#i am so glad echoes of wisdom exists bc it shows that totk is not the standard going forward

[minijenn]

Alright wait I think I should elaborate on this.

So like Tears of the Kingdom is barely a sequel to Breath of the Wild despite being positioned (in its VERY FIRST TRAILER) as such because its so far removed from botw its not even funny. The ancient shiekah tech? Gone because uhhhhh its disappeared randomly bc Nintendy said so lol. Any of the people of Hyrule recognizing the knight that constantly travels alongside their princess? Nope, Link's just some rando none of them know. Any actual mentions of the champions outside of Mipha because she's the only one related to one of the new sages? Fuck those assholes who had a significant reflection on the present of the last game, they dead af.

But despite refusing to acknowledge Botw even happened, Totk insists upon copying pretty much all of its structure. Shrines and dungeons with four or five mechanisms you need to activiate and korok seeds and armor upgrades and pointless side quests and everything in between. The only difference is that Totk forces you to do these repetetive tasks across not just the surface, but a barren, spread out sky and boring, samey depths too. Totk gives you so much shit to do and none of it feels substantial or worthwhile or interesting in the slightest. Its maximalist game design at its worst. You're constantly just doing busy work in areas that just don't feel like a natural part of the world. The wilds in botw felt real and lived in, the sky and the depths feel like they were made solely for the player to fuck around in.

The hand mechanics are so fucking game breaking its not even funny. You can essentially just ultrahand an air bike to get over any obstacle. Asend and recall are so fucking broken that you can just bypass shrine puzzles completely with them. The game gives you these tools and tells you to "unleash your creativity" with them but ultimately most players aren't going to do that, they're just going to use them to cheat the most convienient solution possible, which begs the question, why design these puzzles in the first place if you've given the player the option to just skip them altogether?

Then there's the story, good good this fucking story. First of all there's the fact that you still unlock it through memories but unlike botw where you could essentially get them in any order, totk decided for a much more linear story but because its so married to how botw did it, you can end up stumbling upon major plot spoilers way later than you're supposed to (And dont give me anything about the forgotten temple telling you the order, if a player happens to miss out on going there early on in the game, they're flat out of fucking luck).

As for the story itself, its badly written, poorly paced, and just plain nonsensical. The fact that Ganondorf is able to even get far enough in his plans to obtain a secret stone is a reflection of how fucking stupid Rauru is for letting that fucker even hang around to kill his wife. Zelda not fucking telling Rauru and Sonia early on that Ganondorf is still alive in the present is absolutely bonkers like girl, what the fuck are you doing??? The ancient sages are all nothing characters with no personalities and no fucking names jesus christ nintendo. And we have to watch them repeat the same fucking cutscene four fucking times (Demon King? Secret Stone?) like we're goddamn babies who can't absorb the most basic of information. Ganondorf is also an absolutely wasted character in this game, with no real motivation or personality outside of "evil", who spends almost all of the present just sitting around underground waiting for Link to fucking kill him. You get the sense that they brought him back simply because he's a Zelda series staple and fans were disappointed that Calamity Ganon wasn't a character either but fuck, at least Botw was honest about that instead of what Totk does trying to pretend that Ganondorf is anything but a fucking dry piece of wood.

The only things I'll always defend this game on are its presentation. Its beautiful to look at, of course, the soundtrack is OUTSTANDING, completely blowing botw's out of the water, and depite how stupid the rest of the story is, anything having to do with the Light Dragon always makes me teary and the ending (epic final boss included) reduces me into a Zelink shipping pile of tears.

But everything else surrounding it? Fuck, man they spent six years developing this game, with one of those years apparently spent on "polish". What the fuck were they doing all that time? Why couldn't they fix the obvious problems with the games structure or plot? Why the hell does a game that essentially feels like BotW DLC cost 70 fucking dollars? Why does it feel so unfinished and underbaked despite that cost? Why is it so bad?

I wanted to love totk so much and upon my first playthrough, I did. But when I actually sat down and thought about the overall experience, I realized, this... just ain't it, fam. It's not the sequel to my favorite game of all time that I wanted. It's not even that great compared to other Zelda games that have far better plots and more unique gameplay structures. It's just... disappointing. And I think that's what's the most heartbreaking thing of all.

TLDR: Tears of the Kingdom is Bad and it should feel bad.

Its been over a year and I think I've finally come to terms that Tears of the Kingdom makes me irrationally angry the same way Kingdom Hearts 3 did because Oops The Highly Anticipated Video Game Was Bad, Actually