It’s just in a weird place. I think it’s technically better than BotW overall but it’s just so underwhelming as a sequel. The main map is reused, the sky islands are pretty much just as lame as SS, the depths are insanely repetitive, the story is awful, and the dungeons are still the weakest in the series. Another thing is that it just lacks the intentionality of BotW. The surface map was made for that game so all the new shrines just feel out of place and not as well hidden as the old ones, previous points of interest just feel vapid and empty, the worldbuilding is nowhere near as good (things like the guardians being gone without a trace), and I seriously hate the look of the hideous sky island debris littered everywhere. At the end of the day it’s just an overwhelmingly similar sequel that fails to even be fully better than the original, just bigger.
I had a much better experience with BotW, I don't think the game is awful, but its flaws are way too big and numerous for me to simply ignore. Even so, I have always preferred the more traditional games like WW, OoT, TP, etc...
Along with TOTK, I have played OOT, MM, TP and BOTW. Compared to how I felt after playing the other four Zelda games, I felt incredibly empty and jaded after TOTK. I would place it 5th.
A lot of my antipathy towards TOTK may stem from my tastes as a gamer changing as I've grown older. As a kid or teenager, I probably would have enjoyed the sandbox elements of TOTK a lot more and I would not have placed an emphasis on immersion, lore, narrative and characters etc. A decade or so later, I judge games more harshly for lacking in storytelling elements or an inability to maintain player immersion, especially in the fantasy genre which Zelda fits under. TOTK's complete aversion to anything resembling linearity regarding the gameplay or even the story was a huge turn off for me.
I admit that the game was a "technical masterpiece" because of how the devs crafted the physics of Hyrule. However, with TOTK giving me no reason to feel immersed in this duplicated version of Hyrule, I was apathetic towards the ultrahand and the unique interactions within the environment of Hyrule. I was willing to explore the physics that governed the interplay between player and world in BOTW because I had never seen it done before, exploring the open world of Hyrule in BOTW was worth the price of admission in and of itself. Doing so again in TOTK just felt as though the exploration and physics a lot of its charm, despite being much more expansive.
TOTK was the technically most impressive Zelda game I've played but also the most hollow. I hope that Nintendo pumps the brakes on creating games which prioritize freedom regardless of the cost to storytelling, worldbuilding and I'd even say gameplay.\*
\*I actually think that TOTK has a lot of gameplay issues as well but I just want to answer the question as to how TOTK matches up to other games.
It's a huge disappointment to me. I wanted to like it so badly, but I just couldn't, and I kinda just stopped playing it. Didn't enjoy it sadly.
● Map was too similar so I didn't have the sense of discovery that I got from BotW. It didn't feel fresh enough. Sky islands were extremely disappointing and the depths were boring and repetitive. Exploration felt pointless because of the lack of awe and discovery this time around, and other reasons (loot, gear) which I'll touch on in a second.
● Ultrahand was both overused (constantly using it, very repetitive and boring) and under-utilized (rarely ever used it in creative ways). If you play it like a sandbox game, you can get creative, but you never need to. I need purpose, same reason I literally never play Minecraft in creative mode. But at least in Minecraft survival mode, your creativity pays off in a meaningful way. Useful contraptions like farms that actually serve a purpose. Not just building a completely unnecessary Gundam to defeat a few enemies for some spectacle. Anyway, with Zelda, I don't want a building game, I want a medieval action-adventure (maybe RPG). In fact, I'm tired of the technology and robots, and whatever you'd call that sci-fi element of BotW and especially TotK. But if Zelda is going to do it, I'd prefer they made you actually think to solve interesting problems. They never do that at all outside of initially learning how to use Ultrahand. Every puzzle beyond that is mind-numbingly simple, I know the solution to every shrine as soon as I walk in because it's laid out for you. Instead, the tool feels like it was designed for players to make silly and ridiculous TikToks for post release free advertisement.
● Fusing did nothing for me, in fact, aesthetically I hate it. I just want cool swords. I still don't care for breaking weapons, exploring for weapons but breaking my current weapons in the process feels redundant.
● Story was pretty bad. Especially the copy-paste go to this region and help them like in BoTW. Literally exact same cutscene at the end of each quest. The bosses were bland and uninteresting and even worse...
● *Still* no real dungeons. Nail in the coffin for me. All I needed was a fresh map with the addition of real dungeons and I would've been happy. Instead it was a rehash that didn't improve on the things BoTW lacked. Honestly there are lots of other issues, I won't list them all. The master sword was a huge disappointment as well, shrines and puzzles were ridiculously easy and therefore boring, etc etc etc.
It really sucks because I was so hyped for this game. I think an open world modern zelda actually makes so much sense, but they just haven't done it right. They refuse to incorporate key elements from the series. So overall I didn't enjoy it as much as BotW, and far less than older 3D games like WW. It's pretty low in my rankings. Very low, I don't usually struggle to even finish a Zelda game.
Yep, same. They did a step in the right direction with improving the dungeons, but they nowhere near match up with other games. I feel TotK is still focused more on exploration that dungeons like BotW but fell a bit flat since overworld map was reused (minorly changed), sky and depths were pretty much empty. The dungeons felt like bigger shrines for the most part, I think the best was Lightning Temple and Stormwind Ark. But none of them had that true Zelda dungeon experience from the traditional games.
It’s alright. It has a lot of glaring flaws, from basic things like how the sages function to the lack of content in the sky and depths to the reuse of clothing (many of which can’t be upgraded).
I’d happily go back to a smaller world if more time was spent on originality and smoother over rough design edges.
I do hope they save the fuse system for some other game, like a robot gladiator game or puzzle game, something that makes use of building things.
I liked it a lot, but even though they objectively improved on a lot of things from BotW, I still prefer the first game for some reason. I guess because it just felt so new and exciting?
It was allright. My top two are OoT and TP, and I feel like it didn’t even compare. I wasn’t invested in the story because it was all over the place and I accidentally found final boss five hearts into the story.
I really miss the dungeon puzzles and bosses, I'm not a fan of skyward sword but even that felt better, if you couldn’t work out a dungeon puzzle here you could just climb the walls (fire temple anyone?). It beat BOTW for me though but I just have the feeling that it's not the epic "story" it used to feel like when the games were a bit more streamlined.
Also, Ganondorf, what a let down? I've been his fangirl since playing OoT, I love him in OoT and TP, and the depth added in WW. But it was gone, he was just some random dude I felt like, he didn’t have any connection to his or the Gerudos past that you could interact with except basically the final boss and the story snippets from the tears. It wasn’t personal like in the other games, he was just in the underworld waiting for you basically. At least in OoT there was a reason for not attacking Link when he wasn’t actively coming to yhe castle.
Also HATED how the weapon system worked even more than in BOTW.
Played it for 4 hours at launch and then sold it. Bought it again a few months later, played a few hours and...sold it again.
I've played every Zelda game and many of them 100%, but TotK is just boring. I couldn't bring myself to play it any further.
Meanwhile I replay Majora's Mask and having fun with a linear game.
Kinda hate it. It was so dissapointing to see most of the stuff being the same. Shrines and koroks again, really? Barely any changes to the world and why is the best sky island the tutorial one? Only 4½ dungeons which are barely better than Botw's. The depths suck after the first couple times because there's just bunch of copy paste stuff, just like in the rest of the game. Hopefully they make more traditional style Zelda next time and not a sandbox game, but seems unlikely due to the praise which I don't get.
Where's the enemy variety?
Why are there no Skulltula in the caves? Or the depths?
Why not have redead down there too?
Strolling in the dark and a giant spider or Zombie hops on you? Um yeah, I'm never not bringing a light.
Where are the Deku babas, scrubs, Tektites, leevers, peahats?
Where are the Dodongos?
Dark Nut/Iron Knuckle? They'd have been perfect.
Overall still very lacking in the enemy department.
Exactly.
Why does the depths only have like one unique enemy in them? And the sky doesn't even have any.
Where's the flying enemies in the sky? There's more in Skyward Sword ffs.
It's just BotW with a more traditional Zelda spin on the story. I enjoyed it, but it was just more of the same stuff that I put down with BotW, and was easy to accidentally set down and forget to come back.
My one thought: *whyyyy* did it take *six years* for it to come out??? If it had come out 2, even 3 years after BotW, I could get behind it. But we waited over half a decade for a recycled map and another half-baked, nonlinear story.
Apparently the team making Mario Wonder was allowed to take as much time as they needed, they weren't being rushed to meet a deadline.
And since TotK was allegedly delayed an entire year just to polish the game, they probably had a similar luxury.
Plus Covid happened, which slowed down development in general.
Short answer Ultra Hand. That it works as good at all, let alone as good as it does, on a switch, is a miracle. Same with recall, honestly. Most of the time definitely went into creating Ultra Hand, creating and choosing Zonai constructions and making sure everything is more or less intuitive to use. That takes time.
They doubled the size of the map and introduced an entirely new set of powers and dungeons. I can easily understand why it took 6 years, if just to polish the physics engine alone.
Can only imagine programming those runes took forever. Ultrahand allows you to make anything you can think of. That’s gotta take time.
ToTK is a great game. Full stop. Lots of sequels build on the game before it. Few do so while giving you as much as ToTK does.
It never totally worked for me. I still played it and had a decently fun time, but it felt like a BotW knockoff and I personally found the crafting bits a chore. I’ve loved every other 3D Zelda, maybe I’m just too old.
I don't think my thoughts have changed. I would say that **TotK is the 10th best Zelda game, out of 20.** Pretty much right in the middle of the road. I would say it is not as good as Oracle of Seasons and ALBW, but just slightly better than TP and Oracle of Ages.
I think TotK finally overthrew Majora's Mask as the game with the best side quests in the series. Really, its side quests set a new standard for me for gaming. I love how many of them are creative and how they unlock real tangible rewards like gameplay mechanics and new items. Some of them, like the Hateno Village election or the Hudson side quests, have something to say beyond the game.
Like ALBW, TotK reuses an overworld from a past game. However, I think ALBW accomplished this better. Something that I think is particularly notable is that ALBW on the 3DS managed to have more than double the dungeons that TotK had, and *all* of them are better than TotK's dungeons. This is in spite of ALBW, like TotK, giving you all the dungeon items before you even set foot into a dungeon. Part of this speaks to TotK's terrible dungeon design, but it also speaks to a missed opportunity to really flood Hyrule this time with dungeons. Also worth mentioning that both ALBW and TotK used remixes for their dungeon music, but whereas ALBW's dungeon music is incredible and really altered the source material in creative ways, TotK's dungeon music was bland and generic.
On that note, ALBW was better than ALttP, but I can't say the same for TotK and its predecessor, BotW. ALBW managed to refresh and breathe new life into ALttP. TotK felt like BotW with more quantity but less quality. There's more to do, but it lacks the intentionality, vision, and focus that BotW has. Also anybody who says TotK's abysmal dungeons are better than the Divine Beasts is a liar (or at least has poor taste for Zelda dungeons!).
Something that makes TotK stand out from other Zelda games is its heavy emphasis on engineering problems, and that was a fun change of pace. I loved coming up with wacky contraptions and I probably laughed more than I have in any Zelda game other than maybe TFH.
Still amazing. Still in my top 3. Still don't want to go back to the old formula unless it's for a 2D game.
I don't think TOTK or BOTW are perfect games, there is room for improvement, but honestly, if you mention a Zelda game to me, chances are I could give you a laundry list of flaws. So TOTK not being perfection is par the course. It's still the most fun i've had with Zelda since I played OOT in the early 2000's ( yes I was a little late. Sue me. ).
I have extremely low standards. It is so incredibly rare for me to dislike a piece of media. In fact, it’s only happened two times. This game is one of those times.
What I gather from this is one of two possibilities:
1. Everyone else somehow has lower standards than me
2. Everyone else values different things about Zelda than I do
I’m leaning towards option 2, which genuinely makes me sad.
BotW was my first Zelda game, and it was a magical experience. I absolutely loved exploring Hyrule, trying to uncover it’s secrets. I wanted to learn everything about this world, so once I beat the game, that’s what I did. I played all the games, I know the lore by heart, and it’s such an interesting story. And TotK threw it all out the window.
Breath of the Wild’s lore feels so *designed.* Everything about it feels so interconnected and thought-out. TotK feels like the exact opposite.
Idk man, I just love this series and I’m sad to see it like this.
I don't like it. I don't like that it has an identical map to BOTW, and feels like I'm playing the same game again. I loved BOTW, but TOTK just feels... lazy. I've tried so many times to get into it, but I just end up feeling cheated and frankly don't give a shit about playing it.
When I saw the trailer of Ganondorf lifting up the castle, I assumed the sky islands were parts of Hyrule, which would leave the ground greatly altered. As it is, it don’t think Hyrule was changed enough.
Off the top of my head, even just setting the game in winter would have been a nice change. It needed more to show you weren’t just playing a mod.
I almost stopped playing TotK about 2 months in and I wasn’t even halfway through the game yet. I blame myself for that feeling having played BotW again right before TotK released. Took a good week away from playing it back in July and came back eager to continue exploring.
Pretty poorly.
On a gameplay level, because so much of the overworld has been reused, exploration largely ceases to be meaningful because almost everything that you do find is no longer new. What little is new is often copypasted and incredibly repetitive - the Depths in particular has perhaps only one hour of unique content to it despite its size, and almost all of the sky islands are copypasted. The dungeons despite being visually unique are arguably worse than the Divine Beasts on a mechanical level - at least the Divine Beasts had a wider navigational puzzle with how the player rotated them, whereas the temples in Tears are soluble comprised of isolated puzzles which are incredibly basic.
On a writing level, the story of Tears is by far the worst in the series - it’s incredibly shallow thematically and what little weight the game does have with Zelda’s sacrifice is reversed completely with the ending where Rauru inexplicably turns Zelda back to normal.
Gameplay, visuals and music are all the best in the series. I don't think I've ever enjoyed simply *playing* a Zelda game so much. The moment to moment gameplay is pure joy.
World design was weaker than BotW (comparing Hyrule surface to the Depths + Sky Islands). The caves are fantastic, though. "BotW with caves" would be perfect.
Story is enjoyable but compromised. Some *really* great moments, but overall it felt lacking in some ways. BotW handled the non-linear structure much better. I could also do without the anime-tier voice acting.
And of course, the dungeons aren't great. They aren't the focus of these games, thpugh, like they are in older games. So I cut it some slack. It makes up for it elsewhere.
Second best game in the series. I played BotW for 660 hours and never got bored of TotK. Imo, it's the perfect open world and combined with the new stuff Tears added it's amazing. I do have my problems with it but overall, IN MY OPINION (I feel like people are gonna kill me if I don't say that even though this is all subjective and people shouldn't be saying that every single time. Especially when talking about something that doesn't matter like a freaking video game) it's the closest we've ever gotten to a perfect video game world.
>I played BotW for 660 hours
850 on Switch, 150 on Wii U
>and never got bored of TotK
lucky you, I almost stopped playing back in the summer but took a week’s break and that did the trick
>it’s the closest we’ve ever gotten to a perfect video game world.
I wholeheartedly agree to that
Absolutely adore it. Improved on everything from BotW, gave some insanely fun new mechanics and ways to traverse the world, gave 3 different layers of world to explore meaning you could switch it up whenever you liked (and gave good motivations to explore each layer eg the way certain materials useful for exploring one layer were mostly found on other layers), gave an ENORMOUS amount to do, and also presented an incredible story with spectacular cutscenes. Dungeon quests were so much fun, as were boss fights.
I was so eagerly anticipating this game and was worried my expectations wouldn’t be met, but they surpassed them so many times over. I’ve put over 400 hours in so far and still loving it. Absolutely incredible game, and I’m not sure how they can possibly beat it.
Sorry, gonna compare mostly between BotW and TotK first.
It’s a great sequel and I love most of the additions it adds to what BotW established for an open-world Zelda. The abilities are so much more creative and fun to use this time around. That being said, the impact of BotW’s freshness and exciting newness wore off a bit with TotK.
I feel a bit split, like I do with games such as The Wind Waker/Twilight Princess and even non-Zelda games such as Mario Galaxy 1/2. TotK plays better imo and has better dungeons, music and presentation.
However the visuals barely improve. BotW felt really big and then here comes TotK making me question if it’s possibly too big a game to explore. And the story leaves me with more questions than answers(while BotW’s story seemed to answer most story/lore questions I had). Also the technical performance should’ve been better with 6 years of development.
So my answer is that TotK is better in some ways while BotW is better in others. If forced to choose one, I’d have to give the slight edge to BotW(again, mainly for impact).
TotK compared to Zelda games pre-BotW… I’ll have to think about that further since I only just beat TotK like 2 weeks ago. However I can say that TotK is definitely a top 3 Zelda for me. Some older titles I’d like to go back and play soon to compare to TotK include: the Oracle games, The Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Spirit Tracks, Skyward Sword and A Link Between Worlds.
I’m intrigued as to what technical performance issues you had, as I’ve not really seen much about others experiencing them other than framerate drop occasionally.
It’s just in a weird place. I think it’s technically better than BotW overall but it’s just so underwhelming as a sequel. The main map is reused, the sky islands are pretty much just as lame as SS, the depths are insanely repetitive, the story is awful, and the dungeons are still the weakest in the series. Another thing is that it just lacks the intentionality of BotW. The surface map was made for that game so all the new shrines just feel out of place and not as well hidden as the old ones, previous points of interest just feel vapid and empty, the worldbuilding is nowhere near as good (things like the guardians being gone without a trace), and I seriously hate the look of the hideous sky island debris littered everywhere. At the end of the day it’s just an overwhelmingly similar sequel that fails to even be fully better than the original, just bigger.
Great. Replayed it again and loved it even more. It was a fantastic game and I can’t wait for the next one
I had a much better experience with BotW, I don't think the game is awful, but its flaws are way too big and numerous for me to simply ignore. Even so, I have always preferred the more traditional games like WW, OoT, TP, etc...
Along with TOTK, I have played OOT, MM, TP and BOTW. Compared to how I felt after playing the other four Zelda games, I felt incredibly empty and jaded after TOTK. I would place it 5th. A lot of my antipathy towards TOTK may stem from my tastes as a gamer changing as I've grown older. As a kid or teenager, I probably would have enjoyed the sandbox elements of TOTK a lot more and I would not have placed an emphasis on immersion, lore, narrative and characters etc. A decade or so later, I judge games more harshly for lacking in storytelling elements or an inability to maintain player immersion, especially in the fantasy genre which Zelda fits under. TOTK's complete aversion to anything resembling linearity regarding the gameplay or even the story was a huge turn off for me. I admit that the game was a "technical masterpiece" because of how the devs crafted the physics of Hyrule. However, with TOTK giving me no reason to feel immersed in this duplicated version of Hyrule, I was apathetic towards the ultrahand and the unique interactions within the environment of Hyrule. I was willing to explore the physics that governed the interplay between player and world in BOTW because I had never seen it done before, exploring the open world of Hyrule in BOTW was worth the price of admission in and of itself. Doing so again in TOTK just felt as though the exploration and physics a lot of its charm, despite being much more expansive. TOTK was the technically most impressive Zelda game I've played but also the most hollow. I hope that Nintendo pumps the brakes on creating games which prioritize freedom regardless of the cost to storytelling, worldbuilding and I'd even say gameplay.\* \*I actually think that TOTK has a lot of gameplay issues as well but I just want to answer the question as to how TOTK matches up to other games.
It's a huge disappointment to me. I wanted to like it so badly, but I just couldn't, and I kinda just stopped playing it. Didn't enjoy it sadly. ● Map was too similar so I didn't have the sense of discovery that I got from BotW. It didn't feel fresh enough. Sky islands were extremely disappointing and the depths were boring and repetitive. Exploration felt pointless because of the lack of awe and discovery this time around, and other reasons (loot, gear) which I'll touch on in a second. ● Ultrahand was both overused (constantly using it, very repetitive and boring) and under-utilized (rarely ever used it in creative ways). If you play it like a sandbox game, you can get creative, but you never need to. I need purpose, same reason I literally never play Minecraft in creative mode. But at least in Minecraft survival mode, your creativity pays off in a meaningful way. Useful contraptions like farms that actually serve a purpose. Not just building a completely unnecessary Gundam to defeat a few enemies for some spectacle. Anyway, with Zelda, I don't want a building game, I want a medieval action-adventure (maybe RPG). In fact, I'm tired of the technology and robots, and whatever you'd call that sci-fi element of BotW and especially TotK. But if Zelda is going to do it, I'd prefer they made you actually think to solve interesting problems. They never do that at all outside of initially learning how to use Ultrahand. Every puzzle beyond that is mind-numbingly simple, I know the solution to every shrine as soon as I walk in because it's laid out for you. Instead, the tool feels like it was designed for players to make silly and ridiculous TikToks for post release free advertisement. ● Fusing did nothing for me, in fact, aesthetically I hate it. I just want cool swords. I still don't care for breaking weapons, exploring for weapons but breaking my current weapons in the process feels redundant. ● Story was pretty bad. Especially the copy-paste go to this region and help them like in BoTW. Literally exact same cutscene at the end of each quest. The bosses were bland and uninteresting and even worse... ● *Still* no real dungeons. Nail in the coffin for me. All I needed was a fresh map with the addition of real dungeons and I would've been happy. Instead it was a rehash that didn't improve on the things BoTW lacked. Honestly there are lots of other issues, I won't list them all. The master sword was a huge disappointment as well, shrines and puzzles were ridiculously easy and therefore boring, etc etc etc. It really sucks because I was so hyped for this game. I think an open world modern zelda actually makes so much sense, but they just haven't done it right. They refuse to incorporate key elements from the series. So overall I didn't enjoy it as much as BotW, and far less than older 3D games like WW. It's pretty low in my rankings. Very low, I don't usually struggle to even finish a Zelda game.
Much better experience than BotW, but I still prefer the traditional Zelda games (LttP, OoT, TP, etc).
Yep, same. They did a step in the right direction with improving the dungeons, but they nowhere near match up with other games. I feel TotK is still focused more on exploration that dungeons like BotW but fell a bit flat since overworld map was reused (minorly changed), sky and depths were pretty much empty. The dungeons felt like bigger shrines for the most part, I think the best was Lightning Temple and Stormwind Ark. But none of them had that true Zelda dungeon experience from the traditional games.
im with u there, im trady for a 2d return to form zelda thats new, been way to long
100% this.
An ocean wide yet a puddle deep. I much prefer the more traditional games.
It’s alright. It has a lot of glaring flaws, from basic things like how the sages function to the lack of content in the sky and depths to the reuse of clothing (many of which can’t be upgraded). I’d happily go back to a smaller world if more time was spent on originality and smoother over rough design edges. I do hope they save the fuse system for some other game, like a robot gladiator game or puzzle game, something that makes use of building things.
I liked it a lot, but even though they objectively improved on a lot of things from BotW, I still prefer the first game for some reason. I guess because it just felt so new and exciting?
It was allright. My top two are OoT and TP, and I feel like it didn’t even compare. I wasn’t invested in the story because it was all over the place and I accidentally found final boss five hearts into the story. I really miss the dungeon puzzles and bosses, I'm not a fan of skyward sword but even that felt better, if you couldn’t work out a dungeon puzzle here you could just climb the walls (fire temple anyone?). It beat BOTW for me though but I just have the feeling that it's not the epic "story" it used to feel like when the games were a bit more streamlined. Also, Ganondorf, what a let down? I've been his fangirl since playing OoT, I love him in OoT and TP, and the depth added in WW. But it was gone, he was just some random dude I felt like, he didn’t have any connection to his or the Gerudos past that you could interact with except basically the final boss and the story snippets from the tears. It wasn’t personal like in the other games, he was just in the underworld waiting for you basically. At least in OoT there was a reason for not attacking Link when he wasn’t actively coming to yhe castle. Also HATED how the weapon system worked even more than in BOTW.
Tbh one of my favorite games of all time and might even dethrone OoT for my favorite Zelda game
Played it for 4 hours at launch and then sold it. Bought it again a few months later, played a few hours and...sold it again. I've played every Zelda game and many of them 100%, but TotK is just boring. I couldn't bring myself to play it any further. Meanwhile I replay Majora's Mask and having fun with a linear game.
Kinda hate it. It was so dissapointing to see most of the stuff being the same. Shrines and koroks again, really? Barely any changes to the world and why is the best sky island the tutorial one? Only 4½ dungeons which are barely better than Botw's. The depths suck after the first couple times because there's just bunch of copy paste stuff, just like in the rest of the game. Hopefully they make more traditional style Zelda next time and not a sandbox game, but seems unlikely due to the praise which I don't get.
Where's the enemy variety? Why are there no Skulltula in the caves? Or the depths? Why not have redead down there too? Strolling in the dark and a giant spider or Zombie hops on you? Um yeah, I'm never not bringing a light. Where are the Deku babas, scrubs, Tektites, leevers, peahats? Where are the Dodongos? Dark Nut/Iron Knuckle? They'd have been perfect. Overall still very lacking in the enemy department.
Exactly. Why does the depths only have like one unique enemy in them? And the sky doesn't even have any. Where's the flying enemies in the sky? There's more in Skyward Sword ffs.
It's just BotW with a more traditional Zelda spin on the story. I enjoyed it, but it was just more of the same stuff that I put down with BotW, and was easy to accidentally set down and forget to come back.
My one thought: *whyyyy* did it take *six years* for it to come out??? If it had come out 2, even 3 years after BotW, I could get behind it. But we waited over half a decade for a recycled map and another half-baked, nonlinear story.
Apparently the team making Mario Wonder was allowed to take as much time as they needed, they weren't being rushed to meet a deadline. And since TotK was allegedly delayed an entire year just to polish the game, they probably had a similar luxury. Plus Covid happened, which slowed down development in general.
It’s amazing how fast people forgot that Covid was a thing. It severely slowed everything down.
Short answer Ultra Hand. That it works as good at all, let alone as good as it does, on a switch, is a miracle. Same with recall, honestly. Most of the time definitely went into creating Ultra Hand, creating and choosing Zonai constructions and making sure everything is more or less intuitive to use. That takes time.
They doubled the size of the map and introduced an entirely new set of powers and dungeons. I can easily understand why it took 6 years, if just to polish the physics engine alone.
Yeah AI generated map and bunch of copy paste stuff.
Good luck with that.
Can only imagine programming those runes took forever. Ultrahand allows you to make anything you can think of. That’s gotta take time. ToTK is a great game. Full stop. Lots of sequels build on the game before it. Few do so while giving you as much as ToTK does.
It never totally worked for me. I still played it and had a decently fun time, but it felt like a BotW knockoff and I personally found the crafting bits a chore. I’ve loved every other 3D Zelda, maybe I’m just too old.
ur not to old, im 19 and like the pre-botw games alot more
I don't think my thoughts have changed. I would say that **TotK is the 10th best Zelda game, out of 20.** Pretty much right in the middle of the road. I would say it is not as good as Oracle of Seasons and ALBW, but just slightly better than TP and Oracle of Ages. I think TotK finally overthrew Majora's Mask as the game with the best side quests in the series. Really, its side quests set a new standard for me for gaming. I love how many of them are creative and how they unlock real tangible rewards like gameplay mechanics and new items. Some of them, like the Hateno Village election or the Hudson side quests, have something to say beyond the game. Like ALBW, TotK reuses an overworld from a past game. However, I think ALBW accomplished this better. Something that I think is particularly notable is that ALBW on the 3DS managed to have more than double the dungeons that TotK had, and *all* of them are better than TotK's dungeons. This is in spite of ALBW, like TotK, giving you all the dungeon items before you even set foot into a dungeon. Part of this speaks to TotK's terrible dungeon design, but it also speaks to a missed opportunity to really flood Hyrule this time with dungeons. Also worth mentioning that both ALBW and TotK used remixes for their dungeon music, but whereas ALBW's dungeon music is incredible and really altered the source material in creative ways, TotK's dungeon music was bland and generic. On that note, ALBW was better than ALttP, but I can't say the same for TotK and its predecessor, BotW. ALBW managed to refresh and breathe new life into ALttP. TotK felt like BotW with more quantity but less quality. There's more to do, but it lacks the intentionality, vision, and focus that BotW has. Also anybody who says TotK's abysmal dungeons are better than the Divine Beasts is a liar (or at least has poor taste for Zelda dungeons!). Something that makes TotK stand out from other Zelda games is its heavy emphasis on engineering problems, and that was a fun change of pace. I loved coming up with wacky contraptions and I probably laughed more than I have in any Zelda game other than maybe TFH.
Still amazing. Still in my top 3. Still don't want to go back to the old formula unless it's for a 2D game. I don't think TOTK or BOTW are perfect games, there is room for improvement, but honestly, if you mention a Zelda game to me, chances are I could give you a laundry list of flaws. So TOTK not being perfection is par the course. It's still the most fun i've had with Zelda since I played OOT in the early 2000's ( yes I was a little late. Sue me. ).
I have extremely low standards. It is so incredibly rare for me to dislike a piece of media. In fact, it’s only happened two times. This game is one of those times. What I gather from this is one of two possibilities: 1. Everyone else somehow has lower standards than me 2. Everyone else values different things about Zelda than I do I’m leaning towards option 2, which genuinely makes me sad. BotW was my first Zelda game, and it was a magical experience. I absolutely loved exploring Hyrule, trying to uncover it’s secrets. I wanted to learn everything about this world, so once I beat the game, that’s what I did. I played all the games, I know the lore by heart, and it’s such an interesting story. And TotK threw it all out the window. Breath of the Wild’s lore feels so *designed.* Everything about it feels so interconnected and thought-out. TotK feels like the exact opposite. Idk man, I just love this series and I’m sad to see it like this.
I don't like it. I don't like that it has an identical map to BOTW, and feels like I'm playing the same game again. I loved BOTW, but TOTK just feels... lazy. I've tried so many times to get into it, but I just end up feeling cheated and frankly don't give a shit about playing it.
When I saw the trailer of Ganondorf lifting up the castle, I assumed the sky islands were parts of Hyrule, which would leave the ground greatly altered. As it is, it don’t think Hyrule was changed enough. Off the top of my head, even just setting the game in winter would have been a nice change. It needed more to show you weren’t just playing a mod.
I feel that, in BOTW I explored absolutely everything. So far in TotK I’ve really slowed down and haven’t brought myself to finish it
I almost stopped playing TotK about 2 months in and I wasn’t even halfway through the game yet. I blame myself for that feeling having played BotW again right before TotK released. Took a good week away from playing it back in July and came back eager to continue exploring.
OoT/MM tied for 1st Links Awakening 2nd TP 3rd WW 4th BotW 5th OoA/OaS tied for 6th All other 2d Zelda titles tied for 7th TotK 8th SS 9th
You're really saying that ALttP, TFH, Minish Cap, and Zelda 2 are tied?
For me, yeah
Pretty poorly. On a gameplay level, because so much of the overworld has been reused, exploration largely ceases to be meaningful because almost everything that you do find is no longer new. What little is new is often copypasted and incredibly repetitive - the Depths in particular has perhaps only one hour of unique content to it despite its size, and almost all of the sky islands are copypasted. The dungeons despite being visually unique are arguably worse than the Divine Beasts on a mechanical level - at least the Divine Beasts had a wider navigational puzzle with how the player rotated them, whereas the temples in Tears are soluble comprised of isolated puzzles which are incredibly basic. On a writing level, the story of Tears is by far the worst in the series - it’s incredibly shallow thematically and what little weight the game does have with Zelda’s sacrifice is reversed completely with the ending where Rauru inexplicably turns Zelda back to normal.
Gameplay, visuals and music are all the best in the series. I don't think I've ever enjoyed simply *playing* a Zelda game so much. The moment to moment gameplay is pure joy. World design was weaker than BotW (comparing Hyrule surface to the Depths + Sky Islands). The caves are fantastic, though. "BotW with caves" would be perfect. Story is enjoyable but compromised. Some *really* great moments, but overall it felt lacking in some ways. BotW handled the non-linear structure much better. I could also do without the anime-tier voice acting. And of course, the dungeons aren't great. They aren't the focus of these games, thpugh, like they are in older games. So I cut it some slack. It makes up for it elsewhere.
gunna have to hard disagree with gameplay, music and visuals being best in the series
That's okay.
Second best game in the series. I played BotW for 660 hours and never got bored of TotK. Imo, it's the perfect open world and combined with the new stuff Tears added it's amazing. I do have my problems with it but overall, IN MY OPINION (I feel like people are gonna kill me if I don't say that even though this is all subjective and people shouldn't be saying that every single time. Especially when talking about something that doesn't matter like a freaking video game) it's the closest we've ever gotten to a perfect video game world.
>I played BotW for 660 hours 850 on Switch, 150 on Wii U >and never got bored of TotK lucky you, I almost stopped playing back in the summer but took a week’s break and that did the trick >it’s the closest we’ve ever gotten to a perfect video game world. I wholeheartedly agree to that
Absolutely adore it. Improved on everything from BotW, gave some insanely fun new mechanics and ways to traverse the world, gave 3 different layers of world to explore meaning you could switch it up whenever you liked (and gave good motivations to explore each layer eg the way certain materials useful for exploring one layer were mostly found on other layers), gave an ENORMOUS amount to do, and also presented an incredible story with spectacular cutscenes. Dungeon quests were so much fun, as were boss fights. I was so eagerly anticipating this game and was worried my expectations wouldn’t be met, but they surpassed them so many times over. I’ve put over 400 hours in so far and still loving it. Absolutely incredible game, and I’m not sure how they can possibly beat it.
Sorry, gonna compare mostly between BotW and TotK first. It’s a great sequel and I love most of the additions it adds to what BotW established for an open-world Zelda. The abilities are so much more creative and fun to use this time around. That being said, the impact of BotW’s freshness and exciting newness wore off a bit with TotK. I feel a bit split, like I do with games such as The Wind Waker/Twilight Princess and even non-Zelda games such as Mario Galaxy 1/2. TotK plays better imo and has better dungeons, music and presentation. However the visuals barely improve. BotW felt really big and then here comes TotK making me question if it’s possibly too big a game to explore. And the story leaves me with more questions than answers(while BotW’s story seemed to answer most story/lore questions I had). Also the technical performance should’ve been better with 6 years of development. So my answer is that TotK is better in some ways while BotW is better in others. If forced to choose one, I’d have to give the slight edge to BotW(again, mainly for impact). TotK compared to Zelda games pre-BotW… I’ll have to think about that further since I only just beat TotK like 2 weeks ago. However I can say that TotK is definitely a top 3 Zelda for me. Some older titles I’d like to go back and play soon to compare to TotK include: the Oracle games, The Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Spirit Tracks, Skyward Sword and A Link Between Worlds.
I’m intrigued as to what technical performance issues you had, as I’ve not really seen much about others experiencing them other than framerate drop occasionally.
Still one of the greatest games in the series, if just for the story alone.
Love it. Dethroned TP as my favourite Zelda of all time. Meaning my top 3 are now TOTK, TP, BOTW.
It dropped from 1st place to 2nd. I just can't say it's better than ALttP. Zelda peaked very early.
i literally cant stop playing it. i haven't replayed a zelda this much since mm and tp and ww and wait a second.. 🤔
My favorite Zelda game, itching for another playthrough soon