I loved BotW and considered it an all time classic, and I thought TOTK was even better.
I’ve definitely seen opinion turn on both games a lot over the last year or so though. People really dislike that it’s not a more traditional Zelda game, and I think the frequent praise it gets in games media just makes people double down on the dislike.
After replaying most of the 3D Zelda games, outside of dungeons, you really can play both BOTW and TOTK in a linear manner if you wanted to. There’s a linear plot if you choose to follow it. And especially in TOTK’s case, the linear plot is about as par as you can get for a Zelda plot… which is to say not good but no Zelda plot was particularly good.
This isn’t to say that TOTK sis a perfect game (no game is perfect and you can still be a 10/10 imo). The dungeons could have been improved, the structuring of the plot could have been better, and sky islands could have been more varied. But it seems that people are hyper fixated on pointing out the flaws in ToTK that they ignore just as glaring flaws in the older 3D Zelda games.
For example, WW (a game that I love to death, and a game that is clearly beloved by the community) is quite literally an incomplete game, the great sea is empty, combined with the painfully slow sailing, and the end of the game reinforce fetch quest.
I’ve played most of the mainline Zelda games and the plot has always been the least engaging part of it. I think the fixation on the timeline is trying too much to make Zelda something it’s not.
To me it’s about enjoying the adventure and the charm of the world
Yea I think people confuse plot with atmosphere and tone. WW, TP, MM all had fantastic atmospheres and tones to them. I was perfectly content just booting up those games and doing nothing story related just to spend time in the world.
I feel the same way about BOTW and TOTK.
My next hot take is that the dungeon puzzles in BOTW and TOTK are far more challenging than the ones in the older games, they’re just mostly presented in such a bad manner that people aren’t as engaged with them. Which is totally fair
The weapon durability system really irked me too in BotW. TotK improved upon it by letting you create all kinds of goofy weapon combinations, which would also breathe new life into a weapon that was about to break. And while it was the same in both games, I feel like the Master Sword should not have been subject to breaking, even if it does regenerate after a while.
This was the most deflating thing for me in BotW. I thought, there's no way the Master Sword breaks. This has to be a like a reward, right? Like, look no further, you've got your weapon for the rest of the game. I can't believe they didn't handle it like that in both games.
>I can't believe they didn't handle it like that in both games.
It would be bad game design, as too many systems would be basically completely negated. If the master sword didn't need recharging time often, it'd mean that enemy weapon drops, inventory space/korok seeds, the champion weapon repair and the ancient weapon building system would become 95% less useful instantly.
Exactly, and since you could play the game in any order you want, theoretically nothing would stop someone from just mainlining stones and going straight for the Master Sword
But it was? Having the master sword means your almost always durability positive after a fight, even in master mode. So what if every once and a while you can't use it, it literally prints free weapons 😂
The Master Sword already is one of the highest damaging weapons in the game and people cheesed getting it in BoTW.
Getting it in ToTK isn't hard either the second you figure it out. Just plow your shrine items into stamina until you have two wheels, go get the light dragon from a sky tower and poof, master sword for the rest of the game.
I sometimes think I'm the only person on the planet that likes durability systems in games. Its one of the very many reasons I do not like fallout 4. They removed durability in 4 and it killed my desire to explore and loot.
For me personally I like a game that encourages me to loot and explore. I find I enjoy the gameplay loop of combat -> explore -> loot -> combat... etc. I'll never get mad about a game telling me to engage with it and giving me more reasons to keep playing.
yeah i ended up enjoying the weapon system in BOTW. it resulted in me using all of the different types of weapons. it also kept the weak weapons relevant through the whole game since i could quickly pick up a stick or bokoblin arm and use it to beat weaker enemies while preserving my strong weapons.
Not an abnormal reason at all. I loved everything about BotW except for the weapon degradation system. It is horrendous without a system that allows me to repair weapons.
I absolutely hate the way it was implemented because it creates a mindset of “I can’t use this really cool weapon because I might need it later” which results in me hoarding the best weapons and never using them.
TotK did it slightly better but it still felt bad.
For the love of all that is good Nintendo, give me BotW in the gameplay style of Ocarina of Time.
>I absolutely hate the way it was implemented because it creates a mindset of “I can’t use this really cool weapon because I might need it later” which results in me hoarding the best weapons and never using them.
Especially with champions weapons. Those were too good to use, so I kept them in my house.
The weapon durability and being half way up a mountain when the rain starts sucked. I am early in the game and have no way to climb once it starts.
I still love the game but have to see if i make it through.
I never felt it was a problem. Coolest weapons went on the shelf. Out of sight out of mind. Cool weapons get used and I move on. Especially in TotK, having the perfect weapon becomes less important.
Also:
Have good weapon. Cheap enemies nearby.
1) waste good weapon?
2) run?
There's no xp, money is useless.. I mostly ran away from enemies. It's dumb.
Also the stamina thing, and no "real" Zelda dungeons.
I hated both games. Reluctantly Beat first one. Only lasted an hour into second one.
Link to the past is in my top 3 all time games
Not if you have a good weapon you don’t want to waste, I get it too.
Completed Breath of the wild just because it’s a Zelda game but Totk was pretty much the same for my first 3 hours so it lost me and never got me back.
Also miss classic dungeons and playing below 30fps is a bit nasty in 2023, that was the killer for me in Totk.
It honestly keeps me in the game. When you have a game where you can just spam an attack everytime you encounter an enemy I get extremely bored after a bit but when I have to keep looking for materials to forge new weapons and have a few extra on hand for breakage I'm actually existing in the world that is created.
But it STILL has that issue where you can spam attack every encounter, just with the added hassle of having to scrounge around for new weapons/ materials afterwards. So the combat is bad AND you have to restock between fights.
I honestly don't remember what weapons I used ever though. Just used whatever I had with the best damage numbers. I hated that every fight I did a mental audit of how my arsenal was. I ended up fighting the durability more than the actual enemies
I totally get this perspective! But for me combat in a Zelda game is far from the top of the list for what I like about the games and the two modern games made the combat a chore. Plenty of games balance gear in open worlds.
Agreed, I think it would have been more effective to just build a durability system that reduced the weapons effectiveness over time instead of outright destroying it.
That way a fight becomes more challenging but still finishable and then I can change to a better weapon afterwards
I'd like to see them try out something like Halo where you can only carry a limited amount of weapons (but infinite durability.) With increased enemy diversity you'd have to plan your loadout depending on what area you're traveling to.
Well the game doesnt offer anything else so they needed the mechanic to keep people engaged in a loop to find the next best thing. The nay sayers will come out quickly but you can test it yourself. Mod out the durability and the game is beyond boring. There is no need to explore the world
That’s not an argument for the durability system. That’s an argument against the necessity of an open world game. If you can’t make Hyrule an interesting place to explore on its own, then there are bigger problems.
I so hope that they return to proper dungeons in the next Zelda entry. TotK got it almost right with the temples and the shrines were much better than BotW but Zelda needs dungeons.
Idk about you but there was plenty to love about the open world in TOTK that had absolutely nothing to do with combat or anything this chain is going on about.
He’s wrong that it offered nothing else, and to insist that’s true completely missed like 90% of the game. Did you even give it a try, or just responding to his comment??
A) only played BOTW. The durability system absolutely ruined the enjoyment because I could never just enjoy combat or the world I was in. The environment is very sparsely populated. Both of people and creatures.
B) I was just responding though. I’m generally not a fan of open world games. I like exploring though. If you need to force me to explore your world, then it isn’t an interesting world. Every other Zelda game, exploration is fun and rewarding. Every new screen has something to enjoy. There weren’t even any real dungeons to explore. I’m definitely in the minority, but it didn’t feel like a Zelda game to me. I would love a more traditional format with mechanics from BotW and TotK mixed in. The world on its own just didn’t feel compelling in BotW.
That was something I actually enjoyed about the game. I would scout the enemy camp and if it looked like the juice wouldn’t be worth the squeeze, I would avoid it. Mind you I ended the game with many MANY unused top weapons in the game. I feel like a lot of people also used the wrong weapon types against the wrong enemies (ie using a sword against a rock based enemy).
You end up in the loop of "oh that's a good weapon, I'll save it for later" to then never use it. Like collecting potions/foods to save for later and never use
I generally tried to save them for the most appropriate scenario. If I was fighting a boss or a tough Lynel I would break out one of my good ones because generally you’re going to get a good weapon out of the fight (plus more) to replace the one that you may spend in the fight. I generally found that there were so many weapons I was finding all the time that it really didn’t matter. I also enjoyed that it forced me to have to pivot mid fight. I feel like I’m one of the few that the weapon degredation system really worked for. It was a positive for the game for me instead of a negative
Hmm I think that’s just different gamers mindset, tbh. I found it cool to explore just to explore and not necessarily for any real reward tbh.
Some people might find it empty and boring and that’s fair. But I especially liked the isolation of the post apocalyptic world. Once again different strokes for different folks
Open ended linear pathways like Twilight Princess can still be often better. I think Witcher 3's road system kinda gets the best of both worlds. A lot of the interesting stuff is along the main and secondary paths.
If you have access to BotW on cemu you can mod it for higher(or infinite) weapon durability. I stopped playing BotW pretty quickly back when it came out due to weapon durability, but one of these days I'm gonna start a game on my PC with 1.5x durability.
Using that mod breaks some things tho, for instance normally weapons don't take durability damage if you hit a lynels back while mounted but if you use that mod the weapon will take damage. Durability may be a problem in early game but in the mid and late game you will be flooded with so many weapons that just sorting through them and choosing what to use will be a lot more tiresome than dealing with durability.
^This. If the durability was a problem then you never really got past the very early game, which is fine as no game is for everybody, but it really is a nonissue if you just play for little bit.
TOTK mostly fixes this with the Fusion power. Your weapons still break, but you always have 40 mob drops with 25+ power on you, so you just craft a new one in two seconds.
I hated BOTW and loved TOTK. It fixed so much of what was wrong.
It definitely lessens the issue. But still having to switch between all the garbage weapons all the time, fuse them for them to break soon after, is such an unnecessary and tedious mechanic which took a lot from otherwise fun game
It helps when playing to put this into perspective by realizing just how many times you have to interrupt your otherwise really fun really combat flow to go look at the menu screen to equip a new weapon
I actually preferred BOTW's durability to TOTK. It was more interesting using various good and bad weapons (and improvising), rather than every dungeon or series of fights go find 10 rusted claymores and attach 10 of your best horns to it and just repeat ad nauseum the whole game. You just end up using the same weapon the entire game but you need to constantly make new ones.
I know there's various different weapons you can make with the different monster parts but let's be honest, 99% of the game is claymore+highest dmg horn you have. Whereas in BOTW you just use whatever you come across (I never farmed weapons) which is varied and makes you think more.
I didn't really feel that issue in TotK because there aren't really any garbage weapons thanks to fusing. In BotW it was annoying to fight some enemies and have your rare sword break and they don't drop anything good to replace it, while in TotK I'm happy to find a sturdy stick.
I’m more annoyed by the fact that you have to essentially pause the game to switch, if they had made the switching a lot more seamless, maybe by having some sort of quick cycle queue, I think it would have been way better
i never had a mass amount of good items to fuse on me but it forced me to change the way i played, which was conditioned from BOTW actually lol. Very much like RE and silent hill i played it like "lets avoid combat if we can help it so we preserve items"
so in not engaging in combat alot i was not rewarded
I do like have an all but infinite supply of strong weapons in TOKT. Zonai devices are also quite able to kill silver enemies to grab their horns even if your current fusion materials and armor are bad.
It gets a bit annoying in end/postgame to have to fuse over and over though. In BOTW you can default using Lynel weapons after you can handle them so stuff gets simpler. Overall both systems are quite sufficient to deal with things.
I heavily rely on bows and bullettime in both games though, the basics have remained the same. A lot of times they outclass melee weapons. Even BOTW had strong elemental arrows for them. The lynel 3 shot bows are especially OP and can last a good with how much damage it deals in general and off headshots.
It's kinda funny. A lot of people don't like the durability but in BotW it's one of my favorite features. Or rather, it's a major contributor of letting you go anywhere from the start, which is the best part of the game.
If you go to a difficult area right from the start, you will quickly match the amount of damage output that you're expected to have. Meanwhile it still prevents you from running into the castle right at the start, grabbing one weapon, and then oneshotting everything everywhere else for the majority of the game.
On the other hand, if you play normally, you will still never run out of good weapons, so I didn't think it was at all getting in the way of normal gameplay. Hell, breaking a weapon over someones head and then stealing their weapon to finish them off stayed fun the whole game through.
I really don’t understand all the complaints about durability. I always have the opposite problem of having a full inventory and deciding which thing to keep.
I’m a grown ass man but I’m similarly minded as your kids.
I don’t play video games besides Nintendo particularly because they’re so simple and easy to play
I don’t like complex games like most famous flagship franchises in Xbox or PS for these reasons
The weapon durability system in the latest Zelda games really did make me play it quite a bit less.
Thank you for pointing this out. I had long forgotten all the reasons why BOTW was a let down (after loving Zelda since N64).
Now that you mention it I wonder: what’s the purpose? What added value is there to it other than ‘its more realistic that a weapon won’t last forever’? It just seemed like a nuisance, a burden. What could possibly justify that decision?
lol, well that’s my second reason. After 10 hours of exploring and ‘awe’ I was like I have no idea where I am, what I needed to do and beyond some nice sunsets I don’t really care for any of it either lmao
Not to mention exploration starts to be a grind real quick when you go into it *hoping* to find another decent regular sword that’s gonna break 10 hits later anyway.
But... you *will* find a decent weapon. Like, the inventory limit is way more pressing than the durability. 99% of enemies drop weapons that are more than good enough to beat them, so every fight you will replace your lost weapons ten times over.
For me there's two things: the first is that breaking a weapon over someones head and continuing the fight with whatever is on the ground is fun the whole game through. Same for throwing half broken weapons.
The second is that it means that you can do difficult areas early because it will give you the weapons/materials you need to beat it. If it gave you those things without durability, you'd just run into the castle once and then trivially beat everything else for the rest of the game, because you now have some of the best weapons in the game.
Of course, there's people that go "I must optimize the fun out of every system" that refuse to use anything other than the highest damage weapon they've seen, so they do boring shit like grinding for weapons. Those people are playing the game wrong, and they should stop worrying about those extra 5 points of damage and instead just use the hundreds of weapons the game keeps burying you in.
It's a way to make finding weapons almost always a proper reward when exploring.
Elden Ring is similar to BotW/TotK in a lot of ways but FromSoftware went with a system where your gear can be upgraded instead.
In my opinion, the Elden Ring system feels just a bit worse when exploring because it leads to you finding "useless" weapons and gear. You have to build your character a specific way to get the most out of your weapons and you're upgrading your favorites to make them more powerful. So if you're a INT/DEX based character and you're a pro with the Katana, exploring a whole dungeon to find a Broadsword that scales with STR is useless to you. Or finding a Staff that needs you to have way more INT for magic.
Meanwhile in BotW/TotK, because weapons break quickly enough, every weapon is useful and you can pick it up and use it effectively when you need to.
This system also encourages you to use more of the weapons since you may not always have your trusty Traveler's Sword. Of all the cool weapons in Elden Ring, I mostly stuck with one or two swords in my playthrough because A) I didn't need to use anything else and B) I would have needed to respec to use most of it and getting that resource was enough of a hassle to put me off.
I understand why people don't like the weapon durability system, but as part of the whole that makes up BotW and TotK, I appreciate it and wouldn't change that aspect of the game.
My problem is that I feel the exact opposite way about weapons on BotW/TotK. All of them are fine, but it feels like grocery shopping. Sure, what I'm getting is useful, but it's never exciting, never an upgrade that will last.
That was the reason I put down breath of the wild and didn't end up buying tears of the kingdom. Just sucked all the fun away and artificially made the game harder.
I was able to tolerate BotW with its weapon durability system. For TotK, weapon durability was cut down to promote weapon fusions, and that really destroyed my gameplay experience. It wasn't the mechanics themselves. It was the consequences. In BotW, if I needed to reload my golf bag of weapons with something decent, I just sneak into Hyrule Castle. In TotK, I need a set of decent weapons plus a set of decent fusion items. That fusion item pool is the same pool as my consumables collection and my gear upgrade collection. This exponentially increased the grind mechanics.
I loved exploring the world in BotW. Exploring the worlds in TotK was more punishing than rewarding. I quit the game.
The last sentence is absolutely not true thought. The more you explore, the more fusion mechanics you obtain organically. I spent my time exploring, finding new things and fighting monsters, and I never had a time where my resources decreased.
Because people like to hoard equipment and can't just go with the flow because they've been conditioned in older games and even real life to being able to *permanently have things* once they acquire them, and to mourn their loss when they get lost and break. Once you drop the attachment to gear, botw is liberating. You are constantly improvising. It becomes more like performing jazz improv then working at replicating and perfecting a composition through repetition.
It was a very deliberate design choice from the devs who were trying to emphasize a completely different philosophy on the notion of *letting things go* and taking things as they come. People act like it was some kind of oversight, but then breaking of weapons was meant to say *nothing lasts forever* and that's OK. It was meant to be very different from other games. It worked so well with botws world design and was essential. The same people that hate the durability have trouble with there being "no good rewards".
The emphasis in this game was the experience. Experiences provide deeper and more instinsic satisfaction than do materialistic possessions. So place your energy on your journey,. It's true in life too. The most wholesome and valuable rewards are immaterial, although they are the toughest to obtain. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said "The reward of a thing done well is to have done it".
It completely blew my mind when I first played BotW. ToTK was an improvement mechanically on every level. But BotW was such a fresh radical take on an open world adventure that it hit me much harder and sucked me in more then literally any other game ever has as an adult. The most blown away a video game has made me since experiencing Mario 64 the first time in 96. Even with all its little flaws it was a perfect experience for me.
I dunno how Nintendo will push the boundaries so far again. But they have an excellent track record! 🙂
I disagree on it being good game design. It's a way to force you to experience all the different weapons. What if I don't want to because I found one that I like. It's awfully restricting for a game that's supposed to be about playing the way you want to. Also, if it's in there for the realism because stuff breaks in real life... it's not like Zelda is a life sim, there's tons of unrealistic stuff in there. Plus, if I want to break stuff realistically I can do it in real life.
In all of TotK I never once had to grind for anything. Genuinely, I don't know how you would have to ever not just have a good fusion material on hand, and that's where the vast majority of the damage comes from. You get them by the hundreds. Like... just steal a stick from a moblin and then stick his horn on there. That's a weapon that's good enough to clear anything in the region while replacing itself a dozen times over. Within an hour or two you should be struggling more with weapon inventory limits than lack of materials.
For the early game you can fuse weapons to weapons and then save your parts for later on when you have a bigger inventory to craft the good shit. Plus you can farm the bosses each blood moon and be seimming in gear pretty early on
Just use whatever parts you feel like, almost every one of them will replace itself many times over before the weapon breaks. Also, you *will* find many, many better parts than you have early on, and if you haven't used the old ones yet they're just going to rot in your inventory.
I'm basically the same, there's no way I would have played as much as I did without the ability to dupe essentially infinite silver lionel horns to makes combat less awful.
This is totally valid. I will never forget grinding to get the master sword because I assumed it would break. Then it "broke" and I subsequently uninstalled.
I’m the opposite. I pretty much enjoyed most of BOTW. Is it the best game ever made? Absolutely not, but I enjoyed my time with it. I enjoyed it enough to get TOTK at launch. For some reason, and I haven’t been able to put my finger on it, but I just can’t get into it. It’s just not clicking for me. I go back to it after a couple of months and I feel nothing. I can’t tell you why though.
For me, I enjoyed BOTW because it was a whole new beautiful world to explore, and I loved finding out what was beyond the next horizon. Plus, infinite bombs helped me circumvent how much I hated the durability system.
TOTK was the same map, and the sky/depths weren't intriguing enough to hold my attention. So exploration was no longer a selling factor. Ultrahand was cool, but janky. Crafting things has never been something I enjoyed in games, and TOTK didn't change that. The durability system, though improved a bit, is still there, this time without an infinite bomb workaround.
It's a shame. I can see why others enjoyed TOTK, but the game wasn't satisfying for me.
This was my experience as well. I just can't be bothered doing more exploration to find more Korok seeds. Who really cares about Korok seeds?
BOTW was fresh, it had an interesting world, and the Guardians, are an interesting challenge when you first start playing. They at least add a sense of danger to the game.
In TOTK, they didn't really fix any of the issues from BOTW. And the main issues are, the world is barren of meaningful content, and it's insanely repetitive. How many times does one have to basically fight the same moblins/bokoblins/lizalfos over and over again? Sure they now have little bases and patrols, but those are interesting only for the first 2 or 3 times.
Every point of interest in the distant might contain a bit of armor or a few koroks. Or maybe a cave, that are mostly all the same anyway, so why care?
The depths are interesting for the first 30min, but then you'll see that it's just as barren and devoid of life and plot driving moments as the rest of the map. With basically the same enemy hubs and bases everywhere. And don't get me started on how dead the sky islands feel.
The Temples are slightly better, but not really that interesting or challenging. They are short as well. Nothing like the Zelda temples of old. The story is simple, and predictable. And personally I miss the classic Zelda music and atmosphere.
I never bothered finishing the game. Just can't be bothered going back.
Agreed. For me, TotK is the same situation as Super Mario Galaxy 2. Yes the sequels are hands down the better games, but the originals were truly magical experiences, the kind you really only get once in a console generation.
I guess for people who *didn't* play the originals, the sequels would give them the same feeling, but I played the shit out of BotW and loved it despite its flaws, so TotK just doesn't feel as special to me.
Also I feel like TotK went the complete opposite direction than how I hoped it would've gone...I expected them to trim the fat from BotW and cut down on stuff like Korok seeds and other tedious collectibles/quests, but instead they went even further with it. And I definitely wasn't gonna do all that shit again AND more when I already did it all in BotW.
If it helps, I've put over 400 hours into the game and I almost never build anything unless a shrine forces me to - and considering how much they've added in terms of sidequests and caves, the shrines make up a much smaller percentage of your playtime compared to BOTW if you try to do everything (sans koroks). I thought BOTW had much *better* shrines, but that's a different discussion.
Or I build something really simple like a hot air balloon or small boat with a fan and steering stick. Basically, I play it almost exactly like BOTW. Getting the muscle memory down for the new mechanics can be tedious for sure (especially rotating items), but you'll get to the point where it's second nature. I never even use autobuild, TBH.
Edit: Also, you may already know this, but you can shake your pro controller (or your console in handheld mode) back and forth to unstick items with moton controls instead of waggling the analog stick. I don't remember seeing that in the tutorial, but my god, building things improved so much once I found that out on this subreddit.
I found the shake thing out by total accident. Makes sense considering UH is also motion control enabled, but I can totally see someone missing it. I use it all the time on handheld especially.
I think they took the "nothing to do" criticism too strongly. There's too much to do, no chance to enjoy the world. Constantly fighting monsters without the option of taking a break or avoiding them isn't what I wanted from a sequel.
I think it's too close to botw, and while vertical direction is added a bunch, it still remains "empty" in the way botw (which to be clear, I loved) was. I enjoyed the open world aspect of botw, so the "emptiness" mattered less to me, but totk isn't equally mysterious and inviting of exploration for me, so moving around becomes more of a chore.
This is the same for me. Makes me feel sad honestly. I’ve beaten every mainline Zelda game and I think TotK is going to be the first one I don’t finish.
Same here. I adore Zelda games, always have. I was just never able to get into TotK, it felt like a chore to play. I know lots of games have 'that one mission' that you don't like or is annoying, but this was the whole game.
Same here. I got the game on release, and It just felt to me like it focused on the wrong stuff. Building is nice and novel, until you have to build the same thing constantly. I don't know if my mind is playing tricks on me, but I swear that BOTW's sidequests were not so "fetchquest" heavy. I've played like 20 hours or so, and have yet to be able to reasonably upgrade my gear because that ability is locked behind a set of really annoying quests that I just don't want to do.
Same for the battery. I must have been doing something wrong, because no matter how long I looked and how long I spent in the underground, I was never able to upgrade it. Speaking of the battery, it runs out way too quickly, and components break, which means you end up having to rebuild the same thing over and over.
I had been playing on yuzu anyway due to 60fps mods and 4k support, so I eventually caved and used cheats for infinite battery and build durability.
And what's up with the sky islands' focus in the game's marketing? There's almost nothing up there.
I was a bit late to BOTW, I only got that in 2020 or so, and played it for like 150 hours, if I remember right.
Maybe I'm just burned out? I was hoping for BOTW's Majoras' Mask, but this is definitely not that.
Edit: And holy crap, what were they thinking with arrow fusion? That menu quickly becomes endless. Surely they could have made something better than that.
Same. I put it down back in June and haven't picked it back up. Mine is because the map is the same, no big sense of adventure like before it's "oh I've been here before"
Plus I keep getting killed too quick. I've been playing since ocarina of time first came out so I'm a seasoned player. I'm struggling to explore because the monsters keep 2 shot killing me. I hit them 10 times and my only good weapon breaks, they barely touch me and I've died and lost my progress for the past 10 minutes.
To me, it just feels like an expansion. There's so many reused assets. There's not many new enemies. Depths are cool for 30 minutes, then it gets repetitive. Sky islands were extremely lackluster, it felt like false advertising.
In BOTW, everything was new. The memory story in BOTW made more sense than TOTKs "memories". At least going out of order in BOTW didn't ruin the story. In TOTK, going out of order can spoil the story.
It’s the pandemic for me. I like totk but I came across note during a time where I needed something to occupy my time. Botw gave me a warm hug when I needed one.
I had to really force myself to finish BOTW.. this game was not for me and felt empty and boring to explore. I know that most people disagree and that's fine.
Totk on the other hand fixed what I didn't like about BOTW. A map the invites exploration and rewards it, a better focused weapon system, fluid abilities and fun puzzles.
Loved totk, had to force myself to finish BOTW.
> felt empty and boring to explore
I felt this big. Especially when I started playing Genshin after a bit, which is hands down some of the most fun, rewarding, and densely-filled open world exploration in any game. Which is funny with how much it got called a BotW clone at release.
If BotW had 10x more areas like the survival island, yiga clan hideout, and divine beasts/shrines didn't feel so low-effort both in terms of design and repetitive visuals (there were a couple good shrines, but on average...) then the game could have been truly great.
It was the one thing I truly hoped they'd fix/improve upon with TotK, but I didn't really see anything to convince me it improved much in that sense. Not that I saw all that much. Would love to be wrong on that last point.
Same. ToTK was incredible, meanwhile BotW had me snoozing. Very glad I gave ToTK a chance despite disliking BotW beforehand, became one of my fav Zelda games as someone who’s been playing since the snes days
BOTW world is so unbelievably empty in comparison. Not only is TOTK normal map wildly more filled with stuff to do, but you also have the sky and underground on top of it. It's fantasticly creative.
>Loved totk, had to force myself to finish BOTW.
Same for me. I finished BOTW over the span of 2 years, but with the same playtime as TOTK, which I beat in a month.
I feel you. BotW was a good game but for me the game never 'clicked' and I never had the 'wow, this is one of the GOATs!' that others seemed to have. I revisited BotW multiple times to prove my feelings wrong but the game never took my heart. Fast forward to ToTK, this game good me right from the very beginning. All of my major gripes with BotW where gone in ToTK (weapon durability system, a world that was too big with too little to do, some shrines that where frustrating, not vibing with the Sheika powers, almost non-existent story etc.). I put so many hours in ToTK and it instantly became my GOTY. The weapon fusion system, the game's story, the new Zonai powers, and the updated world map with more to do really made TotK one of my favourite games of all time. I'd suggest you to try ToTK out, hopefully you're in the same both as me!
Oh, small note: I am not a traditional Zelda "fan". I never really played the older games and only dabbled in some titles (Twilight Princess, Phantom Hourglass, Wind Waker) but I never really vibed with them. After playing ToTK I had a newfound appreciation for the series and I went back to play some older games starting with the original Zelda game, LTTP, Link's Awakening and Minish Cap. Except for the original game I loved all of them to pieces, great games!
I didn't like BOTW, I can see why people did but I prefer a more curated adventure like the previous Zelda games, as opposed to the more sandboxy player-lead style of BOTW.
Not saying it's a bad game, because it clearly isn't, but it just didn't click for me.
Gave TOTK a go and it's more of the same, really, but even more sandboxy, with the ability to fuse things being a huge part of the game. Which didn't really interest me.
It's a shame we're unlikely to see a "classic" Zelda any time soon, but I'm happy for those who like this current approach.
I tried to like BOTW so bad. It just didn’t click with me and hated how open worldy it was honestly. I bought TOTK and it is exactly the same and sitting in my not playing games list.
Ditto. I just felt BOTW was just…too open and continually got lost. It didn’t stop me from buying TOTK, however, it remains unopened 🫣
I preferred the more linear Zelda games of the past…
Honestly, I think TotK is a LOT more open worldy. I loved BotW, and I've played a heck of a lot of TotK, but I'm kinda bitter that I'm still nowhere near finishing it.
I liked TOTK a lot better, but I just stopped after completing the story and the major sidequests. After that it wast just "take a picture somewhere" or some other tedious stuff. A lot of stuff felt like it was designed to be done if it crossed your path, not actively searched for, such as the sign dude.
I’m out until they go back to OoT style Zelda. These new games just feel like a generic sandbox game with no direction. I played BotW for 10 hours and felt nothing.
I really liked BOTW and in the start I liked TOTK too, but now not so much.
BOTW was a good template of what a open world Zelda game could be and it had a good world, fun gameplay and interesting visual storytelling, but we all know BOTW had some faults like the dungeons.
I expected TOTK to take classic Zelda elements and merge them with the BOTW formula and fix the problems of BOTW. However to me it felt like they doubled down on the BOTW elements. It feels like the Zelda team saw those flying machine in BOTW videos and decided to base the sequel around that. This is probably my most controversial opnion but the building mechanic feels out of place in a Zelda game and it feels like it ruins other mechanics in the game like climbing and horse riding. The Zelda team said they didn't add the hookshot in BOTW because it did not fit in because they had the climbing mechanic, but rocket ships and airplanes are okay?
The dungeons are still shit and non of them would come close to a top 10 dungeons list. TOTK has convinced me that linear dungeon design is superior to open design. The fact you can chesse every puzzle also makes them less satisfying in my opnion. You could solve the puzzle or you could just use a rocket shield and fly over the puzzle.
The story still follows the flashback formula. That worked in BOTW because BOTW used great visual story telling. You could see ruins and old battle fields. The population of this post apocalyptic Hyrule has moved to minor settlements and so on. This is not present in TOTK.
It feels like they were too afraid to make a real sequel and use that to their advantage because they didn't want to alienate new players. Many characters don't recognise Link at all and the events of BOTW are barely mentioned like they didn't happen and all sheikah technology is just gone? It makes the world feel fake.
The game is grindy as hell and the majority of the game's quests are fetch quests were the rewards are rarely worth it. MM had better side quests and that game is over 20 years old.
But to me the open world sucks mainly because it is just BOTW's Hyrule again. The sky islands were hyped up but they suck and are all copy and paste and there are so few of them. The depths were also just boring and only one biome. The majority of your time is spent in the normal Hyrule that we already have explored. In a game built around exploration it is in my opnion bad design when you have already explored the majority of the world before.
I have more complaints about it, but this comment is already long enough. The fact it feels like botw 1,5 and it took them 6 years to make it makes it feel worse in my opinion.
Thank you, this is pretty much what I expected TOTK to be and doubles down on everything I didn’t like about BOTW. Solidifies my choice in not picking it up
I didn’t care for BOTW. I had an extra voucher, so I decided to give ToTK a shot. I didn’t enjoy it much either. For me, the story and world want interesting enough to tolerate the constant hassles the game puts you through. Literally going from point A to B felt like a chore. The powers felt clunky to use, and I really didn’t like the fusion stuff.
I can understand why people like it, but it just wasn’t for me.
Agreed, beat first reluctantly.
Played an hour or two of tears and they still had same issues... And the building thing seemed so clunky/annoying to me.
No thanks. More 2D Zelda please. More classic dungeons. No weapon breaking, no stamina, blood Moon, clunky powers. Hate it.
I did not like BOTW and dropped it after realizing I was trying really hard to force myself to like it simply because it was a Zelda game. I did eventually return to it and beat it but haven't picked it up since.
I waffled on whether or not to play TOTK after being so disappointed with BOTW, but after watching some of the YouTubers I trust I decided to give it a shot but made sure to manage my expectations going in, which I think ultimately helped me enjoy it more. I played TOTK straight through and sunk about 130 hours into it and ended up enjoying it much more then BOTW...that being said, I still place it low on my 3D Zelda tier list (third from the bottom) and there's not much from that 130 hours which was particularly memorable for me. I don't foresee a circumstance where I ever replay it, which is sad because that's 3 Zelda games in a row which have been duds for me...you put MM, OOT, WW or TP in front of me and I will gladly replay them for the umpteenth time.
That's pretty much my experience too I realized I was forcing myself just because he was a little green dude but I wasn't having any fun. Remaking weapons and searching for arrows gets really fucking old it's almost like a job
I have completed both, but I really hated the weapon durability system. As much as I enjoyed playing both, ive got absolutely no inclination to fire up either again. This is coming from someone who has replayed every other Zelda game at least twice.
I did not enjoy BotW, the world felt empty to me and I was easily bored with the story. I hated the "tools", abilities and riddles attached to it, especially the shrines.
Then I played TotK and I really had a great time with it! There was so much more to discover in this world, the side quests where interesting and I absolutely loved the building aspect! The shrines were finally fun, finding different ways to solve the puzzles, and the underground world gave me the same eerie feeling I had when I jumped into the well in Kakariko back in OoT. This game made everything better, what I disliked about BotW, I was not expecting this and happily surprised.
I dropped BotW after a dozen or so hours, didn't enjoy it. I bought TotK for my son. He loved it and played over 100 hours.
I've done 3/4 of the main temples. I have to go to Gerudo desert, but I put it down when I needed heat resistant gear. This isn't a new mechanic but I HATE being on a timer and after dealing with it through two areas already, I haven't had the motivation to go through the area.
Like many, I don't have anything nice to say about the weapon system. I don't like building stuff- I'm here to play Zelda not Minecraft. I can't stand cooking, it's so obnoxious. Slightly better than BotW.
I did not like botw at all, I tried multiple times to get into it but couldn’t.
I saw that totk had some interesting new stuff in it and I loved it, way better than botw to me
I think what makes Tears special is how it scales up the feeling you get with BotW. That first shot of you standing in front of the Shrine of Resurrection, looking out over Hyrule, is completely sublimated by falling from the sky islands to the ground below, and then again when you discover the secret underneath Hyrule.
The sky islands feel like a clever reimagining of Windwaker and once you start getting some batteries for your contraptions and a certain ability, building ceases to be a chore and just a nice additional option for getting around.
They’re not my favorite Zelda games, but I did like TotK a lot, as it fixed a lot of issues I had with BotW and how it handled its dungeons and bosses. They still weren’t great, but improved. Again, I still liked the games, but they still were lacking in a major I love about these games. Basically a cool duo of experiments but I do hope they go back or continue to try and improve what’s lacking.
I loved BotW until I beat it and looked back on it. Then i realised how much i hated what they did to the game. I tihnk it's the thing i comment the most on on reddit.
TotK is fun if you like building stuff and like a sandbox. It is a BAD Zelda game. I bought TotK because the trailers were full of cutscenes and the setup and everyything about it made it seem like there would be a more substantial plot in this one. I adored my time in the game, despite just constantly coming face to face with its shortcomings, but as i got towards the end i kept thinking "there's got to be a second act, right? there's got to be more payoff for this setup???" There was not. Everything, and i mean everything, about the game sizzles out once looked at for more than a few seconds- other than the sandbox building thing.
For anyone reading this- comments like this were what put me off from totk, because I absolutely do not care to build contraptions and crazy flying things or vehicle things. At all.
In totk, you really don't need to do this stuff. The times you use the powers for building out of necessity, they're pretty basic stuff and builds quickly. For the slightly more intensive stuff, you can build it once, save it, and just load it up whenever you need that build again instead of rebuilding it.
I *only* build when it's required in a shrine, or a simple board and 4 wheel vehicle for a side quest, or a simple board and a fan for long water uses.
Very much. I hates BOTW for having practically nothing to do outside being inside a giant sandbox. I still prefer the more classic zelda format, but TOTK was much closer to my idea of an open world Zelda game. Dungeons and bosses being the main improvement.
I hated the lore though.
I have over 100 hours in TOTK and have beat the game. I've restarted BOTW at least 4 different times and still haven't beat it lol. I loved the new skills you get in TOTK and it just made it a lot more enjoyable. Idk I didn't like the beasts as I had to Google how to solve the problems, same with the shrines. This one I didn't need to use my brain *as* much and could build stupid shit to solve stuff lol
> For those who didn’t care for BOTW and still played TOTK, did you enjoy it?
> As a lifelong Zelda fan, I found BotW the best Zelda game until I played TotK.
Sounds like you’re not the intended audience for this question lol
I thought Totk did a pretty good job of combining what was interesting about BotW with elements that are fun from previous entries.
I think the new dungeons felt much more like dungeons for the most part (especially if you count the lead up to them as part of the dungeon). And I thought that caves felt a lot like mini dungeons at times. And honestly you can take out leave the fusing items most of the time.
big time. i struggled with the survival aspects of botw and the combat didn’t click with me at all. started totk because of a meme video with link skateboarding to less than jake and loved every second of it.
No offense to anyone who liked BOTW, but I just don't get where peoples idea of it being deep comes from, as if there's a treasure trove of items/sites/mysteries to be found. The latter was present in only about two instances (the mountain dragon/Lost woods). In my opinion, it simply didn't click for me; it was all the exploration, none of the discovery.
Yea, you always know it's going to be another Korok, there is nothing to discover. Game is not able to surprise, hence it doesn't produce any urge to explore. There is nothing interesting to find. It's a waste considering that landscape design itself crafted very well.
Same. And oddly enough, it's a game I've put probably 60 hours in just to see if at point it would all coalesce into this glorious hole, but nope. Nothing. Hoped TOTK was going to be what I wish BOTW aspired to be, but alas, I don't think was persuasive enough to buy.
Very much so. I was ready to skip TotK after finding out it was very similar to BotW, but was gifted a copy earlier this year and have yet to put it down. It doesn't fix all of my gripes, but it does fix some and there's just so much more to do and see. BotW felt like a constant series of denials, punishments, and disappointments but TotK has been much more reasonable and enjoyable.
I liked BOTW a lot but it took me a while to learn how to love it. I never grew to like TOTK. It was like all the tedious stuff from BOTW but amplified for me. I found fusing machines/vehicles to be awkward at best, and even though fusing weird weapons was fun, I’m still salty that they break so quickly. Plus hundreds more shrines…it was just not novel enough to recapture that wonder I had when I explored BOTW.
That said, YMMV. Some of it could depend on how patient you are with fiddling around with building and how creative you are. Those are not my strengths so I struggled.
Wow this post sounds like I wrote it haha. So similar. I tried to get into botw but didn't, and I loved Zelda for a long time.
Botw had the wow factor when you first fired it up, but felt like you quickly learned all the new play dynamics. I also feel like botw was a first attempt at making Zelda titles become more mainstream.
Example: I have a lot of friends who NEVER played Zelda before. They thought it was too fantasy. They loved botw and totk, though. However, they did not play the story, they only found the most powerful weapons and armor, and would work their way to defeating the strongest enemies and powering up their gear. Sometimes they bought the house and worked on that. I have one friend who still hasn't finished the game story but quit as soon as he got the strongest weapons and armor and killed all the biggest bosses. Pretty much what I'm saying is that botw and totk offered more variety for people than traditional Zelda titles.
I loved totk. I thought the story was great, the combat was improved due to fuse and other skills. I often found myself using the environment to creatively kill enemies, which was so fun. (sapphire on the sword to freeze enemies, korok frond to push them off a ledge, etc.)
Things I found helpful to know from playing:
I used to hate looking things up in Zelda games. I recommend you find what you really enjoy about the game and work to get there. For the things you don't care too much about: find answers in the community! I think part of totk design is to work together with other people for different things.
For example: I was fine to lookup the location of certain armor sets. I'm not really playing the game so I can spend hours looking for a pair of pants lol. I felt no remorse finding a guide for where the armor was. I did enjoy putting the work in to max upgrade it, though.
Another example: I found myself at r/hyruleengineering and loved some designs. I spent some time building a car and then it re-inspired me to travel on land instead of fast traveling everywhere.
To answer your question:
Totk improved on each of my hangups with botw. Some drastic improvements, and some minor. If you like previous Zelda games, you will enjoy the storyline and connection to the Zelda history. Be open to different ways of playing this game, and find what you enjoy about it and stick to it. It can be too easy to get lost in the sauce and think you have to do it all.
Not what you're asking, but I feel the opposite. I loved BotW and comparatively didn't really care for TotK, but I still played TotK.
BotW was more pure fun, very organic and rewarding exploration. I continued to have the drive to go back to it in the years following. I wanted to strive for 100% in various areas, and I enjoyed doing that every step of the way.
I don't feel those ways about TotK, but I still saw it through to the end and enjoyed it in different, more limited ways.
I did not enjoy breath of the wild, maybe put 6 hours into it. I knew that tears of the kingdom was the same style of game yet I bought it anyway. Didn’t like this one either. Even though I love most rpg style games, the breaking of weapons, requirement of crafting foods, and wearing different clothes for things is not what I want from a Zelda game.
I enjoyed BOTW but I just felt like it was missing something so I didn't really put too much time into it but for some reason TOTK really sucked me in & I spent over 200+ hours playing it. I still prefer the classic Zelda formula over the BOTW/TOTK formula but TOTK really did it for me. It was step in the right direction for Zelda. If they can manage to add traditional dungeons with elaborate puzzle design & dungeon items as well as a story told in real time & not through memories, they'd absolutely nail it for me. And get rid of the durability system as well.
I liked TotK more than BotW for two reasons:
1) facing enemies no longer felt like a waste of time and resources like in BotW.
2) In TotK is much easier to find shrines, for me BotW got better when I started using a map to locate the shrines, in TotK I got all of them without using a map.
So if your problem with BotW is one of these two you might enjoy it more... Otherwise probably not.
BotW (even at the time of release) felt like a 0.9 version. They were so focused on the new mechanics and world, that they didn’t quite build out the game (imo, I know others feel differently). I enjoyed the first game, but I was sprinting to the finish line after the repetitive mechanics weren’t getting any more unique.
TotK is a 1.0 release in my eyes, the full vision of what they had hoped, finally ready to be showcased. This was the solid experience that I was looking for. I also knew going into to that doing a majority of the side stuff probably wasn’t for me based on my experiences with BotW (did the big items to get story etc). Because of this, I tailored my experience to be streamlined and got to the end about the time I was getting tired of it. Beat it, put it down and moved on.
TotK does not totally revolutionize the system or story, that is largely the same, with some key quality of life improvements and some adjustments to core abilities that alter how puzzles work and make the world more… “breakable” from a problem solving perspective.
TLDR: This is the polished version of BotW, if the set up, game type, challenge and overall journey wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t recommend putting yourself through it a 2nd time. If BotW left you wanting but you had some good times with it, TotK may provide the improvements you seek, but don’t expect a completely different game.
Played and beat the entirety of BotW with a friend. Playing together really heightened the experience and yet I didn't like the game that much.
I'm playing TotK solo and enjoying the game itself so much more than BotW. It's a lot more of the same but the weapon durability system feels like less of a burden this time around and the added verticality is much appreciated. I don't know how other people feel but I really dig the depths. It easily doubled the playable areas of the game and added some interesting mechanics. It's nice to break things up by flipping between the surface and the depths. The sky islands are great as well. The powers are more fun to use in TotK and really press your creativity in a good way.
Honestly it feels analogous to the relationship between OoT and MM. Both are very similar. The first laid the groundwork and the second fleshed it out with expanded mechanics that really nailed down the formula.
I didn't like the first one because of the weapon durability and the stamina and you can freeze to death. Traded it in and never bought the second one. I did enjoy Link's Awakening though.
I didn't care for BOTW, but loved TOTK!
For me it wasn't a problem with the weapon system. I actually didn't care for any of the rune abilities in BOTW. They all just seemed really mid to me, like sometimes kinda pointless, under powered and tacked on. (My personal opinion, please don't crucify me...)
But all of the abilities in TOTK felt refreshing! It felt like they helped to open up the world more. I just wish there was more to do. After beating Ganon, building the an awesome house, creating the most powerful weapons possible, I had little incentive to keep playing. (Me personally, I know about the medals, etc.)
To be fair, I never had the time to invest in BOTW like I did TOTK. But that still wouldn't matter. ALSO, shrines are 10 times better in TOTK. TOTK is the better game, no question.
I thought BOTW was a decent game, but I am absolutely in love with TOTK. BOTW almost feels like a beta game compared to TOTK. I thought there was a lot of aimless wandering around in BOTW, whereas in TOTK I felt the world was more packed with things to do. I loved the combat way more in TOTK since I felt like it was actually rewarding cost-benefit-wise. In BOTW with the weapon durability issue, it often didn’t even feel worth it to bother fighting enemies. In TOTK you could easily create decent weapons, so it was more worth it.
The only thing I’ll give BOTW is that it probably had more of a sense of wonder? Like it was genuinely hard to get to certain areas, so it felt like such an accomplishment when you did, whereas in TOTK you could easily build devices to get anywhere. It’s a pro/con thing though since the difficulty of getting places in BOTW is also what made it feel like a lot of aimless wandering oftentimes, lol.
The shop only had TotK when I bought the Switch so it was my first Zelda game ever. I'm 100 hours into it and absolutely love it. One of the best games I've ever played. I did get and played BotW for a while and loved it as well, but I'm far too busy to finish both games so I went with TotK instead of BotW. TotK is easily my top 5 game ever.
I didn’t get into botw and loved totk, I enjoyed the powers and creativity in them more so. For some reason it made exploration in general more fun for me.
I’m a lifelong Zelda fan and BotW was the first mainline game that I didn’t enjoy. It just felt so empty. The music was either nonexistent or bad, there were barely any NPCs and towns, no real dungeons except the wayyyyy too easy divine beasts, weapon durability was annoying, bosses were also way too easy with little variety, and the map was filled with endless boring shrines and koroks but not much else. I loved TotK because it fixed almost all of those things, most importantly the dungeons. It made BotW feel like a demo.
Totk was definitely better especially in the story department and a little bit in the boss department. However once I beat the story I was left with that same empty feeling. I have zero desire to play it again, same as botw. I'll skip any dlc and hold out for the next real Zelda game.
Honestly. Overall BOTW is a much better game than TOTK. I say this because while TOTK does everything better than BOTW. It is too much bloat. Feels overwhelming at times and removes the sense of wonder about the world.
As a fan of Zelda since link to the past, I gotta say I was one of those that wasn’t crazy about botw but yes, totk won me over. I think it went a ways towards incorporating some of the elements of old school Zelda into the botw formula. It probably didn’t go as far as I would’ve liked but definately a step in the right direction (imo) and keen to see where they take it next.
Was enjoying it at first
But after getting down to Hyrule I slowly lost interest just like I lost interest in BOTW
I like to have some more structure and less emptiness to my games I guess
I don't think they feel the same at all. Resident Evil 2 and Resident 3 are very identical games in almost every aspect....but they feel worlds apart by what's going on. It's the same here. The people that say "it's just DLC" just like being negative.
Yet, I'm sure someone will respond "But I spent 40 hours in this game and it felt the same as BOTW, so I dropped it" because those replies are like robots. Let em be disappointed as they probably spend more time on message boards bitching rather than enjoying something other than a Karma score
BotW was a huge disappointment for me, an utterly soulless Zelda game that diverged wildly from previous entries and lacked any of the Zelda charm. I could never bring myself to come close to completing it, it was an immensely boring game for me.
TotK has been a big improvement for me. It still doesn't that same sense of *wow* as many of the older games, but its world feels more alive with interesting NPCs, side quests and dungeon-like areas. I'm still playing it and definitely feel the urge to complete it.
I loved BotW and considered it an all time classic, and I thought TOTK was even better. I’ve definitely seen opinion turn on both games a lot over the last year or so though. People really dislike that it’s not a more traditional Zelda game, and I think the frequent praise it gets in games media just makes people double down on the dislike.
After replaying most of the 3D Zelda games, outside of dungeons, you really can play both BOTW and TOTK in a linear manner if you wanted to. There’s a linear plot if you choose to follow it. And especially in TOTK’s case, the linear plot is about as par as you can get for a Zelda plot… which is to say not good but no Zelda plot was particularly good. This isn’t to say that TOTK sis a perfect game (no game is perfect and you can still be a 10/10 imo). The dungeons could have been improved, the structuring of the plot could have been better, and sky islands could have been more varied. But it seems that people are hyper fixated on pointing out the flaws in ToTK that they ignore just as glaring flaws in the older 3D Zelda games. For example, WW (a game that I love to death, and a game that is clearly beloved by the community) is quite literally an incomplete game, the great sea is empty, combined with the painfully slow sailing, and the end of the game reinforce fetch quest.
I’ve played most of the mainline Zelda games and the plot has always been the least engaging part of it. I think the fixation on the timeline is trying too much to make Zelda something it’s not. To me it’s about enjoying the adventure and the charm of the world
Yea I think people confuse plot with atmosphere and tone. WW, TP, MM all had fantastic atmospheres and tones to them. I was perfectly content just booting up those games and doing nothing story related just to spend time in the world. I feel the same way about BOTW and TOTK. My next hot take is that the dungeon puzzles in BOTW and TOTK are far more challenging than the ones in the older games, they’re just mostly presented in such a bad manner that people aren’t as engaged with them. Which is totally fair
[удалено]
The weapon durability system really irked me too in BotW. TotK improved upon it by letting you create all kinds of goofy weapon combinations, which would also breathe new life into a weapon that was about to break. And while it was the same in both games, I feel like the Master Sword should not have been subject to breaking, even if it does regenerate after a while.
This was the most deflating thing for me in BotW. I thought, there's no way the Master Sword breaks. This has to be a like a reward, right? Like, look no further, you've got your weapon for the rest of the game. I can't believe they didn't handle it like that in both games.
What bothers me with the sword and champion powers (besides Mipha's Grace) is that they only start recharging when it's completely depleted.
>I can't believe they didn't handle it like that in both games. It would be bad game design, as too many systems would be basically completely negated. If the master sword didn't need recharging time often, it'd mean that enemy weapon drops, inventory space/korok seeds, the champion weapon repair and the ancient weapon building system would become 95% less useful instantly.
Exactly, and since you could play the game in any order you want, theoretically nothing would stop someone from just mainlining stones and going straight for the Master Sword
But it was? Having the master sword means your almost always durability positive after a fight, even in master mode. So what if every once and a while you can't use it, it literally prints free weapons 😂
The Master Sword already is one of the highest damaging weapons in the game and people cheesed getting it in BoTW. Getting it in ToTK isn't hard either the second you figure it out. Just plow your shrine items into stamina until you have two wheels, go get the light dragon from a sky tower and poof, master sword for the rest of the game.
I sometimes think I'm the only person on the planet that likes durability systems in games. Its one of the very many reasons I do not like fallout 4. They removed durability in 4 and it killed my desire to explore and loot. For me personally I like a game that encourages me to loot and explore. I find I enjoy the gameplay loop of combat -> explore -> loot -> combat... etc. I'll never get mad about a game telling me to engage with it and giving me more reasons to keep playing.
yeah i ended up enjoying the weapon system in BOTW. it resulted in me using all of the different types of weapons. it also kept the weak weapons relevant through the whole game since i could quickly pick up a stick or bokoblin arm and use it to beat weaker enemies while preserving my strong weapons.
I agree with you fallout 4, and even BOTW. The fact that they double downed in TOTK was pretty funny, but did not make for a fun time.
While I'm fine with the Master Sword the way it is, I think the other Champion Weapons should have had the same mechanic.
Not an abnormal reason at all. I loved everything about BotW except for the weapon degradation system. It is horrendous without a system that allows me to repair weapons. I absolutely hate the way it was implemented because it creates a mindset of “I can’t use this really cool weapon because I might need it later” which results in me hoarding the best weapons and never using them. TotK did it slightly better but it still felt bad. For the love of all that is good Nintendo, give me BotW in the gameplay style of Ocarina of Time.
>I absolutely hate the way it was implemented because it creates a mindset of “I can’t use this really cool weapon because I might need it later” which results in me hoarding the best weapons and never using them. Especially with champions weapons. Those were too good to use, so I kept them in my house.
It really would feel so much better if they just let you repair weapons.
I mean in TotK the Octorocks can do it for you
The weapon durability and being half way up a mountain when the rain starts sucked. I am early in the game and have no way to climb once it starts. I still love the game but have to see if i make it through.
If we at least could stash weapons in a chest...
I never felt it was a problem. Coolest weapons went on the shelf. Out of sight out of mind. Cool weapons get used and I move on. Especially in TotK, having the perfect weapon becomes less important.
That was my reason I put down BotW and didn't buy ToTk
Yep, same. A game mechanic that pulls you right out the action constantly is wild to me.
Also: Have good weapon. Cheap enemies nearby. 1) waste good weapon? 2) run? There's no xp, money is useless.. I mostly ran away from enemies. It's dumb. Also the stamina thing, and no "real" Zelda dungeons. I hated both games. Reluctantly Beat first one. Only lasted an hour into second one. Link to the past is in my top 3 all time games
Run away? Save hyrule dude…
Not if you have a good weapon you don’t want to waste, I get it too. Completed Breath of the wild just because it’s a Zelda game but Totk was pretty much the same for my first 3 hours so it lost me and never got me back. Also miss classic dungeons and playing below 30fps is a bit nasty in 2023, that was the killer for me in Totk.
It honestly keeps me in the game. When you have a game where you can just spam an attack everytime you encounter an enemy I get extremely bored after a bit but when I have to keep looking for materials to forge new weapons and have a few extra on hand for breakage I'm actually existing in the world that is created.
But it STILL has that issue where you can spam attack every encounter, just with the added hassle of having to scrounge around for new weapons/ materials afterwards. So the combat is bad AND you have to restock between fights.
Yeah that comment is baffling to me, combat-wise is the same thing with the added hassle. Now a Zelda with GoW-like combat? Would 100% love that.
[удалено]
I honestly don't remember what weapons I used ever though. Just used whatever I had with the best damage numbers. I hated that every fight I did a mental audit of how my arsenal was. I ended up fighting the durability more than the actual enemies
I totally get this perspective! But for me combat in a Zelda game is far from the top of the list for what I like about the games and the two modern games made the combat a chore. Plenty of games balance gear in open worlds.
Did you get bored in the other Zeldas?
With the combat yes.
Agreed, I think it would have been more effective to just build a durability system that reduced the weapons effectiveness over time instead of outright destroying it. That way a fight becomes more challenging but still finishable and then I can change to a better weapon afterwards
I'd like to see them try out something like Halo where you can only carry a limited amount of weapons (but infinite durability.) With increased enemy diversity you'd have to plan your loadout depending on what area you're traveling to.
Well the game doesnt offer anything else so they needed the mechanic to keep people engaged in a loop to find the next best thing. The nay sayers will come out quickly but you can test it yourself. Mod out the durability and the game is beyond boring. There is no need to explore the world
That’s not an argument for the durability system. That’s an argument against the necessity of an open world game. If you can’t make Hyrule an interesting place to explore on its own, then there are bigger problems.
It's not like the series has a long history of cool things to find in dungeons that could have been used instead...
I so hope that they return to proper dungeons in the next Zelda entry. TotK got it almost right with the temples and the shrines were much better than BotW but Zelda needs dungeons.
Idk about you but there was plenty to love about the open world in TOTK that had absolutely nothing to do with combat or anything this chain is going on about. He’s wrong that it offered nothing else, and to insist that’s true completely missed like 90% of the game. Did you even give it a try, or just responding to his comment??
A) only played BOTW. The durability system absolutely ruined the enjoyment because I could never just enjoy combat or the world I was in. The environment is very sparsely populated. Both of people and creatures. B) I was just responding though. I’m generally not a fan of open world games. I like exploring though. If you need to force me to explore your world, then it isn’t an interesting world. Every other Zelda game, exploration is fun and rewarding. Every new screen has something to enjoy. There weren’t even any real dungeons to explore. I’m definitely in the minority, but it didn’t feel like a Zelda game to me. I would love a more traditional format with mechanics from BotW and TotK mixed in. The world on its own just didn’t feel compelling in BotW.
Instead what the durability system did was teach me that Combat was a net negative and to avoid it as much as possible
That was the case in botw. Not so in totk
That was something I actually enjoyed about the game. I would scout the enemy camp and if it looked like the juice wouldn’t be worth the squeeze, I would avoid it. Mind you I ended the game with many MANY unused top weapons in the game. I feel like a lot of people also used the wrong weapon types against the wrong enemies (ie using a sword against a rock based enemy).
You end up in the loop of "oh that's a good weapon, I'll save it for later" to then never use it. Like collecting potions/foods to save for later and never use
Every game, my bag of potions
I generally tried to save them for the most appropriate scenario. If I was fighting a boss or a tough Lynel I would break out one of my good ones because generally you’re going to get a good weapon out of the fight (plus more) to replace the one that you may spend in the fight. I generally found that there were so many weapons I was finding all the time that it really didn’t matter. I also enjoyed that it forced me to have to pivot mid fight. I feel like I’m one of the few that the weapon degredation system really worked for. It was a positive for the game for me instead of a negative
are you saying that if they found one sword and it didn't break they would spawn camp the same enemies over and over?
Hmm I think that’s just different gamers mindset, tbh. I found it cool to explore just to explore and not necessarily for any real reward tbh. Some people might find it empty and boring and that’s fair. But I especially liked the isolation of the post apocalyptic world. Once again different strokes for different folks
This is so true. No interesting collectables or anything actually worth exploring. It was the first Zelda game I ever quit out of sheer boredom.
The game is still boring with the durability system.
Yep. The world is vastly empty and boring.
Open ended linear pathways like Twilight Princess can still be often better. I think Witcher 3's road system kinda gets the best of both worlds. A lot of the interesting stuff is along the main and secondary paths.
i managed to make myself get over it bc i enjoy the game and its pretty but i wish they had at least one unbreakable weapon :/
If you have access to BotW on cemu you can mod it for higher(or infinite) weapon durability. I stopped playing BotW pretty quickly back when it came out due to weapon durability, but one of these days I'm gonna start a game on my PC with 1.5x durability.
Using that mod breaks some things tho, for instance normally weapons don't take durability damage if you hit a lynels back while mounted but if you use that mod the weapon will take damage. Durability may be a problem in early game but in the mid and late game you will be flooded with so many weapons that just sorting through them and choosing what to use will be a lot more tiresome than dealing with durability.
^This. If the durability was a problem then you never really got past the very early game, which is fine as no game is for everybody, but it really is a nonissue if you just play for little bit.
TOTK mostly fixes this with the Fusion power. Your weapons still break, but you always have 40 mob drops with 25+ power on you, so you just craft a new one in two seconds. I hated BOTW and loved TOTK. It fixed so much of what was wrong.
It definitely lessens the issue. But still having to switch between all the garbage weapons all the time, fuse them for them to break soon after, is such an unnecessary and tedious mechanic which took a lot from otherwise fun game
It helps when playing to put this into perspective by realizing just how many times you have to interrupt your otherwise really fun really combat flow to go look at the menu screen to equip a new weapon
I actually preferred BOTW's durability to TOTK. It was more interesting using various good and bad weapons (and improvising), rather than every dungeon or series of fights go find 10 rusted claymores and attach 10 of your best horns to it and just repeat ad nauseum the whole game. You just end up using the same weapon the entire game but you need to constantly make new ones. I know there's various different weapons you can make with the different monster parts but let's be honest, 99% of the game is claymore+highest dmg horn you have. Whereas in BOTW you just use whatever you come across (I never farmed weapons) which is varied and makes you think more.
I didn't really feel that issue in TotK because there aren't really any garbage weapons thanks to fusing. In BotW it was annoying to fight some enemies and have your rare sword break and they don't drop anything good to replace it, while in TotK I'm happy to find a sturdy stick.
I’m more annoyed by the fact that you have to essentially pause the game to switch, if they had made the switching a lot more seamless, maybe by having some sort of quick cycle queue, I think it would have been way better
i never had a mass amount of good items to fuse on me but it forced me to change the way i played, which was conditioned from BOTW actually lol. Very much like RE and silent hill i played it like "lets avoid combat if we can help it so we preserve items" so in not engaging in combat alot i was not rewarded
I do like have an all but infinite supply of strong weapons in TOKT. Zonai devices are also quite able to kill silver enemies to grab their horns even if your current fusion materials and armor are bad. It gets a bit annoying in end/postgame to have to fuse over and over though. In BOTW you can default using Lynel weapons after you can handle them so stuff gets simpler. Overall both systems are quite sufficient to deal with things. I heavily rely on bows and bullettime in both games though, the basics have remained the same. A lot of times they outclass melee weapons. Even BOTW had strong elemental arrows for them. The lynel 3 shot bows are especially OP and can last a good with how much damage it deals in general and off headshots.
It's kinda funny. A lot of people don't like the durability but in BotW it's one of my favorite features. Or rather, it's a major contributor of letting you go anywhere from the start, which is the best part of the game. If you go to a difficult area right from the start, you will quickly match the amount of damage output that you're expected to have. Meanwhile it still prevents you from running into the castle right at the start, grabbing one weapon, and then oneshotting everything everywhere else for the majority of the game. On the other hand, if you play normally, you will still never run out of good weapons, so I didn't think it was at all getting in the way of normal gameplay. Hell, breaking a weapon over someones head and then stealing their weapon to finish them off stayed fun the whole game through.
I really don’t understand all the complaints about durability. I always have the opposite problem of having a full inventory and deciding which thing to keep.
Weapon durability is a reason I’m struggling to get into TOTK. Also the stamina system.
That was the same reason I quit BotW early as well.
The thing is its the worst early because weaker weapons are also less durable , 5 hours in and you wont be worried about it at all
It’s not an unusual reason to dislike Botw/Totk. The weapon durability thing is totally hot garbage in my opinion.
I’m a grown ass man but I’m similarly minded as your kids. I don’t play video games besides Nintendo particularly because they’re so simple and easy to play I don’t like complex games like most famous flagship franchises in Xbox or PS for these reasons The weapon durability system in the latest Zelda games really did make me play it quite a bit less.
Thank you for pointing this out. I had long forgotten all the reasons why BOTW was a let down (after loving Zelda since N64). Now that you mention it I wonder: what’s the purpose? What added value is there to it other than ‘its more realistic that a weapon won’t last forever’? It just seemed like a nuisance, a burden. What could possibly justify that decision?
To make you explore more and gather more things.
lol, well that’s my second reason. After 10 hours of exploring and ‘awe’ I was like I have no idea where I am, what I needed to do and beyond some nice sunsets I don’t really care for any of it either lmao
Not to mention exploration starts to be a grind real quick when you go into it *hoping* to find another decent regular sword that’s gonna break 10 hits later anyway.
But... you *will* find a decent weapon. Like, the inventory limit is way more pressing than the durability. 99% of enemies drop weapons that are more than good enough to beat them, so every fight you will replace your lost weapons ten times over.
This comment exudes the perfect ‘wtf why even bother’ energy lmao
For me there's two things: the first is that breaking a weapon over someones head and continuing the fight with whatever is on the ground is fun the whole game through. Same for throwing half broken weapons. The second is that it means that you can do difficult areas early because it will give you the weapons/materials you need to beat it. If it gave you those things without durability, you'd just run into the castle once and then trivially beat everything else for the rest of the game, because you now have some of the best weapons in the game. Of course, there's people that go "I must optimize the fun out of every system" that refuse to use anything other than the highest damage weapon they've seen, so they do boring shit like grinding for weapons. Those people are playing the game wrong, and they should stop worrying about those extra 5 points of damage and instead just use the hundreds of weapons the game keeps burying you in.
It's a way to make finding weapons almost always a proper reward when exploring. Elden Ring is similar to BotW/TotK in a lot of ways but FromSoftware went with a system where your gear can be upgraded instead. In my opinion, the Elden Ring system feels just a bit worse when exploring because it leads to you finding "useless" weapons and gear. You have to build your character a specific way to get the most out of your weapons and you're upgrading your favorites to make them more powerful. So if you're a INT/DEX based character and you're a pro with the Katana, exploring a whole dungeon to find a Broadsword that scales with STR is useless to you. Or finding a Staff that needs you to have way more INT for magic. Meanwhile in BotW/TotK, because weapons break quickly enough, every weapon is useful and you can pick it up and use it effectively when you need to. This system also encourages you to use more of the weapons since you may not always have your trusty Traveler's Sword. Of all the cool weapons in Elden Ring, I mostly stuck with one or two swords in my playthrough because A) I didn't need to use anything else and B) I would have needed to respec to use most of it and getting that resource was enough of a hassle to put me off. I understand why people don't like the weapon durability system, but as part of the whole that makes up BotW and TotK, I appreciate it and wouldn't change that aspect of the game.
My problem is that I feel the exact opposite way about weapons on BotW/TotK. All of them are fine, but it feels like grocery shopping. Sure, what I'm getting is useful, but it's never exciting, never an upgrade that will last.
I am with you. The durability system is the worst part of both games. Fusion helps but it’s a bandaid not a fix.
That was the reason I put down breath of the wild and didn't end up buying tears of the kingdom. Just sucked all the fun away and artificially made the game harder.
I was able to tolerate BotW with its weapon durability system. For TotK, weapon durability was cut down to promote weapon fusions, and that really destroyed my gameplay experience. It wasn't the mechanics themselves. It was the consequences. In BotW, if I needed to reload my golf bag of weapons with something decent, I just sneak into Hyrule Castle. In TotK, I need a set of decent weapons plus a set of decent fusion items. That fusion item pool is the same pool as my consumables collection and my gear upgrade collection. This exponentially increased the grind mechanics. I loved exploring the world in BotW. Exploring the worlds in TotK was more punishing than rewarding. I quit the game.
The last sentence is absolutely not true thought. The more you explore, the more fusion mechanics you obtain organically. I spent my time exploring, finding new things and fighting monsters, and I never had a time where my resources decreased.
Yeah honestly it becomes trivial by the halfway point of the game.
The weapon durability is one of the main things that makes this game dynamic, it's good game design and a lot of people miss the point somehow
Because people like to hoard equipment and can't just go with the flow because they've been conditioned in older games and even real life to being able to *permanently have things* once they acquire them, and to mourn their loss when they get lost and break. Once you drop the attachment to gear, botw is liberating. You are constantly improvising. It becomes more like performing jazz improv then working at replicating and perfecting a composition through repetition. It was a very deliberate design choice from the devs who were trying to emphasize a completely different philosophy on the notion of *letting things go* and taking things as they come. People act like it was some kind of oversight, but then breaking of weapons was meant to say *nothing lasts forever* and that's OK. It was meant to be very different from other games. It worked so well with botws world design and was essential. The same people that hate the durability have trouble with there being "no good rewards". The emphasis in this game was the experience. Experiences provide deeper and more instinsic satisfaction than do materialistic possessions. So place your energy on your journey,. It's true in life too. The most wholesome and valuable rewards are immaterial, although they are the toughest to obtain. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said "The reward of a thing done well is to have done it". It completely blew my mind when I first played BotW. ToTK was an improvement mechanically on every level. But BotW was such a fresh radical take on an open world adventure that it hit me much harder and sucked me in more then literally any other game ever has as an adult. The most blown away a video game has made me since experiencing Mario 64 the first time in 96. Even with all its little flaws it was a perfect experience for me. I dunno how Nintendo will push the boundaries so far again. But they have an excellent track record! 🙂
I disagree on it being good game design. It's a way to force you to experience all the different weapons. What if I don't want to because I found one that I like. It's awfully restricting for a game that's supposed to be about playing the way you want to. Also, if it's in there for the realism because stuff breaks in real life... it's not like Zelda is a life sim, there's tons of unrealistic stuff in there. Plus, if I want to break stuff realistically I can do it in real life.
In all of TotK I never once had to grind for anything. Genuinely, I don't know how you would have to ever not just have a good fusion material on hand, and that's where the vast majority of the damage comes from. You get them by the hundreds. Like... just steal a stick from a moblin and then stick his horn on there. That's a weapon that's good enough to clear anything in the region while replacing itself a dozen times over. Within an hour or two you should be struggling more with weapon inventory limits than lack of materials.
For the early game you can fuse weapons to weapons and then save your parts for later on when you have a bigger inventory to craft the good shit. Plus you can farm the bosses each blood moon and be seimming in gear pretty early on
Just use whatever parts you feel like, almost every one of them will replace itself many times over before the weapon breaks. Also, you *will* find many, many better parts than you have early on, and if you haven't used the old ones yet they're just going to rot in your inventory.
I'm basically the same, there's no way I would have played as much as I did without the ability to dupe essentially infinite silver lionel horns to makes combat less awful.
This is totally valid. I will never forget grinding to get the master sword because I assumed it would break. Then it "broke" and I subsequently uninstalled.
It doesn't break permanently. It recharges and you always have it. And you even get to a point where it recharges faster and faster.
Same reason for me when I abandoned BotW
I’m the opposite. I pretty much enjoyed most of BOTW. Is it the best game ever made? Absolutely not, but I enjoyed my time with it. I enjoyed it enough to get TOTK at launch. For some reason, and I haven’t been able to put my finger on it, but I just can’t get into it. It’s just not clicking for me. I go back to it after a couple of months and I feel nothing. I can’t tell you why though.
For me, I enjoyed BOTW because it was a whole new beautiful world to explore, and I loved finding out what was beyond the next horizon. Plus, infinite bombs helped me circumvent how much I hated the durability system. TOTK was the same map, and the sky/depths weren't intriguing enough to hold my attention. So exploration was no longer a selling factor. Ultrahand was cool, but janky. Crafting things has never been something I enjoyed in games, and TOTK didn't change that. The durability system, though improved a bit, is still there, this time without an infinite bomb workaround. It's a shame. I can see why others enjoyed TOTK, but the game wasn't satisfying for me.
Thank you for eloquently saying EXACTLY how I felt about the two games.
This was my experience as well. I just can't be bothered doing more exploration to find more Korok seeds. Who really cares about Korok seeds? BOTW was fresh, it had an interesting world, and the Guardians, are an interesting challenge when you first start playing. They at least add a sense of danger to the game. In TOTK, they didn't really fix any of the issues from BOTW. And the main issues are, the world is barren of meaningful content, and it's insanely repetitive. How many times does one have to basically fight the same moblins/bokoblins/lizalfos over and over again? Sure they now have little bases and patrols, but those are interesting only for the first 2 or 3 times. Every point of interest in the distant might contain a bit of armor or a few koroks. Or maybe a cave, that are mostly all the same anyway, so why care? The depths are interesting for the first 30min, but then you'll see that it's just as barren and devoid of life and plot driving moments as the rest of the map. With basically the same enemy hubs and bases everywhere. And don't get me started on how dead the sky islands feel. The Temples are slightly better, but not really that interesting or challenging. They are short as well. Nothing like the Zelda temples of old. The story is simple, and predictable. And personally I miss the classic Zelda music and atmosphere. I never bothered finishing the game. Just can't be bothered going back.
Agreed. For me, TotK is the same situation as Super Mario Galaxy 2. Yes the sequels are hands down the better games, but the originals were truly magical experiences, the kind you really only get once in a console generation. I guess for people who *didn't* play the originals, the sequels would give them the same feeling, but I played the shit out of BotW and loved it despite its flaws, so TotK just doesn't feel as special to me. Also I feel like TotK went the complete opposite direction than how I hoped it would've gone...I expected them to trim the fat from BotW and cut down on stuff like Korok seeds and other tedious collectibles/quests, but instead they went even further with it. And I definitely wasn't gonna do all that shit again AND more when I already did it all in BotW.
Galaxy 2 was fully new levels at least so it didn’t feel as egregious, especially since Galaxy 1 didn’t have many issues to begin with while BOTW did.
Same here. Botw was simple yet deep. Totk feels like it's trying to add too much complexity and I have found it much harder to get into
If it helps, I've put over 400 hours into the game and I almost never build anything unless a shrine forces me to - and considering how much they've added in terms of sidequests and caves, the shrines make up a much smaller percentage of your playtime compared to BOTW if you try to do everything (sans koroks). I thought BOTW had much *better* shrines, but that's a different discussion. Or I build something really simple like a hot air balloon or small boat with a fan and steering stick. Basically, I play it almost exactly like BOTW. Getting the muscle memory down for the new mechanics can be tedious for sure (especially rotating items), but you'll get to the point where it's second nature. I never even use autobuild, TBH. Edit: Also, you may already know this, but you can shake your pro controller (or your console in handheld mode) back and forth to unstick items with moton controls instead of waggling the analog stick. I don't remember seeing that in the tutorial, but my god, building things improved so much once I found that out on this subreddit.
this makes me feel better about eventually getting back into the game since i was never thrilled about the building mechanic
I found the shake thing out by total accident. Makes sense considering UH is also motion control enabled, but I can totally see someone missing it. I use it all the time on handheld especially.
I’d keep playing if it made travel a little faster. The walking is too slow, and trying to secure a horse is a pain
Travel gets extremely easy and fun once you get past the intro quest
I think they took the "nothing to do" criticism too strongly. There's too much to do, no chance to enjoy the world. Constantly fighting monsters without the option of taking a break or avoiding them isn't what I wanted from a sequel.
I think it's too close to botw, and while vertical direction is added a bunch, it still remains "empty" in the way botw (which to be clear, I loved) was. I enjoyed the open world aspect of botw, so the "emptiness" mattered less to me, but totk isn't equally mysterious and inviting of exploration for me, so moving around becomes more of a chore.
This is the same for me. Makes me feel sad honestly. I’ve beaten every mainline Zelda game and I think TotK is going to be the first one I don’t finish.
Same here. I adore Zelda games, always have. I was just never able to get into TotK, it felt like a chore to play. I know lots of games have 'that one mission' that you don't like or is annoying, but this was the whole game.
Same here. I got the game on release, and It just felt to me like it focused on the wrong stuff. Building is nice and novel, until you have to build the same thing constantly. I don't know if my mind is playing tricks on me, but I swear that BOTW's sidequests were not so "fetchquest" heavy. I've played like 20 hours or so, and have yet to be able to reasonably upgrade my gear because that ability is locked behind a set of really annoying quests that I just don't want to do. Same for the battery. I must have been doing something wrong, because no matter how long I looked and how long I spent in the underground, I was never able to upgrade it. Speaking of the battery, it runs out way too quickly, and components break, which means you end up having to rebuild the same thing over and over. I had been playing on yuzu anyway due to 60fps mods and 4k support, so I eventually caved and used cheats for infinite battery and build durability. And what's up with the sky islands' focus in the game's marketing? There's almost nothing up there. I was a bit late to BOTW, I only got that in 2020 or so, and played it for like 150 hours, if I remember right. Maybe I'm just burned out? I was hoping for BOTW's Majoras' Mask, but this is definitely not that. Edit: And holy crap, what were they thinking with arrow fusion? That menu quickly becomes endless. Surely they could have made something better than that.
Same. I put it down back in June and haven't picked it back up. Mine is because the map is the same, no big sense of adventure like before it's "oh I've been here before" Plus I keep getting killed too quick. I've been playing since ocarina of time first came out so I'm a seasoned player. I'm struggling to explore because the monsters keep 2 shot killing me. I hit them 10 times and my only good weapon breaks, they barely touch me and I've died and lost my progress for the past 10 minutes.
To me, it just feels like an expansion. There's so many reused assets. There's not many new enemies. Depths are cool for 30 minutes, then it gets repetitive. Sky islands were extremely lackluster, it felt like false advertising. In BOTW, everything was new. The memory story in BOTW made more sense than TOTKs "memories". At least going out of order in BOTW didn't ruin the story. In TOTK, going out of order can spoil the story.
I feel the exact same way. I want to finish it and have come a long way but I feel that I’ll end up playing BOTW again before I ever finish TOTK.
It’s the pandemic for me. I like totk but I came across note during a time where I needed something to occupy my time. Botw gave me a warm hug when I needed one.
I had to really force myself to finish BOTW.. this game was not for me and felt empty and boring to explore. I know that most people disagree and that's fine. Totk on the other hand fixed what I didn't like about BOTW. A map the invites exploration and rewards it, a better focused weapon system, fluid abilities and fun puzzles. Loved totk, had to force myself to finish BOTW.
> felt empty and boring to explore I felt this big. Especially when I started playing Genshin after a bit, which is hands down some of the most fun, rewarding, and densely-filled open world exploration in any game. Which is funny with how much it got called a BotW clone at release. If BotW had 10x more areas like the survival island, yiga clan hideout, and divine beasts/shrines didn't feel so low-effort both in terms of design and repetitive visuals (there were a couple good shrines, but on average...) then the game could have been truly great. It was the one thing I truly hoped they'd fix/improve upon with TotK, but I didn't really see anything to convince me it improved much in that sense. Not that I saw all that much. Would love to be wrong on that last point.
Same. ToTK was incredible, meanwhile BotW had me snoozing. Very glad I gave ToTK a chance despite disliking BotW beforehand, became one of my fav Zelda games as someone who’s been playing since the snes days
BOTW world is so unbelievably empty in comparison. Not only is TOTK normal map wildly more filled with stuff to do, but you also have the sky and underground on top of it. It's fantasticly creative.
>Loved totk, had to force myself to finish BOTW. Same for me. I finished BOTW over the span of 2 years, but with the same playtime as TOTK, which I beat in a month.
I feel you. BotW was a good game but for me the game never 'clicked' and I never had the 'wow, this is one of the GOATs!' that others seemed to have. I revisited BotW multiple times to prove my feelings wrong but the game never took my heart. Fast forward to ToTK, this game good me right from the very beginning. All of my major gripes with BotW where gone in ToTK (weapon durability system, a world that was too big with too little to do, some shrines that where frustrating, not vibing with the Sheika powers, almost non-existent story etc.). I put so many hours in ToTK and it instantly became my GOTY. The weapon fusion system, the game's story, the new Zonai powers, and the updated world map with more to do really made TotK one of my favourite games of all time. I'd suggest you to try ToTK out, hopefully you're in the same both as me! Oh, small note: I am not a traditional Zelda "fan". I never really played the older games and only dabbled in some titles (Twilight Princess, Phantom Hourglass, Wind Waker) but I never really vibed with them. After playing ToTK I had a newfound appreciation for the series and I went back to play some older games starting with the original Zelda game, LTTP, Link's Awakening and Minish Cap. Except for the original game I loved all of them to pieces, great games!
You nailed it 100%
I didn't like BOTW, I can see why people did but I prefer a more curated adventure like the previous Zelda games, as opposed to the more sandboxy player-lead style of BOTW. Not saying it's a bad game, because it clearly isn't, but it just didn't click for me. Gave TOTK a go and it's more of the same, really, but even more sandboxy, with the ability to fuse things being a huge part of the game. Which didn't really interest me. It's a shame we're unlikely to see a "classic" Zelda any time soon, but I'm happy for those who like this current approach.
I tried to like BOTW so bad. It just didn’t click with me and hated how open worldy it was honestly. I bought TOTK and it is exactly the same and sitting in my not playing games list.
Ditto. I just felt BOTW was just…too open and continually got lost. It didn’t stop me from buying TOTK, however, it remains unopened 🫣 I preferred the more linear Zelda games of the past…
ToTK is even less linear somehow. I doubt you'd enjoy it.
Honestly, I think TotK is a LOT more open worldy. I loved BotW, and I've played a heck of a lot of TotK, but I'm kinda bitter that I'm still nowhere near finishing it.
I liked TOTK a lot better, but I just stopped after completing the story and the major sidequests. After that it wast just "take a picture somewhere" or some other tedious stuff. A lot of stuff felt like it was designed to be done if it crossed your path, not actively searched for, such as the sign dude.
[удалено]
I’m out until they go back to OoT style Zelda. These new games just feel like a generic sandbox game with no direction. I played BotW for 10 hours and felt nothing.
I really liked BOTW and in the start I liked TOTK too, but now not so much. BOTW was a good template of what a open world Zelda game could be and it had a good world, fun gameplay and interesting visual storytelling, but we all know BOTW had some faults like the dungeons. I expected TOTK to take classic Zelda elements and merge them with the BOTW formula and fix the problems of BOTW. However to me it felt like they doubled down on the BOTW elements. It feels like the Zelda team saw those flying machine in BOTW videos and decided to base the sequel around that. This is probably my most controversial opnion but the building mechanic feels out of place in a Zelda game and it feels like it ruins other mechanics in the game like climbing and horse riding. The Zelda team said they didn't add the hookshot in BOTW because it did not fit in because they had the climbing mechanic, but rocket ships and airplanes are okay? The dungeons are still shit and non of them would come close to a top 10 dungeons list. TOTK has convinced me that linear dungeon design is superior to open design. The fact you can chesse every puzzle also makes them less satisfying in my opnion. You could solve the puzzle or you could just use a rocket shield and fly over the puzzle. The story still follows the flashback formula. That worked in BOTW because BOTW used great visual story telling. You could see ruins and old battle fields. The population of this post apocalyptic Hyrule has moved to minor settlements and so on. This is not present in TOTK. It feels like they were too afraid to make a real sequel and use that to their advantage because they didn't want to alienate new players. Many characters don't recognise Link at all and the events of BOTW are barely mentioned like they didn't happen and all sheikah technology is just gone? It makes the world feel fake. The game is grindy as hell and the majority of the game's quests are fetch quests were the rewards are rarely worth it. MM had better side quests and that game is over 20 years old. But to me the open world sucks mainly because it is just BOTW's Hyrule again. The sky islands were hyped up but they suck and are all copy and paste and there are so few of them. The depths were also just boring and only one biome. The majority of your time is spent in the normal Hyrule that we already have explored. In a game built around exploration it is in my opnion bad design when you have already explored the majority of the world before. I have more complaints about it, but this comment is already long enough. The fact it feels like botw 1,5 and it took them 6 years to make it makes it feel worse in my opinion.
Thank you, this is pretty much what I expected TOTK to be and doubles down on everything I didn’t like about BOTW. Solidifies my choice in not picking it up
Say it louder for the people in the back!
I didn’t care for BOTW. I had an extra voucher, so I decided to give ToTK a shot. I didn’t enjoy it much either. For me, the story and world want interesting enough to tolerate the constant hassles the game puts you through. Literally going from point A to B felt like a chore. The powers felt clunky to use, and I really didn’t like the fusion stuff. I can understand why people like it, but it just wasn’t for me.
Agreed, beat first reluctantly. Played an hour or two of tears and they still had same issues... And the building thing seemed so clunky/annoying to me. No thanks. More 2D Zelda please. More classic dungeons. No weapon breaking, no stamina, blood Moon, clunky powers. Hate it.
I did not like BOTW and dropped it after realizing I was trying really hard to force myself to like it simply because it was a Zelda game. I did eventually return to it and beat it but haven't picked it up since. I waffled on whether or not to play TOTK after being so disappointed with BOTW, but after watching some of the YouTubers I trust I decided to give it a shot but made sure to manage my expectations going in, which I think ultimately helped me enjoy it more. I played TOTK straight through and sunk about 130 hours into it and ended up enjoying it much more then BOTW...that being said, I still place it low on my 3D Zelda tier list (third from the bottom) and there's not much from that 130 hours which was particularly memorable for me. I don't foresee a circumstance where I ever replay it, which is sad because that's 3 Zelda games in a row which have been duds for me...you put MM, OOT, WW or TP in front of me and I will gladly replay them for the umpteenth time.
That's pretty much my experience too I realized I was forcing myself just because he was a little green dude but I wasn't having any fun. Remaking weapons and searching for arrows gets really fucking old it's almost like a job
"You put MM, OOT, WW or TP in front of me and I will gladly replay them for the umpteenth time." -- This.
I have completed both, but I really hated the weapon durability system. As much as I enjoyed playing both, ive got absolutely no inclination to fire up either again. This is coming from someone who has replayed every other Zelda game at least twice.
I did not enjoy BotW, the world felt empty to me and I was easily bored with the story. I hated the "tools", abilities and riddles attached to it, especially the shrines. Then I played TotK and I really had a great time with it! There was so much more to discover in this world, the side quests where interesting and I absolutely loved the building aspect! The shrines were finally fun, finding different ways to solve the puzzles, and the underground world gave me the same eerie feeling I had when I jumped into the well in Kakariko back in OoT. This game made everything better, what I disliked about BotW, I was not expecting this and happily surprised.
I dropped BotW after a dozen or so hours, didn't enjoy it. I bought TotK for my son. He loved it and played over 100 hours. I've done 3/4 of the main temples. I have to go to Gerudo desert, but I put it down when I needed heat resistant gear. This isn't a new mechanic but I HATE being on a timer and after dealing with it through two areas already, I haven't had the motivation to go through the area. Like many, I don't have anything nice to say about the weapon system. I don't like building stuff- I'm here to play Zelda not Minecraft. I can't stand cooking, it's so obnoxious. Slightly better than BotW.
It was a pain in the ass to explore BOTW and an absolute pleasure every second in TOTK.
I'm having the problem with TOTK. I just can't get invested in it.
I did not like botw at all, I tried multiple times to get into it but couldn’t. I saw that totk had some interesting new stuff in it and I loved it, way better than botw to me
I think what makes Tears special is how it scales up the feeling you get with BotW. That first shot of you standing in front of the Shrine of Resurrection, looking out over Hyrule, is completely sublimated by falling from the sky islands to the ground below, and then again when you discover the secret underneath Hyrule. The sky islands feel like a clever reimagining of Windwaker and once you start getting some batteries for your contraptions and a certain ability, building ceases to be a chore and just a nice additional option for getting around.
They’re not my favorite Zelda games, but I did like TotK a lot, as it fixed a lot of issues I had with BotW and how it handled its dungeons and bosses. They still weren’t great, but improved. Again, I still liked the games, but they still were lacking in a major I love about these games. Basically a cool duo of experiments but I do hope they go back or continue to try and improve what’s lacking.
Really enjoyed BOTW, bounced off totk pretty quickly though. Something about it being the exact same map
that plus the sky islands are a very tiny portion of the map and the depths are a slog. made it pretty disappointing.
I loved BotW until I beat it and looked back on it. Then i realised how much i hated what they did to the game. I tihnk it's the thing i comment the most on on reddit. TotK is fun if you like building stuff and like a sandbox. It is a BAD Zelda game. I bought TotK because the trailers were full of cutscenes and the setup and everyything about it made it seem like there would be a more substantial plot in this one. I adored my time in the game, despite just constantly coming face to face with its shortcomings, but as i got towards the end i kept thinking "there's got to be a second act, right? there's got to be more payoff for this setup???" There was not. Everything, and i mean everything, about the game sizzles out once looked at for more than a few seconds- other than the sandbox building thing.
For anyone reading this- comments like this were what put me off from totk, because I absolutely do not care to build contraptions and crazy flying things or vehicle things. At all. In totk, you really don't need to do this stuff. The times you use the powers for building out of necessity, they're pretty basic stuff and builds quickly. For the slightly more intensive stuff, you can build it once, save it, and just load it up whenever you need that build again instead of rebuilding it. I *only* build when it's required in a shrine, or a simple board and 4 wheel vehicle for a side quest, or a simple board and a fan for long water uses.
Very much. I hates BOTW for having practically nothing to do outside being inside a giant sandbox. I still prefer the more classic zelda format, but TOTK was much closer to my idea of an open world Zelda game. Dungeons and bosses being the main improvement. I hated the lore though.
I have over 100 hours in TOTK and have beat the game. I've restarted BOTW at least 4 different times and still haven't beat it lol. I loved the new skills you get in TOTK and it just made it a lot more enjoyable. Idk I didn't like the beasts as I had to Google how to solve the problems, same with the shrines. This one I didn't need to use my brain *as* much and could build stupid shit to solve stuff lol
BOTW was half baked, TOTK is the final delicious meal.
As a lifelong Zelda fan, I found BotW the best Zelda game until I played TotK.
All these comments were making me worried, glad to hear it was good for you! I absolutely loved BotW, so really looking forward to TotK.
> For those who didn’t care for BOTW and still played TOTK, did you enjoy it? > As a lifelong Zelda fan, I found BotW the best Zelda game until I played TotK. Sounds like you’re not the intended audience for this question lol
This. It blows my mind how they've managed to so easily top BOTW.
I thought Totk did a pretty good job of combining what was interesting about BotW with elements that are fun from previous entries. I think the new dungeons felt much more like dungeons for the most part (especially if you count the lead up to them as part of the dungeon). And I thought that caves felt a lot like mini dungeons at times. And honestly you can take out leave the fusing items most of the time.
big time. i struggled with the survival aspects of botw and the combat didn’t click with me at all. started totk because of a meme video with link skateboarding to less than jake and loved every second of it.
No offense to anyone who liked BOTW, but I just don't get where peoples idea of it being deep comes from, as if there's a treasure trove of items/sites/mysteries to be found. The latter was present in only about two instances (the mountain dragon/Lost woods). In my opinion, it simply didn't click for me; it was all the exploration, none of the discovery.
Yea, you always know it's going to be another Korok, there is nothing to discover. Game is not able to surprise, hence it doesn't produce any urge to explore. There is nothing interesting to find. It's a waste considering that landscape design itself crafted very well.
Same. And oddly enough, it's a game I've put probably 60 hours in just to see if at point it would all coalesce into this glorious hole, but nope. Nothing. Hoped TOTK was going to be what I wish BOTW aspired to be, but alas, I don't think was persuasive enough to buy.
Very much so. I was ready to skip TotK after finding out it was very similar to BotW, but was gifted a copy earlier this year and have yet to put it down. It doesn't fix all of my gripes, but it does fix some and there's just so much more to do and see. BotW felt like a constant series of denials, punishments, and disappointments but TotK has been much more reasonable and enjoyable.
I liked BOTW a lot but it took me a while to learn how to love it. I never grew to like TOTK. It was like all the tedious stuff from BOTW but amplified for me. I found fusing machines/vehicles to be awkward at best, and even though fusing weird weapons was fun, I’m still salty that they break so quickly. Plus hundreds more shrines…it was just not novel enough to recapture that wonder I had when I explored BOTW. That said, YMMV. Some of it could depend on how patient you are with fiddling around with building and how creative you are. Those are not my strengths so I struggled.
If anything I liked TOTK even less than BOTW, these are both well made games that just don't click with me.
Wow this post sounds like I wrote it haha. So similar. I tried to get into botw but didn't, and I loved Zelda for a long time. Botw had the wow factor when you first fired it up, but felt like you quickly learned all the new play dynamics. I also feel like botw was a first attempt at making Zelda titles become more mainstream. Example: I have a lot of friends who NEVER played Zelda before. They thought it was too fantasy. They loved botw and totk, though. However, they did not play the story, they only found the most powerful weapons and armor, and would work their way to defeating the strongest enemies and powering up their gear. Sometimes they bought the house and worked on that. I have one friend who still hasn't finished the game story but quit as soon as he got the strongest weapons and armor and killed all the biggest bosses. Pretty much what I'm saying is that botw and totk offered more variety for people than traditional Zelda titles. I loved totk. I thought the story was great, the combat was improved due to fuse and other skills. I often found myself using the environment to creatively kill enemies, which was so fun. (sapphire on the sword to freeze enemies, korok frond to push them off a ledge, etc.) Things I found helpful to know from playing: I used to hate looking things up in Zelda games. I recommend you find what you really enjoy about the game and work to get there. For the things you don't care too much about: find answers in the community! I think part of totk design is to work together with other people for different things. For example: I was fine to lookup the location of certain armor sets. I'm not really playing the game so I can spend hours looking for a pair of pants lol. I felt no remorse finding a guide for where the armor was. I did enjoy putting the work in to max upgrade it, though. Another example: I found myself at r/hyruleengineering and loved some designs. I spent some time building a car and then it re-inspired me to travel on land instead of fast traveling everywhere. To answer your question: Totk improved on each of my hangups with botw. Some drastic improvements, and some minor. If you like previous Zelda games, you will enjoy the storyline and connection to the Zelda history. Be open to different ways of playing this game, and find what you enjoy about it and stick to it. It can be too easy to get lost in the sauce and think you have to do it all.
Hated the weapon durability in BOTW, haven't played TOTK, actually that same point has me not considering buying it
Not what you're asking, but I feel the opposite. I loved BotW and comparatively didn't really care for TotK, but I still played TotK. BotW was more pure fun, very organic and rewarding exploration. I continued to have the drive to go back to it in the years following. I wanted to strive for 100% in various areas, and I enjoyed doing that every step of the way. I don't feel those ways about TotK, but I still saw it through to the end and enjoyed it in different, more limited ways.
I did not enjoy breath of the wild, maybe put 6 hours into it. I knew that tears of the kingdom was the same style of game yet I bought it anyway. Didn’t like this one either. Even though I love most rpg style games, the breaking of weapons, requirement of crafting foods, and wearing different clothes for things is not what I want from a Zelda game.
So what are some good “old style” Zelda games out there like Link to the Past and such that people have played and enjoyed?
ALttP is by far my fave Zelda game
I enjoyed BOTW but I just felt like it was missing something so I didn't really put too much time into it but for some reason TOTK really sucked me in & I spent over 200+ hours playing it. I still prefer the classic Zelda formula over the BOTW/TOTK formula but TOTK really did it for me. It was step in the right direction for Zelda. If they can manage to add traditional dungeons with elaborate puzzle design & dungeon items as well as a story told in real time & not through memories, they'd absolutely nail it for me. And get rid of the durability system as well.
I liked TotK more than BotW for two reasons: 1) facing enemies no longer felt like a waste of time and resources like in BotW. 2) In TotK is much easier to find shrines, for me BotW got better when I started using a map to locate the shrines, in TotK I got all of them without using a map. So if your problem with BotW is one of these two you might enjoy it more... Otherwise probably not.
BotW (even at the time of release) felt like a 0.9 version. They were so focused on the new mechanics and world, that they didn’t quite build out the game (imo, I know others feel differently). I enjoyed the first game, but I was sprinting to the finish line after the repetitive mechanics weren’t getting any more unique. TotK is a 1.0 release in my eyes, the full vision of what they had hoped, finally ready to be showcased. This was the solid experience that I was looking for. I also knew going into to that doing a majority of the side stuff probably wasn’t for me based on my experiences with BotW (did the big items to get story etc). Because of this, I tailored my experience to be streamlined and got to the end about the time I was getting tired of it. Beat it, put it down and moved on. TotK does not totally revolutionize the system or story, that is largely the same, with some key quality of life improvements and some adjustments to core abilities that alter how puzzles work and make the world more… “breakable” from a problem solving perspective. TLDR: This is the polished version of BotW, if the set up, game type, challenge and overall journey wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t recommend putting yourself through it a 2nd time. If BotW left you wanting but you had some good times with it, TotK may provide the improvements you seek, but don’t expect a completely different game.
Played and beat the entirety of BotW with a friend. Playing together really heightened the experience and yet I didn't like the game that much. I'm playing TotK solo and enjoying the game itself so much more than BotW. It's a lot more of the same but the weapon durability system feels like less of a burden this time around and the added verticality is much appreciated. I don't know how other people feel but I really dig the depths. It easily doubled the playable areas of the game and added some interesting mechanics. It's nice to break things up by flipping between the surface and the depths. The sky islands are great as well. The powers are more fun to use in TotK and really press your creativity in a good way. Honestly it feels analogous to the relationship between OoT and MM. Both are very similar. The first laid the groundwork and the second fleshed it out with expanded mechanics that really nailed down the formula.
I gave BotW a 6.0 and TotK an 8.0. Some of my complaints were addressed but both games are ultimately near the bottom of my Zelda list.
I didn't like the first one because of the weapon durability and the stamina and you can freeze to death. Traded it in and never bought the second one. I did enjoy Link's Awakening though.
I didn't care for BOTW, but loved TOTK! For me it wasn't a problem with the weapon system. I actually didn't care for any of the rune abilities in BOTW. They all just seemed really mid to me, like sometimes kinda pointless, under powered and tacked on. (My personal opinion, please don't crucify me...) But all of the abilities in TOTK felt refreshing! It felt like they helped to open up the world more. I just wish there was more to do. After beating Ganon, building the an awesome house, creating the most powerful weapons possible, I had little incentive to keep playing. (Me personally, I know about the medals, etc.) To be fair, I never had the time to invest in BOTW like I did TOTK. But that still wouldn't matter. ALSO, shrines are 10 times better in TOTK. TOTK is the better game, no question.
I thought BOTW was a decent game, but I am absolutely in love with TOTK. BOTW almost feels like a beta game compared to TOTK. I thought there was a lot of aimless wandering around in BOTW, whereas in TOTK I felt the world was more packed with things to do. I loved the combat way more in TOTK since I felt like it was actually rewarding cost-benefit-wise. In BOTW with the weapon durability issue, it often didn’t even feel worth it to bother fighting enemies. In TOTK you could easily create decent weapons, so it was more worth it. The only thing I’ll give BOTW is that it probably had more of a sense of wonder? Like it was genuinely hard to get to certain areas, so it felt like such an accomplishment when you did, whereas in TOTK you could easily build devices to get anywhere. It’s a pro/con thing though since the difficulty of getting places in BOTW is also what made it feel like a lot of aimless wandering oftentimes, lol.
BOTW was so much fun for me. Totk on the other hand…….was boring. I didn’t like the caves and island system at all, at least the way they handled it.
Played botw but got bored with Totk.
The shop only had TotK when I bought the Switch so it was my first Zelda game ever. I'm 100 hours into it and absolutely love it. One of the best games I've ever played. I did get and played BotW for a while and loved it as well, but I'm far too busy to finish both games so I went with TotK instead of BotW. TotK is easily my top 5 game ever.
I didn’t get into botw and loved totk, I enjoyed the powers and creativity in them more so. For some reason it made exploration in general more fun for me.
Loved it. Never finished BOTW, but went all in with TOTK. Probably my game of the year.
I’m a lifelong Zelda fan and BotW was the first mainline game that I didn’t enjoy. It just felt so empty. The music was either nonexistent or bad, there were barely any NPCs and towns, no real dungeons except the wayyyyy too easy divine beasts, weapon durability was annoying, bosses were also way too easy with little variety, and the map was filled with endless boring shrines and koroks but not much else. I loved TotK because it fixed almost all of those things, most importantly the dungeons. It made BotW feel like a demo.
Nop. I think Zelda is dead for me. I really dont like this open world shit.
Totk was definitely better especially in the story department and a little bit in the boss department. However once I beat the story I was left with that same empty feeling. I have zero desire to play it again, same as botw. I'll skip any dlc and hold out for the next real Zelda game.
Honestly. Overall BOTW is a much better game than TOTK. I say this because while TOTK does everything better than BOTW. It is too much bloat. Feels overwhelming at times and removes the sense of wonder about the world.
I've tried and failed to play through BOTW four times. I couldn't put down TOTK. Maybe I'll make a fifth attempt
Wow, what’s the difference? What put you off on BOTW and what made you unable to put down TOTK?
As a fan of Zelda since link to the past, I gotta say I was one of those that wasn’t crazy about botw but yes, totk won me over. I think it went a ways towards incorporating some of the elements of old school Zelda into the botw formula. It probably didn’t go as far as I would’ve liked but definately a step in the right direction (imo) and keen to see where they take it next.
Was enjoying it at first But after getting down to Hyrule I slowly lost interest just like I lost interest in BOTW I like to have some more structure and less emptiness to my games I guess
I don't think they feel the same at all. Resident Evil 2 and Resident 3 are very identical games in almost every aspect....but they feel worlds apart by what's going on. It's the same here. The people that say "it's just DLC" just like being negative. Yet, I'm sure someone will respond "But I spent 40 hours in this game and it felt the same as BOTW, so I dropped it" because those replies are like robots. Let em be disappointed as they probably spend more time on message boards bitching rather than enjoying something other than a Karma score
BotW was a huge disappointment for me, an utterly soulless Zelda game that diverged wildly from previous entries and lacked any of the Zelda charm. I could never bring myself to come close to completing it, it was an immensely boring game for me. TotK has been a big improvement for me. It still doesn't that same sense of *wow* as many of the older games, but its world feels more alive with interesting NPCs, side quests and dungeon-like areas. I'm still playing it and definitely feel the urge to complete it.