Tears of the Kingdom is a weird ass game. I put 80 hours into the game and I could have easily put another 40 hours in collecting clothes and the artifact weapons if I didn’t stop myself. I really love the traversal mechanics in that game, having the ascend power in the toolkit really had things click for me even more than BOTW did. The combat was fun, the building shit was pretty fun, once I wrapped my head around the fuse system, the monster part based weapons made sense and worked for me the way that weapon durability in BOTW didn’t. I had fun. I enjoyed myself and I’m glad I played it.
At the same time, the game sort of proved all the BOTW haters correct?
The best time to play TOTK is several years after you’ve played BOTW since the map is so similar that the more clearly you remember it, the less fun you have. At the same time, TOTK is definitely a direct sequel and does not stand on its own without the context from the previous game. At the same time yet again, the entire main story and all the struggles and suffering of the previous game are basically nullified and forgotten in the opening cutscene lol??
Tears of the Kingdom is such a polished game that nearly every single menial NPC has a unique version of their dialogue that acknowledges if it’s currently raining. Some have dialogue acknowledging if it’s overcast.
Tears of the Kingdom is such an unpolished game that three of the main characters have the exact same line of dialogue during their respective MANDATORY STORY CUTSCENES that occur after you complete THE MOST FEATURE RICH GAMEPLAY SEGMENTS IN THE GAME. (Nintendo you are already paying them to stand in the recording booth why the FUCK would you just give them the same line???)
Tears of the Kingdom has a lot to do, and there is just (barely) enough enemy variety that it’s not tedious to do a lot of it, but only if you play the intended way and shuffle back and forth between the depths, the overworld and the sky islands. God help you if you have a lot of stuff in the depths you need to get through like I did.
Tears of the Kingdom is like BOTW and is a self reflecting narrative that looks back on and recontextualizes stories and lore of all the previous Zelda games that came before it. It plays with the tropes of the series and the expectations a long time player of the series might have, sometimes to really great effect.
At the same time, this game’s Ganondorf is so badly done, he genuinely makes the story worse by being here. A generic evil goo monster with no dialogue would have served the story better than what they did.
Part of the problem is that Matt Mercer sucks fucking ass as Ganondorf. Like he is SO bad. Why the fuck did Nintendo hire this man, he is such a bad fit and the direction they gave him is SO BAD.
But the bigger problem is that this Ganondorf is so boring and buffoonish that he makes the rest of the story less interesting as a result.
Link and Zelda in BOTW were two characters that were suffering from the eternal cycle of destiny that the game series itself and its creators place on them. I thought that was an interesting meta narrative for them to have. These two characters are given their scripts and shoved onto stage but they couldn’t fit the larger than life roles and everything went to shit from there. And because of that, I thought the figure of Calamity Ganon was Ganondorf’s own version of that fate. He too was forced into this ancient role of eternal villain by destiny, and at the end of it there’s nothing left of him. He’s not a person, he’s not even a character with agency anymore, just a mindless force like a natural disaster. I thought that was kind of tragic in its own right, heartbreaking in the way that Link and Zelda’s stories were.
Well TOTK came around to show me that what I had in my head was all bullshit: Ganondorf is just some asshole.
Everything, all the suffering, all the disasters that occurred over thousands of years, all the monsters that harass people, all the toil that the Sheikah and Hyrule did to protect against, it’s all because this one fucking guy was just a huge asshole, because he’s a nasty evil meanie poopyhead. It’s not destiny, it’s not Demise, it’s just this one guy and some handful of random NPCs that inexplicably follow him.
It’d be one thing if it was just OOT and Twilight Princess again and he just wanted to take over and rule Hyrule. Whatever, generic, but we’ve done this song and dance before. They could have even done something interesting with it and have him have a grudge against the Zonai and how they’ve ruled over Hyrule with their technological superiority and thus control of everyone else. But they didn’t do that.
Instead Ganondorf is SUCH a meanie that he wants to kill all life in Hyrule with his nasty icky darkness goo because uhhhhhhh because uhhhh he’s evil :) (YOU’RE GOING TO RULE OVER WHAT, JACKASS? YOU’RE GOING TO BE KING OF WHAT? EVERYONE’S DEAD IDIOT)
Miyamoto is still so fucking pissed that everyone liked when he accidentally made Ganondorf interesting in Wind Waker the one (1) time that he’s never, ever going to let that happen again.
Anyway my main takeaways from Tears of the Kingdom is that Colgera’s phase 2 theme fucking slaps and its Ganondorf fucking sucked, that’s all folks. Thanks for reading, now I have to decide which of my 500 games I’m going to play next (jk it’s Skyrim)
my hot take is that they genuinely don’t care about particularly good english VA for most japanese media. part of that is probably the inherent distance of my not speaking japanese contributing to my perception of the quality of the japanese VA, but still. I tend to dislike the performances in “good” anime english dubs, and the english dub of botw was fucking awful. first thing i did in booting totk was to change over to reading subs with the japanese VA track. not that any of that changes the poor writing of the story, or made me actually try to finish this game, but i at least didn’t suffer every time any character talked.
BOTW’s eng dub was jawdroppingly bad for a AAA first party video game, but part of the reason for that is that they were all industry scabs.
Zelda’s eng actor is still a scab but she got better in TOTK I think. Matt Mercer is a veteran voice actor who has done… some good performances, but he was just. not a good pick in my humble onion
I had to switch to Japanese after hearing Selda’s voice… the voice actress isn’t bad (didn’t know about the scab shit) but her voice just does not fit Zelda at all to me.
The Japanese voice acting is top-notch.
I’m not sure what to think of Matt Mercer.
He was good when helping to start the “actual play” genre of tabletop RPG videos and streams on the Internet (or at least popularizing it), but he’s got issues, from what I’ve heard.
(I know a friend who helps make TTRPGs for a living and this is what he told me, but take it with a grain of salt if you want; I don’t know anything really documented that’s incriminating.)
As for the Zelda VA, I didn’t know she was a scab. I’m out of the loop on that one. Then again, this is Nintendo we’re talking about and Nintendo apparently doesn’t need unions since it’s such a great place to work at! /s
(That’s what the CEO in Nintendo of America said, anyway…)
I heard Zelda’s Japanese VA in the main BOTW trailer and decided to just play in English from that moment on.
lmao
[Final Fantasy XVI has entered the chat.]
It’s an exception to the rule, but the English VA is incredible.
TOTK if it was good
TOTK being good would be like if you were the “energetic flagellant.”
It would be the very opposite of TOTK if it were so…
It would have to be called something else!
From the comments (totally real, bro, totally not fake!):
“The designer didn’t simply make him look violent; they managed to fulfill my wish of making him look overwhelmingly evil while also being handsome enough that both men and women would fall for him. We put a lot of thought into choosing his clothes and accessories, keeping in mind that Ganondorf himself should have a strong sense of beauty and good taste. We thought he would probably be a character who paid a lot of attention to his appearance, demonstrating his dignity and intelligence as a king, and designing him with that in mind, we were meticulous with his face, body, all the way down to his fingertips, making him come off as robust and sexy at the same time.” -Hidemaro Fujibayashi, director of Tears of the Kingdom
huh, I’d believe that quote. I remember the creative side of the fandom really latched onto his ‘hydrated’ design and started drawing/writing character stuff for him after the first trailer. Fannon Gannon ended up being a more interesting character than what Nintendo delivered!
Fanon Ganon is basically his own character (with a tragic backstory to boot!)
Nintendo doesn’t do that.
And while I wouldn’t mind Ganon or Ganondorf being just plain evil… They don’t do even that correctly either…
Yeah, I would still be kind of annoyed if Ganondorf was just his usual same old evil king who wanted to take over Hyrule because he wanted to expand his kingdom, or because he’d been raised to believe it was his glorious destiny, or because he was a pawn that whatever ancient evil forces were acting through. It’d all be stuff we’d seen before, but at least it would be serviceable enough for the story.
A Ganondorf who wants to raze and salt the earth and render it uninhabitable for everyone except monsters… ok why? what is your problem dude? you are below pokemon villain level writing here. Cyrus from Diamond and Pearl back in 2006 had more going on than you
But yeah, this is writing Nintendo had since forever, I would argue, except now it’s more prominent in some ways.
Yes, I get it, Nintendo has done better, but the problem with two-dimensional characters is a big issue with Nintendo arguably goes back.
It just so happens that TOTK seems to have no redeeming features of a story like, say, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, which all had their problems story-wise, but were at least more memorable and left a more lasting impact.
Plus, I think the lack of progression might be hurting the story a lot, but that goes back to BOTW, tbh.
Oh God, I hated Cyrus.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
In addition to the points you made, one thing that really annoys me and something that has also become a trend since BOTW, is these massively open world games that are just…empty. What’s the point of having a giant map that you can explore every inch of if it’s just the same thing copy + pasted with slight variation? This might be why I keep coming back to Skyrim/Fallout NV after all these years because in every inch of that game’s world is something happening. You are rewarded for exploring the world with more than just a special item. There is a unique character or event that happens, or some NPC living their own life, or a book that delves more into the world’s lore.
I would much rather have a smaller, more linear map but with more interesting things to discover or interact with, but I guess that’s not really a selling point to most people.
I went directly from Elden Ring to TotK and was shocked at how empty the map is. I found exploration in Elden Ring much more rewarding.
Plus, it meant I was having fun in the world without getting my butt kicked over and over by any of the story-bosses…. I first-tried a couple of them early on, but late game just ruined me. That gosh darn Giant…
I’m not even a huge fan of elden ring but the world is very compelling to me - the first time you wander into Caelid and very quickly learn that everything in this place hates you is such a great moment, and I never had that sense of life, even hostile, with open world zelda.
TOTK (and BOTW)'s problem is exactly that in removing most of the dungeons & Castle Town/settlements across Hyrule in general, they also got rid of half of the charm. I don’t need Lon Lon Ranch recreated or Castle Town, but damn TOTK still felt largely empty to me - as if the BOTW timeline really is the cursed one and Hyrule’s just boned for good. Shrines are alright - but damn I miss having dungeons designed around the equipment you’d find in one of the chests inside or in the prior dungeon. Snowpeak Ruins from Twilight Princess? Earth Temple from Wind Waker? Ancient Ruins from Oracle of Seasons?? Gimme that - not 20 test of strength shrines, a few unique 5 minute shrines like the build a machine to traverse the lava one or the racetrack one, and then a bunch of annoyingly tedious shrines that after I do the first half I am already sick of it.
The best parts of TOTK were imo: Mattison’s quest in Tarrey Town, the entire Stable Trotters’ questline & crew, and the Lurelin Village restoration.
But yeah, hopefully the next mainline Zelda game is not in the BOTW universe/setting and they ease back a bit on the ‘look you can do anything with the runes/ultrahand but don’t get bored of this cause otherwise you’re only gonna find puddle-deep gameplay’ open-world theme. I say this with like 200 hours in TOTK and having done all the shrines/sidequests except for the koroks.
I kind of disagree in the sense that there were some set pieces/scenarios in TOTK that I really liked and will probably remember for a while. I found the Gerudo questline lead up to be really, really good. The fact that it had unique enemy types and a unique gameplay challenge (the sandstorm) made it really memorable to me, and it had gameplay segments that were specifically built around Riju’s ability and worked imo. (Having that ‘oh shit we have REAL bosses again’ moment also helped too)
My favorite portion of the game overall was the long climb to the wind temple and then the boss. It was the kind of gameplay segment that justified the game’s traversal mechanics (the way the Zora trek through the rain justified BOTW’s traversal system), had an adequate dungeon with a cool theme and a boss that really nailed the spectacle and used the flight and glide mechanics well, even if it wasn’t difficult.
All the dungeons themselves except for maybe the Goron’s were pretty meh, but those two extended leadups are going to be what I take with me from the game the same way I remember Snowpeak and gliding with the Deku leaf to the Forbidden Woods for the first time in Wind Waker.
Oh yeah speaking of unpolished I forgot to talk about one other thing: the sage companions. It is so funny to me how all over the place they are in quality.
Tulin is the only one who actually works, full stop. He’s the only one who can keep up with the player and he’s the only one who uses ranged weaponry. (For some reason, in a group of elemental magic users, no one can shoot a magic missile or anything) He stays out of Link’s way in a fight and actually contributes damage and openings for you. More importantly, his sage ability flows perfectly into traversal, to the point that I advise getting him last since it’s so strong it can trivialize a lot of puzzles and challenges.
On the complete opposite end of the spectrum you have Sidon, who is completely useless in every way besides being a warm body to throw at enemy camps as a distraction. His sage ability (already a nerfed to shit version of Daruk’s ability from BOTW) is virtually unusable, You can’t even proc the shield ahead of time before going into a fight since it has a fucking timer attached to it.
Yunobo at least has a niche with his attack that attaches to the front of your vehicle, but the damage doesn’t scale to be worth the effort for the late midgame imo.
Riju’s ability isn’t bad but it’s a nightmare to hunt her down in the middle of a combat encounter to activate her ability on purpose. Man, if only the sage’s abilities were added to some sort of radial power menu that already existed in the game! That would have been really helpful! But no, it’s so much more important that the world map(???) and the amiibo gacha system have dedicated spots on there 😊
this just reminded me that I never beat TOTK lol. I loved all the new mechanics and the depths are fun to fuck around in but it all felt more like a “remix” of BOTW instead of a whole new game. the big thing that pissed me off was how so many of the treasures and sidequest rewards are just armors from other Zelda games that don’t have any stat bonuses or any benefit whatsoever apart from “WOAH THATS FROM OTHER GAME
” like that shit turned me off from delving into side content after a certain point. i don’t want emo wolf link’s dirty t-shirt, I want good useful shit for THIS game goddammit!It’s fun but the story was so ridiculous I largely just ignored it. Only good part is hot catwolf lady
Dragon cat goat lady my beloved 🥺
The zonai characters had really sick designs I’m ngl
Honestly, the design of a lot of things in the story was on-point.
Yeah I more or less agree. It has some great additions, and has few real drawbacks, however for how much BOTW had going for it this was a let down for me. I enjoyed myself, but I don’t think about how much I want to boot it up and start from nothing and go in a random direction like I did with BOTW.
Ceave Perspective’s video on the game does a good job praising it while explaining the sense of personal disinterest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4ldmt3eU2I&t=3639s
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I tried very hard to like BOTW and TOTK given how much people seem to love them. I generally like Zelda games, but I just could not gel with either of them and I beat them both. TL;DR they took out a ton of what I like about Zelda and added in a bunch of what I hate about open world games.
There are also some baffling design decisions that I can’t explain. Like every boss in BOTW is a ___blight Ganon and how every pseudo-dungeon in TOTK has the exact same unlock-four-locks-to-open-the-boss-room design. And your reward for finishing those? A cutscene with one of the sages that repeats the same thing all the others say. But the geoglyphs? You can get those WAY out of order like I did. Or the underground. I thought it was neat at first until I realized it was literally just a mirror of the overworld. It’s all very strange.
I happened to Banjo-Kazooie glider down to this one geoglyph with a cutsceene that made it
spoiler
incredibly obvious that Zelda was the light dragon
so I glued a joystick to two fans and
spoiler
discovered I did not have the stamina to yoink the master sword out of her
noggin. So I made that my priority. After achieving that, I stopped playing.
spoiler
I like to think she never recovers; is just a primordial dragon forever. All playthroughs are cannon, so you can’t tell me my interpretation is wrong for the experience I had!
The fact that the game just lets you pick up the memories in any order is so baffling to me. It’s fine in BOTW since they were just barely connected vignettes with more of a characterization reveal than a story reveal, but in TOTK one of the memories just straight up tells you that
spoiler
ganondorf is up to his old tricks with the evil Zelda doppleganger
and Link the character just isn’t allowed to react to that knowledge for no reason. Every NPC has a line of dialogue saying something about rain but Link can’t do his stupid canned talking animation to tell anyone the knowledge that he is supposed to know, and as a result Link just lets dozens of NPCs carry on falsely believing something he knows the truth of.
‘Well it would break most of the regional phenomena storylines if Link could do that’
THEN WHY DID THEY LET ME FIND THAT MEMORY? LOCK IT BEHIND THE STORY PROGRESSION??? THEY LITERALLY ALREADY DO THAT WITH ONE OF THE MEMORIES SO AAAAAAAAAAAA
From what little I know of behind-the-scenes Nintendo production, young talent is given a lot of free reign mechanically but the old heads have a vice-like grip on narrative. Zelda games are almost never allowed to break the mold set, or it would ‘no longer be a Zelda game’ (see the hollowing out of Mario RPGs for a similar example). The bits where TOK breaks down most is where it’s forced to be a traditional Zelda narrative, so you have the mechanical implementation almost at war with the story it’s forced to accommodate. I think I remember hearing the original pitch of BotW was a futuristic industrialized civilization being invaded by aliens - the Shika tech and Guardians are the retrofitted remains of that dream.
it’s funny how the production of an incomplete or broken narrative is itself sordid and engaging affair.
THEORY: Link said nothing because he thought it would be funny, and it was
I like this fanfiction.
I really liked botw, and I think I ruined totk for myself by replaying botw (with the Linkle mod) right before the newer game came out, because I booted up totk, fucked around for about two hours, and then never played it again.
Luckily I haven’t paid for a nintendo game in many years, but still.
Yeah the absolute worst thing you can do for your TOTK enjoyment is replay BOTW right before starting it lmao
Demon king? Secret stone?
Shiek?
You’re that ninja.
The story was so lazy (from what I know of it).
Ganondorf is barely in it or present and seems to barely do anything.
I really disliked the idea of the teardrop cutscenes. You’re not an independent actor in a story, you’re basically reliving a story (out of order) that happened thousands of years ago. The culmination of the cutscenes isn’t even that impactful to the game, I think you can literally finish the main story quest and not do tears. It’s weirdly important to the story since it focuses on Zelda and is the the titular aspect of the game, and weirdly completely unimportant. And that’s not saying anything about the quality of the cutscenes themselves - the big “showdown” where the demon king gets sealed away by all the old sages is so ugly I thought I was transported back in time to 2004. Compare it to cutscenes and even regular in-game scenes in Genshin Impact, and you’ll be confused on why TotK was even so awaited.
I didn’t finish because I was bored with the game…
…exactly like how I was bored with Breath of the Wild.
Pluto drops the mic.
B O O M
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