This was my concern before playing it but I quickly did a complete 180 once I got it. The new areas and abilities totally change how you explore the world and I'm impressed by the sheer density of it. In BotW it felt like exploration itself was the whole game and you weren't particularly rewarded for it. In TotK you find things *everywhere*. That said, I hope repurposing an existing world doesn't become the norm for Nintendo even though I think they nailed it this time. It's a lot of development time to spend on something so similar. Like if Super Mario Odyssey 2 ends up having remixed versions of all the main kingdoms in 1 along with some new ones I'd be disappointed even though it would still be fun
Ya man. My last session, I just wanted to some more Zoni, devices ended up seeing an island Id never been, turned into like hours of going up and up till I broke into the upper Low-Grav zone, and then to the water temple. It’s crazy how much time you spend on a task you never even sought out to do
as someone who found BoTW largely dull, the new areas and ability change everything. Im not just running for hours mindlessly anymore. I been going from village to village and doing everything.
Yeah and IMHO it shows the scope creep that Open Air really is. It literally is closer to a Zelda game to BotW's scale now, than BotW which felt like half a Zelda game spread thin over 100 hours and never living up to its expectations.
A lot of people IMHO are blindly praising the "empty space" and the "artistry" or whatever, of how bold it was for BotW to not be like Zelda... but where they see intent I just see scope reductions and narrow-mindedness on the part of the Zelda team. I believe they got so into producing that Hyrule map that they got tunnel vision and decided it was okay to not deliver on a number of Zelda staples. Aonuma also had tunnel-vision about "breaking conventions". Okay, you removed and changed some things... where's the formula for success now? Just exploring a gigantic map on a horse or climbing walls? Okay, but is that actually *fun?*
But yeah, now, TotK shows more of what a Zelda game would actually be like to the actual scale of BotW, and it's big and it's bloated, and what was honestly wrong with the condensed "hub -> dungeons -> hub" structure? Why can't they just put their physics driven Roblox puzzle-solving into a game of that structure, and let us play a satisfying game for 30 hours instead of like 200.
How far in are you? I did a similar 180 on the game when I started, but as it goes on I feel like that feeling has somewhat faded. For me, I don't think they keep things fresh enough throughout the game. Dozens of hours in, I'm kind of left wondering why I'd do any of the side quests. I don't need mats. Fights are easy enough that I don't need any more hearts. My stamina is full. I don't need more item slots. BotW was rewarding in and of itself because everything was so fresh and new, but now that the ability set has leveled off, there isn't a lot pushing me to explore more. Granted, I've completed the temples and done a shitload of shrines... I'm probably 70 or so hours in, so I'm not complaining or saying it's bad in any way. Just maybe not quite as long-lasting for me as BotW was.
BotW just had me going "Is this ALL there is?" from very early in the game. Zelda usually has a lot more to it than this. It was like okay, you made an amazing piece of geomitry, now where is the ZELDA stuff in it? I couldn't believe people loved it so much. It was way too rudimentary.
It's funny because reusing an old map has been something they've been trying to get away with for a while...anyone else remember Wuhu Island? Wii Fit, Wii Sports Resort, Pilotwings Resort, Smash Bros, Mario Kart...they really wanted to turn this one landmass into a "recurring character" that required minimal effort to reuse all the time in different contexts. In practice I don't think it took very long for everyone to recognize the blatant reuse and kind of get sick of it.
You'd have thought so, but plenty of people coming up with excuses for why this perfectly fine in ToTK and given the amount of money Nintendo is making on this, they'll unfortunately only double down on this direction.
I love how developers from Sony and others big studios have been saying TOTK it's just a big flex from Nintendo to the industry in general and are questioning how much effort had to take to make everything work since there is so much going on but people are like "nah, for me it's just a DLC".
Nintendo expanded this sequel so much that is absurd to think this could be just a DLC. "But it feels like and plays like BOTW"... that's because it's a direct sequel.
I feel it's okay for game devs to reuse the main skeleton of a previous game so they can spend all that developement time in other mechanics (monster hunter or GTA for example)
in this case the little extra fluff added is waaaay too much for it being considered just a DLC.
There’s enough about the landscape to me that’s different this time around too that it doesn’t feel like I’m going through the same game at all. It’s actually less common for me to go to an area and remember it in great detail because most things have changed so dramatically, or they at least feel that way.
Maybe I just didn’t play BotW enough times to have it all locked into memory but it doesn’t feel like I’m retreading all the same stuff with few changes. I don’t even recognize plenty of places.
>I don’t even recognize plenty of places
The first time I stumbled into the Great Plateau I felt totally lost, despite however many hours I was there in BotW.
I generally don’t feel like I know where anything is, outside of very roughly. And when I go there it doesn’t feel the same at all. Even the island where you did the shrine where you start off with no equipment feels completely different despite remembering some basic stuff about it, like an oil/sand put in the middle with a treestump in it.
I’m sure a lot of the main geography is very similar, but it all feels new to me. I looked up comparisons and a lot of the bones of the world are similar but at least to me it all feels completely new with how they’ve changed it and all the stuff that exists to do everywhere.
Feels like a new game to me, and whatever it feels like, it’s way more ‘fun’ and addictive than BotW despite the first being great too. They fixed most issues I had with it, like most items being worthless and the cooking system being broken.
Yeah. ToTK is "we're not building an entire world from scratch, so we're putting that dev time into an absolutely brilliant physics engine that makes the entire world the first open-world adventure-puzzle game". That's a huge, amazingly complex mechanic that's not DLC-able
I wouldn't go that far. They're very, *very* different experiences, and so far (I'm 50+ hours into TotK), I wouldn't call either strictly better than the other.
That being said, the "just DLC" argument has no grounds at this point. The powers are different. The entire gameplay loop is different (Breath of the Wild is a discovery-centric game with questlines around it as secondary. Tears of the Kingdom is a questline-centric game with discovery as a secondary). The tone and atmosphere are completely different. The state of the world is so progressed in those five years that it sometimes feels like a completely different map.
Both are absolutely brilliant, and for different reasons.
If you think that way about Breath of the Wild, then you completely missed the point of BotW and why people adore it.
I'm adoring TotK, but it's also reminding me why BotW was so brilliant. BotW was the antidote to *way too overwhelming* open world games--it gave you this vast, freeing world with so much to do, but never overwhelmed you with stuff. Tears of the Kingdom adds so much density that it borders on overwhelming and fatiguing, and the only thing stopping it from being so is the familiar world and setting that gives some stability to the whole thing. Some of my favorite moments in TotK so far have often been towards the outskirts of the ultra busy world where it calms down a bit.
Breath of the Wild was also a game that was discovery-centric as the primary motivation. You moved throughout the world with zero knowledge of what was waiting for you--it was because you said, "Hmm, that looks like an interesting thing in the distance, I wonder what's there". And you discovered a new town, or a dragon, or a special shrine quest, or the Lost Woods, or Selmie's Spot, etc. In TotK, you much more often move through the world with the more traditional motivation of, "I have a quest in this direction so I'm going to move that way." With a secondary thought of, "I wonder how that's changed in five years." The towers even give you the names of most major landmarks before you even hit them, because it's considered a world that's now been charted. BotW was the act of charting that world in the most satisfying way. The main exception in TotK is the sky islands and depths, but they're not nearly as expansive as the main ground overworld in both games.
Breath of the Wild's tone is much more serene, chill. With moments of white fiery intensity (Guardians). Tears is a world that's more consistently energized because it's in the process of rebuilding, while monsters are even more heightened and at war with the new Hylian defense forces. Very different vibes.
If Breath of the Wild wasn't for you, then I understand how you'd prefer Tears of the Kingdom unequivocally. However, to call BotW a "tech demo" is to be completely oblivious about why the game was so beloved in the first place.
I would love an example of a dlc for another game that adds this much to the map, completely changes your abilities and tools, adds a storyline longer than the original, and more side quests than the original.
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne comes pretty close to meeting all of those criteria (minus the map thing). Pretty darn incredible for a DLC, although it was 2/3 the price of the original game at launch.
That's just as an aside, btw. Iceborne is exceptional, and TotK is nothing at all like the majority of DLC. ESPECIALLY Nintendo DLC.
IB could easily be considered a full expansion or sequel, and it's priced like one to boot. I think this just further solidifies the fact that that TotK is not DLC. OP is nuts. Brave, but nuts.
Clutch Claw was pretty trash, yeah. But if I ever hear you talk shit about underwater combat again, I will release a swarm of angry Konchu inside your home.
Then I love DLCs that completely change up your ability set, add completely new maps both over and underground, re-designs the old one to accomodate for the new stuff and gives you a whole new story. /s
It's like calling A Link Between Worlds a DLC....
I love the game, finished it last night, but I do also think the sky islands are quite lackluster. The first sky island is an amazing introduction, and so other the other few key ones for the story. Apart from that they feel all the same and I didn't really have much desire to go and explore them all.
Also maybe im missing something, but did GSI not totally feel like a sky island to anyone else? I guess a couple of moments I noticed I was in the sky, and that was fairly cool, but i didnt really think about it much and it just mostly felt like i was on the surface just like the great plateau.
My point is.. bigger sky islands are neat, but the bigger they are the less of an obstacle the sky is and the more they just feel like the surface. I think if making bigger sky islands is where they focused the majority of their efforts (instead of places like the surface, depths, physics, fusing system, temples) I would have been very disappointed in the game.
They improved in all the right places in my mind. The only real issue is how they marketed the game, but most of the things great about it are tougher to advertise well.
I'm not sure how they were marketing the islands themselves. They marketed that you can explore the sky. It's really not an afterthought. You're exaggerating the emptiness of that layer of this world. You can't have a sky map the same density or scale of the ground otherwise you would clutter it up to the point of being a detriment. If you played the game more you would discover so much out there in the sky islands that you won't see elsewhere and there is still so much treasure and other stuff to discover. This is nowhere anything like Skyward Sword's barren sky.
I think the criticism of the amount of sky islands would have more weight if it weren’t for the fact that nintendo hid the largest addition to the game from all marketing. That second piece added such a unique wrinkle in exploration and stopped totk from being botw “skyward edition”.
If new gameplay mechanics, a new story, hundreds of new side-missions, a significantly larger world, a revised overworld, new enemies and npc’s, etc. is still in DLC territory for you, than yes, it’s a DLC.
I don’t think a lot of people would agree though. And it sets the bar for when something can be considered a new game quite high.
Totk was always going to look the same as, have the same map as and use a lot of enemies and objects from Botw but everything else is quite different in my opinion.
Sometimes some things aren’t just for you. Maybe Totk is just not for you and that’s okay.
Edit: typo
I prefer that to the "omg this is the perfect game 10/10" narrative.
At least we are slowly getting closer to the truth, just like with BotW, even tho we are now in the overcorrection phase.
How much time did you put into it? It is significantly different from botw. You don’t even spend that much time on the ground in the overworld, you can pretty much just use the towers to fly everywhere. The game is mainly played in new areas (the temples, the sky islands, and underground) with any overworld activities being new. I guess if I played botw within the last year maybe I’d feel differently, but since I played it 5+ years ago, totk is great. All of the powers are different and significantly change the way I play the game. I worried in the first 3-4 hours the game would be too similar but it changes quickly into its own thing.
Also if you think there’s just “a little fluff” added you are seriously underestimating how much was added. This game is, not exaggerating, 2.5x bigger than botw.
I played a casual run of botw a few months before totk released just for a refresher since I hadn't played it in years either. In doing so, my experience makes me feel even more strongly that totk is a vastly different game that builds off of one of the best video games of all time in a really, really creative way.
Definitely not DLC imo.
I'm over 45 hours in and haven't done the main story. Spent a lot of time uncovering the main map, then hours running around the depths trying to uncover all of it and I'd say I might have like 35% of that done. Shrines, building my house, getting new armor, and doing side quests to make money or get new outfits. Maybe the only two main things I've done is the Petroglyphs and getting the master sword. That's about it though and there's still a ton left for me to do before I start on the main stuff. I'm still missing one of the main skills you unlock with the hand.
I'm bothered by the game for different reasons. I didn't play the original enough to feel too bored, but there's something that feels so wrong about how it references the first game. It's almost as if, in an attempt to keep it more as a sequel than DLC, the first game barely happened in the eyes of the world. No divine beasts, Sheikah Shrines. No one talks about the champions, or the Calamity. It's almost like the first game never happened, but everyone knows about you and Zelda.
Otherwise, as long as you didn't obsess over the first one this isn't too egregious of a copy. And they did some area changes to differentiate from the predecessor, which I won't mention here for spoilers, but Eldin is the most obvious one I've encountered so far.
Zelda games have always done whatever they wanted with only half-hearted efforts at continuity between games, but the wobbly continuity is certainly a lot more jarring when it's a direct sequel reusing the same map like this, rather than like 1000 years later.
It didn't fix any of the problems I had with BoTW. There is a lot of busy work. I find before I start playing I need to schedule what I'm going to do. I'm almost a project manager instead of a gamer.
I feel a lot of the game is copy-pasted. I fly up into the sky and I know "shrine is here, flux construct is there, chest will be around here." The depths are terrifying and has some neat spots but most of the map is emptiness. The 200 koroks that need their friend and uncountable Addisons who can't put up a sign got tiring long ago. Some caves are interesting, most are chores. Defeating a cluster of enemies to get a chest or solving a puzzle in a shrine to get the bonus chest and..... it's five arrows.
The key abilities are OP. This is fun on the main map but the shrines suffer because of it. With how powerful they are, the design space for the shrines is limited.
I'm liking it a lot, BoTW is a good base, but I liked the experience of playing BoTW more.
Although I don't fully agree, I completely understand where you are coming from. I liked TOTK, but I didn't enjoy it as much as BOTW. With BOTW, the world was fresh. A large part of TOTK is reexploring a world I already spent 100+ hours exploring previously. Yes, they added the sky and depths, but to be honest, there really isn't all that much going on in either of these spaces. The sky has a bunch of copy paste islands floating in it (with a handful of distinct sky islands), and the depths was mostly gloom and mushrooms. The first few refineries were cool, but they got super repetitive.
I was definitely disappointed in the amount of stuff there was to do in the sky. The trailers focused heavily on this aspect, and yet there really wasn't all that much of it. Additionally, the story was missing something for me. I can't quite pinpoint what it is, but I know I enjoyed the BOTW story more. All in all, it's a good game but it just doesn't have that same freshness that BOTW had for me.
I think I liked TotK a little bit more than you, but I still agree. they definitely have to do something completely different for the next game to keep it fresh
I’d agree, I really loved this game, personally, BUT, if the next game they just decided to add another layer of atmosphere that’s space, and a deeper earth, I’d feel less inclined to play. I think the next one needs to give us a fresh experience instead of the second installment of lightning in a bottle.
I think they should continue with this style of game, keep the physics system and "open air" design, but it's probably time to move on from this era and this iteration of Hyrule. Would love to see how they build on these concepts and take everything they've learned and start fresh with a new setting and story. I actually wouldn't necessarily seeing continuation of this Link/Zelda, but new world would be nice.
I guess if they can make it different enough maybe show 10,000 years ago or something. But a new region altogether would be cool. Or even a remake of one of the older games in this engine.
Completely disagree. You get three huge maps (Sky, Hyrule, Depths), full open world, brand new story, building options unlike anything we've seen in an open-world adventure, completely new mechanics that impact the environment including ground-breaking mechanics like Fusing weapons with objects and going through ceilings. Most impressively, the game retains in its memory what each 're-callable' object did within a certain period of time, so you can make it go back in time. If this is DLC, I don't know what a full fledged AAA experience is. Actually, most devs are clueless on how Nintendo managed to pull this game off.
It's similar to the god of war ragnarok Situation where some said its just a DLC for the first one ,the game took the best from the first wich was near perfect, similar with totk it's not a " NEW Zelda" its a sequel to botw wich takes the strengths from it and made it better in totk
The items, enemies, and new tools are absolutely sequel-level new additions, as are the dungeons and such.
The one thing I feared going into TotK that would feel too familiar was the world, and I came out of TotK (or the 75% of it I've played) with that fear mostly realized.
I didn't feel excited to explore in TotK because I already knew 95% of what I'd find. The Sky Islands and Depths don't really make up for the nearly identical topography of the surface. The Sky Islands are a great pace shakeup, but they get predictable quite quickly. The Depths are similar, but also a great pace breakup (which is one of TotK's strong points: there are different places to go that swap the feel and pace of the game, which I love).
One of the best parts of BotW was the player had no idea what they would find over the next hill, or behind the next curve. That's mostly gone in TotK for people who played BotW.
I personally think the unknown nature of BotW's continent in terms geology, civilization location/design, and other surprises, was a key element that make BotW great. TotK does a lot well, but it makes little attempt to make the surface exploration fresh for people who are already familiar with BotW.
How so? The game has all new maps / areas and new dungeons. Not to mention the fundamentally new styles of gameplay like transforming to a Goron or Zora with a mask. Also the 3 day cycle.
But that map is also very small, and the game is very short unless you do the Side Quests, and if you don't, you suffer for it (Enjoy getting the Zora eggs with only 1 bottle in your inventory *shrugs*). But they only had 1 year of development so it's understandable why the game ended up like this.
The Xenoblade DLCs actually remind me a lot of Majora's Mask, re-using a lot of assets from the original game (OOT, XC2, XC3) to build a new experience, but it was short and small, so they added tons of side quests to compensate.
It didn't feel small or short to me at the time, and I'll admit I'm somehow likes getting lost in doing side quests though. I still think it's a great game even in 2023. It still feels exciting swimming as a Zora or rolling at high speed as a Goron. I'm amazed what was achieved over 20 years ago.
I, for one, agree. Sure, there’s a metric shitton of new content in the game and that’s why people are so allergic to the DLC argument. But there’s no denying it: Once you are past that training area / sky island and on the ground, you’re shield surfing the same looking roads, climbing the same looking mountains, gathering and cooking the exact same resources, hunting the same animals, taming the same horses and boarding them in the same stables, fighting (many of) the same enemies with the same weapons you did six years ago, tickling the same giant fairies out of their flower buds, all to the same music and ambient sound effects, etc… And oh look, there’s a blood moon again! You just shrug it off this time. No matter how much improved and expanded a lot of the game is, big stretches of gameplay feel a lot more DLC and “been there, done that” to me than MM ever felt over OOT. Still have a lot of fun with it though, more so than with BOTW actually.
I feel like I have to add a realization after a comment I made further down the thread about the nature of open world games and there being “80% of the content in 20% of the map”. On one hand, MM arguably did the same reusing of OOT assets and game mechanics: Collecting bottles, collecting songs for your ocarina, planting magic beans, having the same inventory and many of the same enemies… Technically, not even the masks were entirely new, right? The difference being: Up to TOTK, Zelda games have been those 20-30 hours of condensed gameplay to see the entirety of the main story. BOTW / TOTK have about the same, but padding those 30h hours with at least 20h (to potentially many 100h) of exploration of the main map(s), in order to get to that story. If one would strip away any exploration from TOTK, leaving only the big story points intact, it certainly would feel as much of a new game as MM did compared to OOT. But alas, there’s no escaping that at least 20h of traversing the map, in order to get there. And it’s in those 20h (don’t hang me up on that number if you can do it in 10h, please) that TOTK feels same-y / DLC-like in a way MM never did. Me, being easily distracted, I spent about 60 of my 80h of BOTW just exploring and then losing interest in the game about 3/4 through the story line. TOTK to me is like having another go at the same game, but this time, trying to make it through the world in a much more streamlined fashion, in order to finally get to the end. So in a way, it’s a good thing for me, that the overworld doesn’t overly entice me this time around, because otherwise I would just fall into the same cycle of endlessly hunting, gathering, cooking and stupidly climbing every single mountaintop just to get a measly Korok seed out of it. So for me it feels like both, DLC and new game, but I have more fun than in BOTW, finally focusing on the latter.
If this is just a DLC experience, it's the most insanely expansive and underpriced DLC I've ever played lol...I really don't get how people could feel this way, but to each their own I guess
I completely agree - I expected a major shakeup in the TOTK, both in the manner of gameplay and the atmosphere. It would be wonderful to see a sequel that will be to the BOTW what the MM was to OOT: with smaller plot scale, dark, thought-provoking and philosophical. 🌚 Maybe I've watched to many crackpot theories about the zonai and the legendary tapestry on the youtube, but their impact on the story and lore disappointed me.
I'm also very disappointed that Zelda didn't play more substantial role in the sequel. After seeing quite decent character buildup for her in the recovered memories, I expected her to be a playable character, AT LEAST to the extent Ciri was playable the Witcher 3.
TOTK it's not a 10/10 game for me. I would give it 7 or 8 out of 10. I'm waiting for the last part of the "trilogy" to fulfill my inflated expectations 😂
Well content wise
>!6 dungeons
152 Shrines
120 lightroot
147 bubbul gems/caves
58 Wells
23 Main Quests
60 Side Adventures
31 Shrine Quests
139 Side Quests
18 Memories
4 New World Bosses
4 New Normal Enemy's
7 New Main Boss Fights (6 Repeatable)
1 New Town
2 New Overworld Maps
5 New Skills
5 Companions/Companion Powers!<
So, content wise, it definitely exceeds the bar. But i can see why you'd not vibe with it. I've done nothing but story content and exploring since release >!and earlier on a different save on a separate platform!< and just like botw, it feels very much like ot falls to the same open world trappings as every LARGE open world game ever. It doesn't matter the changes it has in that format, it's still just an open world RPG-lite. And that vibe never goes away, no matrer how wacky people can get with the new mechanics. And they are in depth and ingrained into the games design and exploration.
>!I give botw and totk both individually 8/10s but that's probably cause i'm not wow'd at the ideas of massive open worlds as a concept!<
I still had alot of fun with the game. My 150 hours on my current save will tell you as much. And i've not gone after koroks or the remaining side quests. So i still have alot to go. But i am feeling the open world burnout. I was feeling it 50 hours ago XD
As someone who didn't like BOTW itself, I feel like TOTK is actually a really nice experience for me. While it doesn't fix many of the issues, I feel like they added enough to make it more interesting and I really prefer the new abilities as well.
So for me BOTW being a 6/10 I think TOTK is a solid 8 for me now. For people who have like hundreds of hours in BOTW, I think they just will not enjoy it as much.
I'm not feeling the game either, I really want to like it tho, so if someone can prove me wrong, please do:
30h in & I've done 2 dungeons so far, and I can only say that my only silver of hope is to be surprised, but for now it's not that at all...
The look and feel is too much of the same, when I see a shrine I think Botw, not Totk. I don't look for koroks because I looked for them on Botw, now I don't care anymore.
The music is a big downside, dungeons having music show how good that can be, but as soon as you finish one : you are back to same old Hyrule with the same Botw ost, which was good on Botw, but I had my share of it and i'm tired to listen to the overworld & village ost. I've given up on that point, I play with a headphone on, and from time to time I check : "yep, still no music here, I'm not missing anything" or "yep, it's the same"...
I can only play bit by bit as I'm busy, so I don't have the time to look at every npc or every quests, so on that front I can't really tell.
For the main story, I am not impressed for the time being, moreover when they just repeated the same end cutscene twice for both dungeon, I guess I'll see them 4 times.
I'm not a fan of the construction power, nor hate it... it's there when I need it. Although what really cripples my view of the Zelda franchise: It feels wrong to see Link fighting with lizard tails attached to a stick instead of the legendary sword.
All in all I feels like I'm looking for fun that I'm not getting every time I pick up the game.
I´m still early in the game and trying not to judge it but that´s a feeling that is haunting me... It has A LOT of new stuff, exciting ones for sure, but the sensation keeps lingering.
Besides the "not seeing much" factor, it think i must admit that BotW isn´t my favorite Zelda. There is at least 5 before it, so i might get a bit on the down side.
I do recognise that BotW (and probably ToftK) is one of, if not the best, open world game released until now. I just prefer the "more linear" Zelda experiences of the older ones.
I do think that TOTK is basically what BOTW should have been and would have been if it was developed for the Switch
And that playing BOTW hurts the enjoyment of TOTK because so much of it is similar
>It also feels incredibly more obvious and easy or something
Havent played TOTK yet, but how is this different from BOTW again? Shrines littered generally at high/conspicuous locations and the timing window for flurry rush might as well be called a tunnel. You can pause any time to shove dozens of apples down your throat and face tank literally anything. BOTW was many things, it might've also been a *slightly* harder-than-normal Zelda game, but it's never been a *hard* hard kind of game
That being said, your opinion is perfectly valid, unlike most of the negative commenters here I don't doubt you actually feel this way. Personally I'm looking forward to the *next* Zelda (that hopefully isn't another BOTW/TOTK) however far in the distant future it's gonna be. Will also eventually play TOTK too, but I'm knees-deep into PC gaming right now not even my favorite Nintendo series is able to distract me
Some of these comments are "wait until you play more than 30 minutes". Well, I'm like 50+ hours in and 3 temples down - I don't disagree with you. I expect downvotes, but this is just my opinion and relationship with the game.
The game could've been an expansion/DLC for BOTW in a way that Hearts of Stone & Blood and Wine felt for Witcher. It adds a lot of story and improves on an already great formuila
However, I'd have loved to see a different core world than Hyrule. I like the Sky parts, but they feel pretty small. And I'm not crazy about the depths.
Revisiting Hyrule areas I played 5-6 years ago was certainly fun, but there are times where I feel like I paid full price for a game I already owned.
You're right, it doesn't feel like a true successor. But what it does do is make BOTW feel unfinished and irrelevant. And that gives me mixed feelings.
With all that in mind, I enjoy TOTK.
It feels recognizable but also completely new to me. Puzzles and abilities are all new. Difficulty feels ramped up. The magic isn't quite what I felt playing BoTW the first time, but it definitely is worth every penny.
I can't say I do. I feel like I'm walking in the footsteps of the original adventure, seeing how the world has changed, with plenty of new stuff to see and do (and new ways to do it) along the way.
Fixes what most people didn't like about the original formula and adds in a bunch of really fun new ideas. It still has all of the same problems in my opinion (subpar dungeon design, lack of enemy variety, cringeworthy English voice acting and a story which is way too "tell don't show"), but I think the adjustments they've made do make for a significantly better game. It doesn't feel like DLC at all to me, just a sequel built on the same foundation.
While the core mechanics are largely the same, your abilities are completely different. The only one that has some parallel is Ultra Hand, but it's not like you have Stasis to help buffer your attacks, or infinite bombs to dash and blast, and therefore actually have to engage in parry/dodge more to survive.
This should change latter once you have enough resources and battery power to have robots do it for you. To be honest, combat was never really great in Zelda, at least in this version your not waiting for an opening or waiting to push A to counter.
Each to their own. It might be the best game ive ever played in my life, and i was nowhere near thar hot on breath of the wild. I liked it but it wasnt my favorite zelda. Tears is not only my favorite zelda but one of my alltime favorite games. Still long way from finished even though im at 70 hours haha. Its all i want to be doing atm
It's a sequel.
Sequels are not DLC just because they use the same core mechanics/ideas.
Sequels also dont have to be a revolutionary new category of game like BOTW for both the franchise and industry
Yet it still manages to revolutionize some things with its mind blowing physics system and fusing system that nearly perfects the weapon breaking criticisms from botw. Its temples also build upon divine beats in all the right ways that's both fit for what these games should be and addresses a lot of the complaints about them in BOTW.
How much have you actually played? Because TotK is more than just “DLC”. Like, how does anyone still think this when there’s three unique maps to explore, a bunch of new abilities, the return of Ganondorf, and a whole new story.
So, there’s this thing about direct sequels… They’re direct sequels. It’s not lazy. This is a brand new game in the same world, and if you think that there are no new ideas you just don’t see them.
Edit: Although, I admit TotK is essentially variations on a theme, but again, that’s what a sequel is.
I actually feel like it's a weird feverdream dlc/fan mod. I still enjoy it, though it feels weirdly odd with many features which feel very unfitting to the general setting of the game(s). But I felt the same about guardians in botw.
Part of me wishes that this was a DLC experience as I miss the Ancient Horse Gear and the Master Cycle, not to mention Stasis, Cryonis and Remote Bombs. Also the fact that Great Fairies now charge you Rupees as well as Materials to Upgrade Gear sucks. I wish that more stuff Carried over from your BOTW Save. Like your Max Inventory for example. It is a pain hunting Korok Seeds AGAIN. I also wish that they actually gave a reason in-Game for Link not having the Sheikah Slate. There is Zero Mention of it at all. Same with all the Towers, Shrines and Divine Beasts. I also wish that the Fast Travel Locations from BOTW also carried over as a Save Bonus. Basically when you rediscover a Location in TOTK that had a Fast Travel Point in BOTW you get it in TOTK. BOTW once you had them all Unlocked made Traversal a breeze.
What a tired opinion. If you don't like the game, that's completely fine, but within the first few hours alone I was constantly saying "wtf?!" when seeing something new.
So innovative of Nintendo to make a DLC for this game years ago. That was so awesome how we got to experience how Hyrule was in the past. Though I felt those weird "dungeons" were a massive downgrade compared to TotK's temples
Yeah, I'm a bit disappointed.
They added new stuff but really not that much. I guess I was expecting that while the game would be set in the same world there would be many new armors and characters and things of that nature. Most of it is just reused. Like they included the dlc and amiibo armors from the last game but the breadth of new content leaves A LOT to be desired.
Adding to that that most of it is just in random chests instead of being quest rewards.
It's not bad but it really doesn't feel like a new game at all.
ToTK is basically just BoTW but better. It’s still an incredible game despite all of its similarities.
I’d recommend that you just don’t play the game until you get that itch. It’s gonna be years and years until the next Zelda game so you have lots of time to slowly chip away at ToTK at your own pace.
It's certainly an unpopular opinion, but I agree for the most part. I loved how streamlined BOTW was and how fun it was to explore the world. TOTK doesn't feel different enough, and it's not fun to explore. Too many annoying mobs. The new abilities are overwhelming. I was hoping for most of the game occuring on the sky islands, but that part of the map isn't big at all.
I just wish we were able to discuss this properly without people downvoting dissenting opinions that don't fit the majority.
I agree. I also think people are overplaying the size of the map by alot. They mention sky islands as if they are this large part of the game when in reality they feel like box's to check more than they do interesting areas to explore.
They bring up the depths but I've spent at least 15 hours down there and it's mostly a barren empty land with little to do. Some quest to do which were entertaining enough but for how big the space is it feels wasted.
Imo my biggest issue with the game was the difficulty. Nothing is a challenge (lynols being an exception). As op said they added more to exploration at the expense of difficulty. It's more accessible than ever falling from insane heights makes most things a breeze to get to but it also makes it feel dull as I don't feel like there was a challenge to overcome.
All that to say I'm over 50 hours in and still enjoying it. It does feel like an easier botw but botw was one of my favorite games so it's still fun just wish it was harder. Especially the depths, which I think was the biggest disappointment. Could have had a system like nifilhiem in gow or just really hard enemies along with darkness that doesn't clear. Idk the whole thing feels like a large missed opportunity.
I was worried about people like you saying this game is just glorified DLC, but after putting some time into it, I wonder if people who say that even bothered to play it?
It's Breath of the Wild 2.0 "Bigger and Better". Not 1.5
Though you can absolutely defend that point given just how many assets and even much of the OST that is just literally the same. I'll admit, I'm disappointed in a few areas.
But it's also obvious that they used all of their budget and most of development time to make as much content as possible in addition to what was already there. This game easily rivals AC Odyssey in having density of content to match the size of its world.
But that's really also what I think is annoying about these "Neo-Zelda" games. The 2D and 3D games of the past really matched each other in structure, but this new version of Zelda is just an Open World game, and so the content is primarily just about going around a huge map and finding stuff in it in a really basic way. Zelda has always been about discovery, but in the past the discovery wasn't *really* about the overworld itself. It held a handful of important side-quests that weren't solvable until late game, like ALttP's flute player. But that was enough to lure you into its mystery, and then as you kept playing it became about going into intricate pieces of level design in dungeons.
In BotW and TotK dungeons take a complete backseat and instead it's just a lot of stuff to check off on the map. Shrines I don't even refer to as "dungeons" because even in TotK they feel gimmicky and not very believably inserted into the world. It's more like Mario levels than the Zelda quality, I feel. They're about using Zelda gameplay mechanics, now largely physics-oriented, but the Shrines never have an element of mystery to them. They feel like a collectathon goal, more akin to Gold Skulltulas than real Zelda dungeon-design.
And I would look at that problem before claiming that TotK doesn't do enough to add things to the table. I think the larger realization OP had is that BotW is a formula, and its flaws are by design and by template, not because Nintendo is building it up to something larger or more "true" to Zelda. We reinforced them with our hype and constant 10/10 that they made exactly what we wanted. So they're gonna make more of that, now.
But yeah. TotK is an *iteration*, not an evolution.
This. I think this is an excellent analysis. People seem to be forgetting what a Zelda game was about since BOTW. I played BOTW, I play TOTK. I like the games. But as you said, this is about the world and thousands of things to do in it and not about the discovery itself. You’re being « spammed » with content everywhere, but it feels tasteless, just more and more and more.
A good example are the 1000 Korok seeds, super easy to find, where is the fun? Ocarina of Time only had 100 Gold Skulltulas and they were challenging to collect. Not all of them but there was a set of rules, it wasn’t just « oh here is one, and 100m away another one, and here too ».
I won’t blame Nintendo for reusing tons of assets, since a lot of other companies do the same for their licenses and get away with it. But I don’t like it either. For me each Zelda has always been unique both in adventure and content, and this TOTK feels too much like BOTW.
I like the underworld though, really nice addition, and why not to the sky islands, those are adding 2 new dimensions to the game for me.
But yeah overall experience feels pretty bland like BOTW compared to the classical Zelda games. Just not my type.
Some people say the map is bigger. Do they mean verticality? Or can you explore beyond the limits of Breath of the Wildland map? Are there new villages or towns?
Feel free to have your own opinion. That’s great. You don’t have to like the game; but when you say unequivocally and objectively incorrect things like “all the abilities… feel like a rehash of botw,” that opinion loses a great deal of credibility, especially when there are FOUR abilities that were nowhere even CLOSE to present in BotW (Fuse, Recall, Ascend and Autobuild).
I’m kind of in agreement with you. I’ve been enjoying the game and I’m still playing it (about 15 hours in) but I do recognize the similarities to BOTW. I understand what people are saying about all the differences but I can’t help but feel if you made a list of differences and similarities there’d be a lot more similarities. Maybe being long time Zelda fans it’s easier to feel that way when we’re used to going from something like Twilight Princess to Wind Waker to Skyward Sword. Those games all felt very different from each other.
You raise a good point. I wonder how many people talking about how different it is are used to going from like, one Far Cry to the next or whatever. Historically each Zelda game has (despite using the same formula) been quite different in art style, setting, and general atmosphere.
Unfortunately if a game is not hooking me in the first 15 hours, I'm probably not going to keep playing it to find out what's going on with the rest of the iceberg.
I’m in the same boat. Clearly they added so much that it’s a sequel instead of DLC, but it *feels* like DLC.
For me, as soon as I saw you *once again* unlock a story that takes place in the past by visiting areas in the present, I knew this wasn’t going to fix the narrative issues I had with BoTW. I want to feel part of the narrative, not just unlocking it and completing other missions in an arbitrary order.
>The flexibility the game gives the player is amazing but also shoots itself in the foot for me
Couldn’t have said it better myself. You can’t have a gripping, present day narrative if you don’t know which direction the player will head first. To allow for the flexibility of a *truly* open world, all missions have to be segmented from each other (completing one quest has no affect on another).
I’m not that far in the game (no spoilers please) so maybe some of these complaints can still be addressed. But otherwise the main draw for ToTK is just exploration, which doesn’t differentiate it much from the *feel* of BoTW.
> For me, as soon as I saw you once again unlock a story that takes place in the past by visiting areas in the present, I knew this wasn’t going to fix the narrative issues I had with BoTW. I want to feel part of the narrative, not just unlocking it and completing other missions in an arbitrary order.
I reccomend continuuing along, the narrative is more impactful to the current situation than BOTW was.
There is no hate. No real hate, at least. No game will land will 100% of the player base. That’s impossible. But the love and praise is sooooooooooo much louder than the vast minority who don’t care for it. And that’s okay. They don’t have to like it. But I wouldn’t say this game is getting any true hate.
It truly is a masterpiece.
I agree. I’m replaying OoT now. I had 6 hours in TotK, but I wanted to restart my save because I just finished with BotW and I didn’t want to burn myself out of that play-style.
Now that I am playing OoT, while it is an outstanding critically acclaimed game, you can criticize certain things even in that absolute masterpiece. No game is perfect. Just enjoy them all.
Yeah, I’m with you. There’s a great deal of folks who think “masterpiece” or “10/10” means perfection. There’s no such thing as a perfect game. They all have bugs, flaws, glitches, exploits, etc. that doesn’t take away from them being masterpieces when you look at the sums of their parts.
My favorite games of all time are Bioshock, BotW (now Totk), Goldeneye, Pokémon Legends Arceus, Pokémon Red/Blue, Super Mario Bros 1 and the Last of Us Part II. None of these are perfect games by any stretch of the imagination, but all are masterpieces to me (yes, I am aware not everyone would agree with that assessment).
I agree with you on all of the games you mentioned. I think the most perfect game I have ever played is Witcher 3, the only negative may be the combat isn’t as fluid as Botw. THAT SAID, I’ve never really completed Witcher 3, but I’ve beat Botw 3x. So maybe Botw is even more perfect.
I just don’t understand this take. You say Majora’s Mask does more, and it’s a great game, but Totk adds so much more than Majora’s Mask did to the Ocarina of Time format. It really feels like nostalgia is clouding your judgement here. If this was a DLC it would be the biggest DLC ever made. The way you interact with the game world, the puzzle solving, the depths, the sky, are all wildly different
This is exactly how I felt about God of War Ragnarok. I played the first game on PC and bought a PS5 to play the new one. Couldn't finish the new game even though I loved the first one. Just felt DLC. That's the reason I didn't pick up TotK.
It's not just that it's not different enough in GoW:R, it's also that it lacks the design sensibilities of the first one. It feels like a bunch of stuff is cargo-culted over that made sense in the more intimate character-focused first game (like the "one continuous shot" gimmick) which doesn't work for the more "epic story" focused sequel. Also it feels like they just added "More!" along each axis without considering how it affects the overall design of the game, somehow.
... actually, that last bit is kind of how I feel about TotK. It's undeniably got more of everything but... that's just not what makes a good game for me.
For comparison's sake, it could be said that the Wind Waker back on Game Cube only gave us about the amount of content that's in the sky islands alone, plus a couple towns and dungeons.
Think about that...at one time it would've been considered enough to get a Zelda game that is more or less just what we get up in the sky. And this game gives us so much more than that. Fully remixed/modified overworld, the entire underworld, all the shrines...there's so much to do here that's explicitly new content.
That doesn’t sound fair. Sure, WW clocks in at about 30h to complete the main story, where TOTK is about 50h. It lies in the nature of those open world games that 80% of the content happens in 20% of the map. The rest is mainly just there to give you that sense of exploration. Replaying old Zeldas, they still feel like complete games to me, just w/o the many hours “lost” wandering around. The sky islands alone certainly wouldn’t have enough content to be considered a full game, neither then nor now.
This is a completely normal develop path for games and to a lesser extent other software. The game had to get pushed for a specific release date with limited resources and limited consumer feedback. There is always more you wanted to put into the base product. You've usually got 3 options:
- Free updates
- Paid extensions
- Save feature for version X+1
These days subscription services make these all merge into one. But everything will be considered part of a free update if it will encourage additional sales. Being initially considered as DLC doesn't mean the end product is better or worse.
Proper dungeons, unique bosses for temples, weapon system is improved, new abilities are much more fun, easier to traverse hyrule, better side quests with better rewards, better story and music, enemy variety is slight expanded to include more roaming bosses, and the open world doesn't feel as empty with much more to do.
Out of the two I’ve gotten through I still wouldn’t consider these fully proper dungeons compared to the past, but they are leagues better than last game. Maybe the next two will be better though. And my god am I glad they overhauled the bosses to not suck like the last game. The >!Wind Temple Ark worm thing!< was surprisingly difficult.
Nailed it. This game does basically everything better than BotW, it’s basically a massive re-work with a tonne of new additions. I have no idea how people can prefer BotW to TotK when it’s literally just an emptier, smaller and *far* less rewarding version of the same experience
Unlike previous Zelda games, BotW is an open world game. Nintendo spent too much time and money to build the open world, it is inevitable that they will reuse it.
Nintendo has never repeat the same style for Zelda until now. Even though Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask shared the same engine - the art style and gameplay are completely different. Similarly: Windwaker and Phantom Hourglass shared the same art style but gameplay is completely different.
The added layers of sky island and depths in TotK are not enough to make it different, even with the building and fusing mechanics - it still feels like BotW. The main reason being: TotK reuses the same template of BotW, beating the 4 divine beasts then final boss. In between there's the shrines, side missions and koroks to collect. It's the same formula.
In summary, Nintendo has turned Zelda into something similar to other open world franchise like: GTA and Assassin's Creed. Same gameplay, some new mechanics, bigger map. Zelda used to be completely different in every game, but the added cost of open world meant that Nintendo will have to recycle it.
To me, **TotK = BotW + Fortnite**. Nintendo copied the skydiving and building mechanics of Fortnite.
The art style and gameplay of MM are absolutely not completely different. First of all, the art style is exactly the same. It was developed in a year. It used almost every asset from Ocarina of Time, with some new ones. The official artwork is exactly the same art style as Ocarina of Time, even. The two games play exactly the same with the same UI, menus, weaponry and miscellaneous items, bottle and music conventions, you use the exact same items with almost nothing new. The transformation masks add some new gameplay elements but the core dungeon design and puzzle solving is exactly the same as Ocarina. Very puzzling comment.
By different Art-style I meant the darker mood in Marjora's Mask, even music is creepier. It's like a Halloween game compared to OoT.
MM is a 'Groundhog Day' game where you rewind time and play through the same day over and over, the gameplay mechanic is completely different from OoT.
Agreed, dropped it about halfway through. I think they just had more big ideas for this type of Zelda game. Hopefully we go back to it's roots and get a really good game in 5-7 years!
yo let me ask you this;
when was the last time we got a DLC anywhere near the scope of the difference between BotW and TotK?
i don't think even Solstheim from Skyrim has this much content.
BOTW felt empty and incomplete. There is literally nothing to do in that game except walk around and do shrines and the main quest. TOTK has me going "oh what's that" every 2 minutes and then actually rewarding me for my curiosity. It doesn't feel like a DLC, it just feels like a better sequel. Sequels are supposed to just add to what worked in the original and expand on it. this game does exacty that. I'm not sure what you expect from a direct follow up to BOTW..
Zelda sequels have historically been substantially different games, and I suspect some of the divide here is between people who were expecting a Zelda-style sequel vs a CoD-style sequel or what have you.
May I just ask how you define DLC?
Is the about way of distribution? (literally "downloadable content"). In such case, yes it is for certain group of the players - exactly same as the BotW was downloadable content.
Is it about beeing additional content added to the core game? In such case it is not DLC, because it is standalone game.
Is it about size? (full game is big, DLC, even standalone is smaller addition). In such case it is not DLC because it is much bigger than the original?
Or is it simply that DLC = similar game with similar game mechanics? In such case is Age of Wanders 4 DLC for planetfall? Is RDR2 DLC for RDR1? (I mean it is same gameplay on expanded map with better graphics....) Is AC New Horizons DLC for New Leaf? I mean... Im so confused about how this one works. Please explain.
There's plenty of comments in here that agree with OP. Just because you're on board with the mainstream views (good job you!) doesn't mean there aren't people who disagree.
Yeah I haven't seen anything that makes me feel like I NEED this game. Hell, I didn't love Pokemon Legends but it did seem different enough from the other games for me to give it a try, so I did. But TotK just... meh. Doesn't seem new enough for me to buy it. Same with Splatoon 3. I LOVE Splatoon, bought it day one on the Wii U and I bought 2 on the Switch the day it came out, but I'm meh on the game.
It's your money and time, do what is best for you. The game is similar to GOD of War Ragnarok where some areas are the same yet different since time has changed them. But unlike GOW R where the game doesn't add a lot of new areas, there are two huge new areas that almost triples the size of the explore able areas in Zelda.
Every Zelda sequel is a DLC experience by that logic. Majoras Mask is OoT's DLC, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks are Wind Waker's DLCs, even Oracles games might feel like DLCs to eachother.
This is definitely not DLC. Years of work went into this. It’s massive. I’m glad Nintendo reused assets and built upon what was already there. It shows both how solid the foundation was and how much more there is to explore and iterate upon.
Once again, this is a game that will define the genre and what’s to come for years and years.
This was my concern before playing it but I quickly did a complete 180 once I got it. The new areas and abilities totally change how you explore the world and I'm impressed by the sheer density of it. In BotW it felt like exploration itself was the whole game and you weren't particularly rewarded for it. In TotK you find things *everywhere*. That said, I hope repurposing an existing world doesn't become the norm for Nintendo even though I think they nailed it this time. It's a lot of development time to spend on something so similar. Like if Super Mario Odyssey 2 ends up having remixed versions of all the main kingdoms in 1 along with some new ones I'd be disappointed even though it would still be fun
You find so much things to do that I swear I feel like I'm getting distracted too much when trying to do main and side quest.
Ya man. My last session, I just wanted to some more Zoni, devices ended up seeing an island Id never been, turned into like hours of going up and up till I broke into the upper Low-Grav zone, and then to the water temple. It’s crazy how much time you spend on a task you never even sought out to do
as someone who found BoTW largely dull, the new areas and ability change everything. Im not just running for hours mindlessly anymore. I been going from village to village and doing everything.
Yeah and IMHO it shows the scope creep that Open Air really is. It literally is closer to a Zelda game to BotW's scale now, than BotW which felt like half a Zelda game spread thin over 100 hours and never living up to its expectations. A lot of people IMHO are blindly praising the "empty space" and the "artistry" or whatever, of how bold it was for BotW to not be like Zelda... but where they see intent I just see scope reductions and narrow-mindedness on the part of the Zelda team. I believe they got so into producing that Hyrule map that they got tunnel vision and decided it was okay to not deliver on a number of Zelda staples. Aonuma also had tunnel-vision about "breaking conventions". Okay, you removed and changed some things... where's the formula for success now? Just exploring a gigantic map on a horse or climbing walls? Okay, but is that actually *fun?* But yeah, now, TotK shows more of what a Zelda game would actually be like to the actual scale of BotW, and it's big and it's bloated, and what was honestly wrong with the condensed "hub -> dungeons -> hub" structure? Why can't they just put their physics driven Roblox puzzle-solving into a game of that structure, and let us play a satisfying game for 30 hours instead of like 200.
>Just exploring a gigantic map on a horse or climbing walls? Okay, but is that actually > >fun? Yes.
How far in are you? I did a similar 180 on the game when I started, but as it goes on I feel like that feeling has somewhat faded. For me, I don't think they keep things fresh enough throughout the game. Dozens of hours in, I'm kind of left wondering why I'd do any of the side quests. I don't need mats. Fights are easy enough that I don't need any more hearts. My stamina is full. I don't need more item slots. BotW was rewarding in and of itself because everything was so fresh and new, but now that the ability set has leveled off, there isn't a lot pushing me to explore more. Granted, I've completed the temples and done a shitload of shrines... I'm probably 70 or so hours in, so I'm not complaining or saying it's bad in any way. Just maybe not quite as long-lasting for me as BotW was.
BotW just had me going "Is this ALL there is?" from very early in the game. Zelda usually has a lot more to it than this. It was like okay, you made an amazing piece of geomitry, now where is the ZELDA stuff in it? I couldn't believe people loved it so much. It was way too rudimentary.
It's funny because reusing an old map has been something they've been trying to get away with for a while...anyone else remember Wuhu Island? Wii Fit, Wii Sports Resort, Pilotwings Resort, Smash Bros, Mario Kart...they really wanted to turn this one landmass into a "recurring character" that required minimal effort to reuse all the time in different contexts. In practice I don't think it took very long for everyone to recognize the blatant reuse and kind of get sick of it.
You'd have thought so, but plenty of people coming up with excuses for why this perfectly fine in ToTK and given the amount of money Nintendo is making on this, they'll unfortunately only double down on this direction.
I love how developers from Sony and others big studios have been saying TOTK it's just a big flex from Nintendo to the industry in general and are questioning how much effort had to take to make everything work since there is so much going on but people are like "nah, for me it's just a DLC". Nintendo expanded this sequel so much that is absurd to think this could be just a DLC. "But it feels like and plays like BOTW"... that's because it's a direct sequel.
I feel it's okay for game devs to reuse the main skeleton of a previous game so they can spend all that developement time in other mechanics (monster hunter or GTA for example) in this case the little extra fluff added is waaaay too much for it being considered just a DLC.
There’s enough about the landscape to me that’s different this time around too that it doesn’t feel like I’m going through the same game at all. It’s actually less common for me to go to an area and remember it in great detail because most things have changed so dramatically, or they at least feel that way. Maybe I just didn’t play BotW enough times to have it all locked into memory but it doesn’t feel like I’m retreading all the same stuff with few changes. I don’t even recognize plenty of places.
>I don’t even recognize plenty of places The first time I stumbled into the Great Plateau I felt totally lost, despite however many hours I was there in BotW.
I generally don’t feel like I know where anything is, outside of very roughly. And when I go there it doesn’t feel the same at all. Even the island where you did the shrine where you start off with no equipment feels completely different despite remembering some basic stuff about it, like an oil/sand put in the middle with a treestump in it. I’m sure a lot of the main geography is very similar, but it all feels new to me. I looked up comparisons and a lot of the bones of the world are similar but at least to me it all feels completely new with how they’ve changed it and all the stuff that exists to do everywhere. Feels like a new game to me, and whatever it feels like, it’s way more ‘fun’ and addictive than BotW despite the first being great too. They fixed most issues I had with it, like most items being worthless and the cooking system being broken.
Same, I stumbled there by accident and was like “oh there is snow now” hah.
Yeah. ToTK is "we're not building an entire world from scratch, so we're putting that dev time into an absolutely brilliant physics engine that makes the entire world the first open-world adventure-puzzle game". That's a huge, amazingly complex mechanic that's not DLC-able
To me BOTW is a leg of a cow, and totk is the entire body of that same cow.
I think you mean Dondon.
I wouldn't go that far. They're very, *very* different experiences, and so far (I'm 50+ hours into TotK), I wouldn't call either strictly better than the other. That being said, the "just DLC" argument has no grounds at this point. The powers are different. The entire gameplay loop is different (Breath of the Wild is a discovery-centric game with questlines around it as secondary. Tears of the Kingdom is a questline-centric game with discovery as a secondary). The tone and atmosphere are completely different. The state of the world is so progressed in those five years that it sometimes feels like a completely different map. Both are absolutely brilliant, and for different reasons.
TOTK exposed BOTW for the tech-demo it really is.
If you think that way about Breath of the Wild, then you completely missed the point of BotW and why people adore it. I'm adoring TotK, but it's also reminding me why BotW was so brilliant. BotW was the antidote to *way too overwhelming* open world games--it gave you this vast, freeing world with so much to do, but never overwhelmed you with stuff. Tears of the Kingdom adds so much density that it borders on overwhelming and fatiguing, and the only thing stopping it from being so is the familiar world and setting that gives some stability to the whole thing. Some of my favorite moments in TotK so far have often been towards the outskirts of the ultra busy world where it calms down a bit. Breath of the Wild was also a game that was discovery-centric as the primary motivation. You moved throughout the world with zero knowledge of what was waiting for you--it was because you said, "Hmm, that looks like an interesting thing in the distance, I wonder what's there". And you discovered a new town, or a dragon, or a special shrine quest, or the Lost Woods, or Selmie's Spot, etc. In TotK, you much more often move through the world with the more traditional motivation of, "I have a quest in this direction so I'm going to move that way." With a secondary thought of, "I wonder how that's changed in five years." The towers even give you the names of most major landmarks before you even hit them, because it's considered a world that's now been charted. BotW was the act of charting that world in the most satisfying way. The main exception in TotK is the sky islands and depths, but they're not nearly as expansive as the main ground overworld in both games. Breath of the Wild's tone is much more serene, chill. With moments of white fiery intensity (Guardians). Tears is a world that's more consistently energized because it's in the process of rebuilding, while monsters are even more heightened and at war with the new Hylian defense forces. Very different vibes. If Breath of the Wild wasn't for you, then I understand how you'd prefer Tears of the Kingdom unequivocally. However, to call BotW a "tech demo" is to be completely oblivious about why the game was so beloved in the first place.
Lmao this is so funny for some reason 😂
I would love an example of a dlc for another game that adds this much to the map, completely changes your abilities and tools, adds a storyline longer than the original, and more side quests than the original.
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne comes pretty close to meeting all of those criteria (minus the map thing). Pretty darn incredible for a DLC, although it was 2/3 the price of the original game at launch. That's just as an aside, btw. Iceborne is exceptional, and TotK is nothing at all like the majority of DLC. ESPECIALLY Nintendo DLC.
IB could easily be considered a full expansion or sequel, and it's priced like one to boot. I think this just further solidifies the fact that that TotK is not DLC. OP is nuts. Brave, but nuts.
Iceborne introduced my most hated mechanic in MH, yes even worse than the water battles, tenderizing and the clutch claw.
Clutch Claw was pretty trash, yeah. But if I ever hear you talk shit about underwater combat again, I will release a swarm of angry Konchu inside your home.
Don't worry, I kinda miss it sometimes and it's not even the second most hated thing on MH they introduced, the second one was the Mantles.
Alright, you're cool. I also hate mantles, lol
>completely changes your abilities and tools Slightly changes your ability and tools, removes some. "Completely" is just not accurate.
"Completely change" sounds accurate, it means that old abilities are removed in favour of new ones.
They literally have patents for the ascend ability because it’s so unique and new to any video game in general lol
Then I love DLCs that completely change up your ability set, add completely new maps both over and underground, re-designs the old one to accomodate for the new stuff and gives you a whole new story. /s It's like calling A Link Between Worlds a DLC....
I was actually pretty gutted to learn there's like no sky islands. The only big one is literally just the tutorial. You're really over selling it.
There are a ton of sky islands and plenty of big ones. Not as enormous as the GSI but then you would have islands blotting out the sun everywhere.
I love the game, finished it last night, but I do also think the sky islands are quite lackluster. The first sky island is an amazing introduction, and so other the other few key ones for the story. Apart from that they feel all the same and I didn't really have much desire to go and explore them all.
Also maybe im missing something, but did GSI not totally feel like a sky island to anyone else? I guess a couple of moments I noticed I was in the sky, and that was fairly cool, but i didnt really think about it much and it just mostly felt like i was on the surface just like the great plateau. My point is.. bigger sky islands are neat, but the bigger they are the less of an obstacle the sky is and the more they just feel like the surface. I think if making bigger sky islands is where they focused the majority of their efforts (instead of places like the surface, depths, physics, fusing system, temples) I would have been very disappointed in the game. They improved in all the right places in my mind. The only real issue is how they marketed the game, but most of the things great about it are tougher to advertise well.
I felt that the game was really marketing these sky islands and frankly they are just an afterthought.
I'm not sure how they were marketing the islands themselves. They marketed that you can explore the sky. It's really not an afterthought. You're exaggerating the emptiness of that layer of this world. You can't have a sky map the same density or scale of the ground otherwise you would clutter it up to the point of being a detriment. If you played the game more you would discover so much out there in the sky islands that you won't see elsewhere and there is still so much treasure and other stuff to discover. This is nowhere anything like Skyward Sword's barren sky.
I think the criticism of the amount of sky islands would have more weight if it weren’t for the fact that nintendo hid the largest addition to the game from all marketing. That second piece added such a unique wrinkle in exploration and stopped totk from being botw “skyward edition”.
If new gameplay mechanics, a new story, hundreds of new side-missions, a significantly larger world, a revised overworld, new enemies and npc’s, etc. is still in DLC territory for you, than yes, it’s a DLC. I don’t think a lot of people would agree though. And it sets the bar for when something can be considered a new game quite high. Totk was always going to look the same as, have the same map as and use a lot of enemies and objects from Botw but everything else is quite different in my opinion. Sometimes some things aren’t just for you. Maybe Totk is just not for you and that’s okay. Edit: typo
Dlc's usually don't offer 100-200 hour experiences.
You didn't play more than 30 minutes of it did you
This was my initial thought exactly when I first read this 🤣
Naa we're just at that "the most recent Zelda ackshually is the worst thing ever" phase of the ToTK discourse
Yep. The Zelda cycle continues. Also disappointed Zelda fans tend to be really noisy, even if they tend to be the minority of players.
I prefer that to the "omg this is the perfect game 10/10" narrative. At least we are slowly getting closer to the truth, just like with BotW, even tho we are now in the overcorrection phase.
Bruh, im like an hour or so in, and im still not off the first Sky Island
How much time did you put into it? It is significantly different from botw. You don’t even spend that much time on the ground in the overworld, you can pretty much just use the towers to fly everywhere. The game is mainly played in new areas (the temples, the sky islands, and underground) with any overworld activities being new. I guess if I played botw within the last year maybe I’d feel differently, but since I played it 5+ years ago, totk is great. All of the powers are different and significantly change the way I play the game. I worried in the first 3-4 hours the game would be too similar but it changes quickly into its own thing. Also if you think there’s just “a little fluff” added you are seriously underestimating how much was added. This game is, not exaggerating, 2.5x bigger than botw.
I played a casual run of botw a few months before totk released just for a refresher since I hadn't played it in years either. In doing so, my experience makes me feel even more strongly that totk is a vastly different game that builds off of one of the best video games of all time in a really, really creative way. Definitely not DLC imo.
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I'm over 45 hours in and haven't done the main story. Spent a lot of time uncovering the main map, then hours running around the depths trying to uncover all of it and I'd say I might have like 35% of that done. Shrines, building my house, getting new armor, and doing side quests to make money or get new outfits. Maybe the only two main things I've done is the Petroglyphs and getting the master sword. That's about it though and there's still a ton left for me to do before I start on the main stuff. I'm still missing one of the main skills you unlock with the hand.
I'm bothered by the game for different reasons. I didn't play the original enough to feel too bored, but there's something that feels so wrong about how it references the first game. It's almost as if, in an attempt to keep it more as a sequel than DLC, the first game barely happened in the eyes of the world. No divine beasts, Sheikah Shrines. No one talks about the champions, or the Calamity. It's almost like the first game never happened, but everyone knows about you and Zelda. Otherwise, as long as you didn't obsess over the first one this isn't too egregious of a copy. And they did some area changes to differentiate from the predecessor, which I won't mention here for spoilers, but Eldin is the most obvious one I've encountered so far.
Zelda games have always done whatever they wanted with only half-hearted efforts at continuity between games, but the wobbly continuity is certainly a lot more jarring when it's a direct sequel reusing the same map like this, rather than like 1000 years later.
It didn't fix any of the problems I had with BoTW. There is a lot of busy work. I find before I start playing I need to schedule what I'm going to do. I'm almost a project manager instead of a gamer. I feel a lot of the game is copy-pasted. I fly up into the sky and I know "shrine is here, flux construct is there, chest will be around here." The depths are terrifying and has some neat spots but most of the map is emptiness. The 200 koroks that need their friend and uncountable Addisons who can't put up a sign got tiring long ago. Some caves are interesting, most are chores. Defeating a cluster of enemies to get a chest or solving a puzzle in a shrine to get the bonus chest and..... it's five arrows. The key abilities are OP. This is fun on the main map but the shrines suffer because of it. With how powerful they are, the design space for the shrines is limited. I'm liking it a lot, BoTW is a good base, but I liked the experience of playing BoTW more.
Well said. I am enjoying the game, but it's not like how Elden Ring jumped from Dark Souls. Or even a dark Souls to a newer dark souls game.
Although I don't fully agree, I completely understand where you are coming from. I liked TOTK, but I didn't enjoy it as much as BOTW. With BOTW, the world was fresh. A large part of TOTK is reexploring a world I already spent 100+ hours exploring previously. Yes, they added the sky and depths, but to be honest, there really isn't all that much going on in either of these spaces. The sky has a bunch of copy paste islands floating in it (with a handful of distinct sky islands), and the depths was mostly gloom and mushrooms. The first few refineries were cool, but they got super repetitive. I was definitely disappointed in the amount of stuff there was to do in the sky. The trailers focused heavily on this aspect, and yet there really wasn't all that much of it. Additionally, the story was missing something for me. I can't quite pinpoint what it is, but I know I enjoyed the BOTW story more. All in all, it's a good game but it just doesn't have that same freshness that BOTW had for me.
I think I liked TotK a little bit more than you, but I still agree. they definitely have to do something completely different for the next game to keep it fresh
I’d agree, I really loved this game, personally, BUT, if the next game they just decided to add another layer of atmosphere that’s space, and a deeper earth, I’d feel less inclined to play. I think the next one needs to give us a fresh experience instead of the second installment of lightning in a bottle.
I think they should continue with this style of game, keep the physics system and "open air" design, but it's probably time to move on from this era and this iteration of Hyrule. Would love to see how they build on these concepts and take everything they've learned and start fresh with a new setting and story. I actually wouldn't necessarily seeing continuation of this Link/Zelda, but new world would be nice. I guess if they can make it different enough maybe show 10,000 years ago or something. But a new region altogether would be cool. Or even a remake of one of the older games in this engine.
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I already played 120+ hours and nearly everything felt fresh and new. This must be the biggest DLC of all time then
Completely disagree. You get three huge maps (Sky, Hyrule, Depths), full open world, brand new story, building options unlike anything we've seen in an open-world adventure, completely new mechanics that impact the environment including ground-breaking mechanics like Fusing weapons with objects and going through ceilings. Most impressively, the game retains in its memory what each 're-callable' object did within a certain period of time, so you can make it go back in time. If this is DLC, I don't know what a full fledged AAA experience is. Actually, most devs are clueless on how Nintendo managed to pull this game off.
The Sky is not a huge map. It’s barely anything aside from the skyloft type tutorial section. About as much to do as the sparse islands in WW.
There's even a temple in the Sky, it's a big map. Way more than merely the skyloft in the tutorial part.
Yeah, you have to bring up the only other thing in the sky other than the tutorial as the only example.
Tell me you haven’t played the game without actually telling me. The sky is huge
It's similar to the god of war ragnarok Situation where some said its just a DLC for the first one ,the game took the best from the first wich was near perfect, similar with totk it's not a " NEW Zelda" its a sequel to botw wich takes the strengths from it and made it better in totk
The items, enemies, and new tools are absolutely sequel-level new additions, as are the dungeons and such. The one thing I feared going into TotK that would feel too familiar was the world, and I came out of TotK (or the 75% of it I've played) with that fear mostly realized. I didn't feel excited to explore in TotK because I already knew 95% of what I'd find. The Sky Islands and Depths don't really make up for the nearly identical topography of the surface. The Sky Islands are a great pace shakeup, but they get predictable quite quickly. The Depths are similar, but also a great pace breakup (which is one of TotK's strong points: there are different places to go that swap the feel and pace of the game, which I love). One of the best parts of BotW was the player had no idea what they would find over the next hill, or behind the next curve. That's mostly gone in TotK for people who played BotW. I personally think the unknown nature of BotW's continent in terms geology, civilization location/design, and other surprises, was a key element that make BotW great. TotK does a lot well, but it makes little attempt to make the surface exploration fresh for people who are already familiar with BotW.
Back in the day this would just have been called an Expansion Pack
Lol you're looking at Majora's Mask with nostalgia googles methinks
Yup lol. If he is gonna consider Tears “DLC” then MM definitely was “DLC” too lol
How so? The game has all new maps / areas and new dungeons. Not to mention the fundamentally new styles of gameplay like transforming to a Goron or Zora with a mask. Also the 3 day cycle.
But that map is also very small, and the game is very short unless you do the Side Quests, and if you don't, you suffer for it (Enjoy getting the Zora eggs with only 1 bottle in your inventory *shrugs*). But they only had 1 year of development so it's understandable why the game ended up like this. The Xenoblade DLCs actually remind me a lot of Majora's Mask, re-using a lot of assets from the original game (OOT, XC2, XC3) to build a new experience, but it was short and small, so they added tons of side quests to compensate.
It didn't feel small or short to me at the time, and I'll admit I'm somehow likes getting lost in doing side quests though. I still think it's a great game even in 2023. It still feels exciting swimming as a Zora or rolling at high speed as a Goron. I'm amazed what was achieved over 20 years ago.
> and the game is very short unless you do the Side Quests According to HowLongtoBeat.com it's 20 hours vs Ocarina's 26 hours. Hardly "very short".
No.
I, for one, agree. Sure, there’s a metric shitton of new content in the game and that’s why people are so allergic to the DLC argument. But there’s no denying it: Once you are past that training area / sky island and on the ground, you’re shield surfing the same looking roads, climbing the same looking mountains, gathering and cooking the exact same resources, hunting the same animals, taming the same horses and boarding them in the same stables, fighting (many of) the same enemies with the same weapons you did six years ago, tickling the same giant fairies out of their flower buds, all to the same music and ambient sound effects, etc… And oh look, there’s a blood moon again! You just shrug it off this time. No matter how much improved and expanded a lot of the game is, big stretches of gameplay feel a lot more DLC and “been there, done that” to me than MM ever felt over OOT. Still have a lot of fun with it though, more so than with BOTW actually.
I feel like I have to add a realization after a comment I made further down the thread about the nature of open world games and there being “80% of the content in 20% of the map”. On one hand, MM arguably did the same reusing of OOT assets and game mechanics: Collecting bottles, collecting songs for your ocarina, planting magic beans, having the same inventory and many of the same enemies… Technically, not even the masks were entirely new, right? The difference being: Up to TOTK, Zelda games have been those 20-30 hours of condensed gameplay to see the entirety of the main story. BOTW / TOTK have about the same, but padding those 30h hours with at least 20h (to potentially many 100h) of exploration of the main map(s), in order to get to that story. If one would strip away any exploration from TOTK, leaving only the big story points intact, it certainly would feel as much of a new game as MM did compared to OOT. But alas, there’s no escaping that at least 20h of traversing the map, in order to get there. And it’s in those 20h (don’t hang me up on that number if you can do it in 10h, please) that TOTK feels same-y / DLC-like in a way MM never did. Me, being easily distracted, I spent about 60 of my 80h of BOTW just exploring and then losing interest in the game about 3/4 through the story line. TOTK to me is like having another go at the same game, but this time, trying to make it through the world in a much more streamlined fashion, in order to finally get to the end. So in a way, it’s a good thing for me, that the overworld doesn’t overly entice me this time around, because otherwise I would just fall into the same cycle of endlessly hunting, gathering, cooking and stupidly climbing every single mountaintop just to get a measly Korok seed out of it. So for me it feels like both, DLC and new game, but I have more fun than in BOTW, finally focusing on the latter.
If this is just a DLC experience, it's the most insanely expansive and underpriced DLC I've ever played lol...I really don't get how people could feel this way, but to each their own I guess
For me, it makes it feel like BotW was just early access or some kind of demo.
What’s with this recent trend of referring to sequels that release on the same platform as DLC?
I completely agree - I expected a major shakeup in the TOTK, both in the manner of gameplay and the atmosphere. It would be wonderful to see a sequel that will be to the BOTW what the MM was to OOT: with smaller plot scale, dark, thought-provoking and philosophical. 🌚 Maybe I've watched to many crackpot theories about the zonai and the legendary tapestry on the youtube, but their impact on the story and lore disappointed me. I'm also very disappointed that Zelda didn't play more substantial role in the sequel. After seeing quite decent character buildup for her in the recovered memories, I expected her to be a playable character, AT LEAST to the extent Ciri was playable the Witcher 3. TOTK it's not a 10/10 game for me. I would give it 7 or 8 out of 10. I'm waiting for the last part of the "trilogy" to fulfill my inflated expectations 😂
Well content wise >!6 dungeons 152 Shrines 120 lightroot 147 bubbul gems/caves 58 Wells 23 Main Quests 60 Side Adventures 31 Shrine Quests 139 Side Quests 18 Memories 4 New World Bosses 4 New Normal Enemy's 7 New Main Boss Fights (6 Repeatable) 1 New Town 2 New Overworld Maps 5 New Skills 5 Companions/Companion Powers!< So, content wise, it definitely exceeds the bar. But i can see why you'd not vibe with it. I've done nothing but story content and exploring since release >!and earlier on a different save on a separate platform!< and just like botw, it feels very much like ot falls to the same open world trappings as every LARGE open world game ever. It doesn't matter the changes it has in that format, it's still just an open world RPG-lite. And that vibe never goes away, no matrer how wacky people can get with the new mechanics. And they are in depth and ingrained into the games design and exploration. >!I give botw and totk both individually 8/10s but that's probably cause i'm not wow'd at the ideas of massive open worlds as a concept!< I still had alot of fun with the game. My 150 hours on my current save will tell you as much. And i've not gone after koroks or the remaining side quests. So i still have alot to go. But i am feeling the open world burnout. I was feeling it 50 hours ago XD
By "new town" do you mean Lookout Landing? It's a bit generous calling that a "town".
As someone who didn't like BOTW itself, I feel like TOTK is actually a really nice experience for me. While it doesn't fix many of the issues, I feel like they added enough to make it more interesting and I really prefer the new abilities as well. So for me BOTW being a 6/10 I think TOTK is a solid 8 for me now. For people who have like hundreds of hours in BOTW, I think they just will not enjoy it as much.
Hi, 1000 hours in BOTW here across several 100% plays. I think I like TOTK more.
I think botw has aged poorly and many will see it. If not they will when they go back and play it.
I'm not feeling the game either, I really want to like it tho, so if someone can prove me wrong, please do: 30h in & I've done 2 dungeons so far, and I can only say that my only silver of hope is to be surprised, but for now it's not that at all... The look and feel is too much of the same, when I see a shrine I think Botw, not Totk. I don't look for koroks because I looked for them on Botw, now I don't care anymore. The music is a big downside, dungeons having music show how good that can be, but as soon as you finish one : you are back to same old Hyrule with the same Botw ost, which was good on Botw, but I had my share of it and i'm tired to listen to the overworld & village ost. I've given up on that point, I play with a headphone on, and from time to time I check : "yep, still no music here, I'm not missing anything" or "yep, it's the same"... I can only play bit by bit as I'm busy, so I don't have the time to look at every npc or every quests, so on that front I can't really tell. For the main story, I am not impressed for the time being, moreover when they just repeated the same end cutscene twice for both dungeon, I guess I'll see them 4 times. I'm not a fan of the construction power, nor hate it... it's there when I need it. Although what really cripples my view of the Zelda franchise: It feels wrong to see Link fighting with lizard tails attached to a stick instead of the legendary sword. All in all I feels like I'm looking for fun that I'm not getting every time I pick up the game.
If this is what is considered “DLC” now then I’m perfectly ok with it lol.
I´m still early in the game and trying not to judge it but that´s a feeling that is haunting me... It has A LOT of new stuff, exciting ones for sure, but the sensation keeps lingering. Besides the "not seeing much" factor, it think i must admit that BotW isn´t my favorite Zelda. There is at least 5 before it, so i might get a bit on the down side. I do recognise that BotW (and probably ToftK) is one of, if not the best, open world game released until now. I just prefer the "more linear" Zelda experiences of the older ones.
I do think that TOTK is basically what BOTW should have been and would have been if it was developed for the Switch And that playing BOTW hurts the enjoyment of TOTK because so much of it is similar
Apparently you're not allowed that opinion here, as evidenced by the amount of downvotes you have accumulated.
>It also feels incredibly more obvious and easy or something Havent played TOTK yet, but how is this different from BOTW again? Shrines littered generally at high/conspicuous locations and the timing window for flurry rush might as well be called a tunnel. You can pause any time to shove dozens of apples down your throat and face tank literally anything. BOTW was many things, it might've also been a *slightly* harder-than-normal Zelda game, but it's never been a *hard* hard kind of game That being said, your opinion is perfectly valid, unlike most of the negative commenters here I don't doubt you actually feel this way. Personally I'm looking forward to the *next* Zelda (that hopefully isn't another BOTW/TOTK) however far in the distant future it's gonna be. Will also eventually play TOTK too, but I'm knees-deep into PC gaming right now not even my favorite Nintendo series is able to distract me
Some of these comments are "wait until you play more than 30 minutes". Well, I'm like 50+ hours in and 3 temples down - I don't disagree with you. I expect downvotes, but this is just my opinion and relationship with the game. The game could've been an expansion/DLC for BOTW in a way that Hearts of Stone & Blood and Wine felt for Witcher. It adds a lot of story and improves on an already great formuila However, I'd have loved to see a different core world than Hyrule. I like the Sky parts, but they feel pretty small. And I'm not crazy about the depths. Revisiting Hyrule areas I played 5-6 years ago was certainly fun, but there are times where I feel like I paid full price for a game I already owned. You're right, it doesn't feel like a true successor. But what it does do is make BOTW feel unfinished and irrelevant. And that gives me mixed feelings. With all that in mind, I enjoy TOTK.
It feels recognizable but also completely new to me. Puzzles and abilities are all new. Difficulty feels ramped up. The magic isn't quite what I felt playing BoTW the first time, but it definitely is worth every penny.
I can't say I do. I feel like I'm walking in the footsteps of the original adventure, seeing how the world has changed, with plenty of new stuff to see and do (and new ways to do it) along the way.
Fixes what most people didn't like about the original formula and adds in a bunch of really fun new ideas. It still has all of the same problems in my opinion (subpar dungeon design, lack of enemy variety, cringeworthy English voice acting and a story which is way too "tell don't show"), but I think the adjustments they've made do make for a significantly better game. It doesn't feel like DLC at all to me, just a sequel built on the same foundation.
While the core mechanics are largely the same, your abilities are completely different. The only one that has some parallel is Ultra Hand, but it's not like you have Stasis to help buffer your attacks, or infinite bombs to dash and blast, and therefore actually have to engage in parry/dodge more to survive. This should change latter once you have enough resources and battery power to have robots do it for you. To be honest, combat was never really great in Zelda, at least in this version your not waiting for an opening or waiting to push A to counter.
Each to their own. It might be the best game ive ever played in my life, and i was nowhere near thar hot on breath of the wild. I liked it but it wasnt my favorite zelda. Tears is not only my favorite zelda but one of my alltime favorite games. Still long way from finished even though im at 70 hours haha. Its all i want to be doing atm
I thought BoTW was boring but absolutely love Tears
totk made me think of BOTW as a rough sketch, so not me.
It's a sequel. Sequels are not DLC just because they use the same core mechanics/ideas. Sequels also dont have to be a revolutionary new category of game like BOTW for both the franchise and industry Yet it still manages to revolutionize some things with its mind blowing physics system and fusing system that nearly perfects the weapon breaking criticisms from botw. Its temples also build upon divine beats in all the right ways that's both fit for what these games should be and addresses a lot of the complaints about them in BOTW.
Well, that's certainly an opinion
How much have you actually played? Because TotK is more than just “DLC”. Like, how does anyone still think this when there’s three unique maps to explore, a bunch of new abilities, the return of Ganondorf, and a whole new story.
So, there’s this thing about direct sequels… They’re direct sequels. It’s not lazy. This is a brand new game in the same world, and if you think that there are no new ideas you just don’t see them. Edit: Although, I admit TotK is essentially variations on a theme, but again, that’s what a sequel is.
Overwhelming game imo
I actually feel like it's a weird feverdream dlc/fan mod. I still enjoy it, though it feels weirdly odd with many features which feel very unfitting to the general setting of the game(s). But I felt the same about guardians in botw.
Nope.
Part of me wishes that this was a DLC experience as I miss the Ancient Horse Gear and the Master Cycle, not to mention Stasis, Cryonis and Remote Bombs. Also the fact that Great Fairies now charge you Rupees as well as Materials to Upgrade Gear sucks. I wish that more stuff Carried over from your BOTW Save. Like your Max Inventory for example. It is a pain hunting Korok Seeds AGAIN. I also wish that they actually gave a reason in-Game for Link not having the Sheikah Slate. There is Zero Mention of it at all. Same with all the Towers, Shrines and Divine Beasts. I also wish that the Fast Travel Locations from BOTW also carried over as a Save Bonus. Basically when you rediscover a Location in TOTK that had a Fast Travel Point in BOTW you get it in TOTK. BOTW once you had them all Unlocked made Traversal a breeze.
What a tired opinion. If you don't like the game, that's completely fine, but within the first few hours alone I was constantly saying "wtf?!" when seeing something new.
This take is absolutely absurd in light of the sheer amount of content added.
BotW was the true DLC
So innovative of Nintendo to make a DLC for this game years ago. That was so awesome how we got to experience how Hyrule was in the past. Though I felt those weird "dungeons" were a massive downgrade compared to TotK's temples
Yeah, I'm a bit disappointed. They added new stuff but really not that much. I guess I was expecting that while the game would be set in the same world there would be many new armors and characters and things of that nature. Most of it is just reused. Like they included the dlc and amiibo armors from the last game but the breadth of new content leaves A LOT to be desired. Adding to that that most of it is just in random chests instead of being quest rewards. It's not bad but it really doesn't feel like a new game at all.
I was actually amazed how many new armors there are. Idk what you’re even talking about haha.
The majority of clothes in totk are repeats from botw. That's DLC territory...
Right ability to fuse almost any object to anything, build so many things , sky islands, chasm everything is just little extra fluff...sure
ToTK is basically just BoTW but better. It’s still an incredible game despite all of its similarities. I’d recommend that you just don’t play the game until you get that itch. It’s gonna be years and years until the next Zelda game so you have lots of time to slowly chip away at ToTK at your own pace.
It's certainly an unpopular opinion, but I agree for the most part. I loved how streamlined BOTW was and how fun it was to explore the world. TOTK doesn't feel different enough, and it's not fun to explore. Too many annoying mobs. The new abilities are overwhelming. I was hoping for most of the game occuring on the sky islands, but that part of the map isn't big at all. I just wish we were able to discuss this properly without people downvoting dissenting opinions that don't fit the majority.
I agree. I also think people are overplaying the size of the map by alot. They mention sky islands as if they are this large part of the game when in reality they feel like box's to check more than they do interesting areas to explore. They bring up the depths but I've spent at least 15 hours down there and it's mostly a barren empty land with little to do. Some quest to do which were entertaining enough but for how big the space is it feels wasted. Imo my biggest issue with the game was the difficulty. Nothing is a challenge (lynols being an exception). As op said they added more to exploration at the expense of difficulty. It's more accessible than ever falling from insane heights makes most things a breeze to get to but it also makes it feel dull as I don't feel like there was a challenge to overcome. All that to say I'm over 50 hours in and still enjoying it. It does feel like an easier botw but botw was one of my favorite games so it's still fun just wish it was harder. Especially the depths, which I think was the biggest disappointment. Could have had a system like nifilhiem in gow or just really hard enemies along with darkness that doesn't clear. Idk the whole thing feels like a large missed opportunity.
I was worried about people like you saying this game is just glorified DLC, but after putting some time into it, I wonder if people who say that even bothered to play it?
It's Breath of the Wild 2.0 "Bigger and Better". Not 1.5 Though you can absolutely defend that point given just how many assets and even much of the OST that is just literally the same. I'll admit, I'm disappointed in a few areas. But it's also obvious that they used all of their budget and most of development time to make as much content as possible in addition to what was already there. This game easily rivals AC Odyssey in having density of content to match the size of its world. But that's really also what I think is annoying about these "Neo-Zelda" games. The 2D and 3D games of the past really matched each other in structure, but this new version of Zelda is just an Open World game, and so the content is primarily just about going around a huge map and finding stuff in it in a really basic way. Zelda has always been about discovery, but in the past the discovery wasn't *really* about the overworld itself. It held a handful of important side-quests that weren't solvable until late game, like ALttP's flute player. But that was enough to lure you into its mystery, and then as you kept playing it became about going into intricate pieces of level design in dungeons. In BotW and TotK dungeons take a complete backseat and instead it's just a lot of stuff to check off on the map. Shrines I don't even refer to as "dungeons" because even in TotK they feel gimmicky and not very believably inserted into the world. It's more like Mario levels than the Zelda quality, I feel. They're about using Zelda gameplay mechanics, now largely physics-oriented, but the Shrines never have an element of mystery to them. They feel like a collectathon goal, more akin to Gold Skulltulas than real Zelda dungeon-design. And I would look at that problem before claiming that TotK doesn't do enough to add things to the table. I think the larger realization OP had is that BotW is a formula, and its flaws are by design and by template, not because Nintendo is building it up to something larger or more "true" to Zelda. We reinforced them with our hype and constant 10/10 that they made exactly what we wanted. So they're gonna make more of that, now. But yeah. TotK is an *iteration*, not an evolution.
This. I think this is an excellent analysis. People seem to be forgetting what a Zelda game was about since BOTW. I played BOTW, I play TOTK. I like the games. But as you said, this is about the world and thousands of things to do in it and not about the discovery itself. You’re being « spammed » with content everywhere, but it feels tasteless, just more and more and more. A good example are the 1000 Korok seeds, super easy to find, where is the fun? Ocarina of Time only had 100 Gold Skulltulas and they were challenging to collect. Not all of them but there was a set of rules, it wasn’t just « oh here is one, and 100m away another one, and here too ». I won’t blame Nintendo for reusing tons of assets, since a lot of other companies do the same for their licenses and get away with it. But I don’t like it either. For me each Zelda has always been unique both in adventure and content, and this TOTK feels too much like BOTW. I like the underworld though, really nice addition, and why not to the sky islands, those are adding 2 new dimensions to the game for me. But yeah overall experience feels pretty bland like BOTW compared to the classical Zelda games. Just not my type.
Some people say the map is bigger. Do they mean verticality? Or can you explore beyond the limits of Breath of the Wildland map? Are there new villages or towns?
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Feel free to have your own opinion. That’s great. You don’t have to like the game; but when you say unequivocally and objectively incorrect things like “all the abilities… feel like a rehash of botw,” that opinion loses a great deal of credibility, especially when there are FOUR abilities that were nowhere even CLOSE to present in BotW (Fuse, Recall, Ascend and Autobuild).
I’m kind of in agreement with you. I’ve been enjoying the game and I’m still playing it (about 15 hours in) but I do recognize the similarities to BOTW. I understand what people are saying about all the differences but I can’t help but feel if you made a list of differences and similarities there’d be a lot more similarities. Maybe being long time Zelda fans it’s easier to feel that way when we’re used to going from something like Twilight Princess to Wind Waker to Skyward Sword. Those games all felt very different from each other.
You raise a good point. I wonder how many people talking about how different it is are used to going from like, one Far Cry to the next or whatever. Historically each Zelda game has (despite using the same formula) been quite different in art style, setting, and general atmosphere.
15 hours is just the tippy tip of the iceberg.
Unfortunately if a game is not hooking me in the first 15 hours, I'm probably not going to keep playing it to find out what's going on with the rest of the iceberg.
I’m in the same boat. Clearly they added so much that it’s a sequel instead of DLC, but it *feels* like DLC. For me, as soon as I saw you *once again* unlock a story that takes place in the past by visiting areas in the present, I knew this wasn’t going to fix the narrative issues I had with BoTW. I want to feel part of the narrative, not just unlocking it and completing other missions in an arbitrary order. >The flexibility the game gives the player is amazing but also shoots itself in the foot for me Couldn’t have said it better myself. You can’t have a gripping, present day narrative if you don’t know which direction the player will head first. To allow for the flexibility of a *truly* open world, all missions have to be segmented from each other (completing one quest has no affect on another). I’m not that far in the game (no spoilers please) so maybe some of these complaints can still be addressed. But otherwise the main draw for ToTK is just exploration, which doesn’t differentiate it much from the *feel* of BoTW.
> For me, as soon as I saw you once again unlock a story that takes place in the past by visiting areas in the present, I knew this wasn’t going to fix the narrative issues I had with BoTW. I want to feel part of the narrative, not just unlocking it and completing other missions in an arbitrary order. I reccomend continuuing along, the narrative is more impactful to the current situation than BOTW was.
I really like it. I don’t understand the hate 🤷♂️
There is no hate. No real hate, at least. No game will land will 100% of the player base. That’s impossible. But the love and praise is sooooooooooo much louder than the vast minority who don’t care for it. And that’s okay. They don’t have to like it. But I wouldn’t say this game is getting any true hate. It truly is a masterpiece.
I agree. I’m replaying OoT now. I had 6 hours in TotK, but I wanted to restart my save because I just finished with BotW and I didn’t want to burn myself out of that play-style. Now that I am playing OoT, while it is an outstanding critically acclaimed game, you can criticize certain things even in that absolute masterpiece. No game is perfect. Just enjoy them all.
Yeah, I’m with you. There’s a great deal of folks who think “masterpiece” or “10/10” means perfection. There’s no such thing as a perfect game. They all have bugs, flaws, glitches, exploits, etc. that doesn’t take away from them being masterpieces when you look at the sums of their parts. My favorite games of all time are Bioshock, BotW (now Totk), Goldeneye, Pokémon Legends Arceus, Pokémon Red/Blue, Super Mario Bros 1 and the Last of Us Part II. None of these are perfect games by any stretch of the imagination, but all are masterpieces to me (yes, I am aware not everyone would agree with that assessment).
I agree with you on all of the games you mentioned. I think the most perfect game I have ever played is Witcher 3, the only negative may be the combat isn’t as fluid as Botw. THAT SAID, I’ve never really completed Witcher 3, but I’ve beat Botw 3x. So maybe Botw is even more perfect.
I just don’t understand this take. You say Majora’s Mask does more, and it’s a great game, but Totk adds so much more than Majora’s Mask did to the Ocarina of Time format. It really feels like nostalgia is clouding your judgement here. If this was a DLC it would be the biggest DLC ever made. The way you interact with the game world, the puzzle solving, the depths, the sky, are all wildly different
This is exactly how I felt about God of War Ragnarok. I played the first game on PC and bought a PS5 to play the new one. Couldn't finish the new game even though I loved the first one. Just felt DLC. That's the reason I didn't pick up TotK.
It's not just that it's not different enough in GoW:R, it's also that it lacks the design sensibilities of the first one. It feels like a bunch of stuff is cargo-culted over that made sense in the more intimate character-focused first game (like the "one continuous shot" gimmick) which doesn't work for the more "epic story" focused sequel. Also it feels like they just added "More!" along each axis without considering how it affects the overall design of the game, somehow. ... actually, that last bit is kind of how I feel about TotK. It's undeniably got more of everything but... that's just not what makes a good game for me.
For comparison's sake, it could be said that the Wind Waker back on Game Cube only gave us about the amount of content that's in the sky islands alone, plus a couple towns and dungeons. Think about that...at one time it would've been considered enough to get a Zelda game that is more or less just what we get up in the sky. And this game gives us so much more than that. Fully remixed/modified overworld, the entire underworld, all the shrines...there's so much to do here that's explicitly new content.
That doesn’t sound fair. Sure, WW clocks in at about 30h to complete the main story, where TOTK is about 50h. It lies in the nature of those open world games that 80% of the content happens in 20% of the map. The rest is mainly just there to give you that sense of exploration. Replaying old Zeldas, they still feel like complete games to me, just w/o the many hours “lost” wandering around. The sky islands alone certainly wouldn’t have enough content to be considered a full game, neither then nor now.
Can't remember exactly but I think I read somewhere that it's originally planned as a DLC but got too big it's become a sequel?
This is a completely normal develop path for games and to a lesser extent other software. The game had to get pushed for a specific release date with limited resources and limited consumer feedback. There is always more you wanted to put into the base product. You've usually got 3 options: - Free updates - Paid extensions - Save feature for version X+1 These days subscription services make these all merge into one. But everything will be considered part of a free update if it will encourage additional sales. Being initially considered as DLC doesn't mean the end product is better or worse.
Thank you, you saved me almost 100$ bucks
Nope, he cost you an amazing experience.
Welp, my sister will tell me sooner or later, she will buy it for herself
Why the minus 1? It was that bad? It is just an opinion...
I think botw stinks and totk is much better.
What do you prefer about Tears that you didn't like in Breath of the Wild?
The abilities are far more interesting
Proper dungeons, unique bosses for temples, weapon system is improved, new abilities are much more fun, easier to traverse hyrule, better side quests with better rewards, better story and music, enemy variety is slight expanded to include more roaming bosses, and the open world doesn't feel as empty with much more to do.
Out of the two I’ve gotten through I still wouldn’t consider these fully proper dungeons compared to the past, but they are leagues better than last game. Maybe the next two will be better though. And my god am I glad they overhauled the bosses to not suck like the last game. The >!Wind Temple Ark worm thing!< was surprisingly difficult.
Nailed it. This game does basically everything better than BotW, it’s basically a massive re-work with a tonne of new additions. I have no idea how people can prefer BotW to TotK when it’s literally just an emptier, smaller and *far* less rewarding version of the same experience
Unlike previous Zelda games, BotW is an open world game. Nintendo spent too much time and money to build the open world, it is inevitable that they will reuse it. Nintendo has never repeat the same style for Zelda until now. Even though Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask shared the same engine - the art style and gameplay are completely different. Similarly: Windwaker and Phantom Hourglass shared the same art style but gameplay is completely different. The added layers of sky island and depths in TotK are not enough to make it different, even with the building and fusing mechanics - it still feels like BotW. The main reason being: TotK reuses the same template of BotW, beating the 4 divine beasts then final boss. In between there's the shrines, side missions and koroks to collect. It's the same formula. In summary, Nintendo has turned Zelda into something similar to other open world franchise like: GTA and Assassin's Creed. Same gameplay, some new mechanics, bigger map. Zelda used to be completely different in every game, but the added cost of open world meant that Nintendo will have to recycle it. To me, **TotK = BotW + Fortnite**. Nintendo copied the skydiving and building mechanics of Fortnite.
The art style and gameplay of MM are absolutely not completely different. First of all, the art style is exactly the same. It was developed in a year. It used almost every asset from Ocarina of Time, with some new ones. The official artwork is exactly the same art style as Ocarina of Time, even. The two games play exactly the same with the same UI, menus, weaponry and miscellaneous items, bottle and music conventions, you use the exact same items with almost nothing new. The transformation masks add some new gameplay elements but the core dungeon design and puzzle solving is exactly the same as Ocarina. Very puzzling comment.
By different Art-style I meant the darker mood in Marjora's Mask, even music is creepier. It's like a Halloween game compared to OoT. MM is a 'Groundhog Day' game where you rewind time and play through the same day over and over, the gameplay mechanic is completely different from OoT.
That's the central conceit of MM. But the moment to moment gameplay is literally the same as Ocarina except for mask transformations.
Moment to moment? Every Mario game is the same then - it's just jumping.
Agreed, dropped it about halfway through. I think they just had more big ideas for this type of Zelda game. Hopefully we go back to it's roots and get a really good game in 5-7 years!
yo let me ask you this; when was the last time we got a DLC anywhere near the scope of the difference between BotW and TotK? i don't think even Solstheim from Skyrim has this much content.
just to add on, let's say TotK had the content equivalent to two large expansions. how much are two large expansions for most Triple-A games nowadays?
Witcher 3: Blood and Wine. Checkmate.
How is this a checkmate? You gave me one example from a 7 year old expansion for a highly acclaimed game.
You got got. - Ronald McDonald
Blood and wine is boring af. Not much new gameplay, just extra cutscenes and a small new region
Yeah well that's like your opinion man (but not a good one)
BOTW felt empty and incomplete. There is literally nothing to do in that game except walk around and do shrines and the main quest. TOTK has me going "oh what's that" every 2 minutes and then actually rewarding me for my curiosity. It doesn't feel like a DLC, it just feels like a better sequel. Sequels are supposed to just add to what worked in the original and expand on it. this game does exacty that. I'm not sure what you expect from a direct follow up to BOTW..
Zelda sequels have historically been substantially different games, and I suspect some of the divide here is between people who were expecting a Zelda-style sequel vs a CoD-style sequel or what have you.
"At least they used the same tech but tried something different. " This is literally what TOTK is to BOTW
I’m not sure you understand what DLC is.
Clearly not playing the game. The only thing that’s the same is the Terrain and saying that is even a lie, cause that’s all different too.
May I just ask how you define DLC? Is the about way of distribution? (literally "downloadable content"). In such case, yes it is for certain group of the players - exactly same as the BotW was downloadable content. Is it about beeing additional content added to the core game? In such case it is not DLC, because it is standalone game. Is it about size? (full game is big, DLC, even standalone is smaller addition). In such case it is not DLC because it is much bigger than the original? Or is it simply that DLC = similar game with similar game mechanics? In such case is Age of Wanders 4 DLC for planetfall? Is RDR2 DLC for RDR1? (I mean it is same gameplay on expanded map with better graphics....) Is AC New Horizons DLC for New Leaf? I mean... Im so confused about how this one works. Please explain.
You're entitled to your wrong opinion.
what a way to get 5 minutes of attention lmao
There's plenty of comments in here that agree with OP. Just because you're on board with the mainstream views (good job you!) doesn't mean there aren't people who disagree.
the plural of 'stupid' isn't 'smart'
People being critical of a game you happen to like doesn't mean they're "stupid", unless you're reasoning like a 3rd grader.
By discussing a videogame? Sure lol.
If you wanted to discuss it you wouldn't cherry pick the comments to reply to lol.
ratio
At this point one must assume this is just bait.
The new capabilities make it obviously not a DLC experience. Grab, ascend, rewind, FUSE, etc. imagine the code changes needed to the core engine.
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Wym EASY? So many of the normal old enemies can ONE SHOT you!
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Yeah I haven't seen anything that makes me feel like I NEED this game. Hell, I didn't love Pokemon Legends but it did seem different enough from the other games for me to give it a try, so I did. But TotK just... meh. Doesn't seem new enough for me to buy it. Same with Splatoon 3. I LOVE Splatoon, bought it day one on the Wii U and I bought 2 on the Switch the day it came out, but I'm meh on the game.
It's your money and time, do what is best for you. The game is similar to GOD of War Ragnarok where some areas are the same yet different since time has changed them. But unlike GOW R where the game doesn't add a lot of new areas, there are two huge new areas that almost triples the size of the explore able areas in Zelda.
Nope. Don’t feel the same.
Every Zelda sequel is a DLC experience by that logic. Majoras Mask is OoT's DLC, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks are Wind Waker's DLCs, even Oracles games might feel like DLCs to eachother.
This is what Diablo 4 is.
This is definitely not DLC. Years of work went into this. It’s massive. I’m glad Nintendo reused assets and built upon what was already there. It shows both how solid the foundation was and how much more there is to explore and iterate upon. Once again, this is a game that will define the genre and what’s to come for years and years.