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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom released one year ago today

GymWolf

GymWolf

Member
Much better than the super overrated botw but they didn't solved almost any of the prequel problems so a better but still deeply flawed game.
 
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RoboFu

RoboFu

One of the green rats
Replies in this thread...

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ChoosableOne

ChoosableOne

ChoosableAll
I understand the disappointment of those who have played Zelda TOTK after Botw. The dullness of the Depths doesn't help either. If it had been a game released instead of BOTW, containing only Hyrule and Sky Islands, it would have been a flawless game. I enjoyed it a lot without having played BOTW too much. Now I'm thinking about how I'm going to play BOTW. I bought it with its DLCs, at least I'll get around with the motorcycle. I think I'll need a year or two to forget Hyrule.
 
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Regginator

Regginator

Member
A tremendous game and a masterclass in player freedom and non-linear, emergent gameplay that I think is pretty unique on such a relatively massive scale. Can't believe it's been a year already! By far my GOTY, 9.5/10 all around. It surpassed the already stellar BOTW in pretty much every single aspect that I think should matter most.

My only gripe with TOTK is that sometimes it offers TOO much player freedom, to the point of almost sequence breaking entire segments of the game, or skipping out on some key story elements that can make the overall story (which isn't all that good to begin with) not mesh very well. Also not a fan of how it barely recognizes the events and Link's actions of BOTW despite it being a direct sequel.

Other than that, it's pure gameplay goodness. I think TOTK is the quintessential gaming experience, where a liberating design philosophy meets actually fun gameplay mechanics.
 
yamaci17

yamaci17

Member
ChoosableOne said:
I understand the disappointment of those who have played Zelda TOTK after Botw. The dullness of the Depths doesn't help either. If it had been a game released instead of BOTW, containing only Hyrule and Sky Islands, it would have been a flawless game. I enjoyed it a lot without having played BOTW too much. Now I'm thinking about how I'm going to play BOTW. I bought it with its DLCs, at least I'll get around with the motorcycle. I think I'll need a year or two to forget Hyrule.
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I see these two games as undertaker vs shawn michaels wrestlemania 25 and 26. something so great that you mind't seeing it twice but with different twists and a more resounding ending
 
K

KloetenQuetsche

Member
Man, I've played it like about 20 hours and love it sooo much.
But as a dad I've no time to play. Sadly.

My dream is when Switch 2 releases playing it in glorious 1080 with all bells and whistles!

Hope it gets true as soon as possible!
 
nemiroff

nemiroff

Gold Member
..I play it almost every day together with my three-year-old these days. We very much enjoy the game.

Only criticism is the bad technical graphic, the peculiar weapon breakage system, and some odd loose ends here and there..
 
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KXVXII9X

KXVXII9X

Member
Despite my gripes about the game (mostly story and padding), I realize it still feels above and beyond other games when it comes to having a lively world.

I was playing some yesterday after a big hiatus and the physics still impress me. It does more to immerse me than static, photorealistic, 4K graphics does.

The game is a technical marvel. I just hope the next game is a bit more linear with a better constructed story while still using their physics and open ended puzzles.

It really sucks there isn't really any consistency with the NPC's remembering you from last game or the resused cutscenes.
 
TheGodfather07

TheGodfather07

Member
It actually made me crave traditional zelda and the only one I had never played was skyward sword. So I thought it's time to give it a go. I actually enjoyed it alot. Mainly because of the dungeons. Music was great too. Really hope Nintendo do a traditional zelda again.
 
Podge

Podge

Neo Member
I’ve been playing video games since Christmas Day 1988. Fittingly, that day my brothers and I received an NES along with SMB1 and TLoZ. TotK might be the best adventure I’ve ever experienced in a game. I thought BOTW would never be exceeded, but Aonuma and everyone on the development team have created their collective masterpiece. Everyone associated with this game should be proud for the rest of their lives with what they created in TotK.

Edit: typo fix for “BOTW“
 
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S

Schmendrick

Member
It was fun for a while but it was just too "samey" and still carried the same weaknesses from BOTW like pityfully small dungeons or the many shrines of which at best half were interesting....

Give me a Twilight Princess or Majoras Mask over BOTW and TOTK any day.
 
DonF

DonF

Member
Awesome game but it felt less cohesive to me than BotW.

the depths are kinda lame and the sky feels like an afterthought. also exploration suffered a bit due to the sky.

It does lots of things better than BotW, but feels like its all patched up.
 
tkscz

tkscz

Member
Pedro Motta said:
It’s 90% the same as BotW. Great game but it is what it is.
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Care to elaborate on that? They added a huge amount of content and even changed the map up quite a bit and not just with above and below ground. Adding so many explorable and expanded caves, changing paths, adding new elements and a new way of traversing the world. While some points on the map are the same, I'd say 90% of the game's map was changed.

My favorite and yet most frustrating part were the expanded caves. You actually found stuff worth exploring and that always made the next cave you find worth breaking every fake wall. Problem is they are fucking impossible to see unless You're stupid close.
 
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kunonabi

kunonabi

Member
DonF said:
Awesome game but it felt less cohesive to me than BotW.

the depths are kinda lame and the sky feels like an afterthought. also exploration suffered a bit due to the sky.

It does lots of things better than BotW, but feels like its all patched up.
Click to expand...
The problem is they choose to reuse all the old BotW conventions but those were already so closely tied to that game's story that the second time around everything feels really contrived and ill-fitting. It makes all the redundancy even more glaring and cheap feeling.
 
Lokaum D+

Lokaum D+

Member
Tears of Boredom was a great game that put me to sleep better than pills, great U$70 DLC...
 
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Sleepwalker

Sleepwalker

Member
Still haven't beaten it, I'll come back to it later this year. I did like it a lot and put 50 hours on it but ran out of steam. I even bought the zelda oled switch.
 
Dr. Wilkinson

Dr. Wilkinson

Member
DonF said:
Awesome game but it felt less cohesive to me than BotW.

the depths are kinda lame and the sky feels like an afterthought. also exploration suffered a bit due to the sky.

It does lots of things better than BotW, but feels like its all patched up.
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I think it absolutely started as DLC in 2018, and by 2019 had morphed into like "hey you know what, we have so much stuff to toss in, can we just take as long as we need and make it a whole separate game?" And it just spun out from there, like a giant Frankenstein. The number of side quests & side adventures is just completely over-the-top, that just seeing how many quests are in the game, is frankly exhausting to think about doing even half of it.
 
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Mitsurux

Mitsurux

Member
ToTK basically took over my household for a few months, with me, my wife and daughter all playing it (yes three copies were bought). Quite a few weekends we didn't even leave the house and all three of us played ToTK all day (Truly the best of times).

I really enjoyed the game, the BotW/TotK game play style really clicked with me. Little things like making a discovery and marking it on the map, solving puzzles and not know if that was the "Correct" way to do it (but it worked!?), building jankey vehicles to get around. Where will the Zelda series go from here (who knows) but these two games were a really fun diversion from the standard Zelda formula.
 
M

Madserb2023

Member
TOTK was great and my most played game last year. I really hope they release a next Gen patch to up the resolution and frame rate for the Switch 2.
 
James Sawyer Ford

James Sawyer Ford

Member
Greatest game of all time? Its not even a top 5 Zelda game

Zero quality dungeons, items and upgrades a bit pointless, weak character building, bosses, and weak combat mechanics

Very poor reward system for seeking out all the redundant time wasting things this game features too

BOTW was novel, ToTK was just boring and bloated
 
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Kataploom

Kataploom

Gold Member
I finished playing BOTW a week before it came out, I mean, I played it kinda frequently sometimes for 2 years, but the last time I played was when TOTK came out. Thing is this: I felt already burnt out and satisfied enough of BOTW, so didn't want to play TOTK yet since I felt BOTW fresh enough, but the hype train won me (like, second time ever lol) and preordered a day before release, I was thinking on playing for around 4 or 5 hours before putting it to rest for the following few months and ended up playing 100 hours instead lmao. Game is actually good and felt different enough to BOTW, you can play it like the prequel but then you'd loose on almost anything the game has imo.

I haven't finished it tho, I got burnt out right at the castle so I need to go back, as with BOTW, I can just play it at any moment for some hours, go do something else go back again, etc. So it's ok by me.

The only thing I hate is the 30fps look. It plays great an contrary to many, I feel it's very consistent (unless you use ultrahand in which case knowing it will slow down beforehand will make it tolerable), the input lag is also very good, but I just can't stand "30fps animations", for many of us the animation fluidity (camera movement, characters animations, etc.) is a great part of graphic appeal and I think the game would look amazing running at 60 fps.

Edit: Oh, and the way you use your companion skills... Fuck that, Nintendo you couldn't have failed on a simple task like that, come on! Those companions are the only thing that is wrong with that game, it's ok that they help in battle but having to "talk" to them to use the skills is just bad design, like wtf?
 
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K

K' Dash

Member
I'm waiting to get back to it and finish the sidequests when we get to play it at a decent Resolution and Framerate.
 
kunonabi

kunonabi

Member
Kataploom said:
I finished playing BOTW a week before it came out, I mean, I played it kinda frequently sometimes for 2 years, but the last time I played was when TOTK came out. Thing is this: I felt already burnt out and satisfied enough of BOTW, so didn't want to play TOTK yet since I felt BOTW fresh enough, but the hype train won me (like, second time ever lol) and preordered a day before release, I was thinking on playing for around 4 or 5 hours before putting it to rest for the following few months and ended up playing 100 hours instead lmao. Game is actually good and felt different enough to BOTW, you can play it like the prequel but then you'd loose on almost anything the game has imo.

I haven't finished it tho, I got burnt out right at the castle so I need to go back, as with BOTW, I can just play it at any moment for some hours, go do something else go back again, etc. So it's ok by me.

The only thing I hate is the 30fps look. It plays great an contrary to many, I feel it's very consistent (unless you use ultrahand in which case knowing it will slow down beforehand will make it tolerable), the input lag is also very good, but I just can't stand "30fps animations", for many of us the animation fluidity (camera movement, characters animations, etc.) is a great part of graphic appeal and I think the game would look amazing running at 60 fps.

Edit: Oh, and the way you use your companion skills... Fuck that, Nintendo you couldn't have failed on a simple task like that, come on! Those companions are the only thing that is wrong with that game, it's ok that they help in battle but having to "talk" to them to use the skills is just bad design, like wtf?
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I 100%ed BotW when it released, out of obligation I was miserable after the first 40 or so hours after I realized just how copy/paste and unfulling the game actually was, and hadn't touched it at all since before playing totk. The feeling of "been there, done that" was so strong it actually took me by surprise. I really didn't expect nearly so many elements to be just lifted wholesale from Botw. It felt so painfully lazy. Eventually, the game showed some new stuff and I actually started enjoying it. But then the story kept getting shittier and shittier and the Master Sword turned out to be total garbage again and I just had enough. The slightly improved dungeons just weren't enough to keep me going.

And yeah the companion skill thing was one of the most ass backwards implementations I've ever seen.
 
Red Crayon Aristocrat

Red Crayon Aristocrat

Member
A year later and I still haven't played it, Zelda is a mythical, fairy tale style thing, a dude simply riding his horse to rescue a princess, not a guy building mechs, cars and rocket ships, it says they really don't get it and this is a case of Nintendo trying TOO hard to innovate, which ironically stifles Nintendo sometimes, either they just abandon a series forever because "can't innovate" (F-Zero) or they stray too far thematically.

It's just not grabbing me enough to justify the massive time sink, this is very frustrating as otherwise I'd like to have played every mainline Zelda, but this one feels like it'd be eating my broccoli.

Literally LESS innovation would have been better, all we needed was BOTW with actual dungeons and a deeper story and I'd have been golden.
 
bender

bender

What time is it?
I "only" put 40 hours into Tears of the Kingdom before getting distracted by something else. I really want to go back to it but I'm in that weird place where I don't really remember where I am at or what I was doing so my brain is telling me to restart but then those 40 hours are sending the opposite message. In the end, even though I want to go back to the game, I just end up playing something else. You can also sprinkle in a little bit of been there, done that as to why it didn't hook me like BOTW which I spent 180 hours on and didn't relinquish its' hooks in me until the very end. I can understand complaints about the original and why some people actively dislike it, but it was nice to have what felt like a handcrafted open world that had system upon system layered upon one another. While the rewards for exploration weren't the best, it was a case of the journey being the joy instead of the destination, but I don't think I played it like most others as I didn't attempt the divine beasts before doing the vast majority (maybe all) of the shrines. So getting to every nock and cranny of the map required every last bit of stamina you could upgrade to. Had I gotten Revali's Gale early on, I think my overall impression of the game would be much different. It almost felt like cheating the traversal system.
 
MaestroMike

MaestroMike

Gold Member
150 hours since i got it last year really started playing it in july last year. heading to kakariko village currently i then have to get the last sage in gerudo desert i'm progressing like a snail thats how it is still having fun with it lol these giant as$ open world games most days i move at a higher rpm but for this game i can only play it at a lower rpm and it takes like a day for me to slow down to be in the correct mode for this game i gotta match the rpm when i have free time and sometimes i don't match it and lose a session to play this game and just play like mario kart instead
 
SALMORE

SALMORE

Member
sold it yesterday ! the exploration in the game is boring and unrewarding , they didn't improve much from the first game it felt like a modded version of the original
 
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