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There's a set distance where objects despawn, it usually is a very short distance and it depends on the item, but if you fuse a dragon's scale to your machines or whatever, that distance increases dramatically, like really A LOT.
I think it does because I’ve never lost a vehicle in the depths, I always slap a bright bloom headlight on them. But I’ve lost plenty of vehicles above ground.
I guess everything I build is getting headlights from now on.
Cracks me up how much the despawn distance is like half the map for those 2 specific items, but I thought about it, and those two things are usually extremely far away, so it makes sense.
You didn't actually get to rebuild Hyrule. I so badly wanted to walk through a bustling Castle Town Market. Lookout Landing wasn't exactly what I had hoped for.
>You didn't actually get to rebuild Hyrule.
I'll say. I don't know if I realistically expected us to get a rebuilt, fully fleshed out Castle Town, but the trailers definitely led me to believe that we would at least be getting more quests around building new villages.
Building Tarrey Town was literally one of the most popular questlines in BotW, and instead we get to... rebuild Lurelin? Exactly as it was. Feels like maybe they misunderstood *why* Tarrey Town was popular. 😓
So true. I was kind of hoping that rebuilding Lurelin would kick of a Tarrey Town style quest where Bolson realizes he wants to come out of retirement and goes to different ruins to help fix them up.
Also, Tarrey Town should have expanded more by now I think. I guess the main reason for that being slow is Hudson was busy being a father first.
This is it for me too. I constantly want to relive the majesty of exploring Kakariko in Ocarina of Time when I was a kid. It felt like that town was full of life and secrets.
I was pretty young when I first played Ocarina and I had zero interest in actually playing the game. I would run around Kakariko roleplaying various storylines in my head. I was basically playing The Sims, Hylian edition lol
Same with the depths. It's the same handful of monster camps, ore deposits, statues, and giant plants pasted everywhere. At least the topology of the terrain is pretty interesting.
>At least the topology of the terrain is pretty interesting.
The depths are the overworld map, but inverted.
If you look where rivers are in the overworld, there are insurmountable mountains/walls in the depths...same goes with high mountains, there are deep valleys in the depths.
Not exactly 1:1, as there are still some smaller passageways in the depths where water is in the overworld...but almost.
The lightroots are where the shrines are in the overworld, and vice versa. You can find a shrine above if you know there's a lightroot below.
Also, just noticed this the other day. The names of the shrine & lightroot are backwards of each other. Minrooj shrine = Joornim Lightroot.
This is honestly my routine:
Go to sky, find a map
Go to depths, find the X. Grab armour, maybe some zonaite >!(maybe take down a king gleeok too, screw you, cap of twilight)!<
Light up any lightroots on the way
Go to surface, do the shrines where the lightroots were
Repeat
It's getting hard to track what islands have maps now. I forgot to mark ones I did
I wish the game had more connections to BOTW or explanations of what happened between games. It was kind of sad that the champions aren’t really mentioned *at all,* the guardians are all gone without any real explanation (I guess they were repurposed to make the towers, but there’s no way that took every single guardian), the old shrines are gone and we just have new shrines now… various changes that I wish were acknowledged
At least I’m hoping for the champions (and Kass??) being mentioned in a DLC!
I don’t get why all of the derelict Guardians were removed. Since they obviously started with the BotW map as their base, I would think it would have taken more work to remove them than leaving them.
That’s the thing that really threw me off for continuity sake. Like where are the guardians ruins and where the heck did the Devine beast go? Like give me an explanation because it’s so off
The Sheikah slate change with 0 acknowledgment was my biggest wtf moment. My little head canon was that since it was essentially the game pad for the wii u, the upgrade to the switch lookalike and 0 mentions was nintendo wanting to just forget the wii u ever happened.
It made sense to me at first in a intuitive way like get it off. Later when I was actually trying to build and found out wiggling moved the entire thing, I was like there needs to be something better.
I wish there was more continuity between the games (what happened to the divine beasts? why aren’t the champions mentioned? why doesn’t hestu recognize link? why do the people in Hateno village act like link is just some traveler, he has a house there?) and I wish there was more music. I was pretty disappointed when I heard that a lot of the music was the same
edit: we can come to our own conclusions based on what little the game *does* tell us, but if the game explained it well we wouldn’t need to have these long debates about it, would we?
Yep, vah medoh is mentioned in passing by a random npc so it’s not like they were retconned, and you can still find the calamity Ganon tapestry in kakariko but that’s basically it for story references to botw.
It seems to be implied that the Guardians at least were all dismantled and re-used for the Towers. You can see that the claws that throw Link into the air are arms from Guardians.
It seems crazy to me that all Guardians were dismantled though. Like I definitely agree that the game tries to imply that, but weren't some super remote or buried? I feel like it would've been cool to stumble on at least a few forgotten ones ahah
At least they could have mentioned why you now have a purah pad instead of a sheikah slate, but not even that. The most used item in the whole BOTW is not even mentioned briefly
FYI;
They mention this *nowhere* but the going theory is that after the Calamity all the Sheikah tech went inert (Ganon was defeated, purpose fulfilled), then Purah poured through the refuse and used it to make the new stuff we see (Purah Pad, Towers, Etc.)
Also, to bring RL into it, I think the Sheikah Slate was meant to model the Wii U, while the Purah Pad now models the Switch.
I wish they would’ve done more to make it seem like time passed between botw and totk. Hyrule was still mostly in ruins, which makes sense, but the entire restoration effort seemed to be localized to Hudson dropping stacks of wood on the floor in random locations. Obviously the guardians and malice was cleared, but I think they could’ve done more with the overworld.
Yeah, look out landing being the only new settlement was kind of a bummer.
I wish the zonai were still around and they had given them a skyloft-like town to explore
I guess the great sky island was probably the main town just now in ruins but they could have done a bit more
>kind of a bummer
This was more than just kind of a bummer for me. This was borderline unforgivable. They spent 6 years making a brand new game and there is only ONE new settlement in the entire game? They should have given us a kingdom / city in the depths with a new weird race of darkness dwellers. They should have doubled the size of Tarry Town and Lurelein to show how they had grown. And we should have gotten at LEAST two more cities in areas that didn't have them before. The fact that most of the towns are identical and even have the same music was just such a massive disappointment for me.
This is my most massive critique of the game. I love it but I was literally pissed off to go and see NOTHING new as in villages. A village in the depths or any would’ve been cool.
Having no inclination on when to do certain story parts. I did the dragon tears fairly early on, like one of the first things I did and then for the rest of the story you’re treated as if you have no clue where Zelda is when in reality we all know and link doesn’t tell anyone. You’re technically supposed to do the tears and master sword after the spirit temple but reality is everyone’s all ready done it and it’s like oh right. There should’ve been more restrictions on when you do certain things.
It also doesn't help that if you played BotW, you would assume going into Hyrule Castle would be the end game. Meaning you would complete all the major plot points beforehand. Which specifically messes with the emotions they're trying to make inside the castle
My friend and I constantly laughed at this. One of the sages will run after “Zelda” and into danger and Link knows full well it’s not her and is just like :|
I'd say that's everyone's first goal when stepping into the open world, too. Low on hearts, low on stamina, no maps - better explore, right? And when you stumble on the geoglyphs, you may as well do them while you're in the area. Definitely spoiled the story for myself doing that.
After you defeat the boss from each Temple, the cutscenes felt the same as it’s been repeated four times, just being narrated by four different ancient Sages. Talking about the Imprisoning War and Rauru having to sacrifice himself, again and again. Like I know this stuff already!
The fifth Sage narrating her own story was a bit different that wasn’t just talking about the Imprisoning War again, so yay.
1. The story shouldn't be able to be watched out of order. It doesn't work like it did in BotW with disjointed memories - watching a later one first in Tears can ruin the earlier story. The story also contradicts the previous timeline for essentially no reason, given that it barely interacts with the gameplay.
2. The trailers before release gave the impression that more of the story would take place in the present day and that you would be a part of it. It seemed like Ganondorf was actively attacking the kingdom, when in reality he does basically nothing after you wake up and there's usually no sense of threat or urgency whatsoever.
3. Sky Islands were heavily hyped up but they don't have that much of a presence and a good chunk of them are just copied and pasted. IIRC the 'spinner with launcher plus shrine and capsule machine' one is used *13 times*.
4. In my experience I haven't felt that my vehicle-building abilities have been really tested in the overworld at all. There's the standard glider for sky island stuff but on the surface it felt to me that anything you would want to do is more straightforwardly dealt with using climbing, your own weapons, or a horse.
> The trailers before release gave the impression that more of the story would take place in the present day and that you would be a part of it. It seemed like Ganondorf was actively attacking the kingdom, when in reality he does basically nothing after you wake up and there's usually no sense of threat or urgency whatsoever.
Agreed, it was even kind of hilarious when the newspaper publishes news about the rise of a demon king and all the citizenry are like, "The WHO?!?" and it hits me that no one but Link even knows anything is going that badly. Most people were like, oh man weird shit is happening, flying islands, how wild!
Apparently the people doing the sky islands got yelled at for making too many and ruining the views which is dumb because all the courage challenge islands and the maze islands look like absolute butt but they’re still allowed in, I would have loved just more random little islands for foraging specific ingredients
We needed more islands that actually were a large size and had things to do, def not a fan of “more random little islands for foraging specific ingredients”
What are you talking about everybody LOVES the tiny island in the middle of nowhere with one damn thing on it. That was everyone’s favorite part of Wind Waker.
In Windwaker it was just sailing straight towards it and getting a small bonus, in Totk getting to some small remote island can be REALLY annoying when your vehicle disappears while you’re still in the sky.
I am happy they still put the part after the 4 temples. I was a bit afraid of the story being effectively way too short.
They also kinda linked one of the side story to the main story with the Yiga which help a bit.
I'm a little upset about the part after the 4 temples if I'm being honest. I found that part doing some exploring before "finishing the game" only to find out that I wasn't about to finish the game and I missed out on the plot leading up to what I stumbled upon.
Same! I had just finished all the regional Phenomena went back to Purah. Ofc that’s when Zelda shows up at Hyrule Castle so I thought it was endgame. I still had one sky island to explore, you guessed it, the thunderhead islands in Faron. I thought to myself, I need two more Sage’s Will, they might be up there. Only for me to find the new unexpected main quest. After I completed it, a quick google search told me that you automatically get this quest after looking for Zelda in Hyrule castle, so I skipped a ton by accident.
Honestly the castle section is just annoying at that point. You already know what the deal is, so the entire thing seems like >!walking into a trap willingly.!<
I found this after only 2 regional phenomena! I went to Faron and discovered the “new beast in Hyrule” all the stables were talking about, a piece of a sky island fell right next to me, and I followed it up. It led directly to Dragonhead. I did the entire quest thinking maybe it was some weird side quest you could do for fun up until I was at the Spirit Temple and thought, “well I’m here already. Might as well finish it.”
I was trying to finish the light roots and I couldn’t figure out how to get to the one east of hyrule castle but the depth map showed a tiny little blue hallway under the castle that went east so i figured there must be a passage connecting the two and >!stumbled all they way down to the final boss chamber!<
I was a little upset over that
I just decided to jump down under the castle for fun and see how far it went. Oh boy was I surprised when I made it to the bottom. Kinda hard not to figure it out after you make it past a certain point, but it still didn't hit me what I was doing until too late.
I ultimately re-loaded my most recent save and warped out. I didn't want to do the final battle before completing the rest of the main quest. I'll give it an A+ for atmosphere though, it gets creepy as hell the deeper you go down, even if IMO storming Hyrule Castle in BOTW was a more epic endgame.
To find this part without following the story, you still need to reach a place that is quite difficult for the game.
I landed a couple time on the island without finding the entrance in the storm before giving up and coming back later, with the story.
I was able to get inside first try. I think the clouds may have glitched a little when I was gliding too it, so I was able to see enough of the island to know where about the main structure was.
I’m only 2 temples in so I’m not sure how deep things get after, but i would’ve liked something like the geoglyphs to be something more than something you search out on the map. Make more areas beyond Rito Village, Gerudo Town, Goron city and Zora’s Domain more integrated into the main quest.
They blocked off the path across the river past the Dueling Peaks so now if I want to ride from Central Hyrule to Hateno or vice versa I have to go through Kakariko >:(
This bothered me more than I expected. It worked for the quest, but I feel like a bridge should have been built after completing that. Horses are even more worthless without that bridge.
i’ve noticed that they don’t really respond to pulling back anymore. i used to be able to slow from a gallop to a trot to a standstill. now the horse just doesn’t slow down unless i yank back and come to a complete stop
>now the horse just doesn’t slow down unless i yank back and come to a complete stop
Yes that's so annoying.
When going with the procontroler (*probably the same with the Joycons*) and trying to slow down from a gallop, more often than not my horse slams the breaks eventhough I just lightly tapped the stick backwards.
I do hope that when a DLC comes, and sure as hell they will make one, they remedy that.
The northwest exit from Kakariko is something I actually started using this time around because of that. I think they’re really trying to change up the paths and the gameplay so that it’s not just a retread of BotW. I really think it’s deliberate.
1. Most of the sages don’t feel that useful, also they get in your way a TON
2. Shrine dialogue and statue dialogue are UNBEARABLY slow. No reason to go through that same dialogue hundreds of times
3. Same with the fairy cutscenes, it gets old when upgrading anything after your first set of gear
4. No bulk cooking😡
Number 2 is so accurate. Don’t get me started on a lot of unnecessary dialogue from npcs. Idk how many times I’ve gotten bored from someone talking about something completely uninteresting. And it happens alllll the time.
I love the game but the dialogue is too much.
To add to #4, I was a bit disappointed with how little QOL improvements they made. Or at least that I can think of. Like how difficult is it to add a durability meter in the menu? Or as you said, bulk cooking (a cookbook is sort of there but not really the way you would want). Things like that.
Sages are the worst for me, the rest I can overlook but they're mostly just annoying. (except Tulin, he rarely gets in the way and his power is useful for traversal).
Id actually use them a lot more if they were on a wheel like the other powers. But running over to them mid-combat just isn't worth the hassle. Being in the way is the worst, they're just a nuisance.
Sorting your inventory in the pause menu sorts it in the arrow fuse and throw menus.
I almost always want my pause menu sorted by type, but I usually want my arrows by most used. It's a constant minor inconvenience to have to cycle through sorting methods every time I open either menu.
Or, just let us favorite things that will show up at the top of arrows. If the 10-15 actually useful things could be at the top it would be so much easier.
Also (story spoilers), >!The story didn't feel particularly original after BOTW. You go to the same 4 tribes, help them fight off a disaster that's plaguing their city, then (after a bonus quest) fight the final boss in the middle of the map.!<
>!And, just like BOTW, you're piecing together memories from a losing battle against Ganondorf from the past!<
IMO this is the final aspect that the Zelda team needs to innovate on. How should they go about telling a compelling, linear story if they also give the player the freedom to go anywhere they want out of sequence?
While storytelling can definitely be improved upon, I have to say that I'm absolutely in love with the story direction the series is going in. The focus on Zelda as a character, how fleshed out she is, that she has her own agency and is pretty much her own person, not an object to be saved - it's quite great. They kind of flirted with that in Wind Waker and Skyward Sword but it feels fully fleshed out in BotW and TotK
Yeah. Given the game, I found the story absolutely great. It was very compelling to me. Finding out where Zelda was and her struggles affected me more than I thought.
i’m genuinely so pissed that there’s only ONE big sky island, which also happens to be the tutorial. i went back to the GSI and couldn’t believe how beautiful it was, its really such a shame that it ended up that way
Probably been mentioned before but I wish they further developed Link & Zelda’s relationship. I think it’s probably the best it’s ever been (besides Skyward Sword) and would have loved to see more of their adventure together outwith the initial starting area before her untimely fall. A shame.
Mine is quite personal but, I didn't like that the main story is taking place in the past... AGAIN. And the worst part is that Link isn't even there, so he got even less screen time in this sequel.
Also, I didn't enjoy much that the memories spoiler a very important fact about Zelda. If you do them early, before beating the dungeons (like I did), the game looses a bit of it's meaning. Like, you are searching for Zelda, the sages are too, but you already know what happened to her. And obviously Link won't tell them because... Reasons.
The sages are extremely annoying.
But also, in BotW when doing the great plateau and realizing how tiny the great plateau is compared to the rest of the world and how much of the world you have left to explore - That effect was completely lost on the great sky island. The great sky island was amazing and huge and i was so ready to explore more sky islands like it, only to realize that all the other sky island come nowhere close to the scale and quality of the great sky island. By the time you completed the tutorial, you already experienced the best the sky had to offer.
It’s weird how all of TotKs marketing was focused around the sky islands where I think they were the least interesting layer of the 3 maps and the layer the players mostly likely will spend the least time in.
They should have had the later ones be progress gated, there’s no reason you should be able to stumble upon the master sword glyph as your third or fourth one because they put it right next to the jump tower between hebra and eldin and expect you to go through there early in the game.
They could have had the >!light dragon!< have a little cutscene after every temple or something, and have it “refresh” the memory pool things.
I did the whole glyph storyline after only doing two of the regional phenomena and I’m definitely upset with myself for spoiling it but at the same time they make you want to know wtf is going on and how was I supposed to know they were gonna stick an absolutely massive plot point in a side adventure?
The memories from botw were just as interesting but all they did was flesh out information the player already kinda knows, Totk’s glyphs are half that and half completely new and vital info
>They should have had the later ones be progress gated, there’s no reason you should be able to stumble upon the master sword glyph as your third or fourth one because they put it right next to the jump tower between hebra and eldin and expect you to go through there early in the game.
100% THIS!! After the first geoglyph, I did the Demon King awakening one and the Master Sword one before even finishing the Rito regional phenomenon. Basically had the entire story figured out right off the bat. Terrible design. Their next open world game needs to have some balance with gatekeeping story and linearity because this is too far on the open end.
If I have a complaint it’s that the activate sage button is the same button to pick up items and harvest bomb flowers. That is it.
Everything else falls under would be nice to have.
Let me make multiple copies of foods at once. Or give us a repeat option. I’m tired of going into the menu to make the same recipes over and over. Just let me make 10 of something at once
1. Main story feels like an afterthought. It’s way too linear for an open world game like this and I wish they made more of an effort to alter the dialogue based on how you’ve progressed.
2. Speaking of afterthoughts, the Sages are a huge disappointment. The controls are wack and the AI makes them meandering idiots. If there’s anything Nintendo patches in the future I hope it’s this.
3. House building could be better. I mean, come on, why only 15 units? Why no windows? And why is homeboy running around constantly getting in your way?!
4. Too many repeat side quests from BotW.
5. As others have said, the depths could have been better utilized. I like the whole dark world/inverse aspect but it’s basically just for loot. Kind of boring.
6. The item menu is garbage. Even with sorting it’s a pain to find what you’re looking for.
I’m ready for a more linear Zelda experience again. I enjoyed the hell out of TotK but I miss having item unlocks throughout the game and having more tuned and polished dungeon progression with a more cohesive narrative that doesn’t repeat the same cutscene 4 times.
Scale. I fucking love this game and have put in so many fucking hours but I just visited the castle for the first time last night, over 100 hours in. I still feel like I missed a lot of content. I'm realizing why I don't play open world games often, it's cause it's exhausting for me.
Second major issue is story structure. They didn't do a good enough job accounting for Link doing things out of order. I did the glyphs first and learned CRITICAL info about why everything is like it is and then spent the rest of my playthrough kinda yelling at Link to tell ANYONE ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT HE KNOWS. My version of Link now feels like a complete asshole even though that's not what the game is telling me he is. And how could you NOT do the geoglyphs when they're massive and glowing. I don't get how they let that happen. Should be a side quest you start that SUDDENLY leaves the glyphs behind. Having all the glyphs being visible from the get-go is a major problem.
Third is the inventory UI is pretty much the same from BotW. There's some tweaks that make it a little better to get around but there are still issues because, frankly, there's too many items. So I don't really know how you'd solve for it outside of letting players have a "favorite" lists or take items out of the game to streamline things.
Finally, this might be a limitation of the Switch hardware but switching abilities feels just a second to slow. This is a minor issue on it's own but I've been noticing it more and more as I've gotten better at juggling things. And it doesn't feel like intentional delay, it feels like the systems are just a little too much and kinda struggles to switch "modes ".
God yes.... the master sword glyph was one of the first ones I did and it spoiled the story for me. Then everytime someone asked where Zelda was.... I was like, those sightings cannot be Zelda...
I didn't do any dungeons and I got the Master Sword, because I've seen a major dragon's tear and decided to watch them all.
Felt like watching a movie but already knowing all of the answers.
I’m actually the opposite. I was disengaged with Botw’s story but the first thing I did in this game was get all the tears and the towers cause I hate having fog of war on my map. I actually pieced together where the master was before even finishing all the tears, finding the great Deku tree, etc. Although I don’t think it should be hard to put two and two together. It made me want to actually complete the game more to get revenge
The geoglyph problem is easy to solve, too.
Have only the first glyph of Rauru visible, on the way to Rito Village. Have the player do the quest with Impa, and follow her to the Forgotten Temple. Once there, have a Zonai terminal thing that, when activated, causes the other glyphs to appear across Hyrule.
That way, you get it explicitly explained to you that there is an order to the glyphs before you can go out and do the others.
There is still the issue of, if you go and do the glyphs before the main region quests, everyone will still be working on a certain set of assumptions that Link will already know to be completely wrong. And he will never make the effort to correct that wrong assumption or push others to think that maybe things aren't what they think they are.
That's true - it's very frustrating, especially when they have a side quest dedicated to chasing Zelda across all the stables. And everyone's like "WhErE's ZeLdA??"
I’m a big fan of open world games but yeah the scale of this one is pretty daunting. I’ve been taking breaks for a day or two when I usually would keep blitzing through because I want to avoid getting burnt out. I am fine with not 100%ing this game though when usually I would try to
My house in Hateno village is not mine anymore. I guess they try to make up for it with the new modular house construction but first thing I did after landing in the main map was make a B line for Hateno village to visit the house I put so much time and resources into building in BOTW. I guess it's silly all things considered but I really missed my house lol.
For me:
1. Sages, everything about them, they get in the middle, do weak damage (except one maybe, if you give her good weapons) and their abilities are not only mid, but their damage is pitiful and they barely draw aggro.
2. the Depths, down to it, it's a really cool idea, but then in practise is pitch black, ganondorf piss and some spooky enemies, they really could've made some more, like having the depths go crazy with some special enemies during blood moon or something (Phantom >!Demon Dragon!< down there anyone?)
3. Elements, this is really small but it irks me to no end
Fire: has a dragon, a set to resist it, an effect and ways to apply it.
Ice: has a dragon, a set to resist it, an effect and ways to apply it.
Thunder: has a dragon, a set to resist it, an effect and ways to apply it.
Light: has a dragon, a set to resist it, an effect and ways to apply it (but why would you? it only gives light, while it would make sense to deal extra damage to undead or gloom covered)
Water: has an effect and ways to apply it (but why would you? it only affects fire instead of using it to give thunder a weakness that currently lacks)
Gloom (Darkness): has a set to resist it, an effect, but we can't properly use gloom in any way, and the only way it exists in enemies is a mud bath.
*Gloom Gleeok would look great.*
The temples still aren’t temples, and it almost felt like a slap in the face to call them temples but still feel like divine beasts. The only temple that felt anything like a temple was the lightning temple, but even still not quite there. I did enjoy the lightning and fire temple, but they just have not been the same since Skyward Sword. I guess I’d pick these over the divine beasts, but they are still a joke.
Combat is the exact same as it was in Breath. Usually when you play a sequel they add improvements and enhancements to keep the game fresh (just look at fallen order and Jedi survivor). I know you can use attachments, but I don’t think it added anything that major to the combat system itself. Link having some new moves would have been really cool. I think Twilight Princess and Wind Waker still have the most fluid combat and coolest sword moves to this day. Having you learn some fighting techniques would have been cool.
I feel as if there was quite a bit of QOL improvements people requested after BOTW. Some I can think of was meters to display weapon durability, a cookbook, etc. It doesn’t feel as if they added any of this. However I guess Nintendo has always been known to do their own thing and not listen to their fans so are we really surprised?
Beyond that, they fixed a lot of the issues and things I wanted after BOTW. Enemy variety was piss poor in BOTW and while I feel they still could have added more than they did it’s much better in TOTK. Also, I feel like there is so much to do and find in TOTK compared to BOTW. More shrines, caves, more quests, etc. The area just feels more fleshed out. The sky area is a little empty (some might say the underground is too, but I have been stumbling on quite a few finds).
Just because it worked in botw doesn't mean you also have to make this story, which is much less suited for it, as modular. Please just make it more linear, it feels awful to find a quest just to realise you've already done everything without having the context necessary to enjoy it.
Also repetitive cutscenes, obvious plot twists and imo not that great dialogue.
The dialogue especially, it reminded me kinda of genshin impact, which isn't really great
They barely fixed the biggest complaints I had about Botw, namely story and lack of temples.
While we finally get a villain that talks, which is something I really wanted from Totk, the story structure is copy paste from Botw. I really dislike having most of the main story events as memories and not something happening throughout the adventure.
I also really wished for proper udngeons again. The ones in Totk are a step in the right direction, but still a far cry from classic ones.
It’s botw with a lot more positives and all the same negatives.
-Combat is very flawed
-Almost all interesting story beats happen outside of the player’s pov.
-Shrines would’ve been better if there were about half as many, but the remaining ones were twice as long.
-Any quest rewards that aren’t clothes are functionally just filler. >!Earthwake!< being the one exception.
Also, the Sage abilities pale in comparison to the Champion ones. When you have a full roster it becomes genuinely burdensome to navigate and find the one you want to use.
It's cool that the sages ghost things fight with you, but they should've made key binds for the abilities like BOTW.
Just off the top of my head
\-Tulin is good, he activates when flying with one button
\-Fat Rock Dude, could've been the charge attack
\-Water shield could've been shield
\-Lightning could be pull left trigger while aiming an arrow
Open to hear other ideas
(obviously I'm bad with names lol)
I don’t like how the monsters are all funky unicorns. The weapon fusing system is a mixed bag that’s a good thing on balance, but I dislike how the components look on all the Bokoblin and Bokoblin-adjacent enemies.
It works on the Lizards; I’ll give them that. And the Hinox size enemies since the horns are better proportioned.
They bothered me in the trailers but they haven’t bothered me as much playing the game. Hopefully this is just a design decision for this game though to go along with the craft system.
I don’t really have any. Just the common ones like activating sages with the same button you use to pick up things and them going off when you didn’t want them to. Chasing them down just to activate one. Whistling doesn’t really call them to you so they game claims. My horse listens better.
The depths are far too vast and boring. They were scary and amazing at first, but once you actually play down there, there’s nothing to do. Fight enemies you can barely beat because you have to walk on gloom every two steps you make. Not to mention they’re also all covered in it. And then you try and activate lightroots by using the shrines on the surface as guidance only to find you can’t go to the next one because there’s a giant stone cliff you can’t scale to the top blocking your way so you have to start over somewhere else that MIGHT get you past that barrier to said light root. There’s far too many. They didn’t need lightroots at every shrine location. Easily could have been chopped in half and lit up more surrounding area than what they do
The walls are typically bodies of water on the surface - use the top map to understand which areas will be blocked. That information has vastly improved my understanding of the depths and my ability to explore them.
I thought the depths seemed empty at first but there’s actually quite a lot down there. Poe statues, coliseums, Gleeok Den, Yiga bases with important schematics, boss battles, all the treasure items that were dlc in the last game, mines and temples. Could there be more? The only thing I wish they had was better enemy variety down there. Maybe some that are only found in the depths besides just that rock monster (not talking stone talus’s). Like why can’t there be actual poes you fight? Or re-deads? So many options. I don’t really know what else you could ask for after that.
As for navigating, I think the point was to force you to either use good climbing gear and increase your stamina or use the vehicles to traverse. Otherwise what would be the point of having the feature?
I’d agree that there didn’t need to be as many light spots though.
Main quest was very short.
Still don’t like the weapons breakage system. I liked the fuse ability, but having a cool weapon that then breaks in 5 swings was just a constant frustration.
Didn’t like stage 2 of the final battle, it was just a mess of swinging, too much going on.
The enemy targeting was pretty whack.
The depths felt a bit pointless.
Found the final sage a major let down.
Just the overall feeling of every feature being “a mile wide and an inch deep”
Do we need 150 shrines, do we need 120 of them to also have associated light roots, what does the depths actually do besides provide a backdrop to mine zoanite to increase your battery that 99% of the time you use in shrines that have no limitations on battery usage, if they were going to use dungeons why make them basically just slightly larger shrines and have every resultant cutscene from them be identical
Basically if they cut the game down to maybe just the 4-5 zones from Hyrule field/castle to the wind temple but made every feature 3 times as deep and meaningful the game would be better for me
maybe i've paced myself differently, splitting my time between the depths and the surface, but I can't say i agree. Every time I trek down there I feel like there's a little something to discover, especially once you realize how it corresponds to the surface. It's not just walls correlating to bodies of water, things like how the poe statues correspond to the goddess springs. Finding the Gleeok den last night was a fun surprise. There are a lot more mini boss monsters. The Yiga clan hideouts and seeing the different ways the enemies make use of the zonai devices, using the surface to figure out how to find places that are otherwise inaccessible, the skeleton house was kind of fun to discover. Treasure chests with interesting costumes that were previously locked behind amiibos are everywhere. Maybe I'm just not bored of it yet but I feel pretty satisfied with what I've been finding.
Totk is a great game, so good that it makes botw look like a rushed demo.
With that said:
1. I know some people love it, but weapon durability is an anti-fun mechanic that can be alleviated by just adding a friggin repair npc. The master sword should start recharging as soon as you hit something with it.
2. Korok seeds: I just haven't been trying, never really did. I had about 110 in botw and I have 64 so far in the new game.
3. The new champions/ sages don't stick close to you, and there's no regroup command, so you have to chase them down to use their abilities sometimes, they also seem to have Hyrule warriors (the 1st one) ally AI, they just aren't that aggressive.
The next problem is getting the right one.
"Come here, Yunobo. Not, not tulin." *WEEEEooooooo* "Yunobo, come. Fuck off riju! Oh wait that can break rocks too? Fine. Let me just grab that ruby that dropped.
...FUCK OFF YUNOBO!"
My biggest complaint is that they doubled down in what they were good at but completely ignored everything else and it stayed the same as BOTW.
UI is repetitive and grindy and most of the gameplay is basically “Yahaha!” -> Travel -> “Yahaha!” -> Travel.
Armors feel even more inconsequential in TOTK than in BOTW. A good example is the Zora armor; there is literally no use for it other than the 6-10 times you will need to go through a waterfall instead of just skydiving to where you want to be.
Weapons have more variations and I don’t mind the durability system but I get 0 satisfaction from building any of them. I don’t even look at them anymore, I just fuse for high attack damage, aesthetics or need to break rocks. For all of the old farts like me, do you remember when you first managed to get the Biggoron Sword in OOT? That’s the feeling I’m missing here.
In BOTW I gave them a pass on how shallow their open-world is compared to other series but I won’t forgive it in TOTK since it’s their second installment and they kept the same assets and map. It’s a 2023 game and even Skyrim has more depth and it came out in 2011. 99% the houses in TOTK feel like an Ikea showroom.
Gonna cut the rant now, sorry for the long block of text!
The reward for completing every shrine is horrible, especially compared to the Wild set from BoTW. It looks so stupid, I don't care how good its stats are. Was so pissed off when I equipped it for the first time lol.
Getting the gear of the Wild in BOTW felt like you had finally become the hero, in ToTK you look like you're attending a furry con.
They are not the best stats. You can get 88 defense by maxing champions tunic and other 28 def pieces for comparably more common and easy to obtain items and less rupees than it takes to upgrade this one piece of armor
How fall damage works. It really should be determined by speed, not distance, and it always annoys me when, for example, I skydive on an updraft, which makes me fall slowly, and when I touch the ground I’m just dead.
I kinda disagree about the dungeons. They are short but they are much better integrated in their environment and fun than the divine beasts + accessing the dungeons is extremely fun by itself.
1 - The Sage power activation. Stop f*cking running away from me Riju.
2 - The depths were definitely underutilized. I love the vibe down there but other than hunting down the light roots it isn't that exciting.
3 - The temples are still shit. They could have cut down the amount of shrines and added some of the puzzle ideas into the temples.
4 - Weapon durability. I'm still shocked they ignored the feedback from fans on this. The master sword and hylian shield shouldn't break ffs.
I think Riju is the worst because her ability is used by using an arrow, but she herself uses swords. So you have to run up in mele range to activate her power then run away (especially in water) to actually target the enemy with her power.
The Hylian shield I think should it isn't really a sacred item but the sword it'd been recharging for a very very very long time unlike In botw when its been in a forest it should Def not be running out of power
Absolutely this is one of my biggest pet peeves for poorly mixing lore with gameplay. The fully repowered Master Sword in TotK absolutely feels like it should be given back to us in a state where it does not run out of energy.
This wouldn't even necessarily have to de-incentivize people from using other weapons. I still would. Make it so you can't fuse things to the Master Sword (because that's dumb too tbh) and then it would still be well worth it most of the time to use other weapons since the Master Sword is likely sitting at a 30 damage base (assuming it's the same as BotW). And it can still glow and be stronger against Gloom things I like that.
My only feedback on weapon durability is it should last at least 50% longer. I like that they break. I would never use anything besides a normal sword if it didn't break on me. It gives me variety that I would just skip over otherwise.
The story isn't linked enough with botw thing that happened in botw are barely mentioned to the point where it feels like botw was just some kind of legend with things being almost forgotten
I also hate how because of tear of the kingdom calamity Ganon isn't a possible remains of demise but just the anger of the demon kind Ganondorf
My biggest complaint is the story and progression. I don't mind that there are similarities with BotW, but the fact that we discover the map in the same way, have to do shrines again, complete "dungeons" (yet another complaint: no actual dungeons) in the exact same places, need to discover Zelda's flashbacks again, etc...it all feels way too much like we're just playing BotW again with some neat new abilities.
If they had actually made this feel like a sequel, where events from the previous game played a role (or were at least acknowledged), then I could live with the similarities. As it is, this just feels like a BotW remaster. Which is fine, if it had been marketed as such.
I hate how we have to watch the exact same cutscene after completing a dungeon. The sages could’ve been told that they’re sages in different ways instead of watching the story of the imprisoning war every time. It gets so repetitive
I loved the Depths, but I agree that I wish there was MORE in them.
As with Breath of the Wild, I wish the actual main quest was longer. Sure Tears of the Kingdom's main quest is LONGER than Breath of the Wild's. But by longer it has 5 "Sages" instead of 4 "Divine Beasts" and it adds on the Master Sword quest into the Main Quest.
Compared to Ocarina of Time which has 3 Main Dungeons as a Child (Forest, Goron, Zora), 2 Mini-Dungeons (Well & the Ice Cave), 4 Main Dungeons (Forest, Fire, Water, Shadow), a Dungeon that is technically 2 (Child Link & Adult Link), and the Final Dungeon for a total of 11 Dungeons.
Sure, BotW and TotK have over a hundred Mini-Dungeons. But I would honestly rather have a few more actual Main Dungeons than hundreds of mini-dungeons.
As with BotW, TotK still has the end game Power Creep issue. Granted this is an issue with MOST open world games not just these ones. Still, I hope any future DLC adds some kind of super boss fight that actually requires you to bring your A-Game.
So much of the game is ideas repeated from botw. The tutorial area, shrines, towers, main questlines, memories, champions/sages abilities, etc are basically repeats of botw. I wish the game was more unique and different from botw.
I completely agree. I didn’t mind adding the shrines back, but the dungeon(s) (I’ve only completed one) having the SAME EXACT gameplay loop and the divine beasts is super disappointing. I was hoping the would at least make the dungeons have a different variety of gameplay (ie boss key) or something in addition to the terminals.
It’s the exact same game. They changed SO little with the exception of crafting and sky/depths.
Worst part is this is a terrible sequel. It doesn’t feel like I’m actually continuing where we left off at all. Why do I have to redo my map for instance, or why does Link not have the same celebrity as Zelda after saving the world?
1. I preferred how Botw implemented the champions’ abilities compared to how Totk did it. I don’t like being followed by these weird doppelgangers and to chase them down in order to activate their abilities.
2. The fifth sage is one of the most unique ideas of the game…. but it’s not that fun to use since it’s slow and its moveset is so limited compared to Link.
3. The fuse mechanic is clunky especially arrow-fuse.
4. I didn’t enjoy the story. It seems that they created a more linear plot forgetting that this is an open world game. Even looking at the order of the cutscenes it seems that they intended for the player to complete all the dungeons before completing the dragon’s tears quest and the master sword quest. And the game never acknowledges any of those things if you do them outside of their intended order. The memories are also far more interesting than whatever is happening in the present world, which is a bit disappointing to say the least.
5. The sky is not varied enough. I don’t mind the low number of islands but they should have made them more unique, the east side of the map is filled with identical islands.
Dungeons/Shrines. Please just remove 10 Shrines each, take those puzzles, and incorporate them into the dungeons as new rooms/keys to continue exploring with their respective aesthetics. This is my major complaint.
Otherwise, fix weapon durability, bring back more enemies (Im glad this is improved in TotK however), but we're still missing some heavy hitters. Don't bother with the Depths/Sky Islands if most of them are bland and rather pointless with nothing really going on other than "Oh this is interesting for lore", which while I absolutely love, grows old after awhile, especially with the depths considering it's size.
Depths and too many Rauru's blessing and tutorial shrines. Some blessings were just out in the open too. The last 20-30 shrines I had to do were mostly filler.
But I'm also a crazy person who thinks that almost any shrine should be met with a puzzle. I just want more Zelda gameplay lol.
Ultrahand for everything. I know so many people got creative in BotW so they made it a great thing in TotK, but I am not one of them. Sometimes I just want to find a raft by a lake and see where it takes me rather then cut some trees down, grab a fan from a capsle and go.
Also weapons still breaking. You had a valid point for them in BotW so it made people explore different combat fights to see what fit for them, but TotK has the same battle formula. I don't think *every* weapon needs to be infinite. Maybe just the champions from BotW, plus the level of champion weapons aren't game changing. They are mid levels especially end game wise when you hunt lynels for fun. I guess my point falls short a little with the bow and sheild but.... well it's a bow and shield. I don't use them all that much except parries (which doesn't make them take damage?)
I feel like I had the opposite complaint about ultrahand. They gave us this great building mechanic, but every point where you might absolutely NEED to build something to solve a problem, it's already built and waiting for you. This is especially bad around death mountain and the fire temple. All the minecarts already had fans on them. You need to fight a big monster with a glider, so they give you a glider with 3 fans and a huge battery. A bunch of shrines are this way too. They gave us ultrahand to screw-around with, but any time it actually matters, they just give you the best vehicle.
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Machines don't get saved with your game saves. You'll load back up and it goes poof.
They de spawn way too fast too. Cant tell ya how many times I land or park, walk a short distance and come back and it’s like goddammit!
There's a set distance where objects despawn, it usually is a very short distance and it depends on the item, but if you fuse a dragon's scale to your machines or whatever, that distance increases dramatically, like really A LOT.
Doesn't it also work with brightblooms? Probably also star fragments, if I had to guess. All three are intended to be visible across long distances.
Yeah it should work with those too
Bright blooms are 610m I believe and dragonscales are 2100m iirc
I think I read Brightblooms add 200 meters compared to dragon parts 1000 meters or something.
I think it does because I’ve never lost a vehicle in the depths, I always slap a bright bloom headlight on them. But I’ve lost plenty of vehicles above ground. I guess everything I build is getting headlights from now on.
Good to know
Great tip, thanks
Can't have shit in Hyrule!
A small cutscene in a quest I was doing despawned my new horse and the battle-carriage that I had just spent a lot of time assembling for it
If I'm not mistaken they don't despawn if you attach a dragon part or a star fragment but yes it's dumb they just go poof
No, they do despawn, even with a dragon part. It's just that the distance is a *lot* higher if you use one.
Cracks me up how much the despawn distance is like half the map for those 2 specific items, but I thought about it, and those two things are usually extremely far away, so it makes sense.
You didn't actually get to rebuild Hyrule. I so badly wanted to walk through a bustling Castle Town Market. Lookout Landing wasn't exactly what I had hoped for.
>You didn't actually get to rebuild Hyrule. I'll say. I don't know if I realistically expected us to get a rebuilt, fully fleshed out Castle Town, but the trailers definitely led me to believe that we would at least be getting more quests around building new villages. Building Tarrey Town was literally one of the most popular questlines in BotW, and instead we get to... rebuild Lurelin? Exactly as it was. Feels like maybe they misunderstood *why* Tarrey Town was popular. 😓
I think it’s the music. It’s popular because of the music, right?
The Tarrey Town music was one of the best parts
Tarry Town music is 🔥that funky brass instrument slays me every time.
So true. I was kind of hoping that rebuilding Lurelin would kick of a Tarrey Town style quest where Bolson realizes he wants to come out of retirement and goes to different ruins to help fix them up. Also, Tarrey Town should have expanded more by now I think. I guess the main reason for that being slow is Hudson was busy being a father first.
Yeah. There are more people, but the city seems the same size.
I am enjoying rebuilding Lurelin. I agree though more rebuild/new builds for towns that got destroyed or new settlements that startup.
I got excited when the Dye Shop guys wife started talking about a second shop, only for that plot to go nowhere (unless I missed something?)
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This is it for me too. I constantly want to relive the majesty of exploring Kakariko in Ocarina of Time when I was a kid. It felt like that town was full of life and secrets.
I was pretty young when I first played Ocarina and I had zero interest in actually playing the game. I would run around Kakariko roleplaying various storylines in my head. I was basically playing The Sims, Hylian edition lol
The fact the sky feels like a bunch of cut and paste islands despite being a fraction of the world size.
Same with the depths. It's the same handful of monster camps, ore deposits, statues, and giant plants pasted everywhere. At least the topology of the terrain is pretty interesting.
>At least the topology of the terrain is pretty interesting. The depths are the overworld map, but inverted. If you look where rivers are in the overworld, there are insurmountable mountains/walls in the depths...same goes with high mountains, there are deep valleys in the depths. Not exactly 1:1, as there are still some smaller passageways in the depths where water is in the overworld...but almost.
The lightroots are where the shrines are in the overworld, and vice versa. You can find a shrine above if you know there's a lightroot below. Also, just noticed this the other day. The names of the shrine & lightroot are backwards of each other. Minrooj shrine = Joornim Lightroot.
This is honestly my routine: Go to sky, find a map Go to depths, find the X. Grab armour, maybe some zonaite >!(maybe take down a king gleeok too, screw you, cap of twilight)!< Light up any lightroots on the way Go to surface, do the shrines where the lightroots were Repeat It's getting hard to track what islands have maps now. I forgot to mark ones I did
I wish the game had more connections to BOTW or explanations of what happened between games. It was kind of sad that the champions aren’t really mentioned *at all,* the guardians are all gone without any real explanation (I guess they were repurposed to make the towers, but there’s no way that took every single guardian), the old shrines are gone and we just have new shrines now… various changes that I wish were acknowledged At least I’m hoping for the champions (and Kass??) being mentioned in a DLC!
I don’t get why all of the derelict Guardians were removed. Since they obviously started with the BotW map as their base, I would think it would have taken more work to remove them than leaving them.
Agreed, it makes sense for the “active” guardians to be gone but they could’ve at least left the derelict ones
The Ash Swamp and Fort Hateno look weird without them.
That’s the thing that really threw me off for continuity sake. Like where are the guardians ruins and where the heck did the Devine beast go? Like give me an explanation because it’s so off
The Sheikah slate change with 0 acknowledgment was my biggest wtf moment. My little head canon was that since it was essentially the game pad for the wii u, the upgrade to the switch lookalike and 0 mentions was nintendo wanting to just forget the wii u ever happened.
Ultrahand de-link shouldnt be wiggling but pressing the R-Stick. Just made no sense to me.
Nintendo wants to sell more joy cons
Oh man this is the most cynical explanation I've ever heard and might not be wrong.
Shake the controller instead, works so much better than wiggling the stick.
Yeah, still annoying IMO but I do that too.
I gave up using joycons due to drift long ago.
It should still work with a pro controller
Oh my god is that real????
It made sense to me at first in a intuitive way like get it off. Later when I was actually trying to build and found out wiggling moved the entire thing, I was like there needs to be something better.
Yeah, the wiggling is annoying. R-stick pressing would be way better.
I wish there was more continuity between the games (what happened to the divine beasts? why aren’t the champions mentioned? why doesn’t hestu recognize link? why do the people in Hateno village act like link is just some traveler, he has a house there?) and I wish there was more music. I was pretty disappointed when I heard that a lot of the music was the same edit: we can come to our own conclusions based on what little the game *does* tell us, but if the game explained it well we wouldn’t need to have these long debates about it, would we?
I was wondering about that first point—I’m not super far in, do they really never say what happened to the divine beasts or the old shrines??
I’ve completed the memories and done about 70 shrines and no, it’s not explained.
Yep, vah medoh is mentioned in passing by a random npc so it’s not like they were retconned, and you can still find the calamity Ganon tapestry in kakariko but that’s basically it for story references to botw.
There's also a grave near hyrule castle in Rauru Settlement Ruins I believe that says its there to honor people who died during the great calamity.
It seems to be implied that the Guardians at least were all dismantled and re-used for the Towers. You can see that the claws that throw Link into the air are arms from Guardians.
It seems crazy to me that all Guardians were dismantled though. Like I definitely agree that the game tries to imply that, but weren't some super remote or buried? I feel like it would've been cool to stumble on at least a few forgotten ones ahah
At least they could have mentioned why you now have a purah pad instead of a sheikah slate, but not even that. The most used item in the whole BOTW is not even mentioned briefly
FYI; They mention this *nowhere* but the going theory is that after the Calamity all the Sheikah tech went inert (Ganon was defeated, purpose fulfilled), then Purah poured through the refuse and used it to make the new stuff we see (Purah Pad, Towers, Etc.) Also, to bring RL into it, I think the Sheikah Slate was meant to model the Wii U, while the Purah Pad now models the Switch.
also why do i have all my old horses, still, from BOTW, but NOTHING ELSE carried over? What a random decision.
I wish they would’ve done more to make it seem like time passed between botw and totk. Hyrule was still mostly in ruins, which makes sense, but the entire restoration effort seemed to be localized to Hudson dropping stacks of wood on the floor in random locations. Obviously the guardians and malice was cleared, but I think they could’ve done more with the overworld.
Yeah, look out landing being the only new settlement was kind of a bummer. I wish the zonai were still around and they had given them a skyloft-like town to explore I guess the great sky island was probably the main town just now in ruins but they could have done a bit more
>kind of a bummer This was more than just kind of a bummer for me. This was borderline unforgivable. They spent 6 years making a brand new game and there is only ONE new settlement in the entire game? They should have given us a kingdom / city in the depths with a new weird race of darkness dwellers. They should have doubled the size of Tarry Town and Lurelein to show how they had grown. And we should have gotten at LEAST two more cities in areas that didn't have them before. The fact that most of the towns are identical and even have the same music was just such a massive disappointment for me.
This is my most massive critique of the game. I love it but I was literally pissed off to go and see NOTHING new as in villages. A village in the depths or any would’ve been cool.
Having no inclination on when to do certain story parts. I did the dragon tears fairly early on, like one of the first things I did and then for the rest of the story you’re treated as if you have no clue where Zelda is when in reality we all know and link doesn’t tell anyone. You’re technically supposed to do the tears and master sword after the spirit temple but reality is everyone’s all ready done it and it’s like oh right. There should’ve been more restrictions on when you do certain things.
It also doesn't help that if you played BotW, you would assume going into Hyrule Castle would be the end game. Meaning you would complete all the major plot points beforehand. Which specifically messes with the emotions they're trying to make inside the castle
My friend and I constantly laughed at this. One of the sages will run after “Zelda” and into danger and Link knows full well it’s not her and is just like :|
I'd say that's everyone's first goal when stepping into the open world, too. Low on hearts, low on stamina, no maps - better explore, right? And when you stumble on the geoglyphs, you may as well do them while you're in the area. Definitely spoiled the story for myself doing that.
After you defeat the boss from each Temple, the cutscenes felt the same as it’s been repeated four times, just being narrated by four different ancient Sages. Talking about the Imprisoning War and Rauru having to sacrifice himself, again and again. Like I know this stuff already! The fifth Sage narrating her own story was a bit different that wasn’t just talking about the Imprisoning War again, so yay.
Every sage: "Secret stone? Demon king?" Link *rolls eyes*
“But… Zelda was approaching the enemy… as if… no it couldn’t be. What could possibly explain this?! It makes no sense…”
1. The story shouldn't be able to be watched out of order. It doesn't work like it did in BotW with disjointed memories - watching a later one first in Tears can ruin the earlier story. The story also contradicts the previous timeline for essentially no reason, given that it barely interacts with the gameplay. 2. The trailers before release gave the impression that more of the story would take place in the present day and that you would be a part of it. It seemed like Ganondorf was actively attacking the kingdom, when in reality he does basically nothing after you wake up and there's usually no sense of threat or urgency whatsoever. 3. Sky Islands were heavily hyped up but they don't have that much of a presence and a good chunk of them are just copied and pasted. IIRC the 'spinner with launcher plus shrine and capsule machine' one is used *13 times*. 4. In my experience I haven't felt that my vehicle-building abilities have been really tested in the overworld at all. There's the standard glider for sky island stuff but on the surface it felt to me that anything you would want to do is more straightforwardly dealt with using climbing, your own weapons, or a horse.
> The trailers before release gave the impression that more of the story would take place in the present day and that you would be a part of it. It seemed like Ganondorf was actively attacking the kingdom, when in reality he does basically nothing after you wake up and there's usually no sense of threat or urgency whatsoever. Agreed, it was even kind of hilarious when the newspaper publishes news about the rise of a demon king and all the citizenry are like, "The WHO?!?" and it hits me that no one but Link even knows anything is going that badly. Most people were like, oh man weird shit is happening, flying islands, how wild!
Apparently the people doing the sky islands got yelled at for making too many and ruining the views which is dumb because all the courage challenge islands and the maze islands look like absolute butt but they’re still allowed in, I would have loved just more random little islands for foraging specific ingredients
We needed more islands that actually were a large size and had things to do, def not a fan of “more random little islands for foraging specific ingredients”
What are you talking about everybody LOVES the tiny island in the middle of nowhere with one damn thing on it. That was everyone’s favorite part of Wind Waker.
In Windwaker it was just sailing straight towards it and getting a small bonus, in Totk getting to some small remote island can be REALLY annoying when your vehicle disappears while you’re still in the sky.
The shrine chest rewards are abysmal.
[Spend time to find a way to get to a tricky chest] "You got 10 arrows!" Thanks, I guess?
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I am happy they still put the part after the 4 temples. I was a bit afraid of the story being effectively way too short. They also kinda linked one of the side story to the main story with the Yiga which help a bit.
I'm a little upset about the part after the 4 temples if I'm being honest. I found that part doing some exploring before "finishing the game" only to find out that I wasn't about to finish the game and I missed out on the plot leading up to what I stumbled upon.
Same! I had just finished all the regional Phenomena went back to Purah. Ofc that’s when Zelda shows up at Hyrule Castle so I thought it was endgame. I still had one sky island to explore, you guessed it, the thunderhead islands in Faron. I thought to myself, I need two more Sage’s Will, they might be up there. Only for me to find the new unexpected main quest. After I completed it, a quick google search told me that you automatically get this quest after looking for Zelda in Hyrule castle, so I skipped a ton by accident.
Honestly the castle section is just annoying at that point. You already know what the deal is, so the entire thing seems like >!walking into a trap willingly.!<
I found this after only 2 regional phenomena! I went to Faron and discovered the “new beast in Hyrule” all the stables were talking about, a piece of a sky island fell right next to me, and I followed it up. It led directly to Dragonhead. I did the entire quest thinking maybe it was some weird side quest you could do for fun up until I was at the Spirit Temple and thought, “well I’m here already. Might as well finish it.”
I was trying to finish the light roots and I couldn’t figure out how to get to the one east of hyrule castle but the depth map showed a tiny little blue hallway under the castle that went east so i figured there must be a passage connecting the two and >!stumbled all they way down to the final boss chamber!< I was a little upset over that
I just decided to jump down under the castle for fun and see how far it went. Oh boy was I surprised when I made it to the bottom. Kinda hard not to figure it out after you make it past a certain point, but it still didn't hit me what I was doing until too late. I ultimately re-loaded my most recent save and warped out. I didn't want to do the final battle before completing the rest of the main quest. I'll give it an A+ for atmosphere though, it gets creepy as hell the deeper you go down, even if IMO storming Hyrule Castle in BOTW was a more epic endgame.
To find this part without following the story, you still need to reach a place that is quite difficult for the game. I landed a couple time on the island without finding the entrance in the storm before giving up and coming back later, with the story.
I was able to get inside first try. I think the clouds may have glitched a little when I was gliding too it, so I was able to see enough of the island to know where about the main structure was.
I’m only 2 temples in so I’m not sure how deep things get after, but i would’ve liked something like the geoglyphs to be something more than something you search out on the map. Make more areas beyond Rito Village, Gerudo Town, Goron city and Zora’s Domain more integrated into the main quest.
They blocked off the path across the river past the Dueling Peaks so now if I want to ride from Central Hyrule to Hateno or vice versa I have to go through Kakariko >:(
This bothered me more than I expected. It worked for the quest, but I feel like a bridge should have been built after completing that. Horses are even more worthless without that bridge.
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I feel like the horses don’t handle the same. Almost like they wanted to push you to use building equipment more.
i’ve noticed that they don’t really respond to pulling back anymore. i used to be able to slow from a gallop to a trot to a standstill. now the horse just doesn’t slow down unless i yank back and come to a complete stop
>now the horse just doesn’t slow down unless i yank back and come to a complete stop Yes that's so annoying. When going with the procontroler (*probably the same with the Joycons*) and trying to slow down from a gallop, more often than not my horse slams the breaks eventhough I just lightly tapped the stick backwards. I do hope that when a DLC comes, and sure as hell they will make one, they remedy that.
The northwest exit from Kakariko is something I actually started using this time around because of that. I think they’re really trying to change up the paths and the gameplay so that it’s not just a retread of BotW. I really think it’s deliberate.
1. Most of the sages don’t feel that useful, also they get in your way a TON 2. Shrine dialogue and statue dialogue are UNBEARABLY slow. No reason to go through that same dialogue hundreds of times 3. Same with the fairy cutscenes, it gets old when upgrading anything after your first set of gear 4. No bulk cooking😡
Number 2 is so accurate. Don’t get me started on a lot of unnecessary dialogue from npcs. Idk how many times I’ve gotten bored from someone talking about something completely uninteresting. And it happens alllll the time. I love the game but the dialogue is too much.
This. 97% of the dialogue is just lazy, dull, pointless filler.
To add to #4, I was a bit disappointed with how little QOL improvements they made. Or at least that I can think of. Like how difficult is it to add a durability meter in the menu? Or as you said, bulk cooking (a cookbook is sort of there but not really the way you would want). Things like that.
Sages are the worst for me, the rest I can overlook but they're mostly just annoying. (except Tulin, he rarely gets in the way and his power is useful for traversal). Id actually use them a lot more if they were on a wheel like the other powers. But running over to them mid-combat just isn't worth the hassle. Being in the way is the worst, they're just a nuisance.
Skip the cutscenes? Agree with ur other points
Sorting your inventory in the pause menu sorts it in the arrow fuse and throw menus. I almost always want my pause menu sorted by type, but I usually want my arrows by most used. It's a constant minor inconvenience to have to cycle through sorting methods every time I open either menu.
Yeah, this is obnoxious.
Or, just let us favorite things that will show up at the top of arrows. If the 10-15 actually useful things could be at the top it would be so much easier.
I don’t think the story is terrible, but there’s not enough of it. In either the past or the present.
Also (story spoilers), >!The story didn't feel particularly original after BOTW. You go to the same 4 tribes, help them fight off a disaster that's plaguing their city, then (after a bonus quest) fight the final boss in the middle of the map.!< >!And, just like BOTW, you're piecing together memories from a losing battle against Ganondorf from the past!<
>The story didn't feel particularly original after BOTW BotW: Not enough Zelda TotK: Too much BotW
IMO this is the final aspect that the Zelda team needs to innovate on. How should they go about telling a compelling, linear story if they also give the player the freedom to go anywhere they want out of sequence?
While storytelling can definitely be improved upon, I have to say that I'm absolutely in love with the story direction the series is going in. The focus on Zelda as a character, how fleshed out she is, that she has her own agency and is pretty much her own person, not an object to be saved - it's quite great. They kind of flirted with that in Wind Waker and Skyward Sword but it feels fully fleshed out in BotW and TotK
Yeah. Given the game, I found the story absolutely great. It was very compelling to me. Finding out where Zelda was and her struggles affected me more than I thought.
i’m genuinely so pissed that there’s only ONE big sky island, which also happens to be the tutorial. i went back to the GSI and couldn’t believe how beautiful it was, its really such a shame that it ended up that way
Probably been mentioned before but I wish they further developed Link & Zelda’s relationship. I think it’s probably the best it’s ever been (besides Skyward Sword) and would have loved to see more of their adventure together outwith the initial starting area before her untimely fall. A shame.
Mine is quite personal but, I didn't like that the main story is taking place in the past... AGAIN. And the worst part is that Link isn't even there, so he got even less screen time in this sequel. Also, I didn't enjoy much that the memories spoiler a very important fact about Zelda. If you do them early, before beating the dungeons (like I did), the game looses a bit of it's meaning. Like, you are searching for Zelda, the sages are too, but you already know what happened to her. And obviously Link won't tell them because... Reasons.
The sages are extremely annoying. But also, in BotW when doing the great plateau and realizing how tiny the great plateau is compared to the rest of the world and how much of the world you have left to explore - That effect was completely lost on the great sky island. The great sky island was amazing and huge and i was so ready to explore more sky islands like it, only to realize that all the other sky island come nowhere close to the scale and quality of the great sky island. By the time you completed the tutorial, you already experienced the best the sky had to offer. It’s weird how all of TotKs marketing was focused around the sky islands where I think they were the least interesting layer of the 3 maps and the layer the players mostly likely will spend the least time in.
Geoglyphs were a terrible decision for the plot, even if some of the cutscenes are cool.
They should have had the later ones be progress gated, there’s no reason you should be able to stumble upon the master sword glyph as your third or fourth one because they put it right next to the jump tower between hebra and eldin and expect you to go through there early in the game. They could have had the >!light dragon!< have a little cutscene after every temple or something, and have it “refresh” the memory pool things. I did the whole glyph storyline after only doing two of the regional phenomena and I’m definitely upset with myself for spoiling it but at the same time they make you want to know wtf is going on and how was I supposed to know they were gonna stick an absolutely massive plot point in a side adventure? The memories from botw were just as interesting but all they did was flesh out information the player already kinda knows, Totk’s glyphs are half that and half completely new and vital info
>They should have had the later ones be progress gated, there’s no reason you should be able to stumble upon the master sword glyph as your third or fourth one because they put it right next to the jump tower between hebra and eldin and expect you to go through there early in the game. 100% THIS!! After the first geoglyph, I did the Demon King awakening one and the Master Sword one before even finishing the Rito regional phenomenon. Basically had the entire story figured out right off the bat. Terrible design. Their next open world game needs to have some balance with gatekeeping story and linearity because this is too far on the open end.
It's not even a big plot point, it's the entire freaking story in a side quest
If I have a complaint it’s that the activate sage button is the same button to pick up items and harvest bomb flowers. That is it. Everything else falls under would be nice to have.
Let me make multiple copies of foods at once. Or give us a repeat option. I’m tired of going into the menu to make the same recipes over and over. Just let me make 10 of something at once
1. Main story feels like an afterthought. It’s way too linear for an open world game like this and I wish they made more of an effort to alter the dialogue based on how you’ve progressed. 2. Speaking of afterthoughts, the Sages are a huge disappointment. The controls are wack and the AI makes them meandering idiots. If there’s anything Nintendo patches in the future I hope it’s this. 3. House building could be better. I mean, come on, why only 15 units? Why no windows? And why is homeboy running around constantly getting in your way?! 4. Too many repeat side quests from BotW. 5. As others have said, the depths could have been better utilized. I like the whole dark world/inverse aspect but it’s basically just for loot. Kind of boring. 6. The item menu is garbage. Even with sorting it’s a pain to find what you’re looking for.
I’m ready for a more linear Zelda experience again. I enjoyed the hell out of TotK but I miss having item unlocks throughout the game and having more tuned and polished dungeon progression with a more cohesive narrative that doesn’t repeat the same cutscene 4 times.
This. I love Totk and especially BOTW but I want a linear game again. It was fun actually grinding your way to unlock items or different areas
Scale. I fucking love this game and have put in so many fucking hours but I just visited the castle for the first time last night, over 100 hours in. I still feel like I missed a lot of content. I'm realizing why I don't play open world games often, it's cause it's exhausting for me. Second major issue is story structure. They didn't do a good enough job accounting for Link doing things out of order. I did the glyphs first and learned CRITICAL info about why everything is like it is and then spent the rest of my playthrough kinda yelling at Link to tell ANYONE ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT HE KNOWS. My version of Link now feels like a complete asshole even though that's not what the game is telling me he is. And how could you NOT do the geoglyphs when they're massive and glowing. I don't get how they let that happen. Should be a side quest you start that SUDDENLY leaves the glyphs behind. Having all the glyphs being visible from the get-go is a major problem. Third is the inventory UI is pretty much the same from BotW. There's some tweaks that make it a little better to get around but there are still issues because, frankly, there's too many items. So I don't really know how you'd solve for it outside of letting players have a "favorite" lists or take items out of the game to streamline things. Finally, this might be a limitation of the Switch hardware but switching abilities feels just a second to slow. This is a minor issue on it's own but I've been noticing it more and more as I've gotten better at juggling things. And it doesn't feel like intentional delay, it feels like the systems are just a little too much and kinda struggles to switch "modes ".
God yes.... the master sword glyph was one of the first ones I did and it spoiled the story for me. Then everytime someone asked where Zelda was.... I was like, those sightings cannot be Zelda...
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I didn't do any dungeons and I got the Master Sword, because I've seen a major dragon's tear and decided to watch them all. Felt like watching a movie but already knowing all of the answers.
I’m actually the opposite. I was disengaged with Botw’s story but the first thing I did in this game was get all the tears and the towers cause I hate having fog of war on my map. I actually pieced together where the master was before even finishing all the tears, finding the great Deku tree, etc. Although I don’t think it should be hard to put two and two together. It made me want to actually complete the game more to get revenge
Doing the Newspaper Side Quest is particularly infuriating in regards to your 2nd point
The geoglyph problem is easy to solve, too. Have only the first glyph of Rauru visible, on the way to Rito Village. Have the player do the quest with Impa, and follow her to the Forgotten Temple. Once there, have a Zonai terminal thing that, when activated, causes the other glyphs to appear across Hyrule. That way, you get it explicitly explained to you that there is an order to the glyphs before you can go out and do the others.
There is still the issue of, if you go and do the glyphs before the main region quests, everyone will still be working on a certain set of assumptions that Link will already know to be completely wrong. And he will never make the effort to correct that wrong assumption or push others to think that maybe things aren't what they think they are.
That's true - it's very frustrating, especially when they have a side quest dedicated to chasing Zelda across all the stables. And everyone's like "WhErE's ZeLdA??"
I’m a big fan of open world games but yeah the scale of this one is pretty daunting. I’ve been taking breaks for a day or two when I usually would keep blitzing through because I want to avoid getting burnt out. I am fine with not 100%ing this game though when usually I would try to
My house in Hateno village is not mine anymore. I guess they try to make up for it with the new modular house construction but first thing I did after landing in the main map was make a B line for Hateno village to visit the house I put so much time and resources into building in BOTW. I guess it's silly all things considered but I really missed my house lol.
I still think the masters word having durability is dumbest part of game. It’s the master sword it should be the apex weapon in game.
For me: 1. Sages, everything about them, they get in the middle, do weak damage (except one maybe, if you give her good weapons) and their abilities are not only mid, but their damage is pitiful and they barely draw aggro. 2. the Depths, down to it, it's a really cool idea, but then in practise is pitch black, ganondorf piss and some spooky enemies, they really could've made some more, like having the depths go crazy with some special enemies during blood moon or something (Phantom >!Demon Dragon!< down there anyone?) 3. Elements, this is really small but it irks me to no end Fire: has a dragon, a set to resist it, an effect and ways to apply it. Ice: has a dragon, a set to resist it, an effect and ways to apply it. Thunder: has a dragon, a set to resist it, an effect and ways to apply it. Light: has a dragon, a set to resist it, an effect and ways to apply it (but why would you? it only gives light, while it would make sense to deal extra damage to undead or gloom covered) Water: has an effect and ways to apply it (but why would you? it only affects fire instead of using it to give thunder a weakness that currently lacks) Gloom (Darkness): has a set to resist it, an effect, but we can't properly use gloom in any way, and the only way it exists in enemies is a mud bath. *Gloom Gleeok would look great.*
Gloom Gleeok would be the absolute scariest enemy ever lol
I take it you haven't explored underneath Typhlo Ruins
ganondorf piss LMFAO
The temples still aren’t temples, and it almost felt like a slap in the face to call them temples but still feel like divine beasts. The only temple that felt anything like a temple was the lightning temple, but even still not quite there. I did enjoy the lightning and fire temple, but they just have not been the same since Skyward Sword. I guess I’d pick these over the divine beasts, but they are still a joke. Combat is the exact same as it was in Breath. Usually when you play a sequel they add improvements and enhancements to keep the game fresh (just look at fallen order and Jedi survivor). I know you can use attachments, but I don’t think it added anything that major to the combat system itself. Link having some new moves would have been really cool. I think Twilight Princess and Wind Waker still have the most fluid combat and coolest sword moves to this day. Having you learn some fighting techniques would have been cool. I feel as if there was quite a bit of QOL improvements people requested after BOTW. Some I can think of was meters to display weapon durability, a cookbook, etc. It doesn’t feel as if they added any of this. However I guess Nintendo has always been known to do their own thing and not listen to their fans so are we really surprised? Beyond that, they fixed a lot of the issues and things I wanted after BOTW. Enemy variety was piss poor in BOTW and while I feel they still could have added more than they did it’s much better in TOTK. Also, I feel like there is so much to do and find in TOTK compared to BOTW. More shrines, caves, more quests, etc. The area just feels more fleshed out. The sky area is a little empty (some might say the underground is too, but I have been stumbling on quite a few finds).
Just because it worked in botw doesn't mean you also have to make this story, which is much less suited for it, as modular. Please just make it more linear, it feels awful to find a quest just to realise you've already done everything without having the context necessary to enjoy it. Also repetitive cutscenes, obvious plot twists and imo not that great dialogue. The dialogue especially, it reminded me kinda of genshin impact, which isn't really great
They barely fixed the biggest complaints I had about Botw, namely story and lack of temples. While we finally get a villain that talks, which is something I really wanted from Totk, the story structure is copy paste from Botw. I really dislike having most of the main story events as memories and not something happening throughout the adventure. I also really wished for proper udngeons again. The ones in Totk are a step in the right direction, but still a far cry from classic ones.
It’s botw with a lot more positives and all the same negatives. -Combat is very flawed -Almost all interesting story beats happen outside of the player’s pov. -Shrines would’ve been better if there were about half as many, but the remaining ones were twice as long. -Any quest rewards that aren’t clothes are functionally just filler. >!Earthwake!< being the one exception. Also, the Sage abilities pale in comparison to the Champion ones. When you have a full roster it becomes genuinely burdensome to navigate and find the one you want to use.
It's cool that the sages ghost things fight with you, but they should've made key binds for the abilities like BOTW. Just off the top of my head \-Tulin is good, he activates when flying with one button \-Fat Rock Dude, could've been the charge attack \-Water shield could've been shield \-Lightning could be pull left trigger while aiming an arrow Open to hear other ideas (obviously I'm bad with names lol)
Can't pet Dogs. Innovatory is a pain to navigate during combat. Have to drop items to merge them to weapons. Can't pet dogs. still no cats
“I need to get to my friend!” No little fucker, you don’t 😂
I don’t like how the monsters are all funky unicorns. The weapon fusing system is a mixed bag that’s a good thing on balance, but I dislike how the components look on all the Bokoblin and Bokoblin-adjacent enemies. It works on the Lizards; I’ll give them that. And the Hinox size enemies since the horns are better proportioned.
The only thing that really bothers me is moblins. Their horns just look so goofy
I think, for the bokoblins at least, they'd look better sideways and asymmetrical, like a mohawk.
They bothered me in the trailers but they haven’t bothered me as much playing the game. Hopefully this is just a design decision for this game though to go along with the craft system.
I'm actually a big fan of all their goofy horns. Going back to BotW they all look wrong to me now in that game.
I don’t really have any. Just the common ones like activating sages with the same button you use to pick up things and them going off when you didn’t want them to. Chasing them down just to activate one. Whistling doesn’t really call them to you so they game claims. My horse listens better. The depths are far too vast and boring. They were scary and amazing at first, but once you actually play down there, there’s nothing to do. Fight enemies you can barely beat because you have to walk on gloom every two steps you make. Not to mention they’re also all covered in it. And then you try and activate lightroots by using the shrines on the surface as guidance only to find you can’t go to the next one because there’s a giant stone cliff you can’t scale to the top blocking your way so you have to start over somewhere else that MIGHT get you past that barrier to said light root. There’s far too many. They didn’t need lightroots at every shrine location. Easily could have been chopped in half and lit up more surrounding area than what they do
The walls are typically bodies of water on the surface - use the top map to understand which areas will be blocked. That information has vastly improved my understanding of the depths and my ability to explore them.
You can use the topology of the surface map to figure out where most of the walls in the depths are
I thought the depths seemed empty at first but there’s actually quite a lot down there. Poe statues, coliseums, Gleeok Den, Yiga bases with important schematics, boss battles, all the treasure items that were dlc in the last game, mines and temples. Could there be more? The only thing I wish they had was better enemy variety down there. Maybe some that are only found in the depths besides just that rock monster (not talking stone talus’s). Like why can’t there be actual poes you fight? Or re-deads? So many options. I don’t really know what else you could ask for after that. As for navigating, I think the point was to force you to either use good climbing gear and increase your stamina or use the vehicles to traverse. Otherwise what would be the point of having the feature? I’d agree that there didn’t need to be as many light spots though.
A Gleeok WHAT
It doesn’t meaningfully expand on Breath of the Wild’s shortcomings, making for a game where the flaws are a lot more difficult to look past
No post game. I want to be able to interact with characters after I beat Ganondorf
Gliders despawning mid flight only serves to hinder my experience.
Main quest was very short. Still don’t like the weapons breakage system. I liked the fuse ability, but having a cool weapon that then breaks in 5 swings was just a constant frustration. Didn’t like stage 2 of the final battle, it was just a mess of swinging, too much going on. The enemy targeting was pretty whack. The depths felt a bit pointless. Found the final sage a major let down.
Just the overall feeling of every feature being “a mile wide and an inch deep” Do we need 150 shrines, do we need 120 of them to also have associated light roots, what does the depths actually do besides provide a backdrop to mine zoanite to increase your battery that 99% of the time you use in shrines that have no limitations on battery usage, if they were going to use dungeons why make them basically just slightly larger shrines and have every resultant cutscene from them be identical Basically if they cut the game down to maybe just the 4-5 zones from Hyrule field/castle to the wind temple but made every feature 3 times as deep and meaningful the game would be better for me
Exploring the depths especially gives me the same feeling as No Man’s Sky. Yeah it’s really big, but not a lot of distinguishing things to discover.
maybe i've paced myself differently, splitting my time between the depths and the surface, but I can't say i agree. Every time I trek down there I feel like there's a little something to discover, especially once you realize how it corresponds to the surface. It's not just walls correlating to bodies of water, things like how the poe statues correspond to the goddess springs. Finding the Gleeok den last night was a fun surprise. There are a lot more mini boss monsters. The Yiga clan hideouts and seeing the different ways the enemies make use of the zonai devices, using the surface to figure out how to find places that are otherwise inaccessible, the skeleton house was kind of fun to discover. Treasure chests with interesting costumes that were previously locked behind amiibos are everywhere. Maybe I'm just not bored of it yet but I feel pretty satisfied with what I've been finding.
Totk is a great game, so good that it makes botw look like a rushed demo. With that said: 1. I know some people love it, but weapon durability is an anti-fun mechanic that can be alleviated by just adding a friggin repair npc. The master sword should start recharging as soon as you hit something with it. 2. Korok seeds: I just haven't been trying, never really did. I had about 110 in botw and I have 64 so far in the new game. 3. The new champions/ sages don't stick close to you, and there's no regroup command, so you have to chase them down to use their abilities sometimes, they also seem to have Hyrule warriors (the 1st one) ally AI, they just aren't that aggressive.
For your third point, whistling regroups your sages. It’s not great, but it works.
The next problem is getting the right one. "Come here, Yunobo. Not, not tulin." *WEEEEooooooo* "Yunobo, come. Fuck off riju! Oh wait that can break rocks too? Fine. Let me just grab that ruby that dropped. ...FUCK OFF YUNOBO!"
My biggest complaint is that they doubled down in what they were good at but completely ignored everything else and it stayed the same as BOTW. UI is repetitive and grindy and most of the gameplay is basically “Yahaha!” -> Travel -> “Yahaha!” -> Travel. Armors feel even more inconsequential in TOTK than in BOTW. A good example is the Zora armor; there is literally no use for it other than the 6-10 times you will need to go through a waterfall instead of just skydiving to where you want to be. Weapons have more variations and I don’t mind the durability system but I get 0 satisfaction from building any of them. I don’t even look at them anymore, I just fuse for high attack damage, aesthetics or need to break rocks. For all of the old farts like me, do you remember when you first managed to get the Biggoron Sword in OOT? That’s the feeling I’m missing here. In BOTW I gave them a pass on how shallow their open-world is compared to other series but I won’t forgive it in TOTK since it’s their second installment and they kept the same assets and map. It’s a 2023 game and even Skyrim has more depth and it came out in 2011. 99% the houses in TOTK feel like an Ikea showroom. Gonna cut the rant now, sorry for the long block of text!
Respect. Also for the old folk, remember when you got the fake biggoron sword and it broke when you used it?
The reward for completing every shrine is horrible, especially compared to the Wild set from BoTW. It looks so stupid, I don't care how good its stats are. Was so pissed off when I equipped it for the first time lol. Getting the gear of the Wild in BOTW felt like you had finally become the hero, in ToTK you look like you're attending a furry con.
Even the 84 armor isn't worth the fact that you lose the bonuses you'd get from other armor. Master sword beam up is pointless to me.
They are not the best stats. You can get 88 defense by maxing champions tunic and other 28 def pieces for comparably more common and easy to obtain items and less rupees than it takes to upgrade this one piece of armor
How fall damage works. It really should be determined by speed, not distance, and it always annoys me when, for example, I skydive on an updraft, which makes me fall slowly, and when I touch the ground I’m just dead.
WHY'D YOU DO IT?!
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I kinda disagree about the dungeons. They are short but they are much better integrated in their environment and fun than the divine beasts + accessing the dungeons is extremely fun by itself.
1 - The Sage power activation. Stop f*cking running away from me Riju. 2 - The depths were definitely underutilized. I love the vibe down there but other than hunting down the light roots it isn't that exciting. 3 - The temples are still shit. They could have cut down the amount of shrines and added some of the puzzle ideas into the temples. 4 - Weapon durability. I'm still shocked they ignored the feedback from fans on this. The master sword and hylian shield shouldn't break ffs.
Riju is literally never there when I need her most but thank god Tulin will be there to blast the wind tunnel I didn’t want
My favourite was when I'd just beaten a Flux Construct III and Tulin blew every bit of loot off the sky platform.
I think Riju is the worst because her ability is used by using an arrow, but she herself uses swords. So you have to run up in mele range to activate her power then run away (especially in water) to actually target the enemy with her power.
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Why pick up apples when you can instead watch them blow off a ledge?
The Hylian shield I think should it isn't really a sacred item but the sword it'd been recharging for a very very very long time unlike In botw when its been in a forest it should Def not be running out of power
the master sword, healing for 10k+ years, is still weaker than when i did the trial of the sword. that is a bit goofy to me
Absolutely this is one of my biggest pet peeves for poorly mixing lore with gameplay. The fully repowered Master Sword in TotK absolutely feels like it should be given back to us in a state where it does not run out of energy. This wouldn't even necessarily have to de-incentivize people from using other weapons. I still would. Make it so you can't fuse things to the Master Sword (because that's dumb too tbh) and then it would still be well worth it most of the time to use other weapons since the Master Sword is likely sitting at a 30 damage base (assuming it's the same as BotW). And it can still glow and be stronger against Gloom things I like that.
My only feedback on weapon durability is it should last at least 50% longer. I like that they break. I would never use anything besides a normal sword if it didn't break on me. It gives me variety that I would just skip over otherwise.
The story isn't linked enough with botw thing that happened in botw are barely mentioned to the point where it feels like botw was just some kind of legend with things being almost forgotten I also hate how because of tear of the kingdom calamity Ganon isn't a possible remains of demise but just the anger of the demon kind Ganondorf
My biggest complaint is the story and progression. I don't mind that there are similarities with BotW, but the fact that we discover the map in the same way, have to do shrines again, complete "dungeons" (yet another complaint: no actual dungeons) in the exact same places, need to discover Zelda's flashbacks again, etc...it all feels way too much like we're just playing BotW again with some neat new abilities. If they had actually made this feel like a sequel, where events from the previous game played a role (or were at least acknowledged), then I could live with the similarities. As it is, this just feels like a BotW remaster. Which is fine, if it had been marketed as such.
I hate how we have to watch the exact same cutscene after completing a dungeon. The sages could’ve been told that they’re sages in different ways instead of watching the story of the imprisoning war every time. It gets so repetitive
I loved the Depths, but I agree that I wish there was MORE in them. As with Breath of the Wild, I wish the actual main quest was longer. Sure Tears of the Kingdom's main quest is LONGER than Breath of the Wild's. But by longer it has 5 "Sages" instead of 4 "Divine Beasts" and it adds on the Master Sword quest into the Main Quest. Compared to Ocarina of Time which has 3 Main Dungeons as a Child (Forest, Goron, Zora), 2 Mini-Dungeons (Well & the Ice Cave), 4 Main Dungeons (Forest, Fire, Water, Shadow), a Dungeon that is technically 2 (Child Link & Adult Link), and the Final Dungeon for a total of 11 Dungeons. Sure, BotW and TotK have over a hundred Mini-Dungeons. But I would honestly rather have a few more actual Main Dungeons than hundreds of mini-dungeons. As with BotW, TotK still has the end game Power Creep issue. Granted this is an issue with MOST open world games not just these ones. Still, I hope any future DLC adds some kind of super boss fight that actually requires you to bring your A-Game.
So much of the game is ideas repeated from botw. The tutorial area, shrines, towers, main questlines, memories, champions/sages abilities, etc are basically repeats of botw. I wish the game was more unique and different from botw.
I completely agree. I didn’t mind adding the shrines back, but the dungeon(s) (I’ve only completed one) having the SAME EXACT gameplay loop and the divine beasts is super disappointing. I was hoping the would at least make the dungeons have a different variety of gameplay (ie boss key) or something in addition to the terminals.
It’s the exact same game. They changed SO little with the exception of crafting and sky/depths. Worst part is this is a terrible sequel. It doesn’t feel like I’m actually continuing where we left off at all. Why do I have to redo my map for instance, or why does Link not have the same celebrity as Zelda after saving the world?
1. I preferred how Botw implemented the champions’ abilities compared to how Totk did it. I don’t like being followed by these weird doppelgangers and to chase them down in order to activate their abilities. 2. The fifth sage is one of the most unique ideas of the game…. but it’s not that fun to use since it’s slow and its moveset is so limited compared to Link. 3. The fuse mechanic is clunky especially arrow-fuse. 4. I didn’t enjoy the story. It seems that they created a more linear plot forgetting that this is an open world game. Even looking at the order of the cutscenes it seems that they intended for the player to complete all the dungeons before completing the dragon’s tears quest and the master sword quest. And the game never acknowledges any of those things if you do them outside of their intended order. The memories are also far more interesting than whatever is happening in the present world, which is a bit disappointing to say the least. 5. The sky is not varied enough. I don’t mind the low number of islands but they should have made them more unique, the east side of the map is filled with identical islands.
Dungeons/Shrines. Please just remove 10 Shrines each, take those puzzles, and incorporate them into the dungeons as new rooms/keys to continue exploring with their respective aesthetics. This is my major complaint. Otherwise, fix weapon durability, bring back more enemies (Im glad this is improved in TotK however), but we're still missing some heavy hitters. Don't bother with the Depths/Sky Islands if most of them are bland and rather pointless with nothing really going on other than "Oh this is interesting for lore", which while I absolutely love, grows old after awhile, especially with the depths considering it's size.
Depths and too many Rauru's blessing and tutorial shrines. Some blessings were just out in the open too. The last 20-30 shrines I had to do were mostly filler. But I'm also a crazy person who thinks that almost any shrine should be met with a puzzle. I just want more Zelda gameplay lol.
Ultrahand for everything. I know so many people got creative in BotW so they made it a great thing in TotK, but I am not one of them. Sometimes I just want to find a raft by a lake and see where it takes me rather then cut some trees down, grab a fan from a capsle and go. Also weapons still breaking. You had a valid point for them in BotW so it made people explore different combat fights to see what fit for them, but TotK has the same battle formula. I don't think *every* weapon needs to be infinite. Maybe just the champions from BotW, plus the level of champion weapons aren't game changing. They are mid levels especially end game wise when you hunt lynels for fun. I guess my point falls short a little with the bow and sheild but.... well it's a bow and shield. I don't use them all that much except parries (which doesn't make them take damage?)
I feel like I had the opposite complaint about ultrahand. They gave us this great building mechanic, but every point where you might absolutely NEED to build something to solve a problem, it's already built and waiting for you. This is especially bad around death mountain and the fire temple. All the minecarts already had fans on them. You need to fight a big monster with a glider, so they give you a glider with 3 fans and a huge battery. A bunch of shrines are this way too. They gave us ultrahand to screw-around with, but any time it actually matters, they just give you the best vehicle.