Both are absolutely amazing games, but if I had to put one game over the other, I would say that Breath of the Wild is slightly better than Tears of the Kingdom.
TotK. Full stop. TotK does EVERYTHING better. Better story. Better dungeons. And by far better game mechanics. The sage abilities suck - but otherwise TotK is definitely and definitively the better game.
I've heard people say that Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are two games that mutually ruin each other: Tears of the Kingdom makes Breath of the Wild look like a demo and Breath of the Wild makes Tears of the Kingdom look like a DLC.
Totally. Like, why pick up BOTW again after TOTK? I get that many people who prefer BOTW still play it, but for me i dont see much reason. I’ll just miss the building and the abilities anyway.
@@elijahyoung4355 well i honestly think thats up for debate though! Personally, i prefer TOTK over BOTW in terms of exploration too. Botw seemed very empty, and especially after TOTK, i mean no sky islands and no depths!! It just feels weird “knowing” its all there!
@@Zeziliath yea i like botw exploration better because of the way you traverse the world. Especially on your first play through just relyingon running,climbing,gliding, and horses to get around. It just felt paced out very well and made the world feel big. In totk you have so many ways to cheese traversal like ascend, towers, and vehicles like the hover bike. Im not saying those additions are bad because they are good and fun it just made the exploration abit worse and less wondrous to me while also taking away the challenge of traversal/exploration. Having less speed in botw lets me take in the world more were as in totk you can travel really fast and miss alot of things.
@@elijahyoung4355 i once again completely understand your point of view, yet again i do not feel the same. To me the sense of exploration increased when i could add my creativity more towards exploration. Although, i had to make a rule for myself as to not just fly over all of Hyrule. So your point definitely stands, I had to give myself rules in order to still take in everything. And I get that some people don’t have that discipline if the game basically begs you to skip half the traveling.
i think its because when you first explore hyrule in botw its magical but because in totk you have already explored hyrule. i think that if totk was first you would have the same feeling.
I think that one factor that makes TotK less replayable than Breath of the Wild is - like you said, how vast and expansive it is - but also how ease of exploration requires a much bigger grind than BotW. In BotW, if you want to get around quickly, you can use a) a horse, b) Revali's Gale, or c) the Master Cycle if you have the DLC. In TotK, if you want to get around quickly, you can use a) a horse, or b) Zonai devices. But those zonai devices require battery packs. Battery packs require zonai crystallized charges. Those can either be collected from Yiga compounds or by processing charges you farm from zonai constructs. So you need to grind in the depths at Yiga camps or grind in the overworld/sky islands by taking out zonai enemies. The depths are much more efficient, but if you want to survive in the depths, you need recipes with Sundelions. Those are best found in the Sky islands, as are the actual zonai devices you'll be using from the gotcha machines. You could also grind to level up your armor, but the grind for that is much more daunting in TotK than BotW. And there's also so much armor to choose from, so leveling up every piece of armor you want takes even more time. The genius of the design of TotK is that the different areas - sky islands, overworld, and depths, become easier and more efficient to explore the more you explore the other areas. Sundelions help with the depths. Charges help with zonai devices, getting you from main story location to main story location easier. The game actively encourages you to explore every nook and cranny to get the most out of it. This makes a first playthrough really engaging, but a second playthrough feel much more time consuming.
The Depths are a pain to explore too. Considering its terrain is just the surface but inverted, there are tons of canyons and impossible to scale walls everywhere.
I actually think this setup lends more to a second playthrough- where you chart out your path for greatest efficiency rather than wandering around aimlessly with little reward.
I also don’t like TOTK compared to BOTW. I think it’s because the story doesn’t feel as grand as it could be. For me knowing that TOTK is a sequel to BOTW makes it feel that they ignored things that happened in BOTW. Like for example, where is all of the guardian technology and divine beasts? It feels that they just ignored the previous game story wise. Guardian technology could easily be written off as an attempt to replicate Zonite technology or something along those lines. They could’ve dismantled the divine beasts as they were major threats to the people of Hyrule. It feels like wasted potential story wise. While I love the gameplay of TOTK I get pulled out of the immersion of the game whenever bad story beats occur.
The story does feel pretty grand though. Nah they really didn`t ignore things that happened in BOTW. The guardians and divine beasts were shut down for obvious reasons. They didn`t ignore the previous game story wise. They did dismantle them. It really isn`t wasted potential story wise. The story beats aren`t bad though.
@@Jdudec367 The Guardians and Divine Beasts were never shut down, nor were they ever dismantled. That is a fan theory that has since been disproved by Nintendo themselves. The official, canonical explanation for their disappearance, as given by the game's Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, is that they magically vanished on their own after Calamity Ganon was defeated, as their purpose was complete. This contradicts their lore from Botw, which states that they were originally created 10,000 years ago to combat an earlier incarnation of the Calamity, so the official lore implies that they should have disappeared way back then since THAT's when they actually fulfilled their original purpose.
I have had the exact same feeling. Here is a metaphor that I've come to: Classic Zelda games are like scaling an epic mountain, with each dungeon and item being another step higher. Breath of the Wild is more like a leisurely stroll in a park: multiple paths and you feel like you can take your time enjoying nature. Tears feels like taking a jog on a treadmill. You can set different speeds, but after doing a lot, there isn't as much of a sense of progress. After all, you can spend three hours wandering the depths and only really come out with some light roots and enough Zonite for a battery cell or three. I agree that it just feels overwhelming. I've played Breath 6 times to completion by now (all shrines, but not all Korok seeds), but I've only done the same for Tears once, despite giving it a good college try two more times, I just start feeling like it is work as opposed to exploration.
The main part where I think TotK fails to meet BotW is its story. The story in TotK is really good, but it is written for a more linear style of Zelda. It doesn’t really fit into the gameplay style of BotW whose story perfectly worked with the games structure.
I agree with you completely, if I had to pick one, it would always be BotW, even though TotK is an incredible game. Most of it for me is purely subjective, and based on my life at the time I played each game. With BotW I definitely came at it from the other direction - while you experienced it at 13, I experienced it at 47. At the time I found myself suddenly unemployed after working in the same field for 20 years, and unemployment in middle age is frightening and ugly. I knew I would find another job, but I also knew due to the nature of my work that it would be at least 6 or 8 months, and that's if I was lucky. I had just gotten a Switch and was anxious to dive in, having been a Zelda fan since the NES days when I was in high school. I figured I'd spend some of my down time playing BotW, and wow, did I ever. I basically cloistered myself for a couple months and did nothing but play this game. The many, many hours of gameplay were amazing, but just as amazing was simply living in that world. Some days, instead of actual gameplay, I would go back to the woodcutter's cabin, don the warm doublet and chop some trees. Some nights, I would go to the beach east of Lurelin out by the Kah Yah Shrine, build a fire, and just sit (crouch) on the beach under the night sky. The wide open spaces, the incredible soundtrack, the lonely but beautiful atmosphere - the game was exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. TotK was amazing, and I have countless hours in it as well, but I really can't imagine anything ever being able to top my memories of playing BotW, exactly when and under the exact circumstances I played it. It's not just a cherished gaming memory for me, it's a cherished memory, period.
No. The frame rate alone makes me like how BotW looks more. Not to mention the designs for the shrines and whatnot. Shiekah tech is just more visually interesting than Zonai tech.
@@Determi9r Frame rates are different, there are some different effects, and there are some new area types in the Sky and Depths, not that those really added all that much to the games. It's more subtle artistic differences, despite the art styles being the same
@@Easternromanfan I got worse dips in TotK, except for Kokiri Forest. That was worse in BotW, at least I remember that one being worse. They may have been roughly the same there
BOTW is the better game. It’s focused and cohesive, a tight gaming experience that still manages an impressive scope. Totk is iterative in the worst way possible. Its trying to be a BOTW clone while also trying to be a linear Zelda game while also trying to be a building sandbox. Except it misses the mark in each of those categories. Everything about TOTK feels cluttered and tacked on, both literally (ie the ugly af fuse weapons) and figuratively (ie the entire dragon tears quest line). TOTK is a game that only manages to reach any height by standing on BOTW’s shoulders. Whereas MM refused to be iterative and live in OoT’s shadow. It did its own thing and offered a completely new gaming experience.
How is botw more cohesive and tight than tears? No. Tears is not trying to be a botw clone. It's trying to be a botw sequel. It takes several mechanics of botw and improves upon them massively. Ultra hand is a far superior magnetize in terms of its execution and usability for a quick example. Also no, tears is not trying to be a linear Zelda. It's taking inspiration from the prior entries for its dungeons, but the design philosophy of botw is still clearly there. Why? Because you said so? Nonsensical. Tears makes botw look like a tech demo. I am currently replaying breath and the game feels empty after tears for several reasons. Ultra hand fundamentally changes the way you approach puzzles for the better. It provides multiple solutions to the problem. The map density of quests in totk is much better as well. They are also of superior quality with the pirates being a particular stand out.
There is actually a way to get the ascend shrine first, there's a whole pathway that goes along opposite side of the snow area, you can even get the battery on that alt path.
My one major gripe with TotK is the dragon tears questline and story feels so disconnected from the rest of the game, and all they really had to do was make it that rather than travelling from one glyph to the other in any order they drop in chronological sequence after you complete major story points and find the previous tear drop Considering they are basically Zelda's messages in bottles sent through time and not an amnesiac triggering his memories from going to places of significance to him, such as where he basically died. Also when you find out that Zelda Dragon'd herself you should be telling Purah and the rest of the sage Crew so we can have the oh nooooooo why Zeldaaa followed by a our first priority is kicking Ganondorf in his moobs before we look at seeing if there is a way to un-dragon Zelda Or you have a small questline trying to use recall on her but Link just isn't powerful enough to do it on his own so when Rauru and Sonia boost him up to do it at the end you know how Zelda was restored. Tears has better gameplay But Breath of the Wild has a better story
Great video! I'm so glad someone else is feeling what I've been. I haven't been playing much of TOTK because...well, I'm bored. I restarted the game after finishing the story to get the dup glitches back (full time jobs and life responsibilities) and I'm bored. I don't have the time or passion to go back in. I don't want to nor have time to grind. And I absolutely do not like how Nintendo's patches made it very clear "THIS is how we want you to play" in a game that's supposed to be part of the greatest open-world engines. I yelled in frustration when I had to jump through useless hoops to get the paraglider, there's so much slow exposition progress, blocked areas that required mandatory quest completions to access (ringed ruins), I'm overwhelmed with the amount of tasks and game mechanics to use for them, Link is the most blandest of all versions with no sign of any emotion during interactions and emotional cutscenes, and so much more. There's a lot that's improved on (I love exploring caves and wells), but I'm enjoying BotW way more.
Both games are phenomenal, 10/10. I adore the gameplay mechanics in TotK. There are countless solutions to every problem and coming up with an idea that actually works is so satisfying. The nostalgia for BotW is real, but TotK gets the edge for me
For me, Breath of the Wild is a 10/10 while Tears of the Kingdom is a 9.5/10. They're both two of my favorite games of all time. Both are masterpieces.
I have done all shrines, light roots, sky islands and caves and it was so much fun… but it felt like it lack something… there was soo much good stuff but most of the great stuff was only found in the main quest while it botw it was found by walking in a random direction. Also totk was lacking in immersion for me. The exploration in botw was a reward within itself while in totk it feels like they have to reward you with something for exploration. And it was also lacking in charm… one of my favorite moments from totk was following a chicken in kakariko and that might sound childish but it reminded me of the charm that botw had. Also Eiji Aonuma doesn’t hate the older style of Zelda, he was the one who directed them, he just finds the new Zelda better. I assume he also sees the issues that the new Zelda has and is trying to find ways to fix them, I think he know that the new Zelda formula is a work in progress.
One also has to understand that if you've been making the same type of game for almost 20 years, you kinda want to put a radical fresh take on the formula.
@@apoplexiamusic I think it's a shame that they didn't just let someone who obviously grew tired of making Zelda games make something new (similar situation with Sakurai and Smash Bros). Then put someone else as the producer of Zelda going forward (like how Aonuma replaced Miyamoto with OoT). This way Zelda as we knew it wouldn't have to die and Aonuma would be able to make games he's passionate about albeit with it being a new series. I don't think this would be much of a loss either since the Zelda iconography is not what makes Botw and such great, the gameplay itself does.
The problem I personally always had between both games is that familiarity that has just enough but a bad distinction a lot similar to "I loved making this story but what would be better is if I split it into 2 different ones and leave the holes up to the readers minds and not bother proof reading some of it at all". Yeah I had fun but it doesn't feel as complete as I hoped. Yes I am aware of the circumstances the game had originally lol
My experience with TOTK was speedrunning a bunch of shrines and building a Zonai device to get back up to the sky islands, because I was under the impression that the paraglider was up there and I had somehow just missed it? (I started the first quest with Purah but then never finished it, AKA, no paraglider) After searching the Great Sky Island for AGES and obviously not finding the paraglider, I used another Zonai device to fly over to the thunder isles (because it looked cool) pushed the doors open, started the Mineru quest/dungeon (that was my first dungeon) and watched the two memories revealing exactly what happened to Zelda… This was all in my first 8 hours of gameplay. By 10 hours (after finding the paraglider) I found dragon Zelda and pulled out the Master sword. So, yeah, first time playing TOTK was a really weird experience for me 😅
Oh my god, when I was watching thought this video had at least a couple 10k views to realise that you have 223 subscribers and only 7.8k views. You deserve so much attention this video is so well put together. Keep up the good work.
I think botw has a better overall concept and gameplay loop. Totk is kinda all over the place. Even though I LOVE the new abilities, it's just not fun going through every single cave, every single light root etc. The sky islands are so few and small, the depths are a bunch of copy pasted content, and the surface is barely any different than before imo. Of course totk has more things to offer, but botw is more streamlined to me. Once you get over the initial high of going to the sky, depths and building cool vehicles, the game kinda falls apart if you ask me. Caves get boring. Depths get boring. Islands get boring. The worst part is that it's so similar to botw. Still shrines, still towers, still memory cutscenes out of order (but much less interesting to locate this time), still four main dungeons in the same regions as before and with the same themes, still koroks. It's the same game with more added on top of it. The question is if that's enough to warrant a sequel. If I had to pick one of these and get rid of the other, I'd pick Breath of The Wild.
Breath of the Wild was my favorite video game until I played Tears of the Kingdom. That said, I still love BotW and will be playing through it for a 9th time this year before my next (and 3rd) TotK run. I feel like the negatives you mentioned in TotK make sense, and some of them I can agree with. Even so, I still believe it's overall the superior game. BotW is a comfy game for me because of the impact it had on me at the time I played it, right after release. That won't ever change, and I should always be able to go back to it whenever. But TotK blew me away so much with the insane amount of stuff you can do, the ridiculous flexibility of the Ultrahand power, and all the extra cool stuff to do that I will definitely be returning to it more over time.
I am really disappointed with TotK's story. The gameplay and mechanics and everything are GREAT, but the story makes me not want to finish TotK. Why is Ganondorf trying to topple Hyrule? Where is the Triforce? How is the Master Sword able to finally defeat Ganon when it was broken by him in a weakened state? Why does no one remember Link? Etc. Even if TotK were the first game or a standalone and BotW didn't exist, I still think it would be disappointing. There was so much mystery in BotW, but TotK is very matter-of-fact. The mysteries in TotK seem to be random attempts at making them interesting. "Oh, look. ANOTHER ancient sage." "The Sheikah tech is gone. Because mystery."
The Master Sword became empowered as it was repaired since it was bathed in light for over 10,000 years, compared to it being repaired in the lost woods for 100 years in botw
NO no no no NOIOO. story and lore is important its what this series is based on. the introduction bit at the start is actually the best part of both games
A lot of people said that they wouldn't return to BotW after TotK. Having played BotW lately, I feel like it is far superior to TotK. I don't feel TotK really improves on much (if anything). The progression is sloppy, the overworld changes are awkward, the dungeons are blander than ever, the copy/pasting is far more pronounced, layers of tedium have been added, the puzzles can be cheesed way more than in BotW, ... I could go on. TotK also manages to completely ignore aspects fans have been begging for to the point where the devs effectively remade BotW with dumb vehicles. Everything is so vast and without substance. TotK has no identity and it polutes BotW with its existence. I'll return to BotW, I'm done with TotK. I wish I'd never bought it, but I was reassured by all the "trust the devs". Wanting my Zelda fix, it was an auto-buy for me. Never again... The next Zelda title will be met with extreme scrutiny and scepticism on my part.
Actually I think I’m the odd one out here. I personally enjoy breath of wild much more, because of playing tears of the kingdom. I got a better understanding of the former because of the latter and have learned to appreciate both games more
No, botw is much much much better written than totk. Totk is just the same plot with a different ancient civilization and new power ups, botw is about the details you slowly discover about the past, you slowly fall in love and sorrow Mipha, you slowly understand and respect Revali, you look up to Daruk, you cry about Zelda and her suffering, you forgive Roahm, you slowly discover a destroyed world and you fall in love again with it to the point you really want to save it and correct the mistake you made in the past. In totk it’s the same exact plot but this time we only have one or two interesting arcs who are Rauru and maybe Mineru but they are still super plain compared to any character before them. Zeldas sacrifice is not as strong as it should be bc we already know she is able to do that for the man she loves as she already did in the previous game. Also the lore is straigh non-existent, we know nothing about the zonai or the secret stones, we know nothing about the fucking antagonist and why he does what he does when he is literally the most important character at this point and still literally plays no role in the events of his own story, this makes the story incredibly superficial and empty which makes it impossible for the player to connect to a deep level with anything. We have to talk also about some incoherences like the fact that no one sent the master sword back in time as Zelda simply discovered it in the main island while Link sent it bc he saw a magical light in front of him, that makes it look like it was a fucking divinity who did that, also how could Zelda sent her magic to link without sending him her secret stone, and the most important, ¿HOW THE HELL DID ZELDA BECAME HUMAN AGAIN? This is exactly how not to write a soft magic system. Not add the horrible narrative structure robbed from botw and we get the worst 3d zelda main storyline. Sorry but I can’t stand people saying totk story is better just because the characters use cooler like dragonification or bc they think Rauru really is the first monarch of any Hyrule. Sorry but I can’t.
Agreed, I feel like it shouldn't bother me this much since it's not like Zelda stories have ever been the focal point, but for how well BotW pulled off its storytelling, the absolute mess that TotK is just feels even worse in comparison. For the most part, looking deeper into the world and story in BotW was rewarding. It wasn't deeply complex or anything, but almost all of it made sense and was told through environmental storytelling. TotK drops the ball on all of that - from acting like half of the previous game's events didn't happen, from not explaining extremely important and simple questions like "where'd all the Sheikah tech go?" or "where did the sky islands come from?" And so many other things along those lines. I can regonize that TotK improved on MANY of BotW's shortcomings, but in all the areas that actually made me emotionally connect with the game, it's just a disappointing step down.
I loved the additions of ToTK I think people severaly underestimate how many little things changed on the map, for me discovering regions again and seeing what changed was a pleasure. The zonai devices and new powers adds a whole new dimension to exploration that BoTW didn't have at all, I never enjoyed simply traveling in a game as much as I did in ToTK The story, people complain but really, I disagree. Am I the only one who thought getting the story in a random order added a sensation of mystery ? It felt like I was an archeologist uncovering bits of informations here and there and let my imagination try to piece them together "She died ? How did that happen ?!" "Oh so his attacks failed, I assume he then pretended to surrender" "Ganondorf tricked them ? But why was he in the castle" "Oh shit those tears are that powerful...but I think ganondorf had one" Getting part of the picture is like a mystery to uncover, sure a few can ruin a lot of suspens if you get them too early, but those are usually the farthest from the center places so if you go get them early that's probably on purpose. As for progression, I dunno, I never felt like I came back from exploring the dealth of the sky islands empty handed. The game encourage you to rotate the three areas, the dealth for battery so you can drive around the world for food, so you can explore the sky islands for light flowers and new blueprints, so you can use those blueprints to explore the dealth faster...ect Tears of the Kingdom is a great sequel that took what was unique with the first and pushed it to new heights. And I am tired of people prentending it doesn't deserve to be a sequel because "it's the same map" or "the gameplay is too similar" when 90% of the sequels in exitence don't do nearly as much as TOTK to deserve to be their own game.
To me it’s just that ToTK just has content for the sake of content. A problem botw had but is much worse in ToTK. Very repetitive. But the worst sin these games commit imo is that every god damn thing is so based on a formula, with little to no surprises, in a game that’s supposed to be about exploration and wonder. The way the game rewards you, the way shrines are almost robotic, the way they insist on dungeons working with switches. Even the story beats are like a predictable formula. Everything has a system, which is the antithesis for adventure. It’s mind boggling to me that that is the way they want to go with these games. It made it so it felt like after finishing the intro and the first dungeon, I basically had experienced everything the game had to offer and what was left was the same experience in a different skin a few times over
As someone who beat every shrine twice (normal and master mode) beat every divine beast twice in normal and in the illusion realm and got the Master Cycle twice I will still go back to BOTW before TOTK. I’m not going to waste 1,000 hours of my life exploring to find stuff I already have in BOTW. All of the new maps was cool, until I realized just how massive they are and how long they would take to explore. I also didn’t feel the connection to the characters like I did in BOTW
Both games were amazing in their own ways. TotK does have a busy world, but it's in sharp contrast to BotW. TotK is set at a point in time where the world has been rebuilt to splendor and is now dealing with a new fresh Calamity. TotK's world is supposed to be busy, just like BotW world is supposed to be mostly empty but filled with monsters. I don't understand why people got so upset about the memories being out of order. There are stories that jump around in time and do flashbacks to explain things, so watching a memory revealing Ganondorf killing Sonia before you saw the memory introducing who Sonia is really didn't matter to me. As far as the Imprisoning War being retold 4 times, sure they could have been more creative with varying those cutscenes, but you really get most of the unique character development from the Regional Phenomenon quests associated with that Sage before you even set foot in the associated temple. They simply just ended with getting the Sage caught up to speed on the Imprisoning War conclusion which unfortunately led to some slight redundancy. Again, I didn't mind this. The concept is cool enough that I can stomach watching it 4-5 times from each Sage's perspective. ToTK did double down on grindy collections and completionist type things, but the player doesn't have to do them, just like the player didn't have to do side quests or even do the divine beasts in BotW. Sure, I can understand feeling the pressure to complete everything in the game, but if you truly like the game for what it is, you'll either play the parts you enjoy and let the game go, or you'll exercise the patience required to complete the game 100% in a timeframe that works for you. My personal thoughts on the subject. Thanks for taking the time to make this video and share your thoughts on TotK.
I think the problem isn’t that there’s more content, the problem is that there’s content like every 5 steps. The thing I love about BOTW is the sense of freedom. I could go hunt monsters if I felt like it, or I could just laze around doing dumb things. With TOTK because the content is so tightly packed together I can’t just walk around. There’s so many groups of monsters it’s no longer a relaxing scenic walk, I have to decide if I want a 2 second walk or if I want to fight and that makes me personally feel very boxed in. Even though there’s new things to explore like caves and stuff, it feels less like exploring and more like mini fight after mini fight after mini fight after mini fight. If they had left more space in between all the new content it wouldn’t have felt that way. Also the depths feel like a weird fish bowl. The plants feel fake and the only thing living down there is monsters and a couple bugs. It feels pretty lifeless and i’m a little disappointed
Interesting video. The most interesting part I think are the aspects why you think BOTW is better than TOTK, are the reasons why I think TOTK is better than BOTW. I love the slower part in the beginning with Zelda. Each time I leave the cave in BOTW I think: "I go back to bed. I'll see you in another 120 years". Just wandering around is not my idea of a fun time. I love that you have to work to get the glider and follow the main story some more. It makes it that if I go out of the world I am missing something. Something that could make life easier and better. It is more in line with the older games, where you would come across an obstacle that you need to earn the key to solving first. I think the story of TOTK is much better than BOTW, mainly because in BOTW the story is not existent. There are no stakes, there is not much for the player to rescue. The world is in a new status quo for decades. I also hate that you have to find the barely visible pixels, that represent notes and books in order to get some more in-depth knowledge. For the rest BOTW are some incoherent cut-scenes. TOTK is far more involved with its story. The stakes are higher and I am far more invested. However because the story is so much better, it also highlights how incompetent Nintendo still is in making a good open-world game. Because you can do many things out of order, it means that the story has to account for it. Even if it means you have to write some lines that no-one will ever see unless they take a very remote and obscure route through the game. With that said I think it is better to have a bad story, than no story at all. In BOTW I think the world is rather bland and empty. In my opinion it is actually devoid of character. While in TOTK I think the world is far more alive, even though many activities are still repetitive. But BOTW was very repetitive as well. The world is far more shook up and you just have more things to see and do. In TOTK I never had an area in the world that I would forget visiting. In BOTW there are several areas I do not remember what is there at all. I just see on the hero's path that I visited the same outcropping, value or whatever multiple times. Still I cannot tell you what is there to find. There is one aspect that BOTW is better at than TOTK. BOTW is better at engaging the player in puzzles. Many challenges have multiple solutions, but are still limited. In TOTK you have so many solutions to a single puzzle, that in the overworld 1 very simple and easy to execute solution, is the answer to 80% of the challenges. In TOTK you need to have some self imposed rules to make the challenges more engaging. In the end though, when I want to replay a Zelda game on the Nintendo Switch, I pick up either Link's Awakening or Skyward Sword. BOTW and TOTK just don't cross my mind for replaying ever.
The part where you say that the puzzles in Tears of the Kingdom need self-imposed rules to be engaging is so true. I played most of the shrines and the dungeons with self-imposed restrictions because I think that I'd enjoy that more than just mindlessly cheesing everything. And I think I made the right desicion.
I agree that these two games aren't made for replaying. They're really made for playing once and doing everything you can do before getting tired of it. TOTK is almost the only game i played in 2023. I put 200 hours into it and haven't explored all of the Depths, because besides farming for Zonaite and bombs and the occasional Yiga camp i take out with a few arrows, and the Master Koga fights, it's a very long and boring map to explore. The overworld is great because there is so much to do at pretty much every step you take, but it also gets to be too much because you get distracted like 20 times when traversing it for one korok puzzle, or sidequest. The discoveries i made on my own were really gratifying, but there is so much to do that to increase efficiency i looked up walkthroughs so many times. I have a full time job, a relationship, music projects and pets to take care of, which leaves me with little spare time and i neglected a lot of time i could have spent making music or other things playing TOTK. And while most of it was incredibly fun it is also incredibly repetitive and it's gonna be a while before i actually get the nerves to go though the whole ending fight. I chose to watch the spoilers to determine whether or not i would go through the whole game and while i really want all those hearts i'm only missing 6, i don't know if i want to do the remaining 13 or 14 shrines. I know i won't max out my battery, probably just the first half which i'm almost there. I know i probably won't find all the lightroots unless i go on 3 or 4 other long hoverbike rides. I don't really care for all the other side content anymore because i've already done a version or 2 of every quest in the game. Edit: see how i didn't mention the frickin Koroks... ugh. I started BOTW for the first time on Friday and i really like how immediate the intro is compared to TOTK. i also like the runes and their simpler use cases. The shrines look much more interesting visually and i came across one that almost felt like a small dungeon! I've made my way pretty directly to Kakariko, then Hateno and then the Rito kingdom, but i've ventured a bit into central Hyrule, trying to activate the Tower and getting my ass handed to me and trying to get to a shrine i could see far off from Hateno that turned out to be a really tough battle against a Guardian that i almost beat but couldn't get past his final attacks. And i'm really enjoying it, even the only ways of traversal are foot, horse and glider, it is more relaxing to explore.
Honestly, for me, it’s just more boring to play TotK. The stuff it does have feels too similar to BotW; same shrines with the same rewards, same Koroks in similar puzzles, similar overworld, etc. Plus the things it does have new feel… undercooked? The depths and sky especially feel way too empty, the lightroots are just shrines with no puzzle and get trivialized by vehicles alongside the entire map exploration deal, the dungeons are cool but do feel very similar to Divine Beasts when you’re actually doing them, it’s just… it doesn’t make enough of an identity for itself. Conceptually it’s great, but in execution it just doesn’t give enough of a reason to play it imo
Tears of the Kingdoms story is incredible, but the way it’s told is awful. I think tears of the kingdom would have been easily the best Zelda game if they used the same story, but just had link get transported to the past WITH Zelda. They could even use the same dungeons because they exist in the past( except for the water temple which they could just use the ancient waterworks) if this happened they wouldn’t have the depths or sky islands(except small areas for the fire and wind temple) but I think that’s an easy sacrifice considering it would basically be a Majoras Mask situation, it’s essentially a parallel world of the hyrule we know and love, and seeing how things have changed, and how the technology has evolved, would be way more interesting if link could actually explore that world that we only got a brief glimpse of. And the story would be so incredible if Link experienced it in real time with Zelda and all the others. They could even do some cool back to the future stuff, where they have to FULLY defeat ganondorf in the past so he never came back in the future. Which now that I think of it would undo the first calamity too lol.
I like botw over totk because totk feels like bloatware. Botw is lean and smart with how it conveys trying to find info about Link’s past and friends, getting redemption, and enjoying the ride. Totk is ‘been there, done that’ plus. The zelda plot is great and the rest feels like extra fluff. The extra characters are mostly unlikeable or just there. It’s like the world’s story is set aside for the hand mechanic and the rest of the game kowtows way too hard to said hand powers. There’s no reason to explore the depths, for example. What’s down there? Costumes and mining. Who wants to play Zelda to spend hours mining? Noone. And costumes aren’t really a good carrot on the stick. That leaves a whole 1/3rd or more of the world as mindless. The koroks are everywhere and in your face. Also not important. The sage powers are in the way and don’t incorporate with Link (ignoring Tulin, who's bonus gift is to blow your items away). Everything else is ‘do this so you can use your hand powers to glue stuff together’ without any real back story or character involvement. Even the shrines are forced, where they’re mostly interesting puzzles on botw and ‘rauru’s blessings’ on totk. For the record, I’ve gotten all the shrines on both games and completed all character quests. Not ambitious enough to mindlessly find all koroks, though.
It’s called a nostalgic bias. The same thing happens with people who grew up with Ocarina of Time. My nostalgic Zelda game is a link between worlds and I play that game multiple times every year
Yeah I agree, people were getting burned out by BotW as well and we like to forget about that. TotK at least did a better job of making different parts of the game world feel genuinely different.
BotW was made with love, it is greater than the sum of its parts, exuding majesty despite its flaws. (And there were flaws) TotK is the corpse of BotW with some makeup on it, a fancy new outfit, no heart or soul, but a really cool hat. You can take the TotK out of the BotW, but you can't take the BotW out of the TotK. Should have been DLC, would have made an excellent high-end expansion to BotW, worth being highly priced as far as DLC is concerned. As it is, it never hit the same way BotW did, and even the parts that are still amazing, aren't elevated quite as highly as its predecessor managed. Built on the back of a giant, never will it be capable of standing on its own :/ 70 friggin bucks, blegh
I have one major disagreement, TotK's weapon system is not better than BotW's, it's significantly worse. It takes everything that sucks about the weapon durability system and amplifies it. In BotW, when you break a weapon, you pick up a new one to replace it. Done. In TotK, when you break a weapon and pick up a new one, you need to fuse something to it, which is a PROCESS. Swap to the new weapon, open the menu, drop the fusion material, swap to the fuse power, use fuse, swap back to whatever power you were using before.
I think the biggest disconnect is while TOTK is a sequel, they completely ignore most story elements from BOTW. Divine beasts are gone, no more guardians, no ancient shekiah technology. I also think TOTK suffers a bit being set in the same world as BOTW only because we've already explored a lot of it, yes the caves and the sky debris do make it a little different, but before doing a single sky tower I knew where most major landmarks were on the surface. The sky island and the depths are a good expansion but I personally think there is too much to the depths and too little in the sky comparatively. I don't know if I'm the only one but I also felt that the shrines in BoTW were more challenging, In Tears most of them are either relatively simply or make it very obvious what you have to do (I could be wrong I have yet to do all of TOTK shrines and haven't gone back to BOTW in quite awhile) While on personal opinions about zelda games I liked majora's mask bore than OoT, not entirely sure why but i did. The thing that honestly has helped me the most from comparing the two is thinking of them both as a cozy dress up game. Just run around and collect different outfits and if I happen to come across a shrine or end up in rito village along the way so be it.
The people who like TOTK more than breath of the wild like the sandbox mechanic more than they like the exploration of BOTW. I personally was more impacted by exploring a huge new world in BOTW than the new physics and mechanics of TOTK
So, this is my thought. I played both shortly after launch on each. BotW I was like "huh. Ok" TotK I was like "oh my christ, WHAT?!? THIS IS INCREDIBLE!" so thats a pretty clear distinction on base impressions I'd say.
I personally prefer TOTK. Prior to the games release, Botw was my fav game of all time, and I often just tried to ignore its flaws. I was nervous that TOTKs reused map will make it feel like the same and while nothing will compare to my first run of Botw, I was shocked and pleased by how much new stuff there is to explore. The caves and wells were so cool and unique, the sky islands, while not as many as I hoped, are really cool with their puzzles. Plus, I was so shocked and excited by the depths. The new mechanics also make the game unique, ultrahand was awesome for making cool gadgets, ascend is something I wish I had irl, recall has gotten better the more I play, and fuse has really helped the combat. While I loved Botw combat, once you get guardian stuff, that’s the best in the game and no unique spins. With TOTK, the different attributes such as knights gear doubling on 1 heart or gerudo gear being very powerful but fragile made combat so much more fun, and making your own weapons feel unique. As for the story, while I understand it could end up being out of order, it worked perfectly on my run and I was really invested and devastated when Zelda turned into a dragon. Plus let’s face it, the ending of TOTK is infinitely better than Botw
Oddly, I feel the same pressure. I found myself thinking, somehow even just getting all the Koroks in this game feels harder; the size really is staggering. And I think it's because BotW forced me to relax and enjoy the show, while TotK gave me a hoverbike. I do feel as though I just wasn't forced to rest in TotK the same way as in BotW; I let it get too overwhelming, until it just isn't, which makes it hard to pick back up. I really like the way you reveal where the caves are, but I think I need a little more direction there, too.
Yeah, BotW felt zen whereas the TotK world felt low-key monster-infested. There weren’t as many moments where you just take in a sunset or stroll through a beautiful field. That’s the one strength the sky Islands had over the rest of the game.
I find my self playing BoTW when I want to break a game and I find myself playing ToTK when I want to actually play a game and have fun doing just that
I'm definitely one who preferred BotW over TotK. There is something about the profound emptiness of the original that just feels comfortable. I remember that I would boot up BotW and just kind of vibe in it. I'd walk the same path over and over again just because it felt nice. Doing that in TotK feels like a chore because there are so many bad guys in between places.... Also they totally ruined Hateno Village and anyone who disagrees can fight me on that.
BOTW was the first game I had played since the late 90's. I bought it simply because it was top of the charts #1 and I was looking for something to reintroduce me to gaming. I put in 1,450 hours in this game, absolutely 100%ing everything I could, 999 of everything in my inventory, etc etc. I LOVED this game. I'd say obsessed, really. But, once TOTK came out, I have only returned to BOTW once or twice, for just an hour or two. TOTK took over and I haven't felt a desire to look back. Maybe because, again, I maxed out everything possible and there is nothing left to do. My lynel killing record in BOTW was 13 seconds. TOTK is less than 5 seconds. ALL about the fuse baby!!
I agree that BotW is the better game. Tears advanced it, but disappointed me more, whereas I was very rarely disappointed in BotW. The achievement of making the majestic world of BotW was BotW’s achievement, whereas the Depths and Sky Islands were frequently just copy-and-paste affairs.
I do see what you‘re saying. This is kinda what happens to me when I try to play Elden Ring now. I just go to dark souls 3 instead. Because it is shorter, I know what to do and I just like it more. And while I have played through BotW multiple times, I only played through Totk once. I still prefer stork though I think… the Fusion and Ultrahand mechanics are absolutely awesome, the combat feels better even when fighting normal enemies and the „huge amount of stuff to do“ leads to me actually just being happy to explore the same map (with slight changes) again. I was genuinely worried that the map would be too boring for me. But they did great with all the changes they made (except Hateno, oh WHY did they have to ruin Hateno). Another thing that I also disliked personally was the „build your own house“ thing. Not only because it was super limiting for no reason, but also because it never looks nice, just ok. I really enjoyed the house buying quest in Botw, where you were on the outskirts of a serene village, with a nice house some small trees and a nice atmosphere. In Totk it feels like I just got hit by the industrial revolution and was pulled out of me cottage out of the Middle Ages. It was so tedious in Totk, I actually duped to have enough rupees to just buy everything. And that brings me to another point: glitches. BotW had some amazing movement glitched which became second hand for many fans over the past 6 years. Sprintwhistling where you can run without loosing stamina, or Windbombing (the coolest traveling Method in any Zelda game), which were just not there in Totk. I was actually pretty bummed out by that. I know that there are ultrahand glitches for even faster movement, but it just does not feel as satisfying. Still after all this. I would say that my 1 Playthrough only Totk was still more fun than my roughly 5 Playthroughs of BotW and I honestly can just say that it‘s because fighting and exploring finally felt „worth“ something. In BotW you explored and explored and all you could find was either a Korok or a shrine with a weapon that you might have fused 30 hours before then. When you fight enemies, the only „looser“ is you. Because whatever cool weapons you have, we’ll you‘re about to lose some. In totk, whenever you explore, the enemies you find give you materials to fuse new stronger weapons when you want and whatever weapon you have is neither cool nor special, because it is recreatable. It can still look cool though. And whenever I went to explore I found something that had good rewards (like caves) where I could trade it to the goblin man who wanted to become a big ol spirit. Idk. I just had a great time with it. Hopefully you have the time to some day play it for a longer while, perhaps your opinion would change. Or maybe not, it‘s your thing after all. Good video!
My experience was similar. Before playing Tears of the Kingdom, I was afraid that the game would be too similar to Breath of the Wild to be enjoyable, and it kinda felt like that at first. When I was at the Great Sky Island, I felt like I was just doing the Great Plateau again. But I decided to not give up, and I started to see the changes in the world and the characters and all the new stuff to do, to the point that the more I played Tears of the Kingdom, the more different it felt from Breath of the Wild. Sometimes I would think to myself "Wow! Does this game really use the same world from Breath of the Wild? It doesn't feel like it!" I was really surprised, the game completely surpassed my expectations. I still prefer Breath of the Wild, thought.
The only real reason to retread the same Hyrule would have been to expand upon the story and add depth to the lore, and while Tears is a mechanically superior game, it absolutely failed on the storytelling aspect.
I think the reason why I return to botw more than totk as botw has a better feel and nearly all the good glitches in botw haven't been patched out. Like I can get to 999 fairies from a new save in botw in like 1 and a bit hours minus the plateau while doing all the glitches to do that in totk takes way longer. Also in botw it's much easier to travel around with blss and windbombing/BILs while totk has the hoverbike and pocket rocketing but pocket rocketing is much harder to perform on the latest version while botw you can do everything I mentioned on the latest version. Or Maybe I just love performing glitches too much.
I have the opposite problem. But I also played Tears first since I got a switch only the day before Tears came out and I only started playing Botw after Tears. I didn’t get through it. I returned to playing several weeks of Tears after getting through the four animals
the worst thing for me is to have mechanics from totk and then go back to botw without those mechanics ( like the diving in the air) is sorely missed since i too find myself going back to botw far more. i consider it the better game too.
You know how many times I tried to windbomb or wish I could put respectable durability on my weapons and bows. Mechanics isn't the issue. You just prefer the new runes and that's ok but mechanically they are a trade off. From speed of activation to in combat utility botw is better. Masterhand is amazing but it's not fun to use and is quite clunky. Many of the new runes are.
I think BOTW is a MUCH better game than TOTK, more does not equal better. BOTW builds around its world in a measure way, while TOTK just adds things on top of it en mass for the sake of it and ruins it. Tiers of a kingdom is just a choir, specially if you have plaid BOTW.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who was disappointed in totk’s story! I just remember feeling so confused, like was I supposed to do them in a certain order and I messed it up? And then I saw the draconification thing coming a mile away, so when Zelda ate her stone I was just like, yep. I knew in my head this was a big story beat but felt nothing. And when is Gannondorf getting some decent character development? It’s sad that Ocarina of time’s Gannondorf is still the best after all these years!
Ever since I got Tears of The Kingdom it's always felt like an alternate universes version of BoTW. Like if BoTW never existed ToTK coult take its place without feeling like I'm missing anything.
I played BotW for the first time since 2017, when the Switch first launched. I played TotK immediately after that, and I can say I enjoyed the former game more.
20 minutes of opinion is what I clicked for. No surprises - TotK has improved many flaws still in BotW, but the things we do as we go through puberty are automatically better than anything that comes after. Nothing will be better than Link’s Awakening DX to me.
@5:01, @5:28 I believe you can get there, I remember making a tree ramp and carefully climbing it. I don't remember using the Ascend ability that you used.
I agree with the main story being great but told in a bad way and the feel of BotW lends itself more to replaying it. But...I absolutely love the sidequests in ToTK
I’d argue that the story is worse. Mainly for characters that felt bland and cookie cutter too me. I do personally think it was time to focus on Link as a character, what’s his story?
I hate how games nowadays are so focused on story because it honestly kills its replayability and a lot of its gameplay potential if we want a story we will watch a movie
Personally I feel that Breath of the wild was better. Tears of the Kingdom is good only if you hadnt played Breath of the Wild. Story wise Breath of the wild pulled me and made me truly sad when the Champions died. Tears of the sadly did not endear me to the sages. In situation where they could have expounded upon the zonai, they did not. They ruined Ganondorf by making him turn into a brainless dragon. The situation with calamity ganon felt more dire. Also sheika tech seemed cooler and more dangerous than the zonai constructs. Tulan story and dungeon are the best thing that stuck out to me for the sages.
My opinión is totaly the same, once y defeated Ganondorf, I didn't knew what to do because all of the things that are in the game. But last week I went back to the game and completed all the srines and the underground but now I have the same problem that at the start 😢
I was thinking about this topic last week , kinda scary to see this video in my recommendations but still , great video. I think you nailed the point , Botw is a more peaceful game.
Tears soured me on its story from the getgo simply because I really wanted Zelda (as in actual Zelda, not the you-know-what) to be in the game for you to interact and go on quests with. The overarching goal of finding her felt more frustrating than anything else, like all the work you did in Breath was for nothing.
It's funny, on launch it was common to hear BotW described as a "tech demo," and not just in terms of the looks as you mentioned in the video, but with the expansion of the game world and how Ultrahand took the focus on physics and how it synergized with the simultaneous focus on player freedom Breath of the Wild brought to the table to what appears to be their logical conclusion by giving you all of these pieces that serve different purposes and the freedom to manipulate them alongside anything else that happens to be nearby and glue them together to make everything from simple bridges and hot air balloons to functional shipping containers capable of taking a horse to Eventide Island or a laser-spewing tank, and everything in between. It seemed that the only common complaint aside from certain aspects that were unpopular holdovers from BotW at the time was that Tears had so much more to offer that players felt that they truly wouldn't be able to go back to BotW and appreciate that game they loved after experiencing the new hotness. Then months passed, and judging by the types of videos coming out opinions seemed to sour on TotK. Definitely not to the extent of something like Starfield, but that new game honeymoon period was definitely over, hype had died down, building hoverbikes and such were no longer mind blowing when players would be doing it over a hundred times over the course of taking in a game of this magnitude, and other such cracks and downsides became more apparent and people were further emboldened to air their own grievances with the game with each new critical video being released and doing rather well considering that the game had seemed almost untouchable not long prior. These weren't just the voices of contrarians, or those that just wanted the pre-BotW formula back, but BotW fans as well that, having taken their time and experiencing what TotK had to offer just found that this new game just failed to click with them the way BotW did to the point that many dipped out well before rolling credits, or had seen it through and may have even still loved their time with it, but in the end they just preferred BotW. And, as someone who grew up with this series and sincerely believes TotK is an excellent game, I get it, and honestly prefer this reality to one in which those early takes about TotK obsoleting BotW had turned out to be true. Despite being a direct sequel to the point of sharing the overworld map layout and many aspects, Tears is a different game that sees how you view and play within that world turn almost completely on its head, not unlike A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds, another pair of Zelda titles I adore, and find the notion that the latter invalidates the former to be short sighted. After all, the games in this series all have their own charm, their own vibe, and their own approaches to keeping things fresh, not all of which will resonate with everyone, but in which anyone could make a compelling case for why any of the official titles going back to the first is their own personal favorite of the lot to this day.
BotW is better in almost every way, in my opinion. Better music, more unique ambiance, just enough not to be overwhelming and most importantly, it was new.
The huge positive reception TotK has gotten makes me feel like an insane man 🥴 imo it’s telling that even Nintendo was afraid people were gonna bash this game for essentially being BotW 1.5 which is what it feels like to me. It doesn’t feel like a proper sequel and many things that were added I don’t care for like the building mechanic a la Nuts & Bolts.
I actually agree. Also botw had a harder experience. People say totk is harder but is there enemies that can heal and are always a tier higher? No. Also it is more of a classic and new mix of a zelda game. Also its story i like more. After all it doesn't ruin rauru. I dont want to use more time to continue explaining why i prefer botw but there is more
I think the main problem is that TotK is not different enough. On it's own, it's the better game by far. But since BotW came first, TotK feels a bit hollow. When they first announced that it would use the same map, I was excited. How would they fill the world with new things that shake it up, and make it fun to discover all these landmarks anew? Well, for the story related places, this was great... for everything else, it was either just a gateway to a new part of the map (like a chasm or cave entrance), or it was essentially empty. Maybe the slapped a side quest in there like the stable photos. Even Terry Town felt underdeveloped, and that got a mini game and side quest with a cutscene. If I had known they would struggle to make most of the world feel alive and full packed because of this, I would have joined the people who were mad about the map being reused before release. A new map would have fixed this. But I actually can't go back to BotW. The core gameplay is just worse. No Ascend, no Fuse, no Ultrahand... it feels so clunky to play compared to TotK. The only think I miss is the Master Cycle Zero and old Champion abilities because clicking A to activate the Sage abilities sucks.
I always viewed it as one big massive game. TotK feeks like the natural progression of ideas introduced in Breath. Playing them back to back is always my way to go
The problem with people that we have had for years is that we all got use to the cliche of always thinking that the 1st is always the best, even though sometimes that isn't the case. Sometimes sequels are better and in zelda case, TOTK is the better game dispite its obvious missteps and missed opportunities. I hate how they had all those years to make TOTK better but Nintendo didn't take advantage, let me explain. The sky islands were a huge let down. Instead of making a whole new world, have major cities and Dungeons up there, they were just pieces of tiny islands with just treasure chests and koroks smh. The depths was cool and little more interesting than the sky islands but they could've had cities down there too, more terrifying enemies and Dungeons down there. They should've done away with the shrines or at least minimized them maybe a handful and replace them all with mini levels and Dungeons instead. The side mission and there rewards were crap and wasn't worthwhile doing. Seriously, who wants to do a cool side mission and your reward would just be a bundle of arrows ar bombs smh? Why not give me exclusive armors, swords and a heart piece instead? The game was also very repetitive to the point that, they had mite as well had made it dlc. Other than tat though, it's still a great game and better than botw.
I have extremely mixed feelings on both games. Actually most titles in the Zelda series overall, if I'm being honest. TOTK to me feels needlessly large in many ways, and honestly it feels very poorly designed for a Nintendo game. Its good aspects overshadow the flaws I feel, but only _j u s t_ barely. TOTK is _unbelievably_ clumsy in so many ways, to a startling degree for a Nintendo developed title. Not only did it refuse to adjust the frankly terrible control scheme of BOTW _(let's make a game that's primary draw is exploration and traversing the world but design the unchangeable controls in such a way that proactive use of both running and jumping requires a claw grip on the controller when we very easily could've set one of these to the control stick or any of the FOUR shoulder buttons),_ but it actually did everything in its power to make things even more convoluted and clumsy. • The Champion abilities are somehow both minimally useful and obnoxious to activate. The whole final hour power of friendship stuff at the end of the game falls flat because of the bizarre decision to have Link travel with shades of the Champions rather than just having them join him on his quest themselves. • The notoriously awful _"Secret Stones??"_ cutscenes at the end of every dungeon, _my God._ • What was supposed to be the emotional payoff of the ending is severely weakened by the nonsensically cheap means of restoring Zelda to her true self, which amounts to Zonai ghosts just being able to do that for no reason when everything in-game pointed to such a resolution being impossible. Finding a way to restore Zelda could have _easily_ laid the groundwork for dozens of quests and story beats and made the player an active participant in achieving a true good ending, but instead it is merely handwaved away to a degree that feels both dismissive and patronizingly stupid. • The game gives the player access to information on Zelda's whereabouts and does not allow it to impact the storyline whatsoever, even as all of Hyrule is frantically searching for her. It makes Link come off as a lunatic that doesn't actually care about anybody, he just meanders around the countryside building weird contraptions even as he knows the answers to everyone's questions. It makes you the player insignificant, you cannot interact with these characters in a truly meaningful way because the story refuses to allow for it. You are entirely disconnected from the characters inhabiting this world. • It is ridiculously easy to accidentally view the memory cutscenes in an order that spoils the payoff and makes the rest of them completely irrelevant. • The Zonai are so poorly implemented as a concept that they came from nowhere with a power that is completely unexplained before they vanished from the world with barely a trace... but then later were the most important people ever and even founded the kingdom of Hyrule itself... but vanished without a trace a second time... but came back to stop Calamity Ganon... but vanished without a trace a third time... And somehow they never interacted with or had an impact on the Triforce or pre established lore that still survives into the modern day, etc. The Zonai are not like the Interlopers/Twili in Twilight Princess, wherein they are a group beholden to a previously established lore and build off of its framework. No, they're more akin to the Giants in Majora's Mask, but forced into the primary world of Hyrule rather than allowed their own setting to grow. They are a foundational aspect of this world's culture and lore, and yet completely disconnected from it in every capacity. The Giants, Termina, and Majora's Mask work because it's essentially an isekai story with the space provided to lay a new foundational myth, but the Zonai in TOTK fail at doing this because they were retrofitted into a groundwork that conceptually clashes with them. • Attaching items to arrows or pulling things out to throw them is unbelievably clumsy, the menu navigation for it is genuinely abysmal. I think the last game that I played with such an awfully clumsy menu that expected you to make use of items that you select was _Castlevania: Symphony of the Night,_ a title that is more than a quarter century this game's senior. • Nearly the entirety of the Depths is completely without purpose. It isn't used to build off the series' lore in any meaningful way. It's repetitive and boring, and there's far too many meaningless things to do down there just to fill out the map. There's no new tribes of characters to talk to, no village establishments, no quests, no minigames, no real challenges provided, no new biomes outside of the one, it's very clumsy to maneuver around through, it offers an incredibly weak reward structure... _It is genuinely awful to a degree that I think the game would be actively better if it was cut down to maybe a tenth of its size and just had those areas made a bit more interesting and unique._ • Armor upgrading is somehow even more abysmal, grindy, tediously slow, and poorly thought out than it was in BOTW. • Horses are somehow even more pointless than they were in BOTW because of the expanded travel options. • TOTK gives a you a million Zonai Devices to experiment with but doesn't actually provide the structure or need for ingenuity that leads to meaningfully experimenting with it, and this is on top of locking parts behind convoluted means of acquiring them from shrines. It's just a very user unfriendly system that elevates complacency and repetitive boring builds over figuring out how it all works. • From a story perspective the fact that the Zonai tech is so similar to Sheikah tech just undermines everything established about the Sheikah. Think about it: Now we know that the Sheikah didn't even invent their own technology. They must have excavated Zonai tech, figured out how it works, made their own interpretations of them, and then they were tragically betrayed by the Royal family of Hyrule over fear of their power. Please note that this means that the Sheikah were basically cursed and betrayed over finding the leftover scraps of the royal family's own technology, what with them being the direct descendants of the Zonai and all. It means that the Sheikah rediscovering their old tech before BOTW is an echo of how they manufactured it in the first place. Then the Sheikah tech is unceremoniously supplanted by the preexisting Zonai tech coming back, which makes all of that completely pointless and bizarre. I could literally go on all day about the number of problems this game has as I haven't even scratched the surface of them, such as; for instance, the numerous places where TOTK clashes with the very game it is a sequel to. NPCs not recognizing Link even though the setting of TOTK establishes that you must have met, world locations that are literally impossible with what existed there in BOTW, the fact that • Purah made her towers • the founding of Lookout Landing • the creation of an entire huge country wide monster hunting system all planned out and implemented in the maybe week or so of time that Link and Zelda have been gone, etc. It just feels very poorly thought out, like the game was in development for so long and yet it's somehow really rushed at the same time. I would not be remotely surprised if we eventually get stories from the team over how many things went catastrophically wrong during the game's development process.
BotW > TotK The reason I feel this way is because I felt fulfilled after BotW's shrines. After collecting a full battery, completing all 152 shrines, and all the light roots. I felt like I had wasted 120 hours of my life. Also the BotW runes are better.
Honestly, it's hard for me to pick favourites. Breath of the Wild felt so charming and fantastical, and I loved the freedom it gave the player (especially when it comes to speedruns). However, Tears of the Kingdom felt a bit more abstract and not as tightly-knit together as Breath of the Wild, especially when it came to the dungeons and the Zonai (I thought I knew everything about them in BOTW. Boy was I wrong). Also the GIANT Great Sky Island was a problem for me as I felt like it was GIGANTIC for a tutorial area and is honestly the hardest place to navigate in the entire game for me. The both of them have their charms. I did run into the Dragon Tears problem though and picked the Sonia's Death one first :/ Weirdly though, I always felt like there was a huge disconnect between Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild. They both take place in the same world, but for me, it always felt that in Tears of the Kingdom, the Hyrule I was exploring didn't feel like the Hyrule I knew in Breath of the Wild. It feels like the games are too different, ironically, to compare them
As one of the few who has played Tears of The Kingdom BEFORE Breath of The Wild I really feel like botw is just like a demo compared to totk, there’s less content in every single aspect, everything botw does totk does better, I guess I don’t have the “sentimental side” about it but that’s just how I see it, I played botw once because I was so curious after all the references I found in totk and I really enjoyed but in 80hrs I was done while on totk I’m on my second gameplay with over 200hrs, it just doesn’t get old it’s amazing
Imo, yes, Totk is the bigger and shinier game but there is barely enough FRESH content to compensate that size. I would of rather have been overwhelmed by interesting options than "I've already seen this in Botw" options. Much of it is horrwndously recycled: DLC rewards, Story format and likenesses, mechanics no one liked or just really needed improvement (koroks, shrines, etc), retconned throwbacks (I love easter eggs, but the way the story was written was with the intention to imitate Botw and previous games' successes. Not hold it's own. Cheap nostalgia on a plate instead of exploring and expanding on new original ideas, lore, characters, even the game mechanics had some misses imo). If you want to make a game feel lived in, you have to fill it. But not with "stuff". With intention. With unique qualities that combined naturally create layers and substance to a game. And imo, tho I recognize the vast emptiness of Botw, the beauty of it is in its subtlety, this desire to know what's around the bend, what new things can be found or explored in a world we had never before seen. Yes, I think Tears tried to do this, but it didn't work. Working on an existing map has some to do with it (although I think HAD THEY FILLED IT correctly it wouldn't have felt so awful. They also had two other maps c'mon), but I also just think it's because they didn't make any of the new stuff interesting enough to keep our attention. Seen one cave, one sky island, one section of the depths... you've prqcticwlly seen at least 80-90% of it's entirety. Because a lot of it is just the same...
I got totk like 3 days after launch I was so hyped when I booted up the game I thought the prologue was amazing but once I got to the temple of time and Raru introduced me to the shrines is where my expectations dropped like common another great plateau? now dont get me wrong I absolutely loved the great plateau in the first game I got botw in 2017 when I was 8 and probably spent about a month on it because it was my first open world/ zelda game so I was just learning everything. that month was probably my favorite time playing a zelda game because I played it with my dad and sister but was still relived when it was over. So when I found out the great sky island was the same thing I was rlly disappointed and just kinda rushed through it not really taking it in because I had done it all before. once I landed in lookout landing I had hope again because "ooh new town" and people knowing who link was made the world feel so much more alive. the first temple I did was the wind temple and after completing it I just kinda gave up, I felt so overwhelmed with the game but at the same time that feeling of aliveness was already gone because it felt nothing had changed on the overworld map there were barley any sky islands and the depths were way too hard early game and on top of the all the characters felt really stale compared to botw, so I stopped. a few weeks ago I picked the game back up and just tried to enjoy it and I have I got the master sword freed korok forrest finished the water temple and fire temple and now just have to finish the sand temple but I still find myself booting up botw and even though ive 100% the game (besides korok seeds im not insane) I still find myself having more fun.
I got my Switch months after it was released. By the way, it was my first game, and now I'm playing it for the third time. I also recently got TTK, and I would agree that the first game is better. The building aspect is a bit overwhelming; everything is about tech now, and there’s little focus on magic.
My problem isn't just that there's too much content, there's too much genuinely F tier content. BotW avoided the open world genre's trappings by making the fun part, the bit that's usually boring in other games. Exploring the landscape IS the appeal. But when it's the same land, the focus is shifted to being all about the new content that exists specifically to justify the game's existence. If you're on land, you're looking for caves, which are quickly repetitive and have extremely poor rewards. Then there's abyss, which artificially doubles your length playing the game, while featuring very little new content, as well as pitiful rewards for engaging with it. Then there's the sky, which peaks in its tutorial, every other sky island is smaller and feels samey. Loved botw, tears of the kingdom is so genuinely bad it makes me forget they were onto something with the first game.
