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[SantaC]

Not hating or the game or so, but i am not sure I enjoy this direction of Zelda. Sure it has a lot of freedom but I kinda lost interest after 15 hours. Zelda used to be more focused, but i feel that Tears of the Kingdom is all over the place. I am not really enjoying the addition of sky area. It's mostly just small islands and i dont see it as fun addition. Traversing it can be a pain.

Also i think Totk has too much busywork for shit rewards. I did this whole questline that took a lot of thought and yet I got a crappy sapphire gemstone or so. The rewards needs to be better. The sidequests in Majoras Mask knew how to give you cool rewards.

 

[asker]

Glueing garbage together with those clunky controls became old after an hour, and the return of the shitty durability system didn't help the game either. I can't see myself starting the game again.

 

[kunonabi]

After 100%ing botw back when it came out having to repeat pretty much all of the same shit again was too draining for me. There is some new and exciting stuff but the majority of the game is still the same busy work I was already fed up with. The godawful story being a worse version of the already bad botw plot was the last straw. I took a break for a week and I honestly can't force myself to go back despite the game finally picking up after the miserable first 30 hours. The good bits just aren't enough to keep me going.

 

[Naked Lunch]

Honeymoon over?
I see similar takes for pretty much all modern Nintendo 1st party games a couple months past launch.

 

[Scotty W]

I am still making amazing discoveries 200 hours in. If anything, my appreciation for the unity of design, story and tech has only grown.

 

[GigaBowser]

Nopes it was my favourite game ever will win GOTY in 90% of places the TGA and has already sold 20 million copies Nintendos GTA thank you my friends

 

[Bruno_Arrais85]

nope, I enjoyed the game.

 

[Thaedolus]

Nah, it’s fucking awesome. I don’t want old “do X so you can do Y then do Z” Zelda any more. I want “here are your tools, figure shit out” Zelda. TotK nailed it

 

[Fbh]

I thought the main quest was fun, the building is really cool and the physics and interactivity is the sort of stuff I would love to see in more game instead of everyone just focusing on better graphics.
But I enjoyed it way more once I started ignoring all the optional content and focused on the main story.

The game suffered from many of the issues of BotW. Most of the side content is very bland, and most stuff feels unrewarding.
Most of the sidequests are really basic and the rewards suck, I honestly think I got some food item as a reward for like half the side quests I did ("Thanks Link, here's some tomatoes!!") . In other similar games at least there's a leveling system or skill points or something like that to make the bland padding feel somewhat worth it. Quests don't have interesting stories, don't take you to cool unique locations, don't have interesting mechanics, don't introduce cool optional bosses or give you worthy rewards.

The way gear works also fuels the unrewarding feeling. Weapons are basically meaningless since they'll just break after a fight or two, and while armors are permanent most of them have very specific uses- Like yeah the set that gives you more mobility in free fall is cool but having to go in the menu and equip it every time I need it (and then going back and unequipping it once I land) is annoying, same with the one that lets you climb wet surfaces, or the ones with specific elemental resistances

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

Quit after 15 hours.

Felt a bit too cozy/casual for my tastes.

 

[Danjin44]

You can choose if you want to explore and do side content, its same with Elden Ring, its ultimately your choice, that point of open world game.

Felt a bit too cozy/casual for my tastes.

What is that mean? You want more gore and violence in Zelda games?

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

What is that mean? You want more gore and violence in Zelda games?

It lacked intensity. Like I was just playing single player Palia.

 

[ByWatterson]

Yes?

But the Temples and especially the ending made the whole thing epic and magical.

But yeah, the majority of the experience starts to feel like a toy after a while.

 

[Tg89]

nah, game is sublime.

would be all in for a more traditional zelda at some point again, though.

 

[GigaBowser]

BOTW: to empties
TOTK: to much to doos!

There is 1 billion tings to doos buuuuut you can pick whateverw you want to

TOTK is FREEDOM

 

[Black_Mamba]

I've never seen a game that started so strong become so bad like ToTK. I picked it up on launch date, played until the third main quest and decided I had enough. There're so many serious design issues everywhere that I could write a book about it. Being all over the place is one of them. The progression, gameplay balance, challenge/reward is terrible.

But many people still think it's one of the greatest games of all time, so I can see Nintendo dialing up on everything I hated with the next ones.

 

[HazukiSensei]

I think as long as FROM software is considered the top dev....you're going to see more games with this type of philosophy that I think leaves alot to be desired in the focus or story department.

part of me wants to blame gaming going more mainstream, and more ADHD frat boys who would otherwise skip cutscenes are considering themselves "gamers" now. when in reality I think a game like baldurs gate, or the Witcher 3 is more difficult for a frat boy to get through (from a patience standpoint) than say...elden ring or Totk. (dialogue)

yet those same frat boys will call elden ring and totk ""gameplay first""" while lacking the love for games to even sit through a cutscene for too long. i.e. NakeyJakey or Videogame Dunkey or Ian (Isla) Hincke types.

so here we are. our Zelda games now kinda have a souls philosophy and that's """gameplay first" because you know...there just was no gameplay in ocarina of time, or Wildwater, majoras, or twilight princess lol

 

[Punished Miku]

One of my favorite games ever made. No, I didnt have that issue.

 

[Pimpbaa]

Helping the incompetent Addison with his Hudson signs and the Koroks with the overstuffed backpacks did happen a wee bit too much. Sometimes I would just stick a rocket to those koror fuckers, aim, and then hope for the best. Other than that I am fine with the game. Got over 100 hours into it and still not finished and have been enjoying it greatly. Although not as much as playing BOTW for the first time.

 

[semiconscious]

breath of the wild was fresh/unique. tears of the kingdom was 'even more breath of the wild!'. after a dozen+ hours, it turned out that i, personally, didn't really need any more...

 

[Shifty1897]

I love it. 100 hours in, fighting the final boss right now. There are some roadblocks to the game where I feel like if you miss certain quests the game will feel like it's missing something.

 

[Balducci30]

I definitely got super burnt out on it. But that was after like 100 hours. Overall I may have enjoyed BOTW more - TOTK didn’t give me as much of a sense of discovery

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Absolutely.

I don't know how so many other games get panned for busy work side quests, when this is "busy work side quests the game" with no meaningful rewards. And it's friggin massive.

• Fetch quests.
• Cut and Paste doo dads to collect.
• Korok's to find and transport.
• Sign posts to stabilize.
• Shrines with one simple puzzle or gimmick copy and pasted many times over
• Shrine finding in the Sky Region with the same puzzle copy and pasted many times over

Didn't like it at all. Ended up doing 75% of the shrines or so just to get stamina maxed and health decently up there, but it was such a slog, especially with the re-used overworld, limited skyworld, and barren and repetitive underworld. I think TOTK is the most overrated Nintendo game next to Mario Odyssey.

BOTW was better, because it actually was quite a new experience at the time, and that sense of discovery you really can't capture twice with the same basic philosophy put into TOTK. Surprisingly, many people shit on Skyward Sword, but I played that last year on the Switch remaster and it was far better than TOTK to me - awesome dungeons and boss battles, good focused adventure/story, and a charming musical score.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

so here we are. our Zelda games now kinda have a souls philosophy and that's """gameplay first" because you know...there just was no gameplay in ocarina of time, or Wildwater, majoras, or twilight princess lol

How is this anywhere close to Souls philosophy? I think they are world's apart, tbh.

 

[GigaBowser]

breath of the wild was fresh/unique. tears of the kingdom was 'even more breath of the wild!'. after a dozen+ hours, it turned out that i, personally, didn't really need any more...

Should played longer TOTK has all the stuffs BOTW does buuuuuuuuut way more gameplay enemies better missions temples storires bosses ending and more alive everything is better except BOTW was the first time

BOTW is just a TOTK tech demos

14 Things Tears Of The Kingdom Does Better Than Breath Of The Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a masterpiece, but Tears of the Kingdom improves a few things.

gamerant.com

 

[Northeastmonk]

It was a good game, but there’s days I forget it even came out. I liked it more than BotW in terms of shrines and objectives. I don’t collect anything. The spiders and heart pieces in OOT was/is the last time I ever care about collectibles in a Zelda game.

 

[Dr.brain64]

totk is better than botw but that's not saying much

 

[RCU005]

Nah, it’s fucking awesome. I don’t want old “do X so you can do Y then do Z” Zelda any more. I want “here are your tools, figure shit out” Zelda. TotK nailed it

You are describing the one good part of TOTK while ignoring the many issues that came with tat good part.

It’s great that TOTK has a huge world where you can go exploring, but both BOTW and TOTK have nothing worth of your time when it comes to rewards, story and side quests.

They should’ve let the heart pieces, because at least that would have been a good reward in many quests and caves rewards.

The story is miserable. It’s like 20 min if you put everything together and doesn’t even make sense. It is completely detached from the world and has no consequence whatsoever.

The main quest design is 100% copy-paste from BOTW.

 

[GigaBowser]

You are describing the one good part of TOTK while ignoring the many issues that came with tat good part.

It’s great that TOTK has a huge world where you can go exploring, but both BOTW and TOTK have nothing worth of your time when it comes to rewards, story and side quests.

They should’ve let the heart pieces, because at least that would have been a good reward in many quests and caves rewards.

The story is miserable. It’s like 20 min if you put everything together and doesn’t even make sense. It is completely detached from the world and has no consequence whatsoever.

The main quest design is 100% copy-paste from BOTW.

RCU005​

Member​

 

[Kataploom]

I think the same, and it's an incredible game, but it also showed to me that BOTW blank space was part of it's magic, an strength rather than a weakness, they don't feel the same at all, they don't even play the same, TOTK is very busy, you can't not be bothered by an event 30 seconds after the last one and it's pretty easy to skip exploration of you know how to trick fast traveling. But that is how many western players like the open worlds it seems, just by GAF opinion lol.

BOTW feels more magic to me but that's ok, they don't have to be the same, they just share some gameplay mechanics and look very similar, but BOTW is a very zen and calmed experience while TOTK is busy af at all times.

 

[FoxMcChief]

Nope.

 

[damidu]

yeah couldn’t finish.
it was oscillating between busy work and brilliant moments bit too much.

there is nothing at narrative side to keep things interesting either, but that’s pretty much a given for any nintendo game.

oh and framerate/graphics were a drag too. i can see myself having much better time at 60fps.

 

[K' Dash]

The only thing I would change is getting rid of most of the armor sets and stack up abilities.

Instead of putting on the frog armor, I’d prefer just to have the ability.

Same with the Korok Mask, I’d just stack up the ability to track koroks, etc.

 

[FinalBossWithTheMostPower]

ToTK is a masterclass in world and gameplay design. Phenomenal game.

Admittedly, I completed very few side quests, finding most of them to be bland and I certainly wasn't going out of my way to fetch Korok seeds.

That said, I mostly explored the new abilities and tiered world, where the memories, temples, and Shrines kept me busy for a good 90+ hours. I stopped after the 4th temple, when I got to the Deku tree.

I hear I have quite a bit left which is great and will probably finish it after complete my first run in BG3.

What a year.

 

[Lokaum D+]

I m playing botw right now and geez, the game has a lot of amazing mechanics, but thats it, Great Plateu área has 4 boring puzzles, a lot of nothing and the same enemies over and over and over, the way to Kakariko is even worse, there is less enemies ecounters, some brain dead puzzles, some guardian that dies with a simple parry and a lot of walking, Kakariko to Hateno, same thing, i agree that the game has incredible ideas and freedom, but thats it, where is the rest ?

Walk, walk, walk, kill some enemies, open a chest ( 90% of time is a shit reward ), climb, climb, climb, enter a shirine, do some brain dead puzzle and repeat.

How this gameplay loop is good ? there is barely no challenge, if totk is anything close to this but with DIY think i ll pass.

 

[tr1p1ex]

You don't have to do all the "busywork" if you don't want to.

And I think the rewards are fine. IT's kind of funny when you get sht for a reward.

 

[FinalBossWithTheMostPower]

I m playing botw right now and geez, the game has a lot of amazing mechanics, but thats it, Great Plateu área has 4 boring puzzles, a lot of nothing and the same enemies over and over and over, the way to Kakariko is even worse, there is less enemies ecounters, some brain dead puzzles, some guardian that dies with a simple parry and a lot of walking, Kakariko to Hateno, same thing, i agree that the game has incredible ideas and freedom, but thats it, where is the rest ?

Walk, walk, walk, kill some enemies, open a chest, climb, climb, climb, enter a shirine, do some brain dead puzzle and repeat.

How this gameplay loop is good ? there is barely no challenge, if totk is anything close to this but with DIY think i ll pass.

 

[ADiTAR]

The fuse mechanic was busy work for me, I get what they wanted to do, and they prob started with just the arrows (because that's the real fun) and they had to compromise on doing it for weapons.

The game itself is a lot of fun to traverse and enjoy, lots of great moments. Most sky islands could have been expended upon, the different ones are def more interesting.

 

[sigmaZ]

Not hating or the game or so, but i am not sure I enjoy this direction of Zelda. Sure it has a lot of freedom but I kinda lost interest after 15 hours. Zelda used to be more focused, but i feel that Tears of the Kingdom is all over the place. I am not really enjoying the addition of sky area. It's mostly just small islands and i dont see it as fun addition. Traversing it can be a pain.

Also i think Totk has too much busywork for shit rewards. I did this whole questline that took a lot of thought and yet I got a crappy sapphire gemstone or so. The rewards needs to be better. The sidequests in Majoras Mask knew how to give you cool rewards.

It was fine for what it was. I felt like it was a somewhat redeemed BotW which had a lot of things that annoyed the crap out of me. The exploration was much better being able to fly around and the fuse function made a lot of weapons more viable in battle. It was also nice to revisit familiar areas and see how things had changed. But I'm with you though, I don't want another BotW style Zelda for now. Overall I much more enjoyed the Link's Awakening remake as a game.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

It's the opposite of "busywork"... I feel that it respects your time more than other games, and certainly much more than previous Zelda titles. You can take any particular aspect that interests you in the world and go for it, with a ton of fantastic tools and polish. You're not forced through a slog of story beats which were the worst part of the franchise post-SNES. I say that as someone who started with the original gold NES cartridge... the heavy story emphasis of the previous 3D Zelda games was the biggest problem with the franchise.

 

[Maori]

If you don't find building and creating different solutions to the same problem to be fun, then you will have a hard time enjoying this game.

For me, TOTK was the ultimate "Adventure" experience. No other game, in my 30 years of gaming, has been able to capture my imagination and sense of discovery quite like this game.

I find the old formula went counter to the "adventure" concept -- Too much handholding and linearity. It became too formulaic. Too predictible. They felt like a good-fantasy book with cool dungeouns, but were wuite stifling when you tried to break the game and throw yourself into the exploration.

Not so with Totk and Botw - the truest expression of the word "Adventure".

 

[zeldaring]

The fuse mechanic was busy work for me, I get what they wanted to do, and they prob started with just the arrows (because that's the real fun) and they had to compromise on doing it for weapons.

The game itself is a lot of fun to traverse and enjoy, lots of great moments. Most sky islands could have been expended upon, the different ones are def more interesting.

Everything added was busy work to me. I hate the building crap that controls like crap. I know it's here to stay cause of the massive success but this not zelda. The fuse mechanic is a joke and so is the combat which when you have 1 or 2 champions and bullet time is all you need. The control scheme also sucks and overly complicated along with the shitty ui. Overall still a fun brought down for me by not addressing of any botw problems and just making them worse.

 

[FinalBossWithTheMostPower]

Everything added was busy work to me. I hate the building crap that controls like crap. I know it's here to stay cause of the massive success but this not zelda. The fuse mechanic is a joke and so is the combat which when you have 1 or 2 champions and bullet time is all you need. The control scheme also sucks and overly complicated along with the shitty ui. Overall still a fun brought down for me by not addressing of any botw problems and just making them worse.

 

[Setsuna Mudou]

I found it so boring i stopped playing after a few hours.
Fighting the controls to do the assembly stuff, the same old shitty weapon durability, lack of any incentive to fight an enemy, horrible framerate...

Ok I get if people aren't bothered by those things and are really into the discovery of the unknown, but I just found it boring, it's really not for me. And I did push myself to finish the first one somehow.

 

[Mythoclast]

Look I ain’t no hater. I bought and beat both games. But I insist that open world doesn’t suit Zelda. Even the worst 3D Zeldas are more fun than the open world Zeldas. As much as they tried to disguise the new temples with “elements” they are still glorified shrines. I don’t think Nintendo will ever be able to make an open world Zelda with REAL themed dungeons (like Jabu Jabu and Shadow Temple) and also with a great story like WW, MM and OOT. I’m disappointed but it is the truth, the game is pretty much an Assassin’s Creed now.

That said, I think the Ultrahand mechanics were pretty sick.

I’ll eat my shit if Nintendo can really produce a Zelda with the open world design AND the narrative direction and dungeon design of OOT and TP.

The new games do feel like a chore.

 

[Mythoclast]

Also, having TOO MUCH freedom is a thing.
And the game has pretty much the same structure as BOTW. Memories, 4 regions, etc etc.

 

[ResurrectedContrarian]

If you don't find building and creating different solutions to the same problem to be fun, then you will have a hard time enjoying this game.

For me, TOTK was the ultimate "Adventure" experience. No other game, in my 30 years of gaming, has been able to capture my imagination and sense of discovery quite like this game.

I find the old formula went counter to the "adventure" concept -- Too much handholding and linearity. It became too formulaic. Too predictible. They felt like a good-fantasy book with cool dungeouns, but were wuite stifling when you tried to break the game and throw yourself into the exploration.

Not so with Totk and Botw - the truest expression of the word "Adventure".

Agreed 100%

And I still say that it's far more faithful to the original NES game than anything else in the series. I remember booting that game up as a kid and having absolutely no idea where to go or what to do... I just wanted to explore, burn or bomb things to find hidden doors, stumble into dungeons totally out of order, etc. That's the kind of game it was right from the opening. You have a sword and you have zero objective or quest markers, not even anything driving you to visit the "first" dungeon.

 

[GigaBowser]

ToTK is a masterclass in world and gameplay design. Phenomenal game.

Admittedly, I completed very few side quests, finding most of them to be bland and I certainly wasn't going out of my way to fetch Korok seeds.

That said, I mostly explored the new abilities and tiered world, where the memories, temples, and Shrines kept me busy for a good 90+ hours. I stopped after the 4th temple, when I got to the Deku tree.

I hear I have quite a bit left which is great and will probably finish it after complete my first run in BG3.

What a year.

Developers Agree That Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Is A Miracle - SVG

Fans and devs agree that "Tears of the Kingdom" is a truly extraordinary achievement that boggles the mind.

www.svg.com

 

[zeldaring]

Agreed 100%

And I still say that it's far more faithful to the original NES game than anything else in the series. I remember booting that game up as a kid and having absolutely no idea where to go or what to do... I just wanted to explore, burn or bomb things to find hidden doors, stumble into dungeons totally out of order, etc. That's the kind of game it was right from the opening. You have a sword and you have zero objective or quest markers, not even anything driving you to visit the "first" dungeon.

Elden ring is far more faithful to Zelda nes. This is botw poor mans Minecraft edition.

 

[Dream-Knife]

Glueing garbage together with those clunky controls became old after an hour, and the return of the shitty durability system didn't help the game either. I can't see myself starting the game again.

Even with mods to get rid of durability the game got boring quickly.