#that was a little of my problem in totk too. the puzzles were too open. they were so open in fact that nobody solved them ‘correctly’

[ra-vio]

ravio I started drawing spring of last year

[beesmygod]

So TotK seems to be clicking where BotW wasn't. Any insight on what the key differences are that work for you?

note: i played botw up until the calamity ganon fight and then went "yeah ok ive played a zelda game before", put it down and never went back. didnt play the dlc

i dont think anyone would be surprised to know that im a "majoras mask was the best zelda" guy but the reason has little to do with the "darker tone" or the lore but because reusing assets allowed the dev team to greatly (GREATLY in this case holy shit) expand on the actual contents of the game itself. i love gold/silver best for the same reason.

botw is like running around an empty movie set. theres nothing in that fucking game. at the time, due to the proliferation of crafting mechanics infesting literally every AAA game, it felt like nintendo was more focused about hitting all the checks on a checklist of tired mechanics that were included just for the sake of saying they had it. crafting! weapon durability! open world! pbbbbt.

none of these things proved to be enjoyable to me. keeping in mind that ive been playing zeldas since the snes (skipping only a handful of handheld games), the changes felt like steps away from what makes zelda games unique. crafting felt like an arbitrary step between me and potions. i wanted to swing my master sword with power, not experiment with clumsy weapons that stop existing after i finally get a feel for them. and the open world, frankly sucked.

mm rewarded me for my curiosity. experimentation and exploration would lead to interesting or gratifying results (did you know theres a paper airplane in ikana canyon...). botw is like playing in the window xp background. theres barely any landmarks, except shrines, or anything to do outside of getting the yiga clan's ass. theyre easy to pick out because theyre literally the only people on the road. the world is put to waste; i cant play with it, i can just observe and be extremely artificially hindered by its vastness.

this doesnt really fit anywhere else in the above open world rant, but trading the shrines for small and sparce dungeons was a huge let down. i was hoping for a series of cohesive puzzles intended to help my mastery of my newest weapon or ability. you know. like a zelda game

totk fixed this and every other problem in the best way possible; the devs dumped a ton of toys into my playpen, gave me a hot glue gun, and told me to go buck wild. i love to build a horrible contraption to solve my stupid problems or kill me instantly. i love that experimenting with weapons involves actual experimentation if you desire or you can have an inventory exclusively full of spear type weapons with vastly different properties by gluing a bunch of rocks or monster parts to it. but most importantly....the "stock up->head out->explore->return" loop no longer feels like i have to go to the dmv over and over.

sure, the depths are artificially large in the way that the map in botw was; theres not a lot to do except reveal the map and do plot stuff. but the overworld was given a complete overhaul using the empty map as a starting point. theres actually stuff to look at, ruins to explore, caves to investigate, holes to jump into, and all that shit in the sky to explore. the sky map might be sparse but its meticulously crafted so that just the process of explorating the archipelagos feels like a puzzle you need to solve, as opposed to a hurdle you have to jump.

there is so much more to do in totk that im pretty sure im over 20 hours in and havent done any of the regional main quests. ive been running around picking up side quests, uncovering the map, exploring the depths, fucking around in the sky, and dying my clothes. but its not annoying or overwhelming. it feels more alive and less like a weird map in an abandoned gmod server. im having fun.

for crit: imo, one of the biggest criticisms i have for both these games is that the voice acting is horrendous. nintendo has too much money to be tapping people who sound like they just got out of the shenmue soundbooth. zelda was not improved by voice acting and they should probably go back to everyone just having short exclamations like "HEH HEEH!" or "hmmm...".

also link doesnt roll anymore and its really fucking me up. im really struggling here lol. i keep trying to do dark souls shit and every fight involves me accidentally zooming in with the sheikah slate instead of locking on, hitting l1 istead of shield, and whistling for my horse instead of drinking estus.

also nerf rain

[the-mic-drop]

TotK Spoilers Below Cut

Regarding Korok Forest

Nothing in either installment of the Wild Duology gave me a greater sense of dread and fear than going into the Korok Forest for the first time in Tears of the Kingdom. Not my first Lynel encounter, not my first Guardian encounter, not my first trip into The Depths, not even my first encounter with the Gloom Hands put the kind of spine-tingling horror into my soul. Sure, those all made me nearly piss myself, but the infected Korok Forest was a unique, well done brand of horrific.

So you get to that one stable, meet Kilton and Koltin, say what's good to Tera, and by now you're thinking "I wonder what's good in the Lost Woods." Now, let's say for the sake of argument that you don't go right into the Minshi Woods Chasm and try to go the original way. Immediately you can tell something's off. Instead of the surreal blue mist you remember, it's a chalky black miasma, and there's no getting through it. No clever wind puzzle either, it's impenetrable.

So now the dread is really starting to build. Both that you have to go into The Depths and that something's wrong in general. So you go to The Depths and on the little raised pathway to a central lightroot are several Koroks being vague about some problem in the Korok Forest. So you ascend up back onto the surface and are faced with... wrongness.

What you should see (depending on what time of day you get there) is shining greens, yellows, pinks, and more colors of a welcoming and safe respite. Instead, you're faced with an eerie stillness and malicious magentas. Towering over this scene is The Great Deku Tree, Protector of the Korok Forest. Except his mouth is hung open and it is clear he is not well. You approach him, quickly noting that the Master Sword is nowhere to be seen, and talk to the first Korok you come across.

To you they say "..." as they stand perfectly still, staring at the ground. The textbox doesn't even display their name.

This is the crowning moment of this horror show. The Koroks are a relative unknown, yet are quite simple. They're childlike, whimsical forest spirits that are always full of energy and enthusiasm. They are pure, innocent, yet mysteriously magical. Most don't even know they exist, let alone interact with them. Yet, here they are, in the place where logic would dictate that they are the safest, lifeless. They are spirits that have been robbed of their spirit, their identities too if the lack of names are anything to go by. And then you go to the Deku Tree himself and he can't even notice you, only groan about a pain in his stomach.

Now this is upsetting in many ways. The Calamity was powerful to be sure, but no Malice ever invaded the forest. Even the monsters that were there seemed to be either naturally occurring or only existed because the forest willed it. But now, not only had Ganondorf's power corrupted the protective fog of the Lost Woods, it infected a near godlike being. It smothered the very essence of the Koroks.

In BotW, the Korok Forest felt more than any other location like a safe haven. Untouched and safe from the dormant power of the Calamity. After all, where else would Fi, the spirit of the Master Sword itself, know it would be safe enough to recuperate for an entire century? But now, in TotK, it has been completely and thoroughly infected by Ganondorf's magic. It feels more than just wrong, it feels heretical, sacrilegious, criminal.

I can only liken this shift in tone to WW2 stories where Allied forces come across a concentration camp for the first time. You've already seen so much, been through so much, but this? This is different. The profound sense of "this shouldn't be this way" is gut-wrenching. Yet it motivates you to stay and fix it like no other quest in any game I've played. No matter how much you hate The Depths, no matter how difficult you find the Gloom Hands, no matter how under-prepared you are for a Phantom Ganon fight, you want desperately to stay until you do it. Not because the payoff might be huge, not because it's required for the plot. But because you just can't not.

At least, that's how I experienced it.

[ratgrimes]

Now that I've been done with Tears of the Kingdom for like 2 weeks, my thoughts on it have solidified. Spoiler free thoughts: the major elements of the game (dungeons, bosses, main quest) are a lot better than Breath of the Wild, but its moment to moment gameplay leaves me wanting something more, or really something else.

Minor spoilers below.

The depths are neat but very underbaked. Without shrines or much scenery to explore, it felt like a gear dump. Like you go down there for gear, bombs, and zonaite and that's about it beyond the ocassional hideout. The sky islands are very cool, but there are too few of them, and the ones that are there are too samey. There are like 5 separate islands that are essentially copypasted. You know the ones: there's like a crooked x bit and a launcher in the middle, a gacha dispenser, and a "fetch the crystal" shrine. The low gravity areas were very cool, but only used rarely. I could live with repeats if they're at least reskinned. But the depths and the sky islands were all visually almost identical, so no areas really stand out: the gerudo sky and the akkala sky look exactly the same, and the areas underground are also indistinguishable. Caves are fine, only one really impressed me (the big lookout landing shelter hole that leads to hyrule castle was cool as hell). Again, they're all visually indistinct, and follow the same formula (other than the eldin ones that are spicy).

It feels incoherent in a way that Breath of the Wild didn't. It's like a lot of little ideas packed together that don't necessarily mix. The shrines felt a little better than BotW's, and I'm very glad the tests of strength were gone, but most feel a bit insubstantial, like a massive snack instead of a meal (a problem in BotW too, but given the time they had, it's a shame there wasn't more done with them).

Ultrahand is really the only new ability worth a damn. Fuse is just ultrahand, and quickly becomes a routine necessity instead of a fun bonus. Ascend is just a quality of life feature outside of maybe two overworld boss fights. Recall is useful for puzzles, but rarely any good outside of that. In contrast, I used bombs, ice, and stasis all the time. Magnesis was no good, ultrahand is a straight upgrade there. I just don't really care about the vehicles. It's not what I play zelda for, and it's not what I play games generally for.

I think it's really hurt by being so similar to BotW at its core. Breath felt like a big jump forward, something new and exciting for zelda and a high water mark for open world games. TotK feels incremental, a decent refinement in some ways, and a frustrating step back in others. If it came out 2-3 years after BotW instead, that might have helped. As it is now, i don't think it will stand the test of time in a way that Breath of the Wild has. I don't feel like going back and replaying it.

It's fine. Middle of the pack zelda. Fun bosses, great final boss fight, cool story, and a few good side quests like the yiga stuff. Unfortunately, everything in the middle is kind of goopy and undefined. It slipped out of my mind as soon as I was done. Very few of the locations stand out in my memory, unlike how they did originally in Breath of the Wild. I still remember climbing dueling peaks the first time, watching the sunset in lurelin, camping on a mountainside and waiting for a dragon to come by, jumping off the great plateau for the first time. In TotK, I remember the water, lightning, and wind temple, and the underground yiga hideout. I remember fiddling with car parts and glider angles and a hot air balloon not working quite right. I remember my gerudo gf (Calyban 💙 Link) that lived in front of a cooking pot and grinding for rupees and monster parts.

I liked the idea of rebuilding hyrule and forming connections, but it didn't really work in practice. The game is left in this awkward middle ground where it's not empty enough to feel intentionally lonely, and not deep and crowded enough to feel lively. It also feels weirdly discontinguous from BotW for a direct sequel. It feels more like a do-over or retcon, like how Deltarune remixed people and places from Undertale, but it shouldn't since it's the same world, the same canon. There's very little from your previous adventure that carries over or that anyone mentions, even though it's only been a few years. The timeline between the two is very messy as well, but that doesn't really matter. It just feels off.

There's a lot to be said about how a game feels, about what it evokes and how, beyond or in tandem with the mechanics. BotW felt almost like a semi-transcendental meditation, a lonely journey through the wilderness, a piece of art with Something To Say about games, the series, maybe even life. TotK feels like a video-game-ass video game, like a lego set. If the temples and bosses were lifted from Tears and put into Breath (and maaaybe the building stuff was added as like a big expansion to BotW) I don't think anything of great value would really be lost. Some of the character work was nice, but there's not enough of it.

I really wish they would make something smaller, more inventive, and more intentional next. I want less control, less stuff, more feeling. But given the sales and praise for TotK, I sincerely doubt that will happen. Instead, we'll wait 7 more years for "another one."

And where the hell is my big bird man Kass

[oceanic-recollection]

To All

What’re your favorite games (and why if you want to answer that part)

<TSF> backgammon, and mens erger je niet, are pretty fun! i used to play backgammon, as well as puzzle games, with my administrator, all the time...

<TSF> we used to go into the market, and offer people bills if they won against us. they were practically a master at everything they showed me... i was the one who usually had to pay up~

<TSF> ...for videogames, i, uh, obviously enjoy phighting. and terraria, and...splatoon....i guess...? i know i sort of, have a sort of, ~gamer persona~, but i'll admit, i don't really, play any games...

<BVQT> I greatly enjoy sudoku! And especially the "harder" variations. So far I have found Hyper Sudoku and Jigsaw Sudoku the most amusing so far.

<BVQT> I also find myself enjoying many sports games! Variations of 'football' especially.

<BVQT> Ah. Videogames also count? Well...

<BVQT> I enjoy Minecraft greatly. The slow-burn worldbuilding interests me massively and I appreciate the lengths that they go to enure that the subjects mentioned are interesting for everyone. I wish that the education edition was available on PC! I would love to play mostly unmodded Minecraft with alchemy available to me.

<BVQT> I also enjoy Terraria. The gratuitous gore is a bit of a turn-off at times especially considering the lag it causes. And there are a great deal of aspects that utterly disgust me. But it is incredibly fun otherwise! The lore is intriguing even if it is often decanonized for little to no reason. I do wish that they finished Terraria: Otherworld. Even if it was sort of a Starbound clone wasn't it?

<BVQT> Speaking of! I massively enjoy Starbound! Though sometimes the worlds feel too closed off and the universe itself too open to feel very immersive it is incredibly fun and I like it! I could spend hours upon hours simply building and browsing its many interesting mods! Even the. less appropriate ones have their own charm and interesting quirks! The community is so dedicated to making updates for a long-forgotten game I am honestly impressed.

<BVQT> I also enjoy Don't Starve though I have already mentioned that earlier here. It is fun! If a bit annoying to handle.

<GRP> OOH OHH ME NEXT

<GRP> I LOVE BALL GAME. and JELLYFISHSPEARFISHING!!!!!! ITS FUN!!! AND NOT JUST BC TABBY INVENTED IT but mostly that :} tabbys so good at gaming

<GRP> uhhhh i dont rlly like amny videogames to be honest... sorry i am not a #epic #gamer. I LOVE phighting tho!!! phunny!!!!!! me and tabby always get mvp in itits funnn

<APIS> Man, Phighting IS fun!

<APIS> You guys already know I don't like sports... Puzzle games are really fun! A digital puzzle game I've been getting into lately is Puyo Puyo. It's, like.. okay...

<APIS> I mean, the story's really funny, to be honest. Like, who even thought of this stuff??? I really like Amitie, and Ringo... they're cute. Like Goldy and I!

<WM> I do notte ofte playye videyogaymes.. Splatty is funne.

<UPSILON> I'm the same as my beloved. I just don't really see the appeal... I tried playing some online games, but they're just - why is it that no matter how long I play, everyone else is always fancier than me!? It's absurd-!

<FS> ........

<FS> i play a little of everything, i guess...

<FS> totk is... it's fine. the physics are uncomfortable, and hard to get used to, since everything's so floaty sometimes, but it's silly. i prefer botw's story... but if i had to choose a zelda game i really liked, it'd be triforce heroes, or maybe spirit tracks. all zelda games have... problems.... but they're fun.

<FS> splatoon's also pretty fun. i like th story. wish the translations weren't so terrible... shoutout to the community for fixing them, jeez.

<FS> phighting is pretty fun. i'm planning on trying out banhammer, even if i don't like his character. i can reclaim him.

<FS> starbound's fun... wish you could make yourself have a specific profession, like your crewmembers do. and wish you could bring tailors with you without mods...

<FS> ...i really like baba is you...

<FS> s fun... like baba...

<FS> b

[tarakaybee]

TOTK Thoughts

I’ve heard some people say that the story and the characters from Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom are not very interesting and I can really see where they’re coming from, a majority of the characters are quite shallow and most of the story dialogue is really generic exposition, especially when relating to the game’s four* major dungeons. For my part I think the story is quite good even amongst Zelda plots, albeit not very deep or complex, but I remember getting emotionally invested in the plotline revolving around Zelda’s adventures and getting to the bottom of what’s happened to her, and seeing all the little recurring characters like the Koroks, the signpost guys, Purrah and everybody else at Lookout Landing are quite nice and just spark joy whenever I see them even if I skip over their dialogue.

My only real grievances with the game revolve around the four* plot dungeons. This and BOTW’s game’s key feature is how open world it is, there’s a lot of things you can do out of order, do without being told, or not do at all, but when you partake in the plotlines around the four* dungeons, the game’s openness is gone and it repeatedly traps you in the same plot and dialogue four* times in a row, and then attached an NPC support character to you to make you wait for cooldowns or for them to catch up to where the current obstacle is..

I really don’t understand why neither Breath of the Wild nor Tears of the Kingdom could get the dungeons right considering they were a solved problem in a majority of Zelda games, they basically just need to make a Shrine, which are all great, but longer and with bespokes visuals and puzzle pieces, the open plan dungeons that don’t have locked rooms are just boring because it’s too easy to clear it in half an hour without putting much thought into any of it. The extremely low difficulty plus the game marking the dungeon keys on your map plus your support character verbally explaining how to beat the dungeon means they’re just gonna be an immediate skip from me in the future. I at least like that you can beat both games without doing them but there’s a difference between choosing to skip it and having to skip it because they’re so tedious.