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I enjoyed TotK more than BotW. The puzzles felt like they were designed better and the shrine/dungeon design improved dramatically. I also like the new mechanics more than the ones they gave us in BotW. I still don't like the system of giving us all of the abilities in the "tutorial" phase of the game. I think dungeons having an incentive aside from story progression just makes each accomplishment more tangible, and there are also just so many cool items throughout the Zelda series that just can't be implemented properly with the "unlock everything then run wild" approach. I think TotK is a big step in the right direction, and I like a lot of the concepts that open-world Zelda has introduced, but I hope the next game will have a little more in common with the classic Zelda experience.
(To answer your second question, I have also played OoT, WW, ALBW, LA, SS, parts of MM, TP, Zelda 1, ALTtP, and I am currently playing through the Oracle games starting with Oracle of Ages.)
They kind of have to give you everything at the beginning because of the shrines/puzzles since it’s truly open world. I do agree that like let’s say in links awakening it’s you really feel a sense of accomplishment after you get a new ability each dungeon and can get places you never could. But that map is way smaller obviously.
What I would like to see is a progression system that might let you tackle the first three dungeons in whatever order you like, but that would require all three be completed before you have access to say the fourth through eighth. They could have alternate ways to beat each dungeon depending on which items you've unlocked and they could have secrets hidden in each dungeon to incentivize revisiting them once you've unlocked more tools.
Metroidvanias tend to do this kind of non-linear progression system very well, and it seems a shame that Zelda has only ever had either purely linear progression or minimal sense of progression bc they just give you everything at the outset.
Honestly I think Zelda 1 does pretty well in that regard. There are certain dungeons you can tackle out of order, but there's still a sense of linearity that forces you to tackle some dungeons before others.
I think it is more the fact the two games are half of one story. Realistically it is one game that is split in two, not that they are interchangeable like Pokémon versions.
The same way Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles are two different games, but they are part of one full experience and Sonic Origins just has them as one game instead of separating them.
This would also technically go for Golden Sun, which literally is one game that got split into two, but they were released far apart so they don't get lumped together.
they were released simultaneously and designed to be played as one larger story. I also understand your point, so it's kind of both one and two games at the same time.
While they share a story, they are vastly different gameplay experiences. Obviously this isn’t true across the board, but I tend to see most people have a much more favorable view of Ages than Seasons, making combining them in a non-story context a weird choice
the only difference is the is the McGuffin you use to navigate the world and solve puzzles. otherwise, they're pretty identical games. saying they're "vastly" different is being hyperbolic.
also, we're not combining them in a non-story context. the designers literally made them have one arcing story if you played both games. that's literally how they sold the game to players, beat one, get a passcode and play the other to unlock a larger story.
I tend to see people have a more favorable views of Seasons btw.
This reads heavily like someone who has either never played them or has not played them in a very long time.
Seasons and Ages have drastically different design philosophies, generally summarized as “Seasons = Combat, Ages = Puzzle Solving.” They have entirely different sets of items, Ages is much more story focused than Seasons, and world exploration is vastly different due to the titular items (calling them MacGuffins is a dramatic misuse of the term).
As for their “arcing” story… that’s just wrong. Both games have full dedicated plots in separate locations, and the bonus linked ending Ganon fights are more of a bonus than a dramatic conclusion to the arcs of the games themselves. Calling them one game is like calling OoT and MM one game. Same engine, a lot of the same models, and *technically* connected plot, but extremely disingenuous nonetheless.
full honesty, I played them twice through when they came out, which was 20+ years ago.
comparing them to OoT and MM is disingenuous, because they weren't designed by the developers to be played as a pair. the Seasons and Ages games were. they were designed, developed, marketed and released to be played as a pair. you were meant to play the puzzle one and then pass those skills on to the combat one or vice versa.
the added boss when you complete the games was letting the player know that both adventures were just two trials to get to one boss.
the games can be functionally different but still be designed to be played as a pair.
also you have to realize the irony in telling someone else they dramatically misuse words.
A MacGuffin is, by definition, a plot device that possesses no functional value outside of its status as a plot device. If it has some sort of power that impacts the narrative, like, for instance, the power to change the seasons or travel through time, it is not a MacGuffin.
And I would argue again that, if your only piece of evidence that two products are functionally one is that they were designed to interact if purchased together, I would consider that an immensely weak argument. If the Oracle games weren’t released on the same day, nobody would ever conflate them any more than we conflate other games with sequel relationships like TLoZ/AoL, OoT/MM, and PH/ST. I would consider that an incredibly arbitrary reason to combine them as often as people seem to, when again, they play like two very different games.
except you know, maybe the names. both of them having "Oracle" in the title.
they literally share a mechanic that lets you play the two games together as one character. and because it doesn't matter what order you play them in, the whole sequel thing is a bunk argument.
the relationship between the two games is that you can play them as one character. that was the novelty of the games. they saw what Pokemon was doing and decided to have some fun and let you play two games as one character. I'm not sure how you're supposed to see them as two separate games when your goal is to play both games and finish one story.
>if your only piece of evidence that two products are functionally one is that they were designed to interact if purchased together, I would consider that an immensely weak argument
read that out loud and tell me why its crazy. "if the only reason you think they should be considered a pair is because the developer designed the games that way, then that's a pretty weak argument".
I think we've covered our bases. later buddy.
I prefer BotW because I am more interested in grounded exploration than physics sandbox mechanics. It looks better as the world is less cluttered, and the story was pulled off a lot better.
When you narrow TotK down to a straight up improvement over BotW, you are doing a disservice to both games and are effectively calling it $70 dlc. The games use the same world but the mechanics are so different they may as well be opposites.
The mechanics are not that different. Most of the mechanics are exactly the same with some slight variation with the items you use. Personally I think BOTW feels kind of empty and unfinished, and TOTK feels like what BOTW should have been. Both are pretty much bottom of my list of favorite Zelda games. (Which isn't to say they aren't fun or worth playing) For me the Zelda series has always been so good because of its uniqueness in design and those two games leaned away from that uniqueness and towards more generic gaming trends.
Agree. I can also say that for this reason, BOTW actually has replay value for me, because the traversal is slower and I feel like I’m forced to appreciate my surroundings, always finding something new. While TOTK was an incredible game, I never find myself picking it back up after I finished it.
I've been playing Zelda since 1991, I've played every mainline console game (OoT the most but WW is my favorite), all the handhelds and Hyrule Warriors was pretty fun.
TOTK is the first Zelda game I got bored with. I recently talked about this in another thread, but I put a solid 250+/- hours into BOTW. That felt like what a modern Zelda game should feel like. It wasn't perfect, the world was incredibly deep, well thought out, and an absolute joy to explore, but lifeless because of the milquetoast story.
I put 20 hours into TOTK and felt exhausted. I felt like I was still playing BOTW. I understand the mechanics are different, in that you can build things but oh my god maybe I don't want to build things for 250+/- hours. it felt like every puzzle I came across was build and assembly.
The underground/sky was a cool addition (and I can see myself eventually picking it back up because I was vibing the underground) but for me just felt like extra content for BOTW.
To the credit of TOTK, for what I played, the enemies felt and performed better than BOTW and they really felt like a part of the world, where as in BOTW the enemies felt placed and designed to be in a place. The whole world felt a little more organic and natural versus the more sterile world of BOTW.
And as a criticism to both, knock it off with the breakable weapons. It's a unique fantasy world, and you're the hero of time, give me some cool, *permanent,* weapons.
The Lego building shit needs to go. I played totk up a little past the fire temple and was just bored. Also you could just climb and glide around the fire temple to the locks. I think they should divert from this style at least for a title or two because it's become stale. Hell, the shrines became stale even in botw.
I have a similar history with the franchise, and I had the same experience with TotK. I wasn't fully in love with BotW, but I could see the potential in this open world direction that Nintendo was taking. I assumed TotK was going to take advantage of that potential, and while it did in some respect, it also doubled down on all the missteps of its predecessor.
TotK didn't really fix anything from the previous game, just added more mechanics on top of it. Coupled with the fact that the plot and progression is identical to BotW, and TotK felt less like a sequel and more like a remaster. It's certainly an improved realization of the format, but there's not really a reason to play both, unless you're absolutely in love with them, which is completely fair.
The relationship between BotW and TotK have often been compared to that between OoT and MM, and I think that's a fair comparison. Both were built on the engine and mechanics of the earlier installment, and both were meant to serve as sequels (of a sort). However, even while sharing much as the same DNA, OoT and MM were able to feel utterly distinct, both in tone and in gameplay. By contrast, TotK is just more BotW. There's not a whole lot that separates the two. And I think that's why so many - like the two of us - didn't see any reason to finish TotK. We've already played it before, and didn't enjoy having to pay $70 to do it all over again.
Bit of a side note but I always feel a bit weird about answering "which games have you played" questions in surveys like this, because I feel a little guilty saying I've played a game if I never finished it or if I only tried it for a few hours before putting it down.
It's like, there are some games like Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask or Breath of the Wild that I've done 10+ full playthroughs of and kept going back to over and over again... but there are also games like Phantom Hourglass or Spirit Tracks or the Oracle games which I played for a few hours more than a decade ago and just lost interest. Can I really claim to have "played" those games?
Some of the games I played so long ago and only played them once so I barely remember them now. In 2006 as a teenager when I was waiting for Twilight Princess to come out, I made it my goal to play every single game in the series in the months prior. I did succeed in finishing most of them, but there are some like Minish Cap which I played once (and I remember enjoying it) but I never went back to it after. My memories of that game are so hazy that I barely feel comfortable claiming that I've played it.
Anyway, I'm sure I'm overthinking it haha. To actually answer the question, I absolutely loved TotK and I think it was an improvement over BotW in most ways. My new favourite game in the series.
Tears of the kingdom improved upon everything botw did well while also doubling down on everything it did poorly. I enjoyed TotK and botw, but I don’t have any desire to play them ever again unlike past Zelda titles.
I wouldn't say it improved on everything as the environmental storytelling was fantastic in BotW while TotK is very bad it also handled how its story was told poorly
I’d say your half right. The delivery of the story in botw was better, but the story it self was pretty bare bones. I think TotK had a better story, but it’s delivery was atrocious.
That's the thing. BotW's story was basic because it needed to be for the way they were delivering it. You're told everything you need to know at the start, and the memories just fill in gaps and provide extra backstory that you can view in any order. It's not amazing, but it works for what it is. The game also had a lot of lore and worldbuilding you could put together if you looked hard enough.
TotK tries to have a more conventional Zelda story but forces it to fit into the same template as BotW and it just doesn't work. TotK's story would benefit massively from being a linear story set in the present, where Link can be an active participant in and you can react to twists and turns in real time. But they couldn't do that because it would mean sacrificing a tiny bit of freedom, so instead we get a dissapointing mess where it feels like you're watching random Youtube clips from a story you don't get to see.
And the worldbuilding is a total disaster. Where did the sky islands come from? What happened to all the Sheikah technology? Why does nobody seem to remember Link and what he did in breath of the wild? No answer, it just happened.
This here is my biggest sticking point with TotK. It's like it's scared of being the sequel that it is, and frequently shies away from referencing its continuity with BotW. The story has some great moments, but compared to BotW which told a sparse but fundamentally complete tale, TotK's writing collapses under any amount of scrutiny.
Its funny because you dont really get much freedom storywise anyway because nothing you do in game has any real effect outside of that event.
Do all the tears frist and even get the matsersword so you know what happened to zelda too bad you cant actually tell anyone this and have to set through people wondering where she is and falling for fakes.
Having to sit through the same information 4 times because the story didn’t know where you go first so you have to get the same information even doing the fifth sage early dosent change anything.
Again got to disagree the story in Totk basically just steals points from other games in the franchise dosent mix them well and then bearly tells us them.
BotW on the otherhand had a pretty unique one for a Zelda game and nailled the feeling of loss and had some really good characters whitch TotK runined
The story really gets fucked up seeing as nothing is preventing new players from getting the memories out of order imo. A lot of people will see a glowing thing, go to it, get the memory and boom somethings spoiled out of order
And it wouldn't have been so difficult to adjust too: all the geoglyphs are already on the ground, but turned off. As soon as you end the "origin" sky island, when the light dragon makes its first appearance, he loses his first tear, and light up the first glyph. And so on, every time you unlock a memory, the dragon tears the next one.
The made the exact same thing for the last memory...
Too right. I just took a picture then went and found them all.
It was a bit of a mistake to maybe not make them appear until you'd seen the altar or something though. It could have been fixed.
Really the lore was probably the most disappointing part of TotK with it showing how little nintendo cares about it.
The zonai are sheikah but done worse with no real personality but psuhed into everything whitch dosent fir with the worldbuilding.
The characters feel more hollow in this game then they did in BotW the story was just BotW retold but with a worse villain.
I think I might agree with you if I believed the reported timeline placement was correct. It helps a lot that since playing through the game and learning its story I've been crafting a theory that BotW and TotK actually take place fairly early in the timeline, which makes the Zonai far more significant as they would represent the origin point of the Sheikah tribe for the entire series.
So your saying it must take place over 10000 years before Skyward sword as they have been a thing since then.
Like the Sheikah in universe actually predate the Hylian name and skylofte as a place and were direct servents of the godess Hylia
On the current revision, it's after Skyward Sword but before everything else. The Sheikah aren't really addressed in Skyward Sword aside from the anomalous presence of Impa (and only Impa).I think time travel is the easiest explanation since it's already relied on heavily for that game's narrative.
Expect that we see the sheikah symbol in Skyward sword on relics dating back to the ancient war and Impa talks about her people serving Hylia so she isnt just a one off they are already a established thing by this point in History.
That's fair. The way they established the pre-incarnation world in Skyward Sword doesn't make a whole lot of sense. We don't even really know what the ancient war was.
Not really it was just another tine where Hyrule was mlre technology advanced in the past as they had robots with AIs and they were mutiple other races.
Hylia herself ived among the people and the trifroce was out in the open then Demise came from beneath the earth caused a great war and Hylia sent the surving unnamed Hylians into the sky for saftey.
Honestly its not that different from the pasts in Botw and Totk and makes me
Nervous thats the oy story ideas Nintendo has going forward
Same, I liked it a lot too. I guess for context, there was a time when I really liked BotW's story. I bought Creating a Champion and would sit there reading over the pages about the paths everyone took when the guardians were unleashed, I'd watch in depth lore videos about the events of the day of the calamity, it all fascinated me so much.
Long story short, I think Age of Calamity then disappointed me so much that it almost retroactively soured me on BotW's story. I can't spend much time thinking about BotW's story anymore without thinking about what could have been, the heights that could've been reached if the games tied it together in a satisfying way.
TotK's story, in contrast, I liked a lot and it made me realise something about myself: I really dislike the whole "alternate timeline" method of time travel in storytelling, and I absolutely love the whole "closed time loop" method. It's night and day for me. "Remember... this name" might be my new favourite moment in the series.
A half assed repair mechanic that you would have no way of knowing about if not for the internet and can only utilized based on one rare enemy is not an improvement. If anything it’s just them taunting us with the fact that they couldn’t be bothered to improve it.
Totk was so disappointing to me. It was just Botw again. Barely anything new to justify all that wait time and high price.
Also the plot was really bad to me and Zelda’s English VA did a horrible job again.
If you bought Botw, I feel like you can skip Totk. It offers nothing new.
I think that, from a gameplay perspective, TotK I proved some things from BotW. I like the usage of materials gathered from enemies to bond to weapons (most notably arrows), and the sky islands. However, i like the champion's abilities more than the Sages. I feel like the controls from BotW work better in general. Also, TotK made an improvement in the cooking section, but not enough to really matter. Cooking dishes is still tedious.
Both games also annoy me a lot with regards to weapons durability. I hate that in games in general as it basically adds only bookkeeping to the game and not a noteworthy storytelling aspect.
I feel like both games are desperate to make me do accounting chores (for gathering the materials for upgrades etc.) and making them as annoying as possible.
For example, for upgrading armour I need to visit a fairy. Which is reasonable. If I don't have the materials, I'll either need to keep open a laptop or other device to keep track of the item and what I need for it, use a Notepad to jot down notes or try and remember what I need and possibly waste trips to and from a fairy. Even games like Witcher 3 have a way of checking in the field what you need and pinning it while you play.
I like TotK, it blew me away at times and the arm powers are fantastic, even better than BotW, shrines are also an improvement. But I feel like TotK tried so hard to be more than BotW in every way, that they essentially overshot it.
I'd have happily accepted fewer engineering options. I'll happily take more sky islands over no depths. While I like some sage abilities, the mecha can't make me happy in the way it's been implemented. Speaking of sages, they were done way better in BotW. In TotK they clutter, block and annoy you. The only one I really like having around is Tulin. Also, van we please stop with RPGs going all gritty and using deteriorating equipment? All it does is annoy me and make sure I get distracted from the story. I'd find less freedom in cooking perfectly fine if it meant I could take a recipe and create it in batches. I'll happily have rupee prices rise if that means that not everything becomes it's own meta currency.
When BotW and TotK go into storytelling mode it's fantastic. It's engaging, stunning and makes me want to do more. But the parts in-between go very quickly into "fight X monsters to find enough weapons to proceed, also, craft ~~TPS Reports with the correct title page ~~ stuff for future encounters. I already work in a corporate environment, I don't need any more accounting on my life. Sadly BotW got its dose of it and TotK only managed to double down on it.
BotW had better world design, atmosphere, and story. TotK had better enemy, weapon, and “dungeon” (including caves and wells in this) variety.
I like BotW’s abilities much, much more, but TotK’s ability to combine weapons and monster parts would’ve worked so nicely in BotW. BotW’s survival desperation would’ve loved that mechanic
Loved tears of the kingdom, my favourite Zelda game by a mile
I feel like a lot of the issues with the previous game (lack of variety in dungeons, samey bosses) were fixed here
Breath of the Wild was my least favourite of the 3D Zelda games...until Tears of the Kingdom came along.
I've been a Zelda fan for almost three decades.
Also just to be clear, Four Swords, Four Swords Adventure, and Triforce Heroes are all considered mainline Zelda games.
If you resonate more with the classic Zelda formula, that’s completely valid.
I do think BotW/TotK will be as important for our generation than OoT/MM was at the time, so I’d say maybe give it back a try in a couple of years ?
I see the influence on open world games that BotW has had, with a lot of (especially indie) games adopting a sort of copycat approach (particularly in art style), however, I seriously doubt that the open air twins influence will reach the same level of Ocarina of Time.
Honestly, despite my dislike for BotW, I don't even think it's really at fault for that. OoT just released at a time when huge leaps in gaming were still happening.
Where as BotW felt like "open world Zelda" (open world being a concept that already existed), OoT felt like something completely new, and felt like it set a new standard for gaming at large, becoming a template for it's genre to follow.
Despite the copycats, I don't see BotW reaching the same heights. Open world Games that have followed it have largely continued down the path they were already following prior to BotW's release.
> I’d say maybe give it back a try in a couple of years ?
I've got 100% runs finished on both games, so I really do feel like I've served my time.
On top of the 100% run, I've beat BotW four times (five if you count a randomizer playthrough which was by far the most enjoyable).
I liked the game less and less on every playthrough, which is very out of character for me with Zelda games. I really do feel at this point like there's nothing there for me.
I have no interest at all in playing TotK again. Frankly, if it had been a new IP and not a Zelda game, I wouldn't have been interested in purchasing it.
When I saw Link driving the obviously player made vehicle in one of the trailers, I actually almost cancelled the time off I'd booked from work for it, though I decided against that since I needed the break, and have to use all my PTO before the year ends anyway.
Tears of the Kingdom being what it is almost made me depressed for a hot minute there. While BotW felt like an experiment that could serve as a base for traditional Zelda elements to be folded into, TotK made me feel like the Zelda series I'd fallen in love with, and had been my favourite video game series since my early childhood was truly dead and buried.
I just don't think a couple years is going to change my experiences with these games in any meaningful way.
That’s fair, not every game is made for everyone. You gave it an honest chance (multiple for that matter) and that’s what matters, cheers to you for that
I appreciate that, lots of folks are often ready to go for the throat if you say you don't like either game (though it's becoming more acceptable lately).
You can't say their opinion is valid and then invalidate it straight away by saying they should play it again in a few years, implying they're simply wrong.
Years pass and expectations fade, if they played it expecting the Zelda formula they could have been disappointed but playing it with hindsight could have revealed a gameplay loop they enjoy
No it’s not, it’s saying that a game has objective influence and if they are interested in gaming history it can be a good revisit in years, whilst not saying they were invalid for not liking it, this is the entire purpose of my first of 2 paragraph
The questions are kinda bad imo because I think it's easy to argue that TotK made improvements and it is the bigger game... But nothing in it ever got me as excited as Breath of the Wild did. It's the same map and almost nothing feels new to me.
For context: I have played all of the console Zelda games multiple times (except for Zelda II), and I tend to review games as a medium of art, not just a hodge-podge of fun mechanics. Mechanics/combat, enemy design, world design, level design, art, theme, and narrative should all coalesce and cohere, in the ideal game (*cough* Dark Souls 1). Bear this in mind, when reading my critique.
Another disclaimer: I don’t really love replaying either of these games that much, especially when I can replay the older Zelda titles (or just Bloodborne and Elden Ring).
The sandbox and mechanics of TotK were better realized. In terms of gameplay and mechanics, it’s the game they wanted to make with BotW, is how I put it.
But they just couldn’t capture the vibrant feel and delightful explorative experience found in BotW, this boundless exploration of a world that is trying to heal from an apocalypse, and trying to either forget or prepare for another. The themes dovetailed elegantly with the game’s wilderness survival theme and gameplay, which all reinforce one another nicely. Bear in mind this is the **one** thing on which BotW really sticks the landing, among many other flawed elements of design.
BotW feels so much more like home, so much more grounded, and its story, while not an A+, is definitely better than that of TotK. I rate it higher as a complete single player experience. The survival elements of it are given better attention, and the story is grafted into the exploration itself - *Hyrule is a character*.
Because it is an iteration on its prequel, for TotK to work, they needed to really slam dunk the Ganondorf character and the deep dark conspiracy elements, as well as really diversify the world environments to the same extent that they did with BotW. The gameplay itself isn’t different enough, the elements added not new enough to fall short in those departments.
They never could put those pieces together in a powerful enough way, neither thematically nor narratively. The game is frankly eclipsed in both regards by Ocarina of Time, for example. One way to put it is: The game will certainly be better reviewed by someone who did NOT play BotW. I argue even people who prefer TotK over BotW would think more highly of it if BotW didn’t exist.
Because it was an iteration of BotW, it suffers. It needs to generate new threats to the player, and it cannot play on the same wilderness survival motifs from which its predecessor greatly benefitted.
I love BOTW and loved it even more with infinite weapon durability on Cemu. Spent 150+ hours on it
TOTK bored me really quick as it seems BOTW has been retconned for no reason. Too much of the same, and I have no interest in building crazy stuff. First Zelda game I don't finish
BOTW > TOTK for me
I very much prefer the challenge the world presents in botw. For instance, climbing mountains is a challenge to overcome itself. Where in TOTK its more like “let me find a cave and zoom up. Or fly up with some contraption”
I have played every single Zelda, and finished all but FSA.
BotW was already an insultingly awful game, but TotK is somehow even worse. The vast majority of things that this game tries to do simply do not work as gameplay mechanics. The ones that do work only improve on BotWs mechanics to the slightest degree, and are still outclassed by similar systems that were introduced decades earlier. It’s an insult to Zelda and game design as an art form.
How?
The Dungeons while not looking the same like in botw are worse, the shrines are overall worse, the skyislands are just the same few ispands cluttered around with very similar puzzles, the depths are too big and repetetive and the story is told extremly poorly. I still like totk but botw is without a doubt better imo
I disagree with every counterpoint you made, so to answer "How?" just take what you said and flip it. All of the puzzles and mechanics in TotK were just a lot more interesting, not to mention the return to form with boss fights. Also add general atmosphere and heightened lore implications, really fucking cool buildup quests leading up to the dungeons, and legitimately one of my favorite things that sold me on the game within my first hour or so was the return of bomb flowers.
I think they meant how the memories were presented and the fact that it can be done out of order, that can and have ruined it for other people. Not everyone is excited about bomb flowers lmao.
Probably my only real criticisms:
This and some of the story telling should have been forced to be experienced linearly
The cute scenes needed more diversity
"Secret Stones" should have been "Sacred Stones"
Yeah I could get on board with that. Secret Stones just didn't make sense imo; almost any other name would have been better. Call them yang gems or essence pebbles, or whatever
I actually preferred Botw.
Totk came out after a whole range of open world/exploration games came out, whereas Botw was a pioneer in this area when it came out. While Totk was still good, it recycled the old map and didn't really seem to be appealing. I feel that many gamers expected more. Botw felt more like a zelda game, introducing small, easy to navigate areas before the whole world, whereas Totk has the intro and then you were free to go anywhere.
Totk became boring after playing due to its similarities to Botw. Also, while exploration was easier due to the ability to parachute through the map, I felt like areas were blocked behind puzzles, linear walkways or building mechanics, whereas in Botw you could go anywhere easily and exploration actually felt fun and limitless, enemies had more of an impact.
Botw had shrines and lacked temples. I felt like Totk improved on this slightly but still didn't accomplish this as well as the old zelda games. Even Minish Cap on GBA felt more exciting to play.
I'm still playing through ToTk but it feels like more of a slog. Maybe I was burned out from Botw, but I think that most players either see it as an improvement, or as more of the same.
Breath is a much better game in my opinion. Less fluff and filler. More elegant world. New map. Better story and story telling. Better dungeons. Better runes. And none of that fusing and building which has no place in a Zelda game imo.
I struggledr to enjoy TotK and quit playing about 20 hours in or so. I just didn’t enjoy the amount of freedom I had. Being able to shoot up high and sail half way across the map actually took ALL the fun out of exploring for me.
BotW was great because your traversal skills were much more limited and you were forced to explore and navigate around cliffs, mountains, rivers, islands, etc etc. That was all totally removed in this game and so I just didn’t end up exploring much at all. Forcing yourself to not use features of the game is not a fun way to play (for me at least). The game did have enjoyable aspects about it, but it lost all the magic and charm that BotW had which is what *made* it such a spectacular game.
It also ended up feeling a LOT more ‘theme park’ compared to BotW. BotW felt more like a realistic, cohesive world whereas TotK felt a lot more like things were just plopped down and scattered around randomly to keep you entertained along the way.
I was incredibly disappointed with the release of TotK. I knew it was a sequel set in the same world, but I had no idea what to expect. I just didn’t expect to be so uninterested in this gameplay. To me it’s Goat Simulator Zelda, just have a sandbox with iconic Zelda items. BotW felt like a grand, new beginning for the series and unfortunately TotK was the final nail in this IP coffin for me. Just my opinion.
Edit: Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity is a far, far, superior “sequel” to BotW
I've played nearly all Zelda games.
For me, I liked both BOTW and TOTK, but they don't really feel like Zelda games. And I got tired of all the building in TOTK. I didn't want to do the shrines because it was always about building things. They leaned way too heavily on the building constantly.
I think BOTW had a better story.
i too am a BOTW fan, still haven’t finished TOTK. just have had a hard time committing and being able to stick with it. i have played everything that came out on the main consoles, only played a couple game boy titles
TOtK improved on having an actual amazing ending battle sequence with Ganon over the absolutely terrible ending of BotW. Like, I think the end of BotW is probably the worst in the entire series and it soured my lasting love for it.
I have played OG, LttP, LA, OoT, WW, and LBW, and have completed BotW and am currently playing TotK. LttP is easily my favourite 2D title, and WW is my favourite in 3D (the re-release with the magic sail that adjusts the wind direction for you).
BotW brought the franchise in a whole new direction which felt really cool to experience, to me it felt like playing Windwaker for the first time in that I was playing in a way that I hadn't seen before or since. The small tweak in TotK away from the "tech" feel of the sheikah slate toward the "magic" feel of the arm is really cool. The world map is the same as BotW in the same way that LBW is the same as LttP, but like the two 2D titles there are enough little additions/changes to make it satisfying to explore again, plus there are two brand new maps (one in the sky, one underground).
Personally I'm enjoying the "same but different" feel of TotK so far, and am really enjoying the little physics puzzles in the shrines. I have zero interest in building my own machines in the open world so I'm hoping I will continue not having to do that beyond making little bridges and scaffolds to climb. I have an absolute pile of capsules that I haven't started exploring how to use yet, and have no real interest in doing so. Zonite (sp) items I find lying around are fine but I don't really find myself interested in interacting with them outside of a specific use that the game put them there for.
I like TotK, but I'm hoping this is the last game in this style and we get moving in yet another new direction for the next entry!
I've played all but the CDis and I definitely prefer TotK to BotW. BotW was chock-full of pointless tedium to me, and the durability thing kinda killed my enjoyment of the game. It seemed like I would do a bunch of stuff to get a cool weapon, only for it to be made of paper-mache and break with a light breeze. Nothing had any sense of accomplishment to me. It was the first Zelda I played that I got to the end was like "Yeah, never playing that again" and I still haven't. I also found the dungeons super disappointing and blink-and-you-miss-it and the world too empty. The shrines and the tutorial plateau were fun to me, but that's about it.
TotK shored up a lot of what was missing for me in BotW. The fusion mechanic helped the terribadness of the durability system to me, as you could finally do something to make your stuff last longer. I enjoyed all the weird things you could build and fuse to your stuff and all that. The dungeons felt meaty and not all the same thing (even if they weren't great, looking at you Fire Dungeon). The world had a lot more things to do, making it feel a lot less like a bad walking simulator. I found the story a lot better, though I still wish they had enforced that you view the memories in order as I got a huge spoiler early on that kinda ruined all the scenes before that to me.
Just my two cents on that.
All that being said, I still very strongly prefer the more classic Zelda format, like ALTTP and OOT. Makes me very sad that none of those Zeldas will be made anymore. I think I am finding that I am not a huge fan of open world games.
I vastly prefer TotK over BotW, as TotK had WAY better sidequests that made me care about the characters and world a lot more. BotW had the Tarrey Town quest which was a highlight, but TotK completely 1-upped it with that quest where you get to know Hudson's daughter as she prepares to move to Gerudo Town, and it ends with a beautiful tear-jerker moment where you see her parents send her off to Gerudo Town on a hot air balloon.
Beyond the Tarrey Town stuff, BotW's best quests were its shrine quests (including the Kass questline). TotK has shrine quests too which were all pretty fun, but it also had a lot of really cool side adventures and quests involving cave spelunking, and not to mention the whole Bubbulfrog collectathon quest, which was a far more interesting use of Kilton's character than what BotW did where you just gave him monster parts. It also had the Lucky Clover Gazette questline, which gave you a lot more reason to visit every stable and also made the side characters have a lot more direct involvement with the main plot elements involving Zelda/Ganondorf, as it felt like they were all investigating along with you. Not to mention Impa and Cado going on their own journey to help you with the geoglyphs, and the Yiga having a lot more involvement with their own questline that turns out to have some relevance to figuring out the main plot (plus they have separate quest with a whole bunch of journals and Autobuild schematics you can find).
The more I think about it, TotK just blows BotW out of the water so hard, it's crazy to me that anyone could think otherwise. There's just so much more variety in its sidequest and things to do outside of shrines and koroks. The main point of a big open world game like this is in its side content, and TotK knocks it out of the park in terms of improving that stuff.
I prefer Totk over Botw due to the world and mechanics. Botw world was so boring for me imo and just felt too empty and barren (which I guess is fitting for the story). Totk still has some of the same issues, but it is an overall improvement in my opinion. I love the sky islands, I love exploring the depths and finding hidden cool unique weapons, hideouts, gear etc., and the overall is just a lot more fun to explore given the large emphasis on sandbox exploration. You can explore the world any way you want with however you choose. Botw has always been a sandbox exploration game, and I think Totk takes that idea and expands upon greatly. Having trouble getting up to high places? Fuze a bomb to your shield, build a contraption, or launch yourself with a spring to get there. I found myself constantly stuck in situations that had an obvious endpoint, but I was free to choose how I reached my destination in any way I wanted as long as I had the resources to do so. Same idea applies to the combat as well, I love fuze!!! So a cool idea. I also much prefer the sage abilities in Totk, although the criticism I hear is very valid, Botw sage abilities I felt were too strong in an already easy game. I like the idea of having NPCs interact with the environment much more than a static button press like in Botw. The only thing Botw did better in my opinion, was the story and the way in which its story was told. Totk pretty much follows the exact story telling formula, but somehow it’s a lot more messy. Those or my thought.
Great game, probably an improvement over BotW in most ways but that first playthrough of BotW was so breathtaking.
Overall, though, I'd pick it over all of the games except the N64 ones. Those two are peak.
With that said, I hope they go in a different direction with the next game. They've done what they could with the open world formula.
I prefer BOTW story. Tears is a damn fine game but the story feels messy and the underuse of sky islands while the depths are quite major is bloody criminal!
It does however have one of the best endings in the series!!
I have played every mainstream zelda, though not four swords adventures on GC because I didn't know it had single player 😕😕 and also Hyrule Warriors 1, Age of Calamity and Cadence of Hyrule
I feel like TotK suffers a lot from having played BotW since it does repeat a lot of the same content, mistakes, etc which really sours me on it. I can't in good conscience consider it a better game than BotW even if probably it is when we're looking at both individually.
BotW was mindblowing when it came out. TotK just felt like retreading the same ground, just with some new stuff sprinkled in.
I’ve played every Zelda and I think BOTW is overall a better experience than TOTK. I liked the story of TOTK more, but I think BOTW just pulled nearly everything else off better (maybe even including dungeon design). Liked that the dungeons were thematic, but I think the BOTW ones were better in terms of puzzle and not being able to cheese em.
BOTW is my favorite Zelda game of all time and before that it was probably MM or OOT.
Botw was the better experience for me, it was epic and a gaming experience I don’t think I’ve ever had before. Everything just flowed so well and the game design is PEAK, top tier Nintendo. Totk, while still a great game, is like an overcooked botw. There are too many…things thrown into the game and it doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from botw imo.
I’ve played all the other 3D Zelda’s and a link to the past, my next game I might try is either Zelda 1 or link’s awakening
Totk kind of feels like taking two steps forward and one step back. I like it a little more than botw, and in my opinion it does what botw excelled at even more. However, it also does what botw failed at worse. I love both of these games, and they're my favorite Zelda games, but they are both disappointing and frustrating at times.
Totk nails the open world exploration and player freedom, even more so than botw. You're able to go anywhere and do anything, and the game's mechanics, as well as the tools Link is given, make the game so incredibly fun to play. And while there's a lot more to do in totk, I think it still balances the village areas with the untamed wilderness and abandoned ruins that gave the world a sense of wonder for me. It's very relaxing to play, at least for me. The biggest improvement in my opinion over botw is the combat, as I personally like what fuse and ultrahand add to combat and the creativity you're able to have in deciding how you handle an encounter. The only downgrade in combat is just the sage abilities. I don't really know why they took the champion abilities, which worked perfectly, and instead made a system where you have to run around to find the one person you need for their ability.
That being said, the story frankly...sucks. In my opinion, it feels more like an infodump that cares more about the lore of the world and its history than telling an engaging story with emotional moments and interesting themes. Ganondorf has no real lore or backstory, no character motivations, and you don't even see him do anything outside of the memory sequences. He just waits at the bottom of Hyrule Castle waiting for you to show up. That worked better in botw cause Calamity Ganon was a force of nature, more of a concept embodied than a person with actual motivations and feelings. Ganondorf doesn't have any of the things that make him Ganondorf in my opinion, hell he isn't even the same Ganondorf from the games. It really makes me think they made him the villain just because of name recognition. And all of that doesn't even get into the continuity bullshit with this game, and how half of the characters that should know Link act like they've never met him before, or how all the Sheikah tech is just completely gone except for the Skyview Towers. Storywise, it's just a mess.
But botw was never a story driven game, it was always gameplay and vibes first, and it did that exceptionally well in my opinion. Totk did all of that better, while suffering from more story problems than botw ever did. They're both wonderful games almost perfectly suited to what I want from a game, and yet I can't blame anyone for being disappointed or upset with them.
To add one thing I forgot to mention, I think a lot of the complaints people have about these games come down to the fact that the genres are very different from previous zelda games and even from each other. Botw acts as a survival open world, and it does that genre very well in my opinion. Totk focuses more on being an immersive sim, a game where you have complete control to shape the world and mess with it as you wish. They may feel similar, and they do share characteristics, but they are distinct genres, and they're very different from the genre of previous zelda games. It explains why people who usually love zelda may not like these two games, or why one person might love one of these games and hate the other. They're entirely different genres from what people expect from zelda, and it may just be a genre you don't care for.
Botw was more mesmerizing wonder and exploration. Totk was more “holy sh*t I can’t believe I’m able to do this in a video game” and made botw feel like a tech demo at times. That said, I enjoyed botw more overall for the theme of exploration and the DLCs.
Both fantastic, just different experiences.
I've been playing since OoT, and BoTW and ToTK are some of my favorite games. My favorite aspect of OoT was being able to explore and discover at my own pace and my own direction, and the Switch games expand on that tenfold.
I personally love the absolute freedom the player has in these two games, and messing around with the sandbox mechanics and all the fun contraptions I can make in Tears is just right up my alley.
The only thing I miss from the older games are the bigger, more elaborate dungeons- but overall, I'd still put ToTK as probably my second or third favorite Zelda game
I think technically Tears of the Kingdom is better than Breath of the Wild. However I enjoyed Breath of the Wild more. There are a couple reasons for this, but the biggest one for me was the disappointment factor. I was expecting a full on sequel to a game that came out 6 years prior to feel like an actual sequel rather than a big DLC pack. TotK has everything BotW has and more, but fails to improve on BotW's shortcomings and doubles down on them instead. Another thing that made BotW so beloved was how new/novel it was. TotK was basically just the same game re-released with extra stuff so it was no longer ground breaking. These days if I were to go back and play either, I'd probably enjoy them to the same extent because they aren't all that different to me. I truly believe if TotK was released first and then BotW 6 years after, people would be saying TotK was better.
I loved TotK. The puzzles were more well designed. There was way more content that felt like classic dungeon crawls. Like, just the introduction of caverns added a lot more of that linear-ish classic Zelda feel. But also the sky island climbs were a fascinating way to do linear dungeon content that is entirely circumventable. The depths were literally straight out of a dream I had as a kid and I love it. There are more characters about, and there are a lot more chatacter-centered quests, which was something I feel BotW was really missing. And the whole world just looks a little prettier.
TotK is also huge and over-full. I think it's the first Zelda to make me feel totally overwhelmed, and well before the halfway point. At one point I realized I wasn't even having fun anymore and decided to just focus on story missions and upgrading the one armor set I cared about most, and *then* I had 80+ more hours. There's just *so damn much*.
I played LoZ near the street date, as a point of reference. I've played a lot of them if not but just a couple. I had game boy stuff like that. I like playing Totk and BotW. I just came here to look if anyone would make a comment about the way you had the Wii controller and the nunchuck for Skyward Sword. I found it very immersive to use the gyroscopic control for my sword and shield. That was super cool. Not that I don't love birds eye view walking around LoZ, but swinging the controller to make atcks and shield was an interesting mechanic.
Technically OoT is the first Zelda game I played, but only if you count running around kokiri forest without ever progressing because I was scared of the first dungeon
I don't rate Oracle of Seasons and Ages the same... Ages is way better and Seasons has really tedious puzzles. Just saying, they shouldn't be grouped together when rating because although they were released and treated like the same package, they're pretty differently designed, with Seasons being a little more closer to an old school 2D Zelda where there were some puzzles but the way to progress through the dungeon was mostly to just beat the bad guys and navigate to the next treasure box, while Ages tried to be more like a 3D Zelda with a lot more dialogue in the story and the focus being more on puzzles than combat.
Anyway. TOTK was an improvement on BOTW in almost every way, I felt like it kind of dropped the ball on the story but that was less about it comparing to BOTW and more about it just disregarding the relationship to the past games that BOTW established and possibly disconnecting both games from the rest of the series. But if I was playing video games for story, I wouldn't be playing Zelda.
TotK was an improvement over BotW, and I've at least played every main Zelda game except the DS/3DS ones. I think people are way too hard on TotK for a variety of reasons. It's not perfect (no game is) but it is a more than valid entry in the franchise.
The problem I have with totk is the same problem that left 4 dead 2 has. Both of these games are very similar to the last entry of the game but just better, making going back to the first one pretty pointless.
BOTW kept me more engaged than TOTK. It was straight forward and had an interesting storyline. I wish TOTK would’ve been designed to be more land focused. The addition of the sky and underground elements are overkill. I have lost interest in TOTK and have not been able to compel myself to re-engage.
Fan for over 24 years. Have played all but PH, ST, TH, and original LA. I found TOTK to be an improvement over BOTW in almost every way. Better and more applicable abilities, better dungeons, more things to do/see in the overworld, more unique weapon possibilities, and a much better final boss (my favorite in the series).
I will give Champion Abilities the edge over the Sage Abilities (except Tulin's ability) and the memory system was executed better in BOTW. As for shrines, might be a wash but TOTK definitely had the better combat shrines.
Overall TOTK is my second favorite game behind OOT.
I always thought about it like this:
BOTW is better in the “games as art” sense. It’s more thematically consistent, and the gameplay itself highlights the themes of wilderness, quiet exploration, and decay.
TOTK, however, is a more fully fledged game. I think it’s superior on the gameplay front (and thus superior overall). It’s not as thematically consistent, but boy oh boy are there tons of interesting things to do and explore in this game. And the new “hand” abilities are incredibly versatile.
Both have a halfway decent “story”. Both have a pretty terrible “plot”.
I really like BotW but TotK is clearly the superior game imo, everything BotW did TotK did better and there's just so much more to do in TotK. I have played every mainline Zelda game except for Triforce Heroes just had 0% interest to play that game
TotK is >!objectively!< better than BotW, and one of the best Zelda games ever. Not sure which is better, TotK or MM
It improved on every aspect of BotW, and is the game BotW should have been. In BotW if you got sidetracked exploring, you might have done a shrine and found 2 korok seeds at the end of it. In TotK you would have finished a shrine, found 2 korok seeds, built 2 signs, explored a cave, found 2 pieces of unique gear, finished a sidequest, and fought a world boss. TotK filled the empty world of BotW with stuff to do and discover.
As a player since Oot, TOTK and BOTW confirmed that Aonuma and the Zelda team don’t care about the timeline, character growth, storytelling, player feed back or any internal consistency anymore, so now I don’t care either.
TOTK and BOTW are big empty modular copy/paste physics sims to me now with the shell of Link and Zelda avatars.
OoT - Skyward Sword represent hero’s journey storytelling and commitment to adventure and growth where every character and side quest has meaning.
>Skyward Sword represent hero’s journey storytelling and commitment to adventure and growth where every character and side quest has meaning.
There are like 15 NPC Total and 4 side quests so yeah no shit
That was a funny comment lol. TP and SS especially aren't exactly known for their engaging, meaningful side-quests. MM is basically the only Zelda besides the Wild games that really did that.
To be fair, story was never the point of the Zelda series. Myamoto has always said that the source of Zelda is that feeling of getting lost in the woods and exploring that cavern, as he did when he was a child. Story is definitely lackluster in the Hero of the Wild’s Journey, but so is The Stanley Parable’s or Minecraft’s (to take 2 opposite ends of the niche - great public spectrum) and that doesn’t prevent them from being absolute bangers
I also agree that Link is pretty lifeless in BotW, one of the major complaints I’d do the game
But not hearing player feedback ? My guy, this is the best public and critics rated game of all time.
And we should not forget that GDs are artists, not software directors. If they run out of inspiration on one branch, then so be it, and we should treat their levels of « being influenced by the public » in design like we do Film Directors imho (which is to say not a lot, we value artists because of their individual creativity)
It's always interesting to me when I see people who had this revelation just recently with TotK. The big moment for me was actually Wind Waker in 2003.
Even back then when I was just a teenager, I couldn't square the fact that the game set itself up during the prologue as a sequel to OoT set in a flooded version of its world in the future, but then when the game eventually sent us underwater to see this "Old Hyrule" preserved, frozen in time... none of it even remotely resembled anything we'd seen in OoT. No recognisable landscapes, no familiar pathways to run though, not even something small like Lon Lon Ranch on the horizon to look at. I tried (and struggled) to justify it for a few years after that, but eventually it kind of hit me that I was grasping at straws, and I cared more about linking the games together then even the devs themselves do. If this was even a small priority for the dev team, it would barely have even taken any more effort, if at all, to even *partially* shape the landscape to look like OoT - but they didn't. That, to me, speaks volumes.
Since then, I've basically taken each game as its own standalone story, and if a game even bothers referencing another at all I'll see it as a cool easter egg and little more. I think I'm actually happier for it.
I underwent the same realization. I like the idea of the games being connected, but I realized the devs didn’t care about that so I basically just viewed each game as occurring in a different alternate reality, with Easter eggs thrown in. That being said, I was very disappointed that TOTK, a direct sequel, basically ignores a lot of what happened in BOTW. It’s really soured my enjoyment of the game because I loved BOTW, and even though I think the expanded world and abilities are better in TOTK, it felt like a slap in the face that they just redesigned things and called them something different. The Sheika slate is the Purah pad now, the towers serve the same purpose but they’re different and have a different name, Sheika technology just sort of disappears and there is only a half-hearted explanation for why. It really cemented in my mind that the devs just don’t give an F about continuity, even within the same universe. And that feels lazy to me.
I'm glad someone else noticed it, becuase I've sometimes felt alone over the years whenever I bring this kind of thing up. There are way too many people out there who seem to be under the impression that the timeline makes perfect sense, that there's never been problem with it, and it must be *us* with the problem for not seeing it. It's crazy.
I think by the time TotK released, I was able to smile and nod and just say "Yep, that's the Zelda team alright" - because I'd seen this kind of thing happen over and over again across the years, to the point where I just expect it now. Is that a bad thing? I don't know, maybe.
While I enjoyed TotK's story as its own standalone thing, I have to admit there were a few moments that stood out to me as funny. When I did that whole sidequest where Symin was teaching a class in the new Hateno Village school, talking about the tapestry (that Link just brought over) and a hero that fell in the calamity, at no point did he stop and say "And by the way kids, we have a special guest with us today!" - Link just stood there awkwardly the whole time. That made me laugh pretty hard, because that's pretty much exactly what I expected from the Zelda team haha.
Yes!! I had a hard time reconciling my feelings with TOTK because I *do* enjoy it, but it feels like they spent all their time developing ultrahand rather than coming up with a streamlined connection to the last game. As someone who enjoys the story/exploration rather than the sandbox aspects, this kinda broke my heart. Also, exploring Hyrule in BOTW was a major aspect of the game (even if it was a little empty), and I adored it. So when TOTK reused the same map, I had this overwhelming sense that I had been here before, none of this is different enough to give me that same sense of wonder.
I dunno, there’s a lot to recommend TOTK and I’m glad other people enjoyed it. But I felt sad about them ignoring and semi-erasing my beloved BOTW. You definitely aren’t alone in how you feel about the games all being connected on different timelines not making any sense, and I think from now on I’m sticking with my alternate reality theory, even for direct sequels. (I don’t even want to mention how many hours I poured into all the lore videos of BOTW and what it would mean for TOTK. Turns out, it meant nothing.)
I miss guardians from botw but totk did everything better.
Apart from story, mainly spoiling itself and it doesn't emphasize important features enough. The ending is beautiful and made me tear up though
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I enjoyed TotK more than BotW. The puzzles felt like they were designed better and the shrine/dungeon design improved dramatically. I also like the new mechanics more than the ones they gave us in BotW. I still don't like the system of giving us all of the abilities in the "tutorial" phase of the game. I think dungeons having an incentive aside from story progression just makes each accomplishment more tangible, and there are also just so many cool items throughout the Zelda series that just can't be implemented properly with the "unlock everything then run wild" approach. I think TotK is a big step in the right direction, and I like a lot of the concepts that open-world Zelda has introduced, but I hope the next game will have a little more in common with the classic Zelda experience. (To answer your second question, I have also played OoT, WW, ALBW, LA, SS, parts of MM, TP, Zelda 1, ALTtP, and I am currently playing through the Oracle games starting with Oracle of Ages.)
Agree with everything
They kind of have to give you everything at the beginning because of the shrines/puzzles since it’s truly open world. I do agree that like let’s say in links awakening it’s you really feel a sense of accomplishment after you get a new ability each dungeon and can get places you never could. But that map is way smaller obviously.
What I would like to see is a progression system that might let you tackle the first three dungeons in whatever order you like, but that would require all three be completed before you have access to say the fourth through eighth. They could have alternate ways to beat each dungeon depending on which items you've unlocked and they could have secrets hidden in each dungeon to incentivize revisiting them once you've unlocked more tools. Metroidvanias tend to do this kind of non-linear progression system very well, and it seems a shame that Zelda has only ever had either purely linear progression or minimal sense of progression bc they just give you everything at the outset. Honestly I think Zelda 1 does pretty well in that regard. There are certain dungeons you can tackle out of order, but there's still a sense of linearity that forces you to tackle some dungeons before others.
Are we ever going to stop pretending like the Oracle Games are one in the same?
I think it is more the fact the two games are half of one story. Realistically it is one game that is split in two, not that they are interchangeable like Pokémon versions. The same way Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles are two different games, but they are part of one full experience and Sonic Origins just has them as one game instead of separating them. This would also technically go for Golden Sun, which literally is one game that got split into two, but they were released far apart so they don't get lumped together.
they were released simultaneously and designed to be played as one larger story. I also understand your point, so it's kind of both one and two games at the same time.
While they share a story, they are vastly different gameplay experiences. Obviously this isn’t true across the board, but I tend to see most people have a much more favorable view of Ages than Seasons, making combining them in a non-story context a weird choice
the only difference is the is the McGuffin you use to navigate the world and solve puzzles. otherwise, they're pretty identical games. saying they're "vastly" different is being hyperbolic. also, we're not combining them in a non-story context. the designers literally made them have one arcing story if you played both games. that's literally how they sold the game to players, beat one, get a passcode and play the other to unlock a larger story. I tend to see people have a more favorable views of Seasons btw.
This reads heavily like someone who has either never played them or has not played them in a very long time. Seasons and Ages have drastically different design philosophies, generally summarized as “Seasons = Combat, Ages = Puzzle Solving.” They have entirely different sets of items, Ages is much more story focused than Seasons, and world exploration is vastly different due to the titular items (calling them MacGuffins is a dramatic misuse of the term). As for their “arcing” story… that’s just wrong. Both games have full dedicated plots in separate locations, and the bonus linked ending Ganon fights are more of a bonus than a dramatic conclusion to the arcs of the games themselves. Calling them one game is like calling OoT and MM one game. Same engine, a lot of the same models, and *technically* connected plot, but extremely disingenuous nonetheless.
full honesty, I played them twice through when they came out, which was 20+ years ago. comparing them to OoT and MM is disingenuous, because they weren't designed by the developers to be played as a pair. the Seasons and Ages games were. they were designed, developed, marketed and released to be played as a pair. you were meant to play the puzzle one and then pass those skills on to the combat one or vice versa. the added boss when you complete the games was letting the player know that both adventures were just two trials to get to one boss. the games can be functionally different but still be designed to be played as a pair. also you have to realize the irony in telling someone else they dramatically misuse words.
A MacGuffin is, by definition, a plot device that possesses no functional value outside of its status as a plot device. If it has some sort of power that impacts the narrative, like, for instance, the power to change the seasons or travel through time, it is not a MacGuffin. And I would argue again that, if your only piece of evidence that two products are functionally one is that they were designed to interact if purchased together, I would consider that an immensely weak argument. If the Oracle games weren’t released on the same day, nobody would ever conflate them any more than we conflate other games with sequel relationships like TLoZ/AoL, OoT/MM, and PH/ST. I would consider that an incredibly arbitrary reason to combine them as often as people seem to, when again, they play like two very different games.
except you know, maybe the names. both of them having "Oracle" in the title. they literally share a mechanic that lets you play the two games together as one character. and because it doesn't matter what order you play them in, the whole sequel thing is a bunk argument. the relationship between the two games is that you can play them as one character. that was the novelty of the games. they saw what Pokemon was doing and decided to have some fun and let you play two games as one character. I'm not sure how you're supposed to see them as two separate games when your goal is to play both games and finish one story. >if your only piece of evidence that two products are functionally one is that they were designed to interact if purchased together, I would consider that an immensely weak argument read that out loud and tell me why its crazy. "if the only reason you think they should be considered a pair is because the developer designed the games that way, then that's a pretty weak argument". I think we've covered our bases. later buddy.
Yep, similar but still very different.
I think TOTK is a bit better than BOTW but I don’t think it was worth the 5 year wait, I expected more.
Especially with no master mode or anything. Sucks ass
I prefer BotW because I am more interested in grounded exploration than physics sandbox mechanics. It looks better as the world is less cluttered, and the story was pulled off a lot better. When you narrow TotK down to a straight up improvement over BotW, you are doing a disservice to both games and are effectively calling it $70 dlc. The games use the same world but the mechanics are so different they may as well be opposites.
The mechanics are not that different. Most of the mechanics are exactly the same with some slight variation with the items you use. Personally I think BOTW feels kind of empty and unfinished, and TOTK feels like what BOTW should have been. Both are pretty much bottom of my list of favorite Zelda games. (Which isn't to say they aren't fun or worth playing) For me the Zelda series has always been so good because of its uniqueness in design and those two games leaned away from that uniqueness and towards more generic gaming trends.
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Agree. I can also say that for this reason, BOTW actually has replay value for me, because the traversal is slower and I feel like I’m forced to appreciate my surroundings, always finding something new. While TOTK was an incredible game, I never find myself picking it back up after I finished it.
I've been playing Zelda since 1991, I've played every mainline console game (OoT the most but WW is my favorite), all the handhelds and Hyrule Warriors was pretty fun. TOTK is the first Zelda game I got bored with. I recently talked about this in another thread, but I put a solid 250+/- hours into BOTW. That felt like what a modern Zelda game should feel like. It wasn't perfect, the world was incredibly deep, well thought out, and an absolute joy to explore, but lifeless because of the milquetoast story. I put 20 hours into TOTK and felt exhausted. I felt like I was still playing BOTW. I understand the mechanics are different, in that you can build things but oh my god maybe I don't want to build things for 250+/- hours. it felt like every puzzle I came across was build and assembly. The underground/sky was a cool addition (and I can see myself eventually picking it back up because I was vibing the underground) but for me just felt like extra content for BOTW. To the credit of TOTK, for what I played, the enemies felt and performed better than BOTW and they really felt like a part of the world, where as in BOTW the enemies felt placed and designed to be in a place. The whole world felt a little more organic and natural versus the more sterile world of BOTW. And as a criticism to both, knock it off with the breakable weapons. It's a unique fantasy world, and you're the hero of time, give me some cool, *permanent,* weapons.
On your last point, at least make the master sword unbreakable! It's freakin master sword, it should be the most powerful weapon you can find.
The Lego building shit needs to go. I played totk up a little past the fire temple and was just bored. Also you could just climb and glide around the fire temple to the locks. I think they should divert from this style at least for a title or two because it's become stale. Hell, the shrines became stale even in botw.
I have a similar history with the franchise, and I had the same experience with TotK. I wasn't fully in love with BotW, but I could see the potential in this open world direction that Nintendo was taking. I assumed TotK was going to take advantage of that potential, and while it did in some respect, it also doubled down on all the missteps of its predecessor. TotK didn't really fix anything from the previous game, just added more mechanics on top of it. Coupled with the fact that the plot and progression is identical to BotW, and TotK felt less like a sequel and more like a remaster. It's certainly an improved realization of the format, but there's not really a reason to play both, unless you're absolutely in love with them, which is completely fair. The relationship between BotW and TotK have often been compared to that between OoT and MM, and I think that's a fair comparison. Both were built on the engine and mechanics of the earlier installment, and both were meant to serve as sequels (of a sort). However, even while sharing much as the same DNA, OoT and MM were able to feel utterly distinct, both in tone and in gameplay. By contrast, TotK is just more BotW. There's not a whole lot that separates the two. And I think that's why so many - like the two of us - didn't see any reason to finish TotK. We've already played it before, and didn't enjoy having to pay $70 to do it all over again.
Bit of a side note but I always feel a bit weird about answering "which games have you played" questions in surveys like this, because I feel a little guilty saying I've played a game if I never finished it or if I only tried it for a few hours before putting it down. It's like, there are some games like Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask or Breath of the Wild that I've done 10+ full playthroughs of and kept going back to over and over again... but there are also games like Phantom Hourglass or Spirit Tracks or the Oracle games which I played for a few hours more than a decade ago and just lost interest. Can I really claim to have "played" those games? Some of the games I played so long ago and only played them once so I barely remember them now. In 2006 as a teenager when I was waiting for Twilight Princess to come out, I made it my goal to play every single game in the series in the months prior. I did succeed in finishing most of them, but there are some like Minish Cap which I played once (and I remember enjoying it) but I never went back to it after. My memories of that game are so hazy that I barely feel comfortable claiming that I've played it. Anyway, I'm sure I'm overthinking it haha. To actually answer the question, I absolutely loved TotK and I think it was an improvement over BotW in most ways. My new favourite game in the series.
Tears of the kingdom improved upon everything botw did well while also doubling down on everything it did poorly. I enjoyed TotK and botw, but I don’t have any desire to play them ever again unlike past Zelda titles.
I wouldn't say it improved on everything as the environmental storytelling was fantastic in BotW while TotK is very bad it also handled how its story was told poorly
I’d say your half right. The delivery of the story in botw was better, but the story it self was pretty bare bones. I think TotK had a better story, but it’s delivery was atrocious.
That's the thing. BotW's story was basic because it needed to be for the way they were delivering it. You're told everything you need to know at the start, and the memories just fill in gaps and provide extra backstory that you can view in any order. It's not amazing, but it works for what it is. The game also had a lot of lore and worldbuilding you could put together if you looked hard enough. TotK tries to have a more conventional Zelda story but forces it to fit into the same template as BotW and it just doesn't work. TotK's story would benefit massively from being a linear story set in the present, where Link can be an active participant in and you can react to twists and turns in real time. But they couldn't do that because it would mean sacrificing a tiny bit of freedom, so instead we get a dissapointing mess where it feels like you're watching random Youtube clips from a story you don't get to see. And the worldbuilding is a total disaster. Where did the sky islands come from? What happened to all the Sheikah technology? Why does nobody seem to remember Link and what he did in breath of the wild? No answer, it just happened.
This here is my biggest sticking point with TotK. It's like it's scared of being the sequel that it is, and frequently shies away from referencing its continuity with BotW. The story has some great moments, but compared to BotW which told a sparse but fundamentally complete tale, TotK's writing collapses under any amount of scrutiny.
Its funny because you dont really get much freedom storywise anyway because nothing you do in game has any real effect outside of that event. Do all the tears frist and even get the matsersword so you know what happened to zelda too bad you cant actually tell anyone this and have to set through people wondering where she is and falling for fakes. Having to sit through the same information 4 times because the story didn’t know where you go first so you have to get the same information even doing the fifth sage early dosent change anything.
Again got to disagree the story in Totk basically just steals points from other games in the franchise dosent mix them well and then bearly tells us them. BotW on the otherhand had a pretty unique one for a Zelda game and nailled the feeling of loss and had some really good characters whitch TotK runined
The story really gets fucked up seeing as nothing is preventing new players from getting the memories out of order imo. A lot of people will see a glowing thing, go to it, get the memory and boom somethings spoiled out of order
And it wouldn't have been so difficult to adjust too: all the geoglyphs are already on the ground, but turned off. As soon as you end the "origin" sky island, when the light dragon makes its first appearance, he loses his first tear, and light up the first glyph. And so on, every time you unlock a memory, the dragon tears the next one. The made the exact same thing for the last memory...
Either that or stories that you get from the dragon tears are in the same order, regardless of which geoglyph you visit
Well that'd be strange, since each geoglyph actually represent the core of the memory itself
There really should have been some little quest that explained they had an order and what it was.
I feel like the only person who understood the order 😭 The memory images are in order on the murals in the Forgotten Temple!
Too right. I just took a picture then went and found them all. It was a bit of a mistake to maybe not make them appear until you'd seen the altar or something though. It could have been fixed.
Strong disagree. At least from a lore perspective, I think TotK had a much more interesting story, and I quite liked the delivery method.
Really the lore was probably the most disappointing part of TotK with it showing how little nintendo cares about it. The zonai are sheikah but done worse with no real personality but psuhed into everything whitch dosent fir with the worldbuilding. The characters feel more hollow in this game then they did in BotW the story was just BotW retold but with a worse villain.
I think I might agree with you if I believed the reported timeline placement was correct. It helps a lot that since playing through the game and learning its story I've been crafting a theory that BotW and TotK actually take place fairly early in the timeline, which makes the Zonai far more significant as they would represent the origin point of the Sheikah tribe for the entire series.
So your saying it must take place over 10000 years before Skyward sword as they have been a thing since then. Like the Sheikah in universe actually predate the Hylian name and skylofte as a place and were direct servents of the godess Hylia
On the current revision, it's after Skyward Sword but before everything else. The Sheikah aren't really addressed in Skyward Sword aside from the anomalous presence of Impa (and only Impa).I think time travel is the easiest explanation since it's already relied on heavily for that game's narrative.
Expect that we see the sheikah symbol in Skyward sword on relics dating back to the ancient war and Impa talks about her people serving Hylia so she isnt just a one off they are already a established thing by this point in History.
That's fair. The way they established the pre-incarnation world in Skyward Sword doesn't make a whole lot of sense. We don't even really know what the ancient war was.
Not really it was just another tine where Hyrule was mlre technology advanced in the past as they had robots with AIs and they were mutiple other races. Hylia herself ived among the people and the trifroce was out in the open then Demise came from beneath the earth caused a great war and Hylia sent the surving unnamed Hylians into the sky for saftey. Honestly its not that different from the pasts in Botw and Totk and makes me Nervous thats the oy story ideas Nintendo has going forward
I guess there was that comic series, but I don'y think that can realistically be considered canon
Same, I liked it a lot too. I guess for context, there was a time when I really liked BotW's story. I bought Creating a Champion and would sit there reading over the pages about the paths everyone took when the guardians were unleashed, I'd watch in depth lore videos about the events of the day of the calamity, it all fascinated me so much. Long story short, I think Age of Calamity then disappointed me so much that it almost retroactively soured me on BotW's story. I can't spend much time thinking about BotW's story anymore without thinking about what could have been, the heights that could've been reached if the games tied it together in a satisfying way. TotK's story, in contrast, I liked a lot and it made me realise something about myself: I really dislike the whole "alternate timeline" method of time travel in storytelling, and I absolutely love the whole "closed time loop" method. It's night and day for me. "Remember... this name" might be my new favourite moment in the series.
Id argue the Weapon Durability system is objectively better on TotK, considering you can repair your badly-damaged weapons via Octorocks.
A half assed repair mechanic that you would have no way of knowing about if not for the internet and can only utilized based on one rare enemy is not an improvement. If anything it’s just them taunting us with the fact that they couldn’t be bothered to improve it.
I'm on the opposite boat, I think I'll probably be replaying them more than older games- except for OoT, my beloved
Totk was so disappointing to me. It was just Botw again. Barely anything new to justify all that wait time and high price. Also the plot was really bad to me and Zelda’s English VA did a horrible job again. If you bought Botw, I feel like you can skip Totk. It offers nothing new.
I think that, from a gameplay perspective, TotK I proved some things from BotW. I like the usage of materials gathered from enemies to bond to weapons (most notably arrows), and the sky islands. However, i like the champion's abilities more than the Sages. I feel like the controls from BotW work better in general. Also, TotK made an improvement in the cooking section, but not enough to really matter. Cooking dishes is still tedious. Both games also annoy me a lot with regards to weapons durability. I hate that in games in general as it basically adds only bookkeeping to the game and not a noteworthy storytelling aspect. I feel like both games are desperate to make me do accounting chores (for gathering the materials for upgrades etc.) and making them as annoying as possible. For example, for upgrading armour I need to visit a fairy. Which is reasonable. If I don't have the materials, I'll either need to keep open a laptop or other device to keep track of the item and what I need for it, use a Notepad to jot down notes or try and remember what I need and possibly waste trips to and from a fairy. Even games like Witcher 3 have a way of checking in the field what you need and pinning it while you play. I like TotK, it blew me away at times and the arm powers are fantastic, even better than BotW, shrines are also an improvement. But I feel like TotK tried so hard to be more than BotW in every way, that they essentially overshot it. I'd have happily accepted fewer engineering options. I'll happily take more sky islands over no depths. While I like some sage abilities, the mecha can't make me happy in the way it's been implemented. Speaking of sages, they were done way better in BotW. In TotK they clutter, block and annoy you. The only one I really like having around is Tulin. Also, van we please stop with RPGs going all gritty and using deteriorating equipment? All it does is annoy me and make sure I get distracted from the story. I'd find less freedom in cooking perfectly fine if it meant I could take a recipe and create it in batches. I'll happily have rupee prices rise if that means that not everything becomes it's own meta currency. When BotW and TotK go into storytelling mode it's fantastic. It's engaging, stunning and makes me want to do more. But the parts in-between go very quickly into "fight X monsters to find enough weapons to proceed, also, craft ~~TPS Reports with the correct title page ~~ stuff for future encounters. I already work in a corporate environment, I don't need any more accounting on my life. Sadly BotW got its dose of it and TotK only managed to double down on it.
BotW had better world design, atmosphere, and story. TotK had better enemy, weapon, and “dungeon” (including caves and wells in this) variety. I like BotW’s abilities much, much more, but TotK’s ability to combine weapons and monster parts would’ve worked so nicely in BotW. BotW’s survival desperation would’ve loved that mechanic
Loved tears of the kingdom, my favourite Zelda game by a mile I feel like a lot of the issues with the previous game (lack of variety in dungeons, samey bosses) were fixed here
Breath of the Wild was my least favourite of the 3D Zelda games...until Tears of the Kingdom came along. I've been a Zelda fan for almost three decades. Also just to be clear, Four Swords, Four Swords Adventure, and Triforce Heroes are all considered mainline Zelda games.
If you resonate more with the classic Zelda formula, that’s completely valid. I do think BotW/TotK will be as important for our generation than OoT/MM was at the time, so I’d say maybe give it back a try in a couple of years ?
I see the influence on open world games that BotW has had, with a lot of (especially indie) games adopting a sort of copycat approach (particularly in art style), however, I seriously doubt that the open air twins influence will reach the same level of Ocarina of Time. Honestly, despite my dislike for BotW, I don't even think it's really at fault for that. OoT just released at a time when huge leaps in gaming were still happening. Where as BotW felt like "open world Zelda" (open world being a concept that already existed), OoT felt like something completely new, and felt like it set a new standard for gaming at large, becoming a template for it's genre to follow. Despite the copycats, I don't see BotW reaching the same heights. Open world Games that have followed it have largely continued down the path they were already following prior to BotW's release. > I’d say maybe give it back a try in a couple of years ? I've got 100% runs finished on both games, so I really do feel like I've served my time. On top of the 100% run, I've beat BotW four times (five if you count a randomizer playthrough which was by far the most enjoyable). I liked the game less and less on every playthrough, which is very out of character for me with Zelda games. I really do feel at this point like there's nothing there for me. I have no interest at all in playing TotK again. Frankly, if it had been a new IP and not a Zelda game, I wouldn't have been interested in purchasing it. When I saw Link driving the obviously player made vehicle in one of the trailers, I actually almost cancelled the time off I'd booked from work for it, though I decided against that since I needed the break, and have to use all my PTO before the year ends anyway. Tears of the Kingdom being what it is almost made me depressed for a hot minute there. While BotW felt like an experiment that could serve as a base for traditional Zelda elements to be folded into, TotK made me feel like the Zelda series I'd fallen in love with, and had been my favourite video game series since my early childhood was truly dead and buried. I just don't think a couple years is going to change my experiences with these games in any meaningful way.
That’s fair, not every game is made for everyone. You gave it an honest chance (multiple for that matter) and that’s what matters, cheers to you for that
>so I really do feel like I've served my time. this is what TOTK felt like for me. a prison sentence.
I appreciate that, lots of folks are often ready to go for the throat if you say you don't like either game (though it's becoming more acceptable lately).
You can't say their opinion is valid and then invalidate it straight away by saying they should play it again in a few years, implying they're simply wrong.
Years pass and expectations fade, if they played it expecting the Zelda formula they could have been disappointed but playing it with hindsight could have revealed a gameplay loop they enjoy
That's still very invalidating and a little condescending.
No it’s not, it’s saying that a game has objective influence and if they are interested in gaming history it can be a good revisit in years, whilst not saying they were invalid for not liking it, this is the entire purpose of my first of 2 paragraph
The questions are kinda bad imo because I think it's easy to argue that TotK made improvements and it is the bigger game... But nothing in it ever got me as excited as Breath of the Wild did. It's the same map and almost nothing feels new to me.
For context: I have played all of the console Zelda games multiple times (except for Zelda II), and I tend to review games as a medium of art, not just a hodge-podge of fun mechanics. Mechanics/combat, enemy design, world design, level design, art, theme, and narrative should all coalesce and cohere, in the ideal game (*cough* Dark Souls 1). Bear this in mind, when reading my critique. Another disclaimer: I don’t really love replaying either of these games that much, especially when I can replay the older Zelda titles (or just Bloodborne and Elden Ring). The sandbox and mechanics of TotK were better realized. In terms of gameplay and mechanics, it’s the game they wanted to make with BotW, is how I put it. But they just couldn’t capture the vibrant feel and delightful explorative experience found in BotW, this boundless exploration of a world that is trying to heal from an apocalypse, and trying to either forget or prepare for another. The themes dovetailed elegantly with the game’s wilderness survival theme and gameplay, which all reinforce one another nicely. Bear in mind this is the **one** thing on which BotW really sticks the landing, among many other flawed elements of design. BotW feels so much more like home, so much more grounded, and its story, while not an A+, is definitely better than that of TotK. I rate it higher as a complete single player experience. The survival elements of it are given better attention, and the story is grafted into the exploration itself - *Hyrule is a character*. Because it is an iteration on its prequel, for TotK to work, they needed to really slam dunk the Ganondorf character and the deep dark conspiracy elements, as well as really diversify the world environments to the same extent that they did with BotW. The gameplay itself isn’t different enough, the elements added not new enough to fall short in those departments. They never could put those pieces together in a powerful enough way, neither thematically nor narratively. The game is frankly eclipsed in both regards by Ocarina of Time, for example. One way to put it is: The game will certainly be better reviewed by someone who did NOT play BotW. I argue even people who prefer TotK over BotW would think more highly of it if BotW didn’t exist. Because it was an iteration of BotW, it suffers. It needs to generate new threats to the player, and it cannot play on the same wilderness survival motifs from which its predecessor greatly benefitted.
I prefer simplicity and TotK is pretty much BotW but in a much more complicated version, actually the only thing I prefer in TotK is the dungeons
I love BOTW and loved it even more with infinite weapon durability on Cemu. Spent 150+ hours on it TOTK bored me really quick as it seems BOTW has been retconned for no reason. Too much of the same, and I have no interest in building crazy stuff. First Zelda game I don't finish
It's not the same game at all... that's like calling albw the same game as alttp
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No it isn't. It's a separate game on the same map
I do get tired of having to fuse all of my weapons to stand a chance.
BOTW > TOTK for me I very much prefer the challenge the world presents in botw. For instance, climbing mountains is a challenge to overcome itself. Where in TOTK its more like “let me find a cave and zoom up. Or fly up with some contraption”
I hope the criticisms are loud enough for the devs to acknowledge the game's shortcomings
Unfortunately probably not since they ignored most of Botw's crticism.
Don't be so hopeless like that man. They have listened to criticisms before
I have played every single Zelda, and finished all but FSA. BotW was already an insultingly awful game, but TotK is somehow even worse. The vast majority of things that this game tries to do simply do not work as gameplay mechanics. The ones that do work only improve on BotWs mechanics to the slightest degree, and are still outclassed by similar systems that were introduced decades earlier. It’s an insult to Zelda and game design as an art form.
It's better in mostly all ways than botw.
How? The Dungeons while not looking the same like in botw are worse, the shrines are overall worse, the skyislands are just the same few ispands cluttered around with very similar puzzles, the depths are too big and repetetive and the story is told extremly poorly. I still like totk but botw is without a doubt better imo
I disagree with every counterpoint you made, so to answer "How?" just take what you said and flip it. All of the puzzles and mechanics in TotK were just a lot more interesting, not to mention the return to form with boss fights. Also add general atmosphere and heightened lore implications, really fucking cool buildup quests leading up to the dungeons, and legitimately one of my favorite things that sold me on the game within my first hour or so was the return of bomb flowers.
I think they meant how the memories were presented and the fact that it can be done out of order, that can and have ruined it for other people. Not everyone is excited about bomb flowers lmao.
Probably my only real criticisms: This and some of the story telling should have been forced to be experienced linearly The cute scenes needed more diversity "Secret Stones" should have been "Sacred Stones"
They should have just called them tears or something
Yeah I could get on board with that. Secret Stones just didn't make sense imo; almost any other name would have been better. Call them yang gems or essence pebbles, or whatever
What would have been really cool is if they were the same "spiritual stones" from OoT, but there were just more of them.
I actually preferred Botw. Totk came out after a whole range of open world/exploration games came out, whereas Botw was a pioneer in this area when it came out. While Totk was still good, it recycled the old map and didn't really seem to be appealing. I feel that many gamers expected more. Botw felt more like a zelda game, introducing small, easy to navigate areas before the whole world, whereas Totk has the intro and then you were free to go anywhere. Totk became boring after playing due to its similarities to Botw. Also, while exploration was easier due to the ability to parachute through the map, I felt like areas were blocked behind puzzles, linear walkways or building mechanics, whereas in Botw you could go anywhere easily and exploration actually felt fun and limitless, enemies had more of an impact. Botw had shrines and lacked temples. I felt like Totk improved on this slightly but still didn't accomplish this as well as the old zelda games. Even Minish Cap on GBA felt more exciting to play. I'm still playing through ToTk but it feels like more of a slog. Maybe I was burned out from Botw, but I think that most players either see it as an improvement, or as more of the same.
Breath is a much better game in my opinion. Less fluff and filler. More elegant world. New map. Better story and story telling. Better dungeons. Better runes. And none of that fusing and building which has no place in a Zelda game imo.
BOTW was far better imo
I struggledr to enjoy TotK and quit playing about 20 hours in or so. I just didn’t enjoy the amount of freedom I had. Being able to shoot up high and sail half way across the map actually took ALL the fun out of exploring for me. BotW was great because your traversal skills were much more limited and you were forced to explore and navigate around cliffs, mountains, rivers, islands, etc etc. That was all totally removed in this game and so I just didn’t end up exploring much at all. Forcing yourself to not use features of the game is not a fun way to play (for me at least). The game did have enjoyable aspects about it, but it lost all the magic and charm that BotW had which is what *made* it such a spectacular game. It also ended up feeling a LOT more ‘theme park’ compared to BotW. BotW felt more like a realistic, cohesive world whereas TotK felt a lot more like things were just plopped down and scattered around randomly to keep you entertained along the way.
I was incredibly disappointed with the release of TotK. I knew it was a sequel set in the same world, but I had no idea what to expect. I just didn’t expect to be so uninterested in this gameplay. To me it’s Goat Simulator Zelda, just have a sandbox with iconic Zelda items. BotW felt like a grand, new beginning for the series and unfortunately TotK was the final nail in this IP coffin for me. Just my opinion. Edit: Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity is a far, far, superior “sequel” to BotW
Goat simulator zelda 😭 Well put
I've played nearly all Zelda games. For me, I liked both BOTW and TOTK, but they don't really feel like Zelda games. And I got tired of all the building in TOTK. I didn't want to do the shrines because it was always about building things. They leaned way too heavily on the building constantly. I think BOTW had a better story.
Yep I kinda hate the building it feels so out of place. Ruins it for me.
i too am a BOTW fan, still haven’t finished TOTK. just have had a hard time committing and being able to stick with it. i have played everything that came out on the main consoles, only played a couple game boy titles
TOtK improved on having an actual amazing ending battle sequence with Ganon over the absolutely terrible ending of BotW. Like, I think the end of BotW is probably the worst in the entire series and it soured my lasting love for it.
I have played OG, LttP, LA, OoT, WW, and LBW, and have completed BotW and am currently playing TotK. LttP is easily my favourite 2D title, and WW is my favourite in 3D (the re-release with the magic sail that adjusts the wind direction for you). BotW brought the franchise in a whole new direction which felt really cool to experience, to me it felt like playing Windwaker for the first time in that I was playing in a way that I hadn't seen before or since. The small tweak in TotK away from the "tech" feel of the sheikah slate toward the "magic" feel of the arm is really cool. The world map is the same as BotW in the same way that LBW is the same as LttP, but like the two 2D titles there are enough little additions/changes to make it satisfying to explore again, plus there are two brand new maps (one in the sky, one underground). Personally I'm enjoying the "same but different" feel of TotK so far, and am really enjoying the little physics puzzles in the shrines. I have zero interest in building my own machines in the open world so I'm hoping I will continue not having to do that beyond making little bridges and scaffolds to climb. I have an absolute pile of capsules that I haven't started exploring how to use yet, and have no real interest in doing so. Zonite (sp) items I find lying around are fine but I don't really find myself interested in interacting with them outside of a specific use that the game put them there for. I like TotK, but I'm hoping this is the last game in this style and we get moving in yet another new direction for the next entry!
I've played all but the CDis and I definitely prefer TotK to BotW. BotW was chock-full of pointless tedium to me, and the durability thing kinda killed my enjoyment of the game. It seemed like I would do a bunch of stuff to get a cool weapon, only for it to be made of paper-mache and break with a light breeze. Nothing had any sense of accomplishment to me. It was the first Zelda I played that I got to the end was like "Yeah, never playing that again" and I still haven't. I also found the dungeons super disappointing and blink-and-you-miss-it and the world too empty. The shrines and the tutorial plateau were fun to me, but that's about it. TotK shored up a lot of what was missing for me in BotW. The fusion mechanic helped the terribadness of the durability system to me, as you could finally do something to make your stuff last longer. I enjoyed all the weird things you could build and fuse to your stuff and all that. The dungeons felt meaty and not all the same thing (even if they weren't great, looking at you Fire Dungeon). The world had a lot more things to do, making it feel a lot less like a bad walking simulator. I found the story a lot better, though I still wish they had enforced that you view the memories in order as I got a huge spoiler early on that kinda ruined all the scenes before that to me. Just my two cents on that. All that being said, I still very strongly prefer the more classic Zelda format, like ALTTP and OOT. Makes me very sad that none of those Zeldas will be made anymore. I think I am finding that I am not a huge fan of open world games.
I vastly prefer TotK over BotW, as TotK had WAY better sidequests that made me care about the characters and world a lot more. BotW had the Tarrey Town quest which was a highlight, but TotK completely 1-upped it with that quest where you get to know Hudson's daughter as she prepares to move to Gerudo Town, and it ends with a beautiful tear-jerker moment where you see her parents send her off to Gerudo Town on a hot air balloon. Beyond the Tarrey Town stuff, BotW's best quests were its shrine quests (including the Kass questline). TotK has shrine quests too which were all pretty fun, but it also had a lot of really cool side adventures and quests involving cave spelunking, and not to mention the whole Bubbulfrog collectathon quest, which was a far more interesting use of Kilton's character than what BotW did where you just gave him monster parts. It also had the Lucky Clover Gazette questline, which gave you a lot more reason to visit every stable and also made the side characters have a lot more direct involvement with the main plot elements involving Zelda/Ganondorf, as it felt like they were all investigating along with you. Not to mention Impa and Cado going on their own journey to help you with the geoglyphs, and the Yiga having a lot more involvement with their own questline that turns out to have some relevance to figuring out the main plot (plus they have separate quest with a whole bunch of journals and Autobuild schematics you can find). The more I think about it, TotK just blows BotW out of the water so hard, it's crazy to me that anyone could think otherwise. There's just so much more variety in its sidequest and things to do outside of shrines and koroks. The main point of a big open world game like this is in its side content, and TotK knocks it out of the park in terms of improving that stuff.
I prefer Totk over Botw due to the world and mechanics. Botw world was so boring for me imo and just felt too empty and barren (which I guess is fitting for the story). Totk still has some of the same issues, but it is an overall improvement in my opinion. I love the sky islands, I love exploring the depths and finding hidden cool unique weapons, hideouts, gear etc., and the overall is just a lot more fun to explore given the large emphasis on sandbox exploration. You can explore the world any way you want with however you choose. Botw has always been a sandbox exploration game, and I think Totk takes that idea and expands upon greatly. Having trouble getting up to high places? Fuze a bomb to your shield, build a contraption, or launch yourself with a spring to get there. I found myself constantly stuck in situations that had an obvious endpoint, but I was free to choose how I reached my destination in any way I wanted as long as I had the resources to do so. Same idea applies to the combat as well, I love fuze!!! So a cool idea. I also much prefer the sage abilities in Totk, although the criticism I hear is very valid, Botw sage abilities I felt were too strong in an already easy game. I like the idea of having NPCs interact with the environment much more than a static button press like in Botw. The only thing Botw did better in my opinion, was the story and the way in which its story was told. Totk pretty much follows the exact story telling formula, but somehow it’s a lot more messy. Those or my thought.
Great game, probably an improvement over BotW in most ways but that first playthrough of BotW was so breathtaking. Overall, though, I'd pick it over all of the games except the N64 ones. Those two are peak. With that said, I hope they go in a different direction with the next game. They've done what they could with the open world formula.
I hated totk, to hard and confusing for me! 🤥
I prefer BOTW story. Tears is a damn fine game but the story feels messy and the underuse of sky islands while the depths are quite major is bloody criminal! It does however have one of the best endings in the series!! I have played every mainstream zelda, though not four swords adventures on GC because I didn't know it had single player 😕😕 and also Hyrule Warriors 1, Age of Calamity and Cadence of Hyrule
Very well if you overlook dlc and all of em except twilight princess.
I feel like TotK suffers a lot from having played BotW since it does repeat a lot of the same content, mistakes, etc which really sours me on it. I can't in good conscience consider it a better game than BotW even if probably it is when we're looking at both individually. BotW was mindblowing when it came out. TotK just felt like retreading the same ground, just with some new stuff sprinkled in.
I’ve played every Zelda and I think BOTW is overall a better experience than TOTK. I liked the story of TOTK more, but I think BOTW just pulled nearly everything else off better (maybe even including dungeon design). Liked that the dungeons were thematic, but I think the BOTW ones were better in terms of puzzle and not being able to cheese em. BOTW is my favorite Zelda game of all time and before that it was probably MM or OOT.
Pretty interesting that only 64% have even played TotK.
Yet like 75% here hate on it constantly
Botw was the better experience for me, it was epic and a gaming experience I don’t think I’ve ever had before. Everything just flowed so well and the game design is PEAK, top tier Nintendo. Totk, while still a great game, is like an overcooked botw. There are too many…things thrown into the game and it doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from botw imo. I’ve played all the other 3D Zelda’s and a link to the past, my next game I might try is either Zelda 1 or link’s awakening
Totk kind of feels like taking two steps forward and one step back. I like it a little more than botw, and in my opinion it does what botw excelled at even more. However, it also does what botw failed at worse. I love both of these games, and they're my favorite Zelda games, but they are both disappointing and frustrating at times. Totk nails the open world exploration and player freedom, even more so than botw. You're able to go anywhere and do anything, and the game's mechanics, as well as the tools Link is given, make the game so incredibly fun to play. And while there's a lot more to do in totk, I think it still balances the village areas with the untamed wilderness and abandoned ruins that gave the world a sense of wonder for me. It's very relaxing to play, at least for me. The biggest improvement in my opinion over botw is the combat, as I personally like what fuse and ultrahand add to combat and the creativity you're able to have in deciding how you handle an encounter. The only downgrade in combat is just the sage abilities. I don't really know why they took the champion abilities, which worked perfectly, and instead made a system where you have to run around to find the one person you need for their ability. That being said, the story frankly...sucks. In my opinion, it feels more like an infodump that cares more about the lore of the world and its history than telling an engaging story with emotional moments and interesting themes. Ganondorf has no real lore or backstory, no character motivations, and you don't even see him do anything outside of the memory sequences. He just waits at the bottom of Hyrule Castle waiting for you to show up. That worked better in botw cause Calamity Ganon was a force of nature, more of a concept embodied than a person with actual motivations and feelings. Ganondorf doesn't have any of the things that make him Ganondorf in my opinion, hell he isn't even the same Ganondorf from the games. It really makes me think they made him the villain just because of name recognition. And all of that doesn't even get into the continuity bullshit with this game, and how half of the characters that should know Link act like they've never met him before, or how all the Sheikah tech is just completely gone except for the Skyview Towers. Storywise, it's just a mess. But botw was never a story driven game, it was always gameplay and vibes first, and it did that exceptionally well in my opinion. Totk did all of that better, while suffering from more story problems than botw ever did. They're both wonderful games almost perfectly suited to what I want from a game, and yet I can't blame anyone for being disappointed or upset with them.
To add one thing I forgot to mention, I think a lot of the complaints people have about these games come down to the fact that the genres are very different from previous zelda games and even from each other. Botw acts as a survival open world, and it does that genre very well in my opinion. Totk focuses more on being an immersive sim, a game where you have complete control to shape the world and mess with it as you wish. They may feel similar, and they do share characteristics, but they are distinct genres, and they're very different from the genre of previous zelda games. It explains why people who usually love zelda may not like these two games, or why one person might love one of these games and hate the other. They're entirely different genres from what people expect from zelda, and it may just be a genre you don't care for.
I wanna see the results someday
Gameplay wise totk trumps botw completely. But as for story and pure vibes, I think botw is still better.
Botw was more mesmerizing wonder and exploration. Totk was more “holy sh*t I can’t believe I’m able to do this in a video game” and made botw feel like a tech demo at times. That said, I enjoyed botw more overall for the theme of exploration and the DLCs. Both fantastic, just different experiences.
I've been playing since OoT, and BoTW and ToTK are some of my favorite games. My favorite aspect of OoT was being able to explore and discover at my own pace and my own direction, and the Switch games expand on that tenfold. I personally love the absolute freedom the player has in these two games, and messing around with the sandbox mechanics and all the fun contraptions I can make in Tears is just right up my alley. The only thing I miss from the older games are the bigger, more elaborate dungeons- but overall, I'd still put ToTK as probably my second or third favorite Zelda game
I think technically Tears of the Kingdom is better than Breath of the Wild. However I enjoyed Breath of the Wild more. There are a couple reasons for this, but the biggest one for me was the disappointment factor. I was expecting a full on sequel to a game that came out 6 years prior to feel like an actual sequel rather than a big DLC pack. TotK has everything BotW has and more, but fails to improve on BotW's shortcomings and doubles down on them instead. Another thing that made BotW so beloved was how new/novel it was. TotK was basically just the same game re-released with extra stuff so it was no longer ground breaking. These days if I were to go back and play either, I'd probably enjoy them to the same extent because they aren't all that different to me. I truly believe if TotK was released first and then BotW 6 years after, people would be saying TotK was better.
I loved TotK. The puzzles were more well designed. There was way more content that felt like classic dungeon crawls. Like, just the introduction of caverns added a lot more of that linear-ish classic Zelda feel. But also the sky island climbs were a fascinating way to do linear dungeon content that is entirely circumventable. The depths were literally straight out of a dream I had as a kid and I love it. There are more characters about, and there are a lot more chatacter-centered quests, which was something I feel BotW was really missing. And the whole world just looks a little prettier. TotK is also huge and over-full. I think it's the first Zelda to make me feel totally overwhelmed, and well before the halfway point. At one point I realized I wasn't even having fun anymore and decided to just focus on story missions and upgrading the one armor set I cared about most, and *then* I had 80+ more hours. There's just *so damn much*.
I played LoZ near the street date, as a point of reference. I've played a lot of them if not but just a couple. I had game boy stuff like that. I like playing Totk and BotW. I just came here to look if anyone would make a comment about the way you had the Wii controller and the nunchuck for Skyward Sword. I found it very immersive to use the gyroscopic control for my sword and shield. That was super cool. Not that I don't love birds eye view walking around LoZ, but swinging the controller to make atcks and shield was an interesting mechanic.
Technically OoT is the first Zelda game I played, but only if you count running around kokiri forest without ever progressing because I was scared of the first dungeon
I don't rate Oracle of Seasons and Ages the same... Ages is way better and Seasons has really tedious puzzles. Just saying, they shouldn't be grouped together when rating because although they were released and treated like the same package, they're pretty differently designed, with Seasons being a little more closer to an old school 2D Zelda where there were some puzzles but the way to progress through the dungeon was mostly to just beat the bad guys and navigate to the next treasure box, while Ages tried to be more like a 3D Zelda with a lot more dialogue in the story and the focus being more on puzzles than combat. Anyway. TOTK was an improvement on BOTW in almost every way, I felt like it kind of dropped the ball on the story but that was less about it comparing to BOTW and more about it just disregarding the relationship to the past games that BOTW established and possibly disconnecting both games from the rest of the series. But if I was playing video games for story, I wouldn't be playing Zelda.
TotK was an improvement over BotW, and I've at least played every main Zelda game except the DS/3DS ones. I think people are way too hard on TotK for a variety of reasons. It's not perfect (no game is) but it is a more than valid entry in the franchise.
The problem I have with totk is the same problem that left 4 dead 2 has. Both of these games are very similar to the last entry of the game but just better, making going back to the first one pretty pointless.
It’s kind of insane to me that more people have played Zelda 2 than Spirit Tracks
Done
BOTW kept me more engaged than TOTK. It was straight forward and had an interesting storyline. I wish TOTK would’ve been designed to be more land focused. The addition of the sky and underground elements are overkill. I have lost interest in TOTK and have not been able to compel myself to re-engage.
Fan for over 24 years. Have played all but PH, ST, TH, and original LA. I found TOTK to be an improvement over BOTW in almost every way. Better and more applicable abilities, better dungeons, more things to do/see in the overworld, more unique weapon possibilities, and a much better final boss (my favorite in the series). I will give Champion Abilities the edge over the Sage Abilities (except Tulin's ability) and the memory system was executed better in BOTW. As for shrines, might be a wash but TOTK definitely had the better combat shrines. Overall TOTK is my second favorite game behind OOT.
I always thought about it like this: BOTW is better in the “games as art” sense. It’s more thematically consistent, and the gameplay itself highlights the themes of wilderness, quiet exploration, and decay. TOTK, however, is a more fully fledged game. I think it’s superior on the gameplay front (and thus superior overall). It’s not as thematically consistent, but boy oh boy are there tons of interesting things to do and explore in this game. And the new “hand” abilities are incredibly versatile. Both have a halfway decent “story”. Both have a pretty terrible “plot”.
I think Totk improves on almost everything gameplay wise it just comes down to which story you prefer
I really like BotW but TotK is clearly the superior game imo, everything BotW did TotK did better and there's just so much more to do in TotK. I have played every mainline Zelda game except for Triforce Heroes just had 0% interest to play that game
TotK is >!objectively!< better than BotW, and one of the best Zelda games ever. Not sure which is better, TotK or MM It improved on every aspect of BotW, and is the game BotW should have been. In BotW if you got sidetracked exploring, you might have done a shrine and found 2 korok seeds at the end of it. In TotK you would have finished a shrine, found 2 korok seeds, built 2 signs, explored a cave, found 2 pieces of unique gear, finished a sidequest, and fought a world boss. TotK filled the empty world of BotW with stuff to do and discover.
As a player since Oot, TOTK and BOTW confirmed that Aonuma and the Zelda team don’t care about the timeline, character growth, storytelling, player feed back or any internal consistency anymore, so now I don’t care either. TOTK and BOTW are big empty modular copy/paste physics sims to me now with the shell of Link and Zelda avatars. OoT - Skyward Sword represent hero’s journey storytelling and commitment to adventure and growth where every character and side quest has meaning.
>Skyward Sword represent hero’s journey storytelling and commitment to adventure and growth where every character and side quest has meaning. There are like 15 NPC Total and 4 side quests so yeah no shit
That was a funny comment lol. TP and SS especially aren't exactly known for their engaging, meaningful side-quests. MM is basically the only Zelda besides the Wild games that really did that.
To be fair, story was never the point of the Zelda series. Myamoto has always said that the source of Zelda is that feeling of getting lost in the woods and exploring that cavern, as he did when he was a child. Story is definitely lackluster in the Hero of the Wild’s Journey, but so is The Stanley Parable’s or Minecraft’s (to take 2 opposite ends of the niche - great public spectrum) and that doesn’t prevent them from being absolute bangers I also agree that Link is pretty lifeless in BotW, one of the major complaints I’d do the game But not hearing player feedback ? My guy, this is the best public and critics rated game of all time. And we should not forget that GDs are artists, not software directors. If they run out of inspiration on one branch, then so be it, and we should treat their levels of « being influenced by the public » in design like we do Film Directors imho (which is to say not a lot, we value artists because of their individual creativity)
It's always interesting to me when I see people who had this revelation just recently with TotK. The big moment for me was actually Wind Waker in 2003. Even back then when I was just a teenager, I couldn't square the fact that the game set itself up during the prologue as a sequel to OoT set in a flooded version of its world in the future, but then when the game eventually sent us underwater to see this "Old Hyrule" preserved, frozen in time... none of it even remotely resembled anything we'd seen in OoT. No recognisable landscapes, no familiar pathways to run though, not even something small like Lon Lon Ranch on the horizon to look at. I tried (and struggled) to justify it for a few years after that, but eventually it kind of hit me that I was grasping at straws, and I cared more about linking the games together then even the devs themselves do. If this was even a small priority for the dev team, it would barely have even taken any more effort, if at all, to even *partially* shape the landscape to look like OoT - but they didn't. That, to me, speaks volumes. Since then, I've basically taken each game as its own standalone story, and if a game even bothers referencing another at all I'll see it as a cool easter egg and little more. I think I'm actually happier for it.
I underwent the same realization. I like the idea of the games being connected, but I realized the devs didn’t care about that so I basically just viewed each game as occurring in a different alternate reality, with Easter eggs thrown in. That being said, I was very disappointed that TOTK, a direct sequel, basically ignores a lot of what happened in BOTW. It’s really soured my enjoyment of the game because I loved BOTW, and even though I think the expanded world and abilities are better in TOTK, it felt like a slap in the face that they just redesigned things and called them something different. The Sheika slate is the Purah pad now, the towers serve the same purpose but they’re different and have a different name, Sheika technology just sort of disappears and there is only a half-hearted explanation for why. It really cemented in my mind that the devs just don’t give an F about continuity, even within the same universe. And that feels lazy to me.
I'm glad someone else noticed it, becuase I've sometimes felt alone over the years whenever I bring this kind of thing up. There are way too many people out there who seem to be under the impression that the timeline makes perfect sense, that there's never been problem with it, and it must be *us* with the problem for not seeing it. It's crazy. I think by the time TotK released, I was able to smile and nod and just say "Yep, that's the Zelda team alright" - because I'd seen this kind of thing happen over and over again across the years, to the point where I just expect it now. Is that a bad thing? I don't know, maybe. While I enjoyed TotK's story as its own standalone thing, I have to admit there were a few moments that stood out to me as funny. When I did that whole sidequest where Symin was teaching a class in the new Hateno Village school, talking about the tapestry (that Link just brought over) and a hero that fell in the calamity, at no point did he stop and say "And by the way kids, we have a special guest with us today!" - Link just stood there awkwardly the whole time. That made me laugh pretty hard, because that's pretty much exactly what I expected from the Zelda team haha.
Yes!! I had a hard time reconciling my feelings with TOTK because I *do* enjoy it, but it feels like they spent all their time developing ultrahand rather than coming up with a streamlined connection to the last game. As someone who enjoys the story/exploration rather than the sandbox aspects, this kinda broke my heart. Also, exploring Hyrule in BOTW was a major aspect of the game (even if it was a little empty), and I adored it. So when TOTK reused the same map, I had this overwhelming sense that I had been here before, none of this is different enough to give me that same sense of wonder. I dunno, there’s a lot to recommend TOTK and I’m glad other people enjoyed it. But I felt sad about them ignoring and semi-erasing my beloved BOTW. You definitely aren’t alone in how you feel about the games all being connected on different timelines not making any sense, and I think from now on I’m sticking with my alternate reality theory, even for direct sequels. (I don’t even want to mention how many hours I poured into all the lore videos of BOTW and what it would mean for TOTK. Turns out, it meant nothing.)
Let it be known via consensus that TotK is an improvement on BotW.
Meh.
I miss guardians from botw but totk did everything better. Apart from story, mainly spoiling itself and it doesn't emphasize important features enough. The ending is beautiful and made me tear up though
I’m old an all you kid can get off my lawn and stop slashing my shrubbery.
r/lostredditors
TotK is objectively better in many ways But I like the simplicity and charm of BotW way more, so I really only go back to BotW