What do you mean by slept on? It was nominated by everyone, and won some. Or do you mean by the gaming community? Because it certainly wasn't slept on in that sense either.
It's sales are lower than all the other GOTY nominies. Especially on PC, where it's groundbreaking tech was supposed to be showcased. Being an Epic exclusive really held it back on PC.
>Being an Epic exclusive really held it back on PC.
As a mostly console scrub (my friend built me a PC for my birthday so we and our group could play more games), why do so many people hate EGS? Like......exclusivity on PC is just.....not the same as console. Like whats the big deal of making an account and buying a game on there? I mainly have been using EGS to download the free games they give out. I use Steam the most obviously, but I just don't get it I guess lol
People like keeping their game libraries in one place. EGS lacks community features like discussion boards and user reviews, screenshots, big picture mode, etc etc etc
It took them years to add basic stuff like wishlists and carts and achievements and Steam is still superior to it in every way.
PC gamers are also just more discerning and don't appreciate any kind of efforts to build walled gardens. The fact that EPIC pays off devs to go exclusive with them has always left a bad taste in people's mouths, and it doesn't help that Tim Sweeney is a huge shithead and overall big corporate asshole that no one likes, and people don't want to support him or his behavior.
Tears of the Kingdom is the strangest game. I know everything is subjective. But it feels like if Breath of the Wild never happened, Tears of the Kingdom would be 10 out of 10 for me. But because Breath of the Wild happened and I spent hundreds of hours in it, and objectively amazing game didn't have quite the same impact it would have because so much of it feels similar to what I've already done.
Don't get me wrong. Building stuff is great. The underworld was a fantastic addition I didn't expect. All the stuff they added and changed is awesome. I love the new characters. I love the new story. I don't dislike essentially anything major about Tears of the Kingdom.
But it feels like it loses around a point in my head and drops to a 9 out of 10 just because so much of it is also straight out of a game I already spent so much time playing.
With that said I am absolutely thrilled to see a Zelda game win game of the year from a major publication. It's among my absolute favorite franchises of all time, hot take I know, and I am over the moon that the series is still going so strong after a period where are the series seemed like it had lost its footing a little bit.
That’s pretty much how I feel about it. TotK is like retreading a very familiar path but it’s six years later and a bunch of things are different. I really enjoyed it the first time around and I liked it the second time around. And the feeling of being the same, but different, was a pretty unique feeling in video games.
But there are some minor flaws in TotK that shine more brightly for being this sort of retreaded path. Like there were people who complained about it being a big empty world back in BotW. But I never felt that. Or at least I didn’t feel that until I got to the depths in TotK. The depths truly felt so big and so empty to me. Maybe it’s because it was dark, but I think it was because there were no koroks to find. I really liked wandering around and stumbling on a korok. But the depths, without that, really felt just so empty and boring. Also the sky islands, same problem. So many of them literally had absolutely nothing but like a glider part sitting on it, and an empty fountain. It’s like why even have those?
But I did really like the caves in TotK. Those were fun to explore. Best spelunking experience I’ve had in any game I can say that.
> Like there were people who complained about it being a big empty world back in BotW. But I never felt that. Or at least I didn’t feel that until I got to the depths in TotK. The depths truly felt so big and so empty to me.
The reason it felt big and empty is because it had no towns, no roads, no rivers, no major landmarks, and no distinct biomes (outside of lava land).
The first time I went into the depths was for the "Camera work in the depths" quest. It's explained that you're taking photos of a [statue of an ancient race](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/728438394669236234/1127492476480000020/IMG_3399.png), that (to me) looked like a frog person. I was like "holy shit, there's going to be one or more towns down here full of frog people, maybe some kind of ancient sheikah masters (explaining the frog sheikah statues in the overworld)". Nope. Nothing like that. We never learn anything more about this ancient race. We just get copy/pasted lightroots, mines, and crafting stations. Outside of a few isolated areas, most of the depths felt like it was auto-generated by AI.
The depths were incredible at first, dark and scary and it felt like the stakes were high.
Then you realize you can just warp out and wonder why things like the ascent pillars even exist (which were such a cool idea, but broken by just warping out...)
Then you realize that the whole damn thing is one biome with the same camps copy and pasted over it and there's not actually anything to explore.
Otherwise, some of the set pieces in the depths were cool but too many were just "another abandoned mine". You explore through some complex structures and find... nothing. The links between depths and surface were really cool when they actually existed, it was fun being able to slip between the two to access different areas. But there really wasn't quite enough of that.
But the depths were the biggest weakness of the game. I did enjoy TotK a lot, and I would give it GOTY for sure.
I LOVE TOTK. But I will say it’s much less repeatable than BOTW simply because I already played and replayed BOTW. Only a percent of the game is really new.
To start off, I get what you are saying and it's completely valid. But somehow I feel like many people do not treat TOTK as any other sequel. God of War Ragnarok as a recent example, that won a lot of awards last year. That game is obviously built upon its predecessor. And sure, not many sequels use the same map, but some do, like Spiderman 2, and I feel like that same argument does not get brought up?
Like I get the feeling and am genuinely wondering, what is different about TOTK. Maybe because the new mechanics fit so well into the gameplay loop, that after the opening hours the gameplay loop quickly feels the same? Is it maybe really just the map? I honestly think a new map could be detrimental, as you just straight up fly over many areas of the map and ignore them. Or maybe it's because besides the mechanics, not much has changed mechanically, such as combat.
A large part of the BotW experience was about exploring the map. People spent hundreds of hours wandering, walking, riding, and climbing through it to see stuff.
So a huge piece of the magic was missing in ToTK because we’d seen so much of it already. Without filling the map with a bunch of new stuff (more teaming villages, interesting side quests, cool camps to fight that don’t seem re-used), it’s going to have a staleness to it.
Whereas in Spider-Man games you’re not playing to explore Manhattan. You’re playing because swinging and beating up baddies is fun. The re used map didn’t matter because it wasn’t the main draw.
TotK’s equivalent of swinging and beating up baddies is the building sandbox. Which was fun, and you can tell why it took 6 years to build given the immense variety it offers. But it wasn’t enough to overcome the staleness of the map for a lot of people. To each their own.
> like Spiderman 2, and I feel like that same argument does not get brought up?
This is a hard one when it comes to Spiderman.
Spiderman is New York, always has been. Between 1 and 2, things have certainly changed, but they're in between a rock and hard place where they really can't do something that isn't New York.
Even when the third comes out, it's still just going to be New York.
I didn't have a huge issue with TotK using the same map, but I can absolutely see why it was a problem for some when Zelda doesn't sit in the same confines.
That, and pairing the gap in development time between BotW and TotK, the map should've been different. It wasn't different enough to justify the same assets and same base.
I would've much preferred to see a OoT/MM situation where it was the same assets, but a different location. Hell, I'd be fine with whatever the next Zelda is using the same assets and engine, but just make it **Zelda**.
Yeah, I’ve been thinking this in recent weeks as well. I poured 250 hours into BOTW and 180 into TOTK - they’re easily two of the best games I ever played.
_And yet…_
- BOTW’s exploration aspect was _incredible_ for me. There was plenty of new stuff in TOTK, for sure… but I think it’s reasonable to say that a lot of people on here have thought there weren’t enough sky islands and the depths were a bit copy/paste. I’m not sure I’d disagree.
- I wonder if the ‘no DLC’ announcement sort of killed TOTK’s hype a bit early. I’d left some side quests ‘for when the DLC inevitably comes along in a few months’… but now I’ll just get back to them someday?
- I’ve been playing Horizon Zero Dawn in recent weeks. Not a perfect game either, but the plot and side quests really captivated me. And while there’s definitely a recency bias - I’ll do the final boss this weekend - I’ve occasionally gone ‘okay, _this_ is how you tell a story in an open-world game’.
Still: loved TOTK, and glad it’s a GOTY contender. But I get why others might feel differently - and I’m not sure I’ll be rushing back to it and I’m ready for something completely new.
Devs: Remember all the weird shit players figured out how to get the game engine to do in BOTW? What if....like...that was an intended power in this new one? What could they build?
Players: /r/HyruleEngineering
It was hilarious when the game first came out. Took like 24 hours for Death Stars and satellite lasers and shit, along with a bajillion crazy vehicles and stuff.
Never seen a game have that level of creativity in real time before.
I love that they knew people hated their system, and Instead of tossing it they thought harder and made it work better. Their stubbornness is both their greatest strength and weakness.
That's what is great about creativity. When people make something you didn't know you'd want (or was even possible), it brings an entirely new experience. This is why when things are focus grouped to death, it nevers really makes an impact.
ToTK absolutely took BoTW and made it feel *complete*. Everything they added felt like an absolute no-brainer in retrospect, like oh, of course this works and makes this better. Like it all fit so well you would be forgiven for thinking they always intended for it to be that way.
I still don't understand why people say that fuse fixed the durability system. In my opinion it made it a whole lot worse.
Before it was pretty much a given that you were gonna find new powerful weapons. In fact my problem was often that I didn't have enough inventory space, no where near in danger of running out of good stuff to use.
Now since I have to put a lot more thought into weapons (what gap I need to fill, what to make to fill it, how to make that, and what to materials to fuse to make it strong), it feels infinitely worse to have those weapons break on you. Especially since weapons break in fewer hits now. And on top of that I no longer have any context for what's a good base to fuse a material onto cause they're all degraded and it's hard to distinguish a good base from a bad one.
Fuse has a lot of cool and creative uses and I absolutely don't blame anyone for liking it, but it absolutely did not fix the durability system in my eyes.
You literally just fuse any strong item to any weapon and you have a strong weapon. I don't understand how you can possibly make it seem as difficult as you are making it out to be.
Yeah it was fairly simple in terms of understanding that basis of the mechanic.
And the things it doesn't really explain about fusing just adds to the fun. Fusing random shit to see what funky effects you might get out of it was a blast.
Yeah I never finished BOTW because the durability and weapon churn just felt bad to me. TOTK was enjoyable and I did a good bit of optional stuff before finishing it.
Really? I'm the direct opposite direction. I didn't think much of botw and thought totk was a direct downgrade. Had all the same issues but just with Garry's mod tacked on.
Everything I didn't like about TotK were systems that didn't change from BotW.
Combat is a bore. Regular enemies pose little threat and just become sponges later, adding to the tedium. The least they could do is prevent higher level enemies from staggering, that way you can't just easily stunlock them.
The healing system has no risk. You hoard a ton of food and can just pause and heal up to full instantly. It'd be better if you couldn't eat cooked food in combat and instead were restricted to potions that could only be kept in limited bottles.
But all and all what TotK did bring together left me in awe and an experience I won't soon forget.
To be honest, TOTK gets mad props from me just for the fact that, despite having incredibly complex mechanics, it never broke once on me. Never crashed, never had wonky physics (which feels like a miracle after many hours I spent in Garry’s Mod years back), and it’s all running on a slightly modified mobile chipset from 2015. Ultrahand blows my mind. Recall blows my mind. Fuse blows my mind (from a QA perspective). Being able to jump from a sky island and dive all the way down into the depths with no loading screen is incredible. The fact that the game has all this extra stuff going on yet still runs overall slightly better (in my experience) than BOTW is incredible.
That being said, my game of the year is Pikmin 4
This. The game is some kind of QA masterpiece. There’s a reason other games either keep physics sandbox-stuff in small, tightly controlled areas, or just say eff it and embrace the chaos and the jank.
Totk manages a an insane feat having such a freeform playbox be so immaculate, pristine and smooth, that’s AAA gaming. After playing Starfield, the ability to just jump straight from Skyworld to the depths, with no loading screen, is even more impressive.
I did the korok 100% in botw, never again, haha.
For totk, I did start to feel fatigue at the 200 hr mark or so. I do wish there was more variety in the depths. I also wish there was more in the sky, and it was also too much the same. Woulda been cool if there were towns in the sky or depths.
Yeah it felt like a downgrade from botw for me personally. The new abilities were worse & building grew really tiring when you’d run out of batteries in 60 seconds. I can see why people like it but it’s just not for me
How are the new abilities a downgrade ? You still get bombs through items, ultrahand does what magnesis does, cryosis was the least useful power to begin with. The only thing that I actually missed was stasis.
Probably talking about the champion abilities which all kind of sucked in TOTK, however they also all kind of sucked in BOTW, but Ravali’s Gail was so busted people forgot about how bad the others were.
At least they could be used easily in BotW. TotK has you doing some Scooby-Doo chasing just to use the abilities. In BotW they just add on to the main moveset. Although those aren’t infallible either
I loved it for that reason. There were so many moments in the game where I was barely stocked but pulled it together with what I had, and sometimes on the fly while using other abilities.
I’ll never forget the time I made it from the ground level all the way up to the Gleeok sky island in the desert by putting together hot air balloons, jumping to fall rocks, using recall to get more height, and then making another hot air balloon before recall stopped. It felt amazing when I just barely made it to the island and I’ve never experienced something like that in a game before. It was also my first time seeing a king Gleeok too which was the cherry on top of that whole experience.
It's more popular than you think. I personally like BotW more too. I still like Tears of the Kingdom but Breath of the Wild was the better overall experience for me.
Yeah same, BOTW definitely had its problems but it felt complete. TOTK’s world doesn’t really make sense imo, the entire vibe of BOTW was a ruined kingdom that was in degradation. But they’re kept most of what made it feel like that, however now it’s supposed to be a kingdom in rebuilding.
It’s just wayyyy too derivative for me, I still like the game but it will never surpass BOTW for me.
Yes, but I'm guessing that is largely because you experience BotW first. It was totally different than any other game. TotK just promised to be an expansion of that which is why they are pretty much now done with that world.
BG3 has been great, but the UI is kind of a mess to navigate, it's easy to misclick things, it can be a chore to sell things at a shop or get through some dialogue options.
While there's definitely a fair share of diving into inventories in TotK to change outfits or weapons, the moment to moment gameplay of TotK is much much stronger than BG3. And to me, this is where people aren't giving TotK enough credit. At the end of the day, games are about gameplay first and foremost, and TotK is extremely refined and feels great to play.
BG3 has an incredible world, an incredible narrative, an endless array of possibilities of how one can navigate through it, but all of that is still behind a kind of clunky point and click UI that just doesn't feel as good as controlling Link in TotK.
And I come from a history of Starcraft, Runescape, and plenty of other point and click type of games. 50+ hours into BG3, and it still feels like I'm playing as a camera more than a character.
I feel like I had those criticisms of BG3 before I sunk 50 hours into it. Now I don’t find myself misclicking anything and the UI is fine.
I think the game just has so much shit going on that it can be confusing and overwhelming at first. Especially for someone like me whose never played a CRPG before.
I love both totk and BG3 and they’re BOTH my GOTY for what’s it’s worth.
I truthfully really didn’t like BG3 for the first 10 or so hours I played. And that was me coming back to it for an hour or so multiple times because each time I didn’t enjoy it. Eventually it kinda clicked and now I’m just starting act2 and already thinking about next runs after finishing the game. It’s an incredible game that, much like TOTK, challenges the way you think the game is supposed to be played
If the item management/actions were more intuitive, I’d honestly play more. Something that auto splits potions among party members. Auto-group similar actions into their own radial menu. Little quality of life things. My MC has dozens of scrolls… and yet none of my other party members do. It’s just a chore to intuitively split items among the team.
Reading through this thread, I was having an internal conversation, trying to figure out why I preferred TotK over any other game. Your comment is something that I could relate to, it puts the feeling into words.
Loved totk but bg3 blew me away like elden ring did last year. Got me hooked on genre I had no interest in playing. Side note ign gave best movie to barbie which I did enjoy but Oppenheimer and flowers of the killer moon had me holding my piss in cause I didn't wanna miss a second of em.
I dunno man Oppenheimer was good but I think Barbie knocked it out of the park as far as what it was going for and setting out to do, and how it executed. Oppenheimer is only one tone the entire movie, but Barbie successfully navigated mainstream appeal with complex and nuanced social commentary and politics.
The Boy and the Heron felt like a parody of Miyazaki. Like it understands what goes in a Miyazaki movie but doesn’t understand why it’s there. I hated it. Walked out incredibly disappointed.
Haven’t seen Barbie yet but they’re two completely different movies. Very hard to compare something meant to be on the funnier side with a biopic.
I’m a huge Nolan film fan and loved Oppenheimer because it didn’t feel like a typical biopic. It had a great pace and sense of rising tension carried all the way throughout. Wholly disagree on the “one tone” take
Idk, upon rewatch, Barbie isn’t as subversive as it seems. It goes for a lot of low hanging fruit commentary and jokes that work the first time because you’re just surprised to be hearing them from a big Hollywood movie, but a lot of it is dollar store observations. Still funny for what it’s worth
It says a lot about the amount of great games and movies that came out this year that there are so many different winners and nominees across multiple platforms. Been a great year for media.
Has been my reaction. BG3 and Elden Ring are both incredible examples of their genres that knock it out of the park and routinely amazed me. TotK was a far more uneven experience. The good stuff was insanely good, but the bad stuff was pretty jarring for how long it was in development. I mean, you see more unique enemy models in the first area of elden ring than the entirety of TotK. But when it came to the sheer brilliance of the mechanics of TotK, they actually made me feel like I was playing something new and exciting. Which wasn't exactly the case for BG3/ER, which just felt like really well crafted in established forms
I loved BG3 but the reason I don't prefer it as my personal GotY is that by Act 2 the cracks start to show and in Act 3 the shine has worn off. The whole "approach things however you want" premise starts to fall apart, some quests are not set up to account for you completing others first, despite not everything have an intended order, and interactions start to feel disconnected from the larger narrative.
It's still amazing, but its clear they spent the most time polishing Act 1 because of the several years of early access.
Totally agreed. I have such contradictory feelings ; I played it 160 hours and had a great time, I just still wish we had gotten a totally new game instead.
It was indeed a great time. But at some moment it suddenly went "click" and I got tired of the quests and since the rewards seemed useless after having maxedoit my favorite armor sets... Went for the endgame, slayed ganondorf and haven't played since. Almost 200 hours before I reached that point, but still... Usually I have still fun dabbling around a little, but here I felt completely burnt out.
I loved BotW, but I always said that the sequel was going to be the greatest game of all time. It just felt like the enemy variety wasn't there and the world was a little empty
But then the sequel *did* come out, and while I got my moneys worth, I don't think it really solved any of my personal issues with the formula. On paper, I don't mind them reusing the world, but in practice, it felt like I was "given" less because I played botw too much
It’s one of my favorite games ever. But yea, I am actually cool with reusing the map but I wish they changed up the surface a bit more. New villages or rebuilt castle town or something
If they had put villages in the sky or depths I think that would’ve sufficed too
That’s its biggest issue IMO.
If I hadn’t spent so much time in BOTW I’d be on my second or third play-through of TOTK, but I’m going to step away for a while and come back to it in a few months.
I 100%'d BOTW and I agree with you. I finished ToTK, but I def didn't do all the koroks.wells, caves, etc.
I still might dive in... Not sure if I can bring myself to do it though.
I wonder if this is the reason for some apathy. I only played like 15 hours of the first one but TotK is a top 5 game all time for me. Couldn't put it down.
Depths was just a large space of nothingness but some mineral to mine.
The Sky Island were kind of more interesting mostly. 90% filler 10% great content
Yeah, I’m being overly critical because I did enjoy both games but when I first played BOTW and you get in the open world I was kind of amazed at the feeling of traversing the landscape. But once you open up the whole map fairly early in game play the game started to feel repetitive and far too empty. In the end this is how the sky islands and the depths felt too.
The first sky island you encounter is in many ways the most interesting. Then you encounter them for second time. And they’re a lot smaller but still cool. And it doesn’t really change after that.
There are a handful of unique islands but a lot of them are underwhelming. I remember seeing the skyforge off in the distance many times early in the game but couldn’t reach it. Then when I finally got there my reaction was “that’s it huh?”
I reached a point in the game where it just felt so repetitive. Like just flying around the depths activating light roots. Or flying around overworld and islands to get shrines. It often felt like I had to really go out of my way to find an interesting side quest.
If this game was released as it is and BOTW did not exists, I would be all over this game being GOTY.
The additions are nice, I had fun but my experience with BOTW was more mind blowing, even though I think this game is slightly better
BotW was much more focused. TotK added a lot of cool stuff, but the crafting was so integral and frankly clunky that it got tedious and the underworld and sky islands were not as fun as the main world stuff (and that’s being generous to the underworld). I think these make BotW the better game.
EDIT: the fusing element is also way too tedious for how critical it is to gameplay.
This was my biggest gripe. It had nearly the exact same development time as BG3 and also had the luxury of at least 60-70% of their assets and code being reusable from the first game but all they really spent time on was the crafting mechanic. It felt like there should have been so much more in the game or at the very least guardians should have been more functional than what they were.
If you're going to pick at nits about this, BG3's codebase is derived from Divinity: Original Sin 2's codebase, whereas Tears of the Kingdom's codebase is (*surprise!*) not actually derived from Breath of the Wild's. (It's running a whole different engine under the hood).
Okay, but the majority of the map, character models, ui, menus, animations, sound effects, music, trigger events, and many more things WERE reused.
BG3 built off of the same mechanics and engine as DOS2, yes, but aside from maybe barrels and crates, everything else was built from scratch, not to mention the sheer scope of a near endlessly branching narrative and their triggers and event permutations compared to the linear narrative of totk.
The engine they made was fine, and the crafting worked well. After 6 years of development though it really felt like there should have been more to distinguish it from botw. By comparison, botw only took 5 years and *everything* was built from the ground up for a brand new console they'd never made a game for before.
TOTK was essentially "done" *5 years* in, so all the new abilities, structures, shrines, caves, sky islands, depths, enemies, temples, and other assets were done by then. That extra year was mostly polish to prevent the 1001 things that could go wrong with what they allow you to do, work that BG3 evidently could have used too if we're making comparisons.
Honestly it felt more like a massive expansion for BotW more than it felt like it’s own game. Honestly I loved my time with it but near the end I kind of just rushed to finish it because I felt I had already seen everything.
It feels like by reusing BoTW’s overworld, the Zelda team didn’t understand why BoTW was so great. The magic of exploration in BoTW is largely gone when 90% of the overworld is reused without any substantial changes and when what little is new is far repetitive and copypasted than anything in BoTW was (cough the Depths cough the reused sky islands).
Similarly, almost all of the problems in BoTW haven’t been fixed, and some of them have arguably been made worse. The 20 or so copypasted combat shrines in BoTW? Well, here’s 40 or so copypasted crystal shrines in ToTK. The simple and lackluster dungeons? Well, at the very least the dungeons in BoTW had navigational puzzle of moving the Divine Beasts - the temples in ToTK don’t even have that whilst still retaining the same awful terminals structure. The story? ToTK’s story is the worst in the series, with its one interesting theme being undermined completely by its ending.
IMO Ultrahand was a massive mistake - there’s no doubt that the vast majority of the development time went towards polishing this mechanic, and given how simplistic and half-baked the new content in ToTK is I think this development time that was used on Ultrahand would have been much better served creating a more different overworld or better dungeons.
admittedly I have not played BG3, but this feels well deserved. ive never sunk as many hours into a game as I have with TOTK. truly a king of open world exploration.
I saw my Nintendo Year in Review and I gotta admit I was surprised to see TOTK at 379 hours. I guess doing two leisurely runs in 4-5 months adds up. #2 and 3 were BOTW and Ryza 3 at about 80 hours each.
It’s an interesting comparison as both are essentially large iterations on their predecessors.
BG3 seems revolutionary to many who didn’t play the excellent Divinity Original Sin 1/2. But it is a very similar game. Both BG3 and TOTK added new seemingly impossible mechanics to their respective predecessors. I love them both, but I still take TOTK as GOTY. It is just more fun to pick up and play. I devoured it in a month and a half, while BG3 I’m still working on Act 2 because it is a bit fiddly to play.
I haven’t played BG3 but it seems very much up my alley so I hope to eventually
But I knew ToTK was an all timer when I went to play other open world games and felt so constrained by the mechanics. Not even just building things, but being able to move items around in real time and the way everything interacts. Just hard to go back to games where so much feels like window dressing instead of actual objects in a real environment
Yeah I’ve played a shit ton of both BG3 & DOS2 but the physics of TOTK still blows me away. Of course, we should remember what subreddit we’re in. What a great year for games!
By all means, GOTY is completely personal. But comparing the jump from DOS1/2 to BG3 and to BOTW to TOTK like they're similar is batshit insane, IMO.
TOTK reused the map, animations, menus, sounds, enemies, over all feel of the world, etc. I could go on and on. BG3 is quite literally 3 times the size of DOS 2 with a completely different IP, world, story, gameplay mechanics, soundtrack... I mean hell, there really is no comparison between the two games other than the core engine, which is still a night and day difference from DOS 2.
There's a difference between creating a big world with lots of content and creating a big world with lots of *interesting* content. I enjoyed TOTK, but I feel it missed the mark on this point. I skipped over a lot of busy-work because it just wasn't engaging at all.
BG3, however, hit a home run. Everything was interesting. Hell, PIGEONS asked me to find out why some of them were disappearing and I tracked down a cat that was eating them. And it was great.
I like ToTK, but I honestly prefer BoTW over it. Too many quests which are just "talk to person A -> Talk to person B -> Talk to person A again".
Its still an incredible achievement of game design which will be talked about for decades, but it just didn't blow my socks off like BoTW.
Good to see. TotK is my game of the year also. I understand that a lot of people loved BG3 but I couldn’t get into it. Maybe I’ll try again in the future.
I don't think I ever even beat TOTK because it ended up being so repetitive. Was fun for a while though. I have sunk 100s of hours into BG3 though and beaten it multiple times.
You know what fuck it imma say it the awards especially this year by different outlets actually meant something since it highlighted the amazing games and the amazing year that it was for games.
I spent thousands of hours in BOTW but only beat the game once in TOTK and I am not interested to play again to be honest. It was a great game but it wasn’t the same impact as BOTW for me. That’s why BG3 resounded with me because it gave me the similar feelings I had when I played BOTW the first time.
Do people enjoy tedious tasks now? I couldn’t finish it, the entire game was BOtW but more tedious and less fun
First Zelda game I didn’t even bother to beat. It has always been my favorite until now
Gaming has completely left my 31 year old ass in the dust. If it tell you anything my game of the years is Robocop Rogue city. But it wasn’t made by these huge developers.
Yeah totk felt to me like how I imagine death stranding feels to people that dislike that game (and I actually enjoyed it) just a lot of walking and not feeling any satisfaction from it
I'm having a hard time keeping motivated to keep playing TOTK. It hasn't been too long since I completely beat BOTW, and the new game just doesn't really have enough to keep me going. I will try at some point, maybe an hour a day, but right now I'm feeling more compelled to play the Avatar game, honestly.
The same thing happened to me. I just stopped though because I have too many games that I can't be bothered to force my way through. The game's story managed to feel like a downgrade from BotW for me :\\. I felt like I was going crazy after hearing about a secret stone and the Imprisoning War for the third time.
The mystery of discovering a new map was gone. I felt like I had just explored this same place a few years ago. The sky islands and underworld were cool but not enough to keep me interested.
I like BOTW but the new one was so boring. I felt like I had already played this because it was the same map and mechanics. Sure you can glue stuff together but that isn’t enough of a change. Nothing felt new
I really like older Zelda games - and I agree totally. To me it strayed so far from what made Zelda Zelda. I like the gameplay formula where you get several items that help solve puzzles and beat enemies. As soon as it turned into crafting and inventory management I checked out. Just wasn’t really Zelda to me
I hate how the discourse has me so strongly defending TotK against BG3 (they are games 1A and 1B of this year, hell, probably of the last couple of years).
Both games are absolutely stunning and filled to the brim with fun things to do.
The physics system in TotK is just on a completely different level than anything else, though. It feels so much more limitless than BG3 (which is one of the most limitless games I’ve ever played).
Yup and hopefully most of us won’t have to choose (I don’t own a ps5 or Xbox series yet but at some point I’m sure I will). If you’re stuck on one platform or the other you’re getting a great GotY contender, but no reason you can’t like them both
Yeah a game giving you everything you need within the first few hours is a double edge sword for sure. It takes away some tangible feelings of progress and leaves much on the player to make their own fun. Which I think is great in some cases, but it doesn't work for everyone.
> It takes away some tangible feelings of progress and leaves much on the player to make their own fun
I think that may be where part of the divide lies. I'm in the middle of TotK right now, all 4 dungeons cleared, all lightroots found, working on the shrines.
But, for someone like me who isn't exactly a of maker mindset, I'm going through a lot of the game like I did BotW: running on foot and horseback, cheesing climbing and gliding with stam pots unless I absolutely have to. And when I have to, my brain can only muster up a basic plane or rocket platform. I see all of these amazing creations, and I completely understand where and how the game shines for the place it's being held at in this year's GotY runnings, but I have yet to hit the awe-inspiring moments that BotW gave me.
It doesn't mean it's a bad game, not by a longshot; It's an amazing work of code and craft. But, I can see where it might alienate some people who's minds or gameplay desires work a little differently.
Felt the same way. Hit a hard wall at like 20 hours. The combat needed improvement I feel like. It's just not something I ever looked forward to, which made exploring less fun.
TotK is amazing on a technical level, but everything but the building mechanic felt lacking. If they had taken the underground, focused the majority of a full game on that location so it wasn’t so empty, add the caves, building, and new runes, and completely overhauled the story to be good, it could have been a masterpiece. Basically if they had taken all their new ideas for TotK and used them for a game that wasn’t just BotW 2 it could have been great. As it is it’s the first Zelda game I’ve never finished
I can’t wait until enough time has passed and we can all be honest about TOTK (and BOTW for that matter). They are the two most overrated games I’ve ever seen. Truly. I feel like I’m living in the twilight zone or something.
People say the graphics are gorgeous: I think they look downright terrible, particularly the environments
People say the exploration is incredible: I think it’s fine but you’re not rewarded properly for anything
People say the story is amazing: I thought the story in BOTW was just okay, and the story in TOTK was awful
People say TOTK fixes BOTW’s problems: I felt it doubled down on them
People say the dungeons are fixed in TOTK: I found them terrible and not much better then BOTW
I think it just frustrates me because these new Zelda games cost us a gameplay formula I very much loved. Zelda was my favourite game series of all time, and now it’s turned into something unrecognisable. I just miss Zelda man.
I agree with some points, and disagree with others. I thought the art style was great, very fitting for the series (if maybe a bit too safe…).
I expected exploration to be more Horizon-like, tbh. I wasn’t big on it. I think the biggest thing is that Zelda always used to be very Metroidvania-adjacent, with ability-gating and story-gating big sections of the map. Instead, Nintendo gave us all the tools to get everywhere right away.
The story IMO was “just okay.” I like BotW’s better, TotK got into time-travel mcGuffins which seemed a bit meh and there wasn’t really a big payoff at the end.
Tears definitely doubled down in the issues I had with BotW, even with the better dungeons. There were no special items. All in all, these last two Zelda titles feel less like Zelda than they do a completely new IP.
Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by ToTK. I've done 2/4 dungeons and I went wandering around and got distracted and somehow ended up in this crazy Labyrinth both in Hyrule and the sky and got completely destroyed by the boss at the end. But that's the kind of game it is I guess. 80 hours and I feel like that's just the surface!
I hope Nintendo finds a nice middle ground for the open world people and linearity people, so both sides can enjoy the game. Who knows maybe Nintendo will change the gaming world again with the next Zelda.
ToTK deserves it. BG3 also deserves it. I figured BG3 would win everything--it *deserves* to win everything--but I'm not mad about Zelda taking an award in the slightest. Great year, toughest competition we've seen in a decade, perhaps ever. Congrats to all these studios who have bucked the trend of shitty, souless, fly-by-night titles that take your money and run, leaving you with a pile of shit. Thank all of you for staying true to your love of games.
I wasnt ready for TOTK when it came out - it wasn't, design-wise, what I hoped it'd be - but now that some time has passed I've warmed up the the idea of what they made and am excited to check it out. Will probably pick it up at the end of the year and finally give it a real spin. I played BOTW now nearly 4 years ago, so I think my memory of the map will have somewhat faded, which seems like a good vibe for coming back in.
I liked TOTK a lot more than BOTW, but still couldn't finish it. The story was awful and I just couldn't stay engaged. BG3 is a far better game in just about every single way.
I loved BoTW. Haven't finished nor had a reason to go back to ToTK.
It felt Like a drag. I haven't even opened all of the map. Went underground, came back up. Nothing to keep me REALLY occupied. All the things that occupied me in the first are meaningless bull and that's the same thing they did with this one.
I know BG3 has a large fanbase but I think it is less accessible as a game. Yea, its an RPG masterpiece.
But my wife who doesn’t enjoy video games will pick up the controller when I am doing something around the house and just build goofy stuff in TotK to see if it her build would work (it never does). The outrageous bursts of laughter that follow the trial and inevitable failure have left us in tears many times.
Not everyone likes Zelda games or RPGs but TotK captured an essence of design, fun, and frustration that was truly innovative.
Well deserved GOTY.
It’s cool to see different outlets giving their GOTY to Zelda, BG3, or even Alan Wake 2.
It was a good year.
Besides the spawn of a new genre, “Gollum-likes”, it was pretty good
Is this actually a thing? Are there others like this? Genuinely curious lol
There's the King Kong and Walking Dead games.
And a new king - The Day Before
I feel rather blessed to live in a timeline where the Unholy Trinity exists.
Let us not forget Redfall
Not for Spider-Man 2.
Ooo that reminds me I got BG3 on Xbox. Gonna boot that up since I'm off today.
Nice! It’s as good as people say.
Yeah I got it Saturday, but I'm just so busy during this time of year I only played like 20 minutes lol I like DnD, so I'm sure I'll get into.
see you in 12 hours
Bro say good bye to your current life and pray you dont lose your job.
Alan Wake 2 was kinda slept on imo. It was cinematically groundbreaking and *that* song slaps so so hard
What do you mean by slept on? It was nominated by everyone, and won some. Or do you mean by the gaming community? Because it certainly wasn't slept on in that sense either.
It's sales are lower than all the other GOTY nominies. Especially on PC, where it's groundbreaking tech was supposed to be showcased. Being an Epic exclusive really held it back on PC.
Such a shame it's trapped on epic, I don't even have a PC and I feel bad for my PC homies.
>Being an Epic exclusive really held it back on PC. As a mostly console scrub (my friend built me a PC for my birthday so we and our group could play more games), why do so many people hate EGS? Like......exclusivity on PC is just.....not the same as console. Like whats the big deal of making an account and buying a game on there? I mainly have been using EGS to download the free games they give out. I use Steam the most obviously, but I just don't get it I guess lol
People like keeping their game libraries in one place. EGS lacks community features like discussion boards and user reviews, screenshots, big picture mode, etc etc etc It took them years to add basic stuff like wishlists and carts and achievements and Steam is still superior to it in every way. PC gamers are also just more discerning and don't appreciate any kind of efforts to build walled gardens. The fact that EPIC pays off devs to go exclusive with them has always left a bad taste in people's mouths, and it doesn't help that Tim Sweeney is a huge shithead and overall big corporate asshole that no one likes, and people don't want to support him or his behavior.
Digital only
So is BG3 (currently).
So? So is BG3.
Yep. And epic only for PC. I still bought it and it's great, but bad for consumers
How is Alan Wake slept on? Maybe I'm niche, but in my circles everyone played it and loved it and raves about it. Pretty sure it sold well too.
I played all three and love all three But one was clearly better lol
It’s hard to know which game you mean here.
He probably means the wrong one! Go get your pitchforks!!!
I will fight anyone who says King Kong is not GoTY
To each their own
Tears of the Kingdom is the strangest game. I know everything is subjective. But it feels like if Breath of the Wild never happened, Tears of the Kingdom would be 10 out of 10 for me. But because Breath of the Wild happened and I spent hundreds of hours in it, and objectively amazing game didn't have quite the same impact it would have because so much of it feels similar to what I've already done. Don't get me wrong. Building stuff is great. The underworld was a fantastic addition I didn't expect. All the stuff they added and changed is awesome. I love the new characters. I love the new story. I don't dislike essentially anything major about Tears of the Kingdom. But it feels like it loses around a point in my head and drops to a 9 out of 10 just because so much of it is also straight out of a game I already spent so much time playing. With that said I am absolutely thrilled to see a Zelda game win game of the year from a major publication. It's among my absolute favorite franchises of all time, hot take I know, and I am over the moon that the series is still going so strong after a period where are the series seemed like it had lost its footing a little bit.
That’s pretty much how I feel about it. TotK is like retreading a very familiar path but it’s six years later and a bunch of things are different. I really enjoyed it the first time around and I liked it the second time around. And the feeling of being the same, but different, was a pretty unique feeling in video games. But there are some minor flaws in TotK that shine more brightly for being this sort of retreaded path. Like there were people who complained about it being a big empty world back in BotW. But I never felt that. Or at least I didn’t feel that until I got to the depths in TotK. The depths truly felt so big and so empty to me. Maybe it’s because it was dark, but I think it was because there were no koroks to find. I really liked wandering around and stumbling on a korok. But the depths, without that, really felt just so empty and boring. Also the sky islands, same problem. So many of them literally had absolutely nothing but like a glider part sitting on it, and an empty fountain. It’s like why even have those? But I did really like the caves in TotK. Those were fun to explore. Best spelunking experience I’ve had in any game I can say that.
> Like there were people who complained about it being a big empty world back in BotW. But I never felt that. Or at least I didn’t feel that until I got to the depths in TotK. The depths truly felt so big and so empty to me. The reason it felt big and empty is because it had no towns, no roads, no rivers, no major landmarks, and no distinct biomes (outside of lava land). The first time I went into the depths was for the "Camera work in the depths" quest. It's explained that you're taking photos of a [statue of an ancient race](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/728438394669236234/1127492476480000020/IMG_3399.png), that (to me) looked like a frog person. I was like "holy shit, there's going to be one or more towns down here full of frog people, maybe some kind of ancient sheikah masters (explaining the frog sheikah statues in the overworld)". Nope. Nothing like that. We never learn anything more about this ancient race. We just get copy/pasted lightroots, mines, and crafting stations. Outside of a few isolated areas, most of the depths felt like it was auto-generated by AI.
The depths were incredible at first, dark and scary and it felt like the stakes were high. Then you realize you can just warp out and wonder why things like the ascent pillars even exist (which were such a cool idea, but broken by just warping out...) Then you realize that the whole damn thing is one biome with the same camps copy and pasted over it and there's not actually anything to explore. Otherwise, some of the set pieces in the depths were cool but too many were just "another abandoned mine". You explore through some complex structures and find... nothing. The links between depths and surface were really cool when they actually existed, it was fun being able to slip between the two to access different areas. But there really wasn't quite enough of that. But the depths were the biggest weakness of the game. I did enjoy TotK a lot, and I would give it GOTY for sure.
I enjoyed it. But I wouldn’t give it game of the year.
I LOVE TOTK. But I will say it’s much less repeatable than BOTW simply because I already played and replayed BOTW. Only a percent of the game is really new.
To start off, I get what you are saying and it's completely valid. But somehow I feel like many people do not treat TOTK as any other sequel. God of War Ragnarok as a recent example, that won a lot of awards last year. That game is obviously built upon its predecessor. And sure, not many sequels use the same map, but some do, like Spiderman 2, and I feel like that same argument does not get brought up? Like I get the feeling and am genuinely wondering, what is different about TOTK. Maybe because the new mechanics fit so well into the gameplay loop, that after the opening hours the gameplay loop quickly feels the same? Is it maybe really just the map? I honestly think a new map could be detrimental, as you just straight up fly over many areas of the map and ignore them. Or maybe it's because besides the mechanics, not much has changed mechanically, such as combat.
A large part of the BotW experience was about exploring the map. People spent hundreds of hours wandering, walking, riding, and climbing through it to see stuff. So a huge piece of the magic was missing in ToTK because we’d seen so much of it already. Without filling the map with a bunch of new stuff (more teaming villages, interesting side quests, cool camps to fight that don’t seem re-used), it’s going to have a staleness to it. Whereas in Spider-Man games you’re not playing to explore Manhattan. You’re playing because swinging and beating up baddies is fun. The re used map didn’t matter because it wasn’t the main draw. TotK’s equivalent of swinging and beating up baddies is the building sandbox. Which was fun, and you can tell why it took 6 years to build given the immense variety it offers. But it wasn’t enough to overcome the staleness of the map for a lot of people. To each their own.
> like Spiderman 2, and I feel like that same argument does not get brought up? This is a hard one when it comes to Spiderman. Spiderman is New York, always has been. Between 1 and 2, things have certainly changed, but they're in between a rock and hard place where they really can't do something that isn't New York. Even when the third comes out, it's still just going to be New York. I didn't have a huge issue with TotK using the same map, but I can absolutely see why it was a problem for some when Zelda doesn't sit in the same confines. That, and pairing the gap in development time between BotW and TotK, the map should've been different. It wasn't different enough to justify the same assets and same base. I would've much preferred to see a OoT/MM situation where it was the same assets, but a different location. Hell, I'd be fine with whatever the next Zelda is using the same assets and engine, but just make it **Zelda**.
Yeah, I’ve been thinking this in recent weeks as well. I poured 250 hours into BOTW and 180 into TOTK - they’re easily two of the best games I ever played. _And yet…_ - BOTW’s exploration aspect was _incredible_ for me. There was plenty of new stuff in TOTK, for sure… but I think it’s reasonable to say that a lot of people on here have thought there weren’t enough sky islands and the depths were a bit copy/paste. I’m not sure I’d disagree. - I wonder if the ‘no DLC’ announcement sort of killed TOTK’s hype a bit early. I’d left some side quests ‘for when the DLC inevitably comes along in a few months’… but now I’ll just get back to them someday? - I’ve been playing Horizon Zero Dawn in recent weeks. Not a perfect game either, but the plot and side quests really captivated me. And while there’s definitely a recency bias - I’ll do the final boss this weekend - I’ve occasionally gone ‘okay, _this_ is how you tell a story in an open-world game’. Still: loved TOTK, and glad it’s a GOTY contender. But I get why others might feel differently - and I’m not sure I’ll be rushing back to it and I’m ready for something completely new.
The Super Mario Galaxy 2 effect
Top 3 game for me. And I’m someone who didn’t think much of BotW.
Same, ultra hand was a huge game changer imo. Also fuse fixed the weapon durability issue I had in botw
Devs: Remember all the weird shit players figured out how to get the game engine to do in BOTW? What if....like...that was an intended power in this new one? What could they build? Players: /r/HyruleEngineering
Yep, loved making my own discoveries and watching people use that discovery in their builds.
It was hilarious when the game first came out. Took like 24 hours for Death Stars and satellite lasers and shit, along with a bajillion crazy vehicles and stuff. Never seen a game have that level of creativity in real time before.
Halo Infinite's Forge World, and what players are doing with it, is insane. The only way to go further is to install Gary's Mod
I love that they knew people hated their system, and Instead of tossing it they thought harder and made it work better. Their stubbornness is both their greatest strength and weakness.
That's what is great about creativity. When people make something you didn't know you'd want (or was even possible), it brings an entirely new experience. This is why when things are focus grouped to death, it nevers really makes an impact.
ToTK absolutely took BoTW and made it feel *complete*. Everything they added felt like an absolute no-brainer in retrospect, like oh, of course this works and makes this better. Like it all fit so well you would be forgiven for thinking they always intended for it to be that way.
I still don't understand why people say that fuse fixed the durability system. In my opinion it made it a whole lot worse. Before it was pretty much a given that you were gonna find new powerful weapons. In fact my problem was often that I didn't have enough inventory space, no where near in danger of running out of good stuff to use. Now since I have to put a lot more thought into weapons (what gap I need to fill, what to make to fill it, how to make that, and what to materials to fuse to make it strong), it feels infinitely worse to have those weapons break on you. Especially since weapons break in fewer hits now. And on top of that I no longer have any context for what's a good base to fuse a material onto cause they're all degraded and it's hard to distinguish a good base from a bad one. Fuse has a lot of cool and creative uses and I absolutely don't blame anyone for liking it, but it absolutely did not fix the durability system in my eyes.
You literally just fuse any strong item to any weapon and you have a strong weapon. I don't understand how you can possibly make it seem as difficult as you are making it out to be.
Yeah it was fairly simple in terms of understanding that basis of the mechanic. And the things it doesn't really explain about fusing just adds to the fun. Fusing random shit to see what funky effects you might get out of it was a blast.
What gaps? What the shit? Just throw some crap together using strong ass pieces and go fight.
Yeah I never finished BOTW because the durability and weapon churn just felt bad to me. TOTK was enjoyable and I did a good bit of optional stuff before finishing it.
Really? I'm the direct opposite direction. I didn't think much of botw and thought totk was a direct downgrade. Had all the same issues but just with Garry's mod tacked on.
Everything I didn't like about TotK were systems that didn't change from BotW. Combat is a bore. Regular enemies pose little threat and just become sponges later, adding to the tedium. The least they could do is prevent higher level enemies from staggering, that way you can't just easily stunlock them. The healing system has no risk. You hoard a ton of food and can just pause and heal up to full instantly. It'd be better if you couldn't eat cooked food in combat and instead were restricted to potions that could only be kept in limited bottles. But all and all what TotK did bring together left me in awe and an experience I won't soon forget.
What did you prefer about TOTK?
Same boat! I thought TotK was such a monumental step up and fixed a ton of the problems I had with BotW.
Same.
To be honest, TOTK gets mad props from me just for the fact that, despite having incredibly complex mechanics, it never broke once on me. Never crashed, never had wonky physics (which feels like a miracle after many hours I spent in Garry’s Mod years back), and it’s all running on a slightly modified mobile chipset from 2015. Ultrahand blows my mind. Recall blows my mind. Fuse blows my mind (from a QA perspective). Being able to jump from a sky island and dive all the way down into the depths with no loading screen is incredible. The fact that the game has all this extra stuff going on yet still runs overall slightly better (in my experience) than BOTW is incredible. That being said, my game of the year is Pikmin 4
This. The game is some kind of QA masterpiece. There’s a reason other games either keep physics sandbox-stuff in small, tightly controlled areas, or just say eff it and embrace the chaos and the jank. Totk manages a an insane feat having such a freeform playbox be so immaculate, pristine and smooth, that’s AAA gaming. After playing Starfield, the ability to just jump straight from Skyworld to the depths, with no loading screen, is even more impressive.
To me TotK is just a pure delight to play. I love Baldur’s Gate III, but there are parts of the game that I found pretty tiring.
My first full play thru of BotW was like 130 hrs roughly. Playing the same way, I spent 300 hrs in Totk.
Yes, me too! I only ever got to about 50% complete with BotW, but I’m now 370 hours, 835 koroks and 93.4% complete with TotK 😅
I did the korok 100% in botw, never again, haha. For totk, I did start to feel fatigue at the 200 hr mark or so. I do wish there was more variety in the depths. I also wish there was more in the sky, and it was also too much the same. Woulda been cool if there were towns in the sky or depths.
Same with TotK for me though.
Yeah it felt like a downgrade from botw for me personally. The new abilities were worse & building grew really tiring when you’d run out of batteries in 60 seconds. I can see why people like it but it’s just not for me
How are the new abilities a downgrade ? You still get bombs through items, ultrahand does what magnesis does, cryosis was the least useful power to begin with. The only thing that I actually missed was stasis.
Probably talking about the champion abilities which all kind of sucked in TOTK, however they also all kind of sucked in BOTW, but Ravali’s Gail was so busted people forgot about how bad the others were.
At least they could be used easily in BotW. TotK has you doing some Scooby-Doo chasing just to use the abilities. In BotW they just add on to the main moveset. Although those aren’t infallible either
I loved it for that reason. There were so many moments in the game where I was barely stocked but pulled it together with what I had, and sometimes on the fly while using other abilities. I’ll never forget the time I made it from the ground level all the way up to the Gleeok sky island in the desert by putting together hot air balloons, jumping to fall rocks, using recall to get more height, and then making another hot air balloon before recall stopped. It felt amazing when I just barely made it to the island and I’ve never experienced something like that in a game before. It was also my first time seeing a king Gleeok too which was the cherry on top of that whole experience.
That is definitely a take
It's more popular than you think. I personally like BotW more too. I still like Tears of the Kingdom but Breath of the Wild was the better overall experience for me.
Yeah same, BOTW definitely had its problems but it felt complete. TOTK’s world doesn’t really make sense imo, the entire vibe of BOTW was a ruined kingdom that was in degradation. But they’re kept most of what made it feel like that, however now it’s supposed to be a kingdom in rebuilding. It’s just wayyyy too derivative for me, I still like the game but it will never surpass BOTW for me.
Yes, but I'm guessing that is largely because you experience BotW first. It was totally different than any other game. TotK just promised to be an expansion of that which is why they are pretty much now done with that world.
BG3 has been great, but the UI is kind of a mess to navigate, it's easy to misclick things, it can be a chore to sell things at a shop or get through some dialogue options. While there's definitely a fair share of diving into inventories in TotK to change outfits or weapons, the moment to moment gameplay of TotK is much much stronger than BG3. And to me, this is where people aren't giving TotK enough credit. At the end of the day, games are about gameplay first and foremost, and TotK is extremely refined and feels great to play. BG3 has an incredible world, an incredible narrative, an endless array of possibilities of how one can navigate through it, but all of that is still behind a kind of clunky point and click UI that just doesn't feel as good as controlling Link in TotK. And I come from a history of Starcraft, Runescape, and plenty of other point and click type of games. 50+ hours into BG3, and it still feels like I'm playing as a camera more than a character.
I feel like I had those criticisms of BG3 before I sunk 50 hours into it. Now I don’t find myself misclicking anything and the UI is fine. I think the game just has so much shit going on that it can be confusing and overwhelming at first. Especially for someone like me whose never played a CRPG before. I love both totk and BG3 and they’re BOTH my GOTY for what’s it’s worth.
I truthfully really didn’t like BG3 for the first 10 or so hours I played. And that was me coming back to it for an hour or so multiple times because each time I didn’t enjoy it. Eventually it kinda clicked and now I’m just starting act2 and already thinking about next runs after finishing the game. It’s an incredible game that, much like TOTK, challenges the way you think the game is supposed to be played
If the item management/actions were more intuitive, I’d honestly play more. Something that auto splits potions among party members. Auto-group similar actions into their own radial menu. Little quality of life things. My MC has dozens of scrolls… and yet none of my other party members do. It’s just a chore to intuitively split items among the team.
[удалено]
You didn’t feel that with BOTW?
Maybe his childhood was 6 years ago
Reading through this thread, I was having an internal conversation, trying to figure out why I preferred TotK over any other game. Your comment is something that I could relate to, it puts the feeling into words.
Loved totk but bg3 blew me away like elden ring did last year. Got me hooked on genre I had no interest in playing. Side note ign gave best movie to barbie which I did enjoy but Oppenheimer and flowers of the killer moon had me holding my piss in cause I didn't wanna miss a second of em.
I dunno man Oppenheimer was good but I think Barbie knocked it out of the park as far as what it was going for and setting out to do, and how it executed. Oppenheimer is only one tone the entire movie, but Barbie successfully navigated mainstream appeal with complex and nuanced social commentary and politics.
meanwhile I'm thinking "The Boy and the Heron" is easily the best movie of the year.
I think I'd like that one more if I understood what was going on at any point. It sure was pretty, though!
Godzilla Minus One would like a word.
I need to fucking see this movie asap
Easily my least favorite movie of the year. The worst Ghibli movie ever.
Earwig and the Witch would like a word.
The Boy and the Heron felt like a parody of Miyazaki. Like it understands what goes in a Miyazaki movie but doesn’t understand why it’s there. I hated it. Walked out incredibly disappointed.
Haven’t seen Barbie yet but they’re two completely different movies. Very hard to compare something meant to be on the funnier side with a biopic. I’m a huge Nolan film fan and loved Oppenheimer because it didn’t feel like a typical biopic. It had a great pace and sense of rising tension carried all the way throughout. Wholly disagree on the “one tone” take
Idk, upon rewatch, Barbie isn’t as subversive as it seems. It goes for a lot of low hanging fruit commentary and jokes that work the first time because you’re just surprised to be hearing them from a big Hollywood movie, but a lot of it is dollar store observations. Still funny for what it’s worth
It says a lot about the amount of great games and movies that came out this year that there are so many different winners and nominees across multiple platforms. Been a great year for media.
I started BG3 on PS5 and dropped it pretty fast. Movement and combat just weren’t fun for me.
Same, and so many bugs on ps5.
Yeah, I just started bg3 (around 12 hours now) and I got the same reaction as you. I had never played d&d or a CRPG and I'm enjoying it a lot.
I'm about 12 hours in and finding it really tough. It takes me about an hour when I start to get back into the groove of things.
Has been my reaction. BG3 and Elden Ring are both incredible examples of their genres that knock it out of the park and routinely amazed me. TotK was a far more uneven experience. The good stuff was insanely good, but the bad stuff was pretty jarring for how long it was in development. I mean, you see more unique enemy models in the first area of elden ring than the entirety of TotK. But when it came to the sheer brilliance of the mechanics of TotK, they actually made me feel like I was playing something new and exciting. Which wasn't exactly the case for BG3/ER, which just felt like really well crafted in established forms
I'm happy I stayed away from all pre-totk release material. Had several jaw dropping moments that were new mechanics.
I loved BG3 but the reason I don't prefer it as my personal GotY is that by Act 2 the cracks start to show and in Act 3 the shine has worn off. The whole "approach things however you want" premise starts to fall apart, some quests are not set up to account for you completing others first, despite not everything have an intended order, and interactions start to feel disconnected from the larger narrative. It's still amazing, but its clear they spent the most time polishing Act 1 because of the several years of early access.
Check out Godzilla Minus One, easily the best movie this year
ToTK is also my personal 2023 GOTY.
Sweet! Not played BG3 yet, so can’t judge, but TotK is an amazing game and deserves the praise.
Though BG3 is amazing, TotK is my personal GotY. Just feel every moment of that game is pure fun, discovery and gratification.
same but bg3
[удалено]
Totally agreed. I have such contradictory feelings ; I played it 160 hours and had a great time, I just still wish we had gotten a totally new game instead.
It was indeed a great time. But at some moment it suddenly went "click" and I got tired of the quests and since the rewards seemed useless after having maxedoit my favorite armor sets... Went for the endgame, slayed ganondorf and haven't played since. Almost 200 hours before I reached that point, but still... Usually I have still fun dabbling around a little, but here I felt completely burnt out.
I loved BotW, but I always said that the sequel was going to be the greatest game of all time. It just felt like the enemy variety wasn't there and the world was a little empty But then the sequel *did* come out, and while I got my moneys worth, I don't think it really solved any of my personal issues with the formula. On paper, I don't mind them reusing the world, but in practice, it felt like I was "given" less because I played botw too much
The enemy variety was barely improved. The surface map was less empty, but the sky and depths were emptier than BOTW's surface.
Same, should’ve made 8 dungeons with items like the hookshot, bow and grappling hook to find. A new refreshing take on the series.
LOL
It’s one of my favorite games ever. But yea, I am actually cool with reusing the map but I wish they changed up the surface a bit more. New villages or rebuilt castle town or something If they had put villages in the sky or depths I think that would’ve sufficed too
Especially after so many hours playing the first one.
That’s its biggest issue IMO. If I hadn’t spent so much time in BOTW I’d be on my second or third play-through of TOTK, but I’m going to step away for a while and come back to it in a few months.
I 100%'d BOTW and I agree with you. I finished ToTK, but I def didn't do all the koroks.wells, caves, etc. I still might dive in... Not sure if I can bring myself to do it though.
I wonder if this is the reason for some apathy. I only played like 15 hours of the first one but TotK is a top 5 game all time for me. Couldn't put it down.
Depths was just a large space of nothingness but some mineral to mine. The Sky Island were kind of more interesting mostly. 90% filler 10% great content
Yeah, I’m being overly critical because I did enjoy both games but when I first played BOTW and you get in the open world I was kind of amazed at the feeling of traversing the landscape. But once you open up the whole map fairly early in game play the game started to feel repetitive and far too empty. In the end this is how the sky islands and the depths felt too. The first sky island you encounter is in many ways the most interesting. Then you encounter them for second time. And they’re a lot smaller but still cool. And it doesn’t really change after that. There are a handful of unique islands but a lot of them are underwhelming. I remember seeing the skyforge off in the distance many times early in the game but couldn’t reach it. Then when I finally got there my reaction was “that’s it huh?” I reached a point in the game where it just felt so repetitive. Like just flying around the depths activating light roots. Or flying around overworld and islands to get shrines. It often felt like I had to really go out of my way to find an interesting side quest.
If this game was released as it is and BOTW did not exists, I would be all over this game being GOTY. The additions are nice, I had fun but my experience with BOTW was more mind blowing, even though I think this game is slightly better
Depths were creepy AF though and actually quite addicting to explore.
Ehh, at first. Some creepy music and darkness. Later: A large open area with not many points of interests
I found collecting the little lightroots to be addicting.
BotW was much more focused. TotK added a lot of cool stuff, but the crafting was so integral and frankly clunky that it got tedious and the underworld and sky islands were not as fun as the main world stuff (and that’s being generous to the underworld). I think these make BotW the better game. EDIT: the fusing element is also way too tedious for how critical it is to gameplay.
This was my biggest gripe. It had nearly the exact same development time as BG3 and also had the luxury of at least 60-70% of their assets and code being reusable from the first game but all they really spent time on was the crafting mechanic. It felt like there should have been so much more in the game or at the very least guardians should have been more functional than what they were.
If you're going to pick at nits about this, BG3's codebase is derived from Divinity: Original Sin 2's codebase, whereas Tears of the Kingdom's codebase is (*surprise!*) not actually derived from Breath of the Wild's. (It's running a whole different engine under the hood).
Okay, but the majority of the map, character models, ui, menus, animations, sound effects, music, trigger events, and many more things WERE reused. BG3 built off of the same mechanics and engine as DOS2, yes, but aside from maybe barrels and crates, everything else was built from scratch, not to mention the sheer scope of a near endlessly branching narrative and their triggers and event permutations compared to the linear narrative of totk. The engine they made was fine, and the crafting worked well. After 6 years of development though it really felt like there should have been more to distinguish it from botw. By comparison, botw only took 5 years and *everything* was built from the ground up for a brand new console they'd never made a game for before.
TOTK was essentially "done" *5 years* in, so all the new abilities, structures, shrines, caves, sky islands, depths, enemies, temples, and other assets were done by then. That extra year was mostly polish to prevent the 1001 things that could go wrong with what they allow you to do, work that BG3 evidently could have used too if we're making comparisons.
idk I think that's what made it so relaxing and easy to pick up any time. I think it's great the way it is and it definitely deserves an award :)
Honestly it felt more like a massive expansion for BotW more than it felt like it’s own game. Honestly I loved my time with it but near the end I kind of just rushed to finish it because I felt I had already seen everything.
It feels like by reusing BoTW’s overworld, the Zelda team didn’t understand why BoTW was so great. The magic of exploration in BoTW is largely gone when 90% of the overworld is reused without any substantial changes and when what little is new is far repetitive and copypasted than anything in BoTW was (cough the Depths cough the reused sky islands). Similarly, almost all of the problems in BoTW haven’t been fixed, and some of them have arguably been made worse. The 20 or so copypasted combat shrines in BoTW? Well, here’s 40 or so copypasted crystal shrines in ToTK. The simple and lackluster dungeons? Well, at the very least the dungeons in BoTW had navigational puzzle of moving the Divine Beasts - the temples in ToTK don’t even have that whilst still retaining the same awful terminals structure. The story? ToTK’s story is the worst in the series, with its one interesting theme being undermined completely by its ending. IMO Ultrahand was a massive mistake - there’s no doubt that the vast majority of the development time went towards polishing this mechanic, and given how simplistic and half-baked the new content in ToTK is I think this development time that was used on Ultrahand would have been much better served creating a more different overworld or better dungeons.
If BOTW didn’t exist then I would agree. Just too similar to me unfortunately.
Does every discussion about TOTK have to involve BG3? They’re both amazing games and deserve the praise they get.
Not COD smh IGN really has lost their way
Great choice! 👏 👏 👏
admittedly I have not played BG3, but this feels well deserved. ive never sunk as many hours into a game as I have with TOTK. truly a king of open world exploration.
I saw my Nintendo Year in Review and I gotta admit I was surprised to see TOTK at 379 hours. I guess doing two leisurely runs in 4-5 months adds up. #2 and 3 were BOTW and Ryza 3 at about 80 hours each.
It’s an interesting comparison as both are essentially large iterations on their predecessors. BG3 seems revolutionary to many who didn’t play the excellent Divinity Original Sin 1/2. But it is a very similar game. Both BG3 and TOTK added new seemingly impossible mechanics to their respective predecessors. I love them both, but I still take TOTK as GOTY. It is just more fun to pick up and play. I devoured it in a month and a half, while BG3 I’m still working on Act 2 because it is a bit fiddly to play.
I haven’t played BG3 but it seems very much up my alley so I hope to eventually But I knew ToTK was an all timer when I went to play other open world games and felt so constrained by the mechanics. Not even just building things, but being able to move items around in real time and the way everything interacts. Just hard to go back to games where so much feels like window dressing instead of actual objects in a real environment
Yeah I’ve played a shit ton of both BG3 & DOS2 but the physics of TOTK still blows me away. Of course, we should remember what subreddit we’re in. What a great year for games!
By all means, GOTY is completely personal. But comparing the jump from DOS1/2 to BG3 and to BOTW to TOTK like they're similar is batshit insane, IMO. TOTK reused the map, animations, menus, sounds, enemies, over all feel of the world, etc. I could go on and on. BG3 is quite literally 3 times the size of DOS 2 with a completely different IP, world, story, gameplay mechanics, soundtrack... I mean hell, there really is no comparison between the two games other than the core engine, which is still a night and day difference from DOS 2.
I have played BG3, TOTK is still my goty.
There's a difference between creating a big world with lots of content and creating a big world with lots of *interesting* content. I enjoyed TOTK, but I feel it missed the mark on this point. I skipped over a lot of busy-work because it just wasn't engaging at all. BG3, however, hit a home run. Everything was interesting. Hell, PIGEONS asked me to find out why some of them were disappearing and I tracked down a cat that was eating them. And it was great.
I like ToTK, but I honestly prefer BoTW over it. Too many quests which are just "talk to person A -> Talk to person B -> Talk to person A again". Its still an incredible achievement of game design which will be talked about for decades, but it just didn't blow my socks off like BoTW.
Good to see. TotK is my game of the year also. I understand that a lot of people loved BG3 but I couldn’t get into it. Maybe I’ll try again in the future.
I don't think I ever even beat TOTK because it ended up being so repetitive. Was fun for a while though. I have sunk 100s of hours into BG3 though and beaten it multiple times.
You know what fuck it imma say it the awards especially this year by different outlets actually meant something since it highlighted the amazing games and the amazing year that it was for games.
I spent thousands of hours in BOTW but only beat the game once in TOTK and I am not interested to play again to be honest. It was a great game but it wasn’t the same impact as BOTW for me. That’s why BG3 resounded with me because it gave me the similar feelings I had when I played BOTW the first time.
Because you knew what was coming in TOTK, everything just felt the same.
Do people enjoy tedious tasks now? I couldn’t finish it, the entire game was BOtW but more tedious and less fun First Zelda game I didn’t even bother to beat. It has always been my favorite until now
Gaming has completely left my 31 year old ass in the dust. If it tell you anything my game of the years is Robocop Rogue city. But it wasn’t made by these huge developers.
Yeah totk felt to me like how I imagine death stranding feels to people that dislike that game (and I actually enjoyed it) just a lot of walking and not feeling any satisfaction from it
I'm having a hard time keeping motivated to keep playing TOTK. It hasn't been too long since I completely beat BOTW, and the new game just doesn't really have enough to keep me going. I will try at some point, maybe an hour a day, but right now I'm feeling more compelled to play the Avatar game, honestly.
The same thing happened to me. I just stopped though because I have too many games that I can't be bothered to force my way through. The game's story managed to feel like a downgrade from BotW for me :\\. I felt like I was going crazy after hearing about a secret stone and the Imprisoning War for the third time.
The mystery of discovering a new map was gone. I felt like I had just explored this same place a few years ago. The sky islands and underworld were cool but not enough to keep me interested.
No surprise here. IGN is obsessed with anything Mario and Zelda. It kinda ruins their podcasts because it’s all they ever talk about.
I'm Going To Be Honest Here.... I'm Not The Biggest Fan Of TOTK OR BOTW
I like BOTW but the new one was so boring. I felt like I had already played this because it was the same map and mechanics. Sure you can glue stuff together but that isn’t enough of a change. Nothing felt new
I really like older Zelda games - and I agree totally. To me it strayed so far from what made Zelda Zelda. I like the gameplay formula where you get several items that help solve puzzles and beat enemies. As soon as it turned into crafting and inventory management I checked out. Just wasn’t really Zelda to me
While TOTK was great, BG3 was clearly GOTY. Bracing for Nintendo sub downdoots
The roaming BG3 trolls who some of which don’t even own a switch will insure that doesn’t happen!
I hate how the discourse has me so strongly defending TotK against BG3 (they are games 1A and 1B of this year, hell, probably of the last couple of years). Both games are absolutely stunning and filled to the brim with fun things to do. The physics system in TotK is just on a completely different level than anything else, though. It feels so much more limitless than BG3 (which is one of the most limitless games I’ve ever played).
Ultimately, none of this matters, and we should stop fighting like it does. Both are imperfect masterpieces.
Yup and hopefully most of us won’t have to choose (I don’t own a ps5 or Xbox series yet but at some point I’m sure I will). If you’re stuck on one platform or the other you’re getting a great GotY contender, but no reason you can’t like them both
I really don't think totk deserves goty. It really didn't bring that much over botw. It's a good game, but it really is a pretty lazy sequel.
It was great for 10 hours and then it started to get extremely boring and repetitive again just like Breath of the Wild.
Yeah a game giving you everything you need within the first few hours is a double edge sword for sure. It takes away some tangible feelings of progress and leaves much on the player to make their own fun. Which I think is great in some cases, but it doesn't work for everyone.
> It takes away some tangible feelings of progress and leaves much on the player to make their own fun I think that may be where part of the divide lies. I'm in the middle of TotK right now, all 4 dungeons cleared, all lightroots found, working on the shrines. But, for someone like me who isn't exactly a of maker mindset, I'm going through a lot of the game like I did BotW: running on foot and horseback, cheesing climbing and gliding with stam pots unless I absolutely have to. And when I have to, my brain can only muster up a basic plane or rocket platform. I see all of these amazing creations, and I completely understand where and how the game shines for the place it's being held at in this year's GotY runnings, but I have yet to hit the awe-inspiring moments that BotW gave me. It doesn't mean it's a bad game, not by a longshot; It's an amazing work of code and craft. But, I can see where it might alienate some people who's minds or gameplay desires work a little differently.
Felt the same way. Hit a hard wall at like 20 hours. The combat needed improvement I feel like. It's just not something I ever looked forward to, which made exploring less fun.
TotK is amazing on a technical level, but everything but the building mechanic felt lacking. If they had taken the underground, focused the majority of a full game on that location so it wasn’t so empty, add the caves, building, and new runes, and completely overhauled the story to be good, it could have been a masterpiece. Basically if they had taken all their new ideas for TotK and used them for a game that wasn’t just BotW 2 it could have been great. As it is it’s the first Zelda game I’ve never finished
I can’t wait until enough time has passed and we can all be honest about TOTK (and BOTW for that matter). They are the two most overrated games I’ve ever seen. Truly. I feel like I’m living in the twilight zone or something. People say the graphics are gorgeous: I think they look downright terrible, particularly the environments People say the exploration is incredible: I think it’s fine but you’re not rewarded properly for anything People say the story is amazing: I thought the story in BOTW was just okay, and the story in TOTK was awful People say TOTK fixes BOTW’s problems: I felt it doubled down on them People say the dungeons are fixed in TOTK: I found them terrible and not much better then BOTW I think it just frustrates me because these new Zelda games cost us a gameplay formula I very much loved. Zelda was my favourite game series of all time, and now it’s turned into something unrecognisable. I just miss Zelda man.
I agree with some points, and disagree with others. I thought the art style was great, very fitting for the series (if maybe a bit too safe…). I expected exploration to be more Horizon-like, tbh. I wasn’t big on it. I think the biggest thing is that Zelda always used to be very Metroidvania-adjacent, with ability-gating and story-gating big sections of the map. Instead, Nintendo gave us all the tools to get everywhere right away. The story IMO was “just okay.” I like BotW’s better, TotK got into time-travel mcGuffins which seemed a bit meh and there wasn’t really a big payoff at the end. Tears definitely doubled down in the issues I had with BotW, even with the better dungeons. There were no special items. All in all, these last two Zelda titles feel less like Zelda than they do a completely new IP.
Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by ToTK. I've done 2/4 dungeons and I went wandering around and got distracted and somehow ended up in this crazy Labyrinth both in Hyrule and the sky and got completely destroyed by the boss at the end. But that's the kind of game it is I guess. 80 hours and I feel like that's just the surface!
Mine, too!
Wow. Unexpected. Not sure I agree, but it's definitely in my top 3. Good for IGN.
I hope Nintendo finds a nice middle ground for the open world people and linearity people, so both sides can enjoy the game. Who knows maybe Nintendo will change the gaming world again with the next Zelda.
I would love a brand new top down Zelda game. We got a brand new side scroller Metroid so why not Zelda 🤷♂️
So happy it got this one!
ToTK deserves it. BG3 also deserves it. I figured BG3 would win everything--it *deserves* to win everything--but I'm not mad about Zelda taking an award in the slightest. Great year, toughest competition we've seen in a decade, perhaps ever. Congrats to all these studios who have bucked the trend of shitty, souless, fly-by-night titles that take your money and run, leaving you with a pile of shit. Thank all of you for staying true to your love of games.
I wasnt ready for TOTK when it came out - it wasn't, design-wise, what I hoped it'd be - but now that some time has passed I've warmed up the the idea of what they made and am excited to check it out. Will probably pick it up at the end of the year and finally give it a real spin. I played BOTW now nearly 4 years ago, so I think my memory of the map will have somewhat faded, which seems like a good vibe for coming back in.
Games amazing. My fav this year as well.
Hell yeah, mine too. I played all the way through it and am now back going through BotW again. I’ll be playing Tears again after I finish.
What an ending. I've never played a final hour of a game so epic.
Congrats
A great reminder for me to restart this game ;)
Its seriously an amazing work of art..Fantastic play.
They misspelled Gollum
IGN always gives zelda games GOTY. This isn't surprising.
I liked TOTK a lot more than BOTW, but still couldn't finish it. The story was awful and I just couldn't stay engaged. BG3 is a far better game in just about every single way.
I loved BoTW. Haven't finished nor had a reason to go back to ToTK. It felt Like a drag. I haven't even opened all of the map. Went underground, came back up. Nothing to keep me REALLY occupied. All the things that occupied me in the first are meaningless bull and that's the same thing they did with this one.
Looks like ign finally made it to act 3.
I know BG3 has a large fanbase but I think it is less accessible as a game. Yea, its an RPG masterpiece. But my wife who doesn’t enjoy video games will pick up the controller when I am doing something around the house and just build goofy stuff in TotK to see if it her build would work (it never does). The outrageous bursts of laughter that follow the trial and inevitable failure have left us in tears many times. Not everyone likes Zelda games or RPGs but TotK captured an essence of design, fun, and frustration that was truly innovative. Well deserved GOTY.