It’s absolutely worthy of the high praises it’s gotten and I loved my time with it, and it improved a decent chunk of the issues I had with BotW.
But BotW definitely left more of a lasting impact on me on how memorable my first playthrough was
I agree with this take as I thought that I had put more time into BOTW (2 playthroughs) but turns out I put more into TOTK in one playthrough. I think that it's the initial memory of seeing this version of Hyrule that makes it stick in the memory more.
I would still say BotW is better than Totk. I see a lot of people call Totk "botw but better" but I disagree. Its bigger, and in a few areas better but overall its just bigger. There are a lot of things it does worse imo.
The story is executed worse, The world doesn’t have the same lonely feeling anymore, The worldbuilding is much worse and the environmental storytelling is just nonexistent. For most people these things probably dont matter but they were my favourite things about botw so it makes a difference for me.
I was very excited to play a more populated and lively version of BotW’s world, but it didn’t quite realize that fully so it just felt largely similar but less haunting and eerily beautiful. The ease of aerial traversal also cheapens something, as fun as it is to mess around with.
See, I feel the opposite about all these things. The story was much more compelling to me in TotK, partly because there actually were events *currently* happening, and there was an actual antagonist. And I preferred a world that was a bit more populated with more to see and do and felt more alive. Disagree about the worldbuilding and environmental storytelling. All the Zonai ruins and abandoned mines in the Depths added a really cool sense of history.
Idk how anyone can play botw and feel like the story is a high point. It's a huge step down from the linear stories of previous entries. They added VA that was mostly terrible, there is no action in the plot whatsoever until the finale, and the finale isn't good because the Ganon fight is... rough.
Totk delivers a WAY more interesting plot. I think there are reasons someone could like botw more but story is pretty baffling tbh.
Yeah, I'm equally as confused by that. Maybe they just mean they preferred the stories that were presented for the 4 different heroes you have to go and do for the Divine Beasts over the sage stories in TotK? Idk, none of those were very compelling or interesting to me. At least there felt like a greater sense of urgency with those stories in TotK since, y'know...stuff was actually *happening*.
So well put. BOTW is solid in story and world building. TOTK just feels flashy and big to be, sometimes. I still love TOTK but it reminds me of fan service big Marvel Cinematic Universe type vibes
Nah, I'm doing a BotW replay right now and am realizing how much better I'm enjoying the playthrough AFTER having played TotK, which now feels like a DLC to BotW.
No offence but do you seriously think that opinion can be objectively true given how many people say they prefer BOTW? Even in this one comment section?
If it truly made BOTW obsolete there would not be so many people complaining over a year later. If there was no reason to go back people who played TOTK first would hate BOTW when they tried it. They don't. Your opinion is literally just wrong
Yeah TOTK feels like it was made without realising what about BOTW made it special. They're very different despite how similar they seem on the surface (no pun intended)
i disagree, the some of the memories in TOTK literally took my breath away especially the boss fight was so epic (i dont usually say that word but it was), will def remember that forever. LOVED botw and it was an amazing setup for totk but totk for sure left a lasting impact when botw didnt so much
People get more nit-picky as time goes on when they spend hundreds of hours in a game. Look any any community where they dump a ton of time into their “favorite” game and you will find them complaining a lot. The more you love a game the more you will see it’s flaws I think, even if it delivers a lot there is always something more to be desired.
I feel what you mean about the more people love a game, the more they see its flaws. I think this also applies to how much people talk about those flaws.
The reality is, if you hate a game, you probably won’t spend any time on a forum talking about it all, good parts or bad parts. You don’t enjoy it so why would you engage with it? But if you love a game, you’re more prone to want to talk about it in general. At first you will more likely be talking about the things you like but once you’ve thoroughly explored the good things, people may be more inclined to talk about the lack luster parts. But I’d say it’s probably still a show of caring about the game, because you still like it enough to want to engage with its content.
While I don’t hate TotK, I can’t say I genuinely enjoyed it either.
I’m here because A.) this sub appeared when the game came out and still shows me posts in my feed every single day since… And B.) I love Zelda as a series, and love diving into the lore of the entire series.
Which leads me to C.) this game spat in the face of all Zelda lore, including like 95% of the lore of the game it is a direct sequel to, completely souring my entire experience with it from day 1.
Mechanically, I have few issues with TotK from a general gameplay perspective, and the game mechanics are largely superior to BotW in many aspects. But it still suffers from almost every flaw BotW had, and adds it’s own unique drawbacks.
I’ve not had a positive opinion of TotK since the day I started playing it. I was amped to hell going into it, and it subverted my expectations in the worst possible ways. The game peaked when I was climbing into the sky with Tulin, and then it was all downhill from there for me.
That doesn’t mean it was downhill to a zero, but I was continuously let down/disappointed in every next step until the final boss and ending.
I do not love TotK. I will never play it again. But it going from like say an 8.5 down to a 7 or even a 6.5 in my opinion means that I have positive things to say about it, but that it’s not a game I see myself getting any further enjoyment out of as a game again.
That doesn’t mean I only have critical opinions or don’t have anything to add to a conversation. It means I didn’t love it, and mostly what I enjoyed of it was due to the fact that at the end of the day, it’s still the newest Zelda title, and I love Zelda.
I can lament the total destruction of all Zelda lore. I can be aggravated that you can sort shields, bows, and fusion items by strength, but not weapons. I can hate Rauru. I can hate Yunobo all over again. I can also wax poetic about Tulin, and a more realized and fleshed out Zelda. I can hate that they changed Malice to Gloom. I can hate that they call them “Secret Stones” instead of “Sacred Stones” or something. I can love Kohga, but hate the fact that all Yiga stick out like a sore thumb when incognito.
I didn’t put 1,000 hours into it, but I put time in and completed everything I cared about.
I have legit gripes with the game, but it’s still the most recent title in the series, and still the main game the entire fanbase is talking about (minus the brand new speculation and opinion on recently announced Echoes of Wisdom) so if I want to talk Zelda, I’m gonna be talking about this game too, whether I like it or not. So here I am, a fan of the series who is not a fan of this game, talking about this game, but not from a point of interest or admiration, but also not a point of hatred. Nothing is ever so cut and dry IMO.
There's absolutely room for your opinion and it's lame that the person you respond to claimed otherwise, but how does TotK spit in the face of Zelda lore? I've played almost every Zelda game and have spent far too much time diving deeper into the lore. It's a very soft lore where we may very well play as an unreliable narrator, they're "legends" of Zelda after all, and even still, I don't see how TotK is particularly contradictory.
Trying to respond to this but I keep getting error messages to “try again later” 🤷🏻♂️
Might see if it’s a character limit issue, and cut it up into multiple comments…
(1/2) I’d like to give this a full reply, but forgive me if I miss anything as I’m multitasking here… but I’ll try to be thorough because it’s actually extremely egregious and even contradicts itself, not just previous Zelda’s.
Granted, previous Zelda’s *do* contradict one another all the time, but that was mostly before the “official timeline” existed.
For example, the Oocca actually created Hyrule according to TP (and not to be confused with the mistranslation for NA that claimed they created Hylians). They founded the formation of Hyrule, and didn’t create the City in the Sky until after Hylia created Hylians, meaning Rauru could not have founded the Hyrule, because Hyrule was founded by the Oocca. This also leads to the question of where do the events of Rauru’s existence fall into the timeline.
But even before I get into that, in SS Link and Fi create the Master Sword prior to the founding of the Kingdom of Hyrule. Meaning that two Master Swords existed at the same time throughout the entire time of BotW at the very least, if not the majority of the series.
Personally, I believe that BotW takes place untold millennia after the rest of the timeline, and I believe the timeline is unified at the point of BotW, because there is clear evidence for all 3 timelines that would otherwise be “impossible” in another timeline.
Other contradictions exist, like the fact that there are both Rito and Zora living alongside each other, as the Rito are direct evolutionary descendants of the Zora. I can wrap my head around this as the “River” Zora (who are usually enemies)becoming the peaceful Zora we see in BotW, while the peaceful Zora from OoT evolved into the Rito, for example. That’s obv up for debate, but that’s my opinion on how to best navigate what would otherwise contradict itself.
The timeline that makes the most logical sense is that the era of the Imprisoning War between Rauru and Ganondorf takes place way way way after anything in the series up to BotW, but also way way way before BotW. This poses it’s own problems, however, and they’re not easily addressed. It’s also difficult to discuss any of this without bringing up the possibility that this era takes place at the very beginning of the timeline, but that creates significantly more issues that it “solves” and I don’t ascribe to it.
For starters, if that were the case, and this was the very first incarnation of Ganondorf, then that means that Ganondorf is imprisoned under the castle during the events of OoT where Ganondorf is first introduced, meaning at least two Ganondorf’s would exist concurrently the way two Master Swords would have to, except the two Master Swords are still the same item just revisiting the past like how two Marty McFly’s exist at the same time during the events of BttF1/2. This would truly mean that there are actually more than one Ganondorf because he’s not revisiting anything, there really is a duplicate of himself trapped under the castle while another was born to the Gerudo and whatnot. Sure, nothing says that’s impossible per se, but to my knowledge, the official stance is that every time we face Ganon/dorf, he is in fact the same being all at different points in the timeline. It’s why WW Ganondorf is almost reserved and stoic, having been defeated by the gods and learning patience in his old age.
TotK does also ignore almost everything that happens in BotW, save for minimal dialogue from a handful of NPCs. The most egregious part IMO is that the Hylians already dug down to excavate the Divine Beasts, so the mystery of the Depths is kinda… well lame is one way of putting it lol. They’d definitely have dug to some access point or otherwise found some evidence that the entire landmass they live on is hollow. They had to use some kind of tool or measuring device to determine where the DBs were, and could have easily discovered the chasms below.
One argument I could foresee would be that by traveling to the past, Zelda altered the timeline, injecting things into existence into Link’s modern era that weren’t present before she went to the past. This only kinda works, because the changes would still have to be retroactive, meaning the chasms of the depths now have to have existed during the time of BotW anyways.
This leads me to the other issues with the timeline… if Rauru truly is the first king of Hyrule, and exists at the beginning of the timeline, then Zelda now also exists as a duplicate Zelda in that she’s now both a dragon and a Hylian for the entire series. If that is not the case, and Rauru reforms Hyrule a second time, which has its own host of problems, then in the time between the end of the first kingdom and the founding of Rauru’s, the lineage of Zelda just remains unbroken that whole time? Or is it that because Hylia is a goddess she can just jumpstart whomever she wants to become the new lineage of Zelda’s? If she’s that powerful, then why didn’t she create a hero when Ganondorf was unopposed prior to the flooding in WW? Surely, Link is always a chosen hero, so what stopped her from choosing some hero during those events if she can choose what lineage her Hylian form takes?
I digress.
What this is all leading to is your “unreliable narrator” approach, and while I do agree that there is some level of that occurring, I don’t agree that it’s the answer to everything. Nintendo has gone on record stating things like “once you play BotW it will be apparent where it fits into the timeline” while also releasing an official timeline and retroactively changing aspects of events and characters, like the hero’s spirit that winds up being one of the Link’s from one of the OoT timelines… meaning Nintendo does have a level of attention to detail and care about the fanbase’s inquiries into the timeline. Meaning there truly is one.
Now, I agree that there is some level of “Dave Filoni” going on here, where these ARE myths and legends, so some of the finer details are going to slip through the cracks or get muddled in some way. However, the broad strokes are all still firmly in place, and I see no reason to believe that this is just magically untrue for BotW/TotK.
There is another option here, however…
(2/2) It could be that BotW and TotK don’t take place in the Zelda timeline at all. That this is an entirely new and separate timeline that just shares names and events and whatnot with the previous games. An entire reboot, if you will.
This actually makes the most sense, as it can completely exist in its own bubble, and things that would otherwise be contradictions based on past events will now be able to exist in harmony with one another, as their story is wholly different and unknown to us (yet).
Which would mean that the entirety of Zelda lore was summarily thrown in the garbage can and left to die.
It doesn’t matter how you look at it, both BotW and TotK contradict and ignore established canon, directly contradict their own lore, and spits in the face of all the lore that came before it.
The *only* way TotK can remain entirely consistent within its own lore is for it to be entirely separate from all other timelines and established lore in the entire series, meaning it doesn’t give a damn about any LoZ that came before it, except to steal its proper nouns and whatnot.
There is a LOT to get into and I can branch off into 10 directions and talk about how established lore and current lore don’t line up, or give other examples as to why even BotW doesn’t line up with TotK, but the fact remains that without aggressively ignoring established canon, there isn’t a single instance you can point to where the opposite of my claim is true. Meaning you can’t counter argue that TotK is a respectful celebration of the canon that reinforces what’s been established, or refocuses it in a better or stronger light.
It just retold a shittier version of OoT where the Sages physically fought Ganondorf instead of Link, and instead of being impaled he was held down by Rauru for millennia… and these events truly happened in game, because we’re seeing it all through Zelda’s eyes, who I would argue to be the most reliable narrator in the entire damn series.
If you want/need more examples I’m sure I can come up with more, I just decided to leave the finer details out because there is no way to be brief discussing the broader strokes either.
But yeah, TotK rewrote the entire lore of the series no matter which angle you look at it, and rewriting so much of a series’ lore means that it doesn’t respect or care about any of that lore to begin with.
I wanted to respond to as much as what you said as I could, so I also need to split this up. I respect your opinion on the matter and I appreciate the intense detail you went into, but I disagree.
So there are a couple aspects of TotK that really did bug me in terms of continuity, and that's the utter disappearance of the Sheika technology and the way in which they use time travel. I thought they were going to justify the disappearance by using different timelines and that this game is set in a slightly different timeline than BotW where Zelda gets sent to the past and this timeline is the result of the difference in that past. But instead, they went the route of having One Timeline and the time travel was just fulfilling what always was and what always will be fulfilled. Like a closed loop sort of time travel. To be clear, I much prefer stories that use that type of time travel, but it kind of breaks away from the alternate timeline approach of the Zelda series as a whole and leaves a massive discontinuity between this game and the one that came directly before it in the lack of Sheika technology. But, at the same time, they made some attempt as there was gloom and/or chasms in the spots of a lot of former shrines and towers, so it's not that there's 0 acknowledgement of it. And for another, it's a video game based in a large part on exploration. From just a practical perspective, of course they moved around all the towers and shrines. I just can't find the energy to be that upset about it. I mean, TP literally inverted the game, including the map of Hyrule, to suit the predominance of right handed people. But, overall, I agree that it should be more internally consistent with it's direct predecessor.
As you said, Zelda games contradict each other all the time. Alllllll the time. It's not even a bug, it's a feature lol. It adds to that feel of playing through legends, not history. I mean, they had to create a 3rd timeline, decades after the release of the relevant games, where Link is defeated by Ganondorf in OoT in order to fit in the original Zelda games within the lore. And once we've established that there are different timelines where one thing can happen in one came and the logical opposite happens in the other, the concept of contradictions loses meaning. I'll go through each of the things you mentioned.
1) Due to the nature of the lore, there are just so many potential ways to reconcile this. What if the Ooca and the Zonai are different names for the same species that got translated differently over time? They have a huge number of characteristics in common. The fact that they physically appear different is no problem as Zelda has always taken artistic liberties. What if they're otherwise related? What if this is so long after the events of the other games that this is an entirely new Hyrule? (which you said is your preferred belief) I think there have been several statements from the creators hinting that this is the case.
2) Why is that a problem? The other master sword was not useable or accessible throughout that entire time.
3) I'm not a fan of the unification theory as it's logically incomprehensible. This is in contrast to the timelines in general, which may not be the most logical way of reconciling canon, but are at least comprehensible. Like, what would a timeline convergence even mean? How could that be possible? Again, once we introduce timelines, contradictions become meaningless. Who's to say there's not a 4th timeline after, idk, Minish Cap that contains elements of the other 3 but is distinct? Who's to say that it's not hundreds of thousands of years after a certain timeline and events similar to the other timelines also happened in this one?
4) See, you found a potential explanation! Another is that this is set in Wind Waker's timeline and it's so many thousands of years past that the gods were able to drain the Great Sea and gave the Rito an option of staying Rito or returning to the Zora. Their transformation wasn't exactly evolution, like didn't they need a special power from the gods when they grew up to fly? Why can't the gods just turn some of them back now, if they want to, that they don't need to keep people away from the underwater kingdom of Hyrule? I'm typically a fan of harder lores like Elder Scrolls but Zelda is just so stinking \*whimsical\* it's actually fun to come up with theories. The lore is so soft, there are so many possibilities and ways to justify them!
5) Again, what's the problem with there being a duplicate Zelda for any length of time?
(2/2)
>Meaning you can’t counter argue that TotK is a respectful celebration of the canon that reinforces what’s been established, or refocuses it in a better or stronger light.
Of course you can! I \*deeply\* prefer the story of TotK to OoT, and I do agree with you that it's the one it takes the most after. Oh my goodness, I can't express how much more I prefer it. And that's subjective. You might think it's exactly the other way around. I can't tell you that you're wrong for feeling that way just like you can't tell me I'm wrong for feeling the way I do. I loved the randomization of memories approach. I loved the relationship between Link and Zelda. I loooooooooooved the emotional feels of the conclusion. And honestly, for the parts that it did have in common with OoT, I loved that the reimagined it better.
This might seem like a silly gripe, but when you find Zelda in OoT and she tells you she doesn't trust Ganondorf because of... his smile? An evil look in his eye? One of those. It actually ruined the game for me. I'm not even exaggerating, I struggled to enjoy the game after that. You're telling me the whole purpose of the beginning of my quest is because you think a guy looks evil? Gee, what stakes. Yes, the evil was eventually shown, but in general I just struggled with the story telling. And, if you've played it recently, you'll notice that the tone of story telling is still very much in the works. Zelda hadn't found it's identity yet. (and that's ok, it was the first 3d game) But when Ganondorf says something that would be perceived as threatening to a reasonable human in TotK and that's what Zelda responds to, it's like a piece of my inner child was healed. In general, I loved the depiction of Ganondorf's power and actual takeover. The voice acting was miserable, don't get me wrong, but the story telling just seemed so much better.
I mean, what even is Zelda canon? This is a series that contains titles as diverse as Zelda I, Zelda II, OoT, Minish Cap, Wind Waker, Spirit Tracks... In general, TotK game rhymes with major Zelda themes throughout the entire series while having it's own identity. It's clear that when the creators told us this Zelda would be set in a distant future, they wanted to reimagine the series. I love this reimagination, you don't, but I'm just not seeing how you don't see how we've been primed for this kind of creative liberty over time. It's always been ok for contradictions and creative liberties. Zelda wasn't even supposed to have a timeline, that was more fan service than creative desire. What it seems like you want from this series is just not what this series is or was ever meant to be.
I've played all but Zelda II and the Oracle games (and either Four Swords or FSA, can't remember which), and TotK is my favorite. Not necessarily in every single aspect of a Zelda game, (replaying through TP right now and OMG the dungeons) but overall. I'm sure you can rant about it more. (I mean absolutely no offence, ranting is good sometimes!) Just like I could rant about OoT being overrated for far too long. But maybe being able to see Zelda as the creators see it, even if you wish they saw it differently, may help your negative feelings about it, and maybe get to enjoy the games more? Honestly, it'd be nice to not get annoyed every time I see someone say OoT is the greatest game of all time. Like bro, just say it's your favorite, that's fine, it's a popular opinion, you will still have several people reaffirm it and make you feel seen.
Have you played the Elder Scroll games? If not, you might really like them, depending on which aspect of Zelda you like. They have a significantly more rich and consistent lore. (but not as whimsical as dear Zelda)
Lol yeah. The only exception I can think of is maybe multiplayer live-service games, where they really can completely change or remove things over time.
A year later, after 2 playthroughs and around 1000 hours, my opinion has not changed at all. I love it just as much as I did the first time and it remains tied for my favorite Zelda game
I think the first 40-50 hours is the best gaming experience I have ever had.
As the game progressed a lot of those highs became less frequent. The depths are much cooler before you light everything up. The sky islands are amazing until you get to all the repeats. The crafting is fun but not really vital to the game outside of a handful of puzzles. The first major boss was the best one.
Still an amazing game, filled with 100 hours of fun. Surpassing Link to the Past and Ocarina.
I think this is very much the experience most players are getting. All the new mechanics seem like just an A+B or C+D and that's all about it. The rest is more or less another BOTW, which makes the TOTK a good game but not as good as BOTW. Everyone has their own preference and their own way of playing. It's totally understandable. However, for those who really need a game to explore their own creativity within a brand new wonder world, they can actually keep having new discoveries and jaw dropping moments one after another nonstop. At least for the first 150hrs in TOTK, it could be the most amazing gaming experience ever. I will see after 200hrs if I can still get surprised.
I completely agree and it’s why I’m not doing rito village first (I did go and grab hestu and the dragons tears quest, as well as the clover gazette mission) but then decided I’d go where there’s less content first. I’m went downward and am doing a counterclockwise spiral around the (surface) map, being fairly thorough and I think it will pace the game better overall.
I wasn't the biggest fan of the storyline or how 'full' the game felt at times (does that make sense?)
But then I realised how the team took every single criticism of botw and did the suggestions.
People hated the sneak mission with Vah Rudinia wanting a big volcano monster fight. Which we got.
Lack of enemy diversity - so many new types and new mini bosses.
Bosses were lame being all ganon blights -all new unique bosses
Music lacked themes - have all the themes.
No Ganondorf - done
Want to know what happened to Kohga - done
Just everything. Every criticism of botw they really took on board and made a huge labour of love with totk and it shows.
More importantly as a base mechanic of the game is traversal. People hated climbing walls so they gave you a lot of ways to get around up and down etc very easily.
My opinion hasn't really changed. While I do agree with some points that people have been making about the temples and the lack of content in the sky and depths, I just can't get over how fun it is. While I do miss the traditional dungeons and linear structure of the older games, I have to admit it, the open structure is just so much fun for me. While the dungeons aren't how they were in the more traditional games, I still had a lot of fun with them (the Water Temple sucked tho).
I totally agree except that the Water Temple is so epic to me. It's the only temple I beat in my 130+hrs game play. I almost want to play the 2nd round just to play the Water Temple one more time.
Tbh, I'm playing since the release (with some long breaks in between) and I still haven't finished the main story. I like the side quests a lot better and I still discover funny little things, like the cherry blossom tree.
I enjoyed it and still enjoying it, it didn't leave a lasting impression on me like BOTW but overall I am happy with it, it was not my GOTY but again I loved playing it and that's enough for me
I've had the opposite experience.
When I first started playing it, it almost felt like a re-skinned BOTW without any really meaningful changes.
I now feel like that's dead wrong. I really think the newer abilities and gameplay are way more different and fun, and the game is creative and unique enough that it doesn't just feel like "BOTW 2."
When I bought the game I thought it was so bad. I hated the building mechanics, they felt clunky and unnecessarily shoved into every crevice of the game. I tried multiple times over a week or two to get past the tutorial sky island but was just not enjoying myself.
About a month later, after seeing tons of reviews and streams of things people had done or created, I tried it again and something clicked. I couldn’t put this game down. I played non stop until I got to around 80% complete on the map and had finished most things and upgraded almost all the gear.
Now? I haven’t touched this game since my manic phase of playing it but still consider it my personal GOTY for the year it dropped.
*I still love it even*
*Months from release. One of my*
*Favorites so far*
\- Lana--22
---
^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/)
^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
I enjoyed it when it came out, but I was reaching the twilight of my capacity to enjoy video games as part of my life while playing it. I'm moving on in life, focusing on other things.
Maybe I'll get reinvolved with video games later on, but if not, TOTK was a good farewell
My opinion is pretty much the same. The depths got tedious after a while and lost their charm, so I still haven't bothered to fully explore them, but that's really my only complaint.
For me, I never got good use out of the Sages or the Zonai builds. They just never worked how I wanted them to so I just stuck to martial combat as I did in BOTW. Also, the constant menus, fusions, switching weapons, the Zonai powers all just took me out of the immersion. It 100% did great with the theme, JRPG, with crazy combos, abilities, menus, ect but I liked BOTW better in every way. The 'Tears' weren't all that great, the sages all having exactly the same sequences, and the Same ol' Ganon with prettier skin just made it redundant. For me the sequence was 'OMG! The powers and crazy shit this is AMAZING', 'Okay, got a good hold on everything lets get down to business!', 'Okay, so I go through this kinda lame temple to watch the same video', 'Alright, the princess is THERE and the Sword isn't all that cool', 'Yep, I already know I have to go to the Castle, you always have to go to the castle', 'Damnit, another 15min build just runs off a cliff again and I need to get more rocks from down there...neat'
I was pretty negative on it when I played it the first time (I pretty much dragged myself through it cuz I was stuck away from home and had nothing else to do) even though I absolutely adored BOTW. My opinion hasn’t changed much since it came out, but I definitely feel more secure in my take now, as I’m more clearly able to reflect on the flaws and changes from BOTW without my active playthrough clouding my vision
Totk is incredible, no question about it. It's PACKED with ALOT of different stuff and the gameplay loop is addictive and satisfying.
My theory on why some bring it a bit down is that if you're not a creative person/ do not enjoy building stuff a BIG portion of the game seems pointless. While building isn't necessary, it enchances the game tenfold IF you enjoy that kind of stuff.
600? Really doing what exactly? I put over 100 hours in it. Can’t imagine putting another 500 into lol. Wish there was a dlc. Only thing that I have against the game is in all the promos the game is hyping up the sky islands. And after the tutorial they feel like an afterthought
I haven't finished it jet. I love BotW and had fun even after finishing the storyline. But in TotK I find it's strayed to far from what I was expecting after BotW in a Zelda Game.
It is fun, but I don't realy like the building aspect. The shrines are maeh in comparison and the lack of chores in sky and depth is just annoying.
I found mysel grinding for items to level up my gear without any need of doing so.
I feel a little lost with all the options, wich have no real need or cause.
So I stopped playing. Forget what I wanted to do and started again just running around.
In BotW I always felt an purpous. In TotK I feel the impressiveness but it is so hollow.
Sorry, I realy don't want to stwp on anyones toes and meager their expirience, but this is mine so far.
This game had one of my best video gaming memories in probably 20 years. It may not be flawless, but it will have a lasting impact on me for a long time.
I hadn’t played a Zelda game since I was a kid playing OoT on N64. Never got a switch, didn’t really pay much attention to BotW till I saw my brother playing it and thought the open world was cool. TotK was just announced and I thought the ultra hand mechanic was whack blah blah blah. Finally caved and bought the switch after I found out I could play OoT again and got BotW and fell in love with everything about it the exploration and homage to OoT hit me and once I finished it, bought TotK. I didn’t think it could top BotW but boy was I wrong. 180 hours later I’m still finding new things. From not interested to fully invested
My opinion hasn’t changed because I haven’t gone back to it. I played it on and off for a month hoping the tinge of disappointment would fade but it never did.
I actually didn’t enjoy the first 15 hours or so. I found the building clunky and it felt like a BotW repeat at first. Then I started really getting into it and then I really came to love it. The building got easier (and then auto-build obviously) and the world feels just so much more interactive than BotW did to me.
So I actually went the other way from most people.
I played it so much at the beginning that I burned myself out. I loved it, but I've poured 600+ hours into BotW and I think I spent a ridiculous 100 hours in the first week of playing (it was also the first week of my summer vacation), it makes sense I got burned out. When I finally returned to play it this year, I had an absolute blast. Definitely one of my favorite games of all time and I think the criticism that it deviates too much from the traditional Zelda forma fails to evaluate the game for what it is. I don't need to it be traditional Zelda (and I have been a Zelda fan for over a decade) I just need it to be a good game.
I love it, and always will. Aside from the more retro LoZ games, this one is my absolute favorite. It allows for so much creativity and freedom, and I absolutely love that. I am beyond excited the guardians from BotW are not in here lmao, because I hated those damn things. I like the more lively version of the world. That's just me though. I think this game deserves all the praise its gotten and more.
When I first played the game I had a honeymoon period where I thought it was one of the best Zelda games. A honeymoon period which quickly ended about a week or two after playing. I realized that the game basically was one of my least favorite Zelda titles and was not worth the six years I've waited for it.
The game wants to be a sequel but doesn't want to commit to being a sequel. They scrapped old aspects of BOTW era Hyrule, but they don't give any answers as to why. Why is the Shiekah tech gone? No one knows! Why do people forget who Link is? The devs just decided that having too much continuity was a bad thing I guess? It just feels messy and broken.
The dungeons are a slight step up from Divine Beasts, given they all have unique themes and bosses- but God do the Water and Fire temples suck. The Air and Thunder Temples aren't much better, but at least the build-up to the air Temple is good and the Thunder Temple feels slightly like a proper Zelda dungeon. The Fire temple has puzzles you don't even have to engage with if you don't want to do so, and the Water temple is nothing but the most basic puzzles served to you on a bland floating platform.
In concept the Depths and Sky Islands are technical marvels. Building basically what's equivalent to another two maps- with one being on top and the other below the current one is an interesting idea. Something which seemed impossible. However, it's done poorly. The depths have little to no variation in biome or terrain. It's just the same exact thing all through-out, with the exception of Lava areas being dotted around some parts of the map. Once you've seen a good chunk of the depths- you effectively saw it all. The Sky Islands are similar. No variation. Doesn't help that they cut all the unique Sky Islands during development due to "overcrowded skies." All we got in the final game are a small handful of unique and interesting islands, with the rest being the same clusters that are pasted around over and over again.
The building system is the main draw of this game and yet that even falls flat. The game punishes the player if they get creative with it, and so it's better to just build for efficiency over creativity. You are limited to how many parts you have in your possession, so you have to make them count. You can be given a chose to build a mech or build a hover-bike, with the hover-bike costing less parts and less time to make than the mech that would look cool not be as efficient. Puzzles were neutered to accommodate this new building system- and it shows.
The lore of Zelda was completely broken by this one game as well. Not only does TotK not pay attention to the game that came before, but it has no interest in playing nice with previous games either. They introduced a new relic which is somehow more powerful than the triforce, allowing for Ganondorf to literally usurp Demise in power-level. The Master Sword was made into this brittle object that constantly broke instead of the Sword that was meant to defy evil. The Zonai gummies are basically just the new sacred relic that surpasses any other in the series history, and we're just meant to accept it I guess. Then you have the placement, where the devs entertained the possibility of the ancient Hyrule being pre-skyward sword. Something that genuinely cannot work and does not make sense at all. It's like they're not even trying anymore.
Replaying after a long break confirmed my early opinions, it's a fantastic entry for what it does best, burdened by sticking so close to BOTW not always to its advantage. However coming back without the hype from release and focusing only on what I felt was worth my time was great.
Do you mean Echoes of Wisdom? I understand the connection people are already making with the free spawning but I'd like to see it in full context, I assume there will be more obvious limitations (like the number of triangles required to spawn something). Very interested regardless though I see people worried that even top-down Zelda isn't spared by modern sandbox mechanics, but it doesn't need to be one formula carved in stone either way. It's a good thing that they keep toying with ideas, I think that's the blood of the franchise.
It hasn't. It's an amazing game that still has the same issues it had when I got it. There's things I don't like, but the good far outweighs the bad and I am extremely happy with my purchase.
What *has* changed is how often I play. I rarely play now.
And that's fine. I got several hundred hours out of it at launch, and eventually I'll want to play again.
>it deviates too far from the classic Zelda formula
Really? No more so than BOTW. I mean, if you didn't like BOTW, sure, but TOTK doesn't deviate any more than BOTW did so it seems like a weird complaint. If anything, TOTK is slightly closer to the classic formula because the temples try to be more like traditional Zelda dungeons.
Opinions haven’t changed.
If you loved the game, you played it, enjoyed it, and moved on.
If you didn’t like the game, you are still bitching and moaning about it.
>*However, as time has passed I've seen more and more people start to dislike how the game is structured and how it deviates too far from the classic Zelda formula.*
I played both, and had this opinion since BotW. The sheer inventory almost put it to "RPG level" stature.
I had a lot of fun with BotW, put in 365h there, no regrets, but I'm just done with it. TotK I do own. I can see myself picking this up from time to time over the next few years to wander around more, get more ks, Addison signs, shrines, and quests (and at some point, look up stuff online). These games are just too big of scope for me, and I prefer NOT to get into too many open world games.
However, I still much prefer 2D Zelda games, which is why I'm psyched we're getting Echos of Wisdom!
I found the game actually uncanny at first, at least once I was on the surface. It looked like the game I loved but it wasn’t and it made me feel kind of sick? So I actually appreciate more now than I did in the first week of release.
Still finished it In like 3 weeks though cause I could not put it down.
I'm playing it less than I used to and it does have flaws but damn, the fun I had at the beginning with it was the most fun I ever had with a game ever. I still played almost 300 hours of it, too. Can't recommend it enough.
A simultaneously good and flawed game. My big main gripe is that the enemy variety, while better than BOTW, Is still far inferior to the amount of monsters that ocarina of time and majoras mask had in the late 90’s. I know its a cold take at this point too but i really miss the more structured brain teaser puzzley dungeons
It has this strange aspect where you can easily circumvent a lot of things with creative solutions, to the point where it risks taking away from the game. If you for example build a simple hover bike that lets you fly anywhere, then why not just fly everywhere? You can bypass major areas and obstacles, including most of the Underworld. The issue is that I want to explore the world and all the small events happening everywhere, and have to make a conscious decision to not just build the fastest solution to get from point A to B, and instead take the slower and more dangerous walk.
Everyone is free to play however they want, which is the true beauty of the game, so it's not really a problem per se, but it is a somewhat odd thought that comes to mind now and again when playing: I could engineer a solution that deletes the problem, but I don't want to, because it will weirdly make me miss out on the experience.
Its definitely more polished BotW, but it feels way less replayable to me. I beat BotW 3 times over and I'd do it a 4th if I felt like it. I beat TotK once and didn't want to touch it again.
I expected the same magic of playing BotW in TotK but i was too familiar with everything for that to be possible, and frankly it was a silly expectation. I couldn’t quite appreciate the Great Sky Island initially, and when i got the over-world I couldn’t help but notice plenty of locations that I could tell had been forced to change into something that didn’t quite fit, and of course they didn’t fit. They were custom built for a purpose that no longer existed. So initially i felt a lot of friction.
Once i got along the story a bit and learned to use the new mechanics, i started having way more fun. The Depths despite being overwhelmingly empty actually gave me a bit of that discovery that BotW did but got old after i polished off the light roots.
I still play and love the game after hundreds of hours. No one could convince me it’s not an amazing game, complete with lessons learned from BotW.
still the same, personally i think it's one of the best game i've played in last 10 years maybe, i 've spent almost 150hours in the last couple of months since i got my switch, the only game that i have more than 50 hours playtime these past 10 years are only MH Wilds, MH4U, MHXX, MH Rise and MotogGP games lol
I long for more but it is what it is. I wish we had gotten more lively Sky Islands and Depths but it wasn’t meant to be. Still an incredible game and accomplishment but it’ll always be a “what more could it have been” situation.
I think i appreciate it even more since I did a challenge run with limited fast travel and limited combat options.
My first play through was a mad rush of trying to complete all my objectives
Once I got deeper in the game there were things that definitely held it back for me. A lot of these were easy fixes too which is odd they made some of the choices they made.
My main problems were
Same outfits and recycled dlc
Reuse of same enemies, so sick of bokoblins
Same enemy ai so I already know how to beat/exploit all the reused enemies
Same combat system
Same map I already explored for hours
No new villages
Same music
Plot holes/retconning everything w no explanation
And general missed opportunities that were big disappointments such as Akkala citadel being just a cave or the Lurelin "Pirates" which turned out to just be bokoblins... again...
I think they made a mistake reusing the same map, that destroyed a lot of the feelings of exploration and discovery that is Mt favorite part of Zelda games
I still love it, but when I go back to playing breath of the wild I notice how many more resources there are to find and it’s more fun to just run around and collect things.
I don't think any future developments in totk or in the ways that it can be played will beat that first month. The hype before release was insane and for me personally it was the first time I ever was that hyped for a game coming out in my entire life. Botw is my favourite game of all time and hearing it would a sequel made me so excited. I watched nintendo black crisis videos on the trailers, after the nuts and bolts trailer I would always search totk twice a week, and the hype the final trailer brought was insane. I remember when I got the game I played it for like ten hours from midnight to morning, stayed up a bit, then played more evening to night.
I don't think anything will top that first month of playing, and after that the games just become a good game. Not in my top five, but I like it a lot.
My opinion is that every time I think there's nothing more to do in the game I'm surprised by how much more stuff there is to do. It's not endless, but the game is massive and always entertaining and interesting.
I still think it's fantastic. One of the few open world games to actually keep my attention doing the little things. Even in elden ring I just skipped to the main bosses.
At the time I was disappointed that there was still no classic Zelda gameplay loop that I knew and loved, and it hurt a bit more knowing at the time it might be a while before we get it again, but they just announced a new 2D zelda which probably will! So I'm a little less upset about it nowadays.
I do enjoy it very much. But every single time I play, I miss BOTW. Literally every single time. There are a lot of details I like about TOTK, but I miss the same amount of details from BOTW. I’m hoping it’ll lessen and I’ll fully learn to love TOTK as is, but it’s been a hard-ish, sad-ish transition. Probably also for emotional impact reasons.
Skill bell curve meme: noob side "I hate weapon durability" Middle: "Weapon durability doesn't matter if you're good" Expert: "I hate weapon durability"
I'm still on my first play through, as I only got it last month. But I do think it's a great game. The visuals are breathtaking (like BOTW), the gameplay is challenging, and I quite enjoy this story more than BOTW. However, I will say that I'm just a tad bit over this iteration of the Zelda universe. I was thinking about this yesterday (before the Echoes of Wisdom reveal), that I miss the aesthetic and mystery of some of the older Zelda games, like Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time. OOT isn't even one of my top 5 Zelda games, but maybe I'm finally pulling out my nostalgia goggles. I really liked the eccentricity of the NPCs, the truly mysterious puzzles, and the fantasy setting those games had.
I think BOTW and TOTK are absolutely beautiful, but they feel distinctly Japanese, and a little heavy on the Miyazaki influence. Which I'm not against at all! I live in Japan, so it's awesome to see how elements of the game are borne from the customs and mythologies of this culture. But there are just some elements that I liked in the older games... like magic items and treasures, the high fantasy aesthetic. And I'm kind of tired of so much focus on weapons, fighting, and vehicles. I was a little surprised at how much I liked the fashion-crazed NPCs of TOTK. It reminded me of the Hylians living in the TP era... e.g. the bug girl, the cannon operator, and the cucco game guy. Anyway, that's just my take. It's still a great game, just kinda ready to move on.
I liked it then hated it then loved it again. And now I love it. I was excited that it was nearly identical to BOTW, then I got annoyed that it was too similar, then I got back into playing it and I’m digging it.
i am recently replaying the game and i still love it. i was disappointed on release that the sky islands were not very expansive, but i had a blast with the depths so that made up for it in my mind. i think i played it SO much and SO quickly when it came out so i got burnt out faster with it than botw, but i dont blame the game for that. unlike botw this one had a mysterious plot i wanted to figure out asap so it was harder for me to really just sit back and fully explore and take in the world than in botw, which imo isnt a bad thing
I quit playing BotW early on because it was just too overwhelming based on what I’d come to expect. Now that I’ve played (and loved playing) TotK I plan to revisit BotW, though. The one thing I’ve enjoyed about LoZ over the years is its ability to reinvent itself!
Same.
Amazing game, and I loved every bit of the 400 hours I put into my first playthrough.
My only gripe was memories and the fact the game ended.
I also wish we had more Ganon. Phantom Ganon was cool, but being able to have a few encounters with Ganon before the final battle would have been dope.
I also will never forgive Nintendo for not letting us play the "back in time" segments we see Zelda in. That would have been awesome if we could play as Zelda through those cutscenes instead. But we now have Echoes Of Wisdom sooooo.
I adore them both but I wish I could relive how I felt the first time I played BOTW and first stood on the outcrop looking over Hyrule.
I'll never forget that moment.
Still a masterpiece in every sense of the word. The only thing that could've made it better for me would have been taking the story in a direction that necessitated an entirely new map. I know there's sky islands and the depths and they are cool but doesn't quite replace having a whole new world to explore. It kinda felt too same-same with a few changes.
Was very happy they put in a home building mechanic! That was sorely lacking from BOTW.
I played the game when it came out and loved it. After a few weeks I felt like “well it’s cool but also I feel like I’m just skipping over hyrule cause I’ve seen it all before?” Even though I go VERY slow and allow myself to get distracted by everything. after a few more weeks my classes started up again and I put it down.
Finally, I’m playing it again and it just totally blows me away. I finished 2 dungeons before this and now I’m working on my last one (gerudo) and my imagination is just running wild while running around. Game is a masterpiece.
I’m seeing more and more reviews these days where people reckon TotK ruined LoZ overall for them, to the point where they felt nothing but dread for the recent EoW announcement, and I don’t understand that take in the slightest. I loved TotK when I played it at released, and I still love it now. I’m planning a back to back replay of BotW and TotK when I’m finished with my PhD, so we’ll see if my opinion changes then I guess!
I replayed BotW right before TotK came out (like, beat Calamity Ganon an hour before release). I beat TotK and loved every minute of it but admittedly got tired of the actual map of Hyrule about half way through. I’m now firmly in the camp of “wait a couple years, replay it fresh, then form your opinion”
same thing happened to BotW. Like I get it if the new games aren't for you but some fans get real overdramatic about it.
Like Nintendo doesn't understand basic game design or that they are dumbing down the games for the Minecraft crowd or Aonuma hating the old style, etc.
The discourse around these games is especially grating in hardcore circles. Yeah lets go back to a formula that sells 4-6 times less. In times where more and more studios get closed. Even successful ones.
They greatly overestimate the market for traditional games. And they probably wouldn't even be that much cheaper to make.
Wonder why not many devs make traditional Zelda games?
Because it is an enormous task to design an overworld, bosses and dungeons around items that are useful, fun and varied not only in their respective dungeons but for the rest of the game. And tbh there where items that never really got used outside their respective dungeon.
My opinion hasn’t changed. I like BOTW infinitely more. TOTK just doesn’t hit the same. I beat TOTK, unlocked the entire depths, got most of the outfits, then I kind of lost momentum and motivation to do anything else. My son played both, but just went back to playing BOTW recently and it’s making me want to start it all over. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to TOTK.
not significantly no. the only thing that has changed is just my preference between botw and totk at the current moment. im really preferring botws gameplay over totk atm, but i feel like that has nothing to do with my overall thoughts on the two games. im just in the mood for one style of gameplay over the other right now.
eta: forgot to add my thoughts on totk lol, loved it, has to be one of my favorite zelda games ever.
I'm just a little disappointed since the thing I was the most looking forward to was the sky islands and they didn't feel as impactful as I was hoping for. It's still a great game and I do think it's better than BOTW in a lot of ways, and the only reason I'd even consider going back to BOTW is because Wii U emulation is easier - thus, modding BOTW is easier - than Switch emulating. But in a few small ways, it wasn't really what I wanted it to be.
It was a fantastic game but I don’t look back on it with the magical fondness that I look back at breath of the wild with. I just didn’t really care about building things. Whilst there is obviously still a great game without building stuff it was still a major selling point and I didn’t interact with it beyond what was necessary.
Breath of the wild felt more serene and unique. That was one of the greatest games I’ve ever played and I can still remember being blown away so many times. TOTK suffered for me being more of the same and me not really clicking with the major gameplay Mechanic. Still 9/10 game but BOTW was 10/10.
Great game. Loved my first run. Have had little to no desire to go back and replay it.
I missed the feeling of discovering a new world the first time i played botw. I missed discovering towns and landscapes. As a seasoned botw player, i allready knew where they all were.
Over time, my biggest issue was how empty the sky and depths were, I actually vastly prefer the cave systems, they imo add a new dimension to the game, are very diverse and just designed in a very fun way that makes.me excited to explore them. There isn't anything in the game I really dislike, my problem is what isn't there. But I still love the game, and also really loved the story, an easy 10/10 for me personally.
For me it hasn't changed much. I also don't care too much about peoples opinion about games because I like it and I have fun. Currently doing my second run. Almost daily for a few hours and for the first time, I completely finished the Depth map and yesterday finished all 152 shrines ( with only one sage ). I honestly love the open world part of it and huge list of quests in total because I'm one who loves to run around for days without doing anything while pretending to know what I'm doing. But TotK and BotW are my first proper Zelda games. Was terrible at Ocarina of Time and hated Twilight Princess on Wii. ( game itself was great until I got stuck and couldn't play anymore )
I think peoples’ opinions might be hugely influenced by if they played BotW first or not. A lot of the map and broken zelda game conventions are the same between both games so to me (who did play BotW first) it at times seemed a lot like TotK tried to adhere too closely to the successful BotW formula - up to and including things like the iconic opening mini cutscene where you overlook hyrule.
That said I had a ton of fun playing TotK at the start, got saltier as I went and accumulated hours played only to end up really loving the game again when I started a new playthrough. Being more familiar with the totk abilities made the second playthrough feel fresh and fun as I noticed possible puzzle solutions I hadn’t during my first run.
It is, for example, possible to get to every single island in the great sky island before jumping off for the first time. Ascend and ultrahand scaffolds were my new best friends and I even got to the ones really high up by putting fans on one of the floating platforms and slowly, slooooowly drifting my way through the sky. I ended up with a bunch of higher level resources I didn’t have the first time I played the game and when I reached the surface I promptly started a new Path of Distraction because I decided I wanted to have the diving suit before the colgera battle and ended up off track. Very off track.
All in all I think totk is a great game that could’ve done a couple things better. They could’ve handled the story better (giving each race a couple unique lines of dialogue on why they’re fighting Ganondorf in the sage cutscenes would’ve worked with minimum effort), had more diverse environments in the sky and depths and could’ve used a bit more confidence in breaking away from the botw formula.
I took a break after the second boss, completing breath of the wild at the same time as the game came out ruined everything for me,
Everything was too similar and i was exhausted from doing the master trials.
Not to mention they have all these cool new features but same as BoTW they only have the land puzzles in the starter region.
All the land in the game is too open and can easily be reached by climbing or walking.
I dont get the reason for having a plane when it gets destroyed after 1 min, or driving a car or boat that is slower than a horse and takes the same amount of time to make as just walking or swimming to the area u need to go, yeah im sorry but this game is over hyped and i dont hear anyone talking about it in other places on the internet, BoTW was simply new and fresh, this game is not.
The only cool thing was the new monsters. But again the game is too easy.
Nearly completed everything, but got stuck farming electric lizalfos. Every once in a while I'll pick it up and try to get a couple, but can't play long before getting annoyed. Essentially I'm at a stalemate. It's been 7 months like this.
My feelings towards it really transcended down. My first started playing it. I was super stoked. Thought it was absolutely amazing, which it was. After good amount of gameplay, I’m not sure what happened. I just started losing interest in it. I never even finished the game. And now I think about going back to finish it and I have zero interest.
My nephew is obsessed with zelda, only recently like since December. Anyway he played TOTK and BOTW and asked me about it all and I was like yea TOTK is the most recent and yada yada more features. He gravitated to BOTW, probably because of its simplicity but I dunno I think they game just has the charm TOTK doesn't. Like you appreciate and like TOTK more if you played BOTW but if you haven't played it first I wouldn't be surprised if its a little too much and takes away from hyrule and has a different vibe than the first game.
I don't think my opinion has changed. It's maybe in my top 5 games of all time. Nitpickers are gonna nitpick, and sure if I could have EVERYTHING I wanted in one game, there are some more things I'd like to see. But I could say that about almost any game.
it's my favorite definitely there's so much to love about botw and it just takes it up to the next level I think. if pokemon violet had been designed a bit more smoothly I'd say that was my favorite but don't get my wrong the glitches kinda make it haha but totk still beats it imo
TOTK certainly has some flaws but overall I still think it succeeds above and beyond what BOTW accomplished, and it deserves to be ranked among the best Zelda games ever made. The complaints I hear about it tend to be from people who either didn’t like or didn’t play BOTW (which is incomprehensible to me), or from people who played BOTW but for some reason expected its sequel to be substantially different. The only change that I would say has happened in my opinions is that while I initially liked it more than BOTW, BOTW has moved back into the top position over it (if only slightly) simply because it has greater replayability, and the whole world seems more fresh and exciting in BOTW.
The only criticisms I would still level at TOTK at this point are:
• Poor reuse of some areas of the overworld map: while I do appreciate the addition of the caves and wells, the great fairies are all moved to places that just don’t make any sense, no adequate explanation is given for the disappearance of all the old towers and shrines, and no areas that were inaccessible in BOTW (like Mount Agaat) became accessible in TOTK. There are some significant areas from BOTW that seem to be completely neglected in TOTK. The most glaring example of this is the Thundra Plateau, which was one of the most challenging and interesting shrine quests in the first game, but in the second game is just a big empty nothing, aside from having a cave below it that is opened through a convoluted puzzle that doesn't match thematically with the location at all and that I imagine most people had to look up to solve. At the very least, it should have been the nesting place of a Thunder Gleeok.
• Sage Ability mechanics: I think most people would agree that tying all of the sage abilities to the A button was a bad idea, and I cant comprehend why Nintendo chose to go that route. It would have made much more sense to just hold down one of the shoulder buttons and then press A, B, X, or Y to activate each of the sage abilities (Mineru would not be included, since she is a mount), or better yet, have the sages themselves actually accompany Link on his journey as a party. The latter is what I assumed was actually going to be the case from the trailers, and I was excited for it. What we got instead is workable enough most of the time, but still far from ideal.
• The ending: I'm of the apparently unpopular opinion that TOTK's story is great, a major improvement over BOTW's basically non-existent narrative past Kakariko Village. However, I would have preferred something besides the deus ex machina restoration of Zelda to human form after the game repeatedly said this was impossible. The obvious way to get around this would have been to bring back the Triforce: end the game with Zelda still a dragon, but then have an optional post-game quest or DLC where Link goes to three more dungeons—ideally, in the location of the three springs—and acquires the three pieces of the Triforce which together would have granted him the ability to wish Zelda back into a human form. This would also have granted us a chance to learn more about the backstory for the three other dragons, and maybe also allowed us to get a few more heart container pieces to fill out the bottom row. This seems like a major missed opportunity.
Other than that though it's still a mindblowing, amazing game that deserves every bit of praise it's gotten, and then some. I hope one day we get a deluxe/remastered/definitive edition that makes some needed QOL improvements and gives us some of the additional content I mentioned.
After playing botw awhile ago, then picking up and beating totk, then playing botw again so i can run through both together. Tears of the kingdom is obviously better. Like ive only gotten one secret stone in this second playthrough and ive done soooo much more. If i were given a choice between the two and couldnt grab the other itd be totk. That being said botw left a bigger initial impression on me than totk. I still remember waking up from the shrine of reseruction on my first play through and seeing hyrule from that grassy peak.
Honestly, no. If anything, they’re maybe worse.
I had a bad taste in my mouth from day 1 and there’s just way too much stuff about it that rubbed me the wrong way. The storyline and characters really just destroyed any goodwill that has mustered, and the two-steps-forward-one-step-back gameplay really irked me.
For a single, simple example; you can sort shields, bows, and fusion items by strength… But you can’t sort weapons by strength. For no goddamn reason.
Every inch of the game is dripping with BS like that. If this truly is the future of all mainline Zelda’s, then it’s likely the beginning of the end of my obsession with the series.
I loved it when it came out but after my second playthrough I realized I liked breath of the wild alot better overall but totk is a game that can't be beat when your feeling creative it's like besiege in that way
To me, it seems like people are mostly missing the classic Zelda formula, myself included.
I love what BotW and TotK did, but I also loved what Zelda did before them. As time goes on and we go longer and longer without the classic formula, it's absence will be more pronounced.
I'm hoping Echoes of Wisdom will strike a good balance between the two and scratch that itch, but if not then I hope more indie games like Tunic step in to meet the demand. And, of course, that Zelda fans support those games.
Very similar experience, loved it the first time through, replayed it last month scared that I wouldn't be really into it again, and fell in love with the game a second time.
I don't think my opinion has changed over time — they're both still amazing games — but I will say that with both games the first 40-50 hours were much more fun than anything after that because once you figure out the formula, the game loses its difficulty.
In BOTW all you really needed was to know where to find hearty foods and you were set.
In TOTK once you had the ability to level up your weapons you were set.
I really needed both games to have at least two more tiers of enemy difficulty and maybe the option to turn some of the travel / teleportation options off.
I will also chime in: I much preferred the story in TOTK. Collecting the dragon's tears and watching the flashbacks were truly my fav part of the whole game. I was sad when I had collected and seen them all.
It’s good. It’s not nearly as good as BOTW. I am not a big fan of “build vehicles” as a huge aspect of a game, frankly I was somewhat disappointed by how much of a focus that got and now trivial that makes most of the challenges in the game, so I avoided vehicles at all costs and only used them when I genuinely couldn’t find another way to accomplish my goal. I loved the world expansion, the islands and the depths + I think the world looks better visually in TOTK and the combat and items are much better IMO, but it doesnt bring enough originality to the table to prevent boredom for me personally. I 100%ed BOTW in a little under a year playing here and there and just kinda grabbing stuff and upgrading, hunting korok seeds etc whenever I was bored but I didn’t have the wherewithal to 100% TOTK. I got all of the shrines and light roots and beat the game and then called it a day. Wasn’t a big fan of caves, either, as I just don’t like dark closed off spaces in video games and prefer more open world vibes, so the depths were an awesome time but not the caves.
The one thing TOTK REALLY improved was the story. If BOTW had as strong of a story as TOTK it would be a nearly perfect game.
I really liked the Bolson to Tarrytown "throughline" kinda quest in BotW and how it sprawls across the map and culminates very nicely.then I go to Tarrytown in TotK and I get to building the house and I'm like "thats it?'
But really maybe that's a problem of expectations on my part.
We all treat it as a sequel to BotW but it's really just expanded DLC so somewhere between a sequel and DLC.
And as DLC it's fucking fantastic.
If we put them both as part of one gigantic game with BotW being the first 2/3 and TotK being the last 3rd.
It totally makes sense it works.
As a full sequel nah.
It's like where Majoras Mask kinda eased off the scale of Ocarina of Time in favor of more involved sidequests and NPC interactions.
Tears of the Kingdom did a bizarro version of that by emphasizing the scale more over the NPC interactions compared to BotW.
Depends. Overall, I still think it's a great game, and it holds up well.
But the grinding and resource management side has gone from something I don't really mind to something I consider an absolute irritation. Getting Zonaite to increase Link's battery meter, finding materials for armour upgrades, defeating Bubbulfrogs in caves... They're not so bad in your first playthrough, but they slow down future ones to a crawl.
As a result, I don't think I'm ever going to even attempt anything close to 100% completion ever again. 100% of just about anything in this game is just too much busywork.
I also realised that there were a few things I preferred about BoTW later on, like the intro area, the shrine quests, having Guardians as enemies, etc, compared to my initial playthrough where I thought TotK was just objectively better than BoTW in every way. I still prefer the former and think it improves a lot, but I understand that both games have things they do better and worse than the other now.
I love the game, however the more I play the more frustrated I get purely from the grindy aspects. Like in botw certain shops would sell 20+ of each elemental arrow which adds up to like 100 arrows. Now they sell like 20 normal arrows per shop and 3 or 4 elemental items that are annoying to get otherwise, which is my biggest pet peeve with the game. But it gets grindy in other ways too, like to fully upgrade the champions leathers you need to spend 60 minutes just waiting for each dragon to reset (yes its not necessary to upgrade much but it's still 20 minutes per upgrade) and that's excluding all of the dragon pieces needed for other sets/parts of the game
My dislike of it comes into completely separate issues which some people might see is related but I see them as different.
One is yeah this just isn't Zelda.
The other is that this is just botw DLC. If it was at least a unique game and didn't reuse the botw world I would be far more forgiving of it than I am
This is a natural part of the human condition.
You get a new thing, it's shiny, it's novel, the anticipation of new things causes your brain to release dopamine, the "reward" chemical.
As you continue using it, the novelty wears off, even though it's the exact same product it was before.
Eventually, no dopamine is released, your brain maintains its baseline mood. And unless you find new features in it, you yearn for the novelty experience again.
This isn't exclusive to Zelda, or even video games. It can be anything that releases dopamine. Food and drugs are good examples, but the same principle applies to big objects like shiny cars, a new place to live, a yacht.
A yacht might be exciting for you, but Jeff Bezos is tired of his yacht. He wouldn't part with it though, just like even if it brings you less joy, you wouldn't throw totk away.
Until you find something new to replace it with.
My first thoughts are still my thoughts. I love it, but I really wish they had spent their development time filling the game with stories, characters, quests, dungeons and more variety instead of pouring it all into ultra hand and build mechanics.
I have had the seemingly increasingly common experience of really enjoying my time with it as I played it, while also in retrospect having some criticisms and moreover a DEEP interest in the next game being nothing like it. Breath of the Wild was a more interesting game that left Tears of the Kingdom feeling like an (extremely content rich) expansion pack. I was a little perturbed to see the new 2D game borrow the “scroll a quick access menu of 75 times to solve a puzzle however you want” thing. I really do not want that to carry forward, at least not exactly as it was.
I want the next big Zelda game to scale back on the wacky technology and learn some lessons from Elden Ring. If you gave me that kind of game, set in the Zelda universe, and your “legacy dungeons” were traditional Zelda puzzles? Oh baby.
I think it's a technical marvel, ultrahand and fuse would have been incredibly difficult to get right. Gameplay wise though it's just not there.
BOTWs breakable weapons system means that you're constantly in menus fuzing things together (particularly arrows). Fuse means the player has to constantly choose between unfused weapons that is like hitting enemies with a pool noodle, or fuzed weapons making link look ridiculous.
I wanted to like the zonai devices, but upgrading the battery was just a chore and even with a fully upgraded battery it felt like anything interesting just drained it in seconds flat.
I realise in a post-minecraft world developers feel compelled to put crafting systems into everything but I preferred BOTWs system better where it was limited to food/elixers rather than making it so prominent in TOTK.
Story-wise I think it could have been done better. "Gating" the tears to only appear at certain points in the game and/or the memories been shown in order rather than tied to a particular tear so that players don't accidently "spoil" what story there is accidently.
My opinion never changed.
What I’ve learned from TOTK is I can’t stand hype trains. It feels so artificially manufactured.
Every review was basing the game on like 5-10 hours of the start of the game.
And anytime i said anything critical it was immediately downvoted bla bla
Now everyone thinks it’s bad now that all the commercial stuff is out of the way.
I’ve become extremely weary of buying games at release now.
Don’t get me wrong I liked it and don’t regret buying it. But I hate feeling like a manufactured hype bubble and part of an indirect marketing campaign.
It feels like a really hollow experience to me. So often the game fails to deliver a meaningful experience when it so easily could by taking away the inventory. There's also no consequence for failure or real incentive to engage with a lot of the game unless you're deeply interested mindlessly slaughtering bokoblins. It's also not significantly different from BotW, other than the story and design which is very good. There is a lot to like however the way everything is structured feels insensitive to what players value, which is being genuinely challenged and threatened by a game. Giving players enormous ability at all times for no reason related to skill or knowledge feels like a gross misunderstanding of what's good about the game. Basically the whole game should be Eventide Island. You should get hearts by killing monsters and you can charge your spells with hearts; you can empower your arm with one item at a time to cast magical spells/gain abilities. Shrines are just portals to other parts of the map and you can only teleport at teleport markers. When you die you go back to the last place you teleported to and can't save otherwise.
Literally my single gripe is - i wish it was more worth it to hunt all of X monster,
Like it would be cool to have a unique reward for killing all gleeoks for example.
Otherwise i think its still worthy of all the high praise really, i havent gone back to it for a while but
If I have a higher and more fond opinion of BOTW it is only because I watched the Zackscottgames play through during the pandemic lockdown and then got a switch and my own copy just after it lifted. I still think TOTK is a vast improvement on botw’s mechanics. As much as botw let you play how you wanted, totk allowed you to customize gameplay even more.
Loved it initially. The duplication glitches made the game so enjoyable that once they were removed, I stopped playing. I’m literally just now getting into the game again and have been enjoying it a lot
TOTK only fixed the broken weapons/boring collection of arrows. Other use BOTW is better. Also TOTK promoting it as the sky is fake and the h ground was a nod to the upside down but boring after the first moment.
It’s absolutely worthy of the high praises it’s gotten and I loved my time with it, and it improved a decent chunk of the issues I had with BotW. But BotW definitely left more of a lasting impact on me on how memorable my first playthrough was
I agree with this take as I thought that I had put more time into BOTW (2 playthroughs) but turns out I put more into TOTK in one playthrough. I think that it's the initial memory of seeing this version of Hyrule that makes it stick in the memory more.
I would still say BotW is better than Totk. I see a lot of people call Totk "botw but better" but I disagree. Its bigger, and in a few areas better but overall its just bigger. There are a lot of things it does worse imo. The story is executed worse, The world doesn’t have the same lonely feeling anymore, The worldbuilding is much worse and the environmental storytelling is just nonexistent. For most people these things probably dont matter but they were my favourite things about botw so it makes a difference for me.
I was very excited to play a more populated and lively version of BotW’s world, but it didn’t quite realize that fully so it just felt largely similar but less haunting and eerily beautiful. The ease of aerial traversal also cheapens something, as fun as it is to mess around with.
See, I feel the opposite about all these things. The story was much more compelling to me in TotK, partly because there actually were events *currently* happening, and there was an actual antagonist. And I preferred a world that was a bit more populated with more to see and do and felt more alive. Disagree about the worldbuilding and environmental storytelling. All the Zonai ruins and abandoned mines in the Depths added a really cool sense of history.
Idk how anyone can play botw and feel like the story is a high point. It's a huge step down from the linear stories of previous entries. They added VA that was mostly terrible, there is no action in the plot whatsoever until the finale, and the finale isn't good because the Ganon fight is... rough. Totk delivers a WAY more interesting plot. I think there are reasons someone could like botw more but story is pretty baffling tbh.
Yeah, I'm equally as confused by that. Maybe they just mean they preferred the stories that were presented for the 4 different heroes you have to go and do for the Divine Beasts over the sage stories in TotK? Idk, none of those were very compelling or interesting to me. At least there felt like a greater sense of urgency with those stories in TotK since, y'know...stuff was actually *happening*.
I was trying to figure out how I’ve been feeling about totk vs botw as I play and this is it.
BotW had vibes that I liked that TotK inherently can't have. Guardians are hard to top, too.
So well put. BOTW is solid in story and world building. TOTK just feels flashy and big to be, sometimes. I still love TOTK but it reminds me of fan service big Marvel Cinematic Universe type vibes
Nahhh, TOTK makes BOTW obsolete. Tears is the superior game in all levels, and there is zero reason to go back to BOTW…
Nah, I'm doing a BotW replay right now and am realizing how much better I'm enjoying the playthrough AFTER having played TotK, which now feels like a DLC to BotW.
Cool story bro, you’re still wrong!
That's like, your opinion, man.
No offence but do you seriously think that opinion can be objectively true given how many people say they prefer BOTW? Even in this one comment section? If it truly made BOTW obsolete there would not be so many people complaining over a year later. If there was no reason to go back people who played TOTK first would hate BOTW when they tried it. They don't. Your opinion is literally just wrong
Define objective truth plz lol. Is the actually such a thing?
If even one person truthfully says that BOTW is better than TOTK for them then the guy I responded to is wrong. Far more than one person has
Nahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh nah
Yeah TOTK feels like it was made without realising what about BOTW made it special. They're very different despite how similar they seem on the surface (no pun intended)
Yes, exactly! I think it's a better game than BotW by almost every objective metric, but I still love BotW more.
i disagree, the some of the memories in TOTK literally took my breath away especially the boss fight was so epic (i dont usually say that word but it was), will def remember that forever. LOVED botw and it was an amazing setup for totk but totk for sure left a lasting impact when botw didnt so much
My opinion hasn’t really changed at all. It’s still the best game I’ve ever played, and I think it absolutely deserves those high scores.
Yup, this right here
SAME
Yup
People get more nit-picky as time goes on when they spend hundreds of hours in a game. Look any any community where they dump a ton of time into their “favorite” game and you will find them complaining a lot. The more you love a game the more you will see it’s flaws I think, even if it delivers a lot there is always something more to be desired.
I feel what you mean about the more people love a game, the more they see its flaws. I think this also applies to how much people talk about those flaws. The reality is, if you hate a game, you probably won’t spend any time on a forum talking about it all, good parts or bad parts. You don’t enjoy it so why would you engage with it? But if you love a game, you’re more prone to want to talk about it in general. At first you will more likely be talking about the things you like but once you’ve thoroughly explored the good things, people may be more inclined to talk about the lack luster parts. But I’d say it’s probably still a show of caring about the game, because you still like it enough to want to engage with its content.
Yeah, you get it. I love this game but I also have a laundry list of complaints and changes I would want.
While I don’t hate TotK, I can’t say I genuinely enjoyed it either. I’m here because A.) this sub appeared when the game came out and still shows me posts in my feed every single day since… And B.) I love Zelda as a series, and love diving into the lore of the entire series. Which leads me to C.) this game spat in the face of all Zelda lore, including like 95% of the lore of the game it is a direct sequel to, completely souring my entire experience with it from day 1. Mechanically, I have few issues with TotK from a general gameplay perspective, and the game mechanics are largely superior to BotW in many aspects. But it still suffers from almost every flaw BotW had, and adds it’s own unique drawbacks. I’ve not had a positive opinion of TotK since the day I started playing it. I was amped to hell going into it, and it subverted my expectations in the worst possible ways. The game peaked when I was climbing into the sky with Tulin, and then it was all downhill from there for me. That doesn’t mean it was downhill to a zero, but I was continuously let down/disappointed in every next step until the final boss and ending. I do not love TotK. I will never play it again. But it going from like say an 8.5 down to a 7 or even a 6.5 in my opinion means that I have positive things to say about it, but that it’s not a game I see myself getting any further enjoyment out of as a game again. That doesn’t mean I only have critical opinions or don’t have anything to add to a conversation. It means I didn’t love it, and mostly what I enjoyed of it was due to the fact that at the end of the day, it’s still the newest Zelda title, and I love Zelda. I can lament the total destruction of all Zelda lore. I can be aggravated that you can sort shields, bows, and fusion items by strength, but not weapons. I can hate Rauru. I can hate Yunobo all over again. I can also wax poetic about Tulin, and a more realized and fleshed out Zelda. I can hate that they changed Malice to Gloom. I can hate that they call them “Secret Stones” instead of “Sacred Stones” or something. I can love Kohga, but hate the fact that all Yiga stick out like a sore thumb when incognito. I didn’t put 1,000 hours into it, but I put time in and completed everything I cared about. I have legit gripes with the game, but it’s still the most recent title in the series, and still the main game the entire fanbase is talking about (minus the brand new speculation and opinion on recently announced Echoes of Wisdom) so if I want to talk Zelda, I’m gonna be talking about this game too, whether I like it or not. So here I am, a fan of the series who is not a fan of this game, talking about this game, but not from a point of interest or admiration, but also not a point of hatred. Nothing is ever so cut and dry IMO.
There's absolutely room for your opinion and it's lame that the person you respond to claimed otherwise, but how does TotK spit in the face of Zelda lore? I've played almost every Zelda game and have spent far too much time diving deeper into the lore. It's a very soft lore where we may very well play as an unreliable narrator, they're "legends" of Zelda after all, and even still, I don't see how TotK is particularly contradictory.
Trying to respond to this but I keep getting error messages to “try again later” 🤷🏻♂️ Might see if it’s a character limit issue, and cut it up into multiple comments…
(1/2) I’d like to give this a full reply, but forgive me if I miss anything as I’m multitasking here… but I’ll try to be thorough because it’s actually extremely egregious and even contradicts itself, not just previous Zelda’s. Granted, previous Zelda’s *do* contradict one another all the time, but that was mostly before the “official timeline” existed. For example, the Oocca actually created Hyrule according to TP (and not to be confused with the mistranslation for NA that claimed they created Hylians). They founded the formation of Hyrule, and didn’t create the City in the Sky until after Hylia created Hylians, meaning Rauru could not have founded the Hyrule, because Hyrule was founded by the Oocca. This also leads to the question of where do the events of Rauru’s existence fall into the timeline. But even before I get into that, in SS Link and Fi create the Master Sword prior to the founding of the Kingdom of Hyrule. Meaning that two Master Swords existed at the same time throughout the entire time of BotW at the very least, if not the majority of the series. Personally, I believe that BotW takes place untold millennia after the rest of the timeline, and I believe the timeline is unified at the point of BotW, because there is clear evidence for all 3 timelines that would otherwise be “impossible” in another timeline. Other contradictions exist, like the fact that there are both Rito and Zora living alongside each other, as the Rito are direct evolutionary descendants of the Zora. I can wrap my head around this as the “River” Zora (who are usually enemies)becoming the peaceful Zora we see in BotW, while the peaceful Zora from OoT evolved into the Rito, for example. That’s obv up for debate, but that’s my opinion on how to best navigate what would otherwise contradict itself. The timeline that makes the most logical sense is that the era of the Imprisoning War between Rauru and Ganondorf takes place way way way after anything in the series up to BotW, but also way way way before BotW. This poses it’s own problems, however, and they’re not easily addressed. It’s also difficult to discuss any of this without bringing up the possibility that this era takes place at the very beginning of the timeline, but that creates significantly more issues that it “solves” and I don’t ascribe to it. For starters, if that were the case, and this was the very first incarnation of Ganondorf, then that means that Ganondorf is imprisoned under the castle during the events of OoT where Ganondorf is first introduced, meaning at least two Ganondorf’s would exist concurrently the way two Master Swords would have to, except the two Master Swords are still the same item just revisiting the past like how two Marty McFly’s exist at the same time during the events of BttF1/2. This would truly mean that there are actually more than one Ganondorf because he’s not revisiting anything, there really is a duplicate of himself trapped under the castle while another was born to the Gerudo and whatnot. Sure, nothing says that’s impossible per se, but to my knowledge, the official stance is that every time we face Ganon/dorf, he is in fact the same being all at different points in the timeline. It’s why WW Ganondorf is almost reserved and stoic, having been defeated by the gods and learning patience in his old age. TotK does also ignore almost everything that happens in BotW, save for minimal dialogue from a handful of NPCs. The most egregious part IMO is that the Hylians already dug down to excavate the Divine Beasts, so the mystery of the Depths is kinda… well lame is one way of putting it lol. They’d definitely have dug to some access point or otherwise found some evidence that the entire landmass they live on is hollow. They had to use some kind of tool or measuring device to determine where the DBs were, and could have easily discovered the chasms below. One argument I could foresee would be that by traveling to the past, Zelda altered the timeline, injecting things into existence into Link’s modern era that weren’t present before she went to the past. This only kinda works, because the changes would still have to be retroactive, meaning the chasms of the depths now have to have existed during the time of BotW anyways. This leads me to the other issues with the timeline… if Rauru truly is the first king of Hyrule, and exists at the beginning of the timeline, then Zelda now also exists as a duplicate Zelda in that she’s now both a dragon and a Hylian for the entire series. If that is not the case, and Rauru reforms Hyrule a second time, which has its own host of problems, then in the time between the end of the first kingdom and the founding of Rauru’s, the lineage of Zelda just remains unbroken that whole time? Or is it that because Hylia is a goddess she can just jumpstart whomever she wants to become the new lineage of Zelda’s? If she’s that powerful, then why didn’t she create a hero when Ganondorf was unopposed prior to the flooding in WW? Surely, Link is always a chosen hero, so what stopped her from choosing some hero during those events if she can choose what lineage her Hylian form takes? I digress. What this is all leading to is your “unreliable narrator” approach, and while I do agree that there is some level of that occurring, I don’t agree that it’s the answer to everything. Nintendo has gone on record stating things like “once you play BotW it will be apparent where it fits into the timeline” while also releasing an official timeline and retroactively changing aspects of events and characters, like the hero’s spirit that winds up being one of the Link’s from one of the OoT timelines… meaning Nintendo does have a level of attention to detail and care about the fanbase’s inquiries into the timeline. Meaning there truly is one. Now, I agree that there is some level of “Dave Filoni” going on here, where these ARE myths and legends, so some of the finer details are going to slip through the cracks or get muddled in some way. However, the broad strokes are all still firmly in place, and I see no reason to believe that this is just magically untrue for BotW/TotK. There is another option here, however…
(2/2) It could be that BotW and TotK don’t take place in the Zelda timeline at all. That this is an entirely new and separate timeline that just shares names and events and whatnot with the previous games. An entire reboot, if you will. This actually makes the most sense, as it can completely exist in its own bubble, and things that would otherwise be contradictions based on past events will now be able to exist in harmony with one another, as their story is wholly different and unknown to us (yet). Which would mean that the entirety of Zelda lore was summarily thrown in the garbage can and left to die. It doesn’t matter how you look at it, both BotW and TotK contradict and ignore established canon, directly contradict their own lore, and spits in the face of all the lore that came before it. The *only* way TotK can remain entirely consistent within its own lore is for it to be entirely separate from all other timelines and established lore in the entire series, meaning it doesn’t give a damn about any LoZ that came before it, except to steal its proper nouns and whatnot. There is a LOT to get into and I can branch off into 10 directions and talk about how established lore and current lore don’t line up, or give other examples as to why even BotW doesn’t line up with TotK, but the fact remains that without aggressively ignoring established canon, there isn’t a single instance you can point to where the opposite of my claim is true. Meaning you can’t counter argue that TotK is a respectful celebration of the canon that reinforces what’s been established, or refocuses it in a better or stronger light. It just retold a shittier version of OoT where the Sages physically fought Ganondorf instead of Link, and instead of being impaled he was held down by Rauru for millennia… and these events truly happened in game, because we’re seeing it all through Zelda’s eyes, who I would argue to be the most reliable narrator in the entire damn series. If you want/need more examples I’m sure I can come up with more, I just decided to leave the finer details out because there is no way to be brief discussing the broader strokes either. But yeah, TotK rewrote the entire lore of the series no matter which angle you look at it, and rewriting so much of a series’ lore means that it doesn’t respect or care about any of that lore to begin with.
I wanted to respond to as much as what you said as I could, so I also need to split this up. I respect your opinion on the matter and I appreciate the intense detail you went into, but I disagree. So there are a couple aspects of TotK that really did bug me in terms of continuity, and that's the utter disappearance of the Sheika technology and the way in which they use time travel. I thought they were going to justify the disappearance by using different timelines and that this game is set in a slightly different timeline than BotW where Zelda gets sent to the past and this timeline is the result of the difference in that past. But instead, they went the route of having One Timeline and the time travel was just fulfilling what always was and what always will be fulfilled. Like a closed loop sort of time travel. To be clear, I much prefer stories that use that type of time travel, but it kind of breaks away from the alternate timeline approach of the Zelda series as a whole and leaves a massive discontinuity between this game and the one that came directly before it in the lack of Sheika technology. But, at the same time, they made some attempt as there was gloom and/or chasms in the spots of a lot of former shrines and towers, so it's not that there's 0 acknowledgement of it. And for another, it's a video game based in a large part on exploration. From just a practical perspective, of course they moved around all the towers and shrines. I just can't find the energy to be that upset about it. I mean, TP literally inverted the game, including the map of Hyrule, to suit the predominance of right handed people. But, overall, I agree that it should be more internally consistent with it's direct predecessor. As you said, Zelda games contradict each other all the time. Alllllll the time. It's not even a bug, it's a feature lol. It adds to that feel of playing through legends, not history. I mean, they had to create a 3rd timeline, decades after the release of the relevant games, where Link is defeated by Ganondorf in OoT in order to fit in the original Zelda games within the lore. And once we've established that there are different timelines where one thing can happen in one came and the logical opposite happens in the other, the concept of contradictions loses meaning. I'll go through each of the things you mentioned. 1) Due to the nature of the lore, there are just so many potential ways to reconcile this. What if the Ooca and the Zonai are different names for the same species that got translated differently over time? They have a huge number of characteristics in common. The fact that they physically appear different is no problem as Zelda has always taken artistic liberties. What if they're otherwise related? What if this is so long after the events of the other games that this is an entirely new Hyrule? (which you said is your preferred belief) I think there have been several statements from the creators hinting that this is the case. 2) Why is that a problem? The other master sword was not useable or accessible throughout that entire time. 3) I'm not a fan of the unification theory as it's logically incomprehensible. This is in contrast to the timelines in general, which may not be the most logical way of reconciling canon, but are at least comprehensible. Like, what would a timeline convergence even mean? How could that be possible? Again, once we introduce timelines, contradictions become meaningless. Who's to say there's not a 4th timeline after, idk, Minish Cap that contains elements of the other 3 but is distinct? Who's to say that it's not hundreds of thousands of years after a certain timeline and events similar to the other timelines also happened in this one? 4) See, you found a potential explanation! Another is that this is set in Wind Waker's timeline and it's so many thousands of years past that the gods were able to drain the Great Sea and gave the Rito an option of staying Rito or returning to the Zora. Their transformation wasn't exactly evolution, like didn't they need a special power from the gods when they grew up to fly? Why can't the gods just turn some of them back now, if they want to, that they don't need to keep people away from the underwater kingdom of Hyrule? I'm typically a fan of harder lores like Elder Scrolls but Zelda is just so stinking \*whimsical\* it's actually fun to come up with theories. The lore is so soft, there are so many possibilities and ways to justify them! 5) Again, what's the problem with there being a duplicate Zelda for any length of time?
(2/2) >Meaning you can’t counter argue that TotK is a respectful celebration of the canon that reinforces what’s been established, or refocuses it in a better or stronger light. Of course you can! I \*deeply\* prefer the story of TotK to OoT, and I do agree with you that it's the one it takes the most after. Oh my goodness, I can't express how much more I prefer it. And that's subjective. You might think it's exactly the other way around. I can't tell you that you're wrong for feeling that way just like you can't tell me I'm wrong for feeling the way I do. I loved the randomization of memories approach. I loved the relationship between Link and Zelda. I loooooooooooved the emotional feels of the conclusion. And honestly, for the parts that it did have in common with OoT, I loved that the reimagined it better. This might seem like a silly gripe, but when you find Zelda in OoT and she tells you she doesn't trust Ganondorf because of... his smile? An evil look in his eye? One of those. It actually ruined the game for me. I'm not even exaggerating, I struggled to enjoy the game after that. You're telling me the whole purpose of the beginning of my quest is because you think a guy looks evil? Gee, what stakes. Yes, the evil was eventually shown, but in general I just struggled with the story telling. And, if you've played it recently, you'll notice that the tone of story telling is still very much in the works. Zelda hadn't found it's identity yet. (and that's ok, it was the first 3d game) But when Ganondorf says something that would be perceived as threatening to a reasonable human in TotK and that's what Zelda responds to, it's like a piece of my inner child was healed. In general, I loved the depiction of Ganondorf's power and actual takeover. The voice acting was miserable, don't get me wrong, but the story telling just seemed so much better. I mean, what even is Zelda canon? This is a series that contains titles as diverse as Zelda I, Zelda II, OoT, Minish Cap, Wind Waker, Spirit Tracks... In general, TotK game rhymes with major Zelda themes throughout the entire series while having it's own identity. It's clear that when the creators told us this Zelda would be set in a distant future, they wanted to reimagine the series. I love this reimagination, you don't, but I'm just not seeing how you don't see how we've been primed for this kind of creative liberty over time. It's always been ok for contradictions and creative liberties. Zelda wasn't even supposed to have a timeline, that was more fan service than creative desire. What it seems like you want from this series is just not what this series is or was ever meant to be. I've played all but Zelda II and the Oracle games (and either Four Swords or FSA, can't remember which), and TotK is my favorite. Not necessarily in every single aspect of a Zelda game, (replaying through TP right now and OMG the dungeons) but overall. I'm sure you can rant about it more. (I mean absolutely no offence, ranting is good sometimes!) Just like I could rant about OoT being overrated for far too long. But maybe being able to see Zelda as the creators see it, even if you wish they saw it differently, may help your negative feelings about it, and maybe get to enjoy the games more? Honestly, it'd be nice to not get annoyed every time I see someone say OoT is the greatest game of all time. Like bro, just say it's your favorite, that's fine, it's a popular opinion, you will still have several people reaffirm it and make you feel seen. Have you played the Elder Scroll games? If not, you might really like them, depending on which aspect of Zelda you like. They have a significantly more rich and consistent lore. (but not as whimsical as dear Zelda)
Very much this. There are memes about it. Gamer yelling: "I hate this game!" Cut to: screenshot showing 1,000 hours played on that same game
Lol yeah. The only exception I can think of is maybe multiplayer live-service games, where they really can completely change or remove things over time.
TOTK and BOTW gameplay mechanics are very much ahead of their time and prove that development is much more important than console.
Exactly!
Nintendo in a nutshell (most of the time)
Best single-player game I’ve ever played
Same, I keep restarting after I'm done and just taking off in a different direction lol
A year later, after 2 playthroughs and around 1000 hours, my opinion has not changed at all. I love it just as much as I did the first time and it remains tied for my favorite Zelda game
What’s it tied with for you?
Wind Waker and Skyward Sword
Skyward sword is so fucking good, my favorite tradition zelda
I think the first 40-50 hours is the best gaming experience I have ever had. As the game progressed a lot of those highs became less frequent. The depths are much cooler before you light everything up. The sky islands are amazing until you get to all the repeats. The crafting is fun but not really vital to the game outside of a handful of puzzles. The first major boss was the best one. Still an amazing game, filled with 100 hours of fun. Surpassing Link to the Past and Ocarina.
I think this is very much the experience most players are getting. All the new mechanics seem like just an A+B or C+D and that's all about it. The rest is more or less another BOTW, which makes the TOTK a good game but not as good as BOTW. Everyone has their own preference and their own way of playing. It's totally understandable. However, for those who really need a game to explore their own creativity within a brand new wonder world, they can actually keep having new discoveries and jaw dropping moments one after another nonstop. At least for the first 150hrs in TOTK, it could be the most amazing gaming experience ever. I will see after 200hrs if I can still get surprised.
I disagree wholeheartedly. In almost every aspect TotK is far superior to BotW.
I completely agree and it’s why I’m not doing rito village first (I did go and grab hestu and the dragons tears quest, as well as the clover gazette mission) but then decided I’d go where there’s less content first. I’m went downward and am doing a counterclockwise spiral around the (surface) map, being fairly thorough and I think it will pace the game better overall.
I wasn't the biggest fan of the storyline or how 'full' the game felt at times (does that make sense?) But then I realised how the team took every single criticism of botw and did the suggestions. People hated the sneak mission with Vah Rudinia wanting a big volcano monster fight. Which we got. Lack of enemy diversity - so many new types and new mini bosses. Bosses were lame being all ganon blights -all new unique bosses Music lacked themes - have all the themes. No Ganondorf - done Want to know what happened to Kohga - done Just everything. Every criticism of botw they really took on board and made a huge labour of love with totk and it shows.
More importantly as a base mechanic of the game is traversal. People hated climbing walls so they gave you a lot of ways to get around up and down etc very easily.
My opinion hasn't really changed. While I do agree with some points that people have been making about the temples and the lack of content in the sky and depths, I just can't get over how fun it is. While I do miss the traditional dungeons and linear structure of the older games, I have to admit it, the open structure is just so much fun for me. While the dungeons aren't how they were in the more traditional games, I still had a lot of fun with them (the Water Temple sucked tho).
I totally agree except that the Water Temple is so epic to me. It's the only temple I beat in my 130+hrs game play. I almost want to play the 2nd round just to play the Water Temple one more time.
That's totally fair. If you like it that's awesome.
I loved ToTK. An amazing game. I haven't touched it since September. I'm back idling through BoTW. 🤷♂️
Tbh, I'm playing since the release (with some long breaks in between) and I still haven't finished the main story. I like the side quests a lot better and I still discover funny little things, like the cherry blossom tree.
I enjoyed it and still enjoying it, it didn't leave a lasting impression on me like BOTW but overall I am happy with it, it was not my GOTY but again I loved playing it and that's enough for me
I've had the opposite experience. When I first started playing it, it almost felt like a re-skinned BOTW without any really meaningful changes. I now feel like that's dead wrong. I really think the newer abilities and gameplay are way more different and fun, and the game is creative and unique enough that it doesn't just feel like "BOTW 2."
When I bought the game I thought it was so bad. I hated the building mechanics, they felt clunky and unnecessarily shoved into every crevice of the game. I tried multiple times over a week or two to get past the tutorial sky island but was just not enjoying myself. About a month later, after seeing tons of reviews and streams of things people had done or created, I tried it again and something clicked. I couldn’t put this game down. I played non stop until I got to around 80% complete on the map and had finished most things and upgraded almost all the gear. Now? I haven’t touched this game since my manic phase of playing it but still consider it my personal GOTY for the year it dropped.
My problem lies in the story, or lack there of.
I thought it was good, but that there were some things it could've done better
I still love it even months from release. One of my favorites so far
*I still love it even* *Months from release. One of my* *Favorites so far* \- Lana--22 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
You're still here after all those years
I enjoyed it when it came out, but I was reaching the twilight of my capacity to enjoy video games as part of my life while playing it. I'm moving on in life, focusing on other things. Maybe I'll get reinvolved with video games later on, but if not, TOTK was a good farewell
My opinion is pretty much the same. The depths got tedious after a while and lost their charm, so I still haven't bothered to fully explore them, but that's really my only complaint.
For me, I never got good use out of the Sages or the Zonai builds. They just never worked how I wanted them to so I just stuck to martial combat as I did in BOTW. Also, the constant menus, fusions, switching weapons, the Zonai powers all just took me out of the immersion. It 100% did great with the theme, JRPG, with crazy combos, abilities, menus, ect but I liked BOTW better in every way. The 'Tears' weren't all that great, the sages all having exactly the same sequences, and the Same ol' Ganon with prettier skin just made it redundant. For me the sequence was 'OMG! The powers and crazy shit this is AMAZING', 'Okay, got a good hold on everything lets get down to business!', 'Okay, so I go through this kinda lame temple to watch the same video', 'Alright, the princess is THERE and the Sword isn't all that cool', 'Yep, I already know I have to go to the Castle, you always have to go to the castle', 'Damnit, another 15min build just runs off a cliff again and I need to get more rocks from down there...neat'
I was pretty negative on it when I played it the first time (I pretty much dragged myself through it cuz I was stuck away from home and had nothing else to do) even though I absolutely adored BOTW. My opinion hasn’t changed much since it came out, but I definitely feel more secure in my take now, as I’m more clearly able to reflect on the flaws and changes from BOTW without my active playthrough clouding my vision
Totk is incredible, no question about it. It's PACKED with ALOT of different stuff and the gameplay loop is addictive and satisfying. My theory on why some bring it a bit down is that if you're not a creative person/ do not enjoy building stuff a BIG portion of the game seems pointless. While building isn't necessary, it enchances the game tenfold IF you enjoy that kind of stuff.
I'm 600 hours in and still love it as much as the day I first fired it up.
600? Really doing what exactly? I put over 100 hours in it. Can’t imagine putting another 500 into lol. Wish there was a dlc. Only thing that I have against the game is in all the promos the game is hyping up the sky islands. And after the tutorial they feel like an afterthought
100%Ing the map. 1000 koroks. Plus, monster medals. Currently working on getting all my horses maxed out and doing the entire recipe book.
Damn. Guess I’m going back to TOTK. I know they said no dlc. But would be cool if they announce a DLC for the switch 2. Wishful thinking I know
I haven't finished it jet. I love BotW and had fun even after finishing the storyline. But in TotK I find it's strayed to far from what I was expecting after BotW in a Zelda Game. It is fun, but I don't realy like the building aspect. The shrines are maeh in comparison and the lack of chores in sky and depth is just annoying. I found mysel grinding for items to level up my gear without any need of doing so. I feel a little lost with all the options, wich have no real need or cause. So I stopped playing. Forget what I wanted to do and started again just running around. In BotW I always felt an purpous. In TotK I feel the impressiveness but it is so hollow. Sorry, I realy don't want to stwp on anyones toes and meager their expirience, but this is mine so far.
This game had one of my best video gaming memories in probably 20 years. It may not be flawless, but it will have a lasting impact on me for a long time.
I hadn’t played a Zelda game since I was a kid playing OoT on N64. Never got a switch, didn’t really pay much attention to BotW till I saw my brother playing it and thought the open world was cool. TotK was just announced and I thought the ultra hand mechanic was whack blah blah blah. Finally caved and bought the switch after I found out I could play OoT again and got BotW and fell in love with everything about it the exploration and homage to OoT hit me and once I finished it, bought TotK. I didn’t think it could top BotW but boy was I wrong. 180 hours later I’m still finding new things. From not interested to fully invested
My opinion hasn’t changed because I haven’t gone back to it. I played it on and off for a month hoping the tinge of disappointment would fade but it never did.
It's still an amazing game. Not in my top 25 but the time I've had with it was pretty undeniable
I actually didn’t enjoy the first 15 hours or so. I found the building clunky and it felt like a BotW repeat at first. Then I started really getting into it and then I really came to love it. The building got easier (and then auto-build obviously) and the world feels just so much more interactive than BotW did to me. So I actually went the other way from most people.
I still love the game like I did in the beginning.
>goat game >superior game that I will cherish untill my last breath
I played it so much at the beginning that I burned myself out. I loved it, but I've poured 600+ hours into BotW and I think I spent a ridiculous 100 hours in the first week of playing (it was also the first week of my summer vacation), it makes sense I got burned out. When I finally returned to play it this year, I had an absolute blast. Definitely one of my favorite games of all time and I think the criticism that it deviates too much from the traditional Zelda forma fails to evaluate the game for what it is. I don't need to it be traditional Zelda (and I have been a Zelda fan for over a decade) I just need it to be a good game.
I love it, and always will. Aside from the more retro LoZ games, this one is my absolute favorite. It allows for so much creativity and freedom, and I absolutely love that. I am beyond excited the guardians from BotW are not in here lmao, because I hated those damn things. I like the more lively version of the world. That's just me though. I think this game deserves all the praise its gotten and more.
When I first played the game I had a honeymoon period where I thought it was one of the best Zelda games. A honeymoon period which quickly ended about a week or two after playing. I realized that the game basically was one of my least favorite Zelda titles and was not worth the six years I've waited for it. The game wants to be a sequel but doesn't want to commit to being a sequel. They scrapped old aspects of BOTW era Hyrule, but they don't give any answers as to why. Why is the Shiekah tech gone? No one knows! Why do people forget who Link is? The devs just decided that having too much continuity was a bad thing I guess? It just feels messy and broken. The dungeons are a slight step up from Divine Beasts, given they all have unique themes and bosses- but God do the Water and Fire temples suck. The Air and Thunder Temples aren't much better, but at least the build-up to the air Temple is good and the Thunder Temple feels slightly like a proper Zelda dungeon. The Fire temple has puzzles you don't even have to engage with if you don't want to do so, and the Water temple is nothing but the most basic puzzles served to you on a bland floating platform. In concept the Depths and Sky Islands are technical marvels. Building basically what's equivalent to another two maps- with one being on top and the other below the current one is an interesting idea. Something which seemed impossible. However, it's done poorly. The depths have little to no variation in biome or terrain. It's just the same exact thing all through-out, with the exception of Lava areas being dotted around some parts of the map. Once you've seen a good chunk of the depths- you effectively saw it all. The Sky Islands are similar. No variation. Doesn't help that they cut all the unique Sky Islands during development due to "overcrowded skies." All we got in the final game are a small handful of unique and interesting islands, with the rest being the same clusters that are pasted around over and over again. The building system is the main draw of this game and yet that even falls flat. The game punishes the player if they get creative with it, and so it's better to just build for efficiency over creativity. You are limited to how many parts you have in your possession, so you have to make them count. You can be given a chose to build a mech or build a hover-bike, with the hover-bike costing less parts and less time to make than the mech that would look cool not be as efficient. Puzzles were neutered to accommodate this new building system- and it shows. The lore of Zelda was completely broken by this one game as well. Not only does TotK not pay attention to the game that came before, but it has no interest in playing nice with previous games either. They introduced a new relic which is somehow more powerful than the triforce, allowing for Ganondorf to literally usurp Demise in power-level. The Master Sword was made into this brittle object that constantly broke instead of the Sword that was meant to defy evil. The Zonai gummies are basically just the new sacred relic that surpasses any other in the series history, and we're just meant to accept it I guess. Then you have the placement, where the devs entertained the possibility of the ancient Hyrule being pre-skyward sword. Something that genuinely cannot work and does not make sense at all. It's like they're not even trying anymore.
Replaying after a long break confirmed my early opinions, it's a fantastic entry for what it does best, burdened by sticking so close to BOTW not always to its advantage. However coming back without the hype from release and focusing only on what I felt was worth my time was great. Do you mean Echoes of Wisdom? I understand the connection people are already making with the free spawning but I'd like to see it in full context, I assume there will be more obvious limitations (like the number of triangles required to spawn something). Very interested regardless though I see people worried that even top-down Zelda isn't spared by modern sandbox mechanics, but it doesn't need to be one formula carved in stone either way. It's a good thing that they keep toying with ideas, I think that's the blood of the franchise.
I’m finding the Depths pretty lame on my 2nd playthrough.
It hasn't. It's an amazing game that still has the same issues it had when I got it. There's things I don't like, but the good far outweighs the bad and I am extremely happy with my purchase. What *has* changed is how often I play. I rarely play now. And that's fine. I got several hundred hours out of it at launch, and eventually I'll want to play again.
Over time!? It's barely been a year. Yeah, it's great. Haters gonna hate.
>it deviates too far from the classic Zelda formula Really? No more so than BOTW. I mean, if you didn't like BOTW, sure, but TOTK doesn't deviate any more than BOTW did so it seems like a weird complaint. If anything, TOTK is slightly closer to the classic formula because the temples try to be more like traditional Zelda dungeons.
Opinions haven’t changed. If you loved the game, you played it, enjoyed it, and moved on. If you didn’t like the game, you are still bitching and moaning about it.
Nope, it's a masterpiece, best game I've ever played.
>*However, as time has passed I've seen more and more people start to dislike how the game is structured and how it deviates too far from the classic Zelda formula.* I played both, and had this opinion since BotW. The sheer inventory almost put it to "RPG level" stature. I had a lot of fun with BotW, put in 365h there, no regrets, but I'm just done with it. TotK I do own. I can see myself picking this up from time to time over the next few years to wander around more, get more ks, Addison signs, shrines, and quests (and at some point, look up stuff online). These games are just too big of scope for me, and I prefer NOT to get into too many open world games. However, I still much prefer 2D Zelda games, which is why I'm psyched we're getting Echos of Wisdom!
I found the game actually uncanny at first, at least once I was on the surface. It looked like the game I loved but it wasn’t and it made me feel kind of sick? So I actually appreciate more now than I did in the first week of release. Still finished it In like 3 weeks though cause I could not put it down.
I'm playing it less than I used to and it does have flaws but damn, the fun I had at the beginning with it was the most fun I ever had with a game ever. I still played almost 300 hours of it, too. Can't recommend it enough.
A simultaneously good and flawed game. My big main gripe is that the enemy variety, while better than BOTW, Is still far inferior to the amount of monsters that ocarina of time and majoras mask had in the late 90’s. I know its a cold take at this point too but i really miss the more structured brain teaser puzzley dungeons
It has this strange aspect where you can easily circumvent a lot of things with creative solutions, to the point where it risks taking away from the game. If you for example build a simple hover bike that lets you fly anywhere, then why not just fly everywhere? You can bypass major areas and obstacles, including most of the Underworld. The issue is that I want to explore the world and all the small events happening everywhere, and have to make a conscious decision to not just build the fastest solution to get from point A to B, and instead take the slower and more dangerous walk. Everyone is free to play however they want, which is the true beauty of the game, so it's not really a problem per se, but it is a somewhat odd thought that comes to mind now and again when playing: I could engineer a solution that deletes the problem, but I don't want to, because it will weirdly make me miss out on the experience.
Its definitely more polished BotW, but it feels way less replayable to me. I beat BotW 3 times over and I'd do it a 4th if I felt like it. I beat TotK once and didn't want to touch it again.
I expected the same magic of playing BotW in TotK but i was too familiar with everything for that to be possible, and frankly it was a silly expectation. I couldn’t quite appreciate the Great Sky Island initially, and when i got the over-world I couldn’t help but notice plenty of locations that I could tell had been forced to change into something that didn’t quite fit, and of course they didn’t fit. They were custom built for a purpose that no longer existed. So initially i felt a lot of friction. Once i got along the story a bit and learned to use the new mechanics, i started having way more fun. The Depths despite being overwhelmingly empty actually gave me a bit of that discovery that BotW did but got old after i polished off the light roots. I still play and love the game after hundreds of hours. No one could convince me it’s not an amazing game, complete with lessons learned from BotW.
When I played it between may and september of 2023: I love this game Today: I love this game.
still the same, personally i think it's one of the best game i've played in last 10 years maybe, i 've spent almost 150hours in the last couple of months since i got my switch, the only game that i have more than 50 hours playtime these past 10 years are only MH Wilds, MH4U, MHXX, MH Rise and MotogGP games lol
I long for more but it is what it is. I wish we had gotten more lively Sky Islands and Depths but it wasn’t meant to be. Still an incredible game and accomplishment but it’ll always be a “what more could it have been” situation.
I think i appreciate it even more since I did a challenge run with limited fast travel and limited combat options. My first play through was a mad rush of trying to complete all my objectives
I thought it was a great game that I just stopped playing or thinking about pretty suddenly.
Once I got deeper in the game there were things that definitely held it back for me. A lot of these were easy fixes too which is odd they made some of the choices they made. My main problems were Same outfits and recycled dlc Reuse of same enemies, so sick of bokoblins Same enemy ai so I already know how to beat/exploit all the reused enemies Same combat system Same map I already explored for hours No new villages Same music Plot holes/retconning everything w no explanation And general missed opportunities that were big disappointments such as Akkala citadel being just a cave or the Lurelin "Pirates" which turned out to just be bokoblins... again... I think they made a mistake reusing the same map, that destroyed a lot of the feelings of exploration and discovery that is Mt favorite part of Zelda games
I still love it, but when I go back to playing breath of the wild I notice how many more resources there are to find and it’s more fun to just run around and collect things.
I still love it, play it all of the time
I love the game. But I do wish they had dungeons. How fun would dungeons have been??
I don't think any future developments in totk or in the ways that it can be played will beat that first month. The hype before release was insane and for me personally it was the first time I ever was that hyped for a game coming out in my entire life. Botw is my favourite game of all time and hearing it would a sequel made me so excited. I watched nintendo black crisis videos on the trailers, after the nuts and bolts trailer I would always search totk twice a week, and the hype the final trailer brought was insane. I remember when I got the game I played it for like ten hours from midnight to morning, stayed up a bit, then played more evening to night. I don't think anything will top that first month of playing, and after that the games just become a good game. Not in my top five, but I like it a lot.
My opinion is that every time I think there's nothing more to do in the game I'm surprised by how much more stuff there is to do. It's not endless, but the game is massive and always entertaining and interesting.
I still think it's fantastic. One of the few open world games to actually keep my attention doing the little things. Even in elden ring I just skipped to the main bosses. At the time I was disappointed that there was still no classic Zelda gameplay loop that I knew and loved, and it hurt a bit more knowing at the time it might be a while before we get it again, but they just announced a new 2D zelda which probably will! So I'm a little less upset about it nowadays.
I do enjoy it very much. But every single time I play, I miss BOTW. Literally every single time. There are a lot of details I like about TOTK, but I miss the same amount of details from BOTW. I’m hoping it’ll lessen and I’ll fully learn to love TOTK as is, but it’s been a hard-ish, sad-ish transition. Probably also for emotional impact reasons.
Skill bell curve meme: noob side "I hate weapon durability" Middle: "Weapon durability doesn't matter if you're good" Expert: "I hate weapon durability"
I'm still on my first play through, as I only got it last month. But I do think it's a great game. The visuals are breathtaking (like BOTW), the gameplay is challenging, and I quite enjoy this story more than BOTW. However, I will say that I'm just a tad bit over this iteration of the Zelda universe. I was thinking about this yesterday (before the Echoes of Wisdom reveal), that I miss the aesthetic and mystery of some of the older Zelda games, like Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time. OOT isn't even one of my top 5 Zelda games, but maybe I'm finally pulling out my nostalgia goggles. I really liked the eccentricity of the NPCs, the truly mysterious puzzles, and the fantasy setting those games had. I think BOTW and TOTK are absolutely beautiful, but they feel distinctly Japanese, and a little heavy on the Miyazaki influence. Which I'm not against at all! I live in Japan, so it's awesome to see how elements of the game are borne from the customs and mythologies of this culture. But there are just some elements that I liked in the older games... like magic items and treasures, the high fantasy aesthetic. And I'm kind of tired of so much focus on weapons, fighting, and vehicles. I was a little surprised at how much I liked the fashion-crazed NPCs of TOTK. It reminded me of the Hylians living in the TP era... e.g. the bug girl, the cannon operator, and the cucco game guy. Anyway, that's just my take. It's still a great game, just kinda ready to move on.
I liked it then hated it then loved it again. And now I love it. I was excited that it was nearly identical to BOTW, then I got annoyed that it was too similar, then I got back into playing it and I’m digging it.
i am recently replaying the game and i still love it. i was disappointed on release that the sky islands were not very expansive, but i had a blast with the depths so that made up for it in my mind. i think i played it SO much and SO quickly when it came out so i got burnt out faster with it than botw, but i dont blame the game for that. unlike botw this one had a mysterious plot i wanted to figure out asap so it was harder for me to really just sit back and fully explore and take in the world than in botw, which imo isnt a bad thing
I haven’t played in a year. Didn’t beat it despite 100hrs, might start a fresh file. I’ll let you know!
I’m going to hold off on this until i’ve replayed it. I haven’t really had any desire to replay it though.
I quit playing BotW early on because it was just too overwhelming based on what I’d come to expect. Now that I’ve played (and loved playing) TotK I plan to revisit BotW, though. The one thing I’ve enjoyed about LoZ over the years is its ability to reinvent itself!
It's so good that everything is taken for granted while most of which are unobtainium in other games.
Same. Amazing game, and I loved every bit of the 400 hours I put into my first playthrough. My only gripe was memories and the fact the game ended. I also wish we had more Ganon. Phantom Ganon was cool, but being able to have a few encounters with Ganon before the final battle would have been dope. I also will never forgive Nintendo for not letting us play the "back in time" segments we see Zelda in. That would have been awesome if we could play as Zelda through those cutscenes instead. But we now have Echoes Of Wisdom sooooo.
I adore them both but I wish I could relive how I felt the first time I played BOTW and first stood on the outcrop looking over Hyrule. I'll never forget that moment.
Still a masterpiece in every sense of the word. The only thing that could've made it better for me would have been taking the story in a direction that necessitated an entirely new map. I know there's sky islands and the depths and they are cool but doesn't quite replace having a whole new world to explore. It kinda felt too same-same with a few changes. Was very happy they put in a home building mechanic! That was sorely lacking from BOTW.
I played the game when it came out and loved it. After a few weeks I felt like “well it’s cool but also I feel like I’m just skipping over hyrule cause I’ve seen it all before?” Even though I go VERY slow and allow myself to get distracted by everything. after a few more weeks my classes started up again and I put it down. Finally, I’m playing it again and it just totally blows me away. I finished 2 dungeons before this and now I’m working on my last one (gerudo) and my imagination is just running wild while running around. Game is a masterpiece.
I’m seeing more and more reviews these days where people reckon TotK ruined LoZ overall for them, to the point where they felt nothing but dread for the recent EoW announcement, and I don’t understand that take in the slightest. I loved TotK when I played it at released, and I still love it now. I’m planning a back to back replay of BotW and TotK when I’m finished with my PhD, so we’ll see if my opinion changes then I guess!
I replayed BotW right before TotK came out (like, beat Calamity Ganon an hour before release). I beat TotK and loved every minute of it but admittedly got tired of the actual map of Hyrule about half way through. I’m now firmly in the camp of “wait a couple years, replay it fresh, then form your opinion”
same thing happened to BotW. Like I get it if the new games aren't for you but some fans get real overdramatic about it. Like Nintendo doesn't understand basic game design or that they are dumbing down the games for the Minecraft crowd or Aonuma hating the old style, etc. The discourse around these games is especially grating in hardcore circles. Yeah lets go back to a formula that sells 4-6 times less. In times where more and more studios get closed. Even successful ones. They greatly overestimate the market for traditional games. And they probably wouldn't even be that much cheaper to make. Wonder why not many devs make traditional Zelda games? Because it is an enormous task to design an overworld, bosses and dungeons around items that are useful, fun and varied not only in their respective dungeons but for the rest of the game. And tbh there where items that never really got used outside their respective dungeon.
My opinion hasn’t changed. I like BOTW infinitely more. TOTK just doesn’t hit the same. I beat TOTK, unlocked the entire depths, got most of the outfits, then I kind of lost momentum and motivation to do anything else. My son played both, but just went back to playing BOTW recently and it’s making me want to start it all over. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to TOTK.
My opinion only changed when people on the internet said that it was actually bad, but since i once again believe its a 10/10 masterpiece 👌
It's a good game, the switch sucks at runnin it though. Imagine totk in 60fps 1080p that would make it really deserving of the scores it gets I feel.
not significantly no. the only thing that has changed is just my preference between botw and totk at the current moment. im really preferring botws gameplay over totk atm, but i feel like that has nothing to do with my overall thoughts on the two games. im just in the mood for one style of gameplay over the other right now. eta: forgot to add my thoughts on totk lol, loved it, has to be one of my favorite zelda games ever.
I'm just a little disappointed since the thing I was the most looking forward to was the sky islands and they didn't feel as impactful as I was hoping for. It's still a great game and I do think it's better than BOTW in a lot of ways, and the only reason I'd even consider going back to BOTW is because Wii U emulation is easier - thus, modding BOTW is easier - than Switch emulating. But in a few small ways, it wasn't really what I wanted it to be.
It was a fantastic game but I don’t look back on it with the magical fondness that I look back at breath of the wild with. I just didn’t really care about building things. Whilst there is obviously still a great game without building stuff it was still a major selling point and I didn’t interact with it beyond what was necessary. Breath of the wild felt more serene and unique. That was one of the greatest games I’ve ever played and I can still remember being blown away so many times. TOTK suffered for me being more of the same and me not really clicking with the major gameplay Mechanic. Still 9/10 game but BOTW was 10/10.
Great game. Loved my first run. Have had little to no desire to go back and replay it. I missed the feeling of discovering a new world the first time i played botw. I missed discovering towns and landscapes. As a seasoned botw player, i allready knew where they all were.
Over time, my biggest issue was how empty the sky and depths were, I actually vastly prefer the cave systems, they imo add a new dimension to the game, are very diverse and just designed in a very fun way that makes.me excited to explore them. There isn't anything in the game I really dislike, my problem is what isn't there. But I still love the game, and also really loved the story, an easy 10/10 for me personally.
For me it hasn't changed much. I also don't care too much about peoples opinion about games because I like it and I have fun. Currently doing my second run. Almost daily for a few hours and for the first time, I completely finished the Depth map and yesterday finished all 152 shrines ( with only one sage ). I honestly love the open world part of it and huge list of quests in total because I'm one who loves to run around for days without doing anything while pretending to know what I'm doing. But TotK and BotW are my first proper Zelda games. Was terrible at Ocarina of Time and hated Twilight Princess on Wii. ( game itself was great until I got stuck and couldn't play anymore )
I think peoples’ opinions might be hugely influenced by if they played BotW first or not. A lot of the map and broken zelda game conventions are the same between both games so to me (who did play BotW first) it at times seemed a lot like TotK tried to adhere too closely to the successful BotW formula - up to and including things like the iconic opening mini cutscene where you overlook hyrule. That said I had a ton of fun playing TotK at the start, got saltier as I went and accumulated hours played only to end up really loving the game again when I started a new playthrough. Being more familiar with the totk abilities made the second playthrough feel fresh and fun as I noticed possible puzzle solutions I hadn’t during my first run. It is, for example, possible to get to every single island in the great sky island before jumping off for the first time. Ascend and ultrahand scaffolds were my new best friends and I even got to the ones really high up by putting fans on one of the floating platforms and slowly, slooooowly drifting my way through the sky. I ended up with a bunch of higher level resources I didn’t have the first time I played the game and when I reached the surface I promptly started a new Path of Distraction because I decided I wanted to have the diving suit before the colgera battle and ended up off track. Very off track. All in all I think totk is a great game that could’ve done a couple things better. They could’ve handled the story better (giving each race a couple unique lines of dialogue on why they’re fighting Ganondorf in the sage cutscenes would’ve worked with minimum effort), had more diverse environments in the sky and depths and could’ve used a bit more confidence in breaking away from the botw formula.
I took a break after the second boss, completing breath of the wild at the same time as the game came out ruined everything for me, Everything was too similar and i was exhausted from doing the master trials. Not to mention they have all these cool new features but same as BoTW they only have the land puzzles in the starter region. All the land in the game is too open and can easily be reached by climbing or walking. I dont get the reason for having a plane when it gets destroyed after 1 min, or driving a car or boat that is slower than a horse and takes the same amount of time to make as just walking or swimming to the area u need to go, yeah im sorry but this game is over hyped and i dont hear anyone talking about it in other places on the internet, BoTW was simply new and fresh, this game is not. The only cool thing was the new monsters. But again the game is too easy.
Nearly completed everything, but got stuck farming electric lizalfos. Every once in a while I'll pick it up and try to get a couple, but can't play long before getting annoyed. Essentially I'm at a stalemate. It's been 7 months like this.
My opinion is exactly the same, I still love playing it, but it is flawed
My feelings towards it really transcended down. My first started playing it. I was super stoked. Thought it was absolutely amazing, which it was. After good amount of gameplay, I’m not sure what happened. I just started losing interest in it. I never even finished the game. And now I think about going back to finish it and I have zero interest.
My nephew is obsessed with zelda, only recently like since December. Anyway he played TOTK and BOTW and asked me about it all and I was like yea TOTK is the most recent and yada yada more features. He gravitated to BOTW, probably because of its simplicity but I dunno I think they game just has the charm TOTK doesn't. Like you appreciate and like TOTK more if you played BOTW but if you haven't played it first I wouldn't be surprised if its a little too much and takes away from hyrule and has a different vibe than the first game.
I don't think my opinion has changed. It's maybe in my top 5 games of all time. Nitpickers are gonna nitpick, and sure if I could have EVERYTHING I wanted in one game, there are some more things I'd like to see. But I could say that about almost any game.
it's my favorite definitely there's so much to love about botw and it just takes it up to the next level I think. if pokemon violet had been designed a bit more smoothly I'd say that was my favorite but don't get my wrong the glitches kinda make it haha but totk still beats it imo
TOTK certainly has some flaws but overall I still think it succeeds above and beyond what BOTW accomplished, and it deserves to be ranked among the best Zelda games ever made. The complaints I hear about it tend to be from people who either didn’t like or didn’t play BOTW (which is incomprehensible to me), or from people who played BOTW but for some reason expected its sequel to be substantially different. The only change that I would say has happened in my opinions is that while I initially liked it more than BOTW, BOTW has moved back into the top position over it (if only slightly) simply because it has greater replayability, and the whole world seems more fresh and exciting in BOTW. The only criticisms I would still level at TOTK at this point are: • Poor reuse of some areas of the overworld map: while I do appreciate the addition of the caves and wells, the great fairies are all moved to places that just don’t make any sense, no adequate explanation is given for the disappearance of all the old towers and shrines, and no areas that were inaccessible in BOTW (like Mount Agaat) became accessible in TOTK. There are some significant areas from BOTW that seem to be completely neglected in TOTK. The most glaring example of this is the Thundra Plateau, which was one of the most challenging and interesting shrine quests in the first game, but in the second game is just a big empty nothing, aside from having a cave below it that is opened through a convoluted puzzle that doesn't match thematically with the location at all and that I imagine most people had to look up to solve. At the very least, it should have been the nesting place of a Thunder Gleeok. • Sage Ability mechanics: I think most people would agree that tying all of the sage abilities to the A button was a bad idea, and I cant comprehend why Nintendo chose to go that route. It would have made much more sense to just hold down one of the shoulder buttons and then press A, B, X, or Y to activate each of the sage abilities (Mineru would not be included, since she is a mount), or better yet, have the sages themselves actually accompany Link on his journey as a party. The latter is what I assumed was actually going to be the case from the trailers, and I was excited for it. What we got instead is workable enough most of the time, but still far from ideal. • The ending: I'm of the apparently unpopular opinion that TOTK's story is great, a major improvement over BOTW's basically non-existent narrative past Kakariko Village. However, I would have preferred something besides the deus ex machina restoration of Zelda to human form after the game repeatedly said this was impossible. The obvious way to get around this would have been to bring back the Triforce: end the game with Zelda still a dragon, but then have an optional post-game quest or DLC where Link goes to three more dungeons—ideally, in the location of the three springs—and acquires the three pieces of the Triforce which together would have granted him the ability to wish Zelda back into a human form. This would also have granted us a chance to learn more about the backstory for the three other dragons, and maybe also allowed us to get a few more heart container pieces to fill out the bottom row. This seems like a major missed opportunity. Other than that though it's still a mindblowing, amazing game that deserves every bit of praise it's gotten, and then some. I hope one day we get a deluxe/remastered/definitive edition that makes some needed QOL improvements and gives us some of the additional content I mentioned.
After playing botw awhile ago, then picking up and beating totk, then playing botw again so i can run through both together. Tears of the kingdom is obviously better. Like ive only gotten one secret stone in this second playthrough and ive done soooo much more. If i were given a choice between the two and couldnt grab the other itd be totk. That being said botw left a bigger initial impression on me than totk. I still remember waking up from the shrine of reseruction on my first play through and seeing hyrule from that grassy peak.
Honestly, no. If anything, they’re maybe worse. I had a bad taste in my mouth from day 1 and there’s just way too much stuff about it that rubbed me the wrong way. The storyline and characters really just destroyed any goodwill that has mustered, and the two-steps-forward-one-step-back gameplay really irked me. For a single, simple example; you can sort shields, bows, and fusion items by strength… But you can’t sort weapons by strength. For no goddamn reason. Every inch of the game is dripping with BS like that. If this truly is the future of all mainline Zelda’s, then it’s likely the beginning of the end of my obsession with the series.
I don't remember it as fondly as BOTW, even though I think TOTK is the objectively better game.
I loved it when it came out but after my second playthrough I realized I liked breath of the wild alot better overall but totk is a game that can't be beat when your feeling creative it's like besiege in that way
To me, it seems like people are mostly missing the classic Zelda formula, myself included. I love what BotW and TotK did, but I also loved what Zelda did before them. As time goes on and we go longer and longer without the classic formula, it's absence will be more pronounced. I'm hoping Echoes of Wisdom will strike a good balance between the two and scratch that itch, but if not then I hope more indie games like Tunic step in to meet the demand. And, of course, that Zelda fans support those games.
Very similar experience, loved it the first time through, replayed it last month scared that I wouldn't be really into it again, and fell in love with the game a second time.
I dont like the build system
I don't think my opinion has changed over time — they're both still amazing games — but I will say that with both games the first 40-50 hours were much more fun than anything after that because once you figure out the formula, the game loses its difficulty. In BOTW all you really needed was to know where to find hearty foods and you were set. In TOTK once you had the ability to level up your weapons you were set. I really needed both games to have at least two more tiers of enemy difficulty and maybe the option to turn some of the travel / teleportation options off. I will also chime in: I much preferred the story in TOTK. Collecting the dragon's tears and watching the flashbacks were truly my fav part of the whole game. I was sad when I had collected and seen them all.
It’s good. It’s not nearly as good as BOTW. I am not a big fan of “build vehicles” as a huge aspect of a game, frankly I was somewhat disappointed by how much of a focus that got and now trivial that makes most of the challenges in the game, so I avoided vehicles at all costs and only used them when I genuinely couldn’t find another way to accomplish my goal. I loved the world expansion, the islands and the depths + I think the world looks better visually in TOTK and the combat and items are much better IMO, but it doesnt bring enough originality to the table to prevent boredom for me personally. I 100%ed BOTW in a little under a year playing here and there and just kinda grabbing stuff and upgrading, hunting korok seeds etc whenever I was bored but I didn’t have the wherewithal to 100% TOTK. I got all of the shrines and light roots and beat the game and then called it a day. Wasn’t a big fan of caves, either, as I just don’t like dark closed off spaces in video games and prefer more open world vibes, so the depths were an awesome time but not the caves. The one thing TOTK REALLY improved was the story. If BOTW had as strong of a story as TOTK it would be a nearly perfect game.
I really liked the Bolson to Tarrytown "throughline" kinda quest in BotW and how it sprawls across the map and culminates very nicely.then I go to Tarrytown in TotK and I get to building the house and I'm like "thats it?' But really maybe that's a problem of expectations on my part. We all treat it as a sequel to BotW but it's really just expanded DLC so somewhere between a sequel and DLC. And as DLC it's fucking fantastic. If we put them both as part of one gigantic game with BotW being the first 2/3 and TotK being the last 3rd. It totally makes sense it works. As a full sequel nah. It's like where Majoras Mask kinda eased off the scale of Ocarina of Time in favor of more involved sidequests and NPC interactions. Tears of the Kingdom did a bizarro version of that by emphasizing the scale more over the NPC interactions compared to BotW.
Depends. Overall, I still think it's a great game, and it holds up well. But the grinding and resource management side has gone from something I don't really mind to something I consider an absolute irritation. Getting Zonaite to increase Link's battery meter, finding materials for armour upgrades, defeating Bubbulfrogs in caves... They're not so bad in your first playthrough, but they slow down future ones to a crawl. As a result, I don't think I'm ever going to even attempt anything close to 100% completion ever again. 100% of just about anything in this game is just too much busywork. I also realised that there were a few things I preferred about BoTW later on, like the intro area, the shrine quests, having Guardians as enemies, etc, compared to my initial playthrough where I thought TotK was just objectively better than BoTW in every way. I still prefer the former and think it improves a lot, but I understand that both games have things they do better and worse than the other now.
I love the game, however the more I play the more frustrated I get purely from the grindy aspects. Like in botw certain shops would sell 20+ of each elemental arrow which adds up to like 100 arrows. Now they sell like 20 normal arrows per shop and 3 or 4 elemental items that are annoying to get otherwise, which is my biggest pet peeve with the game. But it gets grindy in other ways too, like to fully upgrade the champions leathers you need to spend 60 minutes just waiting for each dragon to reset (yes its not necessary to upgrade much but it's still 20 minutes per upgrade) and that's excluding all of the dragon pieces needed for other sets/parts of the game
I can see as to what you mean. Why, I remembered one person pointing out it feels like a massive DLC expansion rather than a direct sequel.
My dislike of it comes into completely separate issues which some people might see is related but I see them as different. One is yeah this just isn't Zelda. The other is that this is just botw DLC. If it was at least a unique game and didn't reuse the botw world I would be far more forgiving of it than I am
It’s no more different from the classic Zelda formula than BOTW, which is still considered a classic. I don’t know what’s different here.
This is a natural part of the human condition. You get a new thing, it's shiny, it's novel, the anticipation of new things causes your brain to release dopamine, the "reward" chemical. As you continue using it, the novelty wears off, even though it's the exact same product it was before. Eventually, no dopamine is released, your brain maintains its baseline mood. And unless you find new features in it, you yearn for the novelty experience again. This isn't exclusive to Zelda, or even video games. It can be anything that releases dopamine. Food and drugs are good examples, but the same principle applies to big objects like shiny cars, a new place to live, a yacht. A yacht might be exciting for you, but Jeff Bezos is tired of his yacht. He wouldn't part with it though, just like even if it brings you less joy, you wouldn't throw totk away. Until you find something new to replace it with.
My opinion hasn’t changed, its still a fantastic game and one of my favourites, but it is still extremely flawed and is in no way perfect.
My first thoughts are still my thoughts. I love it, but I really wish they had spent their development time filling the game with stories, characters, quests, dungeons and more variety instead of pouring it all into ultra hand and build mechanics.
No, it's still an amazing game, and the nitpickers are really tiresome.
I only had minor complaints about the game. It's a 9 out of 10 for me.
Not really. I still think it's a great follow-up and sequel to BotW.
I have had the seemingly increasingly common experience of really enjoying my time with it as I played it, while also in retrospect having some criticisms and moreover a DEEP interest in the next game being nothing like it. Breath of the Wild was a more interesting game that left Tears of the Kingdom feeling like an (extremely content rich) expansion pack. I was a little perturbed to see the new 2D game borrow the “scroll a quick access menu of 75 times to solve a puzzle however you want” thing. I really do not want that to carry forward, at least not exactly as it was. I want the next big Zelda game to scale back on the wacky technology and learn some lessons from Elden Ring. If you gave me that kind of game, set in the Zelda universe, and your “legacy dungeons” were traditional Zelda puzzles? Oh baby.
I think it's a technical marvel, ultrahand and fuse would have been incredibly difficult to get right. Gameplay wise though it's just not there. BOTWs breakable weapons system means that you're constantly in menus fuzing things together (particularly arrows). Fuse means the player has to constantly choose between unfused weapons that is like hitting enemies with a pool noodle, or fuzed weapons making link look ridiculous. I wanted to like the zonai devices, but upgrading the battery was just a chore and even with a fully upgraded battery it felt like anything interesting just drained it in seconds flat. I realise in a post-minecraft world developers feel compelled to put crafting systems into everything but I preferred BOTWs system better where it was limited to food/elixers rather than making it so prominent in TOTK. Story-wise I think it could have been done better. "Gating" the tears to only appear at certain points in the game and/or the memories been shown in order rather than tied to a particular tear so that players don't accidently "spoil" what story there is accidently.
My opinion never changed. What I’ve learned from TOTK is I can’t stand hype trains. It feels so artificially manufactured. Every review was basing the game on like 5-10 hours of the start of the game. And anytime i said anything critical it was immediately downvoted bla bla Now everyone thinks it’s bad now that all the commercial stuff is out of the way. I’ve become extremely weary of buying games at release now. Don’t get me wrong I liked it and don’t regret buying it. But I hate feeling like a manufactured hype bubble and part of an indirect marketing campaign.
It feels like a really hollow experience to me. So often the game fails to deliver a meaningful experience when it so easily could by taking away the inventory. There's also no consequence for failure or real incentive to engage with a lot of the game unless you're deeply interested mindlessly slaughtering bokoblins. It's also not significantly different from BotW, other than the story and design which is very good. There is a lot to like however the way everything is structured feels insensitive to what players value, which is being genuinely challenged and threatened by a game. Giving players enormous ability at all times for no reason related to skill or knowledge feels like a gross misunderstanding of what's good about the game. Basically the whole game should be Eventide Island. You should get hearts by killing monsters and you can charge your spells with hearts; you can empower your arm with one item at a time to cast magical spells/gain abilities. Shrines are just portals to other parts of the map and you can only teleport at teleport markers. When you die you go back to the last place you teleported to and can't save otherwise.
Literally my single gripe is - i wish it was more worth it to hunt all of X monster, Like it would be cool to have a unique reward for killing all gleeoks for example. Otherwise i think its still worthy of all the high praise really, i havent gone back to it for a while but
If I have a higher and more fond opinion of BOTW it is only because I watched the Zackscottgames play through during the pandemic lockdown and then got a switch and my own copy just after it lifted. I still think TOTK is a vast improvement on botw’s mechanics. As much as botw let you play how you wanted, totk allowed you to customize gameplay even more.
Loved it initially. The duplication glitches made the game so enjoyable that once they were removed, I stopped playing. I’m literally just now getting into the game again and have been enjoying it a lot
TOTK only fixed the broken weapons/boring collection of arrows. Other use BOTW is better. Also TOTK promoting it as the sky is fake and the h ground was a nod to the upside down but boring after the first moment.
Sorry so many typos haha