The best thing about TOTK is that almost any problem can be solved with a hoverbike, a rocket shield, or a bomb. The worst thing about TOTK is that almost any problem can be solved with a hoverbike, a rocket shield, or a bomb.
I remember reading a critique on Tumblr to the effect of, “TotK’s problem is that it plays too fast and loose with the story of BotW, but it’s ironically too faithful to the mechanics and game design.”
But it was pretty ridiculously faithful to the story and the mechanics were largely unrecognizable. The entire flow of the game is different simply due to how different most of the core mechanics are. I mean, if you're solely looking at aesthetics.. sure, they similar. And I guess there's a magnesia equivalent? Weapons still break, which was less of a bad thing and more of a thing that people didn't like because they want games to engage with them, instead of engaging with the game. They don't want to play a game, they want to experience Zelda. I mean, they even pretty much removed actual durability because you can actually repair stuff now, and even with that in mind, I never had to do it too often while still maintaining a good chunk of my weapons throughout the game. They're actually annoyingly *indestructible* now and I actually, in hindsight, wish they were a little less durable and closer to BotW. That's a personal thing, though. I know that a lot of game developers are kind of annoyed with constantly dishing out yellow paint for people who refuse to engage with a game on the games terms. Pandering to general audiences at the expense of their vision is kind of why games suck now, and is also kind of why I'm glad Nintendo only listened so much to "fan" critique after BotW and gave then an inch or two of QOL improvements without endlessly pandering to people who clearly just want to play a different game but will burn the world down if they aren't specifically catered to in the future, despite clearly just not being interested in what Nintendo intends with Zelda and sort of going back to the series ideological and inspirational roots. I think it was obvious that the Ocarina of Time formula was getting stale by Twilight Princess, judging by the fact that they only went the direction TP went in due to corporate pressure to pander to the massive pressure from the Ocarina of Time fanbase at the time. I was part of that fan base, and Twilight Princess was a lesson to me as to why rehashing old things maybe isn't the best idea. As a lifelong Zelda fan I'm excited they're moving on and experimenting, but the Ocarina/Twilight Princess loyal crowd will never accept that. That's honestly just the nature of conservatism. "Everything has to be as it always was because I don't want the series to grow, I just want to play Ocarina again"
Well that was a pretty brainless take considering how mechanically different it is. I struggle to think of many sequels that are just as mechanically different as their predecessors.
@@RenSako "but it was pretty ridiculously faithful to the story" saying it doesn't make it true. the sheikah tech disappearing is the tip of the iceberg, totk didn't just drop the ball that was botw's story, it stopped playing the game entirely. link and zelda both had considerable characterization in cutscenes, journals and dialogue, none of which was used in totk - hell, link is a blanker slate than he's ever been here, especially with how the story relies on his complete lack of agency. zelda's inquisitiveness, brash tendencies, her attitude and interests? gone. she's The Princess, the noble and pure maiden who will sacrifice herself for the good of all, nothing more nothing less. and of course don't bother looking for any mention of her father, the champions, half the goddamn NPCs don't know who link is, ganon doesn't seem to be part of the cycle of reincarnation that was a frequent mention in botw because oh yeah! we got rid of the zelda timeline. yeah, skyloft didn't happen, it was all the zonai sorry. (don't give me the copout bullshit that is "well that was a different hyrule" the devs just wanted to appeal to the biggest demographic they could by soft-rebooting zelda.) mechanically, the arm powers being a different set of abilities to the sheikah slate runes doesn't change that you're exploring the same hyrule with the same combat and the same movement, except now you get to skip half of it with skydiving.
@@frenchcoat3140 "Link is a blanker slate than he's ever been here" There are plenty of games where he's a blanker slate than Totk. "Zelda sacrifice herself for the good of all" If it wasn't for Zelda working behind the scenes we would have more than likely died due to not having the sages with us.
The funny thing is this only happens in the English dub, because Americans have to be alliterative and clever instead of describing events. I mean, the design flaws of writing a linear story in a non-linear fashion are still there, but considering the English localization kind of fucked everything up, I would blame that over it necessarily being a design flaw of the game. I was so confused by people's complaints until I changed the game back to English to check it out, and yeah, that's bad, but outside of the repetitive cutscenes, this just didn't happen in the original writing or other dubs, at least in the sense they didn't make up dumb alternative names like "secret stone", which it isn't called anywhere else.
@@skittybitty THE skittybitty in MY comments section? I’m honored :') Finally got to watching your totk video yesterday and absolutely loved it! Hope you enjoy mine!
“You can never go back to how you used to play botw.” THIS. When I first played botw, I remember feeling like it was a huge accomplishment when I saved up enough rupees to buy the full Hylian set. It felt like I had gotten a substantial upgrade. Now, I usually have 1,000+ rupees before I even get anywhere near Kakariko or my first divine beast. That doesn’t necessarily make replays of botw less fun, but it does require that make an effort to do things less “optimally.” But because totk was so similar to botw, I never got that feeling of progression. I never really got better at the game because I had already been good at it for four years at that point.
That's actually something I like a lot about the game. In BotW, I woke up with no memory of my character's past life and had to learn all my abilities from scratch. In TotK, I've mastered most of those abilities and am given a new, stronger version of Ganon to test myself on, plus new types of enemies that actually gave me quite a hard time at first similarily to my first time taking on the BotW enemies. It makes for an interesting dynamic I've never really had before: mastering a game and gaining the ability to breeze through the adventure no problem, then having that adventure actually continue into a whole new game.
Oh my god. I was sooooo confused why Mineru's parting was the true ending cutscene. Like... she was barely a character, giving that cutscene to her made no sense, it had zero emotional impact. I didn't even consider that it was done to mirror the true ending from BotW, where having lingering spirits depart actually made sense, because all of them were fairly developed characters. Damn.
Maybe I'm not remembering correctly; but, what you said about Mineru's parting makes me dislike Breath's ending in hindsight because Mineru actually got to have well animated, poignant goodbye to Zelda (despite the two sharing all of what.....4 minutes of screentime with each other?) yet the Champions or Zelda's *flipping father* couldn't get that?! The same Champions who were shown as personal friends and allies to Zelda (with Urbosa being the closest to her as maternal figure) with the Champion's Ballad DLC further developing their relationships with her. And there's her father, King Rhoam. His severe and distant personality (alongside Zelda's apparent inability to access her sealing powers) caused her insecurities and, consequently, initial hostility towards Link. And he had come to regret his treatment of his daughter (as he wrote in his diary) but, tragically, he was unable to make amends with her before his death by Calamity Ganon. 100 years later, however, he's able to manifest as a ghost to Link and it's shown just how much he'd changed since the fall of his kingdom. When instructing Link on the Great Plateau, he opted to point the young Hylian in the right direction but didn't outright give him the answers to his tasks while having lighthearted fun with messing with Link, complimented by a jovial laugh, all of which showed just how much he had loosened up since he was alive. He even reluctantly asked Link to save his kingdom when even he couldn't when he was alive. With *all of this,* you'd think that Zelda would have a proper farewell to her father and her friends that encapsulates just how much everyone had grown over the course of the story. Just how emotionally moving it would have been to see King Rhoam apologize and reconcile with his daughter and express pride with how far she'd come before all of them pass on at the end. But.....none of them get that. Mineru does despite having nowhere the bonds Zelda had in Breath. Heck, Zelda didn't even get to see Sonia and Rauru one last time after they reverted her to Hylian form. Link does though. Link gets to have all of the goodbyes and closure.....but not Zelda. 😮💨
The point was to tie up lose ends like every Zelda ending. Also the main point was that the kingdom would forever be at peace and the sages vow their lives to Zelda that’s the main point not really mineru leaving. Also Purah is there so that’s a bonus.
The lack of continuity in Zelda would not be a problem if Nintendo was just open and honest about it. There are plenty of videogame series that are very upfront about not having any continuity at all with Final Fantasy being a great example of this
@@slenderMax28I mean it is the same world and mechanics as breath of the wild. And the same characters that progress much more than they did in botw, that sounds like a sequel to me. First you guys were saying it's glorified dlc, now y'all saying it's not a sequel at all. Make y'all minds up.
@@mania4270It is a sequel, a pretty bad one, but it is a sequel. Hell half of the characters that you meet in the first game, don’t even remember who you are, that’s how bad, this sequel is.
@@Anon9729X that's kind of par the course for Zelda sequels though. This game was still a WAY better game than breath of the wild. It has way better explanation, better items, the fuse mechanic is amazing. I judge books or movies on their stories but tears of the kingdom is a video game and I don't judge them on their story because story doesn't really matter. As a Nintendo fan, you should know that. It's all about the gameplay. And I'd rather play tears of the kingdom than botw. BOTW is kind of unplayable after playing tears of the kingdom because tears of the kingdom has a better story, dungeons, and gameplay. Tears of the kingdom hate is unwarranted and seems like a lousy way to get views rather than actually having legitimate complaints
I don't have a strong connexion with the Zelda franchise due to not having the Nintendo consoles growing up. My first Zelda game was as such Breath of the Wild, a game I really enjoyed. I would not put it in my list of "favorite games" but I still had a blast playing it. When I bought Tears of the Kingdom I did not know what to expect. I knew that everyone at the time praised the game beyond measure and as such I was confident I was going to have fun. What took me by surprise was the neutrality I felt during my playthrough. For me, the game was entertaining enough to not be boring, but it was not interesting enough to make me enthusiastic, and so i felt "neutral" if that mean anything. There was no singular one event that made me quit, it was more like a slow breakup, the painful realization that I was just not really having fun : I played less and less every day until eventually I stopped picking the game up. It's a very weird feeling, not of boredom per say, but of disinterest. Outside of some of the controls and other extremely baffling UI decision, I could not pin point why this game did not click with me even tho it is an impressively well crafted experience. But seeing so many long critiques of the games month later like this video is actually helping me understand my indifference toward the game. To be clear, many love ToTK and I understand why : it is a legitimately very impressive work of art. As a game programmer myself, I'm amazed by the technical aspect of the title like the physic engine and building systems, all that running on a Switch. The sound design is top notch, the environments are marvelous. There is undeniable beauty here, a beauty I revisit when I draw with the OST/Ambience blasting in the background. But for me, it did not clicked during gameplay, and I will not lie by pretending that I'm not relieved to see that I'm not alone feeling that way.
You can play the most beautiful sounding and looking game, and it'll all fall apart if the gameplay doesn't just doesn't click with you. I basically have the same story as you tbh, I just lost interest m
I find the same thing happened with RDR2 in a few years everyone will be like “actually it was a masterpiece and games are still failing to live up to how good it is”
I feel so weird. I bounced off of BotW when I first played it because while the world was vast and sprawling, it felt shallow to interact with. TotK sucked me in fully on the other hand, and feels like the realization of what BotW was unable to be for me. I'm still messing around with the physics engine in the game, and building new ways to traverse the lands. I love making wild contraptions to solve different combat situations. And yet everytime I go online I feel like everyone wants to say that the things I enjoy about the game are not the 'correct' way to enjoy the game. To me, TotK is among the best the Switch has to offer.
@@THEONETRUEOVERLORD Same thing with cyberpunk, people were shitting all over it and im not even talking about glitches, after the anime released many people came back to it and suddenly ITS A REDEMPTION ARC when in reality all what people did is tone down their expectations while Cdpr fixed some bugs, now after the DLC its considered one of the best games ever made. Im pretty sure that one day people will revisit TOTK and end up appreciating it for what it is and what it had to offer in fact this has been the case with every Zelda since WW.
Bro did the Joseph Anderson shrine breakdown let's go. It's almost like the shrine designers, dungeon designers, and open world designers were all on separate teams and didn't realize they were repeating the same basic concepts in every one.
I dunno....they seem to all be designed by the same team tbh. And like... it's not repeating the same basic concepts it's more so iterating on and making other puzzles based off those concepts.
What? all of the designs are very similar yet different because it represents a different history built by many different past civilizations This nitpick makes no sense
Genuinely, I think that with how rigid the quests are in this game and with the way the memories are structured this time around, TotK really should have been a linear game. It's a linear game, stretched past the point of comfort to fit an open world shell, and it suffers for it.
This is objectively wrong. It is not a liner game you just played it like a liner game going from point to point I’m sorry but this isn’t a Ubisoft game that’s not how you play. The flying alone makes this an amazing open world and my favorite part of exploration. The quest also takes place all over the map something that wouldn’t make sense in a liner game also most people I know don’t really care about Zelda stories. You clearly don’t know anything about game design if you think this game suffers from being open world. At that rate every open world game should be liner.
Your analysis of the “revenge of the Zelda Formula” put into words something I’ve been struggling to vocalize since TOTK came out. Breath of the Wild was such a fresh and invigorating shot in the arm, I was so excited to see where the Zelda team would go next under this new ‘nothing is sacred’ philosophy only to see them immediately fall right back into the same old routine, just aping BOTW this time instead of OOT. Now with Echoes of Wisdom on the horizon looking to repeat the same structure yet again I’m legitimately worried that we’re in for yet another decades-long generation of iterative, formulaic Zeldas, and that’s just unbelievably disappointing.
TOTK was a DLC initially that became its own thing because it aws too expensive, his argument on the Zelda Formula is not taking that into account at all, everyone knew ever since we knew it was using the same map that it was going to be a very similar game, you can start yapping about that new Formula when it actually becomes a formula they follow, and you won't know that until the next game at the very least, considering they aren't making new games in this Hyrule again.
@@fieldkaiju Well, we already know what the next Zelda game is, Echoes of Wisdom, so let's take a look. Hyrule Castle in the center of the map is engulfed by evil magic. There are 4 races in 4 corners of the map in 4 different biomes, each presumably with their own problem to solve. Zelda must use her suite of wacky physics powers to travel across the wide open overworld in a nonlinear fashion, climbing walls and riding horses to get places faster. Along the way she can collect materials to cook food items that give her temporary stat buffs and mix & match armor sets for more permanent passive effects. Puzzles are open ended and able to be solved however the player wants. Based on what we've seen I'm assuming that you can enter 'rifts' for slightly more structured puzzle challenges, just like shrines. Hell even the UI is directly copied from BOTW. I could be proven wrong when the game comes out I guess, but it certainly looks VERY similar to BOTW/TOTK so far. The formula is established and it's already becoming clear that they intend to stick to it even with games that don't take place in the same Hyrule. Once is coincidence, twice is a pattern. I'm not just baselessly speculating.
The jack of all trades is the master of none. The great sky island, as awe-inspring as the first hour or so was, wasn't as special as the great plateau for me. After a few hours of gameplay, ToTK felt just "ok" at all of the things it tried to accomplish.
Tbh, I didn't mind the Blessing Shrines too much because the Shrines were so tedious that entering a Blessing Shrine relieved me because I knew I was quickly done with it and could move on.
@@Vyloka This has to be bias at this point. There’s no way only the TOTK shrines were bad even though BOTW’s shrines were as well. At least TOTK’s shrines didn’t have garbage forced motion controls in them. Not saying TOTK’s shrines are “better,” just saying BOTW weren’t any better.
You and I had very different experiences with the Construct Factory / Spirit Temple, in a way that adds to your point about fighting the game's intentions. I first stumbled onto the Construct Factory while exploring in the depths. I found all the collectibles nearby, explored all the buildings, etc., and eventually guessed it was just sort of an empty ruin with nothing of note, like so much of the depths had been. Sure, it had a different name and some unique iconography, but there was nothing I could actually DO there. It wasn't until I finished all the other temples, eventually worked through the Kakariko quest, did the Zonai stuff in Faron, and flew to the now-clear-skied dragon head island, that I got the mask with the laser pointing into the depths, and returned to the Construct Factory that I had already thoroughly explored. What could've been a cool reveal was empty on my first visit, and upon my return, one of the main things I thought about was how I'd wasted my time before.
Absolutely agree, on my first play of the game I somehow managed to brute force my way into the thunderdome thing early and actually found the mcguffin to go underground and discovered it completely out of order, definitely feels like it should’ve been that way from the start
I had a very similar experience. I stumbled upon it randomly, and when I saw the words "Spirit Temple" appear on screen I genuinely couldn't contain my excitement. This was super early on, like 2 dungeons in at most, so the whole game I kept fantasizing about what could be in the spirit temple. I went through the construct factory assuming that, like EVERY OTHER TEMPLE, it was the build up section to the dungeon... only to find the "temple" was literally just a boss room. In my entire life, I genuinely don't think I've ever felt so betrayed and disappointed by a video game. The 5 years of hype felt like such a let down in that moment.
With TOTK it is impossible to seperate the fun from the not fun, strangely. It's hard to just ignore the boring stuff because you don't know what's gonna be boring until you've done it, every, single, time.
@@exen8650And so many of the different mechanics depend on each other, you HAVE to engage with them. Oh I want to do this, but I need this resource, which means I have to go do something else (that might be crap) for who knows how long, for the privilege of maybe doing something you want, that may or may not work the way you want anyway.
I feel like it has to become the tradition among Zelda essayists: in order to prove yourself, you must give an opinion on all 152 shrines from Tears of the Kingdom.
They seem so upset that they have to do them all, despite the fact that they don't have to do them all. In fact, they are so obsessed with not collecting hearts to make the game harder that you could almost say they're completely unnecessary.
That ending point about the Water Temple is really eye-opening. They almost had the perfect exploration moment in the game and then forced the script unto the game.
erm actually there is another change to flurry rushes in TOTK....... they changed the capital "R" in the word "Rush" to a lowercase "r" in the prompt joking aside, this is a wonderfully articulated video. i found myself really resonating with a lot of what you had to say, and it feels like thoughts i have struggled to reasonably articulate over the time since playing TOTK have found form through your thoughts in this video. thank you for the sheer amount of effort you've put into creating this!!!
Legitimately thankful I'm not the only one who noticed that! Made it more confusing to edit my capitalization in the script Thank you so much for the compliments too!!! I'm glad people seem to be resonating with it
thrilled to see more critiques... as ive said in other comment sections: TOTK still is inaccessible as a disabled person. yes i can rebind keys, no it does not make it function well enough for my disabled hand. Botw however is accessible and i come back to it bc of this. Anyways awesome vid!! Edit: Thank you for mentioning the lack of accessibility and Nintendo games!! hearing able bodied folks bring it up makes me feel hope for accessibility in video games
@@sensidog1 That's not rude imo, it's just a criticism that unfortunately is true for many games. If you said it's not a problem that it's not accessible, that would be kind of rude and ignorant, but I'm assuming that's not what you were saying.
I think Wind Waker is a better sequel to Ocarina than Tears is to Breath - at least in terms of story, setting and character, where the game's premise derives from events of the previous game, and they actually manage to have continuity rather than 90% of the game world seemingly having had the events of the previous game erased without trace... Admittedly, they achieved the continuity by having a large time jump and some hand-waving, but it's still better than "a few years later, but almost everyone has completely forgotten Link and various towers, shrines, and other sheikah-tech locations (like the Shrine of Resurrection) have apparently dissolved without trace, in most cases also repairing the ground they burst from..." For myself, I've finished one playthrough of Breath of the Wild (with all Shrines completed) and started several since, none of which have made it that far, and found that Tears of the Kingdom brought enough novelty for me to finish it (with all Shrines completed) but I haven't got around to starting a second playthrough yet (and probably wouldn't finish one either) while I've completed Ocarina dozens of times, and most of the rest of the series several times each. My general conclusion is that Tears does improve on Breath in some ways, but not by a lot, and doubles down on some of its flaws. I'm not ready to say which of the two I prefer, but between them they've left me questioning whether modern Zelda is for me. Echoes of Wisdom may end up being the last Zelda game I purchase (if I do).
I had the thought you couldn't make a sequel to the breath of the wild without absolutely dramatically changing the world. Seems like i'm not the only person with similar thinking.
@@GnidelTotK barely changed anything about the world, barely anything new has developed, definitely nothing of note, so how is TotK the best proof? If anything, it shows that a dramatic change would have been needed to make the same world interesting
@@Gnidel totk is worse proof of that though????? what are you on about? the surface is essentially and practically the same! only difference is the chasm entrance and the sky designs trying to blend into the surface. that's it, all the locales and places and even npc's are all the same in totk.
@@BlackHand531 i wish i was! so i could say that the surface is different, but death mountain is still there and with little to no usage other than "something is there now". forest groove is still the groove we used to know, only now you have to enter another way. hyrule castle........had fuk all changes, only that the places where the royal chambers and hall lies are now elevated but the interior is still the same. yeah no, not a lot of drastic changes seen in the surface other than "LOOK CAVES AND SOME ZONAI DEVICES/CAPSULES!"
Imagine if they had 4 regional shrine skins. It wouldn’t fix everything but somehow I would be so much more forgiving somehow. They really did not take a single piece of feedback very seriously when making this game, the more I think about it. BoTW is one of my top 5 favorite games and even I feel disrespected a little lol.
11:35 "The maximum amount of meals I can make is 10" I find the following rule more interesting: You are not allowed to have two cooked meals with the same picture in your inventory. So if you want to have additional cooked meals, you can't just make more mushroom skewers but actually have to make cakes, omeletts, curry and so on. But I think more important than restricting the inventory is just the simple rule: You are not allowed to eat while combat music is playing. You're only allowed to take medicines while combat music is playing (which in Botw don't heal hearts).
@@skittybitty Other rules that I like to add in botw are: 1. You are not allowed to teleport. It makes horses much more useful and forces you to plan ahead a bit where you want to go next. The only time where this rule gets annoying in botw is if you just completed the eventide shrine and the game despawned your boat, and to get back you have to cross an ocean using cryonis. 2. You are only allowed to change your armor if you are at an inn or a stable. Without this rule I constantly switch to climbing armor while climbing, and back to other armor right after that. With this rule you actually have to think what armor you expect to be the most useful in the next few minutes. Although I like to make a slight exception to the rule that you are also allowed to change your armor at the shrine right before Gerudo town, because otherwise it can get annoying to have to go to the desert basar just go switch in and out of the Gerudo outfit.
man idk I think bottles worked so perfectly in the past I think literally just doing that again would be perfectly fine and fix most if not all of the problems with excessive healing in bots/totk
They could also just take advantage of the 600 extra useless korok seeds and let you start with like one food slot and upgrade to a max of ideally less than like 10
YT recommended this video to me, and as a fan of long-form video essays of topics I'm interested in, I ate this up. You completely captured my thoughts on ToTK. Especially the irksome decision to call the magical MacGuffins "secret stones." "Tears of Power" feels so much more grand and (ironically) mysterious than what they went with and actually ties in with the game's title.
The game would have been 1000x better if they had a time travel element into ancient Hyrule. Where all those ruins were vibrant towns and the Zonai were still alive. They wouldn't have had to delete the Shieka and they could kept the continuity. But, what we got was a half assed glorified DLC.
Yep, great way to ignore continuity of botw like they did without it being contradictory . You could’ve then gotten new zora with out making it feel weird to have new faces in a world we fully explored . Heck going back to another sequel even smg2 got it right as the previous game had already established the universe was reset . Not saying a world in a sequel needs to be directly in line with its predecessor but to get a players attention for it being a sequel it needs to have most of the last game line up to make you feel contected
I was part of the crowd who thought BotW was kind of underwhelming. It was a good game for what it was, but to me it couldn't hold a candle to the older Zelda games. The dungeons were bad, the UI was clearly a relic of the gamepad, a lot of the game felt like filler trying to fill a large world, the combat was unbalanced at best, the story was underwhelming. But I felt that a lot of why I thought it was underwhelming was that it was a first attempt at something new. I saw the potential to improve and make something truly great with BotW as a baseline. Being "BotW but better" was, to me, not a high bar. But TotK... just doubled down on the things about BotW that disappointed me, at best leaving them the same or at worst making them actively a bigger problem. Even worse, it also doesn't really understand the parts of BotW that did work, the exploration and discovery, because the new areas just don't have much variety. The game does have higher highs than BotW (Colgera is a banger boss fight and among my favorite bosses in the series for example). But it also has much lower lows than BotW did, and those lows are like, 90% of the game. Because it really is just a worse BotW, with all the same issues, and not even managing to re-capitalize on BotW's strengths to make up for it. In general though, it really feels like the game's competing between two identities and compromises made for one negatively impact the other pretty severely. I can make my own fun while playing a sandbox game. I've played hundreds of hours of DQB2 just goofing off and making silly buildings for the NPCs. But I struggle to do that sort of thing in TotK, because it feels like the game is actively discouraging it due to how disposable everything is. The disposable nature of everything seems to be a compromise for the sake of the fact this is supposed to be an adventure game (and the switch's hardware). But on the flipside, the sandbox elements end up breaking all the puzzles and causing them to collapse into the same puzzles over and over which hurts the adventure game aspect. If they wanted to make a sandbox, I would rather they commit to the sandbox and have the gameplay be about designing cute houses for NPCs (this even makes perfect sense with the state Hyrule is in after BotW!), where the point is to be creative and you can't really "cheese" anything. The Legend of Zelda home designer basically. While this would be more of a spinoff than a mainline game, it would make for a game that feels a lot more cohesive in what it's trying to do. There's even a house building mechanic in the game as is, an expanded version of that with specific tasks or requests from NPCs could be really fun! On the other hand, if they wanted to make an adventure game, they needed to put a lot more limits on what the player can do at any given moment. The inventory needs to be reigned in, make it so the player always has to make a solution with the materials right in front of them provided by the world so that variety is better enforced. Drop a lot of the shrines in favor of making the ones that remain more in depth to decrease the redundancy. Those sorts of things.
The amount of disappointment I felt from Ganondorf being a new incarnation as opposed to the return of the villain from previous entries, I really can't overstate it. The game even sets you up for disappointment as he name drops Zelda, Link, and Rauru in the intro, only for you to find out he knows them because of time loop shenanigans. I wanted a Ganondorf who had a deep hatred for Zelda and Link for all the times they defeated him and the suffering he had endured for being sealed for so long. It felt like a deliberate act by the writers to set expectations just to dash them. I'll say he was a fun and cool Ganondorf, and Matt Mercer did a great job voicing him, but I feel his knowledge of the character in the past entries helped mask how hollow the writing for him was. I know people will say "gameplay first," but as shown in the review, the gameplay suffers, too. If they sacrificed story quality for gameplay and spicing up the old map, where is it? I still like the game even, but it is way below what I wanted for both story and gameplay. I really hope the Zelda Team is listening despite the success and will take more of these criticisms to heart. Obviously, this game will forever be a what-if idea now, full of untapped potential, but hopefully, a new 3D entry can be something special in both gameplay and world building.
It's amazing how many critiques of totk are coming out of the woodwork. And they're all well-deserved and well-written. I swear the community is going to end up putting more total work into critiquing this game than Nintendo put into making it - if they haven't already. Edit: I'm getting real done with all these Nintendo simps replying to me. If you're all willing to settle for less, I guess Nintendo has nothing to worry about, but personally I have standards. I won't be humoring any more replies.
Alright, now you're just hating with that take. :/ nintendo isnt like these other modern companies. They actually put in a lot of work to totk. Covid just fucked it up
@@ALinkToThePresent Then take the extra time needed to fix it. They absolutely could have. Instead, the game is an unexcusable insulting mess, and I say that as someone who enjoys playing it despite that. I'd recommend skittybitty's video if you haven't seen it, as they do an excellent job with a very objective analysis. "Secret stone? Demon king?"
My very sad take on TOTK is that the best thing that came out of it was the third trailer's music Also I can't shake the feeling that the period in which TOTK was the most loved by the community and brought out the most positivity was also between the third trailer's release and the game release. Man I loved the third trailer
@@neelost5984 Unfortunately that's not true. If by community, you mean the loud minority, then yes. Many people enjoy the game and are still doing fun new things in the game. I've never seen people sharing "cool stuff" content as much as with TOTK.
ive gotta say, this actually does echo a lot of what i feel ive... described to many people how i feel about TOTK as "it isnt a sequel, its a remix" as in, the game clearly wanted to appeal to people who didnt play botw, and ... while they had the pieces laid down for a sequel (the zonai and such) ... they ultimately decided to use those pieces to just, do botw but again, with some minor differences. i mean, honestly... ganondorf transforming into the demon dragon literally has him look just like calamity ganon for a moment. sure thats a cool nod, but it also feels to me like another point like how the sheikah and zonai are ultimately like... the same in the role they play -- the devs decided to simply do what they had done but in a different way, like a second draft of sorts. like okay, what if we did botw but we had more time... and... hm, well. if remaking botw, we should probably replace some significant things with other, similar/parallel things. so that it doesnt look too much like we just copied it but the desire to me feels like it ultimately became not to make a sequel to BOTW, but to create BOTW again. if it was titled BOTW: Zonai Remix , and wasnt touted as a sequel, and didnt try to be after the events of botw, i'd respect its story heavily but it taking place after botw feels very tacked on
ah! i just finished the video and you do call it a Repetition of BOTW for what its worth, i will say i immensely enjoyed my time with TOTK... but that was as someone who hadnt 100%'d BOTW itself, and who isnt a major zelda fan yes i love puzzles in games, but also... well, i dunno . i just liked exploring and finding things. the story, while it disappoints me thinking about it afterwards, brought me quite a bit of joy in the moment hell, i teared up at the final tear but yeah, i can say the game was a good game, just not a good sequel. it was really addicting to just, keep having stuff to do, through the many, many sidequests and collectathon type macguffins i think... its funny, they made a game where its most enjoyable if you bring your own batteries. and... as someone who talks about minecraft design and its issues vs its lack of issues (its nuanced as heck ofc) ...thats really what minecraft is TOTK felt like... again, learning from minecraft, and leaning into those player driven stories that Mojang seems very intent on helping create in modern minecraft theres... definitely something interesting to be said, about comparing and contrasting TOTK and minecraft. perhaps ill do that myself ! anyways, fantastic video!
I still wouldn't respect its story - the whole thing with the faceless nameless ancient sages repeating almost identical cutscenes after each dungeon, the much more linear narrative of the memories still being presented in an unpredictable order (though if you do treat the game as a linear one, religiously following its breadcrumbs, you'll discover the intended order of the geoglyphs fairly early on), Link's complete indifference to having learned that the Zelda running around the world is some sort of fake and total failure to mention it to anyone who is acting on fake-Zelda's instructions... Not pretending to be a sequel would remove a bunch of issues with the story, but plenty would remain.
I was so disappointed about Ganondorf in this game. Part of the reason why he's so intimidating is specifically because he is the exact same person throughout all the games he appears in - he's not a reincarnation like Link and Zelda, but the same guy from Ocarina of Time surviving over and over again just to torment the descendants of his greatest enemies. That, to me, added to his intimidation factor, the sheer persistence he had in living just to get revenge. That's what I thought was gonna be the case here, especially with how he's established as knowing who Link and Zelda are before they even meet, and I feel like in that kind of story I would have taken his lackluster motivation a little easier, but...
The first time I saw Tears of the Kingdom, I immediately thought, 'The same game with an extra feature and area added?' If there's one thing I loved about 3D Zelda, it's that each game was completely different from the last. I never knew what to expect. Each game felt connected by gameplay and references, but each game was so stylistically distinct. How different each game was even led to controversies back in the day, but when I look back at it now, the courage to change things up so boldly gives each game its own identity. What is Tears of the Kingdom's identity? Breath of the Wild 2, or Breath of the Wild Expansion Pack.
@@lolilll No. Anyone who didn't play botw would be blown away by the game. And even some who did play botw were, but from what I've seen the general consensus is that those who played botw soured on the game after beating it. It doesn't hold up well as a sequel which most of us expected it to be.
Crazy how Nintendo can consistently make a game that is half masterpiece and half the worst most baffling decisions you've ever seen. So naturally in TotK they decided to undermine the bits of Botw that were actually great and double down on the bits that were terrible Even the central hook, the Ultrahand stuff, is boring to me because there's no thought to it, everything's just a preset - you don't make a fan by attaching planks to a motor, or a wing by attaching slabs in a convex bow, or steer by attaching levers to circuitry. It's all just braindead, attach the Thing Doer. And the game does nothing to actually incentive you to use these contraptions. In fact, with the massive tower ascensions, you're incentivized to just paraglide across the overworld, and rarely to make an airship.
How did they undermine the bits of BOTW that were great? They really didn't, heck they improved stuff like weapons not feeling very useful with fuse. No there is a lot of thought with the Ultrahand stuff with how much you can do with it really,. It's not braindead it's just not needlessly complicated or has you need to create all those indiviual parts for one thing that may or not work...simplyfying it a bit only helped it and made it more accessible and straight forward, and it's attatching stuff that can be complex and pretty precise too at things not just "attach the thing doer". It does do stuff ff to incentive you to use them as they are good for stuff like traversal and combat. Not really you are incentived to make stuff like that if you wanna explore the whole world overhead.
@@Jdudec367for one fuse does not at all make weapons feel more useful. They break all the same but now most of them just look worse as weapons while doing it. And two the incentive to explore is gone, in the development of botw Nintendo came up with a design philosophy I don’t remember what it was called but it had to do with triangles. This incentivized you to explore everywhere, now there is literally towers that send you higher than you could ever get in botw and these towers are everywhere. The incentive for exploration is gone especially when the game quite literally rewards you for making the simplest most broken build in the game the hoverbike. It rewards you because it’s the most battery efficient and fastest build in the game.
@@Jdudec367the hoverbike, glider, and hang glider completely destroy botw exploration philosophy and make it so you can traverse the whole map almost entirely without having to walk nearly as much.
@@SirAlexanderr Actually it does make them feel more useful. Except now when you get a weapon from a chest and feeling like it's not that useful or memorable and that it will take up weapon space now you can use it as a part to make a stronger better and more memorable looking weapon and it will take up less space, so yeah weapons do feel more useful now. They still break but my point still stands and they really don't look worse as weapons while doing it either I don't see how they do. No the incentive to explore really isn't gone. Ok and? Those towers only keep you in the air for so long and allow you to see more and get more curious about what's around you that only incentives you more really not less. So no the incentive for exploration isn't gone and if anything you only proved that it's even stronger here really and no the hoverike really isn't the most broken build in the game it's just cost effective and pretty useful really. But it isn't the fastest build in the game there are faster builds clearly and there are more powerful ones too.
@@SirAlexanderr No they don't I don't see how they do really, I mean yeah but that's the point for there to be faster traversal options and more player options overall, and you still have to land to find things really.
My main issue with TotK is that in its revolutionary physics system, it repeats the same mistakes as BotW, even worsening them sometimes. A big problem with BotW was how easily puzzles could be trivialized by their open ended nature, but at least there were more constrains in play and going off the beaten path usually required at least some effort. In TotK, like you said, 9/10 times I just felt cheated using the intended solution, to the point that sometimes even figuring out the intended way to beat a puzzle took more effort than to just wing it. This is made worse by the fact that almost every puzzle that involves getting somewhere or transporting an object can be skipped with rocket shields, recall cheesing etc., even when the puzzles aren't meaningless tutorials to mechanics you already mastered. Bad puzzles in BotW were obvious and straightforward, but bad puzzles in TotK barely qualify as puzzles. They feel like I am being asked to navigate a labyrinth with walls that only reach up to my knees and that are made of cardboard, and then I am proudly told that I am "allowed to approach the task at hand in any way I want". There are really cool things you could do with TotK's new mechanics, but rarely am I ever forced to engage with them on a deeper level and besides some conveniences like the infamous Hoverbike, there is little room for intrinsical motivation to form. I could build a giant robot or a trap system that clears enemy encounters for me, but I could also just abuse the incredibly cheesable combat system that I already mastered six years before this game even released. Beyond this unfortunate case of stunted novelty, TotK unfortunately offers nothing of interest to me. Exploration feels stale. All sky islands are the same and become boring once you figure out how broken your traversal options in this game are. The depths are empty with literally ZERO worthwile rewards and fearure little to no challenges to overcome beyond a few repetitive bossfights and the very rare environmental puzzle that is then usually tied to a big questline. And Hyrule itself is a literal copy paste of BotW where almost no major location has changed significantly and air travel allows you to get anywhere you want from anywhere within literal minutes. I feel like I am playing a modded version of BotW, with new mechanics that are cool and impressive on paper but rarely if ever used in an engaging way, and with an interface that seems cluttered and amateurish. The game cannot be its own thing because it is a blatant retread of BotW, but it is neither iterative nor polished enough to succeed in that either. It is marketed and structured as a step forward, improving on what is there, but it screams that it is a step to the side, aiming for innovation and novelty rather than perfection. In doing so, it combines the worst possible outcomes of both of these goals and instead stumbles backwards with nothing but a physics engine that took five years to develope and has extremely narrow future use cases to show for it.
As someone who cares more about exploration than story when playing these kinda games, I was disappointed by Tears of the Kingdom. I was ready to explore a Hyrule with an expansive sky and seemingly rapidly altered hyrule, but no hyrule was barely changed and the sky and depths were barebones. The zonai stuff doesn't interest me so the game was disappointing to me. It really is Breath of the Wild; again.
The producers and devs wanted to ground Zonai technology based on real-life technology to help players intuitively understand how devices work based on familiarity yet they reiterate the same Zonai device tutorials over and over. This is videogame handholding at this point. It doesn’t trust players would understand how fans worked so they not only made the device look like… ahem, an electric fan. They also designed 3 separate scenarios explicitly telling you how electric fans work. Why not add in the real-world experience of children encountering electric fans and make a tutorial telling players not to stick their fingers in the fan as well?
This whole “intrinsically motivated” thing is so weird, you can only be intrinsically motivated for any game if you have an extraordinary amount of free time and/or rarely purchase new games, most people only have time to just play the game they bought and by the time you actually finish it multiple new games you want to play will have come out so you move on to the next one
??? “Finally?” “Took forever?” Have you been living under a rock or something? These so called critiques have been here and continuously making these videos since last year. What are you talking about?
@@Matt-eh2dy I've been searching for these videos every single month for the past year. It is only in the past month that I've seen numerous critiques pop up. You had obviously the few critiques over the year but they were being very careful with the "honeymoon period." Now they are popping up everywhere. Maybe our standards for "critique" and "review" differ, must most of them have been simple reviews that refuse to give anything but the milk toast nod at the issues.
@@Kittzu I mean eh...yeah there always have been videos like these there just wasn't as many before for obvious reasons, but like yeah they were always there it's not like they would all come out at once.
*To further BotW's sheer superiority, I will say this:* TotK's story is bad, Fs with pre-established key lore aspects, absolutely shatters all the Master Sword's reputation, unga bunga buff Dorf with little to no ambition other than "me strongest there is" uninteresting, nearly everyone forgot who you were despite this game taking place a mere 4-6 years after Wild, Rauru existing is an insult, no Fi, no breaking of the Demise curse despite it being falsely hinted being the case what with all the Skyward Sword PR this game got (I distinctly remember Skyward Sword being advertised as heavily linked to TotK somehow which, again, is misleading as on Nintendo's part), no dog petting, no hookshot spiderman swinging with the physics being suuuuch a driving factor in these newer Zelda games, no underwater exploration instead a damp dark smelly overgrown cave can't see jack, COLLOSAL missed opportunity to hitch the princess with her handsome knight in shining armor, no stakes since Zelda's sacrifice was reversed giving the story little to no agency or consequence, Link as a protagonist felt nonexistent feels like everyone else was the star of the show not the guy who's saving all their 🫏s, no Link backstory before any of this went down aka no Arryl 2 or Granny 2 aka NOT WIND WAKER, didn't make me cry like Twilight Princess, dungeons are STILL NOT dungeons (pulling a couple levers to open a door and then be treated with literally the same copy-paste cutscene at the very end with each champion? Yeah naw), sky islands hardly anything worth noting although they are pretty asf to look at, I was expecting a totally NEW revamped endgame super Saiyan master sword golden tier 4 legendary new hilt new everything but naw same design with a booboo scar and hilariously less powerful... hoverbike autobuild pales in comparison to THE Master Cycle As a game, sure, it's leagues above BotW but BotW will never be topped as a one-in-a-lifetime *experience* TotK was an overblown $70 DLC and I'm tired of pretending it's not. Mid.
I would rather qualify TotK to be a mod made by an extremly talented creator who knows how to program and creates awesome features, but never made a full compeling and coherent game.
Nah Botw isn't superior really. No Totk's story isn't bad, It doesn't f s with pre-established key lore aspects how does it? No it doesn't shatter any of the Master Sword's reputation how does it? Nah Ganondorf has ambition being that he believes that only the strong should rule a Kingdom with a iron fist and that they should completely rule over the weak which makes sense with how he grew up in the desert where they all had to get strong to survive and thrive while the weak died and that it was only survival of the fittest at times too so his ambition is to make Hyrule a better Kingdom in his own brutal way, nah it's interesting really, no most don't forget who you are most who do know Link remember him and no it actually takes place 7 years after botw, no Rauru existing isn't an insult how is it? I mean yeah that makes sense Fi is resting really and wasn't in the older Zelda games either, no that wasn't ever hinted at being the case and the Skyward Sword PR doesn't mean they would break Demise's curse just that this game has some connections to Skyward Sword with it's sky and stuff (nah it really isn't misleading on Nintendo's part as they do have some connections) so no Demise's curse really shouldn't have been broken really, true no dog petting does suck, I mean no there really shouldn't be hookshot spiderman swinging like that really wouldn't make any sense especially when we can already soar in the sky enough as is in TOTK and they shouldn't just rip off Spider-Man really they should do their own unique things instead, eh....the cave exploration is better though really and they aren't all damp or dark or smelly or overgrown and you can see in them clearly, nah that wasn't a missed oppurtunity I dunno if the current ruler of Hyrule could just marry a knight like that, no there are stakes and yeah Zelda's sacrifice was reversed however you are wrong the story still has agency and consequence with everyone who died in it and the stakes of Ganondorf taking over Hyrule and stuff too, nah Link as a protagonist feels existent really and it doesn't feel like everyone else was the star of the show it feels like Link was the star of the show, no we have some backstory for him but we saw that more in Botw really just like what we got with OOT and MM really, I mean it has emotional moments though too, eh no they are dungeons just not very good ones (I mean it's more then just that they have you navigate through the dungeons and have you move objects and stuff around to complete puzzles and other stuff too), nah sky islands have a lot of stuff worth noting like all the items and fuse material and weapons and armor and ores and side quests and shrines and enemies and mini bosses up there and other stuff too, no it's not less powerful wdym? It's the same Master Sword as in BOTW. Nah Hoverbike is arguably better then the Master Cycle really. True but it's a great one-in-a-lifetime experience too and wait...better as a game??? Then don't say Botw is superior then you are contradicting yourself. Nah it's a full fledged sequel really not $70 DLC. Nah it really isn't mid.
My favorite challenge rule for BOTW is no fast travel. It fundamentally changes the way you approach exploration and it honestly feels like the game was designed without fast travel in mind. It's a real shame, then, that TOTK's world design makes doing a no fast travel playthrough kind of suck. The depths and its embarrassingly few routes back to the surface completely kill the exploration for me. It kind of felt like an afterthought.
@@darthmortem585 Oh believe me, it is not my only problem with the game. In the grand scheme of things, it is hardly a problem at all, just a minor annoyance.
@@darthmortem585 it's something I often do in games that have fast travel. It's a shortcut, but you should still be able to travel without it. I also hated how you could barely get out of the depths without teleporting, it's breaking the immersion for me. How do the character that supposedly lived there and built stuff travel and build without being able to fast-travel?
@@nor6399I mean the depths are optional so you don’t have to do them. Also TOTK makes it easier than ever to not fast travel on the surface because of ultrahand planes.
yours and skittybittys video were extremely cathartic in illustrating with spoken words my frustrations with totk (and some of botw), but at the same time were kind of whiplashing? i think the identification of 'AA' as an experience was really great and is something that i resonate with a lot. however, listening through your comprehensive breakdown of puzzling design in the shrines and the critique of the game's story in skitty's video made me feel like i didn't really pay attention to the game at all. like throughout the video, in relation to these points, i was going "huh... oh!" i had never though of that until it was pointed out. is that because i have poor critical thinking? or do i lack attentiveness in my experiences, being more emotions driven? i found this very fascinating.
That Water Temple anecdote is fucking atrocious. That alone should be enough to convince any unknowing player that this game doesn’t care about its own open world, and therefore, isn’t worth the time and effort. I really can’t fathom it. Reaching a destination only to be blocked because you didn’t choose to let yourself be railroaded like a shitty D&D game. Being given an open world, and then being continually told you’re going the wrong way. It couldn’t be more antithetical to itself. I almost wish you had included this story near the beginning of the script as opposed to more than two hours in, but, that’s just bias; I found this part of your experience to be the most impactful.
How the shrines were implemented in this game demonstrates perfectly why quantity doesn't equal quality. Nintendo also set such a low bar for what counts as "too complicated" to actually include in the game that it's very difficult to make a decent group of shrines people would enjoy. Nintendo desperately slash the shrine count in half and up the complication of shrines if they want to make it work. Or they could just completely dump the concept, return to pieces of hearts, add some stamina equivalent, and drop a bunch of chests all throughout the world that uses environmental puzzles to get you to discover the chests very similar to almost every other game.
I mean a lot of them are quality still. I mean....not really that isn't very difficult to make a decent group of shrines people would enjoy and that's exactly what they did really and they didn't set too low of a bar for what counts as "too complicated" as figuring out shrine puzzles can still take a while and be complicated at times really. Eh no it still does work with all of them and their variety but it could be better still. They DID that though with blessing shrines and shrine quests still.
@@Jdudec367 a whole third of the shrines are empty blessings shrines that don't have a puzzle at all. A majority of shrines with a side quest to unlock them are a shitty copy and paste fetch quest 25 times. The tutorial shrines are all completely useless because totk already does an excellent job at explaining mechanics to players by the abundance of items thrown around with some tiny puzzles right next to them in the overworld. The video creator labeled that only 29 shrines were even good. That's only 20% of all the shrines. When 51 shrines are empty without a puzzle it should immediately be a red flag that there are way too many. The shrines that do actually have a puzzle are usually a quick 10 seconds of thought and 30 seconds of execution. They aren't overly complex and don't have any noise that would make the shrines actually puzzling either. The puzzles also have ridiculously easy to think of workarounds that you get to use across almost every shrine so the puzzle becomes useless anyway. When it's more fun to skip a puzzle, it's a shitty puzzle. Botw had a much better approach with shrines because almost every shrine had a theme and then you had 2-3 steps to fully solve the shrine and each step got slightly harder. There weren't many workarounds and the only shrines people were complaining about were the test of strength shrines. Imagine totk except instead of 150 shrines that only have 29 good ones there were 50 of them and all but like 5 were actually engaging puzzles that a majority of people universally like. I would kill to purge a majority of the shrines if it meant all of them had even just half the effort and care that was put into eventide island.
@@sethmeaseles3301 Actually no they usually have a challenge outside the shrines themselves in some way. Not really, they can involve you looking for something or having to do a specific action and figuring out what to do to get the shrine to appear. They aren't completely useless as since you have to do a specific action and can't attack in any other way it's actually a challenge of sorts to beat it. Well I disagree most are good really. Eh more then 20% are actually good shrines though. Not really...hell you mention puzzles in the overworld which those shrines often have that and there is a challenge to get those shrines usually. No they are usually longer then 10 seconds of thought and 30 seconds of execution as you need to figure out what to attach to what first which you may change your mind a couple of times for that and then you need to figure out how to get it all to work correctly and properly without anything going wrong which is a puzzle itself. They are usually complex enough though for what they are and they do have noise that would make them actually puzzling like trying to get enough wind to get the balloons to the top while on a wooden platform and making sure it doesn't fall off or have too much weight and that the torches can actually create enough wind under it all the time and that it doesn't burn the wooden platform like in "An Uplfiting Device" for example. The puzzles really don't have ridiculously easy to think of workarounds though if anything those "workarounds" can be pretty tedious to do at times and often are not worth going through the trouble of going around and getting the stuff to do them really so no the puzzle never becomes useless. Well it's not more fun to skip a puzzle really so no it's not a shitty puzzle. BOTW really didn't have a better approach, and huh? Just as many if not more shrines have a theme in TOTK and you have multiple steps in them to full solve the shrine too with each step getting a bit harder. Eh...no there were some workarounds really and some people complained about the main shrines too. I mean...most of the shrines in TOTK are good though and most have engaging puzzles and most people do like them. I mean most had enough effort and care put into them though. agree to dizagree then
Nintendo did what could be complicated extremely intuitive and easy to grasp in TotK. I feel like yall people can't grasp simple concepts or are just bad at video games.
When the sequel to BotW was announced, I was hoping for an OoT/MM type of pairing where the new game would feature a completely new map and deeper story featuring the same mechanics and gameplay as BotW. When it was clear that we were returning to the same Hyrule, then I was at least hoping for new types of thematic dungeon areas (which we got, though they were still structured like the Divine Beasts), new puzzle solving items (which we kind of got) and new characters/enemies to interact with (which we barely got). Ultimately, I felt TotK was too similar to BotW with no real moments of discovery and every new element was tedious to me (the sky, the depths, the caves, and the new Zonai devices all felt like busy work).
This is the only Zelda game I have ever dropped. It was... Absolutely overwhelming. Too much. While also being too familiar to what came before, that sensation of wonderment and discovery was absent for a majority of my time with the game since a lot of the bags of tricks that existed in BotW were still present.
For me botw was more boring then totk so I dropped it. And it was my first zelda game. After botw I've played oot, tp, ss, mm, and all of them, except ss, I like mor then botw. And when I start totk i fall in love. And now I have 250 hours and it still interesting. Totk became my Top 2 Zelda game after top 1 majora
Finally another TOTK video analysis to watch! I hope the depths get trashed because I've been saying since day 1 that the depths were just the Overworld with 1% of the content. It's literally just zonai mines, boss refights, and retextured enemy camps. Imagine BOTW but it's one blackish gray mush with no towns, no NPCs, no landmarks, no features in the landscape, no quests, no visual storytelling, NOTHING. I speedran my way out of the depths by hoverbiking to each of the lightroots because it was just that unfun and irritating to be in. its literally the most filler copy paste content in the game, imagine if instead of wasting development on the depths they spent that time improving the skies (which are also very lacking!). One last big grievance. The assault on Hyrule Castle was one of the best parts of BOTW for me. Cutting through the beast's defenses and making my way into the dragon's den was one of the most exhilarating experiences I've ever had in gaming, even if I totally overprepared for the final showdown. Not to mention the intimate details we learn about the calamity in Hyrule Castle as well as the haunting atmosphere. Upon reaching Hyrule Castle in TOTK, I was awash with discomfort and intimidation as Hyrule Castle lay empty, suspended in the sky. It felt like a symbol of Ganondorf's power, him having cast by the wayside the very structure that contained Calamity Ganon for over 100 years. So with that being said, I expected there to be another assault on Ganon, with basically another castle but underground that I'd have to fight my way through. To my surprise it was basically one long empty hallway with a couple of enemies scattered in it. Only thing in there worth mentioning was the area we saw in the prologue. Big disappointment. Calamity Ganon rests in the heart of the most dangerous fortress in Hyrule, meanwhile Ganondorf is just... in a hole... in a crumbling set of hallways... Ganondorf should have been seated on his own throne, in his own castle, symbolically overthrowing the Kingdom of Hyrule by seizing it from the Earth and transplanting his own castle there instead. Consider me very disappointed. 😐
I really enjoyed watching your video, even though TOTK is one of my favorite video game of all time, It is not exempt of some flaws, as BOTW wasn't too. I had a really hard time comparing BOTW to TOTK, since BOTW literally saved me for attempting to take my own life in 2016... Something that TOTK couldn't achieved for the simple reason that I am in a different place now where taking my own life isn't even a thought. I did TOTK without watching any video online of what people were creating in the game, and I only had one friend playing the game on its release. He was watching video, but I told him I wanted to finish my first playthrough before knowing the tricks and glitches the community found out. So we didn't talk about TOTK before I beat Ganondorf. so I wasn't influenced by anyone else then me and the game designers 😂 And having access to a CFW Switch, I played the game (Very Legally) a few weeks before release. So contents about the game on RUclips was really rare and often take down by Nintendo. So BOTW saved my life and TOTK is technically a better BOTW (especially the physics)
Thank you for bringing up the Eight Heroine Quest, I shrieked of frustration when I finished it, I was so incredibly starved for anything of interest and I had placed my final hopes there, only to be hit by the realization that this game would not commit to anything narrative-wise. To be honest, I am quite furious at how all gerudo characters were handled in TotK, they doubled down on everything questionable from BotW while making their conflict with Hyrule part of the plot, and yet sidestepping any of the actual messiness that comes with it because it is unfathomable for Tears of the Kingdom that Hyrule could ever be slightly wrong even for a second, and it will snap its own neck rather than allow genuine conflict to happen or to follow-up on ideas that it could (should) have been establishing. Anyway, I am very glad TotK being subpar in many aspects is now a broader point of conversation, and your video is very thoughtful and level-headed so it's been a delight to watch!
Saying all of this as someone who hasn't played much of TotK, what a criminally good video! I shiver with dread in contemplating just how grueling of an edit this video must have been, but it really pays off. Every single clip was so deliberate and relevant to exactly what you were saying, and there was a cut seemingly every 5 seconds or less. Moreover, I'm genuinely jealous of this script, it's so deliberate and well backed up with examples peppering the entire thing, especially the Shrine segment. This video deserves to blow up (in the positive way, of course), and I'm stoked to see whatever you make next!
I had the exact same experience as you with the Construct Factory, and it was by far my favourite moment in the game! Bumped into the Spirit Temple beforehand by happenstance, and I was simultaneously disappointed I couldn't enter it, and excited for when I could. And yes, the Construct Factory is supposed to be the 'dungeon' part of Spirit Temple, I was still disappointed that there was only a boss to fight and nothing else :(
The amount of, “it’s just for kids” comments are so dumb. I hate that type of mentality. Just because TOTK is accessible to children does not mean it needs to dumb things down and treat its audience like we’re stupid. The best childrens’ media is one that actually treats them like adults and gives them things to think about. ; whether that be complex puzzles or a more engaging story with more than just 1 dimensional characters. I genuinely don’t understand why that’s so hard for people to grasp.
@@Spyderrrrlil I had a line in the original script slightly addressing that… and decided to cut it to be more concise. I maybe should’ve left it in. I feel like there are already shrines in the game that are complex AND made with an audience of all ages in mind. Really wish that was the norm for puzzles
My problems with BotW and Tears of War Kingdom are the complete lack of character development for Link. The only shred of personality for Link in BotW was removed in localization. In the Japanese version of BotW, the quest log is Link’s journal. I wanted that journal in TotK’s quest log. I want to develop an attachment to the other characters through Link as a character, not an avatar that the player controls. Yet, due to the open world design of the Wild era games (Age of Calamity excluded due to its nature as a Hyrule Warriors game), Link’s expressiveness is exclusive in the menu and great great fairy armor upgrades. In previous games like Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess, Link expresses emotions of his own that we relate with. When King Bulbin captured Colin, Link is enraged. When Zelda seals herself in a crystal to maintain the seal on Demise, Link is in emotional anguish, slamming his fist against the crystal in desperation. I want the Hero’s Journey formula back. Due to the nature of BotW’s and TotK’s story delivery, it makes me feel like a janitor, not Hyrule’s Hero.
I also had a feeling that the ending was just too happy. Everything worked out perfectly and this wasn't a trend in earlier Zelda games. The Hero of Time saved not one but two separate worlds yet barely anybody knows about it. In Majora's Mask we can also see the Deku Butler finding the corpse of his son during the credits which is pretty heavy. In Twilight Princess Link and Midna part ways only to never see each other again.
The video really stars at 36:05 all before that doesn't sum anything to the video, unless you want to hear how he experienced the zelda franchise and videogames.
Once again I wish totk had link go back in time with Zelda. If they did away with the depths entirely, and instead focused on changing the world to be one changed an untold number of years in the past, the world would be the same but different. My personal idea is that the story would be more linear, and the past would contain 4 dungeons with key landmarks being changed. Between dungeons, story events and cutscenes would play out telling us the story of the rise of ganondorf. Some big events would occur where we get to experience the lore of the land, i.e. some box in botw mentions dueling peaks was split by a dragon, so maybe we could se that happen in game. After the first four, we should fight ganon and lose, so Zelda does her thing and in her last moments of lucidity sends link forward in time. Having failed, the sacrifice and loss will mean so much more. The second half would involve the current hyrule, but I spent less time thinking about that part
I was hoping that tears of the kingdom was going to focus on Link and Zelda running around and inspecting sky ruins and old places from botw and that she would be a bow and arrow companion like Tulin. In my opinion that would have made a good sequel and boss fights could be similar to the final section of botw. Obviously that’s not what we got but in my heart I was hoping that was a possibility. It doesn’t fix the game but a cope that made it enjoyable for me was experiencing a video game form of princess mononoke and castle in the sky. And the dragon end fight will always be an amazing moment for me, it’s a shame the whole game couldn’t be that good though. Also does anyone else feel cheated that dark link didn’t make a return in this game. Think about it with all the evil copy Zelda nonsense instead of fighting mini ganons in the gloom floor masters image if dark links popped out that would have been so fire.
My journey with video games was similar to yours (I didn't play every single Zelda game, though). I'm also playing video games since 1996 when I was 5 years old. So I totally understand your sentiment. And Zelda was a huge part of my gaming journey. I started my Zelda journey with OoT (and the "screeching zombies" also took me out^^), but my favourite Zelda game ended up being TP. And in contrast to you, I didn't like BotW. So TotK was a hard pass for me. I've watched many critiques online and while it was very difficult to find negative critiques of BotW, I was happy to see that it wasn't as difficult for TotK. All the issues that people had with TotK, I already had with BotW. The biggest part being the extrinsic/intrinsic reward. I personally never got the intrinsic reward shtick regarding BotW. If I climb up a mountain and will only be rewarded with a breathtaking view instead of a secret or a weapon or anything else but a shrine or a korok seed, I will do that in real life. I live in an area with many beautiful mountains and hills and many beautiful medieval castles on their tops. I get that intrinsic reward there, when I reach the top of these mountains and hills. I don't need to play BotW for that. So yeah, the intrinsic reward was never a selling point for me, personally. Also, I'm a story driven player. That's why games like Minecraft never clicked with me, and BotW always felt more like Minecraft to me in which they shoehorned the minimum of Zelda lore/story. TotK seems to be even worse (in my opinion). So personally, I'm happy that people are more critical of that game. I wish it would have already been the case with BotW, because maybe then we would have never gotten a game like TotK, but alas. In the end, tastes are different.
It’s wild seeing the only defense employed by the same few commenters across all critiques is: “But I found meaning where there wasn’t any, therefore I’m right” Unironically worse than Fromsoft fanboys, and I would know, because I am one. At least there are some good eggs, who still enjoy and play the game *while* recognizing it simply didn’t live up to the baseline expected standards for a new triple-A game. If you enjoyed it, the correct attitude is “i like it, I wish it were better, I want it to be better…” and not “what do you mean my plate of dirt isn’t appetizing? This dirt tastes great to me”
"I headcanoned that this dirt was actually a plate of spaghetti and really enjoyed it!" Maybe I'm old fashioned but I still prefer video games that are already fun without any extra effort from me haha
Came here on recommendation from Skittybitty. Nevr thought id be so invested in people critiquing a game ill never play. BotW was reall good maybe thats why i care.
I never use shields in DS because of the higher damage output you get from two handing. My motivation isn’t challenge based….i found it less challenging to just dodge and not take damage, rather than take guaranteed, but reduced damage with the shield, while also dealing less.
58:08 breath of the wild breaks the convention walls, tears of the kingdom picks up the broken plaster and mashes it back into place. The walls aren’t new. They are the same exact walls we’ve had since at least Ocarina. The same story beats, the same one-note characters and regurgitated plot (without any of the charm and loose-ness of BotW), the same “you’re not supposed to be here yet” energy in exploration, the same linear trip wire that bear-traps the player out of free exploration and into “oh…I guess I went the wrong way.” If breath of the wild opened the doors to player-freedom-first, letting you have a unique sequence of gameplay events held together by a very simple story which doesn’t jump ahead of itself or needlessly pity backtrack you at every cutscene, tears of the kingdom desperately holds the door closed, trying to give each player the same experience by copy pasting cutscenes and forcing its open world to clash against a story that wants to be told one way, in one order. And because its gameplay is largely just BotW 1.2, it, in the long run, doesn’t hold a candle to BotW
Right, I hate to act like a know it all or someone I’m not but I promise you the ideas I had for the gameplay mechanics and story were miles better than
I grew up with zelda on the NES. I'm from a country where we don't speak English as our first language. Me and my friend spend months making hand drawn maps of NES Zelda, mapping all it's secrets. We had our own hand book containing all the maps we made and the translations we made of the text characters spoke. We translated it ourselves with a dictionary and our parents. We had no magazine or Internet explaining everything to us. We spend months a manging all the secrets ourselves and completely beating the game. It was fantastic and the best gaming memory I have to date, even though it is one of my first memories. Wow what a time. So great t hear your journey into this franchise. Thanks a thousand times! Subscribed.
If you can make a sequel to the *real* greatest game of all time and have it be well regarded, you can make a good sequel to Breath of the Wild. All it would've taken was more effort and less negligence...
@@waffles245 I wholeheartedly agree with that. It's not that they didn't add enough effort, it's that their efforts went to places that didn't amount to much of anything.
TOTK is already well regarded, this is just a minority opinion. So many players were expecting this game to the point that half of its current lifetime sales were made on the first three days after release, and 20 million in less than a year afterwards. Your statement is about your personal preferences, which is fine, but pointing it out as anything beyond that is laughable at best.
@@jonathanhargraves2241 ultra hand, rewind and optimization had to have taken quite an insane amount of time, and as far as I’m concerned ultra hand and rewind are amazing abilities, I just don’t think Nintendo has the same outlook on the games issues. Every issue the video had wasn’t from the perspective of the public Nintendo is trying to capture, Nintendo is trying to capture the casual nearly non gamer to appeal to their huge install base of switch owners, and in those eyes the game is nothing short of a masterpiece. I think Nintendo knows exactly what they’re doing and they judged the tradeoff for harsher combat at least wasn’t worth it. The shrines still could have been better though
@@cheke_hs thank you lmfao. I dont think people understand that people like skittybitty and cinnanel and majority of these "TOTK critiques" are all just a vocal minority. Not even vocal really just a very tiny minority. I dont like TOTK as much as BOTW but saying it isnt well regarded as an amazing sequel is just a fat LIE lmfao
Playing botw master mode for the first time has taught me a lot of things that you mention, like not being able to just spam Y anymore. I never used parry or flurry rush before and now ive got the timing down better (still not good lol), it feels so much more satisfying to have a rhythm of combat. Also im definitely going to implement that armor restriction method you use. I may be getting too cocky though bc i want to play dark souls or elden ring (mostly just bc i like medieval style melee combat open worlds, that obsession beginning with skyrim but i thirst for more challenge) edit; thank you for the section on how flurries work in botw, i did not know that and i will def be applying that to my gameplay. i never thought to see which direction the enemies swing is going and mostly get lucky with it.. im embarrassed but thank you
I think the more obvious interpretation of the "revenge of the Zelda formula" is to argue that the developers more or less structurally remade BotW in TotK to house the DLC ideas they had that got out of hand. That's why I think it doesn't feel like a sequel: it never let go of the "DLC content" identity.
It is ironic that you are talking about how video games try (or do not try) to mimic real life, and a lot of the examples cited remind me of the number of ways to solve problems in the game that ended up beating TOTK for game of the year, Baldur's Gate 3.
I think it's very interesting that you have an almost completely different set of negatives to say about this game than I do. You barely brought up (imo) empty the skies and depths are, and how repetitive and derivative the new content is. I think it's a testament to how much they got wrong when crafting this "sequel"
as a game developer the fact the building system doesnt make the game implode im impressed. as a player im disappointed in how things like the healing system have stayed shallow.
By the way, thank you for your actually nuanced criticism of the fundamental issues with the game, and thank you for not using hyperbole to inflate criticisms out of proportion. I've heard a lot of heavy criticisim towards Tears of the Kingdom, and while everyone's experience with a game is their own and their opinion's are valid, internet culture rewards objectivizing subjectiveness and blowing bad things out of proportion while belittling any other strengths the game might have. Your criticisms do sound like they're coming from a place of love to the franchise and disappointment on the title (Instead of something like "This sucks, this is the worst, they ruined it, I hate it, this is bad, it's horrible, etc.) I agree with your objective criticisms, and I realize I had a different experience in many of the subjective points you touch on (for instance, you accidentally fell right into the shrine at Thunderhead Isles, and I did the whole arduous walk from the tail to the head, etc). About subjective things like that, I believe (being no game designer myself) that designing a game where you can do anything in any way you find, means people can also find things in unsatisfying ways. I've never been hard on TOTK (I loved my hundred hours with it), but it does have problems that I'm sure stemmed from reusing everything instead of starting fresh, and one problem I immediately found on my first playthrough that would have been so easy to fix during development, and would have been a tiny step in differentiating TOTK from BOTW (in my opinion) would have been to make it so that no matter in what order you find the dragon tears, the memories play back in order. To me that would have been a no brainer, since this game instead of doing random memories to flesh characters out decided to tell a very simple and very chronological story. It baffles me why they made the memories specific to the place you find them, since unlike BOTW, you're not actually recalling the memories when you arrive at a place you've been before, you're receiving a message from someone else (and you're being told a story), I don't know how that never occured to them, because even I, a person who can overlook most of TOTK's problems, can't overlook that. That, and there should have been at least one more huge sky island, maybe full of people that took balloons up there, and started building a town there or something, idk, Anyway, great video, be it praise or critcism, I can never get enough of hearing someone talk about Zelda for hours.
I think every video that critiqued Tears I've watched thus far agreed that the memories should have displayed their events in chronological order regardless of when you collect them. There *are* wall cravings in the Forgotten Temple that show the correct order to get the memories but properly getting there through Impa's quest and following the order itself go against the game's philosophy of player freedom.
@@Takejiro24 You said it, it goes against the player freedom. I remember Impa's quest and the map in the temple, I don't remember following the suggested order, I just went and checked out whichever memory was closer to where I was at the moment
@@Takejiro24I don't even think It'd be that much of an issue, if certain cutscenes didn't blatantly spoil others. (Looking at you, master sword) it's like they wanted memories to be linear but opted against it last minute, compared to botw which is much more segregated.
relate wayyy too hard to that convo about friends playing botw... back when it came out i generally followed the main quest, but basically a day or two after release i was talking to a classmate who beelined the opposite direction and went for the gerudo desert, and he told me all about the stuff he was trying to get into gerudo town, which is really funny looking back on it now. There was such a wild sense of discovery the first few months of release, where since the map was so new seeing any unknown area in photos posted online felt like spoilers, and still remember when i first saw that clip online of someone cheesing the gerudo divine beast puzzles by just lining up all their metallic weapons to direct electricity and thinking "YOU CAN DO THAT???" Totk certainly had something similar in its early release with the machines, and i can't deny that even I enjoyed it at the time, but it felt like it wore off so quickly and afterwards you were just like "ok. now what." I loved botw for being able to discover what was over the next hill, what a new zone would be like, and totk basically had none of what made me love doing that. While the sky and depths were awesome when i first started exploring them, it quickly becomes clear how samey they feel. Even the caves, which were something i desperately wanted in botw, are pretty much all the same, and there's like what. two really unique new things in the whole world that aren't related to the main quest? (thinking the thunderhead isles and the skydiving rings) Nothing akin the encounter with naydra, discovering the zonai ruins, satori mountain, first running into eventide island, or finding the horse god. the whole game feels like it was designed as if botw wasn't played by millions, and that world isn't going to be incredibly familiar to them. Even with that its so confusing how dull the both the sky and the depths are, i could easily tell you all the interesting things i found in botw and point them on a map, but not really with the sky and the depths. Since apparently this is the style of game they're doing for future zelda's as well, i truly hope they try and rectify this in the future. I'd be all for a smaller world as long as it feels like its one thats actually worthwhile to explore.(i started typing this up when you mentioned the school story and i got carried away, so if i repeat some of the stuff you said in the video uhh OOPS)
I'm not a Zelda fan by any means, but I really enjoyed BOTW even if I don't think it's mechanically or even content wise anything special. It had this certain mystery about it. I was constantly wondering what the life in the game world was like 100 years prior, before the the Calamity. It felt in, a way, nostalgic to roam the empty landscape and old ruins while doing your thing and I had a lot of fun. The empty, dying world felt good. TOTK lacked that atmosphere completely. I didn't care much about seeing how the world was healing. The people in game actively made the experience worse. While the world was grander, it felt less interesting on a personal level and the Ultra Hand busywork all but destroyed any will I had to keep playing. I absolutely hated the building mechanics and all the gimmicky garbage it came with. The story, though it had a few interesting beats, never managed to hold my interest the same way as BOTW did, if at all. I dropped the game before I was anywhere near finished, because playing the game felt like one giant chore. The tone in TOTK was just so much different and it didn't work for me.
Flurry rush is not imbalanced. You obviously don’t realize that choosing to flurry rush actually increases the breaking of weapons compared with no flurry rush.
What makes me sad is that so many people didn't like it for so many different reasons despite it being so much fun. Trying to satisfy everyone they missed the mark for so many people.
Botw and totk's weapon system and combat can be stupid fun sometimes when you get creative. All the weapons becoming weak and the fact you have to fuse things to your weapons to make them stronger is such a great idea. From a more casual perspective, it just sucks quite a bit that weapons themselves break and it really incentivizes just completely avoiding combat if the rewards aren't good enough. The items should still break but the weapons themselves should be unbreakable or have a fusion limit that makes them break after you've fused it too much. That system makes casuals actually fight and learn the combat system more than if they make the quick decision to not fight to save weapons. Once they learn the system more they'll be able to get creative and learn how fun it can be to use the runes in different ways to make the fight even more fun.
That's the same idea I thought of while play the game! Wonder if this is a case of great minds thinking alike or is it because the potential rooms for improvement are so obvious lel
this is a horrible idea, dear god. this is completely ignoring the fact that now almost every weapon (except those in the sky) have a unique effect and some work well with their durability. this is a terrible idea that does not incentivize casuals in learning the game, but rather makes them always avoid the purpose of it's combat. This isn't a game where you level up as you defeat enemies. you are surviving here and vanquishing foes to save your life, not to "gain experience and increase stats"
@@AlejandroRodriguez-cy8ee how does making weapons not break therefore giving you more opportunities to reliably engage in combat make players avoid combat? Genuine question here. Plus you're overblowing the unique effects because there're the passive effects that a couple of weapon types have and the basic damage up and durability up effects. If you watched the combat portion of the video they talk about how the unique effects are misleading and there's only a handful of cool and unique effects that are usually on weapons that aren't quite powerful enough that people would want to use. Every Zelda game uses some form of level up mechanics (including botw and totk, if you watched the video you would know this) and the survival bit really only applies for the very start of the game and eventide island. Every time you kill a more powerful enemy and gain a more powerful weapon in botw or totk, you never have to take a step down in weapon power if you conserve durability and only refresh your weapons with better ones. It's leveling up without actually leveling up.
@@gamerunamed538 it's probably the obvious room for improvement and the fact there had never been weapon durability prior to botw. It's very easy for people to point to getting rid of durability when decades of games worked wonderfully without it.
I had the same experience with the 5th sage dungeon. It was amazing! I encountered it fairly early, and thought, "Wow! I can't wait to see what other scintillating secrets exist out there!" How disappointed I would be.
I've said this before when discussing this game with friends and family who are die hard fans. And it causes butt hurt, but hopefully we can all be sensible here! I think it is impossible to have a zelda game that uses the same engine as the last game, set in the same world and same time frame and for it to have any impact. When we look at majoras mask, that game worked as a sequel because while it used the same assets from before, the world was completely fresh and the story and characters worked becauae they weren't so tightly wound to ocarina. As soon as it became apparent that tears of the kingdom would reuse the exact same hyrule map, with the exact same engine and aesthetics, I think it was clear what we were going to get. And that, people, was essentially a $70 dlc. People were in uproar when this was said initially, but look at what we got! At best, you could call it "breath of the wild remixed". Because to the hardcore fans of the last game, who knew the map inside out, thats all this could have been. And it was a shame, to me at least, that the verticality aspect KILLED this game. Why the hell would i want to go and explore the new version of the map when it was so simple for me to just get airbourne and literally fly over everything to where i wanted to be. I ended up just not caring about this game in the end and wanting to get to the end of the story to see if it got good. It didn't! Although i will give it a loint for the final battles getting me on the edge of my seat and feeling epic. In summary, for me, this was a game that tried to do too many things and excelled at nothing making ultimately forgettable and unremarkable.
The best thing about TOTK is that almost any problem can be solved with a hoverbike, a rocket shield, or a bomb.
The worst thing about TOTK is that almost any problem can be solved with a hoverbike, a rocket shield, or a bomb.
Watch this same issue reoccur in Echoes of Wisdom 😂😅
@@augieottie6403 yeah I'm just checked out of this series now in terms of new releases lol
Except the lack of a good story
I'm not even gonna lie. I had way more fun with the game when I just stopped engaging with ultra hand unless required.
Don't forget about long ass bridge
Mr. President, a second longform TOTK critique has hit the towers
thats crazy 😭
No way bro 💀
@jschlatt
theres more then 2 i have a whole playlist
I’m losing it 😂
I remember reading a critique on Tumblr to the effect of, “TotK’s problem is that it plays too fast and loose with the story of BotW, but it’s ironically too faithful to the mechanics and game design.”
But it was pretty ridiculously faithful to the story and the mechanics were largely unrecognizable.
The entire flow of the game is different simply due to how different most of the core mechanics are. I mean, if you're solely looking at aesthetics.. sure, they similar. And I guess there's a magnesia equivalent? Weapons still break, which was less of a bad thing and more of a thing that people didn't like because they want games to engage with them, instead of engaging with the game. They don't want to play a game, they want to experience Zelda.
I mean, they even pretty much removed actual durability because you can actually repair stuff now, and even with that in mind, I never had to do it too often while still maintaining a good chunk of my weapons throughout the game. They're actually annoyingly *indestructible* now and I actually, in hindsight, wish they were a little less durable and closer to BotW.
That's a personal thing, though. I know that a lot of game developers are kind of annoyed with constantly dishing out yellow paint for people who refuse to engage with a game on the games terms. Pandering to general audiences at the expense of their vision is kind of why games suck now, and is also kind of why I'm glad Nintendo only listened so much to "fan" critique after BotW and gave then an inch or two of QOL improvements without endlessly pandering to people who clearly just want to play a different game but will burn the world down if they aren't specifically catered to in the future, despite clearly just not being interested in what Nintendo intends with Zelda and sort of going back to the series ideological and inspirational roots.
I think it was obvious that the Ocarina of Time formula was getting stale by Twilight Princess, judging by the fact that they only went the direction TP went in due to corporate pressure to pander to the massive pressure from the Ocarina of Time fanbase at the time. I was part of that fan base, and Twilight Princess was a lesson to me as to why rehashing old things maybe isn't the best idea.
As a lifelong Zelda fan I'm excited they're moving on and experimenting, but the Ocarina/Twilight Princess loyal crowd will never accept that. That's honestly just the nature of conservatism.
"Everything has to be as it always was because I don't want the series to grow, I just want to play Ocarina again"
Well that was a pretty brainless take considering how mechanically different it is.
I struggle to think of many sequels that are just as mechanically different as their predecessors.
Is there a lore reason why old Zelda is stale and TOTK innovates by copy pasting BOTW.
@@RenSako "but it was pretty ridiculously faithful to the story" saying it doesn't make it true. the sheikah tech disappearing is the tip of the iceberg, totk didn't just drop the ball that was botw's story, it stopped playing the game entirely. link and zelda both had considerable characterization in cutscenes, journals and dialogue, none of which was used in totk - hell, link is a blanker slate than he's ever been here, especially with how the story relies on his complete lack of agency.
zelda's inquisitiveness, brash tendencies, her attitude and interests? gone. she's The Princess, the noble and pure maiden who will sacrifice herself for the good of all, nothing more nothing less.
and of course don't bother looking for any mention of her father, the champions, half the goddamn NPCs don't know who link is, ganon doesn't seem to be part of the cycle of reincarnation that was a frequent mention in botw because oh yeah! we got rid of the zelda timeline. yeah, skyloft didn't happen, it was all the zonai sorry. (don't give me the copout bullshit that is "well that was a different hyrule" the devs just wanted to appeal to the biggest demographic they could by soft-rebooting zelda.)
mechanically, the arm powers being a different set of abilities to the sheikah slate runes doesn't change that you're exploring the same hyrule with the same combat and the same movement, except now you get to skip half of it with skydiving.
@@frenchcoat3140 "Link is a blanker slate than he's ever been here" There are plenty of games where he's a blanker slate than Totk.
"Zelda sacrifice herself for the good of all" If it wasn't for Zelda working behind the scenes we would have more than likely died due to not having the sages with us.
Demon king? Secret stone?
Secret Stone? Demon King?
@@awsome182are you sure it’s the secret king maybe it’s the demon stone?
So THAT was the imprisoning war!
Psycho Mantis? Second Floor Basement?
The funny thing is this only happens in the English dub, because Americans have to be alliterative and clever instead of describing events.
I mean, the design flaws of writing a linear story in a non-linear fashion are still there, but considering the English localization kind of fucked everything up, I would blame that over it necessarily being a design flaw of the game.
I was so confused by people's complaints until I changed the game back to English to check it out, and yeah, that's bad, but outside of the repetitive cutscenes, this just didn't happen in the original writing or other dubs, at least in the sense they didn't make up dumb alternative names like "secret stone", which it isn't called anywhere else.
THE SHRINE SECTION IS ALMOST AN HOUR LONG LFGGGGGG
I had BEEF with these shrines and it was not about to go undiscussed
as you should, they are truly ass
ILY SKITTY!!! Of course youd be here, master of totk roasting.
There's no shrine on shrine island
@@boiwifeyasmr4U did i mention how much the game costs
holy moly i’m so excited to watch this
@@skittybitty THE skittybitty in MY comments section? I’m honored :')
Finally got to watching your totk video yesterday and absolutely loved it! Hope you enjoy mine!
i’m so glad! saw the shrine doc in the description and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that i was in for a good time
You brought me here dude !
omfg “why create a puzzle without noise” is brilliant. what an incisive observation, i love it
Skitty you can't avoid Tears of the Kingdom anymore
“You can never go back to how you used to play botw.”
THIS. When I first played botw, I remember feeling like it was a huge accomplishment when I saved up enough rupees to buy the full Hylian set. It felt like I had gotten a substantial upgrade.
Now, I usually have 1,000+ rupees before I even get anywhere near Kakariko or my first divine beast. That doesn’t necessarily make replays of botw less fun, but it does require that make an effort to do things less “optimally.”
But because totk was so similar to botw, I never got that feeling of progression. I never really got better at the game because I had already been good at it for four years at that point.
That's actually something I like a lot about the game. In BotW, I woke up with no memory of my character's past life and had to learn all my abilities from scratch. In TotK, I've mastered most of those abilities and am given a new, stronger version of Ganon to test myself on, plus new types of enemies that actually gave me quite a hard time at first similarily to my first time taking on the BotW enemies. It makes for an interesting dynamic I've never really had before: mastering a game and gaining the ability to breeze through the adventure no problem, then having that adventure actually continue into a whole new game.
@@speedude0164exactly 100%
Oh my god. I was sooooo confused why Mineru's parting was the true ending cutscene. Like... she was barely a character, giving that cutscene to her made no sense, it had zero emotional impact. I didn't even consider that it was done to mirror the true ending from BotW, where having lingering spirits depart actually made sense, because all of them were fairly developed characters. Damn.
Maybe I'm not remembering correctly; but, what you said about Mineru's parting makes me dislike Breath's ending in hindsight because Mineru actually got to have well animated, poignant goodbye to Zelda (despite the two sharing all of what.....4 minutes of screentime with each other?) yet the Champions or Zelda's *flipping father* couldn't get that?!
The same Champions who were shown as personal friends and allies to Zelda (with Urbosa being the closest to her as maternal figure) with the Champion's Ballad DLC further developing their relationships with her.
And there's her father, King Rhoam. His severe and distant personality (alongside Zelda's apparent inability to access her sealing powers) caused her insecurities and, consequently, initial hostility towards Link. And he had come to regret his treatment of his daughter (as he wrote in his diary) but, tragically, he was unable to make amends with her before his death by Calamity Ganon.
100 years later, however, he's able to manifest as a ghost to Link and it's shown just how much he'd changed since the fall of his kingdom. When instructing Link on the Great Plateau, he opted to point the young Hylian in the right direction but didn't outright give him the answers to his tasks while having lighthearted fun with messing with Link, complimented by a jovial laugh, all of which showed just how much he had loosened up since he was alive. He even reluctantly asked Link to save his kingdom when even he couldn't when he was alive.
With *all of this,* you'd think that Zelda would have a proper farewell to her father and her friends that encapsulates just how much everyone had grown over the course of the story. Just how emotionally moving it would have been to see King Rhoam apologize and reconcile with his daughter and express pride with how far she'd come before all of them pass on at the end.
But.....none of them get that. Mineru does despite having nowhere the bonds Zelda had in Breath. Heck, Zelda didn't even get to see Sonia and Rauru one last time after they reverted her to Hylian form. Link does though. Link gets to have all of the goodbyes and closure.....but not Zelda. 😮💨
@@Takejiro24 you know what, you're right
Plus her voice is so nasally and monotone. I really did not need to hear another 2 minutes of her talking.
@@spaghetti3406Don't play shitty, halfassed dubs that neuter the story
The point was to tie up lose ends like every Zelda ending. Also the main point was that the kingdom would forever be at peace and the sages vow their lives to Zelda that’s the main point not really mineru leaving. Also Purah is there so that’s a bonus.
The lack of continuity in Zelda would not be a problem if Nintendo was just open and honest about it. There are plenty of videogame series that are very upfront about not having any continuity at all with Final Fantasy being a great example of this
Zelda games even do this, for the most part! Why did they frame this game as a sequel to BotW if that's not what they were making??
@@slenderMax28I mean it is the same world and mechanics as breath of the wild. And the same characters that progress much more than they did in botw, that sounds like a sequel to me. First you guys were saying it's glorified dlc, now y'all saying it's not a sequel at all. Make y'all minds up.
Totk was just a fanservice and Nintendo was too much excited for the botw success...
@@mania4270It is a sequel, a pretty bad one, but it is a sequel. Hell half of the characters that you meet in the first game, don’t even remember who you are, that’s how bad, this sequel is.
@@Anon9729X that's kind of par the course for Zelda sequels though. This game was still a WAY better game than breath of the wild. It has way better explanation, better items, the fuse mechanic is amazing. I judge books or movies on their stories but tears of the kingdom is a video game and I don't judge them on their story because story doesn't really matter. As a Nintendo fan, you should know that. It's all about the gameplay. And I'd rather play tears of the kingdom than botw. BOTW is kind of unplayable after playing tears of the kingdom because tears of the kingdom has a better story, dungeons, and gameplay. Tears of the kingdom hate is unwarranted and seems like a lousy way to get views rather than actually having legitimate complaints
I don't have a strong connexion with the Zelda franchise due to not having the Nintendo consoles growing up. My first Zelda game was as such Breath of the Wild, a game I really enjoyed. I would not put it in my list of "favorite games" but I still had a blast playing it. When I bought Tears of the Kingdom I did not know what to expect. I knew that everyone at the time praised the game beyond measure and as such I was confident I was going to have fun. What took me by surprise was the neutrality I felt during my playthrough. For me, the game was entertaining enough to not be boring, but it was not interesting enough to make me enthusiastic, and so i felt "neutral" if that mean anything. There was no singular one event that made me quit, it was more like a slow breakup, the painful realization that I was just not really having fun : I played less and less every day until eventually I stopped picking the game up. It's a very weird feeling, not of boredom per say, but of disinterest.
Outside of some of the controls and other extremely baffling UI decision, I could not pin point why this game did not click with me even tho it is an impressively well crafted experience. But seeing so many long critiques of the games month later like this video is actually helping me understand my indifference toward the game.
To be clear, many love ToTK and I understand why : it is a legitimately very impressive work of art. As a game programmer myself, I'm amazed by the technical aspect of the title like the physic engine and building systems, all that running on a Switch. The sound design is top notch, the environments are marvelous. There is undeniable beauty here, a beauty I revisit when I draw with the OST/Ambience blasting in the background.
But for me, it did not clicked during gameplay, and I will not lie by pretending that I'm not relieved to see that I'm not alone feeling that way.
You can play the most beautiful sounding and looking game, and it'll all fall apart if the gameplay doesn't just doesn't click with you.
I basically have the same story as you tbh, I just lost interest m
Im imagining the Jojo meme where Zeltik and Skittybitty are beating up Totk and Cinnacle joins in😂
Lmfao
The "reality didn't match my overblown expectations and self hype, so thing = bad" crowd
@@RenSako pretty much
@@RenSako The expectations: to fix BOTWs issues, any of them, have usable Sages, or even a SHRINE ON SHRINE ISLAND!
@@RenSako My expectations were a new game, I got "CTRL C + CTRL V".
ToTK: *still breathing*
Everyone: It's not dead yet, keep kicking!
Contrarianism is wild, huh
I find the same thing happened with RDR2 in a few years everyone will be like “actually it was a masterpiece and games are still failing to live up to how good it is”
I feel so weird. I bounced off of BotW when I first played it because while the world was vast and sprawling, it felt shallow to interact with. TotK sucked me in fully on the other hand, and feels like the realization of what BotW was unable to be for me. I'm still messing around with the physics engine in the game, and building new ways to traverse the lands. I love making wild contraptions to solve different combat situations. And yet everytime I go online I feel like everyone wants to say that the things I enjoy about the game are not the 'correct' way to enjoy the game. To me, TotK is among the best the Switch has to offer.
@@THEONETRUEOVERLORD Same thing with cyberpunk, people were shitting all over it and im not even talking about glitches, after the anime released many people came back to it and suddenly ITS A REDEMPTION ARC when in reality all what people did is tone down their expectations while Cdpr fixed some bugs, now after the DLC its considered one of the best games ever made. Im pretty sure that one day people will revisit TOTK and end up appreciating it for what it is and what it had to offer in fact this has been the case with every Zelda since WW.
if you only listen to losertubers who have nothing better to do than shit on massively successful games, then sure I guess lol
Bro did the Joseph Anderson shrine breakdown let's go.
It's almost like the shrine designers, dungeon designers, and open world designers were all on separate teams and didn't realize they were repeating the same basic concepts in every one.
This is the problem with most open world games, a lack of focus and identity.
I dunno....they seem to all be designed by the same team tbh. And like... it's not repeating the same basic concepts it's more so iterating on and making other puzzles based off those concepts.
actually that's really good guess at what went down
What? all of the designs are very similar yet different because it represents a different history built by many different past civilizations
This nitpick makes no sense
@@pickedceasar1216If they were different histories and cultures, they wouldn’t be similar.
completely zoned out while listening to this while drawing only to start paying attention again and bro was talking about “unpuzzling puzzles”
"Zoniaed out*
Genuinely, I think that with how rigid the quests are in this game and with the way the memories are structured this time around, TotK really should have been a linear game. It's a linear game, stretched past the point of comfort to fit an open world shell, and it suffers for it.
This is objectively wrong. It is not a liner game you just played it like a liner game going from point to point I’m sorry but this isn’t a Ubisoft game that’s not how you play. The flying alone makes this an amazing open world and my favorite part of exploration. The quest also takes place all over the map something that wouldn’t make sense in a liner game also most people I know don’t really care about Zelda stories. You clearly don’t know anything about game design if you think this game suffers from being open world. At that rate every open world game should be liner.
@@THEONETRUEOVERLORD you completely missed the point of the comment but you do you I guess.
@@THEONETRUEOVERLORD Could have saved yourself a few minutes writing a mini-easy if you spent a few more seconds reading.
@@THEONETRUEOVERLORDlol your so off base
Your analysis of the “revenge of the Zelda Formula” put into words something I’ve been struggling to vocalize since TOTK came out. Breath of the Wild was such a fresh and invigorating shot in the arm, I was so excited to see where the Zelda team would go next under this new ‘nothing is sacred’ philosophy only to see them immediately fall right back into the same old routine, just aping BOTW this time instead of OOT. Now with Echoes of Wisdom on the horizon looking to repeat the same structure yet again I’m legitimately worried that we’re in for yet another decades-long generation of iterative, formulaic Zeldas, and that’s just unbelievably disappointing.
TOTK was a DLC initially that became its own thing because it aws too expensive, his argument on the Zelda Formula is not taking that into account at all, everyone knew ever since we knew it was using the same map that it was going to be a very similar game, you can start yapping about that new Formula when it actually becomes a formula they follow, and you won't know that until the next game at the very least, considering they aren't making new games in this Hyrule again.
@@fieldkaiju Well, we already know what the next Zelda game is, Echoes of Wisdom, so let's take a look. Hyrule Castle in the center of the map is engulfed by evil magic. There are 4 races in 4 corners of the map in 4 different biomes, each presumably with their own problem to solve. Zelda must use her suite of wacky physics powers to travel across the wide open overworld in a nonlinear fashion, climbing walls and riding horses to get places faster. Along the way she can collect materials to cook food items that give her temporary stat buffs and mix & match armor sets for more permanent passive effects. Puzzles are open ended and able to be solved however the player wants. Based on what we've seen I'm assuming that you can enter 'rifts' for slightly more structured puzzle challenges, just like shrines. Hell even the UI is directly copied from BOTW. I could be proven wrong when the game comes out I guess, but it certainly looks VERY similar to BOTW/TOTK so far. The formula is established and it's already becoming clear that they intend to stick to it even with games that don't take place in the same Hyrule. Once is coincidence, twice is a pattern. I'm not just baselessly speculating.
This is not a bad thing IMO. Iterating on the same ideas is what makes a sequel. If thats not what you want, then you dont want more games.
EH...no EOW looks to e kinda different really.
@@Jdudec367 it looks to be more of the same, but in a style reminiscent of 2D Zelda. What seems different to you?
The jack of all trades is the master of none. The great sky island, as awe-inspring as the first hour or so was, wasn't as special as the great plateau for me. After a few hours of gameplay, ToTK felt just "ok" at all of the things it tried to accomplish.
Tbh, I didn't mind the Blessing Shrines too much because the Shrines were so tedious that entering a Blessing Shrine relieved me because I knew I was quickly done with it and could move on.
That in itself is a problem, no?
@@Awesomeflame16 definitely.
Same, but thats probably not a good thing
It felt like such a choooooore sometimes. Its crazy, inever ever felt that in botw ever from shrines. The blessings were just
Ugh
@@Vyloka This has to be bias at this point. There’s no way only the TOTK shrines were bad even though BOTW’s shrines were as well. At least TOTK’s shrines didn’t have garbage forced motion controls in them. Not saying TOTK’s shrines are “better,” just saying BOTW weren’t any better.
You and I had very different experiences with the Construct Factory / Spirit Temple, in a way that adds to your point about fighting the game's intentions. I first stumbled onto the Construct Factory while exploring in the depths. I found all the collectibles nearby, explored all the buildings, etc., and eventually guessed it was just sort of an empty ruin with nothing of note, like so much of the depths had been. Sure, it had a different name and some unique iconography, but there was nothing I could actually DO there. It wasn't until I finished all the other temples, eventually worked through the Kakariko quest, did the Zonai stuff in Faron, and flew to the now-clear-skied dragon head island, that I got the mask with the laser pointing into the depths, and returned to the Construct Factory that I had already thoroughly explored. What could've been a cool reveal was empty on my first visit, and upon my return, one of the main things I thought about was how I'd wasted my time before.
Absolutely agree, on my first play of the game I somehow managed to brute force my way into the thunderdome thing early and actually found the mcguffin to go underground and discovered it completely out of order, definitely feels like it should’ve been that way from the start
I had a very similar experience. I stumbled upon it randomly, and when I saw the words "Spirit Temple" appear on screen I genuinely couldn't contain my excitement. This was super early on, like 2 dungeons in at most, so the whole game I kept fantasizing about what could be in the spirit temple. I went through the construct factory assuming that, like EVERY OTHER TEMPLE, it was the build up section to the dungeon... only to find the "temple" was literally just a boss room.
In my entire life, I genuinely don't think I've ever felt so betrayed and disappointed by a video game. The 5 years of hype felt like such a let down in that moment.
With TOTK it is impossible to seperate the fun from the not fun, strangely. It's hard to just ignore the boring stuff because you don't know what's gonna be boring until you've done it, every, single, time.
@@exen8650And so many of the different mechanics depend on each other, you HAVE to engage with them. Oh I want to do this, but I need this resource, which means I have to go do something else (that might be crap) for who knows how long, for the privilege of maybe doing something you want, that may or may not work the way you want anyway.
Exactly the same how i experienced the construct factory....on the second visit when doing the storyline, everything was empty and a bit less magical
I feel like it has to become the tradition among Zelda essayists: in order to prove yourself, you must give an opinion on all 152 shrines from Tears of the Kingdom.
They seem so upset that they have to do them all, despite the fact that they don't have to do them all. In fact, they are so obsessed with not collecting hearts to make the game harder that you could almost say they're completely unnecessary.
@@Turambar_499
Ah, yes, an essayist who's giving an opinion on the content they play talks about the content they played.
That ending point about the Water Temple is really eye-opening. They almost had the perfect exploration moment in the game and then forced the script unto the game.
erm actually there is another change to flurry rushes in TOTK.......
they changed the capital "R" in the word "Rush" to a lowercase "r" in the prompt
joking aside, this is a wonderfully articulated video. i found myself really resonating with a lot of what you had to say, and it feels like thoughts i have struggled to reasonably articulate over the time since playing TOTK have found form through your thoughts in this video. thank you for the sheer amount of effort you've put into creating this!!!
Legitimately thankful I'm not the only one who noticed that! Made it more confusing to edit my capitalization in the script
Thank you so much for the compliments too!!! I'm glad people seem to be resonating with it
Secret Stone? Demon King?
THE IMPRISONING WAR.
There are politically incorrect jokes funnier than this.
This game really doesn't know if it wants to act like you played breath of the wild or like it's your first zelda ever
thrilled to see more critiques... as ive said in other comment sections: TOTK still is inaccessible as a disabled person. yes i can rebind keys, no it does not make it function well enough for my disabled hand. Botw however is accessible and i come back to it bc of this. Anyways awesome vid!!
Edit: Thank you for mentioning the lack of accessibility and Nintendo games!! hearing able bodied folks bring it up makes me feel hope for accessibility in video games
Wait...how is BOTW more accessible? I'm curious about that...
I’m sorry to say this but, I don’t think TOTK was made in mind for people with disabilities, sorry I’m not trying to be rude
How is BOTW accessible?
@@sensidog1 That's not rude imo, it's just a criticism that unfortunately is true for many games. If you said it's not a problem that it's not accessible, that would be kind of rude and ignorant, but I'm assuming that's not what you were saying.
@@sensidog1 why shouldn't a game have disabled people in mind? They deserve to play video games, as you do.
I think Wind Waker is a better sequel to Ocarina than Tears is to Breath - at least in terms of story, setting and character, where the game's premise derives from events of the previous game, and they actually manage to have continuity rather than 90% of the game world seemingly having had the events of the previous game erased without trace... Admittedly, they achieved the continuity by having a large time jump and some hand-waving, but it's still better than "a few years later, but almost everyone has completely forgotten Link and various towers, shrines, and other sheikah-tech locations (like the Shrine of Resurrection) have apparently dissolved without trace, in most cases also repairing the ground they burst from..."
For myself, I've finished one playthrough of Breath of the Wild (with all Shrines completed) and started several since, none of which have made it that far, and found that Tears of the Kingdom brought enough novelty for me to finish it (with all Shrines completed) but I haven't got around to starting a second playthrough yet (and probably wouldn't finish one either) while I've completed Ocarina dozens of times, and most of the rest of the series several times each.
My general conclusion is that Tears does improve on Breath in some ways, but not by a lot, and doubles down on some of its flaws. I'm not ready to say which of the two I prefer, but between them they've left me questioning whether modern Zelda is for me. Echoes of Wisdom may end up being the last Zelda game I purchase (if I do).
What matters is that Zelda looked slightly cuter in TotK than in BotW and hence it is the superior game
Lol why is this my thinking too😭😭 (actually it’s cause I love the Zelda series because of fandom stuff)
I had the thought you couldn't make a sequel to the breath of the wild without absolutely dramatically changing the world. Seems like i'm not the only person with similar thinking.
I think changing the world wouldn't work and TotK is the best proof of that. It needs a new world. New regions to explore.
@@GnidelTotK barely changed anything about the world, barely anything new has developed, definitely nothing of note, so how is TotK the best proof? If anything, it shows that a dramatic change would have been needed to make the same world interesting
@@Gnidel totk is worse proof of that though????? what are you on about? the surface is essentially and practically the same! only difference is the chasm entrance and the sky designs trying to blend into the surface. that's it, all the locales and places and even npc's are all the same in totk.
@@AlejandroRodriguez-cy8ee you must be blind.
@@BlackHand531 i wish i was! so i could say that the surface is different, but death mountain is still there and with little to no usage other than "something is there now". forest groove is still the groove we used to know, only now you have to enter another way. hyrule castle........had fuk all changes, only that the places where the royal chambers and hall lies are now elevated but the interior is still the same.
yeah no, not a lot of drastic changes seen in the surface other than "LOOK CAVES AND SOME ZONAI DEVICES/CAPSULES!"
A two hour video on a game I don’t like?! Sign me up!
To me it's worse than a game I don't like, it's a game that disappointed me.
Lol same
@@lalter_it’s not really a game. It’s an expansion pack. If they has just called it that and that’s what you expected it wouldn’t have been too bad
A two hour video on a game I really love?! Oh... At least the video is well produced, even if I intrinsically disagree with the premise.
@dehistoriapisciumfish7639 I mean they basicly did 🤷🏿♀️
Imagine if they had 4 regional shrine skins.
It wouldn’t fix everything but somehow I would be so much more forgiving somehow.
They really did not take a single piece of feedback very seriously when making this game, the more I think about it.
BoTW is one of my top 5 favorite games and even I feel disrespected a little lol.
11:35 "The maximum amount of meals I can make is 10"
I find the following rule more interesting: You are not allowed to have two cooked meals with the same picture in your inventory.
So if you want to have additional cooked meals, you can't just make more mushroom skewers but actually have to make cakes, omeletts, curry and so on.
But I think more important than restricting the inventory is just the simple rule: You are not allowed to eat while combat music is playing. You're only allowed to take medicines while combat music is playing (which in Botw don't heal hearts).
i love this omg
@@skittybitty Other rules that I like to add in botw are:
1. You are not allowed to teleport.
It makes horses much more useful and forces you to plan ahead a bit where you want to go next.
The only time where this rule gets annoying in botw is if you just completed the eventide shrine and the game despawned your boat,
and to get back you have to cross an ocean using cryonis.
2. You are only allowed to change your armor if you are at an inn or a stable.
Without this rule I constantly switch to climbing armor while climbing, and back to other armor right after that.
With this rule you actually have to think what armor you expect to be the most useful in the next few minutes.
Although I like to make a slight exception to the rule that you are also allowed to change your armor at the shrine right before Gerudo town,
because otherwise it can get annoying to have to go to the desert basar just go switch in and out of the Gerudo outfit.
@@myreneario7216 my main gameplay change i make is a restriction on selling items, requiring you to do sidequests and stuff to earn rupees
man idk I think bottles worked so perfectly in the past I think literally just doing that again would be perfectly fine and fix most if not all of the problems with excessive healing in bots/totk
They could also just take advantage of the 600 extra useless korok seeds and let you start with like one food slot and upgrade to a max of ideally less than like 10
YT recommended this video to me, and as a fan of long-form video essays of topics I'm interested in, I ate this up.
You completely captured my thoughts on ToTK. Especially the irksome decision to call the magical MacGuffins "secret stones." "Tears of Power" feels so much more grand and (ironically) mysterious than what they went with and actually ties in with the game's title.
You don't use shields in Dark Souls because it's harder
I don't use shields in Elden Ring because it's easier
"We are not the same."
If I had a nickel for every long form totk critique made by a small creator, I’d have two nickels Which isn’t a lot, but I like that it happened twice
Weird as shit how they spend hours ranting and yet don't actually ever prove their points tbh
@@jackwitty9776 mmm, no, very unwise
@@jackwitty9776bro...did you watch the video?
780 views… 8 hours ago… over two hours of content… and I ate good a few days ago with skittybitty’s totk video.
Guess I’m eating again!
lol same, these critiques are so overdue but i'm so here for them 💯
The game would have been 1000x better if they had a time travel element into ancient Hyrule. Where all those ruins were vibrant towns and the Zonai were still alive. They wouldn't have had to delete the Shieka and they could kept the continuity. But, what we got was a half assed glorified DLC.
THIS
Exactly. An entire story set in ancient Hyrule would have been super fresh with just the right amount of familiarity with the Botw overworld.
Yep, great way to ignore continuity of botw like they did without it being contradictory . You could’ve then gotten new zora with out making it feel weird to have new faces in a world we fully explored . Heck going back to another sequel even smg2 got it right as the previous game had already established the universe was reset . Not saying a world in a sequel needs to be directly in line with its predecessor but to get a players attention for it being a sequel it needs to have most of the last game line up to make you feel contected
I was part of the crowd who thought BotW was kind of underwhelming. It was a good game for what it was, but to me it couldn't hold a candle to the older Zelda games. The dungeons were bad, the UI was clearly a relic of the gamepad, a lot of the game felt like filler trying to fill a large world, the combat was unbalanced at best, the story was underwhelming. But I felt that a lot of why I thought it was underwhelming was that it was a first attempt at something new. I saw the potential to improve and make something truly great with BotW as a baseline. Being "BotW but better" was, to me, not a high bar.
But TotK... just doubled down on the things about BotW that disappointed me, at best leaving them the same or at worst making them actively a bigger problem. Even worse, it also doesn't really understand the parts of BotW that did work, the exploration and discovery, because the new areas just don't have much variety. The game does have higher highs than BotW (Colgera is a banger boss fight and among my favorite bosses in the series for example). But it also has much lower lows than BotW did, and those lows are like, 90% of the game. Because it really is just a worse BotW, with all the same issues, and not even managing to re-capitalize on BotW's strengths to make up for it.
In general though, it really feels like the game's competing between two identities and compromises made for one negatively impact the other pretty severely. I can make my own fun while playing a sandbox game. I've played hundreds of hours of DQB2 just goofing off and making silly buildings for the NPCs. But I struggle to do that sort of thing in TotK, because it feels like the game is actively discouraging it due to how disposable everything is. The disposable nature of everything seems to be a compromise for the sake of the fact this is supposed to be an adventure game (and the switch's hardware). But on the flipside, the sandbox elements end up breaking all the puzzles and causing them to collapse into the same puzzles over and over which hurts the adventure game aspect.
If they wanted to make a sandbox, I would rather they commit to the sandbox and have the gameplay be about designing cute houses for NPCs (this even makes perfect sense with the state Hyrule is in after BotW!), where the point is to be creative and you can't really "cheese" anything. The Legend of Zelda home designer basically. While this would be more of a spinoff than a mainline game, it would make for a game that feels a lot more cohesive in what it's trying to do. There's even a house building mechanic in the game as is, an expanded version of that with specific tasks or requests from NPCs could be really fun!
On the other hand, if they wanted to make an adventure game, they needed to put a lot more limits on what the player can do at any given moment. The inventory needs to be reigned in, make it so the player always has to make a solution with the materials right in front of them provided by the world so that variety is better enforced. Drop a lot of the shrines in favor of making the ones that remain more in depth to decrease the redundancy. Those sorts of things.
The amount of disappointment I felt from Ganondorf being a new incarnation as opposed to the return of the villain from previous entries, I really can't overstate it. The game even sets you up for disappointment as he name drops Zelda, Link, and Rauru in the intro, only for you to find out he knows them because of time loop shenanigans. I wanted a Ganondorf who had a deep hatred for Zelda and Link for all the times they defeated him and the suffering he had endured for being sealed for so long. It felt like a deliberate act by the writers to set expectations just to dash them. I'll say he was a fun and cool Ganondorf, and Matt Mercer did a great job voicing him, but I feel his knowledge of the character in the past entries helped mask how hollow the writing for him was.
I know people will say "gameplay first," but as shown in the review, the gameplay suffers, too. If they sacrificed story quality for gameplay and spicing up the old map, where is it?
I still like the game even, but it is way below what I wanted for both story and gameplay.
I really hope the Zelda Team is listening despite the success and will take more of these criticisms to heart. Obviously, this game will forever be a what-if idea now, full of untapped potential, but hopefully, a new 3D entry can be something special in both gameplay and world building.
It's amazing how many critiques of totk are coming out of the woodwork. And they're all well-deserved and well-written. I swear the community is going to end up putting more total work into critiquing this game than Nintendo put into making it - if they haven't already.
Edit: I'm getting real done with all these Nintendo simps replying to me. If you're all willing to settle for less, I guess Nintendo has nothing to worry about, but personally I have standards. I won't be humoring any more replies.
I unno how true that can possibly be when Nintendo did put alot of effort into making TOTK
@@Jdudec367 Almost as much as you put into that comment, friend.
@@SyntaxDaemon a lot more actually
Alright, now you're just hating with that take. :/ nintendo isnt like these other modern companies. They actually put in a lot of work to totk. Covid just fucked it up
@@ALinkToThePresent Then take the extra time needed to fix it. They absolutely could have. Instead, the game is an unexcusable insulting mess, and I say that as someone who enjoys playing it despite that. I'd recommend skittybitty's video if you haven't seen it, as they do an excellent job with a very objective analysis.
"Secret stone? Demon king?"
My very sad take on TOTK is that the best thing that came out of it was the third trailer's music
Also I can't shake the feeling that the period in which TOTK was the most loved by the community and brought out the most positivity was also between the third trailer's release and the game release.
Man I loved the third trailer
@@neelost5984 Unfortunately that's not true. If by community, you mean the loud minority, then yes.
Many people enjoy the game and are still doing fun new things in the game. I've never seen people sharing "cool stuff" content as much as with TOTK.
i thought the same about botws trailer from the 2017 switch presentation
Demon King? Imprisoning War? Secret Stone? Noise? Signal? Matthewmatosis? lol
ive gotta say, this actually does echo a lot of what i feel
ive... described to many people how i feel about TOTK as "it isnt a sequel, its a remix"
as in, the game clearly wanted to appeal to people who didnt play botw, and ... while they had the pieces laid down for a sequel (the zonai and such) ... they ultimately decided to use those pieces to just, do botw but again, with some minor differences. i mean, honestly... ganondorf transforming into the demon dragon literally has him look just like calamity ganon for a moment. sure thats a cool nod, but it also feels to me like another point like how the sheikah and zonai are ultimately like... the same in the role they play -- the devs decided to simply do what they had done but in a different way, like a second draft of sorts. like okay, what if we did botw but we had more time... and... hm, well. if remaking botw, we should probably replace some significant things with other, similar/parallel things. so that it doesnt look too much like we just copied it
but the desire to me feels like it ultimately became not to make a sequel to BOTW, but to create BOTW again. if it was titled BOTW: Zonai Remix , and wasnt touted as a sequel, and didnt try to be after the events of botw, i'd respect its story heavily
but it taking place after botw feels very tacked on
ah! i just finished the video and you do call it a Repetition of BOTW
for what its worth, i will say i immensely enjoyed my time with TOTK... but that was as someone who hadnt 100%'d BOTW itself, and who isnt a major zelda fan
yes i love puzzles in games, but also... well, i dunno . i just liked exploring and finding things. the story, while it disappoints me thinking about it afterwards, brought me quite a bit of joy in the moment
hell, i teared up at the final tear
but yeah, i can say the game was a good game, just not a good sequel.
it was really addicting to just, keep having stuff to do, through the many, many sidequests and collectathon type macguffins
i think... its funny, they made a game where its most enjoyable if you bring your own batteries. and... as someone who talks about minecraft design and its issues vs its lack of issues (its nuanced as heck ofc)
...thats really what minecraft is
TOTK felt like... again, learning from minecraft, and leaning into those player driven stories that Mojang seems very intent on helping create in modern minecraft
theres... definitely something interesting to be said, about comparing and contrasting TOTK and minecraft. perhaps ill do that myself !
anyways, fantastic video!
I still wouldn't respect its story - the whole thing with the faceless nameless ancient sages repeating almost identical cutscenes after each dungeon, the much more linear narrative of the memories still being presented in an unpredictable order (though if you do treat the game as a linear one, religiously following its breadcrumbs, you'll discover the intended order of the geoglyphs fairly early on), Link's complete indifference to having learned that the Zelda running around the world is some sort of fake and total failure to mention it to anyone who is acting on fake-Zelda's instructions...
Not pretending to be a sequel would remove a bunch of issues with the story, but plenty would remain.
@@rmsgrey thats fair, i think links indifference is fine. but the sages are... yea.h
I was so disappointed about Ganondorf in this game. Part of the reason why he's so intimidating is specifically because he is the exact same person throughout all the games he appears in - he's not a reincarnation like Link and Zelda, but the same guy from Ocarina of Time surviving over and over again just to torment the descendants of his greatest enemies. That, to me, added to his intimidation factor, the sheer persistence he had in living just to get revenge. That's what I thought was gonna be the case here, especially with how he's established as knowing who Link and Zelda are before they even meet, and I feel like in that kind of story I would have taken his lackluster motivation a little easier, but...
he literally dies in Zelda 1, and in Zelda 2, his minions are trying to revive him.
@@TheRealNintendoKid What's your point? They're resurrecting the same individual from Zelda 1.
Four Swords Adventures introduced a new Ganondorf. That alone proved he reincarnates like 20 years ago.
@@abdieljove2011 Once, while Link and Zelda reincarnates every single game. If this Ganondorf was a reincarnation, we don't get a hint of that at all.
The first time I saw Tears of the Kingdom, I immediately thought, 'The same game with an extra feature and area added?' If there's one thing I loved about 3D Zelda, it's that each game was completely different from the last. I never knew what to expect. Each game felt connected by gameplay and references, but each game was so stylistically distinct. How different each game was even led to controversies back in the day, but when I look back at it now, the courage to change things up so boldly gives each game its own identity. What is Tears of the Kingdom's identity? Breath of the Wild 2, or Breath of the Wild Expansion Pack.
Tears of the Kingdom was possibly the most disappointing experience I've ever had with a game, and I didn't even realize it until 40 hours in
Same, loved it until I realized how much more it could've been
@@rpg_haven I don’t get what you expect exactly to get disappointed, we were promised BOTW2 in the same map and that’s pretty much exactly what we got
@@fieldkaijuPersonally I was expecting a more involved story and expanded lore on ganon and the master sword
I must have been the only person to enjoy it... A lot
@@lolilll No. Anyone who didn't play botw would be blown away by the game. And even some who did play botw were, but from what I've seen the general consensus is that those who played botw soured on the game after beating it. It doesn't hold up well as a sequel which most of us expected it to be.
I can apparently watch an infinite amount of this shit so HERE WE GOOOOOO
Holy shit Ben Briggs!! Love your music man ❤
Crazy how Nintendo can consistently make a game that is half masterpiece and half the worst most baffling decisions you've ever seen. So naturally in TotK they decided to undermine the bits of Botw that were actually great and double down on the bits that were terrible
Even the central hook, the Ultrahand stuff, is boring to me because there's no thought to it, everything's just a preset - you don't make a fan by attaching planks to a motor, or a wing by attaching slabs in a convex bow, or steer by attaching levers to circuitry. It's all just braindead, attach the Thing Doer. And the game does nothing to actually incentive you to use these contraptions. In fact, with the massive tower ascensions, you're incentivized to just paraglide across the overworld, and rarely to make an airship.
How did they undermine the bits of BOTW that were great? They really didn't, heck they improved stuff like weapons not feeling very useful with fuse.
No there is a lot of thought with the Ultrahand stuff with how much you can do with it really,. It's not braindead it's just not needlessly complicated or has you need to create all those indiviual parts for one thing that may or not work...simplyfying it a bit only helped it and made it more accessible and straight forward, and it's attatching stuff that can be complex and pretty precise too at things not just "attach the thing doer". It does do stuff ff to incentive you to use them as they are good for stuff like traversal and combat. Not really you are incentived to make stuff like that if you wanna explore the whole world overhead.
@@Jdudec367for one fuse does not at all make weapons feel more useful. They break all the same but now most of them just look worse as weapons while doing it. And two the incentive to explore is gone, in the development of botw Nintendo came up with a design philosophy I don’t remember what it was called but it had to do with triangles. This incentivized you to explore everywhere, now there is literally towers that send you higher than you could ever get in botw and these towers are everywhere. The incentive for exploration is gone especially when the game quite literally rewards you for making the simplest most broken build in the game the hoverbike. It rewards you because it’s the most battery efficient and fastest build in the game.
@@Jdudec367the hoverbike, glider, and hang glider completely destroy botw exploration philosophy and make it so you can traverse the whole map almost entirely without having to walk nearly as much.
@@SirAlexanderr Actually it does make them feel more useful. Except now when you get a weapon from a chest and feeling like it's not that useful or memorable and that it will take up weapon space now you can use it as a part to make a stronger better and more memorable looking weapon and it will take up less space, so yeah weapons do feel more useful now. They still break but my point still stands and they really don't look worse as weapons while doing it either I don't see how they do. No the incentive to explore really isn't gone. Ok and? Those towers only keep you in the air for so long and allow you to see more and get more curious about what's around you that only incentives you more really not less. So no the incentive for exploration isn't gone and if anything you only proved that it's even stronger here really and no the hoverike really isn't the most broken build in the game it's just cost effective and pretty useful really. But it isn't the fastest build in the game there are faster builds clearly and there are more powerful ones too.
@@SirAlexanderr No they don't I don't see how they do really, I mean yeah but that's the point for there to be faster traversal options and more player options overall, and you still have to land to find things really.
My main issue with TotK is that in its revolutionary physics system, it repeats the same mistakes as BotW, even worsening them sometimes. A big problem with BotW was how easily puzzles could be trivialized by their open ended nature, but at least there were more constrains in play and going off the beaten path usually required at least some effort. In TotK, like you said, 9/10 times I just felt cheated using the intended solution, to the point that sometimes even figuring out the intended way to beat a puzzle took more effort than to just wing it. This is made worse by the fact that almost every puzzle that involves getting somewhere or transporting an object can be skipped with rocket shields, recall cheesing etc., even when the puzzles aren't meaningless tutorials to mechanics you already mastered. Bad puzzles in BotW were obvious and straightforward, but bad puzzles in TotK barely qualify as puzzles. They feel like I am being asked to navigate a labyrinth with walls that only reach up to my knees and that are made of cardboard, and then I am proudly told that I am "allowed to approach the task at hand in any way I want".
There are really cool things you could do with TotK's new mechanics, but rarely am I ever forced to engage with them on a deeper level and besides some conveniences like the infamous Hoverbike, there is little room for intrinsical motivation to form. I could build a giant robot or a trap system that clears enemy encounters for me, but I could also just abuse the incredibly cheesable combat system that I already mastered six years before this game even released.
Beyond this unfortunate case of stunted novelty, TotK unfortunately offers nothing of interest to me. Exploration feels stale. All sky islands are the same and become boring once you figure out how broken your traversal options in this game are. The depths are empty with literally ZERO worthwile rewards and fearure little to no challenges to overcome beyond a few repetitive bossfights and the very rare environmental puzzle that is then usually tied to a big questline. And Hyrule itself is a literal copy paste of BotW where almost no major location has changed significantly and air travel allows you to get anywhere you want from anywhere within literal minutes. I feel like I am playing a modded version of BotW, with new mechanics that are cool and impressive on paper but rarely if ever used in an engaging way, and with an interface that seems cluttered and amateurish.
The game cannot be its own thing because it is a blatant retread of BotW, but it is neither iterative nor polished enough to succeed in that either. It is marketed and structured as a step forward, improving on what is there, but it screams that it is a step to the side, aiming for innovation and novelty rather than perfection. In doing so, it combines the worst possible outcomes of both of these goals and instead stumbles backwards with nothing but a physics engine that took five years to develope and has extremely narrow future use cases to show for it.
As someone who cares more about exploration than story when playing these kinda games, I was disappointed by Tears of the Kingdom. I was ready to explore a Hyrule with an expansive sky and seemingly rapidly altered hyrule, but no hyrule was barely changed and the sky and depths were barebones. The zonai stuff doesn't interest me so the game was disappointing to me. It really is Breath of the Wild; again.
The producers and devs wanted to ground Zonai technology based on real-life technology to help players intuitively understand how devices work based on familiarity yet they reiterate the same Zonai device tutorials over and over. This is videogame handholding at this point. It doesn’t trust players would understand how fans worked so they not only made the device look like… ahem, an electric fan. They also designed 3 separate scenarios explicitly telling you how electric fans work. Why not add in the real-world experience of children encountering electric fans and make a tutorial telling players not to stick their fingers in the fan as well?
This whole “intrinsically motivated” thing is so weird, you can only be intrinsically motivated for any game if you have an extraordinary amount of free time and/or rarely purchase new games, most people only have time to just play the game they bought and by the time you actually finish it multiple new games you want to play will have come out so you move on to the next one
Finally, finally all these critiques are coming out, took forever.
???
“Finally?” “Took forever?”
Have you been living under a rock or something? These so called critiques have been here and continuously making these videos since last year. What are you talking about?
@@Matt-eh2dy I've been searching for these videos every single month for the past year. It is only in the past month that I've seen numerous critiques pop up. You had obviously the few critiques over the year but they were being very careful with the "honeymoon period." Now they are popping up everywhere. Maybe our standards for "critique" and "review" differ, must most of them have been simple reviews that refuse to give anything but the milk toast nod at the issues.
@@Kittzu I mean eh...yeah there always have been videos like these there just wasn't as many before for obvious reasons, but like yeah they were always there it's not like they would all come out at once.
*To further BotW's sheer superiority, I will say this:*
TotK's story is bad, Fs with pre-established key lore aspects, absolutely shatters all the Master Sword's reputation, unga bunga buff Dorf with little to no ambition other than "me strongest there is" uninteresting, nearly everyone forgot who you were despite this game taking place a mere 4-6 years after Wild, Rauru existing is an insult, no Fi, no breaking of the Demise curse despite it being falsely hinted being the case what with all the Skyward Sword PR this game got (I distinctly remember Skyward Sword being advertised as heavily linked to TotK somehow which, again, is misleading as on Nintendo's part), no dog petting, no hookshot spiderman swinging with the physics being suuuuch a driving factor in these newer Zelda games, no underwater exploration instead a damp dark smelly overgrown cave can't see jack, COLLOSAL missed opportunity to hitch the princess with her handsome knight in shining armor, no stakes since Zelda's sacrifice was reversed giving the story little to no agency or consequence, Link as a protagonist felt nonexistent feels like everyone else was the star of the show not the guy who's saving all their 🫏s, no Link backstory before any of this went down aka no Arryl 2 or Granny 2 aka NOT WIND WAKER, didn't make me cry like Twilight Princess, dungeons are STILL NOT dungeons (pulling a couple levers to open a door and then be treated with literally the same copy-paste cutscene at the very end with each champion? Yeah naw), sky islands hardly anything worth noting although they are pretty asf to look at, I was expecting a totally NEW revamped endgame super Saiyan master sword golden tier 4 legendary new hilt new everything but naw same design with a booboo scar and hilariously less powerful... hoverbike autobuild pales in comparison to THE Master Cycle
As a game, sure, it's leagues above BotW but BotW will never be topped as a one-in-a-lifetime *experience*
TotK was an overblown $70 DLC and I'm tired of pretending it's not. Mid.
I would rather qualify TotK to be a mod made by an extremly talented creator who knows how to program and creates awesome features, but never made a full compeling and coherent game.
@@LeFizolof probably what actually happened lmao!
Nah Botw isn't superior really.
No Totk's story isn't bad, It doesn't f s with pre-established key lore aspects how does it? No it doesn't shatter any of the Master Sword's reputation how does it? Nah Ganondorf has ambition being that he believes that only the strong should rule a Kingdom with a iron fist and that they should completely rule over the weak which makes sense with how he grew up in the desert where they all had to get strong to survive and thrive while the weak died and that it was only survival of the fittest at times too so his ambition is to make Hyrule a better Kingdom in his own brutal way, nah it's interesting really, no most don't forget who you are most who do know Link remember him and no it actually takes place 7 years after botw, no Rauru existing isn't an insult how is it? I mean yeah that makes sense Fi is resting really and wasn't in the older Zelda games either, no that wasn't ever hinted at being the case and the Skyward Sword PR doesn't mean they would break Demise's curse just that this game has some connections to Skyward Sword with it's sky and stuff (nah it really isn't misleading on Nintendo's part as they do have some connections) so no Demise's curse really shouldn't have been broken really, true no dog petting does suck, I mean no there really shouldn't be hookshot spiderman swinging like that really wouldn't make any sense especially when we can already soar in the sky enough as is in TOTK and they shouldn't just rip off Spider-Man really they should do their own unique things instead, eh....the cave exploration is better though really and they aren't all damp or dark or smelly or overgrown and you can see in them clearly, nah that wasn't a missed oppurtunity I dunno if the current ruler of Hyrule could just marry a knight like that, no there are stakes and yeah Zelda's sacrifice was reversed however you are wrong the story still has agency and consequence with everyone who died in it and the stakes of Ganondorf taking over Hyrule and stuff too, nah Link as a protagonist feels existent really and it doesn't feel like everyone else was the star of the show it feels like Link was the star of the show, no we have some backstory for him but we saw that more in Botw really just like what we got with OOT and MM really, I mean it has emotional moments though too, eh no they are dungeons just not very good ones (I mean it's more then just that they have you navigate through the dungeons and have you move objects and stuff around to complete puzzles and other stuff too), nah sky islands have a lot of stuff worth noting like all the items and fuse material and weapons and armor and ores and side quests and shrines and enemies and mini bosses up there and other stuff too, no it's not less powerful wdym? It's the same Master Sword as in BOTW. Nah Hoverbike is arguably better then the Master Cycle really.
True but it's a great one-in-a-lifetime experience too and wait...better as a game??? Then don't say Botw is superior then you are contradicting yourself.
Nah it's a full fledged sequel really not $70 DLC. Nah it really isn't mid.
Having to create your own rules to make BotW fun is... a problem.
A problem that TotK inherits and makes infinitely worse.
My favorite challenge rule for BOTW is no fast travel. It fundamentally changes the way you approach exploration and it honestly feels like the game was designed without fast travel in mind.
It's a real shame, then, that TOTK's world design makes doing a no fast travel playthrough kind of suck. The depths and its embarrassingly few routes back to the surface completely kill the exploration for me. It kind of felt like an afterthought.
so your entire problem with the game is an issue... you created for yourself? 😭 i respect totk critique but this is honestly taking it too far
@@darthmortem585 Oh believe me, it is not my only problem with the game. In the grand scheme of things, it is hardly a problem at all, just a minor annoyance.
@@PenguinPat that *is* fair, I have my sets of issues with the game too. But I'm generally on the more positive spectrum.
@@darthmortem585 it's something I often do in games that have fast travel. It's a shortcut, but you should still be able to travel without it. I also hated how you could barely get out of the depths without teleporting, it's breaking the immersion for me. How do the character that supposedly lived there and built stuff travel and build without being able to fast-travel?
@@nor6399I mean the depths are optional so you don’t have to do them. Also TOTK makes it easier than ever to not fast travel on the surface because of ultrahand planes.
yours and skittybittys video were extremely cathartic in illustrating with spoken words my frustrations with totk (and some of botw), but at the same time were kind of whiplashing? i think the identification of 'AA' as an experience was really great and is something that i resonate with a lot.
however, listening through your comprehensive breakdown of puzzling design in the shrines and the critique of the game's story in skitty's video made me feel like i didn't really pay attention to the game at all. like throughout the video, in relation to these points, i was going "huh... oh!" i had never though of that until it was pointed out. is that because i have poor critical thinking? or do i lack attentiveness in my experiences, being more emotions driven? i found this very fascinating.
That Water Temple anecdote is fucking atrocious. That alone should be enough to convince any unknowing player that this game doesn’t care about its own open world, and therefore, isn’t worth the time and effort.
I really can’t fathom it. Reaching a destination only to be blocked because you didn’t choose to let yourself be railroaded like a shitty D&D game.
Being given an open world, and then being continually told you’re going the wrong way. It couldn’t be more antithetical to itself.
I almost wish you had included this story near the beginning of the script as opposed to more than two hours in, but, that’s just bias; I found this part of your experience to be the most impactful.
How the shrines were implemented in this game demonstrates perfectly why quantity doesn't equal quality. Nintendo also set such a low bar for what counts as "too complicated" to actually include in the game that it's very difficult to make a decent group of shrines people would enjoy. Nintendo desperately slash the shrine count in half and up the complication of shrines if they want to make it work. Or they could just completely dump the concept, return to pieces of hearts, add some stamina equivalent, and drop a bunch of chests all throughout the world that uses environmental puzzles to get you to discover the chests very similar to almost every other game.
I mean a lot of them are quality still. I mean....not really that isn't very difficult to make a decent group of shrines people would enjoy and that's exactly what they did really and they didn't set too low of a bar for what counts as "too complicated" as figuring out shrine puzzles can still take a while and be complicated at times really. Eh no it still does work with all of them and their variety but it could be better still. They DID that though with blessing shrines and shrine quests still.
@@Jdudec367 a whole third of the shrines are empty blessings shrines that don't have a puzzle at all. A majority of shrines with a side quest to unlock them are a shitty copy and paste fetch quest 25 times. The tutorial shrines are all completely useless because totk already does an excellent job at explaining mechanics to players by the abundance of items thrown around with some tiny puzzles right next to them in the overworld. The video creator labeled that only 29 shrines were even good. That's only 20% of all the shrines. When 51 shrines are empty without a puzzle it should immediately be a red flag that there are way too many. The shrines that do actually have a puzzle are usually a quick 10 seconds of thought and 30 seconds of execution. They aren't overly complex and don't have any noise that would make the shrines actually puzzling either. The puzzles also have ridiculously easy to think of workarounds that you get to use across almost every shrine so the puzzle becomes useless anyway. When it's more fun to skip a puzzle, it's a shitty puzzle. Botw had a much better approach with shrines because almost every shrine had a theme and then you had 2-3 steps to fully solve the shrine and each step got slightly harder. There weren't many workarounds and the only shrines people were complaining about were the test of strength shrines. Imagine totk except instead of 150 shrines that only have 29 good ones there were 50 of them and all but like 5 were actually engaging puzzles that a majority of people universally like. I would kill to purge a majority of the shrines if it meant all of them had even just half the effort and care that was put into eventide island.
@@sethmeaseles3301
Actually no they usually have a challenge outside the shrines themselves in some way. Not really, they can involve you looking for something or having to do a specific action and figuring out what to do to get the shrine to appear. They aren't completely useless as since you have to do a specific action and can't attack in any other way it's actually a challenge of sorts to beat it. Well I disagree most are good really. Eh more then 20% are actually good shrines though. Not really...hell you mention puzzles in the overworld which those shrines often have that and there is a challenge to get those shrines usually. No they are usually longer then 10 seconds of thought and 30 seconds of execution as you need to figure out what to attach to what first which you may change your mind a couple of times for that and then you need to figure out how to get it all to work correctly and properly without anything going wrong which is a puzzle itself. They are usually complex enough though for what they are and they do have noise that would make them actually puzzling like trying to get enough wind to get the balloons to the top while on a wooden platform and making sure it doesn't fall off or have too much weight and that the torches can actually create enough wind under it all the time and that it doesn't burn the wooden platform like in "An Uplfiting Device" for example. The puzzles really don't have ridiculously easy to think of workarounds though if anything those "workarounds" can be pretty tedious to do at times and often are not worth going through the trouble of going around and getting the stuff to do them really so no the puzzle never becomes useless. Well it's not more fun to skip a puzzle really so no it's not a shitty puzzle. BOTW really didn't have a better approach, and huh? Just as many if not more shrines have a theme in TOTK and you have multiple steps in them to full solve the shrine too with each step getting a bit harder. Eh...no there were some workarounds really and some people complained about the main shrines too. I mean...most of the shrines in TOTK are good though and most have engaging puzzles and most people do like them. I mean most had enough effort and care put into them though.
agree to dizagree then
Nintendo did what could be complicated extremely intuitive and easy to grasp in TotK. I feel like yall people can't grasp simple concepts or are just bad at video games.
@@Jdudec367 can y'all space your essays? Its tedious to read one large wall of text just like Totk is tedious.
When the sequel to BotW was announced, I was hoping for an OoT/MM type of pairing where the new game would feature a completely new map and deeper story featuring the same mechanics and gameplay as BotW. When it was clear that we were returning to the same Hyrule, then I was at least hoping for new types of thematic dungeon areas (which we got, though they were still structured like the Divine Beasts), new puzzle solving items (which we kind of got) and new characters/enemies to interact with (which we barely got). Ultimately, I felt TotK was too similar to BotW with no real moments of discovery and every new element was tedious to me (the sky, the depths, the caves, and the new Zonai devices all felt like busy work).
This is the only Zelda game I have ever dropped. It was... Absolutely overwhelming. Too much. While also being too familiar to what came before, that sensation of wonderment and discovery was absent for a majority of my time with the game since a lot of the bags of tricks that existed in BotW were still present.
For me botw was more boring then totk so I dropped it. And it was my first zelda game. After botw I've played oot, tp, ss, mm, and all of them, except ss, I like mor then botw. And when I start totk i fall in love. And now I have 250 hours and it still interesting. Totk became my Top 2 Zelda game after top 1 majora
Finally another TOTK video analysis to watch! I hope the depths get trashed because I've been saying since day 1 that the depths were just the Overworld with 1% of the content. It's literally just zonai mines, boss refights, and retextured enemy camps. Imagine BOTW but it's one blackish gray mush with no towns, no NPCs, no landmarks, no features in the landscape, no quests, no visual storytelling, NOTHING. I speedran my way out of the depths by hoverbiking to each of the lightroots because it was just that unfun and irritating to be in. its literally the most filler copy paste content in the game, imagine if instead of wasting development on the depths they spent that time improving the skies (which are also very lacking!).
One last big grievance. The assault on Hyrule Castle was one of the best parts of BOTW for me. Cutting through the beast's defenses and making my way into the dragon's den was one of the most exhilarating experiences I've ever had in gaming, even if I totally overprepared for the final showdown. Not to mention the intimate details we learn about the calamity in Hyrule Castle as well as the haunting atmosphere. Upon reaching Hyrule Castle in TOTK, I was awash with discomfort and intimidation as Hyrule Castle lay empty, suspended in the sky. It felt like a symbol of Ganondorf's power, him having cast by the wayside the very structure that contained Calamity Ganon for over 100 years. So with that being said, I expected there to be another assault on Ganon, with basically another castle but underground that I'd have to fight my way through. To my surprise it was basically one long empty hallway with a couple of enemies scattered in it. Only thing in there worth mentioning was the area we saw in the prologue. Big disappointment. Calamity Ganon rests in the heart of the most dangerous fortress in Hyrule, meanwhile Ganondorf is just... in a hole... in a crumbling set of hallways...
Ganondorf should have been seated on his own throne, in his own castle, symbolically overthrowing the Kingdom of Hyrule by seizing it from the Earth and transplanting his own castle there instead. Consider me very disappointed. 😐
i don't think Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a sequel to Super Mario Galaxy anymore
@@PieDivide 😂
I really enjoyed watching your video, even though TOTK is one of my favorite video game of all time,
It is not exempt of some flaws, as BOTW wasn't too.
I had a really hard time comparing BOTW to TOTK,
since BOTW literally saved me for attempting to take my own life in 2016...
Something that TOTK couldn't achieved for the simple reason that I am in a different place now where taking my own life isn't even a thought.
I did TOTK without watching any video online of what people were creating in the game,
and I only had one friend playing the game on its release.
He was watching video, but I told him I wanted to finish my first playthrough before knowing the tricks and glitches the community found out. So we didn't talk about TOTK before I beat Ganondorf.
so I wasn't influenced by anyone else then me and the game designers 😂
And having access to a CFW Switch, I played the game (Very Legally) a few weeks before release.
So contents about the game on RUclips was really rare and often take down by Nintendo.
So BOTW saved my life
and TOTK is technically a better BOTW (especially the physics)
watching this and skittybitty's video makes me realize that i just miss classic zelda...
I pity the fool who bought Tears of the Kingdom full price. $70 for a glorified expansion.
This was me 🤡 on launch day
You didnt mention that the spirit temple was tied to a linear quest, but, unlike the water temple, it didnt block you
Thank you for bringing up the Eight Heroine Quest, I shrieked of frustration when I finished it, I was so incredibly starved for anything of interest and I had placed my final hopes there, only to be hit by the realization that this game would not commit to anything narrative-wise. To be honest, I am quite furious at how all gerudo characters were handled in TotK, they doubled down on everything questionable from BotW while making their conflict with Hyrule part of the plot, and yet sidestepping any of the actual messiness that comes with it because it is unfathomable for Tears of the Kingdom that Hyrule could ever be slightly wrong even for a second, and it will snap its own neck rather than allow genuine conflict to happen or to follow-up on ideas that it could (should) have been establishing. Anyway, I am very glad TotK being subpar in many aspects is now a broader point of conversation, and your video is very thoughtful and level-headed so it's been a delight to watch!
Saying all of this as someone who hasn't played much of TotK, what a criminally good video! I shiver with dread in contemplating just how grueling of an edit this video must have been, but it really pays off. Every single clip was so deliberate and relevant to exactly what you were saying, and there was a cut seemingly every 5 seconds or less. Moreover, I'm genuinely jealous of this script, it's so deliberate and well backed up with examples peppering the entire thing, especially the Shrine segment. This video deserves to blow up (in the positive way, of course), and I'm stoked to see whatever you make next!
I had the exact same experience as you with the Construct Factory, and it was by far my favourite moment in the game!
Bumped into the Spirit Temple beforehand by happenstance, and I was simultaneously disappointed I couldn't enter it, and excited for when I could.
And yes, the Construct Factory is supposed to be the 'dungeon' part of Spirit Temple, I was still disappointed that there was only a boss to fight and nothing else :(
The amount of, “it’s just for kids” comments are so dumb. I hate that type of mentality. Just because TOTK is accessible to children does not mean it needs to dumb things down and treat its audience like we’re stupid. The best childrens’ media is one that actually treats them like adults and gives them things to think about. ; whether that be complex puzzles or a more engaging story with more than just 1 dimensional characters. I genuinely don’t understand why that’s so hard for people to grasp.
@@Spyderrrrlil I had a line in the original script slightly addressing that… and decided to cut it to be more concise. I maybe should’ve left it in. I feel like there are already shrines in the game that are complex AND made with an audience of all ages in mind. Really wish that was the norm for puzzles
My problems with BotW and Tears of War Kingdom are the complete lack of character development for Link. The only shred of personality for Link in BotW was removed in localization. In the Japanese version of BotW, the quest log is Link’s journal. I wanted that journal in TotK’s quest log. I want to develop an attachment to the other characters through Link as a character, not an avatar that the player controls. Yet, due to the open world design of the Wild era games (Age of Calamity excluded due to its nature as a Hyrule Warriors game), Link’s expressiveness is exclusive in the menu and great great fairy armor upgrades. In previous games like Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess, Link expresses emotions of his own that we relate with. When King Bulbin captured Colin, Link is enraged. When Zelda seals herself in a crystal to maintain the seal on Demise, Link is in emotional anguish, slamming his fist against the crystal in desperation. I want the Hero’s Journey formula back. Due to the nature of BotW’s and TotK’s story delivery, it makes me feel like a janitor, not Hyrule’s Hero.
I also had a feeling that the ending was just too happy. Everything worked out perfectly and this wasn't a trend in earlier Zelda games. The Hero of Time saved not one but two separate worlds yet barely anybody knows about it. In Majora's Mask we can also see the Deku Butler finding the corpse of his son during the credits which is pretty heavy. In Twilight Princess Link and Midna part ways only to never see each other again.
The video really stars at 36:05 all before that doesn't sum anything to the video, unless you want to hear how he experienced the zelda franchise and videogames.
Once again I wish totk had link go back in time with Zelda. If they did away with the depths entirely, and instead focused on changing the world to be one changed an untold number of years in the past, the world would be the same but different.
My personal idea is that the story would be more linear, and the past would contain 4 dungeons with key landmarks being changed. Between dungeons, story events and cutscenes would play out telling us the story of the rise of ganondorf. Some big events would occur where we get to experience the lore of the land, i.e. some box in botw mentions dueling peaks was split by a dragon, so maybe we could se that happen in game. After the first four, we should fight ganon and lose, so Zelda does her thing and in her last moments of lucidity sends link forward in time. Having failed, the sacrifice and loss will mean so much more. The second half would involve the current hyrule, but I spent less time thinking about that part
I was hoping that tears of the kingdom was going to focus on Link and Zelda running around and inspecting sky ruins and old places from botw and that she would be a bow and arrow companion like Tulin. In my opinion that would have made a good sequel and boss fights could be similar to the final section of botw. Obviously that’s not what we got but in my heart I was hoping that was a possibility. It doesn’t fix the game but a cope that made it enjoyable for me was experiencing a video game form of princess mononoke and castle in the sky. And the dragon end fight will always be an amazing moment for me, it’s a shame the whole game couldn’t be that good though. Also does anyone else feel cheated that dark link didn’t make a return in this game. Think about it with all the evil copy Zelda nonsense instead of fighting mini ganons in the gloom floor masters image if dark links popped out that would have been so fire.
My journey with video games was similar to yours (I didn't play every single Zelda game, though). I'm also playing video games since 1996 when I was 5 years old. So I totally understand your sentiment. And Zelda was a huge part of my gaming journey.
I started my Zelda journey with OoT (and the "screeching zombies" also took me out^^), but my favourite Zelda game ended up being TP. And in contrast to you, I didn't like BotW. So TotK was a hard pass for me. I've watched many critiques online and while it was very difficult to find negative critiques of BotW, I was happy to see that it wasn't as difficult for TotK. All the issues that people had with TotK, I already had with BotW.
The biggest part being the extrinsic/intrinsic reward. I personally never got the intrinsic reward shtick regarding BotW. If I climb up a mountain and will only be rewarded with a breathtaking view instead of a secret or a weapon or anything else but a shrine or a korok seed, I will do that in real life. I live in an area with many beautiful mountains and hills and many beautiful medieval castles on their tops. I get that intrinsic reward there, when I reach the top of these mountains and hills. I don't need to play BotW for that. So yeah, the intrinsic reward was never a selling point for me, personally.
Also, I'm a story driven player. That's why games like Minecraft never clicked with me, and BotW always felt more like Minecraft to me in which they shoehorned the minimum of Zelda lore/story. TotK seems to be even worse (in my opinion).
So personally, I'm happy that people are more critical of that game. I wish it would have already been the case with BotW, because maybe then we would have never gotten a game like TotK, but alas. In the end, tastes are different.
It’s wild seeing the only defense employed by the same few commenters across all critiques is: “But I found meaning where there wasn’t any, therefore I’m right”
Unironically worse than Fromsoft fanboys, and I would know, because I am one.
At least there are some good eggs, who still enjoy and play the game *while* recognizing it simply didn’t live up to the baseline expected standards for a new triple-A game. If you enjoyed it, the correct attitude is “i like it, I wish it were better, I want it to be better…” and not “what do you mean my plate of dirt isn’t appetizing? This dirt tastes great to me”
"I headcanoned that this dirt was actually a plate of spaghetti and really enjoyed it!"
Maybe I'm old fashioned but I still prefer video games that are already fun without any extra effort from me haha
Came here on recommendation from Skittybitty. Nevr thought id be so invested in people critiquing a game ill never play. BotW was reall good maybe thats why i care.
I never use shields in DS because of the higher damage output you get from two handing. My motivation isn’t challenge based….i found it less challenging to just dodge and not take damage, rather than take guaranteed, but reduced damage with the shield, while also dealing less.
58:08 breath of the wild breaks the convention walls, tears of the kingdom picks up the broken plaster and mashes it back into place.
The walls aren’t new. They are the same exact walls we’ve had since at least Ocarina. The same story beats, the same one-note characters and regurgitated plot (without any of the charm and loose-ness of BotW), the same “you’re not supposed to be here yet” energy in exploration, the same linear trip wire that bear-traps the player out of free exploration and into “oh…I guess I went the wrong way.”
If breath of the wild opened the doors to player-freedom-first, letting you have a unique sequence of gameplay events held together by a very simple story which doesn’t jump ahead of itself or needlessly pity backtrack you at every cutscene, tears of the kingdom desperately holds the door closed, trying to give each player the same experience by copy pasting cutscenes and forcing its open world to clash against a story that wants to be told one way, in one order.
And because its gameplay is largely just BotW 1.2, it, in the long run, doesn’t hold a candle to BotW
I disagree, you can make a sequel, you just need to do it better than Nintendo did lol
Right, I hate to act like a know it all or someone I’m not but I promise you the ideas I had for the gameplay mechanics and story were miles better than
I grew up with zelda on the NES. I'm from a country where we don't speak English as our first language. Me and my friend spend months making hand drawn maps of NES Zelda, mapping all it's secrets. We had our own hand book containing all the maps we made and the translations we made of the text characters spoke. We translated it ourselves with a dictionary and our parents. We had no magazine or Internet explaining everything to us. We spend months a manging all the secrets ourselves and completely beating the game. It was fantastic and the best gaming memory I have to date, even though it is one of my first memories. Wow what a time.
So great t hear your journey into this franchise. Thanks a thousand times! Subscribed.
If you can make a sequel to the *real* greatest game of all time and have it be well regarded, you can make a good sequel to Breath of the Wild. All it would've taken was more effort and less negligence...
i dont think it's "more" effort necessarily, but redirecting the effort to someplace besides rewriting all of botw's logic to make it physics-based
@@waffles245 I wholeheartedly agree with that. It's not that they didn't add enough effort, it's that their efforts went to places that didn't amount to much of anything.
TOTK is already well regarded, this is just a minority opinion. So many players were expecting this game to the point that half of its current lifetime sales were made on the first three days after release, and 20 million in less than a year afterwards. Your statement is about your personal preferences, which is fine, but pointing it out as anything beyond that is laughable at best.
@@jonathanhargraves2241 ultra hand, rewind and optimization had to have taken quite an insane amount of time, and as far as I’m concerned ultra hand and rewind are amazing abilities, I just don’t think Nintendo has the same outlook on the games issues.
Every issue the video had wasn’t from the perspective of the public Nintendo is trying to capture, Nintendo is trying to capture the casual nearly non gamer to appeal to their huge install base of switch owners, and in those eyes the game is nothing short of a masterpiece. I think Nintendo knows exactly what they’re doing and they judged the tradeoff for harsher combat at least wasn’t worth it. The shrines still could have been better though
@@cheke_hs thank you lmfao. I dont think people understand that people like skittybitty and cinnanel and majority of these "TOTK critiques" are all just a vocal minority. Not even vocal really just a very tiny minority. I dont like TOTK as much as BOTW but saying it isnt well regarded as an amazing sequel is just a fat LIE lmfao
Playing botw master mode for the first time has taught me a lot of things that you mention, like not being able to just spam Y anymore. I never used parry or flurry rush before and now ive got the timing down better (still not good lol), it feels so much more satisfying to have a rhythm of combat. Also im definitely going to implement that armor restriction method you use. I may be getting too cocky though bc i want to play dark souls or elden ring (mostly just bc i like medieval style melee combat open worlds, that obsession beginning with skyrim but i thirst for more challenge)
edit; thank you for the section on how flurries work in botw, i did not know that and i will def be applying that to my gameplay. i never thought to see which direction the enemies swing is going and mostly get lucky with it.. im embarrassed but thank you
I think the more obvious interpretation of the "revenge of the Zelda formula" is to argue that the developers more or less structurally remade BotW in TotK to house the DLC ideas they had that got out of hand. That's why I think it doesn't feel like a sequel: it never let go of the "DLC content" identity.
It is ironic that you are talking about how video games try (or do not try) to mimic real life, and a lot of the examples cited remind me of the number of ways to solve problems in the game that ended up beating TOTK for game of the year, Baldur's Gate 3.
I think it's very interesting that you have an almost completely different set of negatives to say about this game than I do. You barely brought up (imo) empty the skies and depths are, and how repetitive and derivative the new content is. I think it's a testament to how much they got wrong when crafting this "sequel"
as a game developer the fact the building system doesnt make the game implode im impressed.
as a player im disappointed in how things like the healing system have stayed shallow.
do you guys genuinely think Ninendo doesn't know the healing and combat are piss easy ?
@@fieldkaijuIf your point is that it's purposeful, that doesn't mean you have to like it
@@fieldkaiju oh so they made a bad game by choice then?
@@gsqussy Let's not mention that in older zelda games, your almost never needed to heal in the first place...
I clicked on the video, saw the time stamp, and said "Ah hell no, I'm not watching this". Yet, here I am...
Great job!
By the way, thank you for your actually nuanced criticism of the fundamental issues with the game, and thank you for not using hyperbole to inflate criticisms out of proportion. I've heard a lot of heavy criticisim towards Tears of the Kingdom, and while everyone's experience with a game is their own and their opinion's are valid, internet culture rewards objectivizing subjectiveness and blowing bad things out of proportion while belittling any other strengths the game might have.
Your criticisms do sound like they're coming from a place of love to the franchise and disappointment on the title (Instead of something like "This sucks, this is the worst, they ruined it, I hate it, this is bad, it's horrible, etc.)
I agree with your objective criticisms, and I realize I had a different experience in many of the subjective points you touch on (for instance, you accidentally fell right into the shrine at Thunderhead Isles, and I did the whole arduous walk from the tail to the head, etc).
About subjective things like that, I believe (being no game designer myself) that designing a game where you can do anything in any way you find, means people can also find things in unsatisfying ways.
I've never been hard on TOTK (I loved my hundred hours with it), but it does have problems that I'm sure stemmed from reusing everything instead of starting fresh, and one problem I immediately found on my first playthrough that would have been so easy to fix during development, and would have been a tiny step in differentiating TOTK from BOTW (in my opinion) would have been to make it so that no matter in what order you find the dragon tears, the memories play back in order.
To me that would have been a no brainer, since this game instead of doing random memories to flesh characters out decided to tell a very simple and very chronological story. It baffles me why they made the memories specific to the place you find them, since unlike BOTW, you're not actually recalling the memories when you arrive at a place you've been before, you're receiving a message from someone else (and you're being told a story), I don't know how that never occured to them, because even I, a person who can overlook most of TOTK's problems, can't overlook that.
That, and there should have been at least one more huge sky island, maybe full of people that took balloons up there, and started building a town there or something, idk,
Anyway, great video, be it praise or critcism, I can never get enough of hearing someone talk about Zelda for hours.
I think every video that critiqued Tears I've watched thus far agreed that the memories should have displayed their events in chronological order regardless of when you collect them.
There *are* wall cravings in the Forgotten Temple that show the correct order to get the memories but properly getting there through Impa's quest and following the order itself go against the game's philosophy of player freedom.
@@Takejiro24 You said it, it goes against the player freedom.
I remember Impa's quest and the map in the temple, I don't remember following the suggested order, I just went and checked out whichever memory was closer to where I was at the moment
@@Takejiro24I don't even think It'd be that much of an issue, if certain cutscenes didn't blatantly spoil others. (Looking at you, master sword) it's like they wanted memories to be linear but opted against it last minute, compared to botw which is much more segregated.
relate wayyy too hard to that convo about friends playing botw... back when it came out i generally followed the main quest, but basically a day or two after release i was talking to a classmate who beelined the opposite direction and went for the gerudo desert, and he told me all about the stuff he was trying to get into gerudo town, which is really funny looking back on it now.
There was such a wild sense of discovery the first few months of release, where since the map was so new seeing any unknown area in photos posted online felt like spoilers, and still remember when i first saw that clip online of someone cheesing the gerudo divine beast puzzles by just lining up all their metallic weapons to direct electricity and thinking "YOU CAN DO THAT???" Totk certainly had something similar in its early release with the machines, and i can't deny that even I enjoyed it at the time, but it felt like it wore off so quickly and afterwards you were just like "ok. now what."
I loved botw for being able to discover what was over the next hill, what a new zone would be like, and totk basically had none of what made me love doing that. While the sky and depths were awesome when i first started exploring them, it quickly becomes clear how samey they feel. Even the caves, which were something i desperately wanted in botw, are pretty much all the same, and there's like what. two really unique new things in the whole world that aren't related to the main quest? (thinking the thunderhead isles and the skydiving rings) Nothing akin the encounter with naydra, discovering the zonai ruins, satori mountain, first running into eventide island, or finding the horse god.
the whole game feels like it was designed as if botw wasn't played by millions, and that world isn't going to be incredibly familiar to them. Even with that its so confusing how dull the both the sky and the depths are, i could easily tell you all the interesting things i found in botw and point them on a map, but not really with the sky and the depths.
Since apparently this is the style of game they're doing for future zelda's as well, i truly hope they try and rectify this in the future. I'd be all for a smaller world as long as it feels like its one thats actually worthwhile to explore.(i started typing this up when you mentioned the school story and i got carried away, so if i repeat some of the stuff you said in the video uhh OOPS)
I'm not a Zelda fan by any means, but I really enjoyed BOTW even if I don't think it's mechanically or even content wise anything special. It had this certain mystery about it. I was constantly wondering what the life in the game world was like 100 years prior, before the the Calamity. It felt in, a way, nostalgic to roam the empty landscape and old ruins while doing your thing and I had a lot of fun. The empty, dying world felt good.
TOTK lacked that atmosphere completely. I didn't care much about seeing how the world was healing. The people in game actively made the experience worse. While the world was grander, it felt less interesting on a personal level and the Ultra Hand busywork all but destroyed any will I had to keep playing. I absolutely hated the building mechanics and all the gimmicky garbage it came with. The story, though it had a few interesting beats, never managed to hold my interest the same way as BOTW did, if at all. I dropped the game before I was anywhere near finished, because playing the game felt like one giant chore.
The tone in TOTK was just so much different and it didn't work for me.
That’s the one thing that I dislike about TOTK and what makes me like BOTW more, that being said I still like TOTK
Flurry rush is not imbalanced. You obviously don’t realize that choosing to flurry rush actually increases the breaking of weapons compared with no flurry rush.
I’m a simple man, I see Dark souls in a Zelda video I watch the whole thing
What makes me sad is that so many people didn't like it for so many different reasons despite it being so much fun. Trying to satisfy everyone they missed the mark for so many people.
Botw and totk's weapon system and combat can be stupid fun sometimes when you get creative. All the weapons becoming weak and the fact you have to fuse things to your weapons to make them stronger is such a great idea. From a more casual perspective, it just sucks quite a bit that weapons themselves break and it really incentivizes just completely avoiding combat if the rewards aren't good enough. The items should still break but the weapons themselves should be unbreakable or have a fusion limit that makes them break after you've fused it too much. That system makes casuals actually fight and learn the combat system more than if they make the quick decision to not fight to save weapons. Once they learn the system more they'll be able to get creative and learn how fun it can be to use the runes in different ways to make the fight even more fun.
That's the same idea I thought of while play the game! Wonder if this is a case of great minds thinking alike or is it because the potential rooms for improvement are so obvious lel
this is a horrible idea, dear god. this is completely ignoring the fact that now almost every weapon (except those in the sky) have a unique effect and some work well with their durability. this is a terrible idea that does not incentivize casuals in learning the game, but rather makes them always avoid the purpose of it's combat. This isn't a game where you level up as you defeat enemies. you are surviving here and vanquishing foes to save your life, not to "gain experience and increase stats"
I love flame/frost emitter shields
@@AlejandroRodriguez-cy8ee how does making weapons not break therefore giving you more opportunities to reliably engage in combat make players avoid combat? Genuine question here. Plus you're overblowing the unique effects because there're the passive effects that a couple of weapon types have and the basic damage up and durability up effects. If you watched the combat portion of the video they talk about how the unique effects are misleading and there's only a handful of cool and unique effects that are usually on weapons that aren't quite powerful enough that people would want to use. Every Zelda game uses some form of level up mechanics (including botw and totk, if you watched the video you would know this) and the survival bit really only applies for the very start of the game and eventide island. Every time you kill a more powerful enemy and gain a more powerful weapon in botw or totk, you never have to take a step down in weapon power if you conserve durability and only refresh your weapons with better ones. It's leveling up without actually leveling up.
@@gamerunamed538 it's probably the obvious room for improvement and the fact there had never been weapon durability prior to botw. It's very easy for people to point to getting rid of durability when decades of games worked wonderfully without it.
Good video but I wished you woulda fleshed out an overworld/ exploration section like you did the shrines
Every shrine really should have been a proving grounds. They’re easily the best shrines in both games.
I was more excited with what the theorists cooked up before TOTK release than what actually released 😔
If you notice most zelda theory channels are dead now. Totk was so bad story wise it destroyed and entire career field.
I had the same experience with the 5th sage dungeon. It was amazing! I encountered it fairly early, and thought, "Wow! I can't wait to see what other scintillating secrets exist out there!" How disappointed I would be.
I've said this before when discussing this game with friends and family who are die hard fans. And it causes butt hurt, but hopefully we can all be sensible here! I think it is impossible to have a zelda game that uses the same engine as the last game, set in the same world and same time frame and for it to have any impact. When we look at majoras mask, that game worked as a sequel because while it used the same assets from before, the world was completely fresh and the story and characters worked becauae they weren't so tightly wound to ocarina.
As soon as it became apparent that tears of the kingdom would reuse the exact same hyrule map, with the exact same engine and aesthetics, I think it was clear what we were going to get. And that, people, was essentially a $70 dlc. People were in uproar when this was said initially, but look at what we got! At best, you could call it "breath of the wild remixed". Because to the hardcore fans of the last game, who knew the map inside out, thats all this could have been. And it was a shame, to me at least, that the verticality aspect KILLED this game. Why the hell would i want to go and explore the new version of the map when it was so simple for me to just get airbourne and literally fly over everything to where i wanted to be. I ended up just not caring about this game in the end and wanting to get to the end of the story to see if it got good. It didn't! Although i will give it a loint for the final battles getting me on the edge of my seat and feeling epic. In summary, for me, this was a game that tried to do too many things and excelled at nothing making ultimately forgettable and unremarkable.