Tears of the Kingdom: A Disappointing Masterpiece
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- čas přidán 18. 06. 2024
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the biggest, most ambitious game ever published by Nintendo. It marks the culmination of almost 40 years of the series' history, and is a technical marvel. But is it a good game? Are its world, mechanics, dungeons and story up to the high standards of the Zelda series? Let's find out.
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Sources:
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Gameplay footage used:
ZeldaMaster ( / zeldamasterluke )
ZorZelda ( / zorzelda )
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► Intro music by: bit.ly/RuvenWegner
► Outro music by Clangon: • Zeltik Outro Theme (Wi...
0:00 Intro
15:49 Hyrule
37:50 Link
56:55 Dungeons
1:25:03 Story
2:03:28 Conclusion
2:08:11 The Next Zelda
2:10:47 Outro
#Zelda #Nintendo #tearsofthekingdom - Hry
The fundamental problem with the story, is that the Zelda team's policy of making stand-alone games clashes with the concept of a direct sequel in the same world.
Not to mention how bad sonia and rauru are as characters
It's at its worst when even characters that should canonically know you don't, like Bolson...
I feel the same with how they seem to want to grow out of the timelines because I guess they're too complicated for newcomers to follow. Yet at the same time they can't stop alluding to past names and events. It feels like a cheap way to keep people theorising about a greater story than the one they actually delivered.
@@Chicken_Done
Oh, I think the problem is the opposite. There are callbacks, but they do absolutely nothing with them or outright answer the questions themselves. So it feels moot to bother theorizing about things like the Gerudo pyramid having so many answers or the Depths having no answers.
@@Chicken_DoneIt also doesn't help that "Rauru" is also the name of one of the sages in OOT
Not rebuilding Hyrule Castle Town during the game is a huge missed opportunity
I wish there was a entire part of the game about rebuilding hyrule
I had been hoping for this too. Seeing the foundations of castle town really got me thinking we’d get to do this as a quest.
@@anniedee5796 There were ruins with names which never saw any action, no time travel, nothing
@@anniedee5796 yeah i remember seeing that in one of the trailers was probably the most hyped I got for anything in the trailers and then halfway through the game it just got abandoned for the rest of the game
because, Lookout landing.
Honestly we were all so hyped for the Sky Islands and the best one was the tutorial island.
Ouch.
🤣
When I saw the sky islands for the first time, one of my first ideas for more was the north and western world barrier canyon being a large sky island. Not all still connected, but in the approximate shape so you know what it was. Varying heights and sizes of all the bits that made it up would have made exploring it so fun
TBF, having one good sky island and a bunch of little disappointing ones tracks for what we know about the sky islands from skyward sword
@@harrylane4
As a Skyward Sword lover; real. God, how I would’ve loved if Skyward Sword got some room to build up the sky islands a bit more. But, I get why they didn’t. Still, while I LOVE the linear storytelling, (I like games that almost feel like books or movies, maybe I just don’t like games much 💀-), I also wish the world could’ve had a little more time to be fleshed out. It’s almost why it makes it MORE disappointing because while SS at least had story, the whole point of TOTK was to flesh out the _world._
Where is the lie?!
Biggest question for me is: Why couldn't we have played in the ancient past? They did such a good job of setting up the environment and atmosphere with new characters and an engaging plot where lots of battles take place and many quests could have occurred. It would solve the problem of being the same overworld Hyrule and NPCs. I think it would've been a refreshing move.
For sure. it would have been wonderful to be able to have Zelda on the world, too like everyone wanted
That would've been incredible.
Instead of just fighting monsters and a formerly sealed embodiment of Evil, you instead fight Ganondorfs' army as he's in the process of attacking Hyrule, then again after his 'surrender' and oath of fealty turns out to be fake, with Ganondorf this time joined by a monstrous force and due to it, you get conflicted loyalty moments from the Gerudo who ultimately end up betraying Ganondorf and help seal the man.
Then there could be an (expensive) DLC where you play as Zelda in modern times, working to bring Link back to defeat Ganondorf once and for all. For her, it'd actually make sense to be building all sorts of machines to help you as well as that intelligence and engineering knowhow is established as part of her character.
A final DLC could then be Link OR Zelda, traversing the Underground area to strengthen the Master Sword for that final battle. Said Underground - and the final Sage that is hidden there - could be something both the main game and the DLC hinted towards in their stories as well for it to be a proper culmination of the entire three-story set of the Sealing War, Breath Of The Wild and Zelda's Journey.
Would be more interesting AND more profitable.
Would love to see another Hyrule Warriors game to fill in all the events from the acient past.
Because corporations have video games down to simple math. Tears of The Kingdom is completely substandard, because that's all it had to be. The sales numbers don't lie. They'll sell the same game one more time, then make a big announcement about "shaking up" the formula.
@@SeasoningTheObese you're right. The game is enjoyable to me but there is something strangely lower quality about it.
To this day, I’m still salty that almost no one in the world seems to recognize Link and what he did for them. It felt like my journey in BotW was completely invalidated.
What do you mean almost nobody? Most of the characters do. There's literally only a few that should, but don't for whatever reason... those being Hestu, Bolson, and- maybe- Beetle. He's largely recognized almost everywhere else.
@@WindMageMaster I mean almost nobody because I MEAN almost nobody outside of “important” characters. It’s been six(?) years in-game since BotW, and Link should be a goddamn celebrity. How is it that after all that time, especially with the invention of the PRINTING PRESS, Link just seems to be another random face to the general populace?? And don’t even get me started on the fact that Link seems to be a stranger in Hateno Village, despite the fact that he LIVES THERE.
@@Hanakin-Sidewalker Even many NPCs that weren't in BotW recognize him and celebrate him, so I'm not sure what you mean. It's not literally every NPC, but it's quite a few. There's even a statue of him in Zora's domain with Sidon and the random NPC Zora's even react to him when he's by the statue. He also did not live in Hateno- he gave the house to Zelda.
@@WindMageMasterIt’s very much implied (to me and many others, anyway) that Link and Zelda shared the house. Where else would Link live if he just gave the house solely for Zelda to live in? (Okay, there’s many places, but still)
@@WindMageMaster Pretty sure they're living together there, for what little time they don't spend traveling. You don't just unlock the power of the goddess from your affection for someone and then take their house. She's got Link's spare scrunchie there, and it's decorated by Zelda because she's clearly more of a nester as is common in hetero relationships.
The depths under Eldin was actually very exciting because the biome was different, i don't know why each region wasn't different like Eldin.
You are 100% right
Because, for Eldin, the source of the areas heat, comes from below, so naturally it be the same in the depths, the other areas are basically based on the weather and climate above, which in the depth would have 0 influence.
@@TerranigmaQuintet They should have still found some ways to vary them up to make them more original looking. That's one of my biggest disappointments with the Depths. I think the complaints are overrated, I like the Depths a lot, but the environments is a problem I can't argue against.
@@TerranigmaQuintetbut it’s a video game, not real life. They had any excuse to put whatever biome they wanted underneath the depths of it made the game more fun and interesting, which it would have. Given that the godlike Zonai lived down there, they could’ve had purple rain biome beneath hebra and said “welp, Zonai magic”.
@@FullyOnVolkshell, a purple rain biome sounds sick, so.. why not?
One thing I noticed about how I explored the game differently is I never walked anywhere in TotK, I always flew down from above. To get to new areas of the map, I'd usually just fly down.
By the end of the game, I realized there was so much of the surface I hadn't explored yet, while in BotW I made a point to go everywhere I could.
I think the familiarity with the map and the ability to cheese it by flying actually took away from my exploration of the surface.
there was no new fresh adventure feeling. I think using the same engine and same fucking map with same armor, same monsters and same everything wasn't a good choice
tbf a lot of people who really really played a lot of both just used that bomb glitch to travel around so it had a similar issue
There's also no real puzzle in the game, everything can be solved by using you inventory and abilities in a non-intended way which kinda ruins the whole point of a puzzle, shrines and puzzles are suppose to be a change of pace from the free open world design. I don't understand why they allowed players to use their inventory so freely inside shrines, I get that the whole theme of the game is creativity but when you give the player too much freedom it kinda ruins the whole fun of figuring out a puzzle the way the developer intended.
@riahisama you cheesing shrines is a YOU issue. I made it a point not to cheese them my first play through. You are in control of your adventure
@@notoriousclam3382 That's not the point, if you don't enforce game design onto the player the game can become a disconnected experience regardless of choice because you know at the back of your head that you're handicapping yourself from completing a task.
bro imagine if Farosh, Naydra, and Dinraal joined us during the final fight
Nah bro I need to stop reading these comments because I keep getting so mad at Nintendo for the missed potential 😢
@@MR.Sculptor same here, it feels like they are allergic to any epic/dramatic ideas for the plot.
Imagine those fps tho
@@Kooptj but also they dont, i mean just look at the ending, sure, it would been even more epic/dramatic if this and that would havee been added..but despite it, its just a fantastic ending
Better idea. Imagine if we played as Zelda in the past and met the original forms of Farosh, Naydra, and Dinraal. And we see them transform as a last resort, which then leads us into the realization that Zelda is the light dragon.
It feels like "The Imprisoning War" was A fight, not so much a war. They could have shown the WAR from each of the sages perspective. With the ruin that happens to their homes and people. Instead of the same cut scene from the same simgle fight.
No no-that would have taken away from that one ambiguous scene that happens 4 times :)
Or at least make another DLC for HW:AoC, where we don't see, but play said war.
Yeah, it definitely was a war, with the entire nation of hyrule fighting off monsters. But we don't get to see it. Its just the imprisoning battle for us
@@greenmenace9666 "demon king? secret stone?" 😮
@@sonicsillies 2nd floor basement? psycho mantis???
I decided early to find all the dragon tears, this caused several story problems. Link knows what happened to Zelda and where she is, yet:
He'll continue to chase rumors around the kingdom.
He refuses to tell Paya the "Zelda" that warned her about the ring ruins was false.
He acts surprised at Hyrule castle.
At the very least, the final memory should of been locked behind certain story progression. Before that, even with every other memory, you could argue that while Link (and the player) has pieced together what happened. He doesn't definitively know, and is desperate for it not to be true, so would be willing to chase any lead.
they should have just made the cutscenes unlock in chronological order so it doesn't matter what tear you find, the story's pacing wont break
@@Cajun_SeasoningYES!
It's such a mess. they commit so hard to giving players complete freedom of choice that they neglect to even attempt steering them towards any sort of remotely optimal path. even noticing the correct order of the tears is basically an easter egg that's never once pointed out.
ToTK seems incredibly slapped together last minute, which confuses me so much.
They had Seven years, and this is what they did? I think I would've preferred the DLC of Breathe of the Wild. ToTK is just an awful game, gameplay, and story-wise.
The build system is really cool... However, does nothing but replace the paraglider and bullet time. It's not better, it's forced and annoying. BOTW is way better still.
@@ZeranZeran Not 7 years bro. The 7 years before 2023 was 2016... and BotW didn't even released...
Speaking of NPC's not knowing Link anymore, it's more than a little frustrating that the people in Hateno village don't seem to know Link at all. Even if you ignore Link's involvement in Hateno village in BotW, Link is the personal body guard of Zelda, who has been living in Hateno village for a while. The people there clearly know and even miss the princess, so how they don't know Link, I don't know.
Tarrey town was also frustrating. Hudson and Rhodson know Link, but the other residents of the town act like they don't know him at all, despite the fact that many of them were recruited to live there by Link, worked with Link on building the town, and even all attended Hudson and Rhodson's wedding together.
Bolson should remember Link. . . Come on. Not only did Link make an impression on him, but they both attended a mutual friend's wedding together. Heck, Link is the one who sent him the invite to the wedding.
Same with Hetsu. He's probably a long-lived being, so there's no way his memory is so short.
Don’t forget the Zora Priest. He knew Link when Mipha was still alive.
Edit: Also considering how important it was for the Zora to remember Link since y’know he’d go to Zora’s Domain as a kid, I think I almost rage quitted when Kapson didn’t remember in TOTK.
@@northproductions6104 Yep. Kapson is the member of Hateno Village that makes the least sense. BotW proved not only that Zora have long lives, but also long memories. Many Zora in Zora's Domain remembered Link even though they thought he'd been dead for a century. So, for Kapson to treat Link like a stranger in TotK after only maybe 5 years or so is ridiculous.
It's implied Zelda has taken his home over and Link likely went out to do errands for her/be a poster boy and diplomatic royal microphone for her words. Which honestly is so much worse considering Hateno would then know EXACTLY that he is the royal dog.
@@stanbasicidol9444 Link has such a way with words too.
A sequal that pretends botw doesnt exist and acts like none of the events that occurred in that game actually happened. This is my biggest irk with totk.
I need someone to make a list of all the ways totk ignore botw . I now that some character like bolsons boss don’t but he does.
@@frostycane5134 There are some npcs like Bolson that really should recognize you. But aside from that, the game doesn't pretend that BOTW doesn't exist. Sure, it's weird that nobody mentions what happened to the sheikah tech. But it's still clear that BOTW happened. Not only from the overall state of the world, but the Hateno school lessons, a statue referencing Link and Sidon against the divine beast etc. I think it mostly just boils down to a few things.
1. Nobody mentioning where the Sheikah tech went, not even a throw away line that 'it all just vanished, it was weird.'
2. Some npcs don't recognize you. Though most of the important ones do. The important story NPCs all know you. Bolson and Hetsu are the weird ones that really should have but aside form those two this is ultimately fairly minor.
3. The baffling decision to make the villain another Ganon, and not wanting to elaborate on what exactly Calamity Ganon is in relation to TOTK Ganondorf. The best we get is a vague one off line from Impa that's easy to miss.
For the most part it feels to me not that they want to ignore BOTW/pretend it's not a sequel to it, but more they wanted to minimize references to it as not to alienate people who DIDN'T play BOTW and make sure TOTK could stand on its own as an individual game and not just a sequel.
EDIT: Add the people of Hateno. I think this is the one area where it does start to feel weird that people don't know Link. If Zelda was living there, that means Link would be there, and the people ought to have seen a good deal of him over the last few years even if Link didn't leave much of an impression on them in BOTW proper buying the house.
True
@@frostycane5134 i just wanna dd, in totk at the shringe of resurrection, i hate that they just deleted the sheikah 3d models, they didnt even fell the gaps rightly, they just deleted it and left teh rectangle hole D:
@@nolandderlugner1351go in the hole bro
My biggest complaint for TotK was seriously it’s absolute lack of connection with BotW. It feels more like an entirely different Zelda game with a different story that was never supposed to be a sequel to BotW, that happens to have all the same characters and the same Hyrule
The entire land is a connection to BotW. It is being rebuilt for years and the characters grew too with their own stories. How is that not a connection?
@@Oliveiraverde Except literally nothing is connected. Everything Sheikah, which made up the entireity of BOTWs 'culture', is gone and replaced with Zonai, including shit that couldn't be moved without scarring the land, no one remembers anything from the last game, and nothing has really changed. Up to and including you doing the exact same shit you did in the last game.
Mate, the entire game is basically BotW. Same shite.
@@TheDapperDragonDon’t lie to yourself, everyone who actually experienced what happened in BOTW actually remembers except Bolson
@@chillswany Except, you know, any of the gorons, Zelda, Hetsu, any of the Shiekah, any of the NPCs, Link himself.
I definitely think the depths and the caves should have been combined.
A maze of endless tunnels which seem to just go deeper and deeper, occasional pockets of open space just revealing how far under the earth you really are. It would make exploring it a real challenge, both of your skill and ability to navigate. It would also be fun to drop into a well only to realize after minutes that there isnt going to be an end.
Oh my gosh that's an incredible idea. Like Journey to the Center of the Earth type stuff
@@amilisom mhm. Add rope, hooks, and complex cave structures and you have one of the best traversal puzzle you could ever design. Realistic caves are an amazing setting for a game but I havent seen any exploring it well, the closest is something like deep rock and even that doesnt do it justice.
lore-wise this gives a great chance to allude to the bottom of the well in oot (and deadhands, which is already similar to the gloom hands)
@@Ivel1ossbro just want celeste
@@christianberry3031 Celeste is a really good game, but its a platformer and 2d. A 3d game like breath of the wild with more grounded movement works better for the narrow cave environment, which we almost got for a lot of the caves, my problem is they suffer because they're designed to be really small and simple.
I have lots of gripes about TOTK some of which you mentioned - but I think the biggest thing is they just copy pasted the plot from BOTW but with a different context. Something happens to Link, he wakes up, princess is gone, everything that matters happened in the past, big evil scary Ganon in Hyrule castle, collecting memories again to peace the past together…you get the gist. It was not new or interesting. Even more infuriating was then recycling the OOT narrative plot of Ganondorf’s betrayal.
I think Nintendo’s aim for TOTK was to focus on the game mechanics they couldn’t introduce in BOTW. And then they slapped a half baked plot and same map relatively on it. The care and attention that the team gave to the beauty of BOTW - TOTK did not receive.
Facts, and it definitely shows in the game. Compare Majoras Mask, and TOTK that came out 1 year and 6 years respectively, and i can tell way more effort and care was put into Ocarina if Time's sequel than BOTW's. And MM didnt even have the luxury of using the literal same world.
So it's basically a Dark Souls "story".
True
@@TheSlammuraibut without the philosophy and deep story telling
It's crazy to me that Aonuma would say something like, "How can you want the old Zelda when its so restrictive compared to the freedom of the new Zelda". Its like saying, "How can you want any other toy when you have Legos? You have unlimited freedom to make whatever you want with Legos!" Legos are only as fun as the creativity you want to pour into them. Sometimes I dont want to play with Legos, I want a curated experience! Like you said, restriction and context are sometimes more fun than being able to break every puzzle with a rocket shield. Otherwise we'd play every game in debug mode and just fly around and wall clip and be unkillable. Sometimes that makes stuff fun, but mostly it gets boring really fast.
Ngl, I legit bursted out laughing when you showed the 4 sages cutscenes playing at once. I knew those scenes were redundant and repetitive but jeez that just makes them seem even worse. What you said is true though. The only highlight of that part of the story is Mineru's take of it. Every other sage has the exact same bland retelling with ZERO new info learned. I get Nintendo thinking any region of the game could be a player's first but this is ridiculous.
OTHER open narritive games have done better. Simply make 4 different cutscenes for each sage that plays in order so a complete story is told.
God, I seriously almost skipped the last two in my very first playthrough. That's not a good sign. I'm usually not very analytical in the middle of a blind excited playthrough, so if something takes me out long enough to recognize this is kinda shit, it's bad.
😭😭😭😭😭 wahhhh
It goes to show that this game didn’t take 6 years to make, that was a lie. They were rushing this story evidently.
Could pick up any drunk guy off the street who’s never even heard of Zelda to write better cutscene dialogue than that bs.
@@Aybrix I actually did skip the last two cutscenes. I couldn't be arsed to sit through that two more times.
The sad part for a game that supposedly focuses on the Zonai.... Is that we learned almost NOTHING about them! Hell, they're barely even shown in the game! We still have just as many if not more questions about the Zonai as we did before we played the game....
I expected to be steeped in the lore of the Zonai, only to be left grossly disappointed with the Narrative of this game as a whole. I absolutely LOVE the gameplay iself, but man... The story & how poorly it's both presented and written really takes the experience down for me.
Yeah, I agree on that. We learnt practically nothing about their culture, only about their technology (and not even that was explained properly). "Magic genius scientists" has to be one of my least favorite tropes ever.
right? everything in the game is about them, from the sky to the depths to everything in hyrule's past, yet we know about as much about them as we did before the game came out, except now we know they're weird goat-looking mfs lmao
They did the same with the Sheikah in BOTW. There were Sheikah symbols everywhere but nothing was really added to the lore.
Unfortunately, BOTW was the game that made me give up on the Zelda lore
@Dairunt1 Agreed. It really is sad how lacking the narrative is in these games. I honestly think the entire thing is rather poorly written.... Some scenes feel more like a bad fanfic than a professional narrative!
For example, the scene of Rauru saying he prefers to keep Ganon close... That was so cliche. When I saw that I immediately knew what would happen next. He just "accepts his fealty" & gets Sonya killed. It was so bad.
It all happens so quick, with little way of development. It's like they had to quickly come up with some reason for Ganon to get his power, and THIS was the best they could come up with?
There simply isn't enough of a story here! And what's here is just so badly presented... with short, out of order cutscenes. The premise of the story is solid, but the way it's presented is just plain bad.
I thought that MAYBE, just maybe... They would have learned their lesson from BOTW, but they ended up doing the EXACT same thing! I just don't get why they thought that was a good idea...
And worse yet, the fact that hardly anyone in Hyrule even recognizes Link in this game! After he spent all that time with them in BOTW, everyone acts like he's a total stranger. That alone took me completely out of the narrative. Yet another baffling narrative choice by Nintendo.
They truly need to hire better writers, cus this was just bad in my humble opinion. The gameplay was amazing, but the story was by far the weakest part of both these games.
They destroyed the Zonai imo. They made them too personal, and didn't expand on their story enough, complete antithesis of the Sheika. We met hundreds of Sheika yet they were as mysterious by the end as they were at the beginning, they really sold the idea of this god-like culture, and adding a living one in the DLC only enhanced it. Whereas with the Zonai they were just reskinned Hylians, I couldn't even really appreciate the fact that they're meant to be moon rabbits because it feels more like a design gimmick than an interesting aspect of their story.
Zeltik, thanks for making this video. I have noticed since the initial hype for totk passed the Zelda community has been virtually inactive. It's like totk sucked the last of the lifeblood from the fan base. Any more I want a Zelda game that will tell me a story rather than give me an endless playground where I get to choose everything my way. I don't even know what I should be curious about in totk. It's shot my imagination.
One of the main problems - lack of connection with botw.
What happened with divine beasts? "They just served their purpose".... yeeeeeaaaaah.... 4 gigantic machines just disappeared and NOBODY remembers them.
5 gigantic columns around castle... just disappeared...
Guardians also just disappeared. Shiikah technology like a blue fire furnace disappeared...
IMHO I'd preffer the same world but more connection with previous game... bcs this is DIRECT SEQUEL!!!!!
Plus, aesthetically speaking, Malice and Sheikah tech are cooler than Gloom and Zonai tech.
@@HungryWardenfacts
One rito mentions the perch over rito village as “Vah Medohs Perch” and that’s about it.
@@HungryWarden fr the shrines look way better in botw
You should read Purah's diary. It well explained why there's no sheikah tech anymore
My biggest disappointment with TOTK is that we don't know where is Kass :(
In a DLC pack they cancelled for...some reason, based on what the newspaper bird says after you finish all the newspaper stories
Right!!!!! Out of all the characters from BOTW they brought back, why didn’t they bring back Kass?
He could’ve been the chief of the Rito. Would’ve been far better then what’s his name
@@jessedellross3245 His name is Teba and he was the one teased as the new "Champion" of the Rito after Revali's death in Breath of the Wild. Funnily enough Kass does seem way more fitting as chief of the Rito given his skills as a knowledgeable traveler and bard rather than a simple archer.
I'll never forgive Nintendo for replacing the beloved Kass with some sketchy pelican that won't show his eyes.
Worst trade off ever.
@@AS-fu1kdIn a perfect world we would have had them both :(
They could have had a good explanation for transforming Zelda back.
The triforce.
Remember that thing?
The power left Zelda when she draconified and went to Rauru, Sonia, and Link, each representing power, wisdom, and courage, respectively. This is also proven as Rauru turns Link's arm back to normal. Something he couldn't do at first, hence why Link has his arm.
@@mr.awesome6011 that is complete speculation that is not acknowledged by the game nor intentional. The Triforce never manifests in game, is never mentioned and none of the characters touch it to make a wish. Also how could the Triforce be given to a ghost?
@@Bertiboy....never played Windwaker?
@@richardbean1707 Quite possibly the game I’ve replayed the most number of times in my life. How could I forget one of the the most prominent uses of the Triforce in the whole series, god damn I’m stupid lol
The Triforce can only be used in good Zelda games. Glad they don't use it anymore.
This game is not darker than Majoras mask and I will die on this hill.
Could’ve, should’ve, but isn’t.
My main issue is that I wanted a robust counterpart in the return of Ganondorf. Plotting, ambushing, impacting the world. Maybe going for a coup in Gerudo. But we just got the same Calamity sleeping ghost in the dephts dressed as Ganondorf.
I enjoyed exploring the depths so much, and when I finished activating all light roots, I felt so empty and I realized the entire depths is the same
SAMEE AND THE REWARD WAS SO ASS😭😭
When I realized the depths were literally a mirror world of the surface, I lost all interest.
@@ozvoid1245 EXACTLYY
I was glad to get every root node the first time. That way, I knew I would never have to do it again. But frankly, I wouldn’t want to do it again moreso because there’s fucking no reason to, rather than it simply being a slog.
It’s a big problem with the reward structure of the depths vs the surface.
Complete a shrine? You get what is essentially a piece of heart, tangible power that is of direct immediate use to you.
Complete every shrine? You get an incredibly unique armor set, and subconsciously that set represents all of the puzzles and trials you overcame on the way there, you will have a favourite one, you’ll have a hated one, you’ll have one that made you feel clever for understanding it, one that made you feel dumb for not understanding it. You’ll probably have at least one memory of finding the shrine or making your way to it, engaging with the world in the process.
Contrast that with lightroots:
You find one lightroot, you get a bit of map revealed and the area is lit up without needing to use lightblooms.
Find all of them? You get an icon in your key items. That’s it.
Lighting a single lightroot is underwhelming because all it does is light the area, an area that you probably lit when navigating TO the lightroot, and afterwards means that you have to engage with the depths mechanics less.
Lighting them all? Lightseeds are now a dead mechanic to you, you can see the entirety of the grey identical biome, and you get a menu icon that reminds you of… all the times you walked up to a lightroot and hit A.
Like, say what you want about korok seeds and the golden turd at the end of it all, but at least the turd had a bit of entertaining meta commentary (doing all this for a literal shiny poo), you had to engage with the mechanics of Koroks, you’ll probably be able to reflect on your journey and draw SOME emotions from it (amusement at korok torture, bewilderment at how Koroks were in some places, surprise at an innocuous thing granting a reward, relief at being able to hold more), and for the first third they had a benefit to collecting them for inventory size
Reflecting on the reward the lightroots give you just serves as a reminder of how ultimately hollow the depths are.
The lightroot reward actually managed to be worse than the golden poo.
I hate that even after two entire games, we still know next to nothing about the Zonai and what happened to them.
...why do you care? they are barely mentioned in botw, and serve their purpose in totk
after two games on the n64 we still knew next to nothing about literally anything in those games, but im certain youll tell me its the best thing youve ever played.
The zonai are fujibayashi wanting an explaination for highly advanced magitech, they dont need some sort of deep backstory, they serve as a simple origin point. Thankfully, because the zelda team has decided to stop listening to manchildren sending death threats to them on the internet, youll have plenty more zelda games that will talk about that race.
@@daniel8181I care because I know they could have done so much more with the concept. It just feels like all the theorizing prior to the launch of TotK led to something completely underwhelming and underdeveloped.
@@daniel8181what a bizzare rant. In any sort of media I want to know more about how the world works, and that includes ancient civilizations and how they affect the world you play in.
@Infindox I agree I want to know everything but I also like how there is mystery almost everywhere you go.
I think the point is that the Zelda team just does that. They build up new races and then give you very little information about them. Because Nintendo isn't interested in having a grand cohesive world history spanning 12k years. They just write a little story every five years that may or may not directly connect to one other story. And then the fans go nuts over "tHe TiMeLiNe" when Nintendo never actually cared for it, beyond the bare minimum to sell you the "Hyrule Historia" book
The main issue for me was that in BotW, they sacrificed all of the conventions in order to fulfill one simple thing. The overwhelming sense of adventure. You truly get that in BotW. In TotK, it wasn't the reuse of the world that prevents the sense of adventure, but the reuse of all the game play beats: the towers, the divine beasts, the memories. This left only the sky islands and the depths to attempt to reclaim the sense of adventure, but IMO they fell flat on that aspect. So all that's left to regain the sense of adventure is the new mechanics. I suppose for many people that did the trick, but it didn't for me. It wasn't until the very end of the game that I really felt a part of TotK outshined BotW.
The last sequence of TotK just reminded me of Skyward Sword. You fight off the Demon King's army in both games and face off against the newly rejuvenated villain.
This game really rubbed me wrong but I couldn't explain why, but I've been seeing more and more people expressing disappointment and it's comforting. I recognize its quality but overall lots of it feels wrong to me. (the biggest thing being the story. was so bad it made me mad)
One thing to add though that is purely shallow: I like the visual aesthetic more than BOTWs. The green is a lot prettier than the blue imo
Cope
I think they could've actually gotten away with using the same hyrule map if they had only made link be the one that goes back in time instead. We would still explore what essentially is hyrule but way in the past with different pre evolved enemies, different weapons armor and lootable items throughout the world. That i think could've fundamentally changed the game and made it stand out more. I would've loved to play that game
That could have really been interesting... Link with his amnesia kinda got to dodge a lot of the losses that Zelda experienced in BOTW. Link trying to resolve some of Hyrules past problems only to have to watch them fall, and then Link (and the player) ultimately having to be the one to realize what they have to do and sacrifice and press that button themselves would have been really compelling. You could also have had glimpses of Zelda going princess mode and trying to command the forces of Hyrule in the present to prepare to fight and protect themselves, to remind you of what you're trying to preserve in the future, then glimpses of her trying to reach you before she figures out a way to turn you back (maybe by somehow swapping who's the dragon? then resolving it like the regular ending with Rauru and Sonia) and you get that last fight.
@@rebellemuria It would have been cool to go back as link to JUST before Rauru showed up. Imagine you're thrown into a Hyrule before it was a kingdom, when it was truly wild and free, especially with how it's implied by Ganondorf that it was a savage land where the only way to survive was to be strong. You can still have the monsters with the horns and just explain them away as past versions of the monsters, you can still have the new monsters like the Gleeocks and explain them away as having gone extinct.
You can explore this wild Hyrule for a bit, which seems like Link's dream world, get new weapons, new clothes, then you start seeing the visions of future Zelda, and that's what drives the story. You see a vision of her with the whole Hylian army behind her, and you realize that in order for this to happen, you must unify Hylians into a single kingdom so they can survive and build settlements, as opposed to the mostly nomadic people in the past version. So you go around and do some quests and fight some bosses and maybe a dungeon, and you unify the Hylians.
Rauru, having lost his people, thus, having lost his community, sees you doing this and decides to come and help you in any way he can, and he gives you the Zonai powers. The next glimpse is Sidon saving Zelda's life, and you go and solve whatever problem the Zora's have in the past and establish a peaceful relationship between them and the Hylians, and so on until you've unified all the races. Last up is the Gerudo, who you see helping Zelda, so you must convince them to join Hyrule and live in peace, but unbeknownst to you, Ganondorf has just returned from a war campaign in a faraway land, and he does not accept your offer, and resents what you've done with his world.
This starts the imprisoning war, you can still find the strongest warriors of each race and form the sages, Rauru still gives everyone the stones, by know you can have Zelda imply that she's found a way to bring you back, so you entrust Rauru, your closest friend, to be the first king of Hyrule, instead of taking that title yourself as the rightful unifier of the land. In your final fight with Ganondorf, you're about to lose (scripted) when you're able to take something from him, and in that moment Zelda brings you back to the present, where you find out that adding the item you took from him to the Mastersword unlocks it's full power, and you fight Ganondorf for the last time in the present, Zelda can still sacrifice herself to become a dragon using a stone you brought back with you from the past, and she can do this in order to defeat the draconified Demon King, and the epilogue can still be Rauru and Sonia turning her back.
Yes this is would’ve been a lot more interesting
but then no pristine royal guard's weapon :/
@@manofhealingthis would have been a brilliant idea
I think it would've been super cool if the past zelda cutscenes were playable bits. Making us play as Zelda, being linear, to scratch that old 3D zelda itch, each one ending with a cutscene and unlocking the next one
Would extremely improve game play but it would be hard and weird to do since it's out of order.
Yea no thanks. Literally 0 point in letting us play a cutscene as a player, and given the context there likely would have been little gameplay actually involved outside of mashing the skip dialogue button. Thank god they didnt make them "playable"
@@_AriseChicken I also don't understand what we would even play.
And have the game release 3 years later? Not to mention the game also has to run.
Maybe change it so the light dragon drops a tear each time you complete one.@@tumultuousv
Notts in Rito village: "Hey Link, listen to this ancient song everyone at Rito village has always sung, it's about a boat that flies above us".
Me: "o really?, I never heard this song - that apparently everybody always sings - a few years ago while I was saving you in BOTW, never heard it ALTHOUGH ALL YOU DID BACK THEN WAS SINGING."
TOTK absolutely bit off more than it could chew. Ultrahand allows you to stick anything on anything anywhere, at any time, in any orientation, and fuse does that to a lesser extent. I believe all the delays were almost purely to allow more time to fix the ENORMOUS amount of bugs a mechanic like that would introduce, and to allow even more time to fix them they removed things like those extra sky islands. Makes me sad to think how much better the game would be if ultrahand wasn't an absolute nightmare coding wise
Yeah, I could see that.
A piece of frustration I have is that what you did in BoTW has no effects on the world of ToTK. Now the system to read the save is there, because your horses are transported between games...
The only thing I noticed is the champions portrait from BOTW. If you got it in BOTW, it will also appear in Lin... I mean Zelda's 🙄house.
Yeah that was my biggest issue too. It's a direct sequel and yet no one knew who Link was. In Hateno village when everyone was like who are you, I was like ???????.
I do feel anything more substantial than carrying over horses would’ve been unfair to the Wii U players. (Though I’m likely biased since I’m one of them.)
The amount of effort that would take isn't remotely worth the payoff. The small things like horses and the champions picture is enough. Doing that would need to remove Tarrey town if you didn't do it, and that would just be a loss for players
@@infinitecurliethink about it a little more though. For the majority of hylians, Link was just some dude who came through. Even for Bolson, Link was a client, not much more. The ones who remember you, the races and people like Hudson, all had their lives greatly affected by Link. Given the school in Hateno, not a ton of people even knew about the calamity being finished, much less knowing Link was involved.
Should mention that Zelda not being present in the main story and being imprisoned for hundreds/ thousands of years to beat Ganon is a repeat of the exact same plot points of Breath of the Wild. When people saw the Tears of the Kingdom teaser a lot were hoping for a story with Zelda as a companion this time and not just a damsel, and this game actually has a companion system (ngl, when playing I initially thought Zelda would be the fifth Sage not Mineru). Not to mention the fact that Zelda's now over hundred's of thousands of years old and was obviously suffering during her imprisonment, yet is exactly the same by the end of both games like nothing has happened.
Yeahh Zeltik is more positive to the story the game tried to tell than I. In theory Zelda getting stuck in the past and going on her own parallel journey to Link is very cool. In practice it wasn't the right story to tell at this point in the franchise. It's just BoTW AND Skyward Sword again. I'm sick of saving the princess. Zelda is a cool character, let me hang out with her. On top of that retreading BoTW's plot points so closely but even higher stakes and even longer periods of time really sours BoTW's story, as well. It makes all the suffering Link and Zelda both went through feel pointless knowing they would get even more fucked up shortly after. Not to mention how it wastes the potential of getting to see the most fleshed out iteration of Link and Zelda's relationship actually interact with each other. Aside from like three phenomenal cutscenes, ToTK's story is hot garbage in concept and in execution, imo.
Except, id argue they made it clear that when she turned into a dragon, her human memories halted in place, and when she transformed back, it had the opposite effect. She didnt remember anything about being a dragon, but remembered her hylian past like yesterday. Kinda like blacking out or that split personality thing lmao. But i 100% agree with you that her not being a companion felt like a big missed opportunity. A rehash of many past games where shes just ultimately waiting to be saved. Hopefully we get a playable or companion zelda in the next one.
@@shadowbunny7892 hot garbage? it's far from perfect without question. but hot garbage sounds like you're saying it's worse than BOTW's story, which was super weak, despite the amazing gameplay and evolution of the series (still LOVE the game). I agree saving the princess AGAIN, is so fucking tiring. But disagree about the BOTW rehashing and higher stakes. It's a sequel. It's meant to continue plot points from the previous game lol and no sequel that has smaller stakes has been any better than its predecessor. Id argue there were plenty of new elements to make the game feel like a sequel but also a brand new game, including those storylines. Agree to disagree. Hopefully the next game makes zelda the companion we want and an even better fleshed out, new, fully developed story.
And one note i want to mention about the story that i would agree held it back, as much as i LOVE ganondorf, he was a little dull in this game. He's bad just because lol. At least wind waker ganondorf showed he had more depth than just "im evil, so what".
@@freddyb5620 Yeah it's definitely worse than BoTW's story. BoTW's story was sparse. It was weird, it was definitely not the direction I would have chosen for a Zelda game and it's far from the strongest story in the franchise. But it knew what it wanted to do and it accomplished it. BoTW's story had two goals, get you invested in Link and Zelda's relationship so you care about saving her and making you feel the profound loss of the calamity. It does this by focusing on the characters of Zelda and the champions to the exclusion of anything else, and while, again, I think this was a weird choice, I also think it totally works. The brief glimpses we get of the champions were likable and interesting and they're effective as a stand in for civilization as a whole and their deaths are sad. The progression of Link and Zelda's relationship in the flashbacks is excellent and I REALLY care about her by the end. Most importantly though, BoTW's story was made to support BoTW's gameplay. The focus on character means it can be experienced in any order without really losing anything and there isn't a ticking clock that feels dissonant with the slow pace of the gameplay.
In contrast, ToTK's story does not at all jive with the game that it's in. While sequels often have higher stakes than their predecessors I wouldn't say it's necessary and you can definitely do it incorrectly. BoTW and ToTK both boil down to "Zelda uses her cool powers to make a big sacrifice to save the kingdom and now we have to use ancient advanced technology to save her." It's just way too close to being the same thing a second time and, at least to me, it trivializes BoTW. I WISH ToTK actually continued BoTW's story instead of just rehashing it but ToTK is worse as a sequel than it is in isolation. It actually continues very little from BoTW's story. No progression in Link and Zelda's relationship, no further exploration of Calamity Ganon and how it relates to Ganondorf, no Sheikah stuff. ToTK's Zonai are entirely unrelated to BoTW's Zonai. I wish this game WASN'T a direct sequel, then all it's redundancies or weird omissions wouldn't be a problem. In terms of themes and world building I sincerely believe that BoTW is a better sequel to SS than ToTK is to BoTW.
The extremely pressing threat also doesn't work with the gameplay. Every city is having an active crisis and evil doppleganger Zelda is running around causing problems. I do not feel like I have time to be picking mushrooms and helping Koroks. And I know it's already been said so many times, but I'm saying it again because it's true. Delivering this very linear story nonlinearly purely because that's how BoTW did it is one of the most insane game design decisions I've seen in a while. That, on top of everything else, just makes ToTK's story feel thoughtless and cheap. An afterthought that accidentally has a few moments of brilliance instead of the carefully crafted experience that was BoTW.
Sorry for the wall of text. This is me being succinct. Lol
@freddyb56220 @bunny7892 The totk story makes even less sense, because they gave Zelda an entirely new, unnecessary but relevant TIME power and then started acting like her only option TO GET TO THE FUTURE was an immortal dragon lobotomy rather than say the TIME TRAVEL that SHE USED TO GET HER THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?? And if it was restoring the master swords power and making it stronger that was the problem then did she ever think about rewinding the master sword till before it broke?? I legitimately cried watching the dragon cutscene begging, pleading to whatever deity exists that the plot writers were not that unbelievably stupid that they wrote in such a huge plot point (with so many implications)JUST FOR SHOCK VALUE and to specifically remove zelda from the relevant plot. Then they completely removed the stakes by turning her back with like no fucking explanation and its just like WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DO IT IN THE FIRST PLACE? It was such a disappointment on so many levels, she was my fav character and this game just buried her for no reason istg.
I disagree with reusing the world being a mistake. I've always felt that Botw needed its world to be filled more, and this was their chance. Problem is, they fucked it up. Forget the depths, forget the sky islands, just focus on filling and completing that map with caves, dungeons, enemies, actual meaningful side quests, items, clothing, animals, under water, the list goes on. It was the perfect opportunity to fix all of the previous game's faults. A part of me thinks they didn't do this because it would make botw look like ass in comparison.
Oh, and also, fuck shrines.
Exactly, Nintendo didnt want people to realize how lazy they got after BOTW. Despitehow much they did for that game, so much was either missing, watered down, or copy-pasted everywhere. But the issue is that the world shouldnt have been reused for a sequel, just all this stuff shouldve been in BOTW from the start and not sold to us as a $70 game 6 years later. TOTK was nothing more than $70 DLC, and should've been sold to us at $20 1 year after BOTW, not for $70 after 6 years (with no simple game data carryover so all NPCs forget who Link is).
Another small thing was the lack of actually seeing your final destination, funnily enough. Botw had hyrule castle just menacingly looming over you the whole game and the actual castle felt like a true final level with tons of top tier loot and enemies. In totk it’s all hidden and you don’t get that epic buildup feeling ever. The pathway to the final fight on Totk felt really linear and without challenge and also didn’t have anything special to find loot wise (anybody else get crazy hyped in botw finding the hylian shield in the castle? Hope you don’t look forward to that feeling again) something I never see anybody talk about but it was a bummer to me.
The freedom of Tears of the Kingdom inadvertently highlighting the value of the linearity and restriction seen in the rest of the series is almost tragic
I just don't think it does justice to its freedom in a way that feels satisfying to the player after only a dozen hours of playtime. You start to realize their isn't much to the story and that everything else you do, the gameplay loop, is nothing more than a loop itself where you're constantly meant to do the same things over and over again. Its a problem because not only do I think this gameplay style CAN work, it seems it will never happen because of the insane backlash AND the fact the Zelda team seem completely blind to those problems in order to make any corrections.
@@therealgirl3295BINGO. That’s honestly why I’m not too much a fan of the newer Zelda games, specifically TotK, and BotW a smaller bit. These games lack depth in their side quests and narrative. Insomuch that beyond first experiencing the exciting exploration-the experience is worthless to me on a repeat play-through. I know I’m not like most people but I really need a grand story to find renewed interest and enjoyment in another play-through. And TotK’s pandering to those who didn’t play BotW (which was like nobody) killed the game for me.
They took people's gripes about the extreme linearity of Skyward Sword and went too hard in the other direction. It's like if you told a cook that pouring an entire shaker of salt is too much so they stopped using it all together.
Even The Legend of Zelda on NES isn't nearly as open and nonlinear as people make it out to be.
@Czah5 Yeah too true which is why I get tired of these new games being a "return to the original game" like Miyamoto and Aonuma keep describing it to being. It isn't. Like, really, WHAT is being borrowed from the original game when making these? Little to nothing. Even the NES had much better dungeons than the new.
And I'd much rather play the original NES game over these new ones. I'm serious. They are so damn boring, I just can't make myself go back and finish Tears of the Kingdom after dedicating the ungodly amount of hours I did on the 2017 game. I feel like I already wasted my time with that one given how little substance it really has. Tears of the Kingdom is just more of the same but build a bear mechanics.
I'd actually just describe it as nintendo turned zelda into a ubisoft clone... think about that for a second man that's really what the modern interpretation of NES zelda has become.
Reminds me of a video: Zelda fake fun, aged like a fine wine made by a guy named Strat-edgy highly reccomend
The Wind Temple buildup gave me CHILSSSSSSSSS, and I would go as far as saying that it’s one of the best in the entire franchise. That “wow” factor hit SO hard, and I was convinced right then that this game could actually get the dungeons right. I really enjoyed them with the exception of the Water Temple.
It was my first temple and my favorite one. The excitement and anticipation for what I would find and how far I had to go was amazing. It was the best out of all the rest
The Water Temple, at the very least, was a feast for the eyes.
i didn't enjoy the fire temple at all. that thing was WAY too easy to cheese. wind and lightning were my favorites.
Am I literally the only who enjoyed water temple because of its challenge to do??😂
@@rugeramerican308 it definitely had the hardest puzzles but that's not saying much :S basically 4 shrines stapled to each other. I liked the lead up to it though well enough, the ancient waterworks were pretty cool.
Ngl, I hated getting back all the armors because they were put in chest by some guy name "Misko" even though you had all of them in the last game. It also made me sad to go back to the Great Plateau and see the Shrine of Resurrection become an empty cave with no hint of the sheikah. Idk, just felt like a structure that had been there for so long shouldn't have just vanished... I enjoyed going back to the same world and using what I knew from the previous game to help me in TOTK. I kind of felt a bit of a grind for getting materials for weapons, it felt more tedious with the fuse mechanic to get decent weapons.
My feelings about the game can be summed up by thoughts that kept surfacing while i was playing:
"But I've already done this..."
Gaining full hearts, full stamina, doing puzzles, upgrading armour... I've already done all of that in the last game. Exploring? Ive done most of that already.
(Sorry I know this isn't a new video or new comment), but yeah, I would say that it was disappointingly boring, like everything was the same, yeah they added sky islands and the depths but they felt so empty and pointless and just seemed like the whole game was a money grab. It was fun for a little bit, but never captivating or new
Reason why I never finished it. I constantly felt like I was treading old ground with barely anything new.
My biggest issue was that it didn’t really feel like a sequel. They chose to accommodate for new players instead of rewarding the older players with the familiar atmosphere. Including several npcs not recognising Link, in Breath Of The Wild, I don’t think many players took much notice of the Zonai, as there was so much focus on the Sheikah and the calamity of 10000 years ago. Now, you have “Zonai research teams” and the same feeling of mystery isn’t there anymore. Also they created an Ancient Hero’s aspect, but didn’t really address the ancient calamity, which in the end had no bearing whatsoever on the story.
The game is a technical marvel though.
I feel the exact same way. If Tears of the Kingdom moved a couple things around, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see it as a standalone game away from sequel territory. Yet it's not. These NPCs *ARE* meant for this Link and they *HAVE* met him.
To be honest, I'm sad they cared so much about being fully and 100% story accessible for new players. So many of these changes to familiarize yourself with the world just seem cheap to someone who's already played, and it just isn't cohesive at all.
I didn't even realise that Zonai was in BotW, did anyone mention it in game?
@@stayf0rtea_939it’s funny they’d do it this way too, to accommodate for all 4 of the players who own a switch and never played BotW 🤦♂️
@@ToadstoolFilms I can't remember any NPC mentioning Zonai, we only knew of the Zonai because of the Zonai Ruins in Faron. There is one NPC in Lurelin, whose Shrine Quest involves an unknown ancient language that isn't ancient Sheikah and could be of Zonai origin, but the NPC himself never mentions this
That's just Nintendo's design philosophy. In every game they make; they want the individual games to be able to stand on their own. It's a double edged sword.
Fun fact, the Ascend Ability was actually originally a dev tool, used for quick escapes during betas, and they ended up enjoying it so much that they wanted to share it with us! I'm very grateful for that choice, i absolutely LOVE ascend
That’s the best ability IMO!
Fun ability for sure. Would not like to see it return though lol. I think it’s too game-breaking.
@@created3612 thats kinda fair honestly, i think maybe if it had some sort of limit other than the distance from the roof or the flat surface. if it had some sort of cap on exactly how far through things you could ascend, it might be better, for example i always found it weird asf when i would try to ascend through a wall in the depths and link would pop up all the way on the surface. maybe it will return, maybe it wont, with the series moving on from this era its definitely impossible to tell right now.
@created3162 it should only return on games where you've explored the world already. Aka sequels
@nox1233 there are only like 5 areas you can ascend from the depths to the surface. And they're meant to be there, because some people don't want to fast travel so it's not good to limit that. It already was limited in the depths lol
For me, the biggest reason for progressively losing interest in exploration and questing is the lack of meaningful rewards. Quickly you discover that the typical side quest rewards you with 20 rupees and a potion or something. This had me eventually losing motivation in questing and just focus on the main quests and shrines.
Really, the only side adventure that actually gives you something of substance is the fairies, and those quests weren't even fun... What are your thoughts on this?
One of the only things that were worth exploring fully in the end game were the caves for the potential of unique armor and even then at a certain point it was just for the collection not because the armor was useful. Same could be said about the depths and their unique items but that was even more simplistic as it was just find a mine under a mountain and then you had the rare item. there was no treasure hunting aspect to it.
The fairy quests were cute though.
In regards to the sparse sky islands, the game lets you go significantly higher up in the sky than there are islands. They could have layered them if they were worries about making it cluttered.
And I don't think reusing BoTW's map was a mistake, I think the mistake was how little they changed it. They needed to rebuild castle town, add in new signs of civilization and events involving the people of the world rebuilding and clashing with the remnants of the calamity, and the coming gloom. Instead its the same settlements, same places, same people, same everything... Only with some caves peppered about and shrines moved around.
The idea wasn't the problem, the terrible execution was.
One thing that would have been REALLY cool as late sidequests would have been finding lore about how the 3 other Dragons became dragons! To hear their story of the people who swallowed a Tear to become a Dragon. That would have been neat!
That would’ve been amazing!
I thought the ill fated dlc would do that…
Tbh I kinda assumed those were just naturally dragons and not ones created from secret stones.
@@roadjcat same here
Shouldve been a main mission to do so
You have summed up my feelings exactly. The game is so much bigger, but in weird ways feels smaller and repeats so many of the main beats from BotW. One of my main complaints is, for a direct sequel, how little it references the first game. All the Sheikah tech is mysteriously gone, replaced by identical Purah tech and Zonai shrines. Malice is no more, but is replaced with the almost identical Gloom. Very few of the NPCs even reference the events of the first game. Even Ganondorf seems to say "Calamity Ganon? What's that? I've been stuck down here." I was looking forward to a continuation of the story, but the developers seemed more interested in making it stand alone for those who hadn't played BotW.
The fact that they didn't directly continue on the story in many places left so much on the table, it really is such a huge missed opportunity. This iteration of Link and Zelda have been though so much and most certainly evolved as individuals, in their relationship, and in the greater world of Hyrule. Much of this goes unacknowledged. Unfortunate since the combined story of TOTK + BOTW has a lot of great material to work with, even in its current form, so it could have been even better had they acknowledged the connection between TOTK and BOTW.
I think they tried to wipe the slate clean for newcomers while keeping the BOTW feel while taking commentary from fans and rectyfying their mistakes... which leads to tonal mismatch and why they just didn't send link to the past... they could have re use map and all and avoid all the 'bUt WheRe is SheIkAh TeCh?" questions (which fair, but where the hell is sheikah tech?).
@@knp01 my personal head cannon was - they simply just destroyed it. (which is better than their saying "Oh yeah it just disappeared poof). like if it were me, even knowing that "Ganon was gone" i wouldn't really want any kind of tech (that was intact), to simply exist and be taken over and possibly kill everyone again so they just tore it all down. the new towers etc were similarly based on it -(You can even see some of the pieces) - but probably not to the degree of being completely. the same as the ones in BoTW
The annoying part is a number of these issues can fixed with a little bit of dialogue. The Sheikah tech was buried/destroyed because it was too dangerous. Or gloom is reminds me of a stronger malice, etc.
@@lapniappe I have issues with this explanation- they destroyed it it with whom exactly, there are total 20 people living in hyrule and contrary to people's idea, proper destruction of builts like sheikah shrines would take time. Two- they destroyed it, but left exactly enough of Sheikah tech for the towers and enerfy grid to power the towers, including 11 extra teleport pads from divine beast that Robbie had laying in his lab. Sorry, but no explanation just cuts it in game world even. We can have headcanons and come up with explanations, but the truth is that devs didn't care enough to make even the most basic explanation realistic and coherent in-game. And this kind of incoherence is on the devs and their "gameplay first, sorry later" approach to designning games in general.
The tell just how they didn't care about storytelling is the fact that they didn't have proper script writer position while developing totk and instead they said the story was influenced by all the lead designer and they included actual writers into that pool. It tells me that there was no one effectively responsible for the coherence of the script and story and there were simply to many people who had that influence and they lost track of it while concentrating at the same time on coding the new abilities.
I feel like the Zelda developement team really need to put this "lineacy-is-bad" mindset to rest, else they will just end up making lackluster BotW/TotK clones in the future with one and the same concept while becoming increasingly uninspired, eventually following the same path as the modern mainline Pokemon games.
Linearity
Agreed.
Woah woah holy shit you did not just compare BOTW AND TOTK to fucking Pokemon... I mean, I also have some issues with TotK, the same one as most people in the comments, but they are not even in the same quality plane of existence tf you talking about!?
@@randomname9723 People cant read nowadays. Literally says botw/totk clones """"in the future"""" becoming increasingly uninspired, just like pokemon did, if they follow down the same route.
@@sekiro_the_one-armed_wolfuh, no? It’s lineanity?
Finally finished the game and came here first after avoiding your channel for 11 months to avoid spoilers. I agree with pretty much everything you said, and came to many of the same conclusions on my own while playing the game. I think tears of the Kingdom was just a little bit too big in scope. As a player it's overwhelming, and as for the developer, it seems to be a case of quantity over quality.
I remember when I was so excited while I was exploring the Great Plateau in TotK when I found the place where the Shrine of Resurrection had been. When all I found was a little cave with a couple of Yiga in it, it felt like the game was telling me that I was stupid for caring about the world I had spent dozens of hours exploring in the last game.
no but the gret plateau tells a cool story! each of the holes leading to the depths are where the og shrines where, and the shrine of ressurection is gutted. it's like ganondorf wanted to ensure link couldn't get stronger the same way he did before or use any of his old powers.
@@foxhoundslug Except that there's literally no evidence of that whatsoever. Given the game's general habit of pretnending BotW never happened, it feels more like a cute little nod to BotW than any actual attempt at continuity (like how you get a motorcycle-esque schematic under where the Shrine of Resurrection used to be), which just feels like rubbing salt in the wound.
It doesn't even make sense if you think about it at all. Why only those shrines, specifically? It's not like the other chasms correspond to shrines in the last game. Hell, why those shrines at all? Those four are literally the only shrines Link is guaranteed to have already gotten the Spirit Orbs from and he no longer has the Sheikah Slate, he wouldn't have been able gain anything from them anyway. Hell, how would Ganondorf even have known about those shrines? He's been sealed away for at least several millenia and only knew about Link's existence at all because Rauru mentioned Link's name once. Why wouldn't he destroy the Shrines of Light instead, things that he would probably recognize from his time as a mortal? Where the hell did the rest of the shrines go?
This is just like the "Oh they must just have dismantled the Divine Beasts" theory. It's headcanon that tries to paper over TotK's bad storytelling with a theory that almost certainly wasn't intended by the devs (official dev statement was that all the Shiekah tech just... vanished, and apparently nobody cared for some reason), and doesn't even make any sense if you think about it for five seconds.
Since it would have been literally much easier to not change anything at all rather than strip out all the shrines, towers and Sheikah technology - I have to believe it was done on purpose to try to hint at a particular change in this world’s history.
@@DeadDancers not in terms of writing. instead of making a continuous story and building upon what was set up in the previous game, they tore it all down and only put some cute nods to it. i don't think it's that deep, they just wanted to change it enough to justify it being a new game imo lol
Right? Caves where interiors should have been was a recurring theme.
I mean I was really excited to see Akkala Citadel had an opening at the front, only to sigh, "Oh, of course." When I realized it was another cave.
I just wanted one sky town in the sky with it's own side quests... Just one Nintendo 😢
You're asking too much from current day nintendo. They have to make a whole new town? That's too tiring for them. next thing people will be asking mario games to have a different antagonist other than bowser for a change. that would require a tiny bit of imagination. Nintendo is an extremely overrated company.
@@Vaquix000 it wouldnt make sense for there to be a town. just because they dont care about the timeline doesnt mean they dont care about the story. also, have you even watched the full video?
I was hoping there'd be a zonai sanctuary of some kind that they used to watch over Hyrule, a sort of intermediary between Hyrule and whatever higher plain the zonai live on. Would've been a great chance to give the zonai more interesting lore and a chance to properly interact with them, plus the architecture could've linked to some of the surface ruins
@@colour_fall3851 yeah totally
That and also a village in the Depths - like a group of Cryptids
Such a missed opportunity to have a split story line and play as Zelda! Would have made this so incredible
That would mean to make a new Zelda game and sell it at $USD70,… oh… wait…
literally thought this is what they were going to do since so many people were clamoring for it with botw. they put her in more active, explorer-type gear in the promotional art, even gave her the sheikah slate. this series has so much lore and unexplained details in it (the interlopers and the war surrounding them, mm, and the twili, etc) that it's a huge waste and bloat to reconstruct the whole background of the series with new unanswered questions. I thought she was getting thrown into the depths of the world and would deal with, you know, the triforce and the goddesses but also the questionable new zonai people living underground, and you could play as her with just the sheikah slate while link explores the sky made up of fragments of hyrule, and they would meet in the middle on land! secret stones and time/light power my foot!!
that being said...this zelda has a lot of interesting new takes going for her that I do like. I'm just disappointed with the parts I don't. 😂
"Caves are fantastic; each one has a unique layout filled with treasure..." But do they? I explored the entire map and found no treasure of consequence, including in the caves. Caves were just one more place to collect one more thing that did not amount to anything at all.
You definitely need to explore more caves then.
@@josephteneriello6346 I went everywhere. Are you referring to novelty armor as the important treasure?
@@josephteneriello6346 i haven't explored every cave, but I have explored a decent amount of them and I can chalk up a majority of my new cave discoveries to "get the bubbul gem, get the check mark, never come back"
Yes the game had way too many armor pieces that I never used. Got extremely repetitive.
@@c.nk.01you’ll explore a really cool hidden cave at the coast just to get an opal
The worst part of collecting the memories/tears was that the entire plot, including the heartbreaking scene with Zeldas draconification, was behind literally the easiest mechanic in the game. Find giant glowing picture and go to it. Meaning I unlocked the entire plot before I did much of anything else
This, and just like in BotW, chances are most players discovered them out of order. The second one is clearly visible from the first, but requires entering Hebra Mountains so you could possibly freeze to death if you tried going there too early. Some players likely discovered a few of the later story ones before finding some of the middle ones.
This is exactly why I ignored them until I was pretty much done with the main missions.
I jumped into the Castle Chasm early and, after hours of barely surviving, I finally reached the ruins from the start of the game and bombed the mural. Learning the rest of the story this way felt incredibly rewarding, so imagine my disappointment when I saw that most people would realize the plot twist after Mineru all but spells it out in the second memory.
Well that’s on you then. I marked them all near the beginning and spaced them out throughout my play though in order to balance it out.
@@Dark_Mishrain botw it was way harder to find them. You needed to line up pictures. You just... walk to a place here. There's even a map of all the locations
Thisssssss
I started the game by first, collecting all the dragon tears, discovering Zelda went to the past, and finding Zelda in the present as a dragon with the master sword. Now I’m stuck playing through hundreds of hours of game where every single in game character is carrying on as if no one knows what happened to Zelda. I did the quest. I’m literally holding the master sword in front of you and everyone carries on like an idiot not knowing what happened to Zelda. Did I miss something? Is my game glitching out? I am very confused and have never been so bored and frustrated with something so beautiful.
Sorry, for some reason Nintendo never thought that way of playing, that was my first play through and it just sours the play through.
On a similar note regarding Mineru: I have an actual zonai robot right here, with the functional, conscious soul of an actual ancient zonai who personally experienced, and in some cases directly caused, the history every researcher is obsessed with. Also, via dragon tears, I have experienced the memories of Zelda personally experiencing ancient zonai history. Yet I and Mineru somehow can't share any of this with the many characters trying to figure out who the zonai were and what happened in the past at all, and instead just watch them guess what barely legible ancient tablets were trying to say and generally grasp at straws. ARGH.
I also discovered Zelda relatively early and was baffled that the game kept acting like no one knew what happened.
BoTW wouldn't have had that problem...
I did the opposite. No dragon tears before beating ganon and the mystery of zelda remained fresh.
The game actually will comment on this after you beat the Phantom Ganons in Hyrule Castle.
Purah will be like "We deciphered some Zonai text, and it makes mention of a 5th Sage! We need to-...What's that Link? You say you already found the 5th Sage, gotren Master Sword, and that Zelda is actually the Light Dragon?!?! Why didn't you tell anyone?!"
Like bruh...
I was so bummed to see the sky island had no society living among all those islands. Litterally just a bunch of bots.
This is where Ocarina of Time shines. It was a linear story that made you feel like you had the freedom of an open world.
You got a story that made sense while having the ability to explore.
The completed Breath of the wild but just ran out of passion for the story and stopped midway in Tears of the Kingdom. It felt more like a sandbox instead of an epic fictional adventure
Game simply didn't have enough story to match its long hours of gameplay. We needed a full length story like ghost of tsushima added to the game so that you would run out after getting bored of exploring the world
@@ElasticGoblin GoT is such a good template for Nintendo to follow in terms of weaving storyline into open world gaming. I feel they were already influenced by that game in some ways, but still
it would've been so cool if the whole game had just taken place in the distant past. we could've explored the earliest version of Hyrule - they could've used the same map, but changed it drastically - it would've made having Zonai technology and vanished Sheikah tech make sense, and Link and Zelda could've had their adventure together or in tandem, something I've been wishing for for a long time.
Lol that'd just be Far Cry Primal
Isn’t that skyword sword’s purpose?
I think we've established that the old timeline has been thrown out entirely besides maybe Fi specifically. @@raedenjay
@@Casino220nah, it’s a dragon break.
THAT would have been so awesome
One thing I love about totk is, Botw starts with Link alone, Totk ends with Link surrounded by friends.
BotW you wake up with amnesia and learn that you had amazing friends which all died horribly 😅
Accurate for both of you @rafaynoman1180 and @Broockle
You would love JRPGs
@@jojimpyeah 100% the genre is right up their alley
Excellent video, and your analysis of the dungeons in on point. I definitely agree that the wind temple was peak Zelda, and to me was actually the peak of the game. Getting to the Rito village was an early game challenge, even more challenging to climb, and then the actual climb across ships into the eye of the storm, that was a level of epicness that I did not get from the game again. It felt magical, and suspenseful, and you could FEEL the stakes from the story and the atmosphere. The other dungeons were fun, but this dungeon in particular lives rent free in my head.
My jaw actually dropped when I was doing the wind temple quest and I just kept going up and up and there kept being more. I remember the path to the temple much more than the temple itself, but the bossfight was amazing (even if it was reused in the depths, it was fun there too)
Nobody wants to address that this whole game is a copy/paste.
They copy pasted everything from botw, and made it a tiny bit larger. Sky map is almost empty. Deep map is a grey monotone nightmare of repetitiveness. Every sage's conversation os a copy pasted script, they just swap "water" for "fire." By the 3rd stage, in so bored I'm skipping all dialogue.
They phoned this whole fucking game in.
HARD
1:58:09 This is actually incorrect! A single Rito that resides in Rito Village will refer to the top of the town as "Vah Medoh's Perch"! Which makes it even WEIRDER that the Divine Beasts just vanished.
It probably just flew into a warmer region for the winter lol
Yeah. I never really understood how all of the ancient tech and divine beasts are nowhere to be found
@Jonnyrc18 well, the shrines and towers went back underground, and that makes good sense since Ganon was defeated. The Guardians were obviously scavenged for parts, which we can see in several places, especially the Skyview Towers. The only real mystery that doesn't make much sense is the Divine Beasts
What they should have done was keep them as deactivated pieces in the world, something you can't interact with but stones near them each for the champion that lost their lifes(like the ones all over hyrule)
Divine beast was probably named after the perch
I was disappointed that the elemental weapons were removed because I wanted to create elemental fusions. I was so excited to create an electric ice weapon.
I'm fairly early into the game with little spoilers so far(somehow. And no I haven't watched this video yet I just jumped to teh comments.) I eventually realized there are just no elemental weapons anymore which was very disappointing. My question is, am I basically just fusing things go rusty swords the whoke game? There were many strong attack weapons in BOTW that had power well into the 20s-40s.
@@rajko15 yeah u have to fuse the new rusty weapons with monster parts. there is pretty much no base weapon in this game with an attack power higher than 15
@@rajko15 New weapons? Fuyabashi gave us new ones in the form of the rusted swords. With the horns, he even gave us the same enemies, mostly. If he could, he'd even give us the same story... oh wait...
@@rajko15You will eventually gain access to regular, non 'rusted' / decayed base weapons, nearly every weapon from BOTW returns albeit not so readily available.
No matter how 'good' your base weapon is, you'll still want to use fuse regardless as it will only make a good weapon better. Rest assured, there are weapons / weapon combinations in this game that are substantially more powerful than anything that was available in BOTW.
@@colecube8251Early game, yes, but once you gain access to zoni and pristine weapons, the attack power increases drastically
It's weird how Zelda spent thousands of years tricking out the Master Sword with magic and mojo only for it to be the same as the former game when you get it back. It's dumb. It runs out of power fighting any enemies at all. Dumb.
It's funny isn't it.
😂
Youd think since its late game theyd finally give you ONE infinite durability weapon...
I really thought the sword would do something cool
other than fuse, of course, which _is_ cool but every other sword does that and also you can’t repair the master sword with an octorock so you do actually lose the material you used
Not even that, it’s worse than in the first game because you don’t get that double damage and durability buff when around malice.
I can’t do shrines anymore. If they make a third game, I hope they realize the “Zelda formula” isn’t bad and linearity has value. The emotional build up of TOTK was ruined for me because I got the tears “out of order.” Please just make a linear story with characters I can actually build emotional ties with. The problem with everything happening in the past is that we know they die. The Champions were different because the memories show us why they were loved and why their deaths would be horrific. The sages I couldn’t care less about, and their in sync monologues were INSULTING. I miss Zelda games like Twilight Princess and Wind Waker. Yes they were “linear,” but the characters matter to me. You grow with Midna, you learn about the world with Midna, and when she leaves you know she has to but it’s SAD. There is so much missed potential with TotK. It’s depressing.
Zelda has become more about the gameplay , particularly the gameplay associated with player choice similar to a souls from soft game. However unlike those games it’s environmentally story telling isn’t as good nor its npcs or locations .
@@frostycane5134this arguments tired and been goin on for 6 years but at least botw had a theme.
@@ninjireal I’m not saying that dark souls is a better game or has a better theme , I also like botw themes of regret, I’m just saying that Zelda has went from a linear story focus to a player driven focus which is not a bad thing
It went from doing what the developer wanted you to do , to make your own fun
Id pass this for a suicide note lol
Imagine if your actions as Link were necessary for undoing the draconification. Temples would have contained relics or powers that Link would need to reach through time to bring her back as a Hylian. You could have even done this with the existing temples/dungeons. Three more places to quest for… so disappointing
You are aware that both BotW and TotK are games that let you play how you want and therefore don't require you to get x amount of items to see the finale through?
This would actually be huge!! There could be two different endings, one where you didn’t complete all the temples/memories and Zelda stays a dragon, and another that rewards you for completing all the dungeons/memories by restoring Zelda to her true form
@@NuiYabukoit’s called optional endings. Play games outside of Nintendo that have implemented this.
@@NuiYabuko Nintendo already did a mechanic like this in BotW where you had 2 endings/cutscenes. One where you unlocked all the memories, and one where you didnt.
Drakenwild has a video on exactly this topic, and how the de-dragonification could be explained by fairly minor adjustments to existing questlines.
czcams.com/video/XyDeL8UxrCA/video.htmlsi=vVOBB2loP4VK2Fry
I was really upset with what happened to Zelda, I wanted to see her grow and rebuild her kingdom alongside Link but instead I watched her have to be alone again this time for 10,000 years.
They put my girl in the fridge again 😔
*OH YES* - wasted character development potential.
But hey it could have been worse. If Zelda would have stayed the Dragon of Light, no matter how cute, no matter how fluffy, I would have been devastated. 😞
Imagine what for a sad life that would have been. A kind Maiden watches her whole Kingdom fall appart, thinking it was all just due to her own lack of adequacy. She knows that tons of people have died because of it, she loses her sworn Knight and all other Champions and rises to fight the Calamity itself for 100 long years all by herself, with no chance of truly winning.
And when things look like they are finally taking a turn for the better and things get finally better, she almost dies in what should have been a _"normal"_ cave exploration, gets teleported to the past and must throw away herself everything that she is, to become a Dragon who does not remember her Hylian life, basically killing her as the person that she was.
What for a lowblow this would have been. 😑
At least Rauru & Sonia could return her to her Hylian self, powerful as those two are.
But the development we wanted to see and what we had in mind, did not take place. Instead Link & Zelda were tormented once more.
Link never speaks, due to self-insertive reasons for the player.
But imagine how HE must feel also!
He is unable to truly protect the one Woman he is sworn to basically live for whenever it matters.
He could not protect Hyrule either back then and now Zelda would have almost died forever. He is *'the'* Hero but how powerless & by this nature, sinful & pathetic he must feel.
Link did his best and he knows that. Probably. But if I would be in his skin, I would go all Anakin in the last Movie right before he became Vader.
*_" I want more, but I know I shouldn't. I am not the all powerful Jedi I should be. I 'want' to be. "_*
Would drive me nuts.
I wield the Sword but I am just a glorified Icon that cannot deliever when it matters.
And the only reason the Princess is safe is because of powers far beyond my control. _" Well at least I could slay the Calamity. Again. "_
But my innitial mission was fulfilled only by luck more as by skill.
_" Oh well... at least Riju gave me her seal on my ringfinger huh? At least she loves me! 😆 ... not knowing what for an unreliable mess I am. "_
5ey completely ruined her
My thoughts exactly. It almost felt like Nintendo had to one-up BotW for some reason
Zelda’s mother passed away at a very young age for the princess. This is extra lore you can read up on in Hyrule Castle.
Zelda meets her ancestors Sonia & Rauru, the closest figures she has to parents. She watches Sonia die with her own eyes by the hand of Ganondorf. Let the girl have a damn mom
Zelda sacrificed herself to seal Calamity Ganon, and this goes on for 100 years.
Now Zelda risks it all again to fix the Master Sword, and this takes her _10,000_ years. Now during the events of BotW there are two Master Swords existing at the same time. Was this sacrifice worth the time convolution??
Idk man, the more you think about each game, the more TotK’s storybeats feel like a shoddy rehash
She had to go back to the past...
To play the shitty games that sucked ass.
One of the worst things was Ganondorf himself, we're supposed to think he was the origin of Ganon, the source of all evil in both BOTW and TOTK, and when we got to know him we got a little next to nothing really, a sort of "remake" of OOT storyline with no depth, I mean, there's a Gerudo sage who surly knew him personally as Ganondorf was her king, but she tells you nothing about him but "he was our king, we feel sorry he turned out to be bad", wasted potential there.
i hate nintendo i like supeheros better but i play the detcetive music bye alan tew and je$$$king off looking at princess Zelda pictures
When I jumped off the great sky island, I veered far to the south. Then I kept walking. I ended up finding kakariko village and more, and the whole time, I thought: I can’t believe it. They actually removed the paraglider (I had entirely avoided promotional material).
I was having a blast being forced to come up with solutions to simple problems like crossing a mountain pass, trying both building a bridge and making a glider.
I realized that the game was too hard tho and something must be wrong, and I got the paraglider. It immediately lessened the fun, because 90% of the time the solution is “paraglide, then maybe climb a bit.”
Just one example of how removing freedom can actually enhance the FEELING of freedom.
I feel many players ended up doing an unintentional challenge run lol
I had the same experience lol until I got to a shrine where I felt there was no possible way to solve it without gliding so I begrudgingly want back to the main camp outside the castle
This game came out the day i got into a nearly life ending car accident. I played it for nearly two weeks straight proceeding that and i like to think this game helped me heal.
That’s great man, I’m so glad that you were able to find a way to keep enjoying yourself in a terrible time like that. I hope you’re doing well now
Glad you are still with us, internet stranger
I broke up with my ex beforehand. TotK definitely helped me heal a bit
@@SaberRexZealotI feel you there, I had a friend for over a decade, we basically burned bridges for good just a week before TotK. Still hurts to this day, but it is what it is
same thing happened to me, glad you’re doing ok
What if Rauru acted as a sort of Navi throughout Totk? Instead of vanishing for no stated reason, he could've stayed in links arm, giving backstory to the sky islands and depths locations since he would have knowledge of them, which would greatly flesh out the new content, and this wouldn't affect the plot too much, since he wouldn't know about zelda's transformation or anything involving the sky islands being lifted. it would've provided so much depth to gain the backstory of new locations and depth to rauru as he reacts to the changes from his hyrule to the current one. You would need to rework sonia's death and the imprisoning war to preserve those mysteries, but I think that this would've greatly added to this game.
Or even if not Rauru, then Mineru, she's literally also a spirit inside of A RING ON HIS FINGER AND CAN CALL ON HER AT ANY TIME ONCE FOUND. HOW DID WE NOT CAPITLISE AND HAVE HER ACT AS FI :(
Please not another Fi
I think the commenter imagines this concept as more like Atreus from God of War 4 than Fi.
This! I would have loved more Rauru. Such a cool design and interesting character delegated to an hour or so of screen time.
Nah, he definitely would have known Zelda was the light dragon. He was there when Mineru told Zelda about Draconification, and he would probably notice how odd it is that there is a golden haired dragon flying about. Failing that, he would probably be able to sense his light energy within the dragon like he did when he first met Zelda…
It just feels like breath of the wild, they got so caught up in the cool idea they had they put less effort into actually making that idea cool.
36:40 im so happy you called this out.
It's so disappointing how little new enemies there actually sre in comparison to other Zelda games.
its baffling too, like the Zelda series has entire compendiums of all sorts of monsters idk why they chickened out on making more and just resorted to Bokoblin/Moblin/Lizalfos again
I wish they hadn't done the same layout with the story as breath of the wild with the whole memory thing, I wanted to know more about all the zonai not just rauru, wanted it to dive into the history of all of the zonai, and how they died out. Instead that's just an unsolved mystery never to be found out.
That would be a fantastic hook for another game set between Rauru's time and the Calamity.
Maybe the next one!
Not only that but the layout actually hurts the general narrative as each story has to be isolated (since the player can do it in any order). It straight up prevents characters from being able to actually interact with one another so their impact feels far weaker in the story. Only time this isn’t an issue is ironically with a more linear structured game aka age of calamity.
Tbh they should have made the story and even dungeon progression linear while still keeping the open world as that can allow things like the zoni to be explored and more importantly have the cast more presence in the journey and synergy with one another rather than just them only being relevant to their isolated stories and having false zoni shades of said characters
not just the memory thing.
you wake up on a stranded area after a coma, a dead king tells you to activate 4 shrines then you pick up the paraglider. you activate shrines and get korok seeds while going to the exact same 4 regions to progress the story as botw, until you find and kill ganon.
it really feels like a rip-off how identical the plot structure is
Breath of the Wild’s story actually had substance because it was about living with tragedy, and the characters were well fleshed out. Tears of the Kingdom’s story is about nothing, because its characters are bland.
I was so excited for this game, and the first few hours were amazing. It felt like there was so much new stuff to explore, and I couldn't wait for real dungeons this time. After a few hours of playing and exploring, the honeymoon phase wore off. I noticed that once I've seen a bit of the depths, caves, sky islands, etc. I've seen it all. Everything felt so copy pasted and samey even with new enemies and places to explore.
My first temple was the wind temple, and it was super exciting at first. The ascent to a legendary ark in the sky was a cool concept, and the music as I got closer to it was incredible. The moment I learned it was basically a divine beast again (go to all terminals then fight boss), it felt like a kick in the gut. I genuinely had more fun and excitement getting there than I did completing it. The cutscene with the sage was cool the first time, but I quickly realized they're all the same, but with different sages/ companions. They have to be, because every temple could be your first. The whole experience feels cheapened as a result.
I'm a longtime Zelda fan that's played since the late 90s, and the last two installments have been great in terms of exploration and gameplay, but heavily lacking in other areas such as dungeons and story. With Eiji Aonuma's statement, I began to worry that this is it from now on; this is the new Zelda, and the elements of the Zelda I knew and loved the series for in the first place weren't ever coming back.
You're not alone in your opinion about combining the classic and new elements to make something even better, and your point about the way they've adapted each game based on reviews/ feedback gives me newfound hope that this is still a possibility in the future.
yea the beginning really fooled us into thinking this would be different lol. idk why they couldn't at least make more regional enemies. the gibdos gave me so much hope lol
To counter your point on the Sage cutscenes all being the same: no, they DON'T have to be. We've seen this in games before. We can absolutely tailor events around a player-chosen order.
@@swishfish8858 In that case, the fact that they could have executed it in a better fashion seems like a major oversight on their part. The game would have greatly benefited from that simple addition.
I felt similarly while I enjoyed the game the whole way through after I had beaten it I looked back like a week later and thought I am never going to play that game again whereas in botw I did replay it and kept on thinking about all the other opportunities would have had if they had more time to iron out issues in a potential sequel such as monotonous dungeons and mediocre storytelling this game kind've felt like the devs weren't holding back their ideas because of a lack of time to fully explore the potential of the world but instead because they felt like there was no more potential
I’m not a “totk/botw aren’t Zelda games!” Type person, but I really do miss old Zelda.
This game feels more like a director's cut of Breath of the Wild than a proper sequel (think especially something like the Justice League Snyder Cut); a lot of the same story beats but a different arrangement.
Malice/Gloom, Sheika/Zonai tech, Ganon(dorf) sealed in the castle as/turning into a mindless beast after the First Calamity/Imprisoning War, an event from so far in the ancient past it has become legend... (And the fact that they don't really address the First Calamity and its relation to the Imprisoning War is kind of adding insult to injury for anyone dedicated enough to try to figure out a timeline)
Yeah it feels like a master quest not a totally different game
When I first played TOTK, I wanted to play the game as incorrectly as I could. I wanted to save all the sages for later, so I headed somewhere where I knew there weren't major plot towns. I went down to Faron. And that storm cloud interested me cause I thought a living leviathan might just be there! I blindly transversed that storm cloud, so early in the game being out that there weren't any possible guides yet. I met Mineru before I met the majority of major characters. So I knew where Zelda was instantly.
I got the master sword before I spoke to the Great Deku Tree.
It was so cool!
And then I kept playing and nobody acknowledged that I knew where Zelda was... And I watched repetitive cut scene after repetitive cut scene.
I had so much hope and joy for this story, but the lack of connection is so bad that I don't want to consider TOTK canon since fan theories about BOTW were so much more interesting.
BOTW's environmental story telling was my favorite part. It influenced me so strongly in everything I adore in story telling now. and TOTK's environment is so lacking, so hollow, it's heart breaking.
I know this comment is "old" by now but that's massively impressive to do that without constantly dying at that stage in the game. I did Mineru before my last Sage just because I came across the thundering skyland and I was too stubborn to turn away from it.
I used map overlays to even get the shrine in the dark (it was my very last one, I wasn't leaving without it).
Hope nobody says this is your fault. You were given this freedom, you just became a playtester rather than a player…
In my opinion, ToTK had much more noticeable shrine fatigue than BoTW. In total, 48/152 shrines are Rauru's blessing, the worst of which being those found in a cave with zero other challenge. If you include the 7 combat tutorials, 55/152 (36%) of ToTK's shrines end up feeling like filler.
To be clear, blessing shrines are not inherently bad. After a while their frequency just gets old, especially when your reward is often just a Large Zonai Energy.
Worst part is if you try and finish all of them, most of the last ones you'll find will be blessings due to their more hidden nature.
I wish they did less of the stone puzzles in the sky , but I also like that more puzzles were in the overworld, making them blessings. I wish they did more blessings like the unlit blessing ( it was such a witty way to break the monotony without having to make another puzzle )
I hated blessings already in BotW, but TotK was much worse on that front. I still loved the game, but, like, I'd take a bad or easy-to-cheese puzzle over that BS.
(Though the fake blessing was pretty great. Would still have been great if there were half as many blessings, but still great.)
did you even play the game? most if not all the raurus shrines you had to do a side quest or solve a puzzle to get to them.
@@lukyoung702 Still disappointing, though. At least for me, it's the cutscene into the shrine that primes me for the puzzle, which is then a disappointment if it's a blessing. And there are a handful of shrines that need puzzles to enter that are also not blessings, as well as a handful that are and take no puzzles to enter.
It's just inconsistent, and so it kills the excitement of entering a new shrine every time it's just a freebie. Not like finding a lot of these shrines isn't already a lot of work anyway, even if it's not a puzzle.
Can we please talk about how disappointing the "pirate" attack was on Lurelin? I was so excited when I heard pirates invaded Lurelin, I thought it was going to be Gerudo or entirely new characters. But Instead all we got is the same old monsters we've already battled a dozens of times already. The pirate ships were not even moving, just static. Kinda speaks how low effort the game was, aside from the building mechanic of course.
I genuinely feel they did that on purpose to spite the players. So lazy.
Yeah, I remember hearing someone say they were afraid of the monsters there, thinking they're some new kind of particularly savage creature, but they didn't even include the relatively new Horriblins.
.... also wtf was with the random single enemy hiding in the well? Like what was the point of that? I was under the impression this event was an active battle against invaders, not a scavenger hunt for critters hiding out in weird places. How did the villagers telepathically know he was still there? Why did they only think it was safe when that one random dude finally died? It seems like a random developer choice just to annoy people.
And to make it even worse, when you beat them all, after a blood moon they're all back like nothing happened. This game is very overrated.
I'd prefer thay every single gimmick mechanic in this game got removed and instead they would focus on the world and exploration
“Low effort” over a pirate battle.. my guy don’t be calling this game low effort lol. It isn’t
For me the greatest sin was the total disregard for the established lore: No triforce, No goddesses, King Rauru? So what happened to the events of Skyward sword? The game game itself is good but the story doesn't make any sense from a lore perspective
While I definitely enjoyed TOTK and don't think it sucks (still a 7/10 for me) the thing I think the most regarding the game is just the potential it had. Imagine if the story was lore-friendly, properly developed and wasn't sugar-coated. Imagine if they had made new weapon types (including the field of shields and bows) and not just the same things with shiny cosmetics. Imagine if the combat was better and faster. Imagine if they hadn't prioritised quantity over quality and had a fantastic and new surface and sky map as well as cool caves. Imagine if the dungeons were longer and more traditional. Imagine if it cared about continuity and coherence. It's just... Damn, man. This game could have been AWESOME...
One thing that struck me as extremely odd for me personally is that I never finished the game, and I can’t get the motivation to get back into the game. I’m pretty sure I even beat the four main dungeons. It’s so extremely weird because I had such a huge amount of fun exploring this world and getting distracted by each and every thing that I saw, but one day I just logged off and never came back to it. I will finish it someday but the motivation is just not there, I wonder if I’m just burnt out of this formula already
It’s because you’re running around the same world you already did 7 years ago
I feel the exact same way! I did the 4 dungeons and then just… lost motivation. I think because I did all the dragon tears early and knew what was happening when I got back to Purah telling me to check out “Zelda” at the castle it broke the immersion so much I just stopped caring. I’ve tried to force myself back into it but mindless exploring doesn’t feel as great as BOTW did either for some reason
YEAH. I did this with BotW too. Finished most of the dungeons, got bored, came back to it and finished the rest of the main story later, and then just... gave up again. To this day I haven't beaten either game. There's no more motivation.
Same, finished all the dungeons and got all 5 sages did most of the shrines and like yourself just lost all passion to complete it.. I’m probably just a few hours from doing so but nope…
same!
I wish the Depths had more friendly NPCs instead of the same damn Zonai Survey Team disguised Yiga. Like supposedly the ZST is all about studying the depths yet you never meet a single friendly face down there.
I think it would’ve been nice if you could save some of the monsters that were friendly like a gentle lynel or a wayward bokoblin I agree with you it would’ve been nice to see villages down in the depths it would’ve been interesting to see lake helping those in the depths that aren’t for violence come to the surface
@@1Akarikotsu I think that idea ignores the fact that the monsters are only there cause of Ganon. They aren't good creatures turned bad. They're demons
Wat abot robby
@@kellykindler3492 He’s literally the only one and you only encounter him once.
@@huffle0vidsin botw they’re counted as creatures, but in literally everything else they’re demon
I don't get it. Why can't we have both? Why can't they combine the traditional dungeons with a non-linear world?
From OoT to SS you always got the signature weapon/item within the dungeons where they were supposed to be used. Rarely did you ever need item A in order to beat dungeon B, so you could mod a lot of the older games to be open world and it wouldn't halt a players progression (outside of story reasons).
And even then, unlike a modded older game with a potential softlock, a new game could be designed around that fact, to make sure a player is never gated out of a dungeon halfway - maybe only requiring backtracking with new items in hand for optional dungeons/caves, like that clawshot puzzle in the overworld of TP. I like ALBW, but you don't need a rental system if the dungeon item is found INSIDE the dungeon, rather than being required in order to enter it.
At 1:47:39, you perfectly pointed out what I felt so saddened by: the story of Zelda's journey back in time to the older Hyrule and fighting Ganondorf alongside Rauru and the others was the story that I, as the player, wanted to be a part of! Not just sit by and watch through cutscenes. In fact, I felt like the scene where you pass the decrepit Master Sword to Zelda through the Recall ability was going to trigger some kind of dual-timeline gameplay, where we play through the game as both Link AND Zelda...and was truly disappointed that it didn't happen. It seemed like the perfect set up for something like that.
So, if you're right, and Nintendo is listening to feedback, I hope they hear this from me.
This obsession of them with "every single game MUST be completely disconnected from all of the others!!" really got out of hand and IMHO it's actually hurting the franchise more than anything.
Also, there's nothing wrong with some linear progression here and there, if it's done right. For instance, the ONE thing Skyward Sword absolutely nailed was... well, the dungeons, wasn't it? Open world just for the sake of open world gets quite boring after around 10/20% of the game.
main problem with skyward sword to me is to GET to the dungeons you basically had to go through a dungeon. The open locations did not feel like a fun place to explore like previous zelda's (twilight princess and basically ANY main zelda game before it) it was just a bunch of chores. And many of the dungeons didn't even have a miniboss, it was the standard to have a cool miniboss and a boss in every dungeon. Also, they had two lava dungeons that look basically the same - at least when ocarina of time had two fire dungeons they were totally different in appearance (dodongo cavern and the fire temple)
Agreed
The sky was the most disappointing for me - empty and without the charm of skyward sword. I also spent SO long looking for a skyloft shaped island.
It was right under your nose mate. The Great Sky Island IS Skyloft. Or at least the general shape is.
@@KingRaatzi realized that too but it really did feel not intentional with how little references there are to skyward sword
The skyward sword sky wasn’t even that great, so this is definitely saying something
@@marzgirl99Are you kidding? Skyward Sword is so underrated! The orchestral music, the origin of the beginning of the world, the romance, and the story’s overall structure was what made the game so impactful and amazing
@Hugz4All16 look at what they said again. They were only critiquing the *sky* in skyward sword
This video and its quality are astounding! Thank you so much for this amazing work!
The biggest flaw in my opinion is how nobody in the world remembers you, and also some other story elenents
Can’t believe they fumbled the floating island idea twice
They said they wanted to do it better and then I see that a lot of the islands are similar in size to what you fly past in Skyward Sword.
@@Drew_2152 Size isn't the problem. It's the content. A lot of it is repeated and not much feels special.
3rd Zelda game with floating islands let's goooooo
The weird part is that they nailed it with the Great Sky Island, but then fumbled it with every other island.
I personally think they should've picked either the Sky or the Depths to include in the game and focused development on one of them. As it is, both of them feel pretty undercooked.
@@theophany4935 I think a DLC could descend more bigger islands to the level that the other islands are in and add more to the depths.
The two most distinct memories I have of playing TotK were: 1) the end of the story when Link reaches out to Zelda, feeling the full poetry of the story in that moment. That made me cry. 2) getting on my first horse at the stables near kakirko and hearing the same music from when I did the exact same thing in BotW. That made me sigh
yea they nailed the very beginning and the very end but forgot to put things between those two points lmao
@@highdefinition450 That's just a universal issue with open world games. Linear games made for better storytelling. Twilight Princess is the best example of that.
@@asraarradon4115red dead 2 has a liner story in an open world format. I think totk could do something like that too where there are no memories and a greater emphasis on the story of the questline
@@reyhanfarook8321 Yeah, some companies are better at solving the problem than others, but universal problem still exists. Rockstar has been making gritty, dark, realistic open world titles for over 20 years. So they have a lot of experience doing that. And if you look at the absolute ocean of open world titles we have nowadays, some of their games rise to the top because of that. Most just fill their worlds with collectables to pad "content" but it still feels empty.
@@asraarradon4115 Of course. I just think that the Zelda team should look at games like that for inspiration. Hell I think they already do it to a certain extent with the regional phenomena quests they just need to expand those a lot more and limit the use of memories.
Thanks for this video. Very well produced and lots of the points resonated. I also preferred BotW. For me, the biggest problem in TotK was how easy it is to get around, which you discuss at 45:01. I didn’t use devices. But from early on, whenever I needed to get somewhere, I just glided from a tower or dropped from a sky island. That ease broke the gameplay loop I liked so much in BotW of seeing something in the distance, the challenge of getting there, and sense of accomplishment when you did.
I really just don’t understand what happened with totk. I truly think it could’ve done fine as a sequel, but they just dropped the ball on the story and the sheer repetition of EVERYTHING. They shouldve taken another few years to flesh it all out. Really sucks.
Edit: just wanna point out that it sucks that they really were close to getting the “perfect game” but some things just didnt feel thought out. i guess im just sad about what could have been. The game is great, and ive played it multiple times. But it feels like they were SO close, yknow?
The games director claimed he played and passes the game TWICE . And yet he thought the menu system for arrow fusion was good. Yeah the team was on crunch time and they should have taken more time
Yeah but they were already over 5 years in, the bigger and longer a project, the most risk and costs pile up. In the context of this series it's an odd project from the start, sequels are rare, first follow up to their biggest success, a clear desire to use BOTW's foundation but the new core elements seemed extremely complex. Inevitably they'll have to get ready sooner than later with a new major entry on the next console. Alternatives could have been more BOTW DLC, or a quick sequel but I wonder what they could even have done of any interest in only 2-3 years, or what we got, or an even longer project that will only increasingly lag behind expectations and modern consoles. Or ideally a 5-year project with better priorities but hindsight is 20/20.
Imagine being the designer for TOTK and telling people "no, too many islands, reduce them" only for even the most supportive fans to be like "too little sky islands, make more"
To me a big part of totk's hype was the sky islands, I wanted to do quests up there, meet NPC's, find creative ways to get to other sky islands, imagine wind waker but instead of water you had air and that's how you got to the next island.
Remember how in skyward sword people hated how empty the sky was? You'd think they would've learned that a sky island can never be too cluttered.
I also dislike how there are no indents on the ground from where the islands rose
Uh dude the islands did not rise from the ground...
Rip Jim's hypecanon fantheory 6-year impossible expectations.
@@mbii7667 Shhh, youre interrupting his headcanon.
@@daniel8181what's impossible in adding Loftwing, pegasus or even flying boat? Why couldn't NPCs live in the sky? What's so ridiculous to you? Get a grip
Thing that people seem to forget a lot: The switch can barely run this game, they had to cut out content because it just didn’t fit anymore sadly!
You hit the nail on the head with most of my criticisms as well. My biggest gripes are how the Sheikah tech vanishes with no real explanation and how we just get the same cutscene after all the major dungeons. So much potential that fell short of perfection. Still a good game but had room for so much more.
The continuity issues in TOTK are really bad. It barely even acknowledged it’s own direct predecessor, and it spits on the rest of the series. Imprisoning war/Rauru my ass.
Also how we OBVIOUSLY know Zelda is an evil puppet or something but we have to spend time with each Sage NPC going “wait… th-that’s Zelda! Wait! W-w- what’s she doing?!?! Zelda come backkkkkkkk 😫”
It’s like link doesn’t coordinate his findings with anyone, and YEAH, why is it the same damn cutscene??? I’d rather the game have linearly taken us to each area to uncover the story piece by piece.
All of the lightroots in the depths correspond to a shrine on the surface. I have no idea why they didn't make the surface shrines hidden/concealed until activate their corresponding lightroots in the depths. It would have given the perfect explanation why they were hidden in BotW and incentivized exploring the depths.
How is Zelda blood related when we see Sonia die before ever seeing some sort of heir running around?
Presumably they already had a prince/princess. It's another missed opportunity for a memory: Zelda meeting the young heir could have made the assassination scene so much more impactful
All thats needed is for them to strike a balance between what we have now and the traditional Zelda roots that we know the series for. Its world wouldn't be just wide, but would also have a lot more substance in my opinion.
Nice pfp
The substance part is what bothers me about this game. It's like they were so focused on quantity in terms of explorable areas that they didn't think to add much to do in those vast areas. The game is too empty
What's rough is that they need to actually acknowledge that and do it. All we've heard so far is that they don't understand what people liked about the older games in the first place. Can't fix something when you don't see the problem.
@@that-Potato_guy thanks
@@Flaris What's worse is Aonuma questioning why people would want to go to more traditional games and thinking the new formula is everything the series should be going forward...
Reaching Akkala Citadel was where I physically took damage from the game's missed opportunities. Like what. 100 years ago all this dirt accumulated and it's now a cave? Sure. Prime dungeon material right there and we got horriblins in a cave.
We had a side game that gave Akkala more character than the main games themselves
@@anonosandwich7473 and that's why people should play age of calamity, the maps were designed by zelda team so the areas 100 years before BOTW are canon in that game.
If i believe right they said it was going to be darker than MM but it totally failed if that was the goal. I remember seeing the light dragon in the opening and saying "thats zelda isn't it" they could have held onto that secret better.
This video encapsulates so many of the feelings I had towards this game that I couldn't put into words or quite understand why. Thank you so much for this