5 MISSED Opportunities in Tears of the Kingdom 

Tears needed underwater swimming to make the game more open world, fishing with a fishing rod to call back to the best minigame of past Zelda games, more of a developing story where we fight a ganon who is ACTIVITLY conquering hyrule while we are likewise progressing in the game, a musical instrument which is required for teleportation and required to open certain areas once we learn the song, no more korok poop use other collectableSS in place of them, mini-dungeon/shrines should have at least different coat of paints and preferrably have many different themes, and Zelda should take notes from the Ys series.

I still really wish we got to play as Zelda in the memories 😢

Missed opportunity: sky island civilization which would link skyward sword.

I honestly think the devs spent 90% of there time on the zonai devices and the depths, and when the game was completed they told their story department to come up with, a beginning, middle, and ending segments for the intigrated story parts in the game, then they had them make some story cinematics and lazily placed them throughout the world, the story elements are so disconnected from the world, if you removed the memories and those three segments you wouldn't even know what the game is about, almost all the npcs are totally oblivious to whats happening in the story no matter how late in it you are. At least in BOTW the world told the main story of the calamity, everywhere you went told some story of what happened and whats going on currently regardless of whether you play the memories.

This is making me wonder about the production of Tears of the Kingdom a lot, and if more was planned then what ended up in the final game. The producers said it started as a DLC for BotW, but there were so many ideas they decided to make a new game. A lot of what you mentioned feels like it could have been fleshed out or fit right in to TotK already. For example, the Pirate ships being docked on land almost seems like a compromise from being unable to be implemented as their own bodies in an expanded ocean. I'm wondering if ocean travel / diving was indeed being considered, with the detail about ascend in the water that you mentioned, since a planned ocean floor does partially exist. Even in BotW, you could get a lot of speed with a korok leaf and a raft with a sail, and there's a planned, albeit low detailed ocean floor to the end of the map. With any plans of DLC being nixxed, one theory I have is that they're going to try to implement more of these ideas in the next game on Nintendo's next system, using TotK and its cut ideas as a backbone, as well as ideas from past games being reimplemented - such as Iron boots and hookshot from Oot, or Twilight Princess's Spinner. TotK is already highly optimized for the switch, so I'm guessing they're going to have a strong basis for the next game, even if it has a different art style.

I definitely thought the same about the ocean, but I didn't think about more sky islands going across the ocean. I like that idea.

Top ten things I wanted to see in totk 1. NPCs not haveing dementia (how do some not know who link is at all) 2. The blight ganons returning in the depths as bosses. 3. Skultulas/giant enemy spider. 4. Darknuts 5. The gilded sword ( would have been so cool to have ) 6. Dungeons that didn't reuse the same tedious 5 objective formula. 7. Some kind of Zonai hookshot ability rather than the useless map option. 8. Deadhand as a boss in the depths 9. More wholesome sidequest (reuniteing that one man in the gerudo town prision with his wife and child) 10. Boss moblins and lizalfoes

The biggest thing they should’ve worked on is Links combat alone, yes the Yiga technique is cool but it doesn’t do that much damage and you probably won’t be using it that often. I wish we could’ve seen like when you are equipped with a one handed weapon, you can swing while you are walking kind of like what you could do in Twilight Princess because it gives you more of a freedom of control and I like that. Or like when an enemy is down and or stunned you can do a finishing blow, idk.

One of the HUGE flaws with Totk's story is that UNLIKE botw, the story is _linear._ But despite this the memories/tears can be gotten in any order. They tell you the intended order, technically, but imagine being that one guy who's first memory is the one where Sonia dies. That would REALLY take you out of it! You'd be so confused!

They spent all their time on fuse and ultrahand. I feel that's why the story is so lackluster.

More tactical combat missions where you can fight with groups of people leading to an all out war against the demon kings army. …………………………..They had 6 years

Your number 3 point about the structures connecting to the sky, if you went the way of not utilizing Zonai machines as much like I did, then you would have gotten your wish in trying to get to the Rito Dungeon. Going from the top of Hebra Peak to sky island traversal using only your paraglider and Tulin, was a truly exhilarating experience.

Personally I never put too much faith in underwater swimming, as they didn’t really say anything and that seemed more like theory than fact anyway, and I’d learned my lesson by that point anyway, as for the memories, if they changed it so only a specific memory appeared on the map at a time and fused the Sonia’s death memories together, and gave us a Sonia’s funeral memory with her final goodbye to Rauru, I feel that would of helped a bit, as for everything else, I hadn’t thought about it too much yet, I’ve yet to fight the final boss, but I’m nearly there, so I can give my full thoughts soon

I agree with everything except horizontal expansion... We definitely could have used more pirate ship quests though, and it would have been much better to have at least 1 Lizal pirate boss and Lizal crew... Made no sense just being Bokos and Moblins.

Missed opportunities: The whole game

So disappointed about Ganondorfs backstory and his relationship with the Gerudo. This game went out of his way to make Ganondorf look the most gerudo he ever was! And until the end he KEEPS wearing his folks symbols and clothing with pride! Story wise though? NOTHING! I *desperatly* hoped hed at least say one or two words to Riju when he sees her! Nope. Silence. I wouldnt have been that disappointed if he didnt wear the Gerudo symbol all over him the whole time

I really wish Ganondorf actually did something evil throughout Links adventure. It really felt like the only evil thing Ganondorf did was kill three people and take away Links arm. I wish instead of just seeing Zelda at each location during the game you saw Ganondorf as well, conspiring with Zelda as you wonder why she's doing it.

The first missed opportunity you mentioned reminds me a lot of what inspired Myamoto to make Zelda in the First Place: Cave and Tunnel systems. If Aonuma, the other Main Producer, took more Inspiration for that Experience or even let Myamoto help him, then it might have turned out that way, I wish Myamoto might have more envolvement in new Zelda games, but I guess this might not happen until Aonuma makes his wish of making a Game that surpasses Ocarina of Time come true

I wish the food space category was bigger

In my opinion, it’s a really good game which has a lot of time and effort put into even though there were a few things Nintendo could of added/changed, no game is going to be perfect or be exactly how people expect or want it to be like. I do agree with your points never the less

Kass. ;_;

They honestly did so much wrong with tears of the kingdom that I just stick to breath of the wild and obviously the great older games

For me what i expected to see in tears of the kingdom and it's the very reason that game me the game in the first place is the more massive sky islands like similar to the tutorial great sky island. I was expecting to see more islands in the sky, some big and some small and more to explore about. Also seeing the surface being covered by large shadows thanks to massive amounts of islands floating in the sky. Not only there be more islands in the sky I was also expecting to be more puzzles and some dungeons, maybe even more mini bosses like the Flux Construct in different variants so it wouldn't feel like you're fighting the same boss over and over in each and different islands. I feel like the underground is more developed than the sky islands and i always constantly find myself exploring down there more than i would had on the sky islands. Maybe someday if when they make another dlc... or if there will be a dlc at all. I hoping they could add more islands in the sky and make them a little bigger compared to the rest maybe similar to the Avatar movie i watched. They were beautiful but i know for a fact it's just a wishful thinking but I cant help but dream and hope it will become a reality someday.

if I were Eiji Aounuma, I swear to God the next Zelda game would be a one for one remake of ocarina of Time except you are playing Zelda the entire time and the entire thing would happen underwater. just to shove it in these RU-vidrs face.

there is an actual cave that leads to the depths - it's above the Construct Factory

Hi there! I agree on all your points! Hope you have a wonderful 2024! 🎉

different weapon types and playable zelda story would have been nice

Zelda and the past Hyrule map should've been playable period

Number 3 could have been the Great Deku.

If the ocean was expanded we could have ended up in koholint island Of links awakening

The biggest problem with tears of the Kingdom is that it was a choreoplay with no reward. The story was half-baked there were too many shrines the weapons still breand honestly with all the armor pieces they're kind of useless.

I feel like TOTK has the best and worst of the Zelda series.. Here's a bit of each IMO.. Best: - intro with Ganondorf - fuse weapons (and other abilities) - aesthetic of dungeon lead up - quality of cutscenes Worst: - a bland story where the antagonist is bad just for the sake of being bad. Alot of people like this games "story" but I feel they like the cutscenes, and see that as the "story" - the dungeons - Sonia's death?? I guess you can die from being pushed.. - inconsistency of lore within the game itself. Sonia dies?, but there is still lineage through the ages to Zelda. - scale of the depths that get used for almost no purpose - odd questions that this game brings up without any answers like, where were the dungeons in BOTW, why have generations gone by without knowing of secret stones. Zelda normally has open ended questions that hint or tease an answer without things being conclusive. This game doesn't have that feeling, it feels like the questions teased or the narrative in the game just aren't well thought out

So I agree with all points but I'd like to further expand your first point. I think every cave feels the exact same, the same reward, the same enemies. I would actually say that for a lot about this game. All the rewards feel the exact same or they're pointless. If you unlock all lightroots you basically get an achievement, you get all korok seeds it's the same thing, same for the sign quest, or the bubble frogs. It's all the same! As for your last point I also would like to further expand on that, this game's story is just poorly written and honestly worse than BotW's. Zelda's transformation was honestly unearned, all she did was stand around and watched all the events happen and drink tea with Sonia, and when she turned into a dragon I honestly couldn't hold in my laughter. As for Rauru's sacrifice it was just mediocre, while he was given the most character depth out of everyone in the memories I don't think it was enough nor was his sacrifice either foreshadowed or emotional. Even if we already knew it there is still a way to make the moment emotional and foreshadow it, you even said it yourself in this video that Link's death was actually emotional and to this day I agree with that. As someone who's actually trying to become an author, and with the knowledge I have about writing, Nintendo did everything wrong when it came to story telling. Which is disappointing because they've done a much better job in pass games I've loved Zelda since the Twilight Princess days, but it's sad to say that TotK is so painfully mid that I honestly don't think I'll ever want to play it again unless if I have kids or if I get a wife that's big into videogames like me. Or if I ever want to show this game to someone to explain my reasoning

Regarding the story.. SPOILERS Sonia's death is not a gap. If you look at the full scene prior. We see what happens to Sonia and ithe way it was presented in a way there was no need to wonder. Regarding the memories being disorganized, if you pay attention to Purah and Josha and what order to follow the main quest they reccemend. The region they send you to is the path to the first geoglyph. Impa will be there to say how to use it, guide you and tell you about the place that spells out the order and organization. Another thing the story has over Breath is that the 4 regions have different crisis then just divine beast is reading havoc. They put more care into the present story then breath of the wild did. And while the 4 past sages are cardboard cutouts, they're focusing on the present sages where they should be. Honestly I don't need to learn about more past sages which by association of voice actors probably would just be rehashes of the champions. Like I doubt that would be satisfying anymore then it is now.