively early and was baffled that the game kept acting like no one knew what happened.
BoTW wouldn't have had that problem...
I did the opposite. No dragon tears before beating ganon and the mystery of zelda remained fresh.
The game actually will comment on this after you beat the Phantom Ganons in Hyrule Castle.
Purah will be like "We deciphered some Zonai text, and it makes mention of a 5th Sage! We need to-...What's that Link? You say you already found the 5th Sage, gotren Master Sword, and that Zelda is actually the Light Dragon?!?! Why didn't you tell anyone?!"
Like bruh...
the biggest dissapointment to me was is that there are 2 temple of time but no time travel for link
@bigamateur9055 The entire Depths is big and empty, it's just a copy-pasted "upside down" version of the surface, but less interesting because everything looks exactly the same too. No deviation in textures, extremely repetitive to try to explore, and no reward from lightroots or anything of the like. There's a handful of rare-ish monsters there but truly nothing really worthwhile.
It's crazy to me that Aonuma would say something like, "How can you want the old Zelda when its so restrictive compared to the freedom of the new Zelda". Its like saying, "How can you want any other toy when you have Legos? You have unlimited freedom to make whatever you want with Legos!" Legos are only as fun as the creativity you want to pour into them. Sometimes I dont want to play with Legos, I want a curated experience! Like you said, restriction and context are sometimes more fun than being able to break every puzzle with a rocket shield. Otherwise we'd play every game in debug mode and just fly around and wall clip and be unkillable. Sometimes that makes stuff fun, but mostly it gets boring really fast.
The most beloved areas of BotW are ones that are restricted by design: The Great Plateau, Eventide Island, and the Trial of the Sword. Similarly, the best sky island is the initial one, when your abilities are restricted.
THIS. Every time I try to play TotK, I groan a little inside because it leans so heavily into the building mechanic, and I still don't understand how half the machines work because I actively shy away from using them. I don't WANT to build a dozen structures in order to engage with the game. It's exhausting. Even when I really want to explore more of TotK and actually complete the story, I always end up just going back to BotW because its gameplay is more accessible.
These games feel more like sandboxes and tech demos instead of actual games now.
@WilderHeart13 The only reason I bought the game was to give Yona one way trip to hell and I am extremely thankful for building mechanics for that
I think a similar alagory is my experience while playing Minecraft.
If I decide to build in an unrestrictive biome, like the Plains biomes, my house is almost always a box of some sort. Occasionally I have a creative home idea that requires a large expanse of flat land so I will build in the Plains then, but if I'm just building a home to build a home? You'll get an efficient rectangle.
I adventure to find oddly shaped landmasses that give me restrictions I have to find creative solutions around. A tall pillar might require a way to access the top, a stone archway provided defense but leaves me a small landmass to build on, a small bay gives me access to the ocean but also restricts the directions I can build.
TOTK gives me tons of freedom, so I build a rectangle as it is the most efficient shape, and occasionally get creative for the sake of it, knowing a rectangle would be a much better use of my material and time.
One thing that struck me as extremely odd for me personally is that I never finished the game, and I can’t get the motivation to get back into the game. I’m pretty sure I even beat the four main dungeons. It’s so extremely weird because I had such a huge amount of fun exploring this world and getting distracted by each and every thing that I saw, but one day I just logged off and never came back to it. I will finish it someday but the motivation is just not there, I wonder if I’m just burnt out of this formula already
It’s because you’re running around the same world you already did 7 years ago
YEAH. I did this with BotW too. Finished most of the dungeons, got bored, came back to it and finished the rest of the main story later, and then just... gave up again. To this day I haven't beaten either game. There's no more motivation.
Same, finished all the dungeons and got all 5 sages did most of the shrines and like yourself just lost all passion to complete it.. I’m probably just a few hours from doing so but nope…
same!
I’ve beaten the game and like with BOTW I planned to do all the rest of the shrines in the game and explore more, but I lost any motivation for doing so. Maybe because it’s just more of the same and I’ve been there done that in the previous title. With all the new vehicle potential I’ve still put less time into TOTK than I did BOTW.
Imagine if your actions as Link were necessary for undoing the draconification. Temples would have contained relics or powers that Link would need to reach through time to bring her back as a Hylian. You could have even done this with the existing temples/dungeons. Three more places to quest for… so disappointing
You are aware that both BotW and TotK are games that let you play how you want and therefore don't require you to get x amount of items to see the finale through?
This would actually be huge!! There could be two different endings, one where you didn’t complete all the temples/memories and Zelda stays a dragon, and another that rewards you for completing all the dungeons/memories by restoring Zelda to her true form
@@NuiYabukoit’s called optional endings. Play games outside of Nintendo that have implemented this.
@@NuiYabuko Nintendo already did a mechanic like this in BotW where you had 2 endings/cutscenes. One where you unlocked all the memories, and one where you didnt.
Drakenwild has a video on exactly this topic, and how the de-dragonification could be explained by fairly minor adjustments to existing questlines.
ruclips.net/video/XyDeL8UxrCA/видео.htmlsi=vVOBB2loP4VK2Fry
I know this will be an unpopular opinion but... I truly believe that the ending wasted zeldas sacrifice and made it so her action was ultimately without any sort of downside. They could have used zeldas removal from the timeline in much the way at the end of oot where link is gone and now a new hero had to prove himself. this could have been a similar situation where a new noble bloodline or perhaps a new role for the wisdom representative
Same
Would've actually been an interesting plot device for the next game that is apparently Zelda centered
that could be an interesting thematic tie in with hyrule being destroying in BotW, they would really have to start from scratch and invent a new system
In my opinion, ToTK had much more noticeable shrine fatigue than BoTW. In total, 48/152 shrines are Rauru's blessing, the worst of which being those found in a cave with zero other challenge. If you include the 7 combat tutorials, 55/152 (36%) of ToTK's shrines end up feeling like filler.
To be clear, blessing shrines are not inherently bad. After a while their frequency just gets old, especially when your reward is often just a Large Zonai Energy.
Worst part is if you try and finish all of them, most of the last ones you'll find will be blessings due to their more hidden nature.
I wish they did less of the stone puzzles in the sky , but I also like that more puzzles were in the overworld, making them blessings. I wish they did more blessings like the unlit blessing ( it was such a witty way to break the monotony without having to make another puzzle )
I hated blessings already in BotW, but TotK was much worse on that front. I still loved the game, but, like, I'd take a bad or easy-to-cheese puzzle over that BS.
(Though the fake blessing was pretty great. Would still have been great if there were half as many blessings, but still great.)
did you even play the game? most if not all the raurus shrines you had to do a side quest or solve a puzzle to get to them.
@@lukyoung702 Still disappointing, though. At least for me, it's the cutscene into the shrine that primes me for the puzzle, which is then a disappointment if it's a blessing. And there are a handful of shrines that need puzzles to enter that are also not blessings, as well as a handful that are and take no puzzles to enter.
It's just inconsistent, and so it kills the excitement of entering a new shrine every time it's just a freebie. Not like finding a lot of these shrines isn't already a lot of work anyway, even if it's not a puzzle.
Reaching Akkala Citadel was where I physically took damage from the game's missed opportunities. Like what. 100 years ago all this dirt accumulated and it's now a cave? Sure. Prime dungeon material right there and we got horriblins in a cave.
We had a side game that gave Akkala more character than the main games themselves
@@anonosandwich7473 and that's why people should play age of calamity, the maps were designed by zelda team so the areas 100 years before BOTW are canon in that game.
The two most distinct memories I have of playing TotK were: 1) the end of the story when Link reaches out to Zelda, feeling the full poetry of the story in that moment. That made me cry. 2) getting on my first horse at the stables near kakirko and hearing the same music from when I did the exact same thing in BotW. That made me sigh
yea they nailed the very beginning and the very end but forgot to put things between those two points lmao
@@highdefinition450 That's just a universal issue with open world games. Linear games made for better storytelling. Twilight Princess is the best example of that.
@@asraarradon4115red dead 2 has a liner story in an open world format. I think totk could do something like that too where there are no memories and a greater emphasis on the story of the questline
@@reyhan2006-g5l Yeah, some companies are better at solving the problem than others, but universal problem still exists. Rockstar has been making gritty, dark, realistic open world titles for over 20 years. So they have a lot of experience doing that. And if you look at the absolute ocean of open world titles we have nowadays, some of their games rise to the top because of that. Most just fill their worlds with collectables to pad "content" but it still feels empty.
@@asraarradon4115 Of course. I just think that the Zelda team should look at games like that for inspiration. Hell I think they already do it to a certain extent with the regional phenomena quests they just need to expand those a lot more and limit the use of memories.
My biggest issue with Tears of the Kingdom is the absolute fucking emptiness of the Depths. It was genuinely saddening to me how they literally made this entire second world with a grand total of like two things to do in it.
1 is that there were a couple chests to find with like 2 new armor sets and bunch of DLC items from BoTW (including the poe stuff, which aren't even really poes. They could've been called spirits or tears or something, because calling them poes involves some fun involved in fighting them)
And 2 is just a bunch of Zonite to find.
The hardest part about the Depths was accepting how fucking boring it is, and accepting that I should just stop looking around for more things to do, because there isn’t anything more to find
*do something better with my time
A sequal that pretends botw doesnt exist and acts like none of the events that occurred in that game actually happened. This is my biggest irk with totk.
I need someone to make a list of all the ways totk ignore botw . I now that some character like bolsons boss don’t but he does.
@@frostycane5134 There are some npcs like Bolson that really should recognize you. But aside from that, the game doesn't pretend that BOTW doesn't exist. Sure, it's weird that nobody mentions what happened to the sheikah tech. But it's still clear that BOTW happened. Not only from the overall state of the world, but the Hateno school lessons, a statue referencing Link and Sidon against the divine beast etc. I think it mostly just boils down to a few things.
1. Nobody mentioning where the Sheikah tech went, not even a throw away line that 'it all just vanished, it was weird.'
2. Some npcs don't recognize you. Though most of the important ones do. The important story NPCs all know you. Bolson and Hetsu are the weird ones that really should have but aside form those two this is ultimately fairly minor.
3. The baffling decision to make the villain another Ganon, and not wanting to elaborate on what exactly Calamity Ganon is in relation to TOTK Ganondorf. The best we get is a vague one off line from Impa that's easy to miss.
For the most part it feels to me not that they want to ignore BOTW/pretend it's not a sequel to it, but more they wanted to minimize references to it as not to alienate people who DIDN'T play BOTW and make sure TOTK could stand on its own as an individual game and not just a sequel.
EDIT: Add the people of Hateno. I think this is the one area where it does start to feel weird that people don't know Link. If Zelda was living there, that means Link would be there, and the people ought to have seen a good deal of him over the last few years even if Link didn't leave much of an impression on them in BOTW proper buying the house.
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@@frostycane5134 i just wanna dd, in totk at the shringe of resurrection, i hate that they just deleted the sheikah 3d models, they didnt even fell the gaps rightly, they just deleted it and left teh rectangle hole D:
@@nolandderlugner1351go in the hole bro
You hit the nail on the head with most of my criticisms as well. My biggest gripes are how the Sheikah tech vanishes with no real explanation and how we just get the same cutscene after all the major dungeons. So much potential that fell short of perfection. Still a good game but had room for so much more.
The continuity issues in TOTK are really bad. It barely even acknowledged it’s own direct predecessor, and it spits on the rest of the series. Imprisoning war/Rauru my ass.
Also how we OBVIOUSLY know Zelda is an evil puppet or something but we have to spend time with each Sage NPC going “wait… th-that’s Zelda! Wait! W-w- what’s she doing?!?! Zelda come backkkkkkkk 😫”
It’s like link doesn’t coordinate his findings with anyone, and YEAH, why is it the same damn cutscene??? I’d rather the game have linearly taken us to each area to uncover the story piece by piece.
This obsession of them with "every single game MUST be completely disconnected from all of the others!!" really got out of hand and IMHO it's actually hurting the franchise more than anything.
Also, there's nothing wrong with some linear progression here and there, if it's done right. For instance, the ONE thing Skyward Sword absolutely nailed was... well, the dungeons, wasn't it? Open world just for the sake of open world gets quite boring after around 10/20% of the game.
main problem with skyward sword to me is to GET to the dungeons you basically had to go through a dungeon. The open locations did not feel like a fun place to explore like previous zelda's (twilight princess and basically ANY main zelda game before it) it was just a bunch of chores. And many of the dungeons didn't even have a miniboss, it was the standard to have a cool miniboss and a boss in every dungeon. Also, they had two lava dungeons that look basically the same - at least when ocarina of time had two fire dungeons they were totally different in appearance (dodongo cavern and the fire temple)
Agreed
It feels like a game that doesn't pay any respect for its prequel
The Wind Temple buildup gave me CHILSSSSSSSSS, and I would go as far as saying that it’s one of the best in the entire franchise. That “wow” factor hit SO hard, and I was convinced right then that this game could actually get the dungeons right. I really enjoyed them with the exception of the Water Temple.
It was my first temple and my favorite one. The excitement and anticipation for what I would find and how far I had to go was amazing. It was the best out of all the rest
The Water Temple, at the very least, was a feast for the eyes.
i didn't enjoy the fire temple at all. that thing was WAY too easy to cheese. wind and lightning were my favorites.
Am I literally the only who enjoyed water temple because of its challenge to do??😂
@@rugeramerican308 it definitely had the hardest puzzles but that's not saying much :S basically 4 shrines stapled to each other. I liked the lead up to it though well enough, the ancient waterworks were pretty cool.
I just wanted one sky town in the sky with it's own side quests... Just one Nintendo 😢
You're asking too much from current day nintendo. They have to make a whole new town? That's too tiring for them. next thing people will be asking mario games to have a different antagonist other than bowser for a change. that would require a tiny bit of imagination. Nintendo is an extremely overrated company.
@@Vaquix000 it wouldnt make sense for there to be a town. just because they dont care about the timeline doesnt mean they dont care about the story. also, have you even watched the full video?
I was hoping there'd be a zonai sanctuary of some kind that they used to watch over Hyrule, a sort of intermediary between Hyrule and whatever higher plain the zonai live on. Would've been a great chance to give the zonai more interesting lore and a chance to properly interact with them, plus the architecture could've linked to some of the surface ruins
@@colour_fall14 yeah totally
That and also a village in the Depths - like a group of Cryptids
I have lots of gripes about TOTK some of which you mentioned - but I think the biggest thing is they just copy pasted the plot from BOTW but with a different context. Something happens to Link, he wakes up, princess is gone, everything that matters happened in the past, big evil scary Ganon in Hyrule castle, collecting memories again to peace the past together…you get the gist. It was not new or interesting. Even more infuriating was then recycling the OOT narrative plot of Ganondorf’s betrayal.
I think Nintendo’s aim for TOTK was to focus on the game mechanics they couldn’t introduce in BOTW. And then they slapped a half baked plot and same map relatively on it. The care and attention that the team gave to the beauty of BOTW - TOTK did not receive.
Facts, and it definitely shows in the game. Compare Majoras Mask, and TOTK that came out 1 year and 6 years respectively, and i can tell way more effort and care was put into Ocarina if Time's sequel than BOTW's. And MM didnt even have the luxury of using the literal same world.
So it's basically a Dark Souls "story".
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@@TheSlammuraibut without the philosophy and deep story telling
@@Diesalot-sc9qz What deep storytelling? In Dark Souls you have to fill in enormous gaps with your imagination so it can be as terrible or "grand" as you can imagine. Not really good storytelling that. It's like writing a book with most of the pages missing.
Demon king? Secret stone?
...so that was the imprisoning war
Chad ALTTP Imprisinong War >>> TOTK Fanfiction ripoff
Psycho Mantis ?
@@deux_cents wrong comment section
@@clonetrooper2003 What can you tell me about the reapers?
@@Slaraffus2750 reapers? Do you mean the weapons?
21:08
I feel like one of the greatest missed opportunities of Totk would be to have the upheaval lift sections of the map into the air. Destroy the surface and create a new map underneath it. cave systems could be made from the remains both in the air and through the new craters of missing land.
That way you'd be able to reshape/purpose the surface in the air, and manage to create a new surface so the identity of the map isn't just a 1-1 asset shift of BOTW.
There's also the thought that sheikah tech could be present in the new game, and having it be ripped apart, deactivated and out of the ground to reveal some remains of those shrines could be extremely cool. I'm not sure how the lore or story would play into that. But it's a cool thought regardless.
And regarding the depths, a quick opinion is that it just feels way too difficult to navigate simply because there's just so much of the same environment. It doesn't feel like an exploration, rather a highway drive through a cornfield. Occassionally you'll find something cool to look at or have to stop for lunch, (boss rematches/zonai gear/lightroots) but nothing else really happens.
Sections defined by their heat or cold alone would do wonders if applied aesthetically. Or crystal caves under the desert to give it natural light. You could even create some funky mechanics based on the biome alike to the low gravity in certain areas in the sky.
The vision of the game just probably wasn't fully realized and it just sucks because it had way too much potential. And the fact it's phenomenal despite this really speaks to how much more it could have become.
yea that's what everyone thought it would be since you see the castle rising in the trailers lol. would have made exploring the same places feel fresh again without having to design a completely new map
Speaking of NPC's not knowing Link anymore, it's more than a little frustrating that the people in Hateno village don't seem to know Link at all. Even if you ignore Link's involvement in Hateno village in BotW, Link is the personal body guard of Zelda, who has been living in Hateno village for a while. The people there clearly know and even miss the princess, so how they don't know Link, I don't know.
Tarrey town was also frustrating. Hudson and Rhodson know Link, but the other residents of the town act like they don't know him at all, despite the fact that many of them were recruited to live there by Link, worked with Link on building the town, and even all attended Hudson and Rhodson's wedding together.
Bolson should remember Link. . . Come on. Not only did Link make an impression on him, but they both attended a mutual friend's wedding together. Heck, Link is the one who sent him the invite to the wedding.
Same with Hetsu. He's probably a long-lived being, so there's no way his memory is so short.
Don’t forget the Zora Priest. He knew Link when Mipha was still alive.
Edit: Also considering how important it was for the Zora to remember Link since y’know he’d go to Zora’s Domain as a kid, I think I almost rage quitted when Kapson didn’t remember in TOTK.
@@northproductions6104 Yep. Kapson is the member of Hateno Village that makes the least sense. BotW proved not only that Zora have long lives, but also long memories. Many Zora in Zora's Domain remembered Link even though they thought he'd been dead for a century. So, for Kapson to treat Link like a stranger in TotK after only maybe 5 years or so is ridiculous.
It's implied Zelda has taken his home over and Link likely went out to do errands for her/be a poster boy and diplomatic royal microphone for her words. Which honestly is so much worse considering Hateno would then know EXACTLY that he is the royal dog.
@@stanbasicidol9444 Link has such a way with words too.
@@stanbasicidol9444 take
The worst part of collecting the memories/tears was that the entire plot, including the heartbreaking scene with Zeldas draconification, was behind literally the easiest mechanic in the game. Find giant glowing picture and go to it. Meaning I unlocked the entire plot before I did much of anything else
This, and just like in BotW, chances are most players discovered them out of order. The second one is clearly visible from the first, but requires entering Hebra Mountains so you could possibly freeze to death if you tried going there too early. Some players likely discovered a few of the later story ones before finding some of the middle ones.
This is exactly why I ignored them until I was pretty much done with the main missions.
I jumped into the Castle Chasm early and, after hours of barely surviving, I finally reached the ruins from the start of the game and bombed the mural. Learning the rest of the story this way felt incredibly rewarding, so imagine my disappointment when I saw that most people would realize the plot twist after Mineru all but spells it out in the second memory.
Well that’s on you then. I marked them all near the beginning and spaced them out throughout my play though in order to balance it out.
@@Dark_Mishrain botw it was way harder to find them. You needed to line up pictures. You just... walk to a place here. There's even a map of all the locations
Thisssssss
36:40 im so happy you called this out.
It's so disappointing how little new enemies there actually sre in comparison to other Zelda games.
its baffling too, like the Zelda series has entire compendiums of all sorts of monsters idk why they chickened out on making more and just resorted to Bokoblin/Moblin/Lizalfos again
My main issue is that I wanted a robust counterpart in the return of Ganondorf. Plotting, ambushing, impacting the world. Maybe going for a coup in Gerudo. But we just got the same Calamity sleeping ghost in the dephts dressed as Ganondorf.
Super disappointing that Ganondorf has never got the already low bar WW set up 20 years ago. This was their chance and they wasted it.
This was a big thing for me too. Ganondorf finally returned but it was easily my least favorite depiction of him yet; absolutely nothing interesting to his character.
I was disappointed that the elemental weapons were removed because I wanted to create elemental fusions. I was so excited to create an electric ice weapon.
I'm fairly early into the game with little spoilers so far(somehow. And no I haven't watched this video yet I just jumped to teh comments.) I eventually realized there are just no elemental weapons anymore which was very disappointing. My question is, am I basically just fusing things go rusty swords the whoke game? There were many strong attack weapons in BOTW that had power well into the 20s-40s.
@@rajko15 yeah u have to fuse the new rusty weapons with monster parts. there is pretty much no base weapon in this game with an attack power higher than 15
@@rajko15 New weapons? Fuyabashi gave us new ones in the form of the rusted swords. With the horns, he even gave us the same enemies, mostly. If he could, he'd even give us the same story... oh wait...
@@rajko15You will eventually gain access to regular, non 'rusted' / decayed base weapons, nearly every weapon from BOTW returns albeit not so readily available.
No matter how 'good' your base weapon is, you'll still want to use fuse regardless as it will only make a good weapon better. Rest assured, there are weapons / weapon combinations in this game that are substantially more powerful than anything that was available in BOTW.
@@colecube8251Early game, yes, but once you gain access to zoni and pristine weapons, the attack power increases drastically
I was really upset with what happened to Zelda, I wanted to see her grow and rebuild her kingdom alongside Link but instead I watched her have to be alone again this time for 10,000 years.
They put my girl in the fridge again 😔
*OH YES* - wasted character development potential.
But hey it could have been worse. If Zelda would have stayed the Dragon of Light, no matter how cute, no matter how fluffy, I would have been devastated. 😞
Imagine what for a sad life that would have been. A kind Maiden watches her whole Kingdom fall appart, thinking it was all just due to her own lack of adequacy. She knows that tons of people have died because of it, she loses her sworn Knight and all other Champions and rises to fight the Calamity itself for 100 long years all by herself, with no chance of truly winning.
And when things look like they are finally taking a turn for the better and things get finally better, she almost dies in what should have been a _"normal"_ cave exploration, gets teleported to the past and must throw away herself everything that she is, to become a Dragon who does not remember her Hylian life, basically killing her as the person that she was.
What for a lowblow this would have been. 😑
At least Rauru & Sonia could return her to her Hylian self, powerful as those two are.
But the development we wanted to see and what we had in mind, did not take place. Instead Link & Zelda were tormented once more.
Link never speaks, due to self-insertive reasons for the player.
But imagine how HE must feel also!
He is unable to truly protect the one Woman he is sworn to basically live for whenever it matters.
He could not protect Hyrule either back then and now Zelda would have almost died forever. He is *'the'* Hero but how powerless & by this nature, sinful & pathetic he must feel.
Link did his best and he knows that. Probably. But if I would be in his skin, I would go all Anakin in the last Movie right before he became Vader.
*_" I want more, but I know I shouldn't. I am not the all powerful Jedi I should be. I 'want' to be. "_*
Would drive me nuts.
I wield the Sword but I am just a glorified Icon that cannot deliever when it matters.
And the only reason the Princess is safe is because of powers far beyond my control. _" Well at least I could slay the Calamity. Again. "_
But my innitial mission was fulfilled only by luck more as by skill.
_" Oh well... at least Riju gave me her seal on my ringfinger huh? At least she loves me! 😆 ... not knowing what for an unreliable mess I am. "_
5ey completely ruined her
My thoughts exactly. It almost felt like Nintendo had to one-up BotW for some reason
Zelda’s mother passed away at a very young age for the princess. This is extra lore you can read up on in Hyrule Castle.
Zelda meets her ancestors Sonia & Rauru, the closest figures she has to parents. She watches Sonia die with her own eyes by the hand of Ganondorf. Let the girl have a damn mom
Zelda sacrificed herself to seal Calamity Ganon, and this goes on for 100 years.
Now Zelda risks it all again to fix the Master Sword, and this takes her _10,000_ years. Now during the events of BotW there are two Master Swords existing at the same time. Was this sacrifice worth the time convolution??
Idk man, the more you think about each game, the more TotK’s storybeats feel like a shoddy rehash
She had to go back to the past...
To play the shitty games that sucked ass.
One of the worst things was Ganondorf himself, we're supposed to think he was the origin of Ganon, the source of all evil in both BOTW and TOTK, and when we got to know him we got a little next to nothing really, a sort of "remake" of OOT storyline with no depth, I mean, there's a Gerudo sage who surly knew him personally as Ganondorf was her king, but she tells you nothing about him but "he was our king, we feel sorry he turned out to be bad", wasted potential there.
i hate nintendo i like supeheros better but i play the detcetive music bye alan tew and je$$$king off looking at princess Zelda pictures
Ganondorf wasn't even relevant in the story until the end of the game. Most of hyrule didn't even know he was a problem.
I wish that it had been more of an ocarina of time vs majoras mask situation, where the similarities are obvious but the differences were still massive. It made them feel connected, but provided very different tones and experiences. When there were rumors comparing totk to majora during development, it made me excited, but ultimately I dont think that comparison was accurate.
OMG YES THISSS
It's hard to believe these horrendously dull games are made by the same people who brought us masterpieces like ocarina of time and majora's mask.
Can we please talk about how disappointing the "pirate" attack was on Lurelin? I was so excited when I heard pirates invaded Lurelin, I thought it was going to be Gerudo or entirely new characters. But Instead all we got is the same old monsters we've already battled a dozens of times already. The pirate ships were not even moving, just static. Kinda speaks how low effort the game was, aside from the building mechanic of course.
I genuinely feel they did that on purpose to spite the players. So lazy.
Yeah, I remember hearing someone say they were afraid of the monsters there, thinking they're some new kind of particularly savage creature, but they didn't even include the relatively new Horriblins.
.... also wtf was with the random single enemy hiding in the well? Like what was the point of that? I was under the impression this event was an active battle against invaders, not a scavenger hunt for critters hiding out in weird places. How did the villagers telepathically know he was still there? Why did they only think it was safe when that one random dude finally died? It seems like a random developer choice just to annoy people.
And to make it even worse, when you beat them all, after a blood moon they're all back like nothing happened. This game is very overrated.
I'd prefer thay every single gimmick mechanic in this game got removed and instead they would focus on the world and exploration
“Low effort” over a pirate battle.. my guy don’t be calling this game low effort lol. It isn’t
It feels really nice to hear a number of my thoughts on this game echoed.
TOTK as a video game is an absolute masterpiece, and the things it managed to accomplish, especially on the switch, are nothing short of groundbreaking. But as a ZELDA game, and one that was supposed to be a sequel, it just feels like they slapped a weak band aid on the problems with the first game and somehow making them even more pronounced.
The ending of Tears of the Kingdom is literally "and they all clapped"
It's the whole "power of friendship" that plagues most games and shows. Like "well, we have this unsolvable issue (Zelda being a Dragon and Link having an weird arm), let's just solve it by friendship" - which doesn't really explains anything, feels cheap, is cheap, and shows how little writers are willing to put effort into _some explanation_, not even one that makes sense...
That Colgera theme still gives me CHILLS man, it just hits me like a brick everytime that even as I breach 30 I can't help but to remember all those years ago and shed a tear while fighting such a cinematically perfect boss
Damn you now I'm stuck humming it
link's a wanker always playing with that ultra-hand
It’s a great theme 100%. Pity the fight itself is literally the easiest boss fight I’ve played in years
@reddemon_6408 I don't care that it was easy, nothing will ever beat how cool it was DIVING THROUGH a boss to attack ot while that theme was blaring. Highly disappointing game but they absolutely nailed that part.
Finally finished the game and came here first after avoiding your channel for 11 months to avoid spoilers. I agree with pretty much everything you said, and came to many of the same conclusions on my own while playing the game. I think tears of the Kingdom was just a little bit too big in scope. As a player it's overwhelming, and as for the developer, it seems to be a case of quantity over quality.
All thats needed is for them to strike a balance between what we have now and the traditional Zelda roots that we know the series for. Its world wouldn't be just wide, but would also have a lot more substance in my opinion.
Nice pfp
The substance part is what bothers me about this game. It's like they were so focused on quantity in terms of explorable areas that they didn't think to add much to do in those vast areas. The game is too empty
What's rough is that they need to actually acknowledge that and do it. All we've heard so far is that they don't understand what people liked about the older games in the first place. Can't fix something when you don't see the problem.
@@KyotoRaider thanks
@@Flaris What's worse is Aonuma questioning why people would want to go to more traditional games and thinking the new formula is everything the series should be going forward...
I defended this game from every naysayer until I realised one simple truth. I couldn't put BoTW down when I first got it until I 100% it. ToTK I dropped after 30 hours for Metroid Dread and couldn't put that down until I 100% that as well. Proof is in the pudding. ToTK naysayers were right, the story is meh, the continuity is shit and the world is just not dense enough to justify the adventure.
Meh? maybe. At least without sonia and rauru it would have been passable. But WITH them, it is a disaster
It’s because you already played botw which is a similar game. If TOTK came out first you would have 100% that too
@@alswanathan except botw has a comeptent story
@@alswanathan maybe. Not so sure. I played Horizon when it came out DLC and all 100% and when I finally got down to Forbidden West I couldn't help but play that as well without being swayed to other games. Sure I didn't 100% it but I finished the campaign after getting all the upgrades and missions minus some collectibles. ToTk just didn't have enough outside of the main mechanic, plot wise especially. Felt like so much effort was put into UltraHand that everything else was an afterthought. Barren sky islands. Copy pasted underworld. Same old hyrule map. After so many years? They could've done way way better. I admit. It was overhyped. It doesn't survive scrutiny upon replay once the rose tinted glasses wear off
@@clonetrooper2003 there’s barely any story in botw lol
One of the main problems - lack of connection with botw.
What happened with divine beasts? "They just served their purpose".... yeeeeeaaaaah.... 4 gigantic machines just disappeared and NOBODY remembers them.
5 gigantic columns around castle... just disappeared...
Guardians also just disappeared. Shiikah technology like a blue fire furnace disappeared...
IMHO I'd preffer the same world but more connection with previous game... bcs this is DIRECT SEQUEL!!!!!
Plus, aesthetically speaking, Malice and Sheikah tech are cooler than Gloom and Zonai tech.
@@HungryWardenfacts
One rito mentions the perch over rito village as “Vah Medohs Perch” and that’s about it.
@@HungryWarden fr the shrines look way better in botw
You should read Purah's diary. It well explained why there's no sheikah tech anymore
My biggest gripe with this game was that it was sooo FRONT LOADED. The Great Sky island is NOTHING like the rest of the sky and i would go so far as to say it’s the only interesting island to explore (although there was that one with the mirror puzzles). Having played Botw meant i was curious to rediscover old zones! I decided to go check the great plateau FIRST, before even going to lookout and before getting the paraglider. This was the BEST and WORST decision i made that playthrough!
With nothing in hand the Plateau was an amazing challenge in terms of combat and that really felt like getting kicked in the ass back in Botw! I also had the chance of discoveting the stone eyes without knowing about the depth. I used falling platforms to elevator myself deep into each chasm!
The first time i discovered the underground was incredible. The PITCH BLACK depth and the eerie music were the greatest moments of my playthrough, i loved how complexed the great central mines were. Like a huge complex of minecarts and verticality. This was the BEST the depth had to offer. Nothing would ever come close for the nest 200hours.
I Also had the idea of going to Gerudo desert first! Before any other region. That was once again a huge mistake but also made for some of the best content in the game! The gerudo region was the only one who had an interesting questline before the dungeon! And the Lightning Temple who felt even close to what a true “Zelda Dungeon” looks like. No other dungeon even came close!
All these made for an incredible 20 hours and a dissapointing 200 hours of missed potential. I can’t beleive they spent 6 years making barely any changes to the world. The abilities are nice and the story is pitifully bland and repetitive but BOTW and TOTK thrive in their Worlds! But TOTK’s is just THE SAME exacly the same with nothing to find underground and ABSOLUTE NOTHINGNESS in the sky.
Sorry for the long comment but i needed to vent.
You said it all.
Just what I was thinking. Starts off strong but then you realize it doesn't progress into anything better
My experience with BotW ended in disappointment. The game felt unfinished, and there was no depth to any of the exploration. I regrettably forced myself to beat it, but I will never waste my time with a video game again. I went back to playing Skyrim and Minecraft, games that had actual things to do and encouraged exploration and creativity.
I wish the Depths had more friendly NPCs instead of the same damn Zonai Survey Team disguised Yiga. Like supposedly the ZST is all about studying the depths yet you never meet a single friendly face down there.
I think it would’ve been nice if you could save some of the monsters that were friendly like a gentle lynel or a wayward bokoblin I agree with you it would’ve been nice to see villages down in the depths it would’ve been interesting to see lake helping those in the depths that aren’t for violence come to the surface
@@1Akarikotsu I think that idea ignores the fact that the monsters are only there cause of Ganon. They aren't good creatures turned bad. They're demons
Wat abot robby
@@kellykindler3492 He’s literally the only one and you only encounter him once.
@@Huffle_0in botw they’re counted as creatures, but in literally everything else they’re demon
Seems weird that in the space of a few years that all the dormant Guardians have been completely removed, except one in Hateno. Really enjoyed the Guardians, all types.
The sky was the most disappointing for me - empty and without the charm of skyward sword. I also spent SO long looking for a skyloft shaped island.
It was right under your nose mate. The Great Sky Island IS Skyloft. Or at least the general shape is.
@@KingRaatzi realized that too but it really did feel not intentional with how little references there are to skyward sword
The skyward sword sky wasn’t even that great, so this is definitely saying something
@@marzgirl99Are you kidding? Skyward Sword is so underrated! The orchestral music, the origin of the beginning of the world, the romance, and the story’s overall structure was what made the game so impactful and amazing
@Hugz4All16 look at what they said again. They were only critiquing the *sky* in skyward sword
This game came out the day i got into a nearly life ending car accident. I played it for nearly two weeks straight proceeding that and i like to think this game helped me heal.
That’s great man, I’m so glad that you were able to find a way to keep enjoying yourself in a terrible time like that. I hope you’re doing well now
Glad you are still with us, internet stranger
I broke up with my ex beforehand. TotK definitely helped me heal a bit
@@SaberRexZealotI feel you there, I had a friend for over a decade, we basically burned bridges for good just a week before TotK. Still hurts to this day, but it is what it is
same thing happened to me, glad you’re doing ok
Can’t believe they fumbled the floating island idea twice
They said they wanted to do it better and then I see that a lot of the islands are similar in size to what you fly past in Skyward Sword.
@@Drew_2152 Size isn't the problem. It's the content. A lot of it is repeated and not much feels special.
3rd Zelda game with floating islands let's goooooo
The weird part is that they nailed it with the Great Sky Island, but then fumbled it with every other island.
I personally think they should've picked either the Sky or the Depths to include in the game and focused development on one of them. As it is, both of them feel pretty undercooked.
@@theophany4935 I think a DLC could descend more bigger islands to the level that the other islands are in and add more to the depths.
How is Zelda blood related when we see Sonia die before ever seeing some sort of heir running around?
Presumably they already had a prince/princess. It's another missed opportunity for a memory: Zelda meeting the young heir could have made the assassination scene so much more impactful
My guess is the heir is somewhere else, maybe being educated in another kingdom like was common in real history. Still not explained well, though.
During my playthrough of TOTK, whenever I was looting a chest in the depths, I felt like I was getting placeholder loot. Especially when you get to the point where you got most armor pieces and all the chests are batteries. It just didn't feel like a reward most of the time
This pissed me off too. I get that they need to reuse assets and stuff to save on time, but come on, using all the same armor pieces as in BotW was lame. At a certain point you have more battery levels than some “vehicles” can handle.
@@melisjevisje save on time my ass, they took six years to make this game. They could've easily diversified loot, let alone the sky and depths content wise. They simply chose not to
@@aegis84 You are aware the game also has to run, right?
@@NuiYabuko Putting a different objectID into a chest costs NOTHING.
Hover bike broke the game entirely.
🤣
Am I the only one that was never crazy about all the building stuff in this game? I mean it all became irrelevant as soon as someone made that hover bike popular. Other than that I really wish they would’ve spent more time fixing some of the game’s issues like the horrible champion abilities, the empty sky islands and the boring depths. They could’ve at least made a village in the sky with Rito villagers and added some interesting side quests or something like that. Perhaps even have Kass there with some of the other Rito as part of the Lucky Clover Gazette quests. I’m sure it would’ve been relatively easy to do.
I never was. The worst part about the building mechanics inclusion is the opportunity cost. As you said, how much was sacrificed in development in favor of this dumb ass building mechanic that most long time Zelda fans don't care about at all... I appreciate Nintendo's creativity and focus on innovation most of the time but bro dedicating so much to building was such a flop.
I was open to it. I just hoped it wasn’t going to be the focal point of the game. And then I learned the whole game was built around 1) exploration and 2) building. I never enjoyed building in ToTK.
It would be fine if building was the game. Instead ToTK has a so many mechanics, it’s hard to make any of them seamless.
I was very excited about all the building stuff and was also let down by how irrelevant it became once the 9 zonaite get-anywhere-fast machine was discovered. It's really impressive how well all the pieces work together, but it's also really disappointing how close it got to perfection without achieving it. All I wanted was one interactive button on the steering stick, so I could have a "fire" button or a "jump" button or a "transform" button depending on which piece is activated by it. Just a little more direct control over my contraptions. Instead of engineering cool solutions to problems in the world, a good 90% of my time with Ultrahand was spent engineering solutions to problems presented *by* my tools.
The building mechanics seem like a way to extend play time to me. Like I can see the puzzle aspect of it but I don't like having to spend 10 minutes angling and fiddling with parts to get to the next island/ point of interest. I just wanna ride my horse around a medieval fantasy world.
💯
Biggest question for me is: Why couldn't we have played in the ancient past? They did such a good job of setting up the environment and atmosphere with new characters and an engaging plot where lots of battles take place and many quests could have occurred. It would solve the problem of being the same overworld Hyrule and NPCs. I think it would've been a refreshing move.
For sure. it would have been wonderful to be able to have Zelda on the world, too like everyone wanted
That would've been incredible.
Instead of just fighting monsters and a formerly sealed embodiment of Evil, you instead fight Ganondorfs' army as he's in the process of attacking Hyrule, then again after his 'surrender' and oath of fealty turns out to be fake, with Ganondorf this time joined by a monstrous force and due to it, you get conflicted loyalty moments from the Gerudo who ultimately end up betraying Ganondorf and help seal the man.
Then there could be an (expensive) DLC where you play as Zelda in modern times, working to bring Link back to defeat Ganondorf once and for all. For her, it'd actually make sense to be building all sorts of machines to help you as well as that intelligence and engineering knowhow is established as part of her character.
A final DLC could then be Link OR Zelda, traversing the Underground area to strengthen the Master Sword for that final battle. Said Underground - and the final Sage that is hidden there - could be something both the main game and the DLC hinted towards in their stories as well for it to be a proper culmination of the entire three-story set of the Sealing War, Breath Of The Wild and Zelda's Journey.
Would be more interesting AND more profitable.
Would love to see another Hyrule Warriors game to fill in all the events from the acient past.
Because corporations have video games down to simple math. Tears of The Kingdom is completely substandard, because that's all it had to be. The sales numbers don't lie. They'll sell the same game one more time, then make a big announcement about "shaking up" the formula.
@@SeasoningTheObese you're right. The game is enjoyable to me but there is something strangely lower quality about it.
I think your ending comment on the story not leading Link to where he needs to be, leading him throughout the game, is exactly why I stopped playing ToTk. The story felt like it wasn't there. Like at all. So it just felt like I was free-roaming in BoTW with a few new toys. It's hard for me to remember that I have the Ultra Hand abilities vs the Sheikah Slate, I kept forgetting I had Ascend, when you mentioned using recall I felt like an absolutely idiot for not thinking about that for so many dungeons. I agree that it's an expansion pack and probably should've been. Such a shame.
After receiving the paraglider, I headed straight for the giant cloud above Faron. Navigating the stormy sky islands was tricky, but after a short while I found myself at the door that requires 8 or 10 hearts (can't remember) to access the Mineru quest. Having just come from the Great Sky Island, I assumed these heart doors were a new way of barring certain events behind progression. As I completed shrines and worked on the Gerudo quest, each time I gained a new heart I would teleport back and try the door again, curious as to what could be important enough to lock behind such a barrier. I was excited to find similar doors throughout the world, but alas, that was the only one.
yes, that would have been such a good way of restricting the player without taking too much of their freedom to navigate the world... I love this games, I'm excited to see what they'll do next, when untied from the laid out pre-conceptions of BotW
Why was there like 2 shrines in the entire game that made use of keys and that’s it. They could’ve had keys in dungeons and made more complex dungeon puzzles
Yes! Some shrines had keys! Why not the dungeons
@@lRedBaronl Are you really hung up about dungeons having keys?
When Light Dragon comes to aid Link in the final battle, I’d asked myself a question during the 3rd phase: “Did she come back and maybe Draconification hasn’t removed everything that is Zelda?” I would strongly believed it is her love for her knight is what drove her dragon instinct/consciousness in saving Link from falling and aiding him against the Demon Dragoon. And we all seen that when her powers is activated when the one she loves is threaten in Breath of the Wild’s final memory.
The Demon Dragon, also shows it has not lost everything in the dragonification process, you can clearly tell it still recognises Link and Zelda as dragon, as is still evil.
@@TerranigmaQuintet I thought the reason why both the "Light Dragon" and "Demon Dragon" began to fight eachother was because they both sensed they _had to_ due to what the other represented in terms of their respective personalities and motivations: Order and good in the case of the Light Dragon, Chaos and evil in the case of the Demon Dragon hence their seemingly instinctive desire to fight one another. It was less that they were both conscious and more so that their "animal senses" sort of speak were forcing them to fight one another.
PS: I SO love your account name omg. Terranigma and Quintet are both gems from the good ol' days of introspective videogame storytelling from the 90s. Here's to hoping Terranigma gets a well deserved remake for the Switch 2 someday.
It has to be that because the other three dragons didn't show up to help.
@@Mysticgamer The other 3 dragons are only concerned with watching over their respective springs which is why they couldn't care less about the giant Demon Dragon rampaging through the sky and destroying everything around it.
Honestly we have no proof thet the hole "Loosing onself" is acually correct. Its not like the Dragons can acually talk. So most likley Zelda was still fully herself when turned into a Dragon. Thats how she knew to stay above the cloud barrier until the Upheavel and as to why she fights against Link pulling out the sword...well...she had a Sword stuck in her nogging, that probably hurt like hell having it pulled out. Ore she was testing Link, making sure he had regained enough strenght
I hated the dungeons man they had such good potential but they were repetitive and no mini bosses at least the dungeons could have been more linear like twilight princess
One thing I find interesting is that for all previous Zelda's, it is the central gameplay concept that is finalized first, and that in turn informs the game's central setting, themes, story, and characters.
The main concept of sailing as the main means of exploration in a Zelda title in turn led to the concepts of a flooded Hyrule, bite-sized islands to explore, and Zelda being a pirate.
The main concept of playing as a child and an adult in one game led to the concepts of Ganondorf taking over for 7 years, Zelda going into hiding as Sheik during that time, and OoT's major theme of the inevitability of growing up and leaving your childhood innocence behind.
In Tears though, the developers tied their own hands by choosing to graft their central mechanic of Ultrahand into a world that wasn't designed with it in mind, into a setting that already had its own story, lore, and characters. They limited their own freedom to create, and limited the fact that one good idea can spawn several more, simply by choosing to reuse the same overworld, and it shows in the end product. Out of all the Zelda's I've played, I feel the least passion from the developers in this one.
I don't think limiting creative freedom is necessarily the big thing that did them in here - Majora's Mask, which although not everyone's favorite, is quite a fews', and that was created quite a bit out of imposed limitations, both technologically and creatively. I agree wholeheartedly about a lack of passion felt in the game, but I don't think it's from being lack of options or possible paths to walk, I think it's born from a confused development philosophy and pressure of the games being Nintendo's big IP's, forced into more bland, streamlined forms. I guess I mean to say, it feels more like they're following a recipe now with specific ingredients vs cooking up something new with limited ones (maybe that's a bit too pedantic, which would totally be fair haha)
Similar to how Pokemon used to have a ton of variety in tone, with different aesthetics and (relatively) different ages being appealed to - Pokemon Colosseum and Pokemon Stadium back then are quite different, while both being essentially just batting on repeat. Now, Pokemon is essentially just the same formula for every game (minus the indie-esque spinoffs that they don't talk about aside from launch days, and Legends, which kinda proves the point from how much just shaking things up on an average level proved successful). I don't think this is the perfect analogy as Zelda never had as large differences, and obvs the Pokemon Company/Nintendo dynamic is slightly different than the Zelda/Nintendo but I think it's still applicable to the change in design philosophy.
Or, somewhat similar to the modernization/minimalism of modern logos, that kind of overly-smooth corporatized feel once they've somehow revamped a hand drawn mascot into two different colored circles - "well designed" but emotionless
Oh, quickly realized - I mentioned I didn't think Zelda has as large differences, which might seem odd when talking about Zelda, but I mean purely in the sense that the series has mostly always been an adventure game made for ~the same ages, whereas Pokemon had many different forms of media and pretty varied central game mechanics - puzzles, catching, battling, etc... in addition to the differences in tone.
Just say you don't vibe with the game or something as opposed to assuming the devs' feelings.
I don't think their comment was intended to be negative or anything, they seem to be just airing their thoughts, as am I - plus, who cares if someone likes/dislikes the game, if they voice it politely? Have a good one!
@@NuiYabuko
@@NuiYabuko He's right though. And its not just Zelda. Its kind of the core design philosophy behind many Nintendo games, like Mario. Design extremely fun mechanics first, then design the rest of the game around those mechanics.
I had the same frustration regarding the geoglyph memories ... As I was watching, it occurred to me that a simple fix would have been to have each geoglyph appear separately over time, perhaps as each previous geoglyph was completed or with a story progression mechanic. Would have still made the world open and allowed plenty of freedom to explore while keeping that particular story thread linear.
I was completely spoiled by Ganondorf's transformation because memory 8 is directly next to memories 1 and 2
They display the linear order you should watch them by doing Impa's quest
I definitely didn't catch on to that, but they really should have just made the cutscenes play in order regardless the order that you find the glyphs
@@mooseylukenot obvious enough for everybody
@@Neodynamics423 The glyphs are literally linked to the memory.
I think it whould have been a cool idea if the game took place in the past. They could still use the same hyrule but we get to experience it 10000+ years in the past
before it launched i thought that was going to be the case, that in classic Zelda fashion we were going to travel between two time points.
Man that would have been so much better!
That would be Skyward Sword lol
@@philspaghet No it wouldn't, the Hyrule that the Zonai formed isn't the same Hyrule the first Link and Zelda formed. BotW Zelda didn't go to Skyward Sword Era, she just went to the start of this new Hyrule.
Alternatively, instead of the boring Depths, all the Dragon’s Tears memories are portals to the playable past where you get to control Zelda
After the GDC presentation Nintendo did on Tears of the Kingdom's development, I think we now know why the game ended up as it did. I think it's safe to say most of us were expecting Nintendo to build on top of Breath of the Wild's world and physics; to take that and add classic dungeons and such. Nintendo's goal with this game, however, was instead to *double down* on BotW's open world and physics. This explains why the game reaches greater heights than BotW while also reaching greater lows.
The shortcomings I felt BotW had were all forgiven by what it achieved and by accepting what is was. So you noted exactly what I felt with TotK- it’s much harder to forgive the shortcomings when they were repeated from the last.
Perhaps because those aren't shortcomings but design choices.
@@NuiYabuko I don't see your point? A deliberate design choice can still be a shortcoming? I still wish the divine beasts were something different when I play BotW, but I don't look down on the developers for making those choices and trying something new. But I do look down on the same things in TotK that I let slide in BotW because there was an opportunity to course correct.
@@NuiYabuko Most shortcomings throughout the planet come down to the choices people make.
When Ganondorf knew Link and Zelda's names at the beginning of the game I was so impressed, thinking he was acknowledging versions of them from the older games. It was therefore a huge disappointment that he only knew who they were because of Zelda going back in time.
Remember when people thought "omg, is that Demise?" when the trailers dropped?
Ooof. Basically what Bandit Games said is how I felt. I was like omg is this linked back to like TP or WW. But noooo.
Then when he mentioned "Rauru" I was like "HOLY SHIT! THEY'RE GOING THERE, TO OOT!"
... ... .... Then we learn that, no, its just a totally new and unrelated Rauru... That deflated me greatly early on.
@@saxoman1right? Like holy shit they flopped so hard, they need a completely new story department and writing team
thats a very weird thing to be disappointed in. especially because demise reincarnates just like link and zelda, so hes just as un aware about the past as they are. just because YOU are disappointed doesnt mean its actually disappointing.
You nailed everything I've thought about the game for some time now. The game really needed more enemy types. Hearing about the pirates at lurelin was magical only to find the same moblins -- no eyepatch or peg leg in sight. They needed more threats in the air while you were flying around, and more threats in the ocean while you were sailing away. That would have helped it feel more fresh being in the same world and all.
My Zelda motivation is still, even now, in shambles from this game. It was so disappointing. What a waste of 6 years. So unfortunate. There was good about it, but it was such, such a waste. I wish we could have just had the fucking dlc after a year or two, not this dogshit.