TotK is a great game, but I also think it's a bad sequel, because Nintendo develop each game to be a stand-alone experience. So they failed in considering the lore and the impact of things they beautifully created at BotW. I'm not gonna write an essay about it, but for me the NPC's amnesia is a great turn-off. The fact all Sheika and Divine Beast elements literally disappeared is baffling, and we have really few places rebuilding from Calamity Ganon. I also think we don't get enough of the deeps and the sky islands. But the greatest frustation is the storyline. I mean, one criticism BotW recieved was Calamity Ganon as an impersonal villain. I was really hoping they would stablish Calamity Ganon returning each 10,000 years as Ganondorf's gloom leaking and accumulating until manifesting as malice. I also fail to see how TotK continues the gorgeous character development of Zelda, and her relationship with Link. That gimmick with the false Zelda was also a bit much, especially because Zelda draconification only impacts Link (even if you unlock every tear memory early in the game, nobody will know or react about knowing her Princess, ruler and savior turned into a semi-eternal dragon). Again, as a game, it's excellent. The gameplay experience improved, almost perfected. But as a sequel, I think the writers were lazy, and that's just sad.
I agree, and having to explain the disappearance of the Sheikha tech and divine beasts in an interview shows lack of deeper thought into environmental storytelling
I also agree with that sentiment. The narrative of TotK just does not fit with the world that BotW established before it. The Sky Islands and Depths could've helped with that, but they didn't.
The biggest issue is that TotK fails to tell its story through the world. BotW's map was curated to tell the story through the setting, which is what we also see in every single other Zelda title as well. BotW did phenomenal with this as you can see the world after a disaster and through the memories, you can piece together what happened in the world you get to explore. On the other hand, TotK reuses the exact map of BotW and becomes contradictory to what the story is telling. This makes the memories mechanic in TotK more distant from the story as it's the BotW map trying to tell the story of TotK, which does not work. The map is also an issue in it of itself since it is completely copied. This becomes even more apparent when multiple points of interest in BotW became unimportant without a new point of interest to replace it. Some examples of this are Gut Check Rock, Skull Lake, Mount Lanayru, East Gerudo Ruins, Statue of the Eigth Heroine, Forgotten Temple, and Thundra Plateau. The biggest draw for Zelda is the exploration, so there's a complete lack of adventure as they didn't do enough to change the map. The new areas are extremely boring to explore with the entire sky islands being sparse and copy-pasted shrines, and the depths just being a place to farm items. It's uncreative that the depths are just the inverted version of the main map but with a single biome and not many points of interest. Caves also became tedious as they were all basically the same. Next, the enemy variety is completely lacking. They added a total of 11 new enemies (not including element variants, gloom versions of the same enemy, and dungeon bosses), many of which are repeat enemies from past games while removing a few enemies that were unique to BotW. The mass majority of enemies encountered are Bokoblins, which are not interesting to fight and easily avoidable. Instead of using fuse and durability to add variety to combat, the enemies should require different mechanics to defeat. There are three different kinds of melee weapons and the game doesn't take full advantage of this. Every single enemy in both BotW and TotK can be beaten by hitting it with any type of melee weapon or with arrows. Other Zelda games for example use enemy variety to alter your combat style; some enemies require the hook shot, bombs, the shield, boomerang, a puzzle (Anubis in Oot is a puzzle enemy), a lens or magic, an instrument, or even a combination of multiple different weapons for example. Majoras Mask takes it a step further and might require specific masks to defeat enemies. This is far more interesting than relying on mashing the sword attack over and over into enemies that are just bullet sponges and breaking weapons that then require fusing just to break two enemies later. Forcing durability to alter combat is frustrating and leads to avoiding combat altogether; especially when every enemy is defeated identically with the exception of some bosses. It's even more frustrating that fuse is required just to get the same durability as the base weapon due to the rusting on all weapons. The last issue is the dungeons and shrines. These are completely lackluster in TotK. They are way too easy because the ultrahand and ascend abilities are too powerful. When you have to force yourself to do the puzzle properly instead of cheating the level to get a challenge indicates poor level design. Skipping the entire fire dungeon with ascend is a problem. It's really too bad how easy cheating that dungeon was given how interesting the puzzles they made for it were. All the shrines are way too open with solutions that there's no challenge. What made the puzzle BotW shrines fun is that they were difficult to figure out. There were very creative puzzles in BotW whereas TotK just had ultrahand puzzles that let you do anything or even let you bring in fused weapons that let you completely bypass the shrine altogether. Shrines in BotW also tied in with the story much better. The Stolen Heirloom shrine for example was phenomenal and was able to progress a small part of the story. BotW had multiple examples of shrines that tied in with the characters or took place outside of the shrine dimension and were actually part of the world. Kass shrines were also quite fun. The issue with TotK dungeons is that they lacked a dungeon mechanic and just reskinned divine beasts. The divine beasts were interesting because the puzzle was the dungeon. All the divine beasts required you to move different parts of it to progress. Similar to mechanics such as flipping Stone Tower Temple, raising water levels in the Water Temple, moving rooms in Sky Keep, Twisting the hallway in the Forest Temple, using other characters in Wind Waker, and knocking the pillars in Eagles Tower acting as dungeon puzzles. This is missing in TotK and becomes a "go to the terminal" quest. It's fine to have linear dungeons, not everything in the game needs to be completely open. Having constraint is what makes puzzles difficult. Without constraints, too many available solutions remove any challenge and should be left in the overworld and not areas dedicated to problem solving. Overall, having an identical gameplay loop in the same world as BotW makes TotK not differentiate itself enough as a sequel. It really feels like the exact same game with new abilities while being significantly more tedious. The new abilities, although cool, are very tedious and with ultrahand, you eventually make the same few things over and over again to progress in the game, mainly because all the puzzles can be solved with the same builds. BotW was also unique in that the environment was a big mechanic in the game, which essentially just got replaced with the sandbox nature of ultrahand. There were also too many anti-fun mechanics such as weapon durability, battery deplesion, using sages, and menuing to fuse everytime. Basically, TotK is not a good sequel as it did not change enough from BotW. If you played BotW, then the experience with TotK is almost identical. I did enjoy playing TotK, but it's a disappointment for me as it felt more like replaying a game I already spent hundreds of hours in.
Thanks for the supportive comment. I completely neglected the shrine integration in the BotW overworld (I think) in my original comment. But that truly did make areas feel important. But they had to move the shrines so, suddenly, all those important areas were either empty or had superfluous enemies or NPCs there. And that's not to mention how weird it is that they change the name for gloom to be different from malice, despite them looking the same and gloom really just being amped up malice and gameplay-wise the same for the most part, other than the occasional gloom hands, lack of eyes to shoot to remove it, and they don't spawn other enemies anymore, but they kept calling shrines shrines despite the obvious visual differences, the fact that one had literal doors to enter them and the other was just a rock with no signs of anything inside without Rauru's hand power. It just feels like inconsistent retconning. Dude says it's the same as reusing death mountain, but there's a difference between reusing locations or landmarks and reusing basically the same story elements in near-identical ways and then giving it a new name like it's some huge change. At least the shrines had the decency to not pretend to be something entirely different. I mean, gloom, really? Sounds like the main villain is depressed, not threatening the way malice sounded. And hey, BotW's final boss way way gloomier (disappointing) to fight than TotK, so I think they got it backwards, lol
3:17 there is a video that talks very well about why a lot of npc don't recognise link...it's a video made by CaptBurgerson and the video is called "How Many NPCs REALLY Forgot Link In Tears of the Kingdom?(BOTW/TOTK)",the fact that a lot of NPCs don't recognise link was one of my biggest complaints about this game,but after watching that video it onestly all make so much sense...every totk player should watch that video
TotK felt like an ambitious BotW mod. The games felt like they were the same game. The zonai building was the only thing that kept it from being a carbon copy. What’s wild is Majora’s Mask reused literally all of OoT’s textures and somehow felt like a totally unique experience compared to OoT, meanwhile TotK realistically had way more differences to BotW than MM had to OoT and yet it felt like a copy lol
I like this comparison between assets of Majora’s Mask to Ocarina and Wild to Tears. I hadn’t thought about that. Majora’s Mask def feels like a completely different game for its “sequel” where Tears has a lot more similar elements. I do think it feels more than a mod though.
At which point did ascend, ultrahand, recall, fuse, the depths, the sky islands feel like a copy of botw? Also majora is a game where if u know what ur doing u can finish it in less then 5 hours. Its on a completely different scale from totk.
@@capgangchannel6309 First, OP already acknowledged that the new abilities are the only thing totally unique with the game. However, the entire gameplay loop and experience is identical between both games. Sure, the islands were new, but they were very few and far between with the majority of them being copy-pasted shrines. The sky exploration also isn't too different from the main map making it feel like just an add on with islands worse than Skyward Sword. The bulk of the game takes place on the map we already explored with the depths and sky being essentially optional and not all to interesting to explore in the first place. Next, bigger game does not mean better. Yes, TotK is significantly bigger than Majoras Mask, but MM is a far better game. MM is much more refined and there are no "I've seen this already" moments, which is experienced all the time in TotK with the depths, sky, shrines, side quests, and caves. Copy-pasting things in a game to make it larger is not fun. TotK is just tedious with how large the game is. Also, TotK and BotW let you beat the game immediately if you wanted. The speed run for both games is actually faster than the any% MM speedrun, so comparing scale with time to beat is inaccurate.
@@capgangchannel6309 Definetely a different scael for sure. Al the abilities and new additions isn't a copy-paste to me either. I can see some people seeing - 4 divine beasts - 4 main temples - zonai/sheikah - gloom- malice like the beginning of the video I point out. But that's just Zelda to me. Familiarity in all the games...all those death mountains and water temples prove that.
Familiarity is one thing across a series of anthologic games. It's rhyming in storytelling and helps the player feel familiar across entries. Taking something from one game, basically upgrading/supercharging them and calling them something entirely new without ever referencing what came before is not good writing for a sequel. If this was a completely different world or time, I wouldn't mind it so much, but this is canonically, what, 3 years later? 5? The fact that they don't even acknowledge how the gloom feels like a more potent form of the malice from the Calamity is weird. And despite the more "permanent" damage it does, the gloom is functionally the same outside of the occasional gloom hands attack, which is probably more similar to guardians than the Gleeoks are. That said, does anyone else think it was a missed opportunity to totally remove guardians in TotK when you now have flying devices standard and that was the only enemy that came in literal turret and helicopter form? I'd find using zonai flying machines a lot more interesting if I had to worry about being shot down by guardians at any random hill or tower I flew by. Ganon took them over before, and both calamity ganon and ganondorf in this game could spawn enemies from their malice and gloom, so why not have him make gloom versions after the people dismantled the shieka tech to avoid potential ganon abuse in the future? It would answer multiple story issues and make the use of ultrahand vehicles more engaging with actual overworld threats
Things that made TotK a miss for me: 1. The main map is the same which makes it worse than BotW because we explored the map for the first time there but much of that exploration was lost for TotK. 2. Still making meals one at a time which is boring. Still changing armor sets to fit the situation, which is monotonous. 3. There's more grinding in TotK than BotW. This was not a thing in previous Zelda games. The open world structure made grinding somewhat necessary, but Nintendo should have tried to reduce the grinding, not increase it (batteries). 4. The greater mission structure is virtually identical to BotW. Go to the four main areas and free them from some issue their having and they will help you in the final battle against Ganon. Go find random bits of memories scattered throughout the land to figure out the story. 5. Ultrahand was a miss. I could see them taking Ultrahand and making an entirely new (non-Zelda) game around it, and that game could be awesome. It doesn't fit in Zelda though. 6. The overworld and underworld additions were underwhelming. For some reason, we are given access to the largest sky area right from the start which made me think "that's it?" for each new sky area I reached after that. The underworld was too depressing and traveling it was too cumbersome. While the underworld was large, it felt the same no matter where you went, other than the one dungeon. TotK is a very impressive game but largely unsatisfying in retrospect. I have zero desire to play through it a second time.
I feel this. Not to mention, lots of points of interest were given importance in BotW with shrines or Kazz puzzles and they just don't exist in those locations in this game. Not to mention the complete lack of connective story elements. They repeated elements from BotW and not 1 character acknowledges any of them. It feels like the entire world has amnesia, making it feel less like a sequel and more like a remake/reimagining with different mechanics and story beats (many of which were ripped from old games. First time Zelda's gone so far as to basically copy and paste a scene from a past game with Ganondorf bowing to the King, which makes him look entirely incompetent with how things turned out) Also, WHERE IS THE TRIFORCE?! We have these sacred stones with zero explanation and the Triforce is suddenly just not mentioned anymore. It's weird
Spent the last few hours, while I had time, writing an essay response and it didn't seem to post, so I'll respond properly in the morning. But, I think an important question for you is this: What makes a game a great sequel? Specifically a sequel and not just a great new entry. Cause, for me, it's connective tissue in the story and lore, and acknowledgement that what happened, actually happened. Majora's Mask spends maybe 5 minutes on it, it's not hard to do. Being in the same world, it probably would've taken more effort, but they didn't put it in. I mean, hell, Riju specifically was trying to model herself off Urbosa in BotW as she started to take the throne young to inspire the leader she would become and she was still in that process in TotK and made no mention of Urbosa in it. That's weird. It's super weird for the champions who basically defined the ideal of each race in their cultures, the ones who were so acknowledged even 100 years later as the cultural role model for the citizens, to not be mentioned a single time in TotK. They put in effort to not acknowledge events and persons from BotW's story, and that really hurts the game as a sequel. If it was another anthological entry like BotW is to Skyward Sword, or Ocarina of Time, or if hundreds of years passed, like with Twilight Princess from Ocarina and Majora's, it'd be understandable. But taking place, what, less than 5 years later.... it's weird
Connective tissue is probably the best descriptor you could have said to describe the disparity of how people look at a sequel. You're right that this does feel more like an anthological sequel which is what I normally take Zelda games to be where this one, if you came in with expectations of a true sequel in every sense, I could see how that could be a let down. Just wanted to say an extra shoutout for coming back and commenting once again on my video. I love the back and forth and honestly it's sometimes what keeps me motivated to keep making videos. Actual discussions...even if you tore my vuideo apart a bit with your first statement in the last video. But I like that! You had some good points which led to this video.
Yeah, thanks, I appreciate the discussion too. I think it's really fun. And it let me expand the discussion with a bunch of other commenters below while my daughter was keeping me up all night, lol. Talking and debating ideas is really fun, cause I also feel like I can appreciate aspects of the game a bit more listening to what you've said too. I think this type of discussion is really important and healthy for things we're passionate about 😁
Repeated world with new mechanics that disincentivize actually exploring it to see what's actually changed. Ultrahand and the falling ruins that recall can't even return high enough to get to the sky islands are clearly there just to skip whole sections of the overworld at a time. Like, they might as well have just left the warp points from BotW in the start of the game if they wanted to make getting around that easy. Or just make a menu that takes players to specific islands or shrines, why have an overworld when it's so frequently given ways to skip over the vast majority of it?
Guess I replied to the wrong post with my first comment, lol. I do totally agree with you. Because it's a sequel and not some disassociated entry, it feels like the game was trying to remake the story using the same elements. Evil power seeping into the land, ancient warriors that enable the hero, and an ancient race with special technology that the hero can use to fulfill his quest. In their most essential form, they are the same, and they do it so often in TotK it makes the game feel like a remake in ways
In a kingdom the size of Hyrule, with no television or anything similar, why would you expect random townspeople to recognize Link? Sure, they would have heard of him, but that doesn’t mean they’d recognize him.
In a post apocalyptic world with a limited population and you canonically worked directly with a number of people and even saved some of their lives, why wouldn't they think this person at least looks familiar? Does anyone in the town with Link's literal house from BotW (now Zelda's house, so even if he moved out he's spending close to as much time there as the princess) even recognize Link? A lot of kids who knew it was Zelda's house didn't recognize it despite Link being such a frequent visitor that Zelda had to work for a present for him in her well to hide it from him.
The sheer potential a sequel had was not even close to being met. More risk needed to be taken instead of following every major gameplay structure that botw followed
I can kinda see what you’re saying. The main formulas are very similar…even though it feels waaay different to me. More risks could have changed things, but I feel like the risks of changing the abilities alone is a big one. But I can see you viewpoint!
@@vladdy974 totk has gameplay features that no other videogame has. Especially not a massive 3D openworld game. Give me an example on any game that has something like ultrahand, recall, ascend, fuse, autobuild, the depths, sky islands all in one game. If u can’t that means totk is completely unique. Just programming in all the features i just mentioned took Nintendo years upon years. And the fact that a game this ambitious isn’t filled with bugs and glitches like every other big 3A release from other companies these days is a small miracle. So saying totk isn’t ambitious enough seems like a ridiculous statement.
@@bitsoftimemedia if they did, the bits and pieces of their vision certainly weren't communicated to the end user. Look at the top criticisms TotK receives - dungeon structure is even simpler than BotW's, active story is nonexistent again (same issue as BotW), combat is largely the same as BotW (and again there is never a compelling enemy design reason to use the cool techniques and ingenuity granted by Ultrahand/Recall/Fuse outside of "wouldn't it be cool to do XYZ" --- imagine if you never needed to use the Bow to beat Gohdan, or the Clawshots to beat Argorok, or the Mirror Shield to beat Twinrova, or..), and the ingame world doesn't reference BotW much at all - in fact it tries hard to act like BotW was a fever dream or an afterthought, with many a character calling Link "Zelda's swordsman" rather than something with true veneration like THE HERO OF HYRULE. Or how Zelda is "Miss Zelda" throughout the land rather than the reigning monarch Her Highness (admittedly Zelda would probably not be so quick to become Queen anyway before the land is restored, but i wont let that one go lol). Or how Hyrule (the kingdom) hasn't rebuilt much of anything in the 4-6ish years since BotW (bunch of supply caches from Hudson Construction lying about).
Yeah, they really treated the game as an anthological sequel and not a direct story sequel, to a fault. And after marketing it as BotW's sequel, that really makes it not sit super well as a sequel. It feels like they just wanted to remake it but scale up some elements to be more dramatic, have more impactful set pieces, and add references to old games that, in my opinion, got a bit too direct with things like Ganondorf bowing to the king and "puppet" Zelda. There were reasons for those things in past games. In TotK, it just makes Rauru look incompetent and Ganondorf look like he's oddly obsessed with Zelda for no reason, at least in the past
That's a hotter take than anything I said. Lol. How are you enjoying having to pause the game to fuse every time you want to fire any kind of non-basic arrow? Being able to fuse them may be an improvement, but removing the ability to stockpile arrow types that aren't basic normal arrowheads is a definite downgrade. But regardless, games can be good games and bad sequels. Like they didn't streamline any of the time wasting stuff people took issue with from BotW, like cooking is still only 1 dish at a time, and weapons with fusion don't really last that much longer than BotW weapons. Do you ever unfuse things from your weapons after you've used it halfway to refuse it with something different? If not, then is fusion really solving the problem of weapon durability? It only solves the problem of not having the type of weapon you need if you have the right parts and keep a stock of unfused weapons to add an element to if you need it or something of the such. There's a lot of good, but a ton of updates were mixed bags, especially as a sequel. Just look at Majora's Mask, it barely mentions it but it references Ocarina all it needs while TotK, an even more direct sequel since it's in the same land, basically goes out of its way to not mention things from BotW. And gameplay-wise, Majora's kept the most popular mechanics from Ocarina, and then added a mix of new mechanics, like the time mechanic and all of the masks. TotK really only kept the world and combat, with superfluous changes to the combat like fusion, which can add more elements to combat but at the cost of a lot of time menuing. Personally, i rather stasis a rock and knock it into a group of enemies than spend 20 minutes building an ultrahand thing that'll maybe work, and then, if it does, I just save it and auto build it when I find enemies so I never have to do real combat again. Sometimes more is less
The depths and sky layer could have been fleshed out if the switch hardware wasnt so outdated. Plus the main feature, zonai tech being laggy after only combining a few parts rly sucks, espcially when you find out they spent a year on bug fixes and optimisation.
The sky was more fleshed out. They talked about it in interviews. They nerfed it cause playtesters hated how crowded it looked from the ground. Apparently more sky islands were going to be similar to the Great Sky Island. Would've been a better game for it. This is probably why there's a ton of falling ruins where there are no ruins and why most of them don't bring you high enough with recall to reach any sky islands, despite Aunums literally marketing and doing a gameplay demo showcasing that as their primary purpose
Sky layer being more fleshed out as in more unique sky islands, instead of the same repeated structures placed over and over. I think great sky island, Thunderhead isles, Water temple are great examples of fleshed out sky content
In the lore it says that the (zonai) temple of time and the land around it were raised into the sky (great sky island) so i was thinking it would have been a cool idea to have the old Hyrule Castle that was located above the shrine of resurrection in the sky to explore.
Even suggesting that totk is a bad sequel is so disrespectful to the developers who are literally some of the most creative people in the industry right now. Nobody else is making games like this. Other companies could only dream of making something like totk which requires a massive amount of talent and creativity. What a lot of people don’t understand is that if they had made a brand new openworld it would have been the easy choice for them to do. They literally could have just given us a botw sequel with the same gameplay mechanics set in a different world. Just like horizon 2 has the same gameplay in a new world, or every assassin creed game having the same gameplay where the only difference is setting. Instead Nintendo made something truly unique that is unlike anything you can do in botw. All the new gameplay mechanics introduced in totk make the game completely unique from botw. Just having to program something like ascend into the game that it works everywhere on the map still blows my mind. The fact u can fuse any 2objects together and make your own weapons is insane. Making ur own contraptions to solve every puzzle in a different way is so satisfying and fun. And recall where literally every movement of every object on screen is remembered by the game so you can send it back in time is crazy. A2nd openworld underneath the main one that is completely pitch black that you have to light up is so unique. You won’t find stuff like this in any other videogame, especially not in a massive 3D openworld game. So saying that Nintendo didn’t do enough with totk is a very ridiculous and ignorant statement.
There's no denying that there is majority copy paste in the sky and depths layer, and even changes to the surface were more minimal then they should have been, especially for returning players.
@@vladdy974 thats a complaint u need to throw at Nintendo’s hardware not the game itself. Thats like saying elden ring could have been way better if the ps5 and xbox series x were more powerful. The fact totk is even able to run on the 7 year old hardware of the switch is a testament of how good these programmers/developers are.
@@vladdy974 literally every area in the main openworld has received changes. Its not just the towns and other notable areas. But even pretty forgettable areas from botw like satori mountain have received changes like added caves, new enemies etc… Also saying that there is a copy paste in the sky world is literally to be expected. Its like complaining in Minecraft that all the caves in the game look the same. If u wanted every single lil area in the world to be completely unique from every other single lil area in the world the game would have taken 20 more years to develop and at that point ur expectations would be completely unrealistic. Every game has a development time and budget. We already know that totk was delayed multiple times so them working on the game for even longer would just have been to much. At some point u need to release your game so u can actually start making money. Its called the reality of the situation.
@@capgangchannel6309 @capgangchannel6309 *majority copy paste sky islands, how is satori mountain a forgettable location. Saying that Nintendo prioritises money is ridiculous nowadays. With such a large enemy list they could have pulled from the franchise, they could have brought more since most of your non boss fights are still bokoblins lizalfos moblins. Imagine butchering the potential of such a highly anticipated sequel because it has to run on a device that literally runs worse than a phone, it's just outdated. Also comparing minecrafts procedurally generated basically infinite world to a place like Hyrule is insane
@@bitsoftimemedia sure the game has its flaws and things that could potentially make it better, but calling it a failed sequel is a major stretch. The game is rated over a 9/10 on most critic platforms, and had a nomination for game of the year in 2023. That means it had to have a high audience rating as well. So saying it “fails in comparison to its predecessor” is a major stretch.
A game can be a great game and fail as a sequel. Those are 2 very different things. Thinking those are the same is an L take. Name one part of TotK that directly mentions anything that happened from BotW. Even Majora's Mask does more to reference Ocarina of Time, and that's a short game that takes place in a parallel world, not the same place some 5 years later with over 100 hours of gameplay for a standard playthrough
Video #3 because of all these comments: th-cam.com/video/l4s2KORZ6v8/w-d-xo.htmlsi=LN-h6ki-SRwCtenv
TotK is a great game, but I also think it's a bad sequel, because Nintendo develop each game to be a stand-alone experience. So they failed in considering the lore and the impact of things they beautifully created at BotW.
I'm not gonna write an essay about it, but for me the NPC's amnesia is a great turn-off. The fact all Sheika and Divine Beast elements literally disappeared is baffling, and we have really few places rebuilding from Calamity Ganon. I also think we don't get enough of the deeps and the sky islands.
But the greatest frustation is the storyline. I mean, one criticism BotW recieved was Calamity Ganon as an impersonal villain. I was really hoping they would stablish Calamity Ganon returning each 10,000 years as Ganondorf's gloom leaking and accumulating until manifesting as malice. I also fail to see how TotK continues the gorgeous character development of Zelda, and her relationship with Link. That gimmick with the false Zelda was also a bit much, especially because Zelda draconification only impacts Link (even if you unlock every tear memory early in the game, nobody will know or react about knowing her Princess, ruler and savior turned into a semi-eternal dragon).
Again, as a game, it's excellent. The gameplay experience improved, almost perfected. But as a sequel, I think the writers were lazy, and that's just sad.
I agree, and having to explain the disappearance of the Sheikha tech and divine beasts in an interview shows lack of deeper thought into environmental storytelling
I also agree with that sentiment. The narrative of TotK just does not fit with the world that BotW established before it. The Sky Islands and Depths could've helped with that, but they didn't.
The biggest issue is that TotK fails to tell its story through the world. BotW's map was curated to tell the story through the setting, which is what we also see in every single other Zelda title as well. BotW did phenomenal with this as you can see the world after a disaster and through the memories, you can piece together what happened in the world you get to explore. On the other hand, TotK reuses the exact map of BotW and becomes contradictory to what the story is telling. This makes the memories mechanic in TotK more distant from the story as it's the BotW map trying to tell the story of TotK, which does not work. The map is also an issue in it of itself since it is completely copied. This becomes even more apparent when multiple points of interest in BotW became unimportant without a new point of interest to replace it. Some examples of this are Gut Check Rock, Skull Lake, Mount Lanayru, East Gerudo Ruins, Statue of the Eigth Heroine, Forgotten Temple, and Thundra Plateau. The biggest draw for Zelda is the exploration, so there's a complete lack of adventure as they didn't do enough to change the map. The new areas are extremely boring to explore with the entire sky islands being sparse and copy-pasted shrines, and the depths just being a place to farm items. It's uncreative that the depths are just the inverted version of the main map but with a single biome and not many points of interest. Caves also became tedious as they were all basically the same.
Next, the enemy variety is completely lacking. They added a total of 11 new enemies (not including element variants, gloom versions of the same enemy, and dungeon bosses), many of which are repeat enemies from past games while removing a few enemies that were unique to BotW. The mass majority of enemies encountered are Bokoblins, which are not interesting to fight and easily avoidable. Instead of using fuse and durability to add variety to combat, the enemies should require different mechanics to defeat. There are three different kinds of melee weapons and the game doesn't take full advantage of this. Every single enemy in both BotW and TotK can be beaten by hitting it with any type of melee weapon or with arrows. Other Zelda games for example use enemy variety to alter your combat style; some enemies require the hook shot, bombs, the shield, boomerang, a puzzle (Anubis in Oot is a puzzle enemy), a lens or magic, an instrument, or even a combination of multiple different weapons for example. Majoras Mask takes it a step further and might require specific masks to defeat enemies. This is far more interesting than relying on mashing the sword attack over and over into enemies that are just bullet sponges and breaking weapons that then require fusing just to break two enemies later. Forcing durability to alter combat is frustrating and leads to avoiding combat altogether; especially when every enemy is defeated identically with the exception of some bosses. It's even more frustrating that fuse is required just to get the same durability as the base weapon due to the rusting on all weapons.
The last issue is the dungeons and shrines. These are completely lackluster in TotK. They are way too easy because the ultrahand and ascend abilities are too powerful. When you have to force yourself to do the puzzle properly instead of cheating the level to get a challenge indicates poor level design. Skipping the entire fire dungeon with ascend is a problem. It's really too bad how easy cheating that dungeon was given how interesting the puzzles they made for it were. All the shrines are way too open with solutions that there's no challenge. What made the puzzle BotW shrines fun is that they were difficult to figure out. There were very creative puzzles in BotW whereas TotK just had ultrahand puzzles that let you do anything or even let you bring in fused weapons that let you completely bypass the shrine altogether. Shrines in BotW also tied in with the story much better. The Stolen Heirloom shrine for example was phenomenal and was able to progress a small part of the story. BotW had multiple examples of shrines that tied in with the characters or took place outside of the shrine dimension and were actually part of the world. Kass shrines were also quite fun. The issue with TotK dungeons is that they lacked a dungeon mechanic and just reskinned divine beasts. The divine beasts were interesting because the puzzle was the dungeon. All the divine beasts required you to move different parts of it to progress. Similar to mechanics such as flipping Stone Tower Temple, raising water levels in the Water Temple, moving rooms in Sky Keep, Twisting the hallway in the Forest Temple, using other characters in Wind Waker, and knocking the pillars in Eagles Tower acting as dungeon puzzles. This is missing in TotK and becomes a "go to the terminal" quest. It's fine to have linear dungeons, not everything in the game needs to be completely open. Having constraint is what makes puzzles difficult. Without constraints, too many available solutions remove any challenge and should be left in the overworld and not areas dedicated to problem solving.
Overall, having an identical gameplay loop in the same world as BotW makes TotK not differentiate itself enough as a sequel. It really feels like the exact same game with new abilities while being significantly more tedious. The new abilities, although cool, are very tedious and with ultrahand, you eventually make the same few things over and over again to progress in the game, mainly because all the puzzles can be solved with the same builds. BotW was also unique in that the environment was a big mechanic in the game, which essentially just got replaced with the sandbox nature of ultrahand. There were also too many anti-fun mechanics such as weapon durability, battery deplesion, using sages, and menuing to fuse everytime. Basically, TotK is not a good sequel as it did not change enough from BotW. If you played BotW, then the experience with TotK is almost identical. I did enjoy playing TotK, but it's a disappointment for me as it felt more like replaying a game I already spent hundreds of hours in.
Thanks for the supportive comment. I completely neglected the shrine integration in the BotW overworld (I think) in my original comment. But that truly did make areas feel important. But they had to move the shrines so, suddenly, all those important areas were either empty or had superfluous enemies or NPCs there.
And that's not to mention how weird it is that they change the name for gloom to be different from malice, despite them looking the same and gloom really just being amped up malice and gameplay-wise the same for the most part, other than the occasional gloom hands, lack of eyes to shoot to remove it, and they don't spawn other enemies anymore, but they kept calling shrines shrines despite the obvious visual differences, the fact that one had literal doors to enter them and the other was just a rock with no signs of anything inside without Rauru's hand power. It just feels like inconsistent retconning. Dude says it's the same as reusing death mountain, but there's a difference between reusing locations or landmarks and reusing basically the same story elements in near-identical ways and then giving it a new name like it's some huge change. At least the shrines had the decency to not pretend to be something entirely different. I mean, gloom, really? Sounds like the main villain is depressed, not threatening the way malice sounded. And hey, BotW's final boss way way gloomier (disappointing) to fight than TotK, so I think they got it backwards, lol
3:17 there is a video that talks very well about why a lot of npc don't recognise link...it's a video made by CaptBurgerson and the video is called "How Many NPCs REALLY Forgot Link In Tears of the Kingdom?(BOTW/TOTK)",the fact that a lot of NPCs don't recognise link was one of my biggest complaints about this game,but after watching that video it onestly all make so much sense...every totk player should watch that video
TotK felt like an ambitious BotW mod. The games felt like they were the same game. The zonai building was the only thing that kept it from being a carbon copy. What’s wild is Majora’s Mask reused literally all of OoT’s textures and somehow felt like a totally unique experience compared to OoT, meanwhile TotK realistically had way more differences to BotW than MM had to OoT and yet it felt like a copy lol
I like this comparison between assets of Majora’s Mask to Ocarina and Wild to Tears. I hadn’t thought about that. Majora’s Mask def feels like a completely different game for its “sequel” where Tears has a lot more similar elements. I do think it feels more than a mod though.
At which point did ascend, ultrahand, recall, fuse, the depths, the sky islands feel like a copy of botw? Also majora is a game where if u know what ur doing u can finish it in less then 5 hours. Its on a completely different scale from totk.
@@capgangchannel6309 First, OP already acknowledged that the new abilities are the only thing totally unique with the game. However, the entire gameplay loop and experience is identical between both games. Sure, the islands were new, but they were very few and far between with the majority of them being copy-pasted shrines. The sky exploration also isn't too different from the main map making it feel like just an add on with islands worse than Skyward Sword. The bulk of the game takes place on the map we already explored with the depths and sky being essentially optional and not all to interesting to explore in the first place. Next, bigger game does not mean better. Yes, TotK is significantly bigger than Majoras Mask, but MM is a far better game. MM is much more refined and there are no "I've seen this already" moments, which is experienced all the time in TotK with the depths, sky, shrines, side quests, and caves. Copy-pasting things in a game to make it larger is not fun. TotK is just tedious with how large the game is. Also, TotK and BotW let you beat the game immediately if you wanted. The speed run for both games is actually faster than the any% MM speedrun, so comparing scale with time to beat is inaccurate.
@@capgangchannel6309 Definetely a different scael for sure.
Al the abilities and new additions isn't a copy-paste to me either.
I can see some people seeing - 4 divine beasts - 4 main temples - zonai/sheikah - gloom- malice like the beginning of the video I point out. But that's just Zelda to me. Familiarity in all the games...all those death mountains and water temples prove that.
Familiarity is one thing across a series of anthologic games. It's rhyming in storytelling and helps the player feel familiar across entries. Taking something from one game, basically upgrading/supercharging them and calling them something entirely new without ever referencing what came before is not good writing for a sequel. If this was a completely different world or time, I wouldn't mind it so much, but this is canonically, what, 3 years later? 5? The fact that they don't even acknowledge how the gloom feels like a more potent form of the malice from the Calamity is weird. And despite the more "permanent" damage it does, the gloom is functionally the same outside of the occasional gloom hands attack, which is probably more similar to guardians than the Gleeoks are.
That said, does anyone else think it was a missed opportunity to totally remove guardians in TotK when you now have flying devices standard and that was the only enemy that came in literal turret and helicopter form? I'd find using zonai flying machines a lot more interesting if I had to worry about being shot down by guardians at any random hill or tower I flew by. Ganon took them over before, and both calamity ganon and ganondorf in this game could spawn enemies from their malice and gloom, so why not have him make gloom versions after the people dismantled the shieka tech to avoid potential ganon abuse in the future? It would answer multiple story issues and make the use of ultrahand vehicles more engaging with actual overworld threats
No.
Yes 😁
Things that made TotK a miss for me:
1. The main map is the same which makes it worse than BotW because we explored the map for the first time there but much of that exploration was lost for TotK.
2. Still making meals one at a time which is boring. Still changing armor sets to fit the situation, which is monotonous.
3. There's more grinding in TotK than BotW. This was not a thing in previous Zelda games. The open world structure made grinding somewhat necessary, but Nintendo should have tried to reduce the grinding, not increase it (batteries).
4. The greater mission structure is virtually identical to BotW. Go to the four main areas and free them from some issue their having and they will help you in the final battle against Ganon. Go find random bits of memories scattered throughout the land to figure out the story.
5. Ultrahand was a miss. I could see them taking Ultrahand and making an entirely new (non-Zelda) game around it, and that game could be awesome. It doesn't fit in Zelda though.
6. The overworld and underworld additions were underwhelming. For some reason, we are given access to the largest sky area right from the start which made me think "that's it?" for each new sky area I reached after that. The underworld was too depressing and traveling it was too cumbersome. While the underworld was large, it felt the same no matter where you went, other than the one dungeon.
TotK is a very impressive game but largely unsatisfying in retrospect. I have zero desire to play through it a second time.
I feel this. Not to mention, lots of points of interest were given importance in BotW with shrines or Kazz puzzles and they just don't exist in those locations in this game. Not to mention the complete lack of connective story elements. They repeated elements from BotW and not 1 character acknowledges any of them. It feels like the entire world has amnesia, making it feel less like a sequel and more like a remake/reimagining with different mechanics and story beats (many of which were ripped from old games. First time Zelda's gone so far as to basically copy and paste a scene from a past game with Ganondorf bowing to the King, which makes him look entirely incompetent with how things turned out)
Also, WHERE IS THE TRIFORCE?! We have these sacred stones with zero explanation and the Triforce is suddenly just not mentioned anymore. It's weird
Spent the last few hours, while I had time, writing an essay response and it didn't seem to post, so I'll respond properly in the morning. But, I think an important question for you is this: What makes a game a great sequel? Specifically a sequel and not just a great new entry. Cause, for me, it's connective tissue in the story and lore, and acknowledgement that what happened, actually happened. Majora's Mask spends maybe 5 minutes on it, it's not hard to do. Being in the same world, it probably would've taken more effort, but they didn't put it in. I mean, hell, Riju specifically was trying to model herself off Urbosa in BotW as she started to take the throne young to inspire the leader she would become and she was still in that process in TotK and made no mention of Urbosa in it. That's weird. It's super weird for the champions who basically defined the ideal of each race in their cultures, the ones who were so acknowledged even 100 years later as the cultural role model for the citizens, to not be mentioned a single time in TotK. They put in effort to not acknowledge events and persons from BotW's story, and that really hurts the game as a sequel. If it was another anthological entry like BotW is to Skyward Sword, or Ocarina of Time, or if hundreds of years passed, like with Twilight Princess from Ocarina and Majora's, it'd be understandable. But taking place, what, less than 5 years later.... it's weird
Connective tissue is probably the best descriptor you could have said to describe the disparity of how people look at a sequel. You're right that this does feel more like an anthological sequel which is what I normally take Zelda games to be where this one, if you came in with expectations of a true sequel in every sense, I could see how that could be a let down.
Just wanted to say an extra shoutout for coming back and commenting once again on my video. I love the back and forth and honestly it's sometimes what keeps me motivated to keep making videos. Actual discussions...even if you tore my vuideo apart a bit with your first statement in the last video. But I like that! You had some good points which led to this video.
Yeah, thanks, I appreciate the discussion too. I think it's really fun. And it let me expand the discussion with a bunch of other commenters below while my daughter was keeping me up all night, lol. Talking and debating ideas is really fun, cause I also feel like I can appreciate aspects of the game a bit more listening to what you've said too. I think this type of discussion is really important and healthy for things we're passionate about 😁
no
No?
@@bitsoftimemedianope
@@modimihir No argument.
The issue with the first 3 is that the repeated world makes it feel like it’s just a repetition of botw
Repeated world with new mechanics that disincentivize actually exploring it to see what's actually changed. Ultrahand and the falling ruins that recall can't even return high enough to get to the sky islands are clearly there just to skip whole sections of the overworld at a time. Like, they might as well have just left the warp points from BotW in the start of the game if they wanted to make getting around that easy. Or just make a menu that takes players to specific islands or shrines, why have an overworld when it's so frequently given ways to skip over the vast majority of it?
Guess I replied to the wrong post with my first comment, lol. I do totally agree with you. Because it's a sequel and not some disassociated entry, it feels like the game was trying to remake the story using the same elements. Evil power seeping into the land, ancient warriors that enable the hero, and an ancient race with special technology that the hero can use to fulfill his quest. In their most essential form, they are the same, and they do it so often in TotK it makes the game feel like a remake in ways
In a kingdom the size of Hyrule, with no television or anything similar, why would you expect random townspeople to recognize Link? Sure, they would have heard of him, but that doesn’t mean they’d recognize him.
Ya know…you got a point
In a post apocalyptic world with a limited population and you canonically worked directly with a number of people and even saved some of their lives, why wouldn't they think this person at least looks familiar? Does anyone in the town with Link's literal house from BotW (now Zelda's house, so even if he moved out he's spending close to as much time there as the princess) even recognize Link? A lot of kids who knew it was Zelda's house didn't recognize it despite Link being such a frequent visitor that Zelda had to work for a present for him in her well to hide it from him.
The sheer potential a sequel had was not even close to being met. More risk needed to be taken instead of following every major gameplay structure that botw followed
I think you’re right. It ended up feeling like BotW with chores thrown in
I can kinda see what you’re saying. The main formulas are very similar…even though it feels waaay different to me. More risks could have changed things, but I feel like the risks of changing the abilities alone is a big one.
But I can see you viewpoint!
This is such an ignorant statement.
@@capgangchannel6309 can U explain
@@vladdy974 totk has gameplay features that no other videogame has. Especially not a massive 3D openworld game. Give me an example on any game that has something like ultrahand, recall, ascend, fuse, autobuild, the depths, sky islands all in one game. If u can’t that means totk is completely unique. Just programming in all the features i just mentioned took Nintendo years upon years. And the fact that a game this ambitious isn’t filled with bugs and glitches like every other big 3A release from other companies these days is a small miracle. So saying totk isn’t ambitious enough seems like a ridiculous statement.
Yes it did. Because it wasn't a sequel and was never intended to be more than DLC. but the ideas got too ambitious without a unifying vision
I don’t think I would say that. It was named a sequel during a Nintendo direct. I believe they had a vision beyond DLC
@@bitsoftimemedia if they did, the bits and pieces of their vision certainly weren't communicated to the end user.
Look at the top criticisms TotK receives - dungeon structure is even simpler than BotW's, active story is nonexistent again (same issue as BotW), combat is largely the same as BotW (and again there is never a compelling enemy design reason to use the cool techniques and ingenuity granted by Ultrahand/Recall/Fuse outside of "wouldn't it be cool to do XYZ" --- imagine if you never needed to use the Bow to beat Gohdan, or the Clawshots to beat Argorok, or the Mirror Shield to beat Twinrova, or..), and the ingame world doesn't reference BotW much at all - in fact it tries hard to act like BotW was a fever dream or an afterthought, with many a character calling Link "Zelda's swordsman" rather than something with true veneration like THE HERO OF HYRULE. Or how Zelda is "Miss Zelda" throughout the land rather than the reigning monarch Her Highness (admittedly Zelda would probably not be so quick to become Queen anyway before the land is restored, but i wont let that one go lol). Or how Hyrule (the kingdom) hasn't rebuilt much of anything in the 4-6ish years since BotW (bunch of supply caches from Hudson Construction lying about).
Yeah, they really treated the game as an anthological sequel and not a direct story sequel, to a fault. And after marketing it as BotW's sequel, that really makes it not sit super well as a sequel. It feels like they just wanted to remake it but scale up some elements to be more dramatic, have more impactful set pieces, and add references to old games that, in my opinion, got a bit too direct with things like Ganondorf bowing to the king and "puppet" Zelda. There were reasons for those things in past games. In TotK, it just makes Rauru look incompetent and Ganondorf look like he's oddly obsessed with Zelda for no reason, at least in the past
No, it improved on BOTW in every way
In every way seems to be a controversial take😅 even if I lean more towards that being true
That's a hotter take than anything I said. Lol. How are you enjoying having to pause the game to fuse every time you want to fire any kind of non-basic arrow? Being able to fuse them may be an improvement, but removing the ability to stockpile arrow types that aren't basic normal arrowheads is a definite downgrade.
But regardless, games can be good games and bad sequels. Like they didn't streamline any of the time wasting stuff people took issue with from BotW, like cooking is still only 1 dish at a time, and weapons with fusion don't really last that much longer than BotW weapons. Do you ever unfuse things from your weapons after you've used it halfway to refuse it with something different? If not, then is fusion really solving the problem of weapon durability? It only solves the problem of not having the type of weapon you need if you have the right parts and keep a stock of unfused weapons to add an element to if you need it or something of the such. There's a lot of good, but a ton of updates were mixed bags, especially as a sequel. Just look at Majora's Mask, it barely mentions it but it references Ocarina all it needs while TotK, an even more direct sequel since it's in the same land, basically goes out of its way to not mention things from BotW. And gameplay-wise, Majora's kept the most popular mechanics from Ocarina, and then added a mix of new mechanics, like the time mechanic and all of the masks. TotK really only kept the world and combat, with superfluous changes to the combat like fusion, which can add more elements to combat but at the cost of a lot of time menuing. Personally, i rather stasis a rock and knock it into a group of enemies than spend 20 minutes building an ultrahand thing that'll maybe work, and then, if it does, I just save it and auto build it when I find enemies so I never have to do real combat again. Sometimes more is less
The depths and sky layer could have been fleshed out if the switch hardware wasnt so outdated. Plus the main feature, zonai tech being laggy after only combining a few parts rly sucks, espcially when you find out they spent a year on bug fixes and optimisation.
The sky was more fleshed out. They talked about it in interviews. They nerfed it cause playtesters hated how crowded it looked from the ground. Apparently more sky islands were going to be similar to the Great Sky Island. Would've been a better game for it. This is probably why there's a ton of falling ruins where there are no ruins and why most of them don't bring you high enough with recall to reach any sky islands, despite Aunums literally marketing and doing a gameplay demo showcasing that as their primary purpose
Sky layer being more fleshed out as in more unique sky islands, instead of the same repeated structures placed over and over. I think great sky island, Thunderhead isles, Water temple are great examples of fleshed out sky content
I think the amount of sky islands they put in was good tho
In the lore it says that the (zonai) temple of time and the land around it were raised into the sky (great sky island) so i was thinking it would have been a cool idea to have the old Hyrule Castle that was located above the shrine of resurrection in the sky to explore.
Might imply that it was destroyed in between ganondorf acquiring the secret stone and when he gets sealed away.
I would delete this video tbh
Why do you think that?
Even suggesting that totk is a bad sequel is so disrespectful to the developers who are literally some of the most creative people in the industry right now. Nobody else is making games like this. Other companies could only dream of making something like totk which requires a massive amount of talent and creativity. What a lot of people don’t understand is that if they had made a brand new openworld it would have been the easy choice for them to do. They literally could have just given us a botw sequel with the same gameplay mechanics set in a different world. Just like horizon 2 has the same gameplay in a new world, or every assassin creed game having the same gameplay where the only difference is setting. Instead Nintendo made something truly unique that is unlike anything you can do in botw. All the new gameplay mechanics introduced in totk make the game completely unique from botw. Just having to program something like ascend into the game that it works everywhere on the map still blows my mind. The fact u can fuse any 2objects together and make your own weapons is insane. Making ur own contraptions to solve every puzzle in a different way is so satisfying and fun. And recall where literally every movement of every object on screen is remembered by the game so you can send it back in time is crazy. A2nd openworld underneath the main one that is completely pitch black that you have to light up is so unique. You won’t find stuff like this in any other videogame, especially not in a massive 3D openworld game. So saying that Nintendo didn’t do enough with totk is a very ridiculous and ignorant statement.
Just imagine the world they could have built if the hardware wasn't so outdated 🏴☠️
There's no denying that there is majority copy paste in the sky and depths layer, and even changes to the surface were more minimal then they should have been, especially for returning players.
@@vladdy974 thats a complaint u need to throw at Nintendo’s hardware not the game itself. Thats like saying elden ring could have been way better if the ps5 and xbox series x were more powerful. The fact totk is even able to run on the 7 year old hardware of the switch is a testament of how good these programmers/developers are.
@@vladdy974 literally every area in the main openworld has received changes. Its not just the towns and other notable areas. But even pretty forgettable areas from botw like satori mountain have received changes like added caves, new enemies etc…
Also saying that there is a copy paste in the sky world is literally to be expected. Its like complaining in Minecraft that all the caves in the game look the same. If u wanted every single lil area in the world to be completely unique from every other single lil area in the world the game would have taken 20 more years to develop and at that point ur expectations would be completely unrealistic. Every game has a development time and budget. We already know that totk was delayed multiple times so them working on the game for even longer would just have been to much. At some point u need to release your game so u can actually start making money. Its called the reality of the situation.
@@capgangchannel6309 @capgangchannel6309 *majority copy paste sky islands, how is satori mountain a forgettable location. Saying that Nintendo prioritises money is ridiculous nowadays. With such a large enemy list they could have pulled from the franchise, they could have brought more since most of your non boss fights are still bokoblins lizalfos moblins. Imagine butchering the potential of such a highly anticipated sequel because it has to run on a device that literally runs worse than a phone, it's just outdated. Also comparing minecrafts procedurally generated basically infinite world to a place like Hyrule is insane
L take
I thought my take was pretty thought out. But that’s ok if you don’t agree.
@@bitsoftimemedia sure the game has its flaws and things that could potentially make it better, but calling it a failed sequel is a major stretch. The game is rated over a 9/10 on most critic platforms, and had a nomination for game of the year in 2023. That means it had to have a high audience rating as well. So saying it “fails in comparison to its predecessor” is a major stretch.
I stated the question
In the video I proved that’s not the case. I think it does succeed.
A game can be a great game and fail as a sequel. Those are 2 very different things. Thinking those are the same is an L take. Name one part of TotK that directly mentions anything that happened from BotW. Even Majora's Mask does more to reference Ocarina of Time, and that's a short game that takes place in a parallel world, not the same place some 5 years later with over 100 hours of gameplay for a standard playthrough
Yes
no.
Yes 😁
No
Yes 😁
no