The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom [Switch] buy it now!!!

That is a fantastic write-up, OR. Everything Nintendo did to make Tears of the Kingdom a greater experience reminds you of the better experience you had with Breath of the Wild. A future open-world game needs to try and get back to that Breath of the Wild simplicity or go fully in on a linear storyline within that world.

Fantastic write up OR and definitely chimes with my own thoughts.

Great write up OR, but I couldn't disagree with it more! :lol:

For me BOTW was always a game that failed to live up to its potential. It was a game that had amazing mechanics in traversal, stamina, survival, exploration but ultimately lacked the refinement to deliver an experience that utilised them effectively. It was a game that always seemed to struggle find a balance between challenging a player with things to do, providing compelling reasons to engage with those challenges, and (sadly too often) simply providing a shortcut which undercut or entirely eliminated that challenge (and not in a fun "ah, amazing I found a way to avoid that!" way, but a dull "oh, well what's the point in half of this gooseberry fool if it doesn't matter...

" way sadly). The joy that it undoubtedly presented in some of its gameplay grew stale and repetitive within a fraction of the time it took to fully explore its world. The story was limp, the characters and motivations of people in the world largely underdeveloped or simply nonexistent, it lacked a compelling narrative drive to push the player forward. Yet, for much of its early playtime it was an amazing experience!

TotK reduced, solved, or outright eliminated pretty much every reservation I had with BotW. A compelling power curve and character progression! A world that rewards exploration as much as it entices it! A set of mechanics that continues to deliver value and maintain interest beyond the opening areas! A story and cast of characters that are interesting and varied! The depths! (My god the depths :wub:

)

They're both superb achievements, but for me TotK absolutely blew BotW out of the water

I really liked both of the games, basically equally, so I guess I can't really contribute much here. But I do think it's a bit funny that in conversations like this, by necessity of explaining your preference which of course entails focusing on the negatives of one and positives of the other, the comparison starts to sound like it's between, like, a 10/10 game and a 6/10 game -- whereas I think for most people who even have a preference, it's really between a 10/10 game and a 9/10 game (whichever way round that might be!).

For sure!

I often think of it as a bit of am "uncanny valley" type effect - the closer something gets to perfection the more the flaws stand out and you can't help but make a fuss over them!

In a vacuum with the absence of any context, TotK is (considerably) the better game. But it wouldn't exist at all without BotW.

No Christmas name wrote:I think for most people who even have a preference, it's really between a 10/10 game and a 9/10 game

Absolutely! TOTK is still a ridiculously good game.

Jenu-All I Want For Christmas wrote:Yet, for much of its early playtime it was an amazing experience!

I don't really disagree with any of the points you make, only the degree to which they affected my overall experience. I think we've both agreed in the past that the best part of BOTW is the Great Plateau, and I think that still stands across both games!

I have nothing special or interesting to add, just that I agree with most of what's been said. TotK was somewhat begrudgingly my game of the year, despite being excellent, for all of the reasons above. Well written all! (waves pom-poms)

Balladeer wrote:Well written all! (waves pom-poms)

I try my best.

I struggle to see how you could come away from TOTK thinking the Depths were amazing.

One of the best gaming areas/experiences I've seen in years :wub:

The depths are by no means perfect but they're still an absolutely brilliant addition to the game.

I thought the depths were a massive chore.

I totally understand how they're divisive. But for me personally, they were my favourite bit of the game, and one of my favourite zones in any game.

I found the depths and the sky to be generally much weaker than the surface, but for different reasons. The depths for not being the kind of environment I find appealing, and the sky for being too underdeveloped. The surface has the most going on with characters and settlements and wildlife and variety of locales. Plus I'm still upset that I built a vehicle to safely transport my horse down into the depths, only for the game to disallow it

The depths are good, don't get me wrong, but I kind of feel the same way about them as I do the Planes of Oblivion versus Cyrodiil.

OrangeRKN wrote:More TOTK versus BOTW thoughts as I put together my top 5 games of 2023, just to reopen a can of worms!

This gooseberry fool again :roll:

Loved reading the full article in the link by the way. Very well written and enjoyable read.

I should definitely play Jusant sometime.

Thanks Barnsy! I reckon Jusant is your kind of game, definitely recommend it.

Two people I know have been making their way through this which inspired me to dabble again (again again again).

Still so good with such a lovely, flexible gamefeel and loop. And still so beauts.

And now that I'm post-shrines/lightroots/most caves etc. it's a much less distractedly dense experience - probably more akin to what some people miss about BotW. I'm just mooching about with my Korok mask on, occasionally stumbling on a Korok or (much less occasionally) a new cave or (much much less occasionally) a new side-quest.

I recently found a side-quest batch I'd somehow missed which was my first new one in many many hours! They were also pretty great ones, as I got to befriend a dog and use its nose (which I'd not bothered much with before) and got to open up a closed cave I'd kept wondering about (the solution was right under my nose in a way that was awesome!) and more.

In experimental news: How did it take me so long to try Ruby/Sapphire/Topaz (I think?) as weapons? Even in the final trailer there's that shot of him drawing a ruby arrow. Turns out they're the most kabloomiest things in the game?! So fun to use!

Also how had I not heard/noticed before that the boss bokoblins with the horns don't just do the standard horn call in battle, but later go into a tune?

And still lots of lovely details like I just saw that a small sign towards Goron City from Hyrule (by one of the stables) is in metall-y, Goron style, compared to the normal wooden ones in the green plains. Stood out - got noticed - gave joy.

I also can't quite understand (in a good way?!) how there's still around 400 Koroks for me to find.

Good game man

I'm in the same stage of as you just wandering around getting Koroks and doing the odd side quest I never got around to. I think I'm at 81% completion.

I still feel a bit jaded on it. I seem to remember around release people saying why would you ever go back to BotW with this. It seems logical but I just disagree. There's too much noise in this game and I'm concerned how big a factor construction is going to be in the series going forward. BotW felt so much tighter to me. There's also the fact that Koroks hunting now just feels like box ticking whereas the 2 times I did it in BotW I always felt I was discovering new bits of landscape or amazing views. It just emphasises to me how much is lost by not having any interesting new land mass.

I tend to agree, I played BoTW twice, but I couldn’t imagine playing this twice, I found it too overwhelming for the first 30 hours, which I don’t recall feeling with BoTW, I felt like the great plateau was a better opening area than the islands. The weapon fusion was fun to begin with, but then I reached a point in the game again, where you just used the Master Sword and fused a high level item to it, then waited for it to recharge. Next game the Master Sword needs to be the same as previous games, picked up mid game and can just be used endlessly (story of TotK ties into this a little I feel), but I yearn for the return of classic weapons too, I miss the Hookshot as a means of traversing the environment, they could easily combine it with the climbing mechanics too.

The high points of TotK outweigh BoTW’s though, the segments leading to each dungeon, that truly epic ending segment, just amazing sections to play through, only segment I preferred in BoTW was the Zora section. The side quests were much better in TotK too. I feel like TotK had far too many armour options though, could have just redesigned some BoTW sets and changed the full set bonus in my opinion.

Only way I’d probably play through this again is if it had a Switch 2 update, even then I’d leave out the parts I disliked about this, mainly the depths, they were excellent in small parts, but it did not need to be the same size as the overworld map (minus water), especially with how similar it all was, actually loved the Sky Islands, even though they weren’t overflowing in content either. The game just doesn’t need to be anywhere near as big as TotK was.

Both amazing games though.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom [Switch] buy it now!!!

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