Support NeoGAF

[analog_future]

I bought this a couple weeks ago on a nice sale and I enjoyed the opening hours on Great Sky Island well enough, but once I completed that section and landed back in Hyrule it's lost it's luster. I'm about 10 hours in now and I've been bored as shit.

For background, I've played a good amount of the Zelda games but nowhere near all of them. I've completed A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, and Breath of the Wild. I've also played a good amount of Link's Awakening and Skyward Sword, but didn't beat them.

I can understand why people have loved TotK, but so far the game pretty much equates to:

• Roam around
• Find random caves/shrines/encampments and complete them
• Upgrade your health/stamina
• Gather and build/upgrade weapons and items that you find
• Build various contraptions or vehicles to cross rivers/ravines/etc..
• Run into random people who give you very vague hints of where a side-adventure might take place
• Complete various optional activities around the world like following/harvesting the glowing blue rabbit, fixing that one guys sign that he keeps trying to put up, etc..

For example, having to build a raft or roam around endlessly to find a bridge every time I want to cross a large river is just annoying to me, not fun. It also doesn't help that the game is ugly as shit on a technical level and despite what I've seen many say, it does feel like a retread of BotW in many ways, just "more".


Is this pretty much it for the whole game or should I continue to push on if I'm not having much fun thus far?

 

[Punished Miku]

You get some ways to rapidly build things, but it doesn't change a ton. I thought it was a masterpiece from very early on, through to the end.

 

[NecrosaroIII]

For me it left a great first impression but wore down on me as i went through it

 

[Dzab]

If you're not liking the gameplay and the loop now, there's nothing in the game that will change your mind or be different enough later on

 

[GymWolf]

I liked the game well enough but like botw they are both overrated and flawed as fuck.

 

[Jsisto]

Yea if you’re not feeling it at 10 hours in it’s probably not for you. I enjoyed it for what it was but once the new game luster wore off I felt like it really was just BoTW 1.5. The new build features really didn’t do it for me at all and felt more tedious than fun. Really wish 3D Zelda would go back to basics at this point.

 

[cormack12]

I haven't played it, but can confidently say no

 

[Schmendrick]

Overcoming hurdles and travelling around the landscape with ever more complex contraptions and solving a riddle shrine or similar here and there is a very big part of the gameplay loop. You get an ability relatively early which allows you to save and replicate your creations, but in the end it`s still a looooot of building and tinkering.

If you don`t like that then you might as well give up on the game imho...actually if you're bored with any game at the 10 hours mark you propbably shouldn´t waste any more time on it.

 

[TintoConCasera]

Had a pretty similar experience. First few hours on the tutorial area were fun but once I landed in Hyrule it started to feel boring and too samey, specially since I already played BOTW.

Doesn't help that the glue mechanic felt super jank to me, with bad controls and making the framerate tank at times. Also, attaching shit to my weapons and shields looked super-dumb, I didn't like that. Too much menu navigation too.

Overall, to me, it felt like they grabbed BOTW and glued as much shit as possible to that formula without putting to much thought into it. Laziest Zelda sequel ever imo.

 

[gpn]

Have you been in the underworld area yet? If not, maybe give that a try and see if it livens things up for you. There's also a lot more to do in the sky islands than what you do in the beginning portion.

 

[tommib]

Amazing first 20 to 30 hours. But then I’m done. They’re super clever games with great atmosphere. If you’re not liking it already, drop it. Just sell it.

 

[Raven117]

it’s okay not to like a thing.

I think BotW and TotK are solid games, some brilliance, but in the end, fall a little flat for me.

Some people love building sheet and tinkering with systems. I don’t find that particularly compelling. So the game is ultimately not for me, sounds like you are the same.

 

[Robb]

I’d probably just let it go after 10h if I felt that way personally.

But this game is so vast in terms of content and approach/sequence breaking that I just don’t understand why you’d keep doing the stuff you think is boring? Just follow the main quest instead. Or better yet, just run to Hyrule Castle and defeat Ganondorf if that’s what you feel like. The final boss is definitely worth experiencing, it’s probably the best in the entire franchise.

 

[InterMusketeer]

No. It's not a very good game.

 

[Astral Dog]

Thats pretty much it, there are "dungeons" wich look pretty but aren't designed like the previous games (i have no idea how i solved the temple in death mountain )

the combat feels awful and graphics look worse on the surface and underground areas

 

[Little Chicken]

No, it doesn't.

 

[ahtlas7]

, …fixing that one guys sign that he keeps trying to put up, etc..

that guy can’t hang a sign for shit. He clearly lied about his skills.

 

[Nonehxc]

Same situation.

Breath of the Wild is true to its name. The perfection of the open world wilderness. Give you a few tools and let you discover everything organically. Nothing lacking nothing overstaying its welcome, just pure perfect balance throughout. Pure unadulterated gameplay, nothing is just easy but it isn't artificially complicated.

Tears of the Kingdom, so far, is irritating to say the least. What could perfectly be ONE step, it's dragged into several steps depending what you have or not. What broke me is having to do at least 6 steps just to be able to fight a rock armored base fucking goblin which would have taken just one step, which turned just seeing it and go rape it into a 5 min search for s fucking rock to fuse with anything.

Having more story it's very welcome, but all that fusing and building it's just screaming to me 'GTFO old boy, this shit is for the Roblox/Minecraft/Sandbox next generation retardos, the princess gameplay you're looking for is in another century castle'.

While BOTW was, in Eiji Aonuma's words 'see that up high? You can get there' simplicity, given you have Stamina, TOTK is the same but with an irritating mechanics/gameplay twist drag 'see that? You can get there...but not before searching for, then glueing together the three near logs together several tens of meters apart, then, go to that platform over there with your contraption and glue it on top, then bring that rotten monstrosity to that lame ass hill to climb the logs and at the platform at the top, swim up to it'

This isn't our Zelda. This is the Zelda for the newer generations.

 

[hemo memo]

At least wait until you reach the first dungeon.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

The bad thing is that it really is an expansion, but people refuse to believe it.

 

[ManaByte]

Honestly Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity is the best thing to come out of the two games. It's great.

 

[Damigos]

I dislike Zelda-open world. I hated the stamina depletion, the weapons that break, the choppy sub 30 frame rate. The open world creates so much randomness and so little story continuation that in my opinion does not fit in story heavy game like Zelda.
I know the last 2 Zeldas are godsent to many people but they are not for me.
FYI i generally dont enjoy massive open world games, with World of Warcraft being the big exception. Semi open, like God of War is my sweetspot

 

[analog_future]

I’d probably just let it go after 10h if I felt that way personally.

But this game is so vast in terms of content and approach/sequence breaking that I just don’t understand why you’d keep doing the stuff you think is boring? Just follow the main quest instead. Or better yet, just run to Hyrule Castle and defeat Ganondorf if that’s what you feel like. The final boss is definitely worth experiencing, it’s probably the best in the entire franchise.

Honestly I've been trying to follow the main quest but there's so many things in my way to just reach one of the four main locations (Goron City/Zora's Domain/Rito Village/etc..) that it's truly a chore to just get where you want to go. The game actively tries to prevent you from just completing the "golden path", which I understand is kind of the point as they want you to wander and discover and get lost in the world, but it makes it difficult and not enjoyable to just try play it that way.

 

[hemo memo]

The bad thing is that it really is an expansion, but people refuse to believe it.

A 40+ hours expansion?

 

[Robb]

Honestly I've been trying to follow the main quest but there's so many things in my way to just reach one of the four main locations (Goron City/Zora's Domain/Rito Village/etc..) that it's truly a chore to just get where you want to go. The game actively tries to prevent you from just completing the "golden path", which I understand is kind of the point as they want you to wander and discover and get lost in the world, but it makes it difficult and not enjoyable to just try play it that way.

Sounds like a skip to me.

 

[GymWolf]

The bad thing is that it really is an expansion, but people refuse to believe it.

The opposite for me, tokt made me me realize how much of a tech demo botw felt.

I think tokt is the full realization of botw concept, the problem is that the core concept has both great heighs and terrible lows.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

A 40+ hours expansion?

It has the same characters, almost the same locations, the same enemies plus a little variety, same combat system with added elements. The location of the worlds is the same.

 

[SCB3]

A 40+ hours expansion?

Wait til you see how long Elden Rings DLC has taken me....

But yea, if you're not enjoying its loop now, you can call it, I loved it and was my easy goty, but I fully understand why people drop it quickly

 

[Buggy Loop]

Was a huge fan of BOTW and didn't manage to finish TOTK. It was very exciting at the beginning of the game, but they completely killed BOTW's exploration. By making devices or teleport to sky and then skydive anywhere you need to go on the map, it basically removed all the on-land on foot / horse exploration that made BOTW special imo.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

The opposite for me, tokt made me me realize how much of a tech demo botw felt.

I think tokt is the full realization of botw concept, the problem is that the core concept has both great heighs and terrible lows.

So we can say that BOTW is a beta version... AND TOTK is the complement to the definitive version of the world of Zelda?

 

[Loomy]

I'm about 10 hours in now and I've been bored as shit.

Might be time to move on. 10 hours is more than enough time to put into a game to determine if it's for you or not.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

The opposite for me, tokt made me me realize how much of a tech demo botw felt.

I think tokt is the full realization of botw concept, the problem is that the core concept has both great heighs and terrible lows.

And to be honest, there Nintendo copied the elements of my Gravity Rush.

 

[GymWolf]

So we can say that BOTW is a beta version... AND TOTK is the complement to the definitive version of the world of Zelda?

I would not call it definitive because some things are exactly the same as botw and they didn't evolved at all, but at least you have way more content...

 

[GymWolf]

And to be honest, there Nintendo copied the elements of my Gravity Rush.

Like what?

You can't freely fly in zelda.

 

[NuclearDiarrhea]

I made the mistake of playing BOTW right before TOTK came out and it had a negative effect on my TOTK playthrough. I had already explored Hyrule to death so my enjoyment exploring the same map was lessened and the new shrines and vehicles didn't do jack shit for me. I thought the sky islands were also really underused in TOTK and the game would've been so much better (for me at least) if there were more sky islands to explore since they were refreshing and new.

 

[Lucifers Beard]

Dropped it after around 10 hours and really tried to enjoy it. It certainly has an audience and it's clear loads of people loved it. It just wasn't for me.

 

[BossLackey]

For me it left a great first impression but wore down on me as i went through it

Same here. Amazing fist impression and the mechanics are fantastic, but after the novelty wears off it feels like a big open world with mechanics dumped into it and the same handful of "puzzles" evenly dispersed.

Doesn't feel hand made at all. Oh and the depths were also really cool at first until you realize it's 90% empty space.

I just want a handcrafted, tight, dungeon-filled experience with Zelda. This was not that.

 

[MDSLKTR]

Nah give up, I never played botw so the first 50 hours are some of my favorite moments of gaming. After that I wanted to wrap it up unlike elden ring.

 

[GymWolf]

Was a huge fan of BOTW and didn't manage to finish TOTK. It was very exciting at the beginning of the game, but they completely killed BOTW's exploration. By making devices or teleport to sky and then skydive anywhere you need to go on the map, it basically removed all the on-land on foot / horse exploration that made BOTW special imo.

Horse exploration was dogshit so thank god for that.

And you still have to walk a lot, you can't just teleport everywhere or glide everywhere from above, cmon.

 

[Buggy Loop]

Horse exploration was dogshit so thank god for that.

And you still have to walk a lot, you can't just teleport everywhere or glide everywhere from above, cmon.

Not early on but later, almost yeah, with gliding suit and so on, I made huge shortcuts in the map. Only underground and sky were more limited. Underground I became bored of this total darkness bullshit full of walls between the places. Sky was nice but inventions also made most of it trivial.

There's no magical moments where for example, you travel on foot and go through the forest in the fog and through logs to hide from lizards, which felt like it was designed to take you on a designed "path", to Zora's domain for example. TOTK you can really skip so much of that. BOTW took you through designed paths to progress. TOTK breaks almost all of that.

 

[Mr Hyde]

Put in about 70 hours in it and thought it was fun but the formula wears thin and it's too much recycled content from Botw, which I finished and put over 100 hours in. So for me, I was just tired of Breath of the Wild concept. I hope Nintendo goes back to traditional Zelda for its next outing. I agree these games are overrated though.

 

[AMSCD]

A 40+ hours expansion?

More like 250h

 

[GymWolf]

Not early on but later, almost yeah, with gliding suit and so on, I made huge shortcuts in the map. Only underground and sky were more limited. Underground I became bored of this total darkness bullshit full of walls between the places. Sky was nice but inventions also made most of it trivial.

There's no magical moments where for example, you travel on foot and go through the forest in the fog and through logs to hide from lizards, which felt like it was designed to take you on a designed "path", to Zora's domain for example. TOTK you can really skip so much of that. BOTW took you through designed paths to progress. TOTK breaks almost all of that.

I mean isn't that almost any open world after you explore the map a lot? You think i was walking from one point of the map to another in botw after 20-30 hours and many fast travel point discovered?

In zelda is even worse because combat is terrible and you only waste weapons when fighting and there is really nothing worth to find in 90% of cases so just going from point a to b was boring as fuck, and the horse were some of the worst horse in any open world game, i know people like to suck nintendo for their perfect gameplay or some shit, but gameplay wise the zelda have a lot of amateur hour flaws starting with the combat and ending with the control scheme...

 

[KuraiShidosha]

Most generic, soulless copy pasted game I've ever played. I didn't even like BotW but that game blows TotK out of the water. At least that game offered an entirely new world to explore from scratch.

 

[Mortisfacio]

BotW and TotK are both overrated, in my opinion. It doesn't get better. It's more or less the same boring game.

 

[spons]

The movement feels terribly off in both this and BotW. Sluggish, making it almost unplayable for me.

 

[IntentionalPun]

I really enjoyed the shrines in TOTK but wasn’t happy with the rest. The building mechanic just isn’t my thing and since I don’t really like the stuff in the sky much and kinda hated the underworld the map was just a ruined version of the first game.

Also you have to collect so many resources to do a lot of shit, and you have to deal with all the breakable weapons to collect many of those resources.

Almost everyone I know who played the game used the early dupe bug to just skip over major resource collection slog and none of them would admit that helped them enjoy the game more lol

 

[StueyDuck]

It doesn't.

 

[Buggy Loop]

I mean isn't that almost any open world after you explore the map a lot? You think i was walking from one point of the map to another in botw after 20-30 hours and many fast travel point discovered?

In zelda is even worse because combat is terrible and you only waste weapons when fighting and there is really nothing worth to find in 90% of cases so just going from point a to b was boring as fuck, and the horse were some of the worst horse in any open world game, i know people like to suck nintendo for their perfect gameplay or some shit, but gameplay wise the zelda have a lot of amateur hour flaws starting with the combat and ending with the control scheme...

The path of discovery of BOTW was more controlled and you could not really have a shortcut. Every regions was designed with that in mind.

TOTK has almost none of that. The desert city as another example, BOTW forced you through the canyon portion. TOTK I skipped all that.

Simple really. The tools they gave are just too strong and breaks most of the exploration. Maybe you didn't like the on-foot of BOTW, for me it's why it was a special open world compared to the other ones.

 

[GymWolf]

The path of discovery of BOTW was more controlled and you could not really have a shortcut. Every regions was designed with that in mind.

TOTK has almost none of that. The desert city as another example, BOTW forced you through the canyon portion. TOTK I skipped all that.

Simple really. The tools they gave are just too strong and breaks most of the exploration. Maybe you didn't like the on-foot of BOTW, for me it's why it was a special open world compared to the other ones.

I had to do the desert puzzle to get into the lesbian city and i generally didn't skipped much except some puzzles in some dungeons because the game give you the tool to break puzzles (great since i hate puzzles).

Maybe that's why i didn't felt much of a difference with botw in terms of on foot exploration, walking was still what i did 80% of the time because you had to be a fucking space engineer with millimetric precision to build something that run straight in that game and they disappear after a while so on foot was always the most reliable way of movement, didn't even tried horses once since they were terrible in botw.