Zelda "fans" will hate every new game if it isnt exactly like the first Zelda game they ever played. Once a new generation comes up and plays BOTW and TOTK for the first time, they will be blown away. Just like how Windwaker was shunned for years, now it seen as a timeless classic. The base just refuses to evolve and is stuck more on nostalgia than just enjoying something new, even if it is objectively better.
I just don't get where all the hate for this game is coming from. It's so much better than BOTW. It’s a sequel, so why are they expecting a totally different game? If they truly love BOTW, shouldn’t they love TOTK even more? Because it is BOTW, but a lot better. The powers available to Link are much better, the story is much better, the shrines are better, the “dungeons’ are better, the enemy variety is better, the weapon situation is better, the world itself is better, and a lot more things are better. I just don't really get where the hate is all coming from.
10:28 Idk if this was a joke, but in Japanese it is "Hokora Tō", which is translated as Shrine Island (hokora is the name for Shinto shrines). It is not a transliteration, it is a translation but i think this was a joke
Where's the beef? Am I dating myself with that reference? I'll just crawl back into my Boomer hole. Hmm, sounds kinda dirty when I put it like that....
I don't agree with the idea that "it doesn't really matter how much of an impact these quests have on the main plot." Rebuilding Hyrule is the conceit of the main plot, so if the quests of helping the Hylians aren't meaningful, it's going to feel disjointed, perhaps even inconsistent.
I grew up not being really into Nintendo besides collecting Pokémon cards. As time went on, however, I felt distant from the Pokémon franchise and lost the charm I used to feel from it. Nintendo became empty to me. This changed completely around under a month before the release of Totk. I wish I had grown up on Zelda instead-the amount of depth and love I see of past and modern Zelda games are things I wish I experienced through my childhood. When my Zoology teacher introduced me to Totk (he was just really excited and kept talking about it) I looked up Totk and found the third trailer (at the time it was up for like 5-10 days). I immediately fell in love and became obsessed with Zelda in a matter of minutes. I knew of BotW a couple of years beforehand but it never peaked my interest until I really got exposed to Totk (yes, sadly I played totk before botw). While I love playing botw and totk basically all of the time, I just can’t help but feel regret not indulging in the older games from the past. While I may be a new Zelda fan I am glad to be one and I can’t wait to continue being part of the community. Botw and totk are my first steps to getting interested in Nintendo again. The Legend of Zelda is peak. The pessimism towards Totk is not something I pay attention to because it really did feel amazing to play over twice. I’m just glad to play it.
Thank you for sharing your perspective! Most people I've talked to about this game went in with the BotW experience under their belts, so it's interesting to hear from someone who did not have that. Pretty much every Zelda game is a banger in its own right, so I hope you get a chance to play more of them.
TOTK definitely has *some* continuity issues But 90% of the "continuity issues" i hear people complain about over and over again are them either completely ignoring noc dialogue, completely ignoring environmental cues, or completely refusing to use context clues and their imagination Half the sheikah stuff got scrapped for parts and the other half got reburied because it was dangerous Most of the NPCs dont recognize tou Because to them you were a random drifter they met a decade ago, to the Gerudo especially because you were in disguise Some new people arrived and some old people went away because Hyrule isn't the only place in the world and sometimes people travel Its completely plausible that diogenically the light dragon exists in botw but is just Way too high up to see The house quest is optional, but to me jts really obvious that both of them live there together. That's why Zeldas second secret diary is hidden in a well and thats why you can sleep in the bed. Your stuff is gone because its been almost a decade and weapon durability took its toll, and all he really needs in peaceful times is the Master Sword anyway. The champions' gifts are gone because their ghosts are at peace, mipha is the only one still actively being mourned because its been *over a hundred years* and the new champions have gotten comfortable and confident in their roles The only serious story gripe is have with TOTK is that Link is apparently not bothering to tell anyone that he knows its a fake Zelda at the castle, like seriously we've seen puppet Zelda in all the dungeons and in the memories and in all the ridiculous things its told people to do at the Stables but sure Purah definitely saw the real one through her periscope this time and Paya definitely got that order about the ruins from the real one
2:17 except it doesnt. The game treats the characters as if we havent intereacted with them. The game prior is mentioned 3 times and only one time is its in the main story. You cant say totk narratively continues the story cause it doesnt. The game's story never trys to connect to botw's to the point that its as if botw didnt even happen. The shrines are missing but its onky explained in AN INTERVIEW with a lame answer. Most Npc's remember link, but not as a hero, they just know him. And npc's that should know link DONT. And the craziest thing is nintendo said they would stop connecting Zelda games in timeline BUT THEN THEY MAKE A SEQUEL. but this "sequel" almost follows what Nintendo said. Its not connected to Botw. All the questions we wanted answers too after the main story of botw are never built upon. They couldve explained that Ganondorf was the root of the Calamity's. That his hatred over the years materialized. That would make narrative sense. But the Calamity that ruined Hyrule is mentioned so little. Zelda and Link are affected so litle by it, that if botw never existed, it wouldnt make a difference. The calamity would be a mystery of totk's lore. And the reason the world is in ruin ca be expalined by the upheaval. Totk doesnt need Botw to exist which is like the opposite of the job a sequel is supposed to serve. Yes sequels should be able to be played without the original. After all, Sequels are complementary to their predecessor, the fist game is never REQUIRED to play first. But totk doesnt do this. It isnt complimentary to botw. It makes botw seem unncessary. From both a story a gameplay perspective. Botw and totk share so many systems that really which one is more fun or engaging comes down to preference. Do you want a game with too much to do or a narratively connected world? They are so similar that it makes totk look more like a remaster of Botw than a new game. Totk just isnt enough of a sequel. The only thing that makes totk a sequel is that both games just happen to be in the same world. But even that doesnt guarenteen that a game is a sequel. Reusing the world doesnt automatically make a game a sequel. Botw and totk have such little narrative cohesion that totk could realistically be a prequel to botw and it really doesnt make a difference, Because the only thing that makes totk a sequel to botw is that it HAS to take place after cause link was out cold before botw. But if botw started in any other way, then totk would lose sequel status cause that is the one thing that puts totk in the sequel position.
The construct factory is focused around ultra hand, yes, but in the least engaging way possible, all the buildings are incredibly obvious to create. Unironically had more trouble entering the factory because i never fused rockets on shields and didnt think of attaching them to the construct than with the entire factory
NGL I disliked their video, I respect they dislike TOTK but it sounded like complaining after the first 30 minutes? I would give it a fair chance but I know I love TOTK, I KNOW I'm gonna disagree and just be frustrated LMAO Killer video though, I wish more people would see why I and many others love TOTK 😭 💔
I think a lot of people are judging it via the conventions it actively tries to break. "All the cool stuff is optional", the whole point of the Wild games is that everything is optional and you get to follow your own path through the world unlike previous Zeldas which had a companion character guide you via artificial game design barriers. The point about the various places the game leads you really drives this point home; Skitty and many others seem to be looking at this as if it's a classic Zelda experience in the way I mentioned above, and of course it'll fall short of that expectation since it needs to be designed to be completed in any order instead of via a predetermined narrative. These kinds of dialogue are meant to create points of interest in your mind that you can go explore whenever, and looking at it as just "where the game design leads you", really takes away from the appeal.
they did have fubuki witness the same murder multiple times in the dlc! (which is very disappointing and definitely not worth the price) but then they had to screw it up by using extremely twisted logic and like, no one would logically do what the victim did to achieve what the victim wanted to achieve. so yeah, more wasted potential
Ah, I've been outed! I didn't play the DLC (because I heard it was very disappointing and definitely not worth the price) so I missed that. It's crazy that they couldn't manage to make it good there, either.
Your ideas about a better Time Leap made me think of some of the puzzles/tasks you have to do in Life is Strange. But having them be in a mystery (well, MORE of a mystery)/deduction game would be even better. Haven't heard of Rain Code, but this was an interesting analysis! The title grabbed me because I'm sucker for time travel stuff.
1- Even previous defenders of reused hyrule have an issue with the lack of content. 2- There's a reason why totk Building on its predecessor is unique. It's a bad idea. Yes, 3 new settlements would have helped, but that wouldn't fix the remaining towns being nearly functionally the same, the systems being identical, koroks returning, shrines returning, and the surface's topography being completely unchanged save for some mostly useless sky ruins scattered around. 3- The thematic progress you see through gameplay is your own personal anecdote and does not hold up in a logical critique, and the thematic progress you see in the people of hyrule is extremely shallow. 4- The whole "new thing in an old place" motif is extremely basic and poorly implemented most of the time. For example, Hateno has a different fashion sense, and there's a quest about it. That, and Zelda taking your house are the only meaningful changes made to hateno. You can't even buy mushroom clothes, let alone see/buy new or interesting kinds of fashion in the town. Just old clothes from botw and the nearly useless quest hat. Botw made EVERYTHING from scratch. Totk can't even manage to fully implement it's changes. 5- No, the pirates suck. They dont pilage or loot, they just sit there like any other enemy camp on the beaches and in static boats that don't even look like proper ships. They don't act like pirates, they don't look like pirates, they just sit on and near a stupid pirate ship while we are told they are pirates. 6- These changes are almost entirely tell, not show. Do rito village's youth actually do anything with their responsibility? No. Gerudo town lets link in out of necessity, does this mean they become less strict about their policies and culture? No. There is one tourist spot built at death mountain, it isn't in the city, and it isn't for anyone other than gorons. This is all surface level, its what you are told to feel by the dialogue, not what the game actually shows you or does. 7- none of those fallen ruins in your new b-roll footage are bigger or more interesting than the original example, and even then that only had like 1 room in it. 8- Materials were useful for cooking and upgrades in botw. In totk, their use is almost the exact same, its just that now a handful of them are used as arrow or weapon tips. That's literally it. 12:32 no. Experimentation is nearly useless. You'll be making the same silver horned weapons over and over once you realize that making a mirror shield or mushroom spear is worthless in most scenarios. 9- Those are the best quests in the game, and there are a max 10 and they are still very cheap. 10- The labyrinths are boring and offer next to no challenge. They look cool and seem cool the first time, but all 3 ask you to do the same boring quest with a lame reward thats recycled from botw. At least botw's reward armor was all new to the game. 11- Tedious is what you're looking for. Since there is mostly nothing to do down there, exploring means traversing miles of empty or annoying inverted terrain until you find your next destination. 12- They're defending nothing. The monsters never invade towns save for the gibdo in the gerudo quest. they're just recklessly raiding camps in the middle of nowhere. They come across as stupid and pathetic, especially since they can't win on their own. 13- Again, this is all tell, not show. She just barks orders at link and sends messages to the sages so they can assemble. That's it. She never gets to actually help you or solve any mysteries. She just tells you to turn on the towers and ponders the mysteries that link already knows the answer to. 14- Same with zelda, its tell, not show. She never acts like the intelligent woman she was in botw. She makes massive, hard to make mistakes and never even so much as gets excited about getting to meet a zonai or exploring zonai tech after actually meeting them in person. The only time she acts like herself or like a leader is within hearsay from others. 15- Its extremely obvious why totk's ability to fly anywhere sucks. It makes exploration piss easy. You no longer put effort into going anywhere, you just fly over it all. More control isn't always better. That's like saying Minecraft should be played in creative mode. A big part of what make botw's exploration so good is that you would find a destination in the distance, and then you'd be forced to come across lots of other interesting landmarks, challenges, and collectibles along the way. Now, you can easily miss these things without knowing it, because the game never asks you to make that trek. It makes the most efficient way to explore the most boring way to travel, which is bad game design. 16- Skitty clearly misspoke here, but the game never asking you to do interesting things with ultrahand is a massive flaw, and you brush it off like its nothing. 17- Their point was that the required stuff isn't that engaging. Also, seriously? No game should be built around the idea that some content isn't fun or well made and should be ignored. That's never how a game should be designed. I get it if you decide to skip some stuff, especially in very difficult games, but outright skipping content should never be a part of a game's fundamental design philosophy. They also never said that optional content doesn't count. This is blatant slander. Both of your videos overall are highly based on nostalgia and feelings, ideas that you've interpreted out of what little the game has to say about itself. They are far from critical analyses of the game, despite posing as them. Its ok to like the game based on those things, but to claim that the game is well made or fundamentally well designed in any objective sense based on your personal interpretations is ridiculous.
Can I say, I think all the sheika tech disappearing feels very Ghibli inspired, but I wish it was mentioned what happened to it SOMEWHERE. It was corruptible by Ganon's power, so they spent the better part of the last few years destroying and hiding it to start anew. If that was the focus, then it could explain why the only new settlement in the entire beautiful world of Hyrule is essentially a quick-built fort outside the destroyed castle town. However, even if it's assumed Link would already know this, it's never mentioned by anybody. I really likes the shrines and divine beasts in botw and I miss them :(
7:03 I’ve given this some thought and I think this would be the perfect premise for a dlc that is in a similar style to the champion’s ballad we got for botw. Has all or most of the Shiekah tech been scrapped and repurposed? The purah pad definitely hints to that. Has the awakening (the events of totk when all the structures started falling I don’t remember the actual name) caused it to disappear? One of the biggest complaints about the game could become its biggest mystery
this game does continue the narrative from breath of the wild, but it happens in the evolution of each location between the two games. I think people often equate narrative with cutscenes but nintendo doesn't really tell their best stories through cutscenes. People praised BOTW for it's environmental storytelling and TOTK literally continues that narrative quite directly. I think my favorite was trying to figure out how to get into the lost woods, only to figure out that the Great Deku Tree had been infected with gloom and that I had to travel into the depths directly below the woods in order to get everything back to normal. Also, Lookout Landing and Tarrey Town!! Both BOTW and TOTK are telling their best stories through their environments, quests and gameplay, not those lame ass repetitive cutscenes after every dungeon
Im glad you clarified your point While yes, the game is a thematic sequel, honestly, if that was the devs goals, there are SO many easy things they couldve done to make the game lead into that theme Imagine if all the dirt paths in the game were now paved, for example! But they chose to leave things the same. It kinda undercuts its own theme. "Whats the point of the time skip if nothing changes" which is, ironically a criticism levied at Botw's 100 year time skip. Even something as simple as explaining the Zonai tech as moderised, refined, reverse engineered Shiekah tech would show growth without changing the mechanics!! The Zelda team seems unfocused and unwilling to change what needs to be changed in the admittedly flowed Open Air style. Seriously, a game with 6 years of development cant even break the enemy count of Zelda 1? Are you kidding me??
good point on "skipping the content is on you" thing. when i first played totk, i figured out how broken the hover bike was, but chose NOT to use it for temples or structured challenges as i knew it would ruin the experience. the issue i have with tears is... i dont think i'd ever wanna replay this game again, its too big and there's just too much, yet now that i've beaten it, there's nothing left at all... its tough idk
I have played it twice and intend to do it a 3rd time in the future and how I keep it from becoming overwhelming is by only doing the things I find fun to do so it dose not drag on to long. Honestly I look more forward to replaying TOTK over BOTW because there is so much more fun stuff to do in TOTK.
I know it's a big ask, but skitty actually has a like 10 minute point on how traversal with the skyview towers makes the game worse in their 3 hour haye letter video. They also had a crazy amount of play time on the game so I dont think they skipped it. Personally I think it gets chalked up to a lot of the popular game streamers are trying to be optimized for something, and their followers tend to do the same causing a vocal minority of players making it feel like doing anything unoptimized is not how you should play. I've felt this in other games and definitely felt it with the TotK community and has led me to not wanting to interact with a lot of fan communities online
