Couldn't have put it better. Both games drag each other down at the end of the day, but I think BOTW is compact enough that it's the more replayable in the long run.
I started another playthrough of Breath of the Wild and I love it’s simplicity. It feels much less overwhelming compared to Tears of the Kingdom, yet they’re both great at what they do.
Both BOTW and TOTK do amazing things. TOTK suffers as a sequel but also from decisions that go overboard with BOTW's foundation. I think that beyond the things it simply does well, BOTW shined thanks to its simplicity and focus on a strong vision that was fresh for the series. Putting hype aside for TOTK, it was pretty logical to double down on BOTW for the setting, structure and gameplay, but that's where it emphasizes important limits. BOTW didn't tell too much for a story but it was efficient. Non-linear memories of Zelda's struggle leading to an obvious outcome. The backstory of Ganon, the Sheikah and the kingdom was short but had lots of imagery, translated pretty well in the environments, mixed with tons of references to older games leading to cool interpretations of this world. TOTK upped the ante by hyping up the return of Ganondorf as the evil behind all this, and the mysterious Zonai, but neither really cared to address what was set up before nor really developed the new themes. We get a different interpretation of the usual tropes, which I liked on its own but I wish it didn't make half-baked commitments. The ambitious setting also involved more characters and twists that required build up, which is contradicted by insisting on non-linear short memories and, even as I was fortunate enough to learn the recommended memory order and stuck to it, by rewarding exploration with poorly timed spoilers (i.e. you can find Mineru early)... Meanwhile some secondary achievements are gated too much (e.g. Great Fairies, froggy armor). TOTK's main mechanics are more impressive, though Ultrahand ended up as overkill for many players. We could say it doesn't hurt because it's optional, but that implies two issues: first the devs have made clear that this mechanic and the physics that go with it were a _massive_ undertaking, which we can only applaud from a technical standpoint, but a technical feat doesn't make game by itself. It's definitely cool to use and has applications, but to me it didn't justify messing around repeatedly when I just wanted to progress to the next cool thing (that's why autobuild is there). So it took a lot of the game's time and resources for something most players will slightly tap into, which is bold but a sign of this game's imbalance. Second, the surface is still fundamentally designed for BOTW's experience, and it felt weird to go by so many places that I recognized but knew had nothing to offer, besides a reminder that I did something here before. Of course there are changes on the surface and caves, often there would be sweet little discoveries, but also often they're forgettable in isolation and quite repetitive. The sky islands were the big thing I wish we didn't get a chance to hype so much, as lackluster as they were. The Depths are the "big reveal" that was definitely amazing to discovery, but quickly lost steam quicker than anything I experienced in BOTW. That game at least was entirely new and had variety in its landscapes and some lively places. The Depths do not, and the opportunity they had to drop lore bits was barely used. The dungeons IMO are more ambitious in the lead-up, themes and bosses, but the puzzles and repetitive story outcome made it grating after the first one. The Fire temple is another extreme of unrestrained freedom hurting what's supposed to be an essential challenge, while the Water temple further confirms that sky islands were unfortunately conceptualized as basic platforms rather than meaningful places. Glad that I finished my first playthrough with the Lightning temple, at least the vibe was more appropriate. Then there's smaller stuff that ends up annoying by accumulation: I can understand minimalism and that the horizontal menu has sort options but damn, that really isn't an efficient UI. The Sage spirits have brain-dead AI and are just annoying to be around, they made sense in temples but should have been reworked for the rest of the adventure. Positive notes: I prefer BOTW but still love TOTK, I did a run without paraglider some time ago, it was a really interesting challenge. I'm glad they're "done" with this arc because they got that vision realized, I can't wait to see how they refine the template.
TOTK is fun, but BOTW is better in pretty much every way. The mechanics in BOTW are simple and easy to use, while TOTK is complicated and jenky, a lot of people say "TOTK fix BOTW", I'm like, no it didn't, weapons for exemplo, they have te same amount of damage and the same amount of power, the difference is that in BOTW you just pick them and use it, in TOTK you have to slowly open the menu, pick and item, trow in the ground then open the manu againto select fusion then fuse so you can finally use it, and you have to do that for every single weapon, is so stupid, every mechanic in TOTK envolve slowly open the menu while in BOTW you can do everything with one or two clicks. The sages power are terrible, it's by far the worse mechanic of the game, they also are very usuless, like, riju and yonobu just explode some stuff, they do exactly what bombs do, there is nothing special about that, the champions powers not only was more useful, but they were a lot easier to use. The bosses in BOTW actually attack you, in TOTK, they just stand there waiting for you to attack them, the memories were this really cool mechanics in BOTW, where you had to actually explore the map to find it, on TOTK they are essentially mark points on the map, which is pretty dumb, the koroks were this little fun challenge puzzles to keep you distracted on BOTW, on TOTK the are so tedious, you have to stop you progress, to buid something became a Uber for koroks, it's so stupit. There is also not anything fun or memorable to find on the TOTK map, on BOTW you had a few missions, like the dragon stuck on the mountain, or the terrey town or finding a weird blue worse, on TOTK I have more than 100 hours and everything I found was a bunch of NPCs asking for favors, there is nothing actually fun to do on the map outside the main missions. The Eventide island is a good exemple of how poor TOTK is, in BOTW the island is a fun and unique challenge, in TOTK they turn that into a bunch of repetive shrines, and that's the problem with TOTK, everything in TOTK is just a worse version of BOTW. Anyway, BOTW is a really good game, but TOTK is just a lazy sequel.
@lukasguziur4229 that's still a lot, in BOTW you don't have to keep opening the menu every 3 seconds, just pick a weapon in the ground and done. TOTK needs the menu for everything.
TOTK is amazing, but BOTW is just unmatchable, maybe Its just my nostalgia talking, as i played that game with my aunt when i was 9, having just acquired my switch, finsihing up that game was the most surreal experience in my life tbh, it was my first Zelda game, definetly my favorite game of all time
I'm with you 100% I would love to play BOTW again for the first time! It was such a different experience compared to past games and something about it still amazes me! But i still love TOTK more :)
That was a great analysis! I hadn't put it to words for myself yet, but I think I completely agree here. Tears of the Kingdom has the advantage of knowing what worked in Breath of the Wild and what didn't, but that doesn't invalidate Breath of the Wild at all. I ended up 200%-ing Breath of the Wild (I beat the whole thing in normal and master mode), so you'd think that I would have gotten sick of exploring the same terrain in Tears of the Kingdom, but since the developers *knew* that players had already explored Hyrule's surface, they leaned their efforts into an experience that wasn't solely focused on exploration. Unfortunately for me, I found that making Zonai devices to fight enemies, while fun at first, just ended up being way too cumbersome and resource heavy to realistically use in most monster encounters, so I would usually just have a fused weapon that was super good and I would just use those instead. Props to the people who engineered all sorts of Zonai builds though! That actually does remind me of one of the criticism I have with both games however. Flurry rushes are too overpowered when compared to perfect shielding. Flurry rushes reward the player with a certain number of "free" hits on the enemy depending on their weapon, whereas perfect shielding briefly stuns the enemy, allowing for maybe 1-3 extra hits, and if the shield's armor rating is high enough, then you can also disarm enemies. It can also reflect projectiles, which is a much bigger deal in BotW than TotK. Perfect shielding an enemy attack not only has a smaller window of opportunity than flurry rushing, but it's also more punishing, as a missed shield bash means you're still in range of the enemy's attack and you'll be punished. Dodging the enemy's attack too early doesn't give you a flurry rush opportunity, but you're still moving away from the attack, so it's very likely that you'll not take damage from the enemy, which is the most important part of defensive actions. This ends up teaching the player that flurry rushes are always the way to go unless you *need* to disarm the enemy. And if that's your only goal, then you could just use any of the electric weapons in either game to electrocute the enemy and get them to drop their weapons while ALSO doing damage to them. So yeah, even that aspect of perfect shielding isn't special... At least in BotW perfect shields can be used to reflect Guardian lasers, so that's a pretty important use for it. Maybe if perfect shielding also did damage to the enemy (like what the lynel shields do, except have that effect be for every shield and have the lynel shields do way more damage), then there would be more cases where perfect shielding would be useful over flurry rushes.
@@nathanielsmith1879 I do believe there is still one use for a perfect shield, if you can parry a lynel charge you get a chance to shoot them in the head, which gives you 4 hits that don’t take durability. Better than a flurry rush. It’s not as common as a guardian laser, but it isn’t rare either
@@minecrafter3448 Yes, that's true! Although perfect shielding *any* of the Lynel's attacks gives you the same window of opportunity. Perfect shielding is also the safer of the two main defense tactics when fighting Stone Taluses due to the area of effect of the Talus's thrown boulders.
I sure hope someone finds something like the IST glitch from BoTW for ToTK. I tried it a week ago, and was surprised to start a whole new save with my full wardrobe of armor. Couldn't bring the weapons, bows, and shields for some reason...
have to agree that totk is the better game. weapon durability in botw was the main issue keeping me from wanting to explore, quite the opposite of what the developers intended, so I quit the game. there's no rational reason you can give as to why weapons have such low durability, or why they cant be tempered or reforged to extend the lifespan(blacksmiths exist Nintendo!). totk kind of solved that issue, even if it's not perfect, though getting pristine weapons also helps immensely. I see way too comments on other vids concerning these two games and praising botw and deeming it the better game, but I wholeheartedly disagree. totk has its own issues but they dont actively discourage you from playing the game. shrines have also been somewhat simplified(discounting rauru's blessing), dungeons are more traditional even if they dont have quite the classic zelda feel and exploring is easier than ever before with zonai devices. totk was literally designed to eradicate the flaws of botw and did so uniquely. going back to botw would feel like a downgrade.
This is shucc an indepth video, it's great. I have played BOTW and I loved it, but i wasn't sure if i should buy TOTK. The Gadgets you get there did kinda scary me away from it, but now after watching this video i will consider trying it and see how great it is.
11:32 I will say that is common in most games though, I just finished castlvania aria of sorrow and realized all of the healing and mana potions a saved were now usless. Even though they could have been extremely useful earlier on
I love both games for different reasons I loved exploring botw for its new world. Totk is just botw but better. Although I miss exploring a new world I’m still disappointed totk didn’t bring us somewhere entirely new
If you judge by what each game added at the time; BOTW If you judge just based on what someone should play now if they never played either before and can only play 1: Totk
There’s things that I like and dislike about both games. But I enjoyed Breath of the Wild more. There’s three main reasons why: Characters Atmosphere Technology Breath of the Wild has superior characters and the champions abilities were more useful than the sage abilities. Characters like Sonia and Mineru don’t even come close to characters like Mipha and Urbosa and Kass was also way better than Penn who basically replaced him. Breath of the Wild has an eerie sense of loneliness in its atmosphere and overworld that no other game in the series can match. The entire land is destroyed and littered with ruins and like you said the death of the champions could be the fault of Zelda. The story is much more emotional and Link is basically traveling around this post apocalyptic land trying to figure out who he is. The Zonai were cool but I much prefer the Sheikah technology and the fact that it all disappeared without a trace of thought is absolutely mind numbing considering how important it was to the story and lore of breath of the wild. The guardians were better than gloom hands as they had a variety of forms and scattered much more around the land. The divine beasts were unique and interesting from a lore perspective and ancient weapons were an amazing addition. Also, revisiting certain places and areas in Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t really hit the same as the first time around. Perfect examples would be Tarrey Town, Hyrule Castle, Lost Woods, Death Mountain, and Zora’s Domain. I did enjoy the new abilities in Tears of the Kingdom even though I missed having stasis and an infinite amount of two different types of bombs. It had a really good ending, the story was decent and Zelda turning into a dragon was the ultimate sacrifice in the series besides The King flooded himself and the land in Wind Waker for hopes of a better future. The problem was that the memory formula didn’t work well for the story since it’s a linear story told in a non linear fashion. I also enjoyed the 5th sage side quest and the quests and storyline leading up to it. I think dungeons are overall lacking in both games and I hope in the future they can find a balance between traditional and open world with better and more dungeons.
I whole-heartedly agree that these games are best enjoyed in a vacuum, almost. And to that I'll say that when it comes to which is better in that regard, it's down to flavor. Do you like an experience of quiet solitude and discovery? Botw is your game. Do you like being able to play and do anything and everything in your own, creative way and build things? Totk. Both do what they do really, really well
Totk took my breath away on the first playthrough, but I didn't enjoy replays as much. Botw held my attention much better on replays. It's just a better overall game.
I love both games, but for me me, botw will always be my favourite, just because it came first. So much of totk is too similar to botw and I just didn’t get the same sense of awe and wonder playing totk. As someone who has 100%ed both games I can say that from a completionist perspective, Botw was a lot of fun to fully complete, however doing it all again in totk was honestly one of the least fun things I’ve ever done. I also think the way botw tells its story is much stronger than in totk. In botw you can discover the story in any order and it doesn’t really matter, however the way totk’s story works is much more linear and discovering it in a non- chronological order doesn’t really work as well. Overall, while Totk is technically the better game, botw is the far better experience because it came first and felt more fresh and original
"Zelda's transformation into a dragon is permanent"... Until the writers' decided it wasn't. What BotW does mildly better than TotK is deal with loss and sacrifice, although both pale in comparison to more structured stories, even within the Zelda series. That's the argument I've heard from others that stands out the most to me - the story is largely meaningless. I'm happy that Zelda returned in the end - I don't want her to have a sad / bad ending per se - but why raise the stakes on us by saying it's permanent, only to regress from that at the end?
I might be the odd one out, I really enjoyed playing both games but found the exposition cut scenes boring and tedious. I skip through them by mashing X as soon as a cut scene happens and get disappointed when skipping through isn’t an option.
I prefer Tears of the Kingdom. I revisit BOTW recently and I kill a few guardians cause I thought I missed bullying them lol. I killed I don’t know five or so. Rode the motorcycle around. Told myself I wasn’t going to restart the game and play a little more and then after a few more minutes I was naw I’m good, back to Tears of the Kingdom. Though it took me a bit to warm up to with the new gameplay cause I kept trying to play it like BOTW. Once I let that go, I now have become completely taken with the game even leaving and not playing Soulsborne games and have just been really enjoying myself with Tears. I honestly think it does about 90-95% of things better then BOTW. And I felt the pressure to not like it or enjoy less with such a loud audience trying to proclaim it to be a horrible or terrible game and sequel. But I remember the days back when Majora’s Mask came out and everyone at the time hated it in comparison to OOT and then after time somehow it age out of the initial hate into adoration and appreciation of it uniqueness. I hope that happens with Tears.
12:02 No it doesn't, at least for me. I *never* use my strong weapons (pristine, high modifiers, etc) even with the incentive of a strong monster part. I only ever use my weak ones to get the monster parts, put it on the strong weapon and effectively make that strong weapon go to waste. The only exception to this is the Master Sword, for obvious reasons.
@@minecrafter3448It could offer real rewards. Instead of being built on a system of predictable and fairly useless ones. Or a straight up better durability system. I recomend Skyward Sword, because the shield durability system there was already perfect, just needed to be expanded upon for the wider weapon selection.
@@amandaslough125 Predictable and fairly useless? It’s a system of constant improvement. The reward for combat is that next time you do combat combat is easier.
Tiny nitpick, but this game is not an RPG. By definition it might fall into that category, since you’re playing as a main character in a story driven narrative, but there are no core elements in this game that are staple to every RPG developed in Japan. This is more like action adventure / puzzle.
BoTW is my favorite Zelda game and one of my favorite games. ToTK is an objectively better game, though. It's essentially BoTW but more of everything that makes it great. Had ToTK been first it would be my favorite.
As a player who loves botw and is playing totk, I like both games for different reasons. But personally the magic didn’t hit as much in tears of the kingdom, probably due to me already having played the entire map in the first game leaving little to explore. Even if this is the case I love totk as well and I’m having fun exploring the game, finding new zonai creations clearing the dungeons, etc.
BotW has empty grassy fields with nothing to do in them. If you find the beta to have more replayability...do you, but BotW being so devoid of content is why I and many others would disagree
I think you somewhat overexagerated the amount of creative freedom in TOTK. While you technically have the option to build pretty much whatever you want, you get actively punished for doing so: why build anything else when you can just build a hoverbike? It is a lot cheaper and it has fantastic maneuverability. Even if you do spend your time and resources it will just be gone when; you reload your save, travel even to that area, go too far and tall the parts will eventually break. I think they made autobuild to combat this, but it is also lackluster: it costs precious zonaite which asks the player a question, do you want to save up your zonaite in order to expand your battery permanently or do you want to spend it all on some odd contraption which you wont be able to build on and will just disappear the moment you take a break? Also, the story in TOTK makes no sense, through the game being open world you can just stumble upon the cutscene where it is revealed that the zelda here is FAKE and all the characters pretend it is the real zelda and link doesnt say anything? also its a spoiler ig. The order of the cutscenes matter way more than it does in BOTW which hurts the story. Also, Zelda coming back in the ending really cheapens the moment Zelda swallows the secret stone and if you come back to watch the cutscene afterwards you dont care because you know Zelda comes back. TOTK didn't actually fix the problems in BOTW, it made them worse: the inventory is still a mess, healing is way too cheesy, weapon durability is still unbalanced. And added more problems. The replayability of TOTK is atrocious: puzzles are really slow, the time spent completing a puzzle is artificially lengthened by the time spent building something which just means that you will just opt for cheesing it if it is a shrine or dungeon you already completed. While I have to admit that BOTW also has a lot of issues, it gets a pass because of the expiremental nature of the game meanwhile TOTK is a sequel and therefore you expect Nintendo to actually solve the problems and this is the point I think you missed.
I can't fathom the argument that TotK improves on everything BotW did. It reads entirely on recency bias to me, because once you actually analyze the game, it falls apart. The amount of time wasted in just badly designed menu management means it's a downgrade from a pure gameplay standpoint at its core. Everything else is quickly designed slop because they spent so much time on a physics engine they forgot they had to make a full game (aka only the Gerudo region is really fleshed out). Fuse doesn’t improve weapon durability: it's a bandaid fix that let them market bad decisions as a feature. You still can't see how long something lasts. Weapons break quicker unless fused, but you need to break unfused ones to get most pristine versions to spawn in the depths. You still have to go through an obscure octorock hunt to repair them. Majority of fuse materials are worthless 1 atk menu hoarding. That infinite scroll "quick select" menu is a design sin. I won't make the largest essay about the story, but it's one of the worst written I've seen. It's littered with plot holes, inconsistencies, and ulitmately is pointless because there's no real consequences at the ending. It only works well on a surface level. But the major characters don't act with any real form of logic, Sonia exists just to be a shock value death (if you didn't spoil it for yourself), and nothing from the past actually makes a real difference in the present. You might as well be playing two different games because the dropped subplots make it obvious too it's handled poorly. Why are Ganondorf's minions mining in the depths again? The only objective improvements were things like being able to toss items directly, and switching out weapons when you get new ones from a chest. And the additional arrow types like dazzle, confusion, and homing. Everything else is the same, or made worse through the menu and limited zonai constructive system. Even if the content itself in TotK was labeled as "good" (I disagree except for a minor list of exceptions, but if I gave it the benefit of the doubt), I still wouldn't label it better because of the map. Not because it's the "same map" but because it "butchered" the map. The map was built with BotW gameplay in mind. The DNA is all over, integrated acutely. TotK content is haphazardly placed all over (for some concrete examples beyond fallen debris and monster camps, think of the great fairy flowers being plucked from their groves and "moved" to random hills, or the Zora shrine moving from the central of city pool to below the entrance bridge). Because of this, places that were important in BotW are now empty, despite the map being designed to show you they're important and to go there. The map and game content are continuously fighting each other, trying to lead the player into opposite directions. This overstimulation can be way more overwhelming to the brain than the simple increase of the game's checklist compared to the prequel causes. Unless you're flying overhead on a device, you're literally fighting with your brain to properly decide where to go on the map. And with today's modern world of constant tech stimuli and bombardment, I refuse to agree that's an "improvement" from its predecessor and "good game design".
Breath of the wild was great. Until you realized the ending was complete trash and the dlc just wasn't worth it. Tears of the kingdom was terrible. It felt like fortnight x zelda. To this day tears of the kingdom is the ONLY 3D zelda game I have not completed and have no plans to ever get back to it
@@PixelPikminmy dude really goes to any video he can of TotK and BotW just to cry about them. If you want your hand held, just go play the older entries but you're absolutely a troll. Literally every video praising BotW/TotK I see, you're there crying like you didn't even watch the videos
@PixelPikmin ...you look up videos on people praising BotW/TotK because you're salty they're opinion doesn't line up with yours. Your comments get shared around meme groups lol
First play experience: ToTK
Replayability: BoTW
In my experience, Breath of The Wild (Inc. DLC) is the best video game of all time.
Couldn't have put it better. Both games drag each other down at the end of the day, but I think BOTW is compact enough that it's the more replayable in the long run.
I started another playthrough of Breath of the Wild and I love it’s simplicity. It feels much less overwhelming compared to Tears of the Kingdom, yet they’re both great at what they do.
Both BOTW and TOTK do amazing things.
TOTK suffers as a sequel but also from decisions that go overboard with BOTW's foundation. I think that beyond the things it simply does well, BOTW shined thanks to its simplicity and focus on a strong vision that was fresh for the series. Putting hype aside for TOTK, it was pretty logical to double down on BOTW for the setting, structure and gameplay, but that's where it emphasizes important limits.
BOTW didn't tell too much for a story but it was efficient. Non-linear memories of Zelda's struggle leading to an obvious outcome. The backstory of Ganon, the Sheikah and the kingdom was short but had lots of imagery, translated pretty well in the environments, mixed with tons of references to older games leading to cool interpretations of this world.
TOTK upped the ante by hyping up the return of Ganondorf as the evil behind all this, and the mysterious Zonai, but neither really cared to address what was set up before nor really developed the new themes. We get a different interpretation of the usual tropes, which I liked on its own but I wish it didn't make half-baked commitments. The ambitious setting also involved more characters and twists that required build up, which is contradicted by insisting on non-linear short memories and, even as I was fortunate enough to learn the recommended memory order and stuck to it, by rewarding exploration with poorly timed spoilers (i.e. you can find Mineru early)... Meanwhile some secondary achievements are gated too much (e.g. Great Fairies, froggy armor).
TOTK's main mechanics are more impressive, though Ultrahand ended up as overkill for many players. We could say it doesn't hurt because it's optional, but that implies two issues: first the devs have made clear that this mechanic and the physics that go with it were a _massive_ undertaking, which we can only applaud from a technical standpoint, but a technical feat doesn't make game by itself. It's definitely cool to use and has applications, but to me it didn't justify messing around repeatedly when I just wanted to progress to the next cool thing (that's why autobuild is there). So it took a lot of the game's time and resources for something most players will slightly tap into, which is bold but a sign of this game's imbalance. Second, the surface is still fundamentally designed for BOTW's experience, and it felt weird to go by so many places that I recognized but knew had nothing to offer, besides a reminder that I did something here before.
Of course there are changes on the surface and caves, often there would be sweet little discoveries, but also often they're forgettable in isolation and quite repetitive. The sky islands were the big thing I wish we didn't get a chance to hype so much, as lackluster as they were. The Depths are the "big reveal" that was definitely amazing to discovery, but quickly lost steam quicker than anything I experienced in BOTW. That game at least was entirely new and had variety in its landscapes and some lively places. The Depths do not, and the opportunity they had to drop lore bits was barely used.
The dungeons IMO are more ambitious in the lead-up, themes and bosses, but the puzzles and repetitive story outcome made it grating after the first one. The Fire temple is another extreme of unrestrained freedom hurting what's supposed to be an essential challenge, while the Water temple further confirms that sky islands were unfortunately conceptualized as basic platforms rather than meaningful places. Glad that I finished my first playthrough with the Lightning temple, at least the vibe was more appropriate.
Then there's smaller stuff that ends up annoying by accumulation: I can understand minimalism and that the horizontal menu has sort options but damn, that really isn't an efficient UI. The Sage spirits have brain-dead AI and are just annoying to be around, they made sense in temples but should have been reworked for the rest of the adventure.
Positive notes: I prefer BOTW but still love TOTK, I did a run without paraglider some time ago, it was a really interesting challenge. I'm glad they're "done" with this arc because they got that vision realized, I can't wait to see how they refine the template.
Both games are masterpieces and both excel at different elements. But saying either of them is "bad" is just pure copium.
"Both. Both is good."
TOTK is fun, but BOTW is better in pretty much every way.
The mechanics in BOTW are simple and easy to use, while TOTK is complicated and jenky, a lot of people say "TOTK fix BOTW", I'm like, no it didn't, weapons for exemplo, they have te same amount of damage and the same amount of power, the difference is that in BOTW you just pick them and use it, in TOTK you have to slowly open the menu, pick and item, trow in the ground then open the manu againto select fusion then fuse so you can finally use it, and you have to do that for every single weapon, is so stupid, every mechanic in TOTK envolve slowly open the menu while in BOTW you can do everything with one or two clicks.
The sages power are terrible, it's by far the worse mechanic of the game, they also are very usuless, like, riju and yonobu just explode some stuff, they do exactly what bombs do, there is nothing special about that, the champions powers not only was more useful, but they were a lot easier to use.
The bosses in BOTW actually attack you, in TOTK, they just stand there waiting for you to attack them, the memories were this really cool mechanics in BOTW, where you had to actually explore the map to find it, on TOTK they are essentially mark points on the map, which is pretty dumb, the koroks were this little fun challenge puzzles to keep you distracted on BOTW, on TOTK the are so tedious, you have to stop you progress, to buid something became a Uber for koroks, it's so stupit.
There is also not anything fun or memorable to find on the TOTK map, on BOTW you had a few missions, like the dragon stuck on the mountain, or the terrey town or finding a weird blue worse, on TOTK I have more than 100 hours and everything I found was a bunch of NPCs asking for favors, there is nothing actually fun to do on the map outside the main missions.
The Eventide island is a good exemple of how poor TOTK is, in BOTW the island is a fun and unique challenge, in TOTK they turn that into a bunch of repetive shrines, and that's the problem with TOTK, everything in TOTK is just a worse version of BOTW.
Anyway, BOTW is a really good game, but TOTK is just a lazy sequel.
you can just open the quick menu sort by most damage and drop the item you want from the quick menu skill issue tbh
@lukasguziur4229 that's still a lot, in BOTW you don't have to keep opening the menu every 3 seconds, just pick a weapon in the ground and done. TOTK needs the menu for everything.
ToTK is so peak. Its unreal how good it is even with the flaws.
TOTK is amazing, but BOTW is just unmatchable, maybe Its just my nostalgia talking, as i played that game with my aunt when i was 9, having just acquired my switch, finsihing up that game was the most surreal experience in my life tbh, it was my first Zelda game, definetly my favorite game of all time
I'm with you 100%
I would love to play BOTW again for the first time! It was such a different experience compared to past games and something about it still amazes me! But i still love TOTK more :)
That was a great analysis! I hadn't put it to words for myself yet, but I think I completely agree here. Tears of the Kingdom has the advantage of knowing what worked in Breath of the Wild and what didn't, but that doesn't invalidate Breath of the Wild at all. I ended up 200%-ing Breath of the Wild (I beat the whole thing in normal and master mode), so you'd think that I would have gotten sick of exploring the same terrain in Tears of the Kingdom, but since the developers *knew* that players had already explored Hyrule's surface, they leaned their efforts into an experience that wasn't solely focused on exploration.
Unfortunately for me, I found that making Zonai devices to fight enemies, while fun at first, just ended up being way too cumbersome and resource heavy to realistically use in most monster encounters, so I would usually just have a fused weapon that was super good and I would just use those instead. Props to the people who engineered all sorts of Zonai builds though!
That actually does remind me of one of the criticism I have with both games however. Flurry rushes are too overpowered when compared to perfect shielding. Flurry rushes reward the player with a certain number of "free" hits on the enemy depending on their weapon, whereas perfect shielding briefly stuns the enemy, allowing for maybe 1-3 extra hits, and if the shield's armor rating is high enough, then you can also disarm enemies. It can also reflect projectiles, which is a much bigger deal in BotW than TotK. Perfect shielding an enemy attack not only has a smaller window of opportunity than flurry rushing, but it's also more punishing, as a missed shield bash means you're still in range of the enemy's attack and you'll be punished. Dodging the enemy's attack too early doesn't give you a flurry rush opportunity, but you're still moving away from the attack, so it's very likely that you'll not take damage from the enemy, which is the most important part of defensive actions. This ends up teaching the player that flurry rushes are always the way to go unless you *need* to disarm the enemy. And if that's your only goal, then you could just use any of the electric weapons in either game to electrocute the enemy and get them to drop their weapons while ALSO doing damage to them. So yeah, even that aspect of perfect shielding isn't special...
At least in BotW perfect shields can be used to reflect Guardian lasers, so that's a pretty important use for it. Maybe if perfect shielding also did damage to the enemy (like what the lynel shields do, except have that effect be for every shield and have the lynel shields do way more damage), then there would be more cases where perfect shielding would be useful over flurry rushes.
@@nathanielsmith1879 I do believe there is still one use for a perfect shield, if you can parry a lynel charge you get a chance to shoot them in the head, which gives you 4 hits that don’t take durability. Better than a flurry rush. It’s not as common as a guardian laser, but it isn’t rare either
@@minecrafter3448 Yes, that's true! Although perfect shielding *any* of the Lynel's attacks gives you the same window of opportunity. Perfect shielding is also the safer of the two main defense tactics when fighting Stone Taluses due to the area of effect of the Talus's thrown boulders.
I sure hope someone finds something like the IST glitch from BoTW for ToTK. I tried it a week ago, and was surprised to start a whole new save with my full wardrobe of armor. Couldn't bring the weapons, bows, and shields for some reason...
0/10 video, should've come to the conclusion that the better game is clearly the hit 2017 video game Hollow Knight
@@UnFunnyValentineGGG what about the hit game cave story?
@@TheRenaissanceOfficial while the hit 2004 game Cave Story is quite good, i feel that the video should stay on topic
lmao Skyrim and Minecraft blow both of these games clean out of the water.
Preach, Hollow Knight is in my top 5 favorite games
have to agree that totk is the better game. weapon durability in botw was the main issue keeping me from wanting to explore, quite the opposite of what the developers intended, so I quit the game. there's no rational reason you can give as to why weapons have such low durability, or why they cant be tempered or reforged to extend the lifespan(blacksmiths exist Nintendo!). totk kind of solved that issue, even if it's not perfect, though getting pristine weapons also helps immensely.
I see way too comments on other vids concerning these two games and praising botw and deeming it the better game, but I wholeheartedly disagree. totk has its own issues but they dont actively discourage you from playing the game. shrines have also been somewhat simplified(discounting rauru's blessing), dungeons are more traditional even if they dont have quite the classic zelda feel and exploring is easier than ever before with zonai devices. totk was literally designed to eradicate the flaws of botw and did so uniquely. going back to botw would feel like a downgrade.
Totk is my choice tbh better game overall and honestly exploration feels rewarding in totk
This is shucc an indepth video, it's great. I have played BOTW and I loved it, but i wasn't sure if i should buy TOTK. The Gadgets you get there did kinda scary me away from it, but now after watching this video i will consider trying it and see how great it is.
11:32 I will say that is common in most games though, I just finished castlvania aria of sorrow and realized all of the healing and mana potions a saved were now usless. Even though they could have been extremely useful earlier on
I love both games for different reasons
I loved exploring botw for its new world.
Totk is just botw but better.
Although I miss exploring a new world I’m still disappointed totk didn’t bring us somewhere entirely new
When I do something cool I'm awesome but when link does somthing dumb he's stupid
If you judge by what each game added at the time; BOTW
If you judge just based on what someone should play now if they never played either before and can only play 1: Totk
Personally I feel like TotK is a straight up upgrade to BotW in every single way
17:56 that’s actually exactly what they did, that’s how the game was incepted
There’s things that I like and dislike about both games. But I enjoyed Breath of the Wild more. There’s three main reasons why:
Characters
Atmosphere
Technology
Breath of the Wild has superior characters and the champions abilities were more useful than the sage abilities. Characters like Sonia and Mineru don’t even come close to characters like Mipha and Urbosa and Kass was also way better than Penn who basically replaced him.
Breath of the Wild has an eerie sense of loneliness in its atmosphere and overworld that no other game in the series can match. The entire land is destroyed and littered with ruins and like you said the death of the champions could be the fault of Zelda. The story is much more emotional and Link is basically traveling around this post apocalyptic land trying to figure out who he is.
The Zonai were cool but I much prefer the Sheikah technology and the fact that it all disappeared without a trace of thought is absolutely mind numbing considering how important it was to the story and lore of breath of the wild. The guardians were better than gloom hands as they had a variety of forms and scattered much more around the land. The divine beasts were unique and interesting from a lore perspective and ancient weapons were an amazing addition.
Also, revisiting certain places and areas in Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t really hit the same as the first time around. Perfect examples would be Tarrey Town, Hyrule Castle, Lost Woods, Death Mountain, and Zora’s Domain.
I did enjoy the new abilities in Tears of the Kingdom even though I missed having stasis and an infinite amount of two different types of bombs. It had a really good ending, the story was decent and Zelda turning into a dragon was the ultimate sacrifice in the series besides The King flooded himself and the land in Wind Waker for hopes of a better future. The problem was that the memory formula didn’t work well for the story since it’s a linear story told in a non linear fashion. I also enjoyed the 5th sage side quest and the quests and storyline leading up to it. I think dungeons are overall lacking in both games and I hope in the future they can find a balance between traditional and open world with better and more dungeons.
Botw was fine in my opinion. The only problem i had with it was that getting around too long. Totk was amazing for me. 100% it.
I loved both games and I have played both twice. The best improvement for me in TOTK was being able to ride dragons. ❤
I whole-heartedly agree that these games are best enjoyed in a vacuum, almost. And to that I'll say that when it comes to which is better in that regard, it's down to flavor. Do you like an experience of quiet solitude and discovery? Botw is your game. Do you like being able to play and do anything and everything in your own, creative way and build things? Totk. Both do what they do really, really well
0:35 such a good joke
Totk took my breath away on the first playthrough, but I didn't enjoy replays as much.
Botw held my attention much better on replays. It's just a better overall game.
I love both games, but for me me, botw will always be my favourite, just because it came first. So much of totk is too similar to botw and I just didn’t get the same sense of awe and wonder playing totk. As someone who has 100%ed both games I can say that from a completionist perspective, Botw was a lot of fun to fully complete, however doing it all again in totk was honestly one of the least fun things I’ve ever done. I also think the way botw tells its story is much stronger than in totk. In botw you can discover the story in any order and it doesn’t really matter, however the way totk’s story works is much more linear and discovering it in a non- chronological order doesn’t really work as well. Overall, while Totk is technically the better game, botw is the far better experience because it came first and felt more fresh and original
"Zelda's transformation into a dragon is permanent"... Until the writers' decided it wasn't. What BotW does mildly better than TotK is deal with loss and sacrifice, although both pale in comparison to more structured stories, even within the Zelda series. That's the argument I've heard from others that stands out the most to me - the story is largely meaningless.
I'm happy that Zelda returned in the end - I don't want her to have a sad / bad ending per se - but why raise the stakes on us by saying it's permanent, only to regress from that at the end?
Well-done analysis on what makes both games so great. I especially liked how you covered the stories
I might be the odd one out, I really enjoyed playing both games but found the exposition cut scenes boring and tedious. I skip through them by mashing X as soon as a cut scene happens and get disappointed when skipping through isn’t an option.
When a ssance?
I prefer Tears of the Kingdom. I revisit BOTW recently and I kill a few guardians cause I thought I missed bullying them lol. I killed I don’t know five or so. Rode the motorcycle around. Told myself I wasn’t going to restart the game and play a little more and then after a few more minutes I was naw I’m good, back to Tears of the Kingdom. Though it took me a bit to warm up to with the new gameplay cause I kept trying to play it like BOTW. Once I let that go, I now have become completely taken with the game even leaving and not playing Soulsborne games and have just been really enjoying myself with Tears. I honestly think it does about 90-95% of things better then BOTW. And I felt the pressure to not like it or enjoy less with such a loud audience trying to proclaim it to be a horrible or terrible game and sequel. But I remember the days back when Majora’s Mask came out and everyone at the time hated it in comparison to OOT and then after time somehow it age out of the initial hate into adoration and appreciation of it uniqueness. I hope that happens with Tears.
12:02 No it doesn't, at least for me. I *never* use my strong weapons (pristine, high modifiers, etc) even with the incentive of a strong monster part. I only ever use my weak ones to get the monster parts, put it on the strong weapon and effectively make that strong weapon go to waste. The only exception to this is the Master Sword, for obvious reasons.
Well there’s nothing more the game can do. It gives you an immediate reward for using strong weapons, it literally can’t do better.
@@minecrafter3448 But it gives the same reward for using weak weapons. But yeah, it's probably a me problem.
@@minecrafter3448It could offer real rewards. Instead of being built on a system of predictable and fairly useless ones.
Or a straight up better durability system. I recomend Skyward Sword, because the shield durability system there was already perfect, just needed to be expanded upon for the wider weapon selection.
@@amandaslough125 Predictable and fairly useless? It’s a system of constant improvement. The reward for combat is that next time you do combat combat is easier.
BOTW is my favorite game and nothing is changing that fact.
I prefer botw personally, but I do mostly agree with you
Tiny nitpick, but this game is not an RPG. By definition it might fall into that category, since you’re playing as a main character in a story driven narrative, but there are no core elements in this game that are staple to every RPG developed in Japan. This is more like action adventure / puzzle.
BoTW is my favorite Zelda game and one of my favorite games. ToTK is an objectively better game, though. It's essentially BoTW but more of everything that makes it great. Had ToTK been first it would be my favorite.
I personally love Botw more. The atmosphere is really what seals it for me, along with a better story imo.
Totk just takes to long, and can't match the experience of botw.
In terms of game play and customization I fell totk is better but in terms of story and execution of said story and environment I think botw is better
I prefer Ocarina of Time to Breath of the wild.
As a player who loves botw and is playing totk, I like both games for different reasons. But personally the magic didn’t hit as much in tears of the kingdom, probably due to me already having played the entire map in the first game leaving little to explore. Even if this is the case I love totk as well and I’m having fun exploring the game, finding new zonai creations clearing the dungeons, etc.
I see that you choose Minecraft Er’s option
He’s doing the thumbnail test, 3 different thumbnails
Oh
But I do like the new one thi
BotW has a high replay value while TotK is just way to bloated.
BotW has empty grassy fields with nothing to do in them. If you find the beta to have more replayability...do you, but BotW being so devoid of content is why I and many others would disagree
Tears of the Kingdom sweeps Beta of the Wild
Breath of the Wild is better
Clearly im not playing enough Tears of the Kingdom because I have yet to beat it despite playing it for the past 3 days for several hours a day.
@@AnAveragePurplePikmin clearly you have now been spoiled
@@TheRenaissanceOfficial I didn't watch the video I just kept thus comment so I remember to comeback and watch it later.
Oh you have so much more to go
A complete playthrough is 120 hours. That’s not 100%, that’s a complete playthrough
I think you somewhat overexagerated the amount of creative freedom in TOTK. While you technically have the option to build pretty much whatever you want, you get actively punished for doing so: why build anything else when you can just build a hoverbike? It is a lot cheaper and it has fantastic maneuverability. Even if you do spend your time and resources it will just be gone when; you reload your save, travel even to that area, go too far and tall the parts will eventually break. I think they made autobuild to combat this, but it is also lackluster: it costs precious zonaite which asks the player a question, do you want to save up your zonaite in order to expand your battery permanently or do you want to spend it all on some odd contraption which you wont be able to build on and will just disappear the moment you take a break? Also, the story in TOTK makes no sense, through the game being open world you can just stumble upon the cutscene where it is revealed that the zelda here is FAKE and all the characters pretend it is the real zelda and link doesnt say anything? also its a spoiler ig. The order of the cutscenes matter way more than it does in BOTW which hurts the story. Also, Zelda coming back in the ending really cheapens the moment Zelda swallows the secret stone and if you come back to watch the cutscene afterwards you dont care because you know Zelda comes back. TOTK didn't actually fix the problems in BOTW, it made them worse: the inventory is still a mess, healing is way too cheesy, weapon durability is still unbalanced. And added more problems. The replayability of TOTK is atrocious: puzzles are really slow, the time spent completing a puzzle is artificially lengthened by the time spent building something which just means that you will just opt for cheesing it if it is a shrine or dungeon you already completed. While I have to admit that BOTW also has a lot of issues, it gets a pass because of the expiremental nature of the game meanwhile TOTK is a sequel and therefore you expect Nintendo to actually solve the problems and this is the point I think you missed.
I can't fathom the argument that TotK improves on everything BotW did. It reads entirely on recency bias to me, because once you actually analyze the game, it falls apart. The amount of time wasted in just badly designed menu management means it's a downgrade from a pure gameplay standpoint at its core. Everything else is quickly designed slop because they spent so much time on a physics engine they forgot they had to make a full game (aka only the Gerudo region is really fleshed out).
Fuse doesn’t improve weapon durability: it's a bandaid fix that let them market bad decisions as a feature. You still can't see how long something lasts. Weapons break quicker unless fused, but you need to break unfused ones to get most pristine versions to spawn in the depths. You still have to go through an obscure octorock hunt to repair them. Majority of fuse materials are worthless 1 atk menu hoarding. That infinite scroll "quick select" menu is a design sin.
I won't make the largest essay about the story, but it's one of the worst written I've seen. It's littered with plot holes, inconsistencies, and ulitmately is pointless because there's no real consequences at the ending. It only works well on a surface level. But the major characters don't act with any real form of logic, Sonia exists just to be a shock value death (if you didn't spoil it for yourself), and nothing from the past actually makes a real difference in the present. You might as well be playing two different games because the dropped subplots make it obvious too it's handled poorly. Why are Ganondorf's minions mining in the depths again?
The only objective improvements were things like being able to toss items directly, and switching out weapons when you get new ones from a chest. And the additional arrow types like dazzle, confusion, and homing. Everything else is the same, or made worse through the menu and limited zonai constructive system.
Even if the content itself in TotK was labeled as "good" (I disagree except for a minor list of exceptions, but if I gave it the benefit of the doubt), I still wouldn't label it better because of the map. Not because it's the "same map" but because it "butchered" the map. The map was built with BotW gameplay in mind. The DNA is all over, integrated acutely. TotK content is haphazardly placed all over (for some concrete examples beyond fallen debris and monster camps, think of the great fairy flowers being plucked from their groves and "moved" to random hills, or the Zora shrine moving from the central of city pool to below the entrance bridge). Because of this, places that were important in BotW are now empty, despite the map being designed to show you they're important and to go there. The map and game content are continuously fighting each other, trying to lead the player into opposite directions. This overstimulation can be way more overwhelming to the brain than the simple increase of the game's checklist compared to the prequel causes. Unless you're flying overhead on a device, you're literally fighting with your brain to properly decide where to go on the map. And with today's modern world of constant tech stimuli and bombardment, I refuse to agree that's an "improvement" from its predecessor and "good game design".
such a skibidi vid
Then crying harder and make river in bangladesh 😂😂😂
Breath of the wild was great. Until you realized the ending was complete trash and the dlc just wasn't worth it. Tears of the kingdom was terrible. It felt like fortnight x zelda. To this day tears of the kingdom is the ONLY 3D zelda game I have not completed and have no plans to ever get back to it
They are both incomplete cash grabs? AKA baby's first "Open World" game? Because as an open world lover and a Zelda fan, these games were incomplete.
You don’t know what a cash grab is. They wouldn’t spent 6 years developing each game for a quick ‘cash grab’
Clueless 🗿
@@PixelPikminmy dude really goes to any video he can of TotK and BotW just to cry about them. If you want your hand held, just go play the older entries but you're absolutely a troll. Literally every video praising BotW/TotK I see, you're there crying like you didn't even watch the videos
@PixelPikmin ...you look up videos on people praising BotW/TotK because you're salty they're opinion doesn't line up with yours. Your comments get shared around meme groups lol
weak bait